Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:06 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode 351, and today's show is brought to you by

00:00:11 ◼   ► Pingdom, ExpressVPN, and Indeed.

00:00:14 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Federico Vittucci.

00:00:17 ◼   ► Hi Federico.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Hello Myke, how are you?

00:00:19 ◼   ► I am great, how are you?

00:00:21 ◼   ► I am good.

00:00:22 ◼   ► It's hot and I'm exhausted by the heat, but I'm good.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Yes.

00:00:27 ◼   ► two things don't sound good to me but if you can deal with them that's awesome

00:00:32 ◼   ► yeah yes Stephen is not here this week he is I believe lost in the woods and

00:00:39 ◼   ► that's as much as we have to say on that maybe we'll come back who knows maybe

00:00:43 ◼   ► not who knows no one can know summer of no fun is taken no steven

00:00:50 ◼   ► - Disappearance.

00:00:51 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:53 ◼   ► - My iMac arrived today.

00:00:55 ◼   ► - Oh, oh.

00:00:56 ◼   ► - It was unexpected, it was very unexpected.

00:00:58 ◼   ► It was supposed to come in mid-July,

00:01:00 ◼   ► and then a few days ago it shipped directly from China,

00:01:04 ◼   ► and then all of a sudden today it was out for delivery,

00:01:07 ◼   ► which was surprising to me.

00:01:09 ◼   ► It's arrived at home, I don't have it here,

00:01:12 ◼   ► but I'll be bringing it to the studio tomorrow,

00:01:14 ◼   ► and I'll be setting it up,

00:01:16 ◼   ► I'll be back to yellow iMac land, which I'm excited about.

00:01:19 ◼   ► You didn't send us a picture.

00:01:21 ◼   ► Of what?

00:01:22 ◼   ► Of the iMac.

00:01:24 ◼   ► Because I don't have it yet. It's at home. I'm not home.

00:01:26 ◼   ► Oh, you're not home.

00:01:28 ◼   ► No.

00:01:28 ◼   ► Okay, alright. Yeah.

00:01:29 ◼   ► Makes sense.

00:01:30 ◼   ► So, I did buy something to put it on.

00:01:34 ◼   ► I bought a stand.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Oh, let's see.

00:01:37 ◼   ► From a company Grovemade.

00:01:39 ◼   ► I think Grovemade are one of these companies that make a lot of things that don't meet your own aesthetic tastes.

00:01:44 ◼   ► It's all wood.

00:01:45 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:01:46 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:01:46 ◼   ► You like this.

00:01:47 ◼   ► Woodgrass and that kind of stuff.

00:01:48 ◼   ► wooden accessories. Okay.

00:01:50 ◼   ► But I bought this stand to put the iMac on to try and raise it up a bit.

00:01:55 ◼   ► But I thought this stand, I like the look of it, but I thought the function of it is pretty good

00:01:59 ◼   ► because I can just put things underneath it, you know?

00:02:02 ◼   ► Right.

00:02:03 ◼   ► Which I thought was a pretty good idea. So that, I have that now.

00:02:08 ◼   ► What are you going to put underneath that? Like your USB Pre 2 for example?

00:02:11 ◼   ► Yeah, probably my USB Pre 2 and maybe my little audio, like my headphone amp or something maybe?

00:02:17 ◼   ► I'll see. But I think that will work pretty well for me.

00:02:20 ◼   ► So I'm very excited to be back on the iMac.

00:02:24 ◼   ► And I also have my second monitor set up again,

00:02:27 ◼   ► which I'm looking forward to.

00:02:29 ◼   ► I do want to give a piece of follow-up,

00:02:30 ◼   ► which is completely unnecessary.

00:02:32 ◼   ► It's a correction.

00:02:33 ◼   ► On the previous episode, I said I had a 2-terabyte SSD.

00:02:36 ◼   ► I actually have a 1-terabyte SSD.

00:02:38 ◼   ► I apologize for the error, and I hope I could be forgiven.

00:02:41 ◼   ► -I don't know. I don't know.

00:02:42 ◼   ► -I know it's difficult.

00:02:44 ◼   ► I need to break out Apple Notes

00:02:47 ◼   ► and write one of those things out.

00:02:50 ◼   ► - One of those apology notes that you can tweet out.

00:02:54 ◼   ► - I saw someone say that with live text,

00:02:57 ◼   ► you'll be able to copy and paste the text out of those now.

00:03:00 ◼   ► - Well, yes.

00:03:01 ◼   ► So I've been thinking about this too in theory.

00:03:03 ◼   ► So in Safari for sure,

00:03:04 ◼   ► because the Safari preview image takes over

00:03:07 ◼   ► like whatever custom preview thing

00:03:09 ◼   ► Twitter is doing in the mobile app.

00:03:11 ◼   ► But in Safari, like I actually came across this yesterday,

00:03:15 ◼   ► I was trying to copy a photo from Google Images.

00:03:18 ◼   ► And if you're not careful, you just select the text instead.

00:03:22 ◼   ► So you need to be, and maybe this will be tweaked

00:03:24 ◼   ► over the upcoming betas, but you need to be extra careful

00:03:27 ◼   ► when you're long pressing an image,

00:03:29 ◼   ► because if it contains some text in Safari,

00:03:31 ◼   ► you're not gonna copy that text.

00:03:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, I just had this with Gray.

00:03:35 ◼   ► I was sending him a picture of a handwriting sample on paper

00:03:38 ◼   ► because that's the life that we share now, I suppose.

00:03:41 ◼   ► and we were on the phone at the time

00:03:43 ◼   ► and he was trying to tap the image to make it larger

00:03:47 ◼   ► or to zoom in on it,

00:03:49 ◼   ► and he just kept selecting my handwriting instead.

00:03:52 ◼   ► So this is what I wanted.

00:03:54 ◼   ► - Computer, I need you to be a little dumber right now.

00:03:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is one of those things

00:03:58 ◼   ► that I can imagine him tweaking.

00:04:00 ◼   ► In certain circumstances,

00:04:02 ◼   ► I feel like it should work the same way it works

00:04:05 ◼   ► in maybe in the Photos app

00:04:07 ◼   ► where you have to press the button first

00:04:09 ◼   ► to go into kind of like text selection mode.

00:04:12 ◼   ► Is that right?

00:04:13 ◼   ► Have I got that right?

00:04:14 ◼   ► I think it's on the iPad, it's like this.

00:04:17 ◼   ► There's like a little button and it shows you

00:04:20 ◼   ► what looks like a piece of paper and you press it

00:04:21 ◼   ► and then you can select the text.

00:04:23 ◼   ► - Isn't that just an indicator that tells you the text?

00:04:25 ◼   ► - Is it just an indicator?

00:04:26 ◼   ► Oh, okay. - I think it is.

00:04:28 ◼   ► I think it is.

00:04:29 ◼   ► - I think maybe in certain circumstances

00:04:31 ◼   ► it would be helpful to have like a mode you go into,

00:04:34 ◼   ► but it is also kind of magical to just be like,

00:04:37 ◼   ► there's an image I want that text, I'll just select it.

00:04:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, but that stuff is really incredible though.

00:04:42 ◼   ► - It is cool.

00:04:44 ◼   ► - It's cool and it's a little bit of a bummer right now

00:04:47 ◼   ► that, and I guess if anyone from the shortcuts team

00:04:49 ◼   ► is listening, I was kind of hoping to put together

00:04:52 ◼   ► like a shortcut with live text already

00:04:55 ◼   ► where you use the take a picture action in the shortcuts app

00:05:00 ◼   ► and instead of taking a picture, you capture the live text

00:05:03 ◼   ► and you pass it on to the next action as text.

00:05:07 ◼   ► Like if you want to put together a custom shortcut,

00:05:08 ◼   ► basically build what the camera does,

00:05:10 ◼   ► but in shortcuts so that you can have other actions,

00:05:14 ◼   ► you know?

00:05:15 ◼   ► But that's not possible right now

00:05:16 ◼   ► because the take picture action

00:05:19 ◼   ► is not live text enabled right now in beta one, it seems.

00:05:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, this feels addable.

00:05:24 ◼   ► I don't know if we're going to get it in iOS 15.0,

00:05:27 ◼   ► but that definitely feels like something you could add.

00:05:29 ◼   ► I mean, especially because they had that,

00:05:32 ◼   ► There's that WWDC session with the live sounds thing, whatever they call it, right?

00:05:36 ◼   ► The sound detection?

00:05:37 ◼   ► And the guy was using shortcuts for that, right?

00:05:40 ◼   ► It was like detecting sounds.

00:05:41 ◼   ► They do have the trigger.

00:05:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:43 ◼   ► They do have the sound recognition trigger in the automations right now.

00:05:48 ◼   ► Which, I mean, I know it's not the same thing,

00:05:51 ◼   ► but it doesn't seem far away from that in my mind, you know?

00:05:54 ◼   ► Like those two things seem somewhat similar.

00:05:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I was thinking about that.

00:05:59 ◼   ► like how could I use the sound recognition trigger for an automation?

00:06:02 ◼   ► And I was wondering like maybe if I put like an iPad by the front door and it

00:06:07 ◼   ► detects like the doorbell it could do stuff right? But I don't know. I don't

00:06:12 ◼   ► know. I don't have an iPad like you know how people sometimes they hang those

00:06:17 ◼   ► iPads like a spare iPad mini or something on the wall? I tried doing that.

00:06:21 ◼   ► Yeah? Well I tried setting one up in the kitchen. This is before I got my Echo

00:06:27 ◼   ► show and I tried setting one up in the kitchen and it didn't it ended up just

00:06:34 ◼   ► not being what I wanted it was like an iPad's too fully functioned like I want

00:06:42 ◼   ► it to be simple but it's like it keeps getting all my notifications and you

00:06:45 ◼   ► have to kind of keep time and stuff off and you got to charge it more unless you

00:06:49 ◼   ► leave it plugged in all the time or whatever and yeah the echo show ended up

00:06:52 ◼   ► working out perfectly for what we wanted.

00:06:54 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:06:55 ◼   ► - Because it's also made for that, right?

00:06:58 ◼   ► Like you've got a timer running,

00:06:59 ◼   ► the thing's showing you the timer all the time.

00:07:00 ◼   ► Like it's, you know, it's kind of more focused for that,

00:07:04 ◼   ► which is why, you know, we've spoken about it on this show

00:07:07 ◼   ► before we will again in the future,

00:07:09 ◼   ► why we would like to see Apple build a home product

00:07:12 ◼   ► with a screen.

00:07:13 ◼   ► Because then you can put a version of the operating system

00:07:17 ◼   ► that is fully catered towards meeting the tasks

00:07:20 ◼   ► of that device, rather than trying to make it work for you with a more general purpose

00:07:27 ◼   ► computer.

00:07:28 ◼   ► Right, yeah. Do you have the Echo Show, the one that turns around when you say the trigger

00:07:34 ◼   ► word?

00:07:35 ◼   ► No, we have the one before that.

00:07:36 ◼   ► Okay. I saw some videos of that, it looks...

00:07:39 ◼   ► It's cool, it's very cool. I think really the biggest benefit for that is video calling,

00:07:47 ◼   ► know? And we don't video call from the Echo show. I mean I will say like we

00:07:57 ◼   ► do love the center stage. Yes I've been using that. It's so nice it's so so good

00:08:03 ◼   ► I love that feature on the on the new iPad so like when we have like calls of

00:08:08 ◼   ► family and friends now we use it in as iPad Pro and the center stage

00:08:13 ◼   ► functionality is really good. It gets a bit weird sometimes, right? But like it's

00:08:17 ◼   ► great like 95% of the time. It's a really good feature. Nice little addition.

00:08:25 ◼   ► Listeners of the show probably know by now that we have Connected Pro, which is

00:08:30 ◼   ► every single week you can get longer versions of the show. We do pre-show or

00:08:35 ◼   ► post-show and sometimes both. And with no ads you go to getconnectedpro.co

00:08:40 ◼   ► and you can sign up for that. There's a particular reason I'm mentioning

00:08:43 ◼   ► now is we are now one year into Connected Pro.

00:08:47 ◼   ► So we just wanted to extend an additional thank you

00:08:52 ◼   ► than the one we would normally extend

00:08:54 ◼   ► to everyone who supported the show over the last year.

00:08:57 ◼   ► It's been a worrying, challenging time, right?

00:09:00 ◼   ► And can still be in certain circumstances

00:09:03 ◼   ► if you are running your own business.

00:09:06 ◼   ► I'm sure many of our listeners will know that.

00:09:08 ◼   ► And having the support directly from our members

00:09:12 ◼   ► has been something to really take the weight off of our minds.

00:09:15 ◼   ► So thank you to everybody that's chosen to support this show.

00:09:19 ◼   ► It really means a lot to us, and we

00:09:20 ◼   ► hope that you continue to enjoy the Connected Pro content.

00:09:23 ◼   ► Yes, thank you.

00:09:24 ◼   ► Thank you, thank you.

00:09:26 ◼   ► Last week, day one was acquired by Automattic, Automattic

00:09:30 ◼   ► the company behind WordPress.

00:09:33 ◼   ► It's got two T's in it.

00:09:34 ◼   ► You may have forgotten this, that Automattic also

00:09:38 ◼   ► owns Simple Note and Tumblr.

00:09:40 ◼   ► I did.

00:09:40 ◼   ► I'd forgotten they own Tumblr.

00:09:44 ◼   ► I remembered SimpleNote.

00:09:46 ◼   ► I forgot Tumblr.

00:09:48 ◼   ► I think it's because Tumblr has been owned by so many people

00:09:51 ◼   ► now that it's difficult to remember that one.

00:09:55 ◼   ► In my mind, Automattic owns Tumblr,

00:09:58 ◼   ► like Mozilla owns Pocket.

00:10:00 ◼   ► Pocket, yeah.

00:10:01 ◼   ► It's very similar.

00:10:02 ◼   ► I mean, but actually, you're not far off, really,

00:10:05 ◼   ► because one of the things that Automattic has done,

00:10:08 ◼   ► at least with the things that we've seen them buy up recently, is to seemingly keep the

00:10:16 ◼   ► services not only independent from a branding perspective, but they also seem to be run

00:10:22 ◼   ► independently. And so, you know, I think that seems pretty cool. I guess this is probably

00:10:32 ◼   ► pretty good for day one. It's still going to be run by the founder Paul Main. Matt Mullenweg

00:10:38 ◼   ► who is the CEO founder, I'm not sure if he's CEO, but I'm pretty sure founder of Automattic,

00:10:45 ◼   ► wrote like a really nice blog post kind of about what day one means to him personally.

00:10:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I feel like this is a, this has to be the best case scenario for something like,

00:10:58 ◼   ► for a product like day one. Like if day one couldn't stay independent, right, if they made

00:11:03 ◼   ► the decision that like if we want to keep growing we need to be acquired by someone with, you know,

00:11:08 ◼   ► more resources than we have.

00:11:11 ◼   ► I think a company like Automattic, like I really like them.

00:11:14 ◼   ► I like what the company stands for, I like,

00:11:18 ◼   ► I think they're doing an excellent job with WordPress and with the other products that they have.

00:11:21 ◼   ► Don't forget they have the open source, you know, like they are, it's more than just

00:11:25 ◼   ► WordPress.com, it's also WordPress, the open source part.

00:11:30 ◼   ► Yes.

00:11:30 ◼   ► You know, seems like a pretty good company.

00:11:32 ◼   ► It's, I think it does seem like a pretty good fit,

00:11:36 ◼   ► Day one is an app they use for personal writing.

00:11:41 ◼   ► It's a writing app much like WordPress could be a writing service,

00:11:44 ◼   ► Tumblr could be a short form writing service, and this one is a personal, you know,

00:11:49 ◼   ► journaling and diaries, sort of, you know, that kind of different writing product.

00:11:54 ◼   ► And so it does seem like a good fit to me and you can see how,

00:11:58 ◼   ► you know, some aspects of the day one experience like photo uploads, right?

00:12:04 ◼   ► automatic as a CDN that now they can leverage for media uploads in your personal journal.

00:12:11 ◼   ► So in theory, on paper it sounds like the best case scenario outcome for day one. I

00:12:18 ◼   ► had no idea personally that day one was looking to be acquired, but I mean, definitely better

00:12:25 ◼   ► than say, I don't know, Verizon, right? Or some other giant corporation that is just

00:12:29 ◼   ► going to...

00:12:30 ◼   ► company. This is your journal, your personal journal. You know, you don't want just any

00:12:35 ◼   ► random company buying it.

00:12:37 ◼   ► There's people that have been journaling in day one for a decade at this point. Like,

00:12:41 ◼   ► I remember using day one years ago when I was in a not so great period of my life and

00:12:47 ◼   ► day one was there. So I think it's a, like, it is the best case scenario I feel like.

00:12:55 ◼   ► a cool company. I like how they seem to suggest like they're gonna stay independent, they're

00:13:02 ◼   ► gonna be operated by the same founder, nothing is gonna change. Now obviously long term some

00:13:07 ◼   ► things are going to change. I don't like that phrase "nothing's going to change". Right?

00:13:12 ◼   ► I know. That's impossible and also, I mean, look, I don't know what was going on with

00:13:18 ◼   ► day one, but something had to change because they needed to be acquired. Exactly. So there

00:13:23 ◼   ► needs to be some kind of change because they were clearly not operating at a level where

00:13:31 ◼   ► an acquisition wasn't necessary for them. And sometimes acquisitions are a necessity,

00:13:36 ◼   ► you know, like financially or, you know, just in general meeting different resources. And

00:13:43 ◼   ► so a company finding a good home can actually be the best outcome because otherwise day

00:13:47 ◼   ► day one may have gone away, you know?

00:13:50 ◼   ► But, you know, things will change and that's fine.

00:13:55 ◼   ► I know why companies say nothing's going to change, but it's a bit of a platitude, you

00:14:02 ◼   ► know how I feel about platitudes.

00:14:04 ◼   ► But I'm happy for them though, genuinely, because I know that day one means a lot to

00:14:11 ◼   ► a lot of people and I'm pleased that the app will continue, I'm pleased that it's going

00:14:15 ◼   ► to be run by the same people and I'm pleased that they seem to be at a home

00:14:22 ◼   ► at a home that feels like they it will be treated right and given what is

00:14:27 ◼   ► needed. Mm-hmm yeah this news though like this acquisition it made me think

00:14:33 ◼   ► how I've been doing this for for a while at this point you know writing max

00:14:38 ◼   ► stories we we have been doing the podcast for eight years and and in all

00:14:42 ◼   ► these years, like, we've seen, we've seen a lot of these acquisitions, right? And it

00:14:47 ◼   ► made me think how rare it is these days for something to truly stay independent

00:14:53 ◼   ► forever. Because when you think about it, like, it's easy to summarize as, "Oh,

00:14:58 ◼   ► everyone gets acquired eventually." Which, I mean, it's not true, it's not true that

00:15:03 ◼   ► everyone gets acquired, but a lot of companies, and especially over the past

00:15:06 ◼   ► couple of years, there's been a lot of consolidation, I think, you know, between

00:15:10 ◼   ► Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon.

00:15:14 ◼   ► Amazon and Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon. Who's the fifth?

00:15:22 ◼   ► Facebook.

00:15:24 ◼   ► Facebook, oh yes, Facebook. But yeah, like there's been a lot of these corporations

00:15:31 ◼   ► acquiring services and apps that we use and that is, on one hand it's kind of sad,

00:15:39 ◼   ► right? But it also makes sense and in some cases it's led to new features in

00:15:45 ◼   ► the iPhone for example, you know, like take a look at workflow and becoming

00:15:50 ◼   ► shortcuts, right? So in a lot of cases it's great but it also like in

00:15:56 ◼   ► thinking about this it made me appreciate the truly indie developers a

00:16:01 ◼   ► lot more. Like it's challenging to stay independent for a long time on the

00:16:06 ◼   ► internet these days. Well I think what makes it even harder Federico to actually do it

00:16:11 ◼   ► is because the intended goal of companies that are started in modern times is to be

00:16:17 ◼   ► acquired. Right? Like that's the goal. You set up your entire company in a way that acquisition

00:16:26 ◼   ► is the win. Right? So like your entire structure for how you make money and spend money is

00:16:35 ◼   ► in such a way to increase your user base to the point that you become attractive to a

00:16:41 ◼   ► larger company and they buy you. That's why it happens more because companies are created

00:16:47 ◼   ► with the express purpose of trying to be acquired.

00:16:50 ◼   ► Yeah, well, good luck day one. I hope it's found a good home. Seems like it.

00:16:57 ◼   ► Me too. I think this is probably the best place for it.

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00:18:33 ◼   ► their support of this show and Relay FM. Jetpack Joyride is coming to Apple Arcade.

00:18:42 ◼   ► Jetpack Joyride is one of my favorite iOS games of all time. It's made by Halfbrick,

00:18:50 ◼   ► is the name of the studio that created it. And they had a bunch of games, if I'm remembering

00:18:54 ◼   ► rightly Jetpack Joyride was like a spin-off from another game that they made.

00:18:59 ◼   ► I think so.

00:19:00 ◼   ► They were making like a dual stick shooter game that this character was a part of and

00:19:06 ◼   ► then they made Jetpack Joyride as like a sequel or a spin-off type game.

00:19:13 ◼   ► Yes you're right though.

00:19:14 ◼   ► Yes I remember that.

00:19:15 ◼   ► And it's like a, it's basically not as difficult Flappy Bird before Flappy Bird, right?

00:19:23 ◼   ► Like it's that going left to right, you're going up and down by pressing and holding

00:19:26 ◼   ► on the screen.

00:19:28 ◼   ► This is one of the most recent games that is coming to Apple Arcade and getting the

00:19:34 ◼   ► plus added at the end of it.

00:19:37 ◼   ► Apparently, I saw it saying this is coming in July, like maybe July 23rd is the expectation.

00:19:43 ◼   ► So yeah, I'm super pumped for this.

00:19:46 ◼   ► This is one of my very favorite all-time iOS games.

00:19:49 ◼   ► I played this game for years.

00:19:52 ◼   ► - I remember this game.

00:19:54 ◼   ► I'm really happy that,

00:19:55 ◼   ► I'm really happy with this initiative

00:19:58 ◼   ► that Apple is doing with reviving old games

00:20:01 ◼   ► as part of Apple Arcade.

00:20:02 ◼   ► I think it's a very smart move.

00:20:04 ◼   ► It speaks to my,

00:20:05 ◼   ► oh, was Minigore the name of the game?

00:20:08 ◼   ► - Very possible.

00:20:10 ◼   ► - I think it was Minigore.

00:20:11 ◼   ► Top down, dual security.

00:20:13 ◼   ► Yeah, sounds like Minigore to me.

00:20:15 ◼   ► Anyway, this initiative,

00:20:17 ◼   ► it speaks to my interest in game preservation, right?

00:20:22 ◼   ► And I know that it's done for profit.

00:20:24 ◼   ► I know that it's all part of this bigger plan

00:20:26 ◼   ► of expanding the Apple Arcade catalog.

00:20:30 ◼   ► It doesn't matter.

00:20:31 ◼   ► As long as you take an old game

00:20:33 ◼   ► and you make it available again,

00:20:35 ◼   ► that counts as a win for me.

00:20:38 ◼   ► So yeah, you could be cynical about it and say,

00:20:40 ◼   ► "Yeah, but they're only doing this because of the money."

00:20:42 ◼   ► Sure, I mean, Apple is not a charity,

00:20:45 ◼   ► And Apple is not the video game history foundation, right?

00:20:48 ◼   ► They don't necessarily care

00:20:51 ◼   ► as much as certain organizations do about this topic.

00:20:54 ◼   ► But the end result is what matters.

00:20:56 ◼   ► And the end result is we are getting all games updated

00:21:00 ◼   ► for the latest devices, and you can play them again

00:21:03 ◼   ► with better graphics, controller support,

00:21:05 ◼   ► and iCloud integration.

00:21:07 ◼   ► So I'm really happy they're doing this,

00:21:09 ◼   ► and I'm just gonna say it,

00:21:11 ◼   ► I hope Apple works out a deal with EA, I guess,

00:21:15 ◼   ► to bring back Flight Control,

00:21:16 ◼   ► because I really wanna play Flight Control again.

00:21:19 ◼   ► - Oh my God, yeah.

00:21:20 ◼   ► - That game disappeared years ago from the App Store.

00:21:24 ◼   ► - I would love that.

00:21:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I'm really happy they're doing this.

00:21:30 ◼   ► I think it's smart to sort of compliment Apple Arcade,

00:21:34 ◼   ► which is shaping up to be the service

00:21:36 ◼   ► where you have originals, you have new games,

00:21:39 ◼   ► and you have these new editions of old classics.

00:21:44 ◼   ► I think it's smart, it's a great move, I'm in favor of it and Jetpack Joyride I'm really

00:21:51 ◼   ► happy to see because I also played that game a lot and yeah, great news.

00:21:57 ◼   ► Yeah it's a good one, I'm really excited about it.

00:22:00 ◼   ► I wonder if there'll be anything additional coming for it.

00:22:03 ◼   ► I saw that they were doing something as well with like, Ultos Odyssey with additional levels

00:22:10 ◼   ► I think is coming to Apple Arcade.

00:22:12 ◼   ► called The Lost City I think. Yeah that sounds about right. Yeah, Altos Odyssey The Lost City

00:22:18 ◼   ► is coming to Apple Arcade as well so they're doing a lot of interesting stuff. Oh this is Angry Birds

00:22:23 ◼   ► Reloaded and Doodle God Universe are also coming to Apple Arcade. So I love this like new games,

00:22:30 ◼   ► great old games like yes this is it. All kinds of games. Forensic is fantastic by the way. I still

00:22:36 ◼   ► have to play that because I've been writing the review this week and so I haven't played games.

00:22:41 ◼   ► very very good, it's very very good. It feels like both a sequel and like a new version,

00:22:51 ◼   ► you know? Like it's really, yeah I'm really really liking it, I think it's great.

00:22:57 ◼   ► I mean if you think about it, Apple is sort of following the Nintendo model here, taking

00:23:02 ◼   ► old games and making money off of them again. So classic Nintendo playbook over here, and

00:23:08 ◼   ► I mean, it's a tried and true model. It works! People are gonna spend that money again!

00:23:14 ◼   ► But this is for a subscription service, so I think it's even clever. It's very clever.

00:23:19 ◼   ► And look, Nintendo should really do this, right? We've been talking about it forever

00:23:23 ◼   ► on remaster, our video game podcast. Nintendo, why don't you make a $5 a month service where

00:23:29 ◼   ► I can play all kinds of new Nintendo, old Nintendo games, but on my new Nintendo Switch.

00:23:35 ◼   ► But they don't get it.

00:23:36 ◼   ► Oh, they'll do it, but in like 10 years.

00:23:38 ◼   ► -Sure. -You know, Game Pass will happen,

00:23:40 ◼   ► it'll be a big success, and then Nintendo will do it like 10 years later,

00:23:44 ◼   ► and it'll be half of the catalog to start with,

00:23:47 ◼   ► and it won't make any sense.

00:23:49 ◼   ► -That's just what Nintendo do. -Yes.

00:23:51 ◼   ► People will love it. It will have some weird charm to it,

00:23:54 ◼   ► which basically just means they forgot something.

00:23:56 ◼   ► We will get xCloud with Game Pass integration on the Nintendo Switch

00:24:01 ◼   ► before we get a Nintendo subscription service.

00:24:04 ◼   ► incredibly possible.

00:24:06 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:24:08 ◼   ► So...

00:24:10 ◼   ► Dark Sky received an update.

00:24:12 ◼   ► It's not really...

00:24:14 ◼   ► This is one of those things, like, I saw the headlines for this

00:24:17 ◼   ► and was like, I was more excited that it ended up being

00:24:20 ◼   ► but it also just opens up for a point that I wanted to bring up anyway.

00:24:23 ◼   ► Like, basically they updated it, it got some bug fixes

00:24:26 ◼   ► and accessibility improvements, by and large.

00:24:29 ◼   ► But I was expecting the app to be gone by now.

00:24:33 ◼   ► I think we all were.

00:24:36 ◼   ► I'm sure this has something to do with the fact

00:24:38 ◼   ► that they announced that the API's going to live on

00:24:40 ◼   ► for another year.

00:24:41 ◼   ► So I don't know if we're going to get a grand plan

00:24:46 ◼   ► for weather from Apple as the reason why they bought

00:24:49 ◼   ► Dark Sky, which is more than just,

00:24:52 ◼   ► "Hey, we put some radar maps in the weather app

00:24:55 ◼   ► when I was 15," which is very Dark Sky-y, right?

00:25:00 ◼   ► But, you know, I was expecting them to,

00:25:03 ◼   ► well, we all were, for them to have at least killed the API

00:25:05 ◼   ► and probably the app by now,

00:25:06 ◼   ► but it seems like they're not.

00:25:08 ◼   ► Maybe they are going to do something more, I don't know.

00:25:12 ◼   ► - So my personal theory,

00:25:14 ◼   ► which is also like a very popular theory,

00:25:16 ◼   ► is that Apple wants to do a weather kit framework

00:25:21 ◼   ► for iOS and iPadOS and the Mac in the future.

00:25:25 ◼   ► So basically an API that allows weather apps

00:25:28 ◼   ► on Apple platforms to use that data provided by Apple free of charge, right, instead of

00:25:34 ◼   ► developers having to pay a fee, like usually a subscription fee, to use cloud services

00:25:40 ◼   ► for weather data, whether it's the weather channel or what's the other one?

00:25:47 ◼   ► AccuWeather.

00:25:48 ◼   ► AccuWeather, you know, all this.

00:25:51 ◼   ► Carrot weather is a good example of this.

00:25:53 ◼   ► Like Carrot weather, the developer Brian Miller years ago made the decision to switch to a

00:25:57 ◼   ► subscription model to offset and to cover the costs of running a highly customizable

00:26:03 ◼   ► weather app powered by different kinds of sources. And so if I were Apple, I would look

00:26:09 ◼   ► at this and I'd be like, "Okay, we can make our own weather app much better with the Dark

00:26:14 ◼   ► Sky integration, but also Dark Sky is not just an app that we are acquiring to copy

00:26:19 ◼   ► the design and to hire the makers of it. It also powers all these other apps that are

00:26:25 ◼   ► part of our ecosystem already.

00:26:27 ◼   ► And so if I were Apple, I would say,

00:26:30 ◼   ► well, maybe there's an opportunity for us here

00:26:33 ◼   ► to make it easier for our developers

00:26:35 ◼   ► to build alternative weather apps for, you know,

00:26:39 ◼   ► maybe iPad users that don't have a native weather app

00:26:42 ◼   ► installed, you know, they're looking

00:26:43 ◼   ► for a third-party weather app.

00:26:46 ◼   ► And so we would allow developers to integrate

00:26:49 ◼   ► with our framework, give them the data for free

00:26:52 ◼   ► so they don't have to stress over the fact that they need to pay an external service

00:26:57 ◼   ► for that data.

00:26:58 ◼   ► And also, our service will be built in, it's going to have great performance, you don't

00:27:04 ◼   ► have to worry about updating data in the background, it's going to make it easy for you if you

00:27:10 ◼   ► want to make a complication on the watch, for example, that needs to poll weather updates

00:27:15 ◼   ► in the background and consuming battery potentially.

00:27:19 ◼   ► You don't have to worry about that anymore.

00:27:21 ◼   ► And also, those services, a lot of these weather apps, they have some questionable privacy

00:27:28 ◼   ► choices, right?

00:27:30 ◼   ► And you could imagine Apple saying our framework is native, it doesn't expose any user data,

00:27:35 ◼   ► it's not creepy, it's not privacy invasive, you can plug your app into it, and just like

00:27:41 ◼   ► developers have been able to integrate with MapKit instead of the Google Maps framework

00:27:46 ◼   ► for displaying maps, data and information, so you will be able to do the same with

00:27:52 ◼   ► WeatherKit in the future. That would be my theory, but I guess it's not ready yet

00:27:56 ◼   ► and therefore Apple realized we're just gonna keep Dark Sky around for

00:28:01 ◼   ► another year and maybe in iOS 16 next year we're gonna get this WeatherKit

00:28:07 ◼   ► framework and Dark Sky will shut down for good and maybe they will make, like

00:28:12 ◼   ► Like they have a MapKitJS framework for JavaScript on the web.

00:28:17 ◼   ► Maybe they will also do WeatherKitJS.

00:28:20 ◼   ► If you want to build a compatible service that is not on Apple platforms, maybe you

00:28:26 ◼   ► will have a web component as well.

00:28:28 ◼   ► But that would be my theory.

00:28:30 ◼   ► That they want to do their own thing, they want to make it easier for developers, but

00:28:34 ◼   ► it's not ready yet.

00:28:36 ◼   ► >> Somebody wrote to us, we spoke about it as an upgrade, and referenced the fact that

00:28:41 ◼   ► Honestly, I didn't notice. I don't know if you noticed.

00:28:43 ◼   ► The Dark Sky isn't data.

00:28:48 ◼   ► They're actually pulling in other data sources,

00:28:51 ◼   ► and then they sell that to developers.

00:28:54 ◼   ► So Apple hasn't bought a bunch of their own data.

00:29:00 ◼   ► Dark Sky has a good way to interpret data.

00:29:05 ◼   ► So if Apple did do this,

00:29:07 ◼   ► they would still need to be paying someone for the data,

00:29:12 ◼   ► but they're already doing that.

00:29:14 ◼   ► -As long as Apple pays, you don't care.

00:29:16 ◼   ► -And it's not like they don't have the money, right?

00:29:18 ◼   ► -Right. It's much better for the $2 trillion corporation

00:29:22 ◼   ► to pay for weather data than the indie developer.

00:29:25 ◼   ► -I do wonder what would happen to weather apps, though.

00:29:28 ◼   ► -That is the question, right?

00:29:31 ◼   ► It's interesting to think about that.

00:29:34 ◼   ► Honestly, I don't think it's gonna revolutionize the space, but it's gonna be a nice option

00:29:43 ◼   ► to have.

00:29:44 ◼   ► It's gonna be much simpler to build a weather app with a different design and different

00:29:49 ◼   ► features because you don't have to worry about that aspect.

00:29:53 ◼   ► I mean more the business model.

00:29:55 ◼   ► So I would just say, I will pay monthly for a weather app.

00:29:59 ◼   ► I don't care.

00:30:00 ◼   ► I don't care about the data.

00:30:02 ◼   ► I don't pay for Carrot because I want to make sure that they have the money for the data.

00:30:09 ◼   ► I pay monthly for Carrot because I use the app every single day and I love it.

00:30:14 ◼   ► But there is an argument which is correct to make, which is that they have ongoing monthly

00:30:20 ◼   ► costs maybe in a way that other apps don't.

00:30:23 ◼   ► And if everyone just switches to Apple's thing, it would be interesting to see if and how

00:30:28 ◼   ► business models would change for weather apps.

00:30:32 ◼   ► Yeah I can see that.

00:30:36 ◼   ► Now you know that weatherkit exists and you as a user will be like why do I need to pay

00:30:40 ◼   ► you now?

00:30:41 ◼   ► Can't you just use weatherkit?

00:30:42 ◼   ► I don't want to pay a subscription anymore.

00:30:44 ◼   ► And maybe there'll be different tiers.

00:30:47 ◼   ► Something like Carrot you can pay more or less depending on how much data you want and

00:30:51 ◼   ► from where.

00:30:52 ◼   ► And there's always going to be requirements for specialized data services I'm sure right?

00:30:57 ◼   ► Right.

00:30:58 ◼   ► It'd just be changes, I assume, to the way that business models work.

00:31:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:05 ◼   ► Yeah, but I really want to see what they do here.

00:31:09 ◼   ► Maybe they also wanted to do this next year because they're finally bringing a weather

00:31:13 ◼   ► app to iPad next year.

00:31:15 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:31:19 ◼   ► Did you see the 9to5Mac article about the iPad weather app?

00:31:23 ◼   ► That was brilliant, right?

00:31:25 ◼   ► It was truly superb.

00:31:29 ◼   ► It's a parody article, basically, written by Taylor Hall.

00:31:33 ◼   ► So I recommend people go and check that out.

00:31:36 ◼   ► I'll just put a link in the show notes.

00:31:38 ◼   ► No spoilers.

00:31:39 ◼   ► It's great.

00:31:40 ◼   ► All right, this episode is also brought to you by ExpressVPN.

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00:33:49 ◼   ► this show and all of Relay FM. I want to talk about email.

00:33:53 ◼   ► Oh okay. It's like one of my favorite things to talk about always.

00:33:57 ◼   ► Wow, evergreen topic. Okay, okay.

00:34:00 ◼   ► I mean this is spurred on by something that's happened in my life and so now I'm bringing it to the show.

00:34:06 ◼   ► Okay.

00:34:07 ◼   ► So I finally got around to canceling my Hay subscriptions.

00:34:10 ◼   ► Alright.

00:34:11 ◼   ► Because I, so one, my personal Hay account I cancelled that ages ago because I don't use it.

00:34:17 ◼   ► But I was using on your challenge, your request,

00:34:21 ◼   ► I'd switched my Cortex brand email to Hay

00:34:25 ◼   ► before Hay made some decisions that we weren't happy with.

00:34:29 ◼   ► We spoke about those a few weeks ago.

00:34:31 ◼   ► And I wasn't able to cancel off my subscription

00:34:34 ◼   ► until I got some projects out of the way,

00:34:37 ◼   ► because there was some stuff that we were working on,

00:34:39 ◼   ► web-based stuff.

00:34:41 ◼   ► And I didn't want to find myself in a situation

00:34:44 ◼   ► where something didn't get set up right,

00:34:46 ◼   ► because someone missed an email during the migration.

00:34:49 ◼   ► And plus we have a designer and web developer

00:34:53 ◼   ► working on it too.

00:34:54 ◼   ► And I already felt bad about making him set up

00:34:57 ◼   ► the Hay account in the first place.

00:34:58 ◼   ► And now like a couple of weeks later saying like,

00:35:00 ◼   ► "We're going back to Gmail."

00:35:02 ◼   ► So I wanted to wait until it was all set.

00:35:05 ◼   ► So Gmail is what I went with because why wouldn't you?

00:35:11 ◼   ► And I know people go, "What about fast mail?"

00:35:13 ◼   ► Okay, like fine.

00:35:15 ◼   ► Right? Like, fine.

00:35:17 ◼   ► But I just, I am already paying for Google Workspace or whatever.

00:35:22 ◼   ► And I just, I just want to go back to something I know now.

00:35:26 ◼   ► I've tried something else and I never liked Hay.

00:35:29 ◼   ► I always have problems with it.

00:35:30 ◼   ► And I know Fastmail doesn't do that.

00:35:32 ◼   ► Like, isn't all about the weird stuff that Hay does.

00:35:35 ◼   ► But I'm just going to go back to what I know and I'm going to Gmail.

00:35:38 ◼   ► So I wanted to just say at first that DNS sucks.

00:35:42 ◼   ► and I, as does anything with custom domains really,

00:35:45 ◼   ► especially for email, it's much more complicated

00:35:48 ◼   ► to do any kind of email related stuff with domains,

00:35:50 ◼   ► I find them regular domain stuff.

00:35:53 ◼   ► And I just feel like it's 2021.

00:35:55 ◼   ► I don't know why I'm still manually entering MX records.

00:35:58 ◼   ► Why am I still doing this?

00:36:01 ◼   ► Why has nobody worked out a better way to handle this?

00:36:05 ◼   ► - Isn't it wild if you think about it,

00:36:07 ◼   ► how the internet runs on a bunch of numbers and dots?

00:36:11 ◼   ► I hate to think about stuff like that.

00:36:13 ◼   ► Because then it's like, oh, you entered all the stuff

00:36:16 ◼   ► correctly.

00:36:17 ◼   ► So something I did was I copied and pasted stuff

00:36:20 ◼   ► from one of Google's help articles.

00:36:23 ◼   ► But one of the help articles was missing a period,

00:36:26 ◼   ► like a full stop at the end of the MX record.

00:36:29 ◼   ► And I think that was why it wasn't working.

00:36:31 ◼   ► But the thing about DNS is you don't

00:36:35 ◼   ► know if you've done it for a really long time, where

00:36:39 ◼   ► I deleted stuff from the MX records and I'm refreshing in Gmail's thing and like, make

00:36:43 ◼   ► sure you delete this one!

00:36:44 ◼   ► It's like it's already gone.

00:36:45 ◼   ► I deleted it an hour ago.

00:36:47 ◼   ► Like the whole system is bananas.

00:36:49 ◼   ► I really do not know why we are still in this.

00:36:53 ◼   ► Like no one's fixed it.

00:36:55 ◼   ► Ultimately, it all comes down to the single evil bad feature of computing, which is caching.

00:37:03 ◼   ► Caching is the cause of all evil in computing.

00:37:08 ◼   ► That would be my theory.

00:37:11 ◼   ► It's because when data is like,

00:37:13 ◼   ► we're working on a lot of things for Mac stories.

00:37:17 ◼   ► And whenever a developer says,

00:37:20 ◼   ► "I deployed, but you're probably not seeing that

00:37:23 ◼   ► because of cache."

00:37:24 ◼   ► I'm like, "Ugh, why?"

00:37:26 ◼   ► I know I don't need to be lectured

00:37:28 ◼   ► on why caching is necessary,

00:37:30 ◼   ► but your DNS experience confirms propagation,

00:37:34 ◼   ► that's because of caching,

00:37:36 ◼   ► and a lot of computer science problems

00:37:38 ◼   ► ultimately come down to two things.

00:37:40 ◼   ► One is caching and the other is time zones.

00:37:42 ◼   ► So, yeah, anyway.

00:37:44 ◼   ► - You know, we've all been saved by caching, right?

00:37:48 ◼   ► - I know, I know.

00:37:49 ◼   ► - As much as we've frustrated with it.

00:37:51 ◼   ► But it's still the point of like,

00:37:53 ◼   ► sometimes you just feel like there should be better systems,

00:37:58 ◼   ► and I really feel like,

00:37:59 ◼   ► "Hey, enter these five MX records into your DNS history and they're all just slightly different."

00:38:05 ◼   ► I feel like there should be a better system than this.

00:38:08 ◼   ► Yes.

00:38:09 ◼   ► Right?

00:38:10 ◼   ► I don't know why Gmail can't just partner with all of the major domain registrars and

00:38:15 ◼   ► they just work it out, right?

00:38:17 ◼   ► Because it can't be good for Google either, that they have to have like, and they have

00:38:20 ◼   ► like 30 help articles for all of the different domain registrars.

00:38:25 ◼   ► And it's, yeah, I just, I don't understand why this is still happening.

00:38:29 ◼   ► The real power move, Myke, would be to run your own email server,

00:38:33 ◼   ► and that would be fun.

00:38:34 ◼   ► Some people do that.

00:38:35 ◼   ► Would that be fun?

00:38:37 ◼   ► I don't think that's fun.

00:38:38 ◼   ► That doesn't seem fun to me.

00:38:41 ◼   ► I don't like the thought of that at all.

00:38:43 ◼   ► There is nothing about that that I want.

00:38:46 ◼   ► But I got it done.

00:38:49 ◼   ► The migration wasn't difficult. I actually

00:38:52 ◼   ► found it harder to move to Hey than to move back to Gmail.

00:38:56 ◼   ► It just took a long time.

00:38:58 ◼   ► but it seemed, you know, for a while,

00:39:00 ◼   ► I was getting email in both places,

00:39:02 ◼   ► which I do not understand how that's possible.

00:39:05 ◼   ► I do not understand that.

00:39:06 ◼   ► And again, I know it's caching,

00:39:08 ◼   ► but I don't understand how I can get it

00:39:10 ◼   ► in two places at once.

00:39:12 ◼   ► Like I said, the test email,

00:39:13 ◼   ► and it arrived both in Hey and Gmail.

00:39:16 ◼   ► And it's like, this doesn't make sense,

00:39:17 ◼   ► 'cause isn't the whole point of this

00:39:19 ◼   ► that this shouldn't happen?

00:39:20 ◼   ► Like, isn't that why I have to do this whole thing

00:39:22 ◼   ► in the first place?

00:39:23 ◼   ► So anyway.

00:39:25 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:39:26 ◼   ► landscape as it stands right now is my personal email, my Relay FM email and my kind of general

00:39:34 ◼   ► Myke Hurley business email is all in Spark. So that's where all of that stuff has been

00:39:42 ◼   ► for a long time and continues to be. The reason I use Spark for all of that email is because

00:39:49 ◼   ► I really love their, I've spoken about this before, their team sharing features which

00:39:55 ◼   ► I use with the Relay FM email. Me and Kerry, our sales assistant and sales manager, I should

00:40:02 ◼   ► say, we share email a lot and communicate that way and it's really great. And because

00:40:07 ◼   ► I use that, I've just had all my email in the same place. But I've always wanted to

00:40:12 ◼   ► separate the Cortex brand email out into its own application. I've done that for a while

00:40:17 ◼   ► and it's because it is another public-facing email address and it's wildly different from

00:40:21 ◼   ► my other stuff, so I don't want it to all get intermixed.

00:40:26 ◼   ► When I was writing the Google Doc today, I think I had a Galaxy Brain moment, which was

00:40:32 ◼   ► like, so I go with like regular Brain, which is all in the same place, and then it's like,

00:40:38 ◼   ► I don't remember how these are referenced, but like slightly bigger Brain, which is I'm

00:40:43 ◼   ► going to separate the Cortex brand out, email out into its own email app.

00:40:47 ◼   ► Galaxy Brain, why don't I have three email apps?

00:40:52 ◼   ► One for personal, one for Relay FM,

00:40:57 ◼   ► and one for Cortex brand.

00:40:59 ◼   ► Why do I need to have all of my email accounts?

00:41:02 ◼   ► - You don't need to.

00:41:04 ◼   ► - No, I don't need to.

00:41:04 ◼   ► So why do I do this?

00:41:06 ◼   ► This is why I wasn't sure.

00:41:07 ◼   ► Like I couldn't, and I couldn't get an answer.

00:41:09 ◼   ► Like, okay, unified inbox, but why?

00:41:11 ◼   ► - Because then you have three different apps.

00:41:13 ◼   ► Like, are you okay with that? - Yeah, but I also use like

00:41:15 ◼   ► Slack and iMessage and Discord to communicate in some instances with the same groups of people.

00:41:21 ◼   ► Right? Yeah, yeah. And I have like two slacks or three slacks and like you know so I just think

00:41:28 ◼   ► why not maybe separate it out a little bit more. It's just something I thought of. I might try this

00:41:35 ◼   ► I don't know yet. I mean if you really want to separate that's an idea for sure. Like if you want

00:41:39 ◼   ► to do that then it makes sense. I don't know if I want to do that but I could imagine

00:41:45 ◼   ► benefits. For example, the reason that you were using Hey initially was quite smart,

00:41:52 ◼   ► which is having something do a bunch of work for you with your email. I like that, but not on

00:42:01 ◼   ► all of my email. I want different levels of this for different email accounts. For my personal

00:42:09 ◼   ► email, I'm happy with way more filtering. You can turn it up to the maximum.

00:42:13 ◼   ► them, right? Because it's not critical and you can do more filtering to that email and

00:42:20 ◼   ► I'm fine with it. With my like relay FM email, I have SaneBox for that, but I have it on

00:42:28 ◼   ► like its lowest settings. So it's trying to get rid of some of the junk and it does that

00:42:32 ◼   ► for me, but also then doesn't like hide from me some like first time business email or

00:42:39 ◼   ► whatever, I like it, sandbox is our previous sponsor, I do pay for it myself.

00:42:45 ◼   ► You can say, hey, I get cold emails from people, so don't hide it all away kind of thing, don't

00:42:53 ◼   ► put it all in sane later, I actually like that they have those things.

00:42:56 ◼   ► When I was first saying up, I was concerned about that, but they have that.

00:43:00 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:43:01 ◼   ► So like I have -- but like if I go in or all in on an app or service that does all of this

00:43:06 ◼   ► stuff for me. I won't get those like the different experiences like you can go

00:43:13 ◼   ► with kind of like vanilla email just everything comes in basically Apple mail

00:43:17 ◼   ► right it doesn't do anything stupid and then you can go all the way up to

00:43:23 ◼   ► something like a hay where it's doing a bunch of filtering for you there's this

00:43:28 ◼   ► app coming I think tomorrow it's been teased a bunch I'm intrigued about it

00:43:32 ◼   ► big mail which is like trying to do this stuff but on device and I thought that

00:43:38 ◼   ► could be a potentially an interesting way to do my personal email but I don't

00:43:43 ◼   ► want to trust my business email to it right so that was this is part of what

00:43:47 ◼   ► was getting me thinking about maybe I could just have multiple email apps that

00:43:52 ◼   ► I use but nevertheless to get back onto the main topic I'll follow up if that's

00:43:56 ◼   ► a thing that I actually do. I don't know. This seems like a harebrained scheme. I've

00:44:03 ◼   ► never heard anybody do it before, so that might suggest that it's a bad idea.

00:44:06 ◼   ► Alright, so I feel like I'm in a pretty similar situation to you, but I really am resisting

00:44:14 ◼   ► the idea of using multiple apps, because I really don't want to have multiple email apps

00:44:20 ◼   ► on my home screen. I don't know why, but I'm okay with multiple messaging apps, but

00:44:26 ◼   ► all email goes into one bucket sort of person. So I also have been using Spark because of

00:44:35 ◼   ► all features that I need from email, being able to share and assign emails to a different

00:44:42 ◼   ► team member and having private conversations inside those messages, like that's really

00:44:49 ◼   ► valuable to us right now. And so I feel like I needed to have an easy... like I needed to transition

00:44:56 ◼   ► from "hey" quickly, because I don't have time right now to research other options and to go through

00:45:02 ◼   ► all this all over again. And so I just went back to the place where I started, which was Gmail and

00:45:08 ◼   ► Spark. So I am using Spark because of the sharing features. I do not love Spark, and I mentioned this

00:45:16 ◼   ► before. I don't like its custom look, I don't like how it looks on iPad, it doesn't have a native

00:45:22 ◼   ► three column layout, and it's got this weird like context menus that are custom but some of them

00:45:30 ◼   ► are native and there's like there's this mix of custom UI and native UI that I fundamentally

00:45:36 ◼   ► dislike. But it's got sharing and we can leave comments and it integrates with Todoist, which

00:45:45 ◼   ► is my task manager. And so it was very easy for me to transition to that. I've been trying

00:45:52 ◼   ► Apple Mail again, like I set it up.

00:45:54 ◼   ► I have to point this out, I just saw this in Discord. Justin Hamilton says, "Can you

00:45:58 ◼   ► build an email app in Obsidian?"

00:46:01 ◼   ► Honestly, you probably can.

00:46:03 ◼   ► Roasted!

00:46:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:05 ◼   ► Sorry.

00:46:06 ◼   ► But, so I've been trying Apple Mail again as part of the review research cycle. It doesn't

00:46:14 ◼   ► really have anything new this year. I mean, yes, you can open messages in Center Windows

00:46:19 ◼   ► and that's about it. It's got the mail tracking prevention stuff, which is cool, but a lot

00:46:25 ◼   ► of other apps these days have it. So there's nothing really new for me in Apple Mail. And

00:46:30 ◼   ► the big missing feature is sharing. And again, I don't think Apple is ever going to do this

00:46:34 ◼   ► because they don't care about the sort of enterprisey, you know, businessy feature.

00:46:39 ◼   ► They shouldn't implement sharing, like leave that to other companies to deal with.

00:46:45 ◼   ► That's such a next level thing and really is something that people should pay for.

00:46:52 ◼   ► Bigmail is interesting.

00:46:53 ◼   ► I really want to check it out.

00:46:54 ◼   ► I kind of hope that the developer would have like a press beta before, so unfortunately

00:46:59 ◼   ► we will not have a review tomorrow.

00:47:01 ◼   ► I know that a lot of Mac Stories readers have been asking us like, "Are you guys going to

00:47:05 ◼   ► review Bigmail?

00:47:06 ◼   ► Are we going to see a Bigmail review?"

00:47:07 ◼   ► because we don't have access to Bigmail, so I'm gonna start using it like everybody else

00:47:12 ◼   ► tomorrow. It does look very nice. I appreciate the sort of on-device processing and categorization

00:47:20 ◼   ► of messages. I also want to see...

00:47:22 ◼   ► It's pretty.

00:47:23 ◼   ► It's pretty. I also want to see how well it works in practice for all kinds of messages

00:47:28 ◼   ► that are not necessarily in English. Like, in theory, if it's using on-device processing

00:47:34 ◼   ► and if it's using all the latest Apple APIs to detect sentiment analysis and receipts

00:47:43 ◼   ► and all that kind of stuff, in theory it should work for multiple languages. But again, we'll

00:47:48 ◼   ► see in practice. It's pretty. It's got the... What's it called? Every feature has got its

00:47:53 ◼   ► own name. There's Spy Scanner, which is the blocking tracking pixels stuff. The developer

00:48:01 ◼   ► also rebuilt essentially like a version of the Hey Screener, which is called the Bouncer

00:48:09 ◼   ► in big mail, which would be the same idea. Like if you got an email from a new contact

00:48:14 ◼   ► that's never emailed you before, you can bounce, in this case, the sender and say, "No, I don't

00:48:19 ◼   ► want to ever want to be contacted by this sender again in the future." So it's pretty.

00:48:25 ◼   ► We'll see how it works. It's on Apple, iPad.

00:48:27 ◼   ► - It's on every platform, it's on the Mac too.

00:48:29 ◼   ► - Every platform, on the Mac.

00:48:30 ◼   ► - Which is super rare to see,

00:48:31 ◼   ► and I know it's easier to do now, right?

00:48:34 ◼   ► Like I'm sure it's a Catalyst app,

00:48:36 ◼   ► but I don't know that, I'm expecting it's a Catalyst app.

00:48:39 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:48:40 ◼   ► - But even still, you don't necessarily see people

00:48:44 ◼   ► doing that, so I'm intrigued, I'm intrigued.

00:48:47 ◼   ► - My, so my final thought here is,

00:48:51 ◼   ► I wish that mail extensions for macOS

00:48:56 ◼   ► were also available on iPhone and iPad.

00:48:58 ◼   ► My hope is that these extensions will go the way

00:49:02 ◼   ► of Safari web extensions,

00:49:03 ◼   ► which is launch it first on the Mac

00:49:06 ◼   ► and the following year bring the same technology

00:49:08 ◼   ► to iOS and iPadOS.

00:49:10 ◼   ► We're gonna talk about that in a few minutes.

00:49:13 ◼   ► So maybe next year I could reconsider Mail

00:49:16 ◼   ► if it's got extensions,

00:49:18 ◼   ► and I really wanna see what developers do with extensions

00:49:20 ◼   ► on the Mac this year, sort of get an idea

00:49:23 ◼   ► if this technology is gonna be interesting going forward

00:49:25 ◼   ► or not, but right now, I'm going to try Bigmail.

00:49:30 ◼   ► I also kinda wish that I could do the following system.

00:49:34 ◼   ► Like, I wish that I could set up Spark

00:49:37 ◼   ► in a way that I get notified only by shared messages.

00:49:42 ◼   ► Like, I wanna use a different email client

00:49:47 ◼   ► for my day-to-day, like, composing

00:49:49 ◼   ► and responding to email messages.

00:49:51 ◼   ► But I just wanna keep Spark on the side

00:49:54 ◼   ► just for the sharing stuff.

00:49:56 ◼   ► The problem is the notification settings in Spark,

00:49:59 ◼   ► there's no way to say just notify me for shared activity.

00:50:04 ◼   ► You either turn them on, the push notifications,

00:50:06 ◼   ► or you don't.

00:50:07 ◼   ► So if I do this, I guess I would have to leave

00:50:12 ◼   ► push notifications for messages, all messages,

00:50:17 ◼   ► enabled in Spark, but use a different client

00:50:21 ◼   ► so that I don't get push notifications twice

00:50:24 ◼   ► basically. Like for example I would have to leave notifications enabled.

00:50:28 ◼   ► Well you know, you could do this. Can't you have notifications for comments?

00:50:32 ◼   ► Not just for comments. I only want them

00:50:36 ◼   ► for comments and for when John shares an email message with me.

00:50:40 ◼   ► In Spark. At least on iOS and iPadOS there is no setting that says

00:50:44 ◼   ► I have notifications, email and comments. They're like

00:50:48 ◼   ► two different. Are you looking on the Mac? No, I'm looking on my iPhone. How?

00:50:52 ◼   ► Tell me how. I've gone to settings and then... No you tell me how right now. I've gone to

00:50:58 ◼   ► the settings and I'm going to notifications. Settings, notifications. And there's at the

00:51:04 ◼   ► top email and comments and you can choose between each. Oh my god. So you could turn

00:51:09 ◼   ► off notifications for email and leave them on for comments. This is why parks UI is...

00:51:16 ◼   ► Well I mean some of us noticed it immediately you know I can't speak for everybody. I just

00:51:21 ◼   ► That segmented control was invisible to me until you mentioned it.

00:51:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't think that's even a standard control. It looks a little bit odd.

00:51:30 ◼   ► So how would I do this? Like, notification type...

00:51:35 ◼   ► You turn all the notifications off for the email.

00:51:38 ◼   ► You completely changed my email life right now.

00:51:45 ◼   ► So now you know you can do this. Tell me what you're going to do.

00:51:48 ◼   ► What are you going to do now?

00:51:50 ◼   ► All right, so here's the plan. Spark goes off the home screen and I install bigmail

00:51:57 ◼   ► tomorrow. I'm struggling because now I have all this new information that you just sprung

00:52:04 ◼   ► on me. Move Spark into a folder, receive notifications just for comments. I guess my only question

00:52:14 ◼   ► is if John shares an email with me without commenting on the email, will I be notified?

00:52:23 ◼   ► I don't know, you'll have to test it. I'll have to test it. Or I would have to ask John,

00:52:28 ◼   ► please, whenever you share a message with me, also leave a comment. Which is not hard.

00:52:32 ◼   ► Which is not hard. Hmm. Thank you, Michael. No problem. So if you don't go with bigmail,

00:52:39 ◼   ► because again, we don't know, probably by the time a lot of people listen to this, you

00:52:42 ◼   ► probably try out bigmail. You'd go to apple mail? Yes. You wouldn't go to anything else?

00:52:47 ◼   ► No, no. Have you seen the other email apps? They're even weirder than... What about like outlook? No, no,

00:52:54 ◼   ► no, no, no. I find... I'm sorry, I know that a lot of people use and appreciate Microsoft products,

00:53:02 ◼   ► but I find them visually unappealing. That Microsoft has no taste.

00:53:11 ◼   ► personally speaking, and I really dislike the Microsoft UI.

00:53:16 ◼   ► I just I really don't like it.

00:53:18 ◼   ► I'm sorry. I don't like it.

00:53:20 ◼   ► I use an Xbox. I love my Xbox.

00:53:23 ◼   ► When it comes to productivity apps.

00:53:25 ◼   ► No, no, no.

00:53:28 ◼   ► So I would use it. And I like Apple Mail, right?

00:53:30 ◼   ► For other things like drag and drop.

00:53:33 ◼   ► It works and it gives you a link, a deep link to the message.

00:53:37 ◼   ► It always works with the latest iPad.

00:53:41 ◼   ► technologies like multi-window a couple of years ago or in this case center window in

00:53:46 ◼   ► ipadOS 15. So I'm fine with Apple Mail, right? But you just blew my mind with this notification

00:53:53 ◼   ► trick, Myke. See, you are the email power user here and should have asked you before.

00:54:01 ◼   ► Now that I'm looking at it, I mean, there was a control to switch between email and

00:54:05 ◼   ► comments right there and I never saw it. I don't think it's my fault that I never saw

00:54:11 ◼   ► it. Art control is strange. Anyway, thank you Michael.

00:54:17 ◼   ► So my, if you ever need me for app consultancy, you know, I see things with the regular person's

00:54:27 ◼   ► vision, you know? I come in here and like, "Oh, I can get through this checkbox." You're

00:54:33 ◼   ► just looking at it with like higher minded design, you know, like you see things only

00:54:38 ◼   ► as a good designer.

00:54:39 ◼   ► Honestly, you are right. Like, not about the good designer eye, but about like standard

00:54:45 ◼   ► controls. That is something that I've increasingly noticed about myself.

00:54:49 ◼   ► Yeah, and I'm getting in here and I'm back here with the every person, you know, like

00:54:54 ◼   ► having to jump through all these hoops to understand that. I mean, as well, honestly,

00:54:59 ◼   ► I've used Spark for so long, I feel like I kind of understand their design at this point.

00:55:03 ◼   ► And you do a lot more email than I do.

00:55:06 ◼   ► I do a lot of email.

00:55:08 ◼   ► I've seen you in real life, lots of times, with your phone, and you get and you respond

00:55:14 ◼   ► to a lot of email.

00:55:16 ◼   ► Much more email than I have, than I've ever had.

00:55:18 ◼   ► Here's the thing, so I'm just in Spark right now, and I'm like selecting...

00:55:23 ◼   ► I have received 47 emails today.

00:55:27 ◼   ► Oh no, no no no.

00:55:28 ◼   ► And what I need to just make very clear to everybody, I don't get like marketing emails

00:55:35 ◼   ► from your favorite brands kind of thing, you know?

00:55:39 ◼   ► Like that's not, I don't, that's not the kind of, like I'm not on like, hey, my favorite

00:55:43 ◼   ► clothing brand 123.com's email list.

00:55:47 ◼   ► This is just like, that is work related email right there.

00:55:50 ◼   ► I get a lot of email, get a lot of email.

00:55:54 ◼   ► But so here's my thing.

00:55:57 ◼   ► It all starts now with big mail.

00:56:00 ◼   ► So is big mail something I'm going to use?

00:56:02 ◼   ► Maybe we'll talk about it in future episodes.

00:56:04 ◼   ► We can follow up on it.

00:56:05 ◼   ► If I don't, I'm currently using Gmail

00:56:11 ◼   ► for the Cortex brand email

00:56:13 ◼   ► and I'll probably just stick with it in Gmail.

00:56:18 ◼   ► - Okay, like the Gmail app.

00:56:20 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:56:21 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:56:22 ◼   ► - Until, I don't know,

00:56:24 ◼   ► and then maybe I'll change my mind later on.

00:56:26 ◼   ► But what I would really like to do now though, honestly, is like, I do like,

00:56:31 ◼   ► I do like this idea of three email apps.

00:56:34 ◼   ► I want to see how far I can take this and if it makes any sense or if it's just

00:56:39 ◼   ► a nightmare disaster. We'll find out. All right.

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00:58:21 ◼   ► show and all of Relay FM. So you were popping off on Twitter about Safari on... I think

00:58:31 ◼   ► most of your concerns are iOS 15 than iPadOS 15 but you tell me if I'm wrong.

00:58:37 ◼   ► No, no, that's right. I have installed Monterey on an external drive but I've only used it

00:58:43 ◼   ► once.

00:58:44 ◼   ► Oh, do you have any opinions on Monterey?

00:58:47 ◼   ► Shortcuts is great.

00:58:48 ◼   ► I guess the universal con- oh, okay. Universal control's not a thing yet though, is it?

00:58:52 ◼   ► I have no idea. I also don't care.

00:58:55 ◼   ► Oh, really?

00:58:56 ◼   ► Well, it's cool. I'm never gonna use it.

00:58:58 ◼   ► Fair enough. Fair enough.

00:59:00 ◼   ► But yes, my concerns are mostly about iOS and iPadOS, that's correct.

00:59:06 ◼   ► I should say that Safari, along with shortcuts, really is my favorite iOS and iPad app.

00:59:14 ◼   ► Like, of the ones made by Apple, obviously.

00:59:17 ◼   ► It's one of the apps where I spend most of my time every day,

00:59:23 ◼   ► and I just really like Safari for a lot of reasons,

00:59:26 ◼   ► from Safari Reader to how shortcuts integrate with Safari,

00:59:31 ◼   ► to being able to run JavaScript shortcuts in Safari.

00:59:35 ◼   ► I really like it, and I've always liked Safari,

00:59:38 ◼   ► and I've always believed that it's really the crown jewel

00:59:41 ◼   ► of the Apple built-in apps.

00:59:44 ◼   ► And that's really why I care about Safari being great, basically.

00:59:51 ◼   ► But the version that we got in the first beta of iOS and iPadOS 15 has a lot of issues, in my opinion.

00:59:59 ◼   ► And now I know that a lot of people have talked about this topic.

01:00:03 ◼   ► I'm very much aware that it's Beta 1 and that Apple is working on it.

01:00:07 ◼   ► And I get the sense that they're really listening to whatever is going on with Safari on all platforms,

01:00:13 ◼   ► including the Mac. So I just wanted to have this conversation on the show to

01:00:18 ◼   ► sort of expand on the things I tweeted and to offer better context about them

01:00:23 ◼   ► and maybe offer some suggestions if those can be helpful to anyone.

01:00:27 ◼   ► And also as well, you can help explain it to me because I have not used this on the iPhone.

01:00:32 ◼   ► Okay.

01:00:32 ◼   ► My experience with Safari has been on iPadOS and I'm mostly pretty positive about it.

01:00:40 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. Okay, so let's start with the thing you know, with iPadOS.

01:00:45 ◼   ► Uh-huh.

01:00:45 ◼   ► I have two main problems with the iPadOS version.

01:00:49 ◼   ► The first one, the obvious one, is the unified tab and address bar design,

01:00:55 ◼   ► which I would be okay with.

01:00:59 ◼   ► I don't particularly care about seeing the full address of the web page.

01:01:06 ◼   ► I mean, like, for the past few years I've kept just the main domain in the Safari address bar, and I'm fine with it.

01:01:12 ◼   ► I don't need to see the full URL at all times.

01:01:17 ◼   ► But my issue is that on iPad if you open multiple tabs and

01:01:21 ◼   ► you click on it,

01:01:24 ◼   ► the location of the address bar is never the same, because that unified design means that each tab

01:01:32 ◼   ► pans in a different place on screen. It used to be that you have your address bar centered at the top

01:01:39 ◼   ► and your tabs underneath that. And the address bar never physically moves on screen. It's in a fixed

01:01:46 ◼   ► position. Now, because of this unified design, you can never really tell, right, where it's gonna be.

01:01:54 ◼   ► and I think it's visually glaring that you see this jumping around horizontally a lot.

01:02:02 ◼   ► Like, I really dislike it and it confuses me visually and I feel like it requires a lot more,

01:02:10 ◼   ► what's it called, there's a term I'm speaking about.

01:02:14 ◼   ► Spatial awareness?

01:02:15 ◼   ► Yeah, something like that.

01:02:19 ◼   ► It requires more, what's it called, cognitive something.

01:02:24 ◼   ► Yes.

01:02:24 ◼   ► Mode?

01:02:25 ◼   ► Yes.

01:02:25 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:02:26 ◼   ► Thank you, Myke.

01:02:27 ◼   ► And thank you, Emma, in the Discord.

01:02:29 ◼   ► I really don't think it works for me,

01:02:31 ◼   ► because it feels like I need to learn every single time what

01:02:35 ◼   ► I'm looking at.

01:02:36 ◼   ► And I don't think that's good.

01:02:39 ◼   ► The second issue that I have is the sidebar, which on its own,

01:02:43 ◼   ► like, I appreciate the inclusion of a sidebar

01:02:45 ◼   ► to have more elements displayed in it. But my problem with it is that it feels vastly

01:02:53 ◼   ► underused at the moment. It seems like Apple added a sidebar on iPad just to make it possible

01:03:02 ◼   ► for you to easily switch between tab groups, right?

01:03:06 ◼   ► And they should have a compact sidebar, I think, too. I believe this is a thing you

01:03:14 ◼   ► can do, right? You can have, and I don't really feel like I see a lot of apps do it, maybe

01:03:18 ◼   ► I've had a fever dream that you can have like a compact sidebar because sometimes I just

01:03:23 ◼   ► want to go between my tab groups and the sidebar, even on the big iPad, it really shrinks Safari

01:03:30 ◼   ► down like it's too large and I would love to be able to just give my tab groups an icon

01:03:36 ◼   ► and just have the icons like live on the side in like a really skinny tab bar and I could

01:03:40 ◼   ► just like bounce between them or something.

01:03:42 ◼   ► - I think you can switch between,

01:03:43 ◼   ► once you're in a tab group,

01:03:45 ◼   ► I believe you can,

01:03:48 ◼   ► by the way, you can have a compact sidebar,

01:03:50 ◼   ► like the thing you mentioned,

01:03:51 ◼   ► you can have that in iPadOS,

01:03:52 ◼   ► but also in Safari specifically,

01:03:54 ◼   ► I think you can switch between tab groups

01:03:56 ◼   ► with a dropdown menu in the top toolbar.

01:04:00 ◼   ► - Oh, really?

01:04:01 ◼   ► - I think it shows you the name of the tab group you're in

01:04:04 ◼   ► and you can click it to see other tab groups, I believe.

01:04:08 ◼   ► But then I've seen that.

01:04:09 ◼   ► does that work for like the non tab group tabs?

01:04:13 ◼   ► - It doesn't.

01:04:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, you see it?

01:04:15 ◼   ► 'Cause I think the issue that I have is

01:04:17 ◼   ► I like having the tab groups, right?

01:04:20 ◼   ► I have a relay FM tab group,

01:04:21 ◼   ► I have like a cortex tab group,

01:04:23 ◼   ► like I have like different tab groups

01:04:25 ◼   ► for different things that I'm doing in Safari,

01:04:27 ◼   ► but then I also have just a like,

01:04:29 ◼   ► I'm browsing the internet tabs

01:04:31 ◼   ► and I don't particularly need those to sync

01:04:34 ◼   ► because I have iCloud tabs too,

01:04:36 ◼   ► if it's something like I particularly need to grab

01:04:38 ◼   ► And I could imagine setting up a tab group for this in the future,

01:04:41 ◼   ► but this goes back to something that Gray was talking about, which I agree with.

01:04:44 ◼   ► Like, you can't default tabs to open in a tab group, which would make that easier,

01:04:51 ◼   ► but I still want to be able to switch back to that easily.

01:04:54 ◼   ► Like, the most of the switching I'm doing is from regular tabs to a tab group and back again,

01:04:59 ◼   ► not like tab group to tab group to tab group.

01:05:02 ◼   ► So, I feel like I'm opening the sidebar a lot.

01:05:05 ◼   ► Yeah, so a couple of things here.

01:05:07 ◼   ► First, I wish that I could pin more elements to the sidebar.

01:05:12 ◼   ► I wish that I could put folders of bookmarks there, not just tab groups.

01:05:17 ◼   ► And instead, Apple is really pushing tab groups in this release and it's sort of saying, "Yeah,

01:05:23 ◼   ► you don't need to use bookmarks anymore."

01:05:25 ◼   ► Which brings me to my other problem with this sidebar design on iPad, which is I like the

01:05:32 ◼   ► tab group idea, like as a general concept of, "Oh, you can group your tabs together

01:05:40 ◼   ► and you can give them a name and you can give it a context." I like that. My issue with

01:05:45 ◼   ► tab groups is that in this current version, I don't think I'm ever going to use them,

01:05:55 ◼   ► because the way I would like to switch between these different groups of tabs is I wish they

01:06:03 ◼   ► were permanent, in the sense that in my mind a tab group is something that I can create

01:06:11 ◼   ► beforehand and when I click it, it recreates my tab group.

01:06:18 ◼   ► Imagine that I create like a Mac source tab group and it's like the homepage, the posting

01:06:24 ◼   ► interface in WordPress and maybe, you know, a Google Doc for Mac stories, right?

01:06:31 ◼   ► And when I click on that, I always want those three tabs to open.

01:06:35 ◼   ► Similarly, I created a tab group called Italian News, and I opened three tabs for the four

01:06:43 ◼   ► different Italian news sources that I follow.

01:06:47 ◼   ► But the problem is, those are not bookmarks.

01:06:50 ◼   ► They are not permanent.

01:06:51 ◼   ► And so if you navigate to a different page, it stays within the tab group, but the next

01:06:57 ◼   ► time you open it, it doesn't go back to the homepage.

01:07:02 ◼   ► So I guess what I'm asking for is, I just want to use folder bookmarks, like folders

01:07:08 ◼   ► containing bookmarks, that every time I open them, they reopen those permanent, fixed URLs.

01:07:17 ◼   ► Because Apple tried to sell this as "oh, when you're doing research, you can organize your

01:07:22 ◼   ► tabs in groups."

01:07:24 ◼   ► But when I do research, like personally speaking, when I'm using Safari for a particular task,

01:07:31 ◼   ► let's say research on going on vacation, it's not like I'm handling multiple tasks at the

01:07:39 ◼   ► same time.

01:07:40 ◼   ► Like I'm looking for a place to stay, I'm going to open a bunch of tabs for different

01:07:44 ◼   ► hotels and different restaurants, right? Different locations, whatever. But it's not like at

01:07:50 ◼   ► the same time I'm also dealing with podcast show notes, and so I want to switch to a tab

01:07:56 ◼   ► group containing two different Google Docs. This idea of now you can organize your tabs

01:08:04 ◼   ► in different groups for all your activities, it's not something that I ever find myself

01:08:08 ◼   ► doing. Like, I'm doing research, I discover a bunch of links, I want to save those links,

01:08:15 ◼   ► right? It's not like I need... The thing that doesn't work for me is this fleeting nature

01:08:21 ◼   ► of the tab groups. They're basically tabs, they're not bookmarks, but you can group them

01:08:27 ◼   ► together.

01:08:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I think if I can, if you don't mind me jumping in, I think one thing that needs

01:08:32 ◼   ► to kind of be really understood, like underscored is,

01:08:36 ◼   ► one of the features that they've removed,

01:08:38 ◼   ► seem to have removed from Safari,

01:08:40 ◼   ► or maybe they haven't, or I hoped it was gonna be similar.

01:08:43 ◼   ► To be fair, I haven't actually used it on the Mac yet,

01:08:45 ◼   ► so maybe it's still there,

01:08:46 ◼   ► but it reminds me of it, it's pinned tabs.

01:08:48 ◼   ► So I use pinned tabs on Safari on my Mac a lot,

01:08:51 ◼   ► and I kind of wished that pinned tabs and tab groups

01:08:54 ◼   ► are more similar, because pinned tabs,

01:08:57 ◼   ► they can't really be destructed.

01:08:58 ◼   ► Like if you try to go somewhere else,

01:09:01 ◼   ► like click a link from a pinned tab, it opens a new tab to keep you on the domain at least

01:09:07 ◼   ► that you're on. But with tab groups, if you have like there are these are these six tabs

01:09:12 ◼   ► I want to keep open, but you click a link in one of those tabs, it's just changed the

01:09:18 ◼   ► tab. So like if you were on say Mac stories and always wanted the Mac stories homepage,

01:09:22 ◼   ► but then click the link that went to six colors. Now that tab is six colors and like that's

01:09:26 ◼   ► That's not... they are destructible.

01:09:29 ◼   ► That's my problem.

01:09:30 ◼   ► And that is a frustration for me too.

01:09:32 ◼   ► That's my problem.

01:09:33 ◼   ► And also I should say, I'm a person that tends to clear tabs in Safari when I'm done with

01:09:41 ◼   ► the tabs.

01:09:42 ◼   ► Like I don't like to keep lots of tabs open.

01:09:45 ◼   ► I want to be done with it and I want to save and archive those links in other apps, like

01:09:50 ◼   ► Obsidian or MyTaskManager, whatever.

01:09:54 ◼   ► I don't want to leave tabs open.

01:09:57 ◼   ► So I don't know, tab groups in its current form,

01:09:59 ◼   ► maybe if they added like a pinned option,

01:10:03 ◼   ► I could see myself using those.

01:10:04 ◼   ► So I could create a tab group for my Italian news

01:10:07 ◼   ► or for Nintendo news, for example,

01:10:12 ◼   ► and so that those pinned tabs would always be there

01:10:15 ◼   ► in the group, but links would open in separate tabs

01:10:19 ◼   ► within the group.

01:10:20 ◼   ► In that case, I could see myself using the tab group.

01:10:23 ◼   ► In its current fashion, it's like you're just organizing tabs

01:10:27 ◼   ► that are not permanently assigned to a website.

01:10:32 ◼   ► And that, for me, diminishes the utility of it.

01:10:34 ◼   ► -I understand that.

01:10:36 ◼   ► Even though I have that frustration,

01:10:38 ◼   ► I still will and am and plan to continue using tab groups

01:10:43 ◼   ► because I do otherwise have, like, in a web browser,

01:10:47 ◼   ► even on my iPad, like, eight tabs or so

01:10:50 ◼   ► that I always want to have open,

01:10:53 ◼   ► and then we'll use other tabs after that.

01:10:55 ◼   ► And I do find that I'm more organized with tab groups

01:11:00 ◼   ► by having two groups, one has five, six tabs in it,

01:11:03 ◼   ► one has two tabs in it.

01:11:05 ◼   ► I do actually really like that feature,

01:11:07 ◼   ► but I definitely agree with you.

01:11:09 ◼   ► Like there are some things they could do

01:11:11 ◼   ► to not just refine this feature,

01:11:14 ◼   ► but really make it much more useful,

01:11:17 ◼   ► which really doesn't seem like a lot,

01:11:19 ◼   ► you know, it's not like about reinventing the wheel,

01:11:22 ◼   ► take some cues from features you already have, like bookmarks or pin tabs.

01:11:26 ◼   ► There's a few other things that don't really work for me in the new Safari in general,

01:11:30 ◼   ► and especially on iOS.

01:11:33 ◼   ► Share extensions are now hidden by default.

01:11:37 ◼   ► I hate this.

01:11:38 ◼   ► I don't understand why, but when you press the "more" button to open the share sheet,

01:11:42 ◼   ► it's like half of the share sheet.

01:11:45 ◼   ► I don't know why it even looks like the share sheet.

01:11:47 ◼   ► It's like it tricks me. Right?

01:11:50 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't like that.

01:11:51 ◼   ► It contains your Action Extensions and your shortcuts and your default Safari actions,

01:11:56 ◼   ► but it doesn't have the Contacts, like the top row of

01:12:00 ◼   ► profile pictures, and it doesn't have Share Extensions.

01:12:04 ◼   ► You need to press a separate Share button to sort of switch the share sheet mid-flight

01:12:09 ◼   ► to show you Share Extensions and Contacts, which I don't understand. And even on iPad,

01:12:16 ◼   ► The reload button is gone from the address bar and it's now part of this context menu

01:12:22 ◼   ► Which I mean seriously you're on an iPad you're working in landscape mode

01:12:27 ◼   ► And you didn't have the place for a reload button that needs to be tucked away in a menu

01:12:33 ◼   ► I mean, I understand that modern Apple likes to do away with buttons occasionally, but I mean come on

01:12:40 ◼   ► I think it's kind of ridiculous that developers have to write an

01:12:44 ◼   ► extension to bring back a reload button in a browser. I think it's kind of ridiculous.

01:12:49 ◼   ► I could get used to the pull to refresh on the iPhone.

01:12:52 ◼   ► That only works if you are at the top of the page.

01:12:55 ◼   ► Exactly, and that's the problem because I'm not always, and a lot of times when I'm refreshing

01:13:00 ◼   ► stuff or whatever, like I'm doing it for speed and it's because I'm trying to buy something

01:13:06 ◼   ► or like get a ticket to something or whatever, and I want to be able to hit the button, not

01:13:12 ◼   ► pull to refresh. Another big problem, the floating address bar at the bottom on

01:13:18 ◼   ► iPhone. Okay, so all right tell me about this because I've had nothing, no

01:13:23 ◼   ► experience of this at all. Okay, so when you open Safari the address bar is now at

01:13:28 ◼   ► the bottom, right? When you scroll a page it sort of minimizes at the bottom on

01:13:33 ◼   ► the screen. If you scroll up or if you tap it, it expands into this floating

01:13:38 ◼   ► bar. And the floating bar, you can tap it again to select the URL. And that right

01:13:45 ◼   ► there is the first issue that I have with it, which is, it's at the bottom, but

01:13:49 ◼   ► if you tap it, it shoots all the way to the top. And so if you're tracking it

01:13:54 ◼   ► with your eyes, you need to follow the thing like you're looking at it, and you

01:13:58 ◼   ► tap on it, and you expect to be looking at the same place on screen, but then you

01:14:02 ◼   ► need to move your eyes and look at the top. It literally flies to the top.

01:14:06 ◼   ► - The very top?

01:14:08 ◼   ► - The very top.

01:14:09 ◼   ► It doesn't sit above the keyboard.

01:14:11 ◼   ► Like I would expect like it's at the bottom, I tap on it,

01:14:16 ◼   ► a keyboard needs to be displayed, that's fine.

01:14:20 ◼   ► And I would assume, well,

01:14:22 ◼   ► the address bar is now above the keyboard,

01:14:23 ◼   ► but no, it shoots all the way to the very top.

01:14:26 ◼   ► - You know why they might have done that?

01:14:29 ◼   ► I'm not, this is, I don't mean this as good design,

01:14:31 ◼   ► but when you are entering text into a webpage,

01:14:35 ◼   ► that tab bar would probably be hiding the place you were typing in.

01:14:40 ◼   ► Yes! Which is bringing me to the other problem.

01:14:45 ◼   ► This bar, because of the floating design, it covers the contents of web pages.

01:14:51 ◼   ► And I've seen this already, for example...

01:14:54 ◼   ► Oh, I see. When it goes to the top it does that too, right? It's still going to do it.

01:14:57 ◼   ► But also when it's at the bottom, it covers the page.

01:15:00 ◼   ► Oh.

01:15:00 ◼   ► And when it-- like, I'm seeing this right now,

01:15:03 ◼   ► when it's at the bottom in a service like Mailbrew,

01:15:06 ◼   ► for example, which has-- it's a web app that has its own top

01:15:10 ◼   ► bar at the bottom.

01:15:11 ◼   ► Now the top bar in Mailbrew is all weird,

01:15:14 ◼   ► because of the floating bar also at the bottom in Safari.

01:15:18 ◼   ► And so developers would have to adjust to this floating bar

01:15:21 ◼   ► at the bottom.

01:15:22 ◼   ► We're building a few things for Mac stories ourselves.

01:15:25 ◼   ► And one of the menus that we have now

01:15:27 ◼   ► will have to make a consideration as to what

01:15:29 ◼   ► happens with the new Safari if Apple doesn't change anything because this floating bar

01:15:34 ◼   ► covers part of our menu. Because it's null, Apple wanted to get rid of UI Chrome as much

01:15:42 ◼   ► as possible and they thought we'll just make it float above the content of a web page.

01:15:46 ◼   ► But the problem is, web pages, they were not built for that, and all kinds of websites

01:15:51 ◼   ► and web apps will look broken because of this right now.

01:15:55 ◼   ► I guess the question is, right, when I'm using the keyboard, do I need any of the functions that are in the bar?

01:16:04 ◼   ► Like, why does it even need... why do I even need to see it?

01:16:08 ◼   ► I don't know. But it gets even worse, because what this bar does...

01:16:13 ◼   ► And... try your best to visualize this. And it's kind of ironic.

01:16:20 ◼   ► This bar, in its current design right now,

01:16:23 ◼   ► it makes Google AMP websites look even nicer and better.

01:16:30 ◼   ► And if it stays like this, it's going to confuse a lot of people.

01:16:34 ◼   ► Because, with this design, a Google AMP web page

01:16:39 ◼   ► will look like an old, regular Safari page.

01:16:46 ◼   ► because you're going to see at the top the Google AMP address bar.

01:16:50 ◼   ► And what's even more ironic about that,

01:16:54 ◼   ► it's that the Google AMP address bar has a share button, and when you tap the share button,

01:16:59 ◼   ► it brings up the actual real share sheet.

01:17:03 ◼   ► So in a way, in a sort of a twisted ironic way, with this design Apple is doing Google a favor,

01:17:10 ◼   ► because Google AMP pages, they do look much nicer,

01:17:14 ◼   ► because they don't have the double address bar at the top,

01:17:19 ◼   ► and they have a share button that works better

01:17:21 ◼   ► than the Safari share sheet.

01:17:23 ◼   ► So in a way, if you're a Google AMP fan,

01:17:26 ◼   ► you gotta hope that this design sticks around

01:17:28 ◼   ► because it makes your Google AMP pages even nicer.

01:17:31 ◼   ► This floating bar, it loses a bunch of buttons, right?

01:17:35 ◼   ► Because there's no longer an address bar at the top

01:17:39 ◼   ► and a toolbar at the bottom,

01:17:40 ◼   ► you don't have the navigation arrows anymore.

01:17:43 ◼   ► So if you want to navigate back and forth on a website, you know, back and forward,

01:17:49 ◼   ► you cannot do it anymore with buttons. You need to do that with swipe gestures.

01:17:53 ◼   ► But those swipe gestures, they don't work on all websites. They don't work on all web apps, right?

01:17:59 ◼   ► Sometimes swiping for me in some websites just doesn't work, and so those buttons are gone.

01:18:07 ◼   ► Similarly,

01:18:09 ◼   ► Other buttons were removed. The reload button,

01:18:13 ◼   ► the ability to open reader settings, and like

01:18:17 ◼   ► display settings for the current page. All of those buttons are now tucked away in a menu in the same weird

01:18:25 ◼   ► pseudo

01:18:27 ◼   ► sharesheet menu that you mentioned before.

01:18:29 ◼   ► Bookmarks and reading list on iPhone. You know what's the only way to open bookmarks and reading list now, Myke?

01:18:39 ◼   ► Is it under the bar?

01:18:41 ◼   ► No, the only way to open those bookmarks is to open a new tab or to click on the address bar and see the start page.

01:18:50 ◼   ► So if you want to see your bookmarks on iPhone, the bookmarks icon only lives at the top of the address bar.

01:18:59 ◼   ► So, once again, to repeat this, you're tapping a floating bar at the bottom, it shoots all

01:19:05 ◼   ► the way up to the top, and the bookmarks icon is there.

01:19:09 ◼   ► So the only way for you to open your bookmarks, like it used to be pretty simple, there's

01:19:13 ◼   ► a bookmarks icon at the bottom in iOS 14, and you tap it and you navigate to your bookmarks.

01:19:19 ◼   ► Now you need to go to the start page, either by opening a new tab or tapping the address

01:19:25 ◼   ► bar and you need to reach a button all the way to the top, underneath the clock, if you

01:19:31 ◼   ► want to open your bookmarks. What else? I mean, the Start page is really nice. The Start

01:19:37 ◼   ► page is one of those nice new things in the new Safari.

01:19:42 ◼   ► Private mode. Lots of people want to use private mode. It used to be that there was a button

01:19:49 ◼   ► in the tabs view that said "private" and that opened private mode.

01:19:54 ◼   ► Now the only way to open private mode on iPhone is to go to the tab view, which is nice, it's

01:19:59 ◼   ► a grid view, this change I do like.

01:20:03 ◼   ► So you tap on the tabs button, you're taken to the grid view, but there's no longer a

01:20:07 ◼   ► private button there.

01:20:10 ◼   ► You need to tap on the text label that says "two tabs" or "three tabs" and that opens

01:20:18 ◼   ► a menu that has a bunch of options including private. So it takes you one extra tap to

01:20:25 ◼   ► activate private mode. It's a bunch of little things like that where it seems to me like

01:20:31 ◼   ► they're sacrificing a lot of usability in the name of this floating bar at the bottom.

01:20:39 ◼   ► And you have to wonder, is that really worth it? Like, all these things you're losing just

01:20:44 ◼   ► to put that bar at the bottom. Why does the bar need to float? I don't think I understand

01:20:54 ◼   ► why the bar needs to float. Like, why can't the bar just be fixed and... Why can't you

01:21:00 ◼   ► have a toolbar at the top and a toolbar at the bottom? Like, you're, what, just to gain,

01:21:06 ◼   ► what exactly, 20 pixels? I mean, is that really necessary? It's also counterintuitive to the

01:21:12 ◼   ► the fact that nobody's purchasing an iPhone 12 mini anyway.

01:21:15 ◼   ► So like those small phones where you could make the case

01:21:18 ◼   ► for, oh, we need to display extra content on web pages.

01:21:22 ◼   ► You ain't selling those phones, Apple.

01:21:24 ◼   ► So like--

01:21:25 ◼   ► - I mean, 'cause the thinking I guess,

01:21:27 ◼   ► which is I do like, right?

01:21:28 ◼   ► Which is move it all to the bottom

01:21:30 ◼   ► because as phones get bigger,

01:21:32 ◼   ► it's easy to have that at the bottom, right?

01:21:33 ◼   ► But there are, I don't know why it needs to move

01:21:37 ◼   ► and I don't know why they have to hide as many buttons

01:21:40 ◼   ► as they have hidden.

01:21:43 ◼   ► Like there's some stuff that I kind of understand.

01:21:45 ◼   ► Like maybe you won't be happy about this,

01:21:47 ◼   ► maybe there are people who won't be happy about this.

01:21:49 ◼   ► I don't think many people really use Bookmarks.

01:21:54 ◼   ► Like I don't think that that is a well used feature,

01:21:58 ◼   ► you know, by like the general user.

01:22:02 ◼   ► Like, and so maybe like an extra tap to get to Bookmarks,

01:22:06 ◼   ► I don't think is the worst thing in the world.

01:22:07 ◼   ► but the reload button, the share button,

01:22:11 ◼   ► like that's the bridge too far.

01:22:13 ◼   ► Yeah, like the navigation, like all of that feels

01:22:16 ◼   ► like it's too much for me, I think.

01:22:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I really don't know what that thing

01:22:21 ◼   ► needs to float and sort of cause issues with web pages.

01:22:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, the moving is silly to me,

01:22:28 ◼   ► that really does feel silly for the recording,

01:22:31 ◼   ► I don't get that.

01:22:32 ◼   ► - There's some things I like, which I wanna mention.

01:22:35 ◼   ► the new customizable start page. I think it's really nice. I installed the gradient wallpaper

01:22:43 ◼   ► as the background image for the start page. I like that you can reorder the sections of the

01:22:50 ◼   ► start page, so I immediately turned off "Shared with you", which is the new gimmicky feature

01:22:56 ◼   ► this year. I just left enabled "Favorites", "Reading List" and "Siri Suggestions", because

01:23:02 ◼   ► Sometimes Siri does suggest doesn't know what I want to visit

01:23:06 ◼   ► So I like that you can customize the start page and install a custom background image. That's cool

01:23:11 ◼   ► Extensions are gonna be great. I think web extensions coming to

01:23:16 ◼   ► iPhone and iPad are gonna be so nice for password managers for note-taking apps for

01:23:23 ◼   ► You know task managers, right all things and maybe this is why Apple thought they could hide

01:23:31 ◼   ► Share extensions because they feel like most of that functionality will be replaced by web extensions

01:23:37 ◼   ► I could see that argument, but I still think it's weird that that they're hiding the contacts

01:23:43 ◼   ► I mean that's a bold, that's like a real bold prediction

01:23:46 ◼   ► It's a bold move

01:23:48 ◼   ► I can also tell you that with the Mac stories of a special projects team with Finn

01:23:52 ◼   ► The one true son we have been working on our own Safari web extension

01:23:58 ◼   ► There's a screenshot for you in the show notes that you can check out. We've been working on our own highlighter app

01:24:05 ◼   ► to help me

01:24:08 ◼   ► highlight things on web pages and

01:24:10 ◼   ► export those highlights to markdown

01:24:12 ◼   ► And you can share this with the passion ones? You can, you can

01:24:16 ◼   ► You can see how

01:24:18 ◼   ► extensions that you know

01:24:20 ◼   ► You can see the extension icon in the address bar and they can open a pop-up on iPad which becomes a sheet on iPhone

01:24:28 ◼   ► It's very nice, and I really think extensions are gonna be,

01:24:32 ◼   ► you know, one of the things to check out

01:24:35 ◼   ► on the App Store this year.

01:24:37 ◼   ► So that I'm really happy about.

01:24:38 ◼   ► What else do I like?

01:24:43 ◼   ► Extensions.

01:24:45 ◼   ► The custom start page.

01:24:49 ◼   ► And basically nothing else, I think.

01:24:54 ◼   ► - All right.

01:24:56 ◼   ► Do you think we're gonna change any of it?

01:24:58 ◼   ► - Yes, yes.

01:24:59 ◼   ► I think they are listening.

01:25:03 ◼   ► I feel like potentially this is one of the reasons

01:25:10 ◼   ► why we haven't seen a beta two this week.

01:25:14 ◼   ► I think Apple is gathering lots of feedback,

01:25:16 ◼   ► including the Mac.

01:25:17 ◼   ► Like I haven't talked about the Mac,

01:25:19 ◼   ► but I also think they're listening there.

01:25:21 ◼   ► I know that Steven is not here this week,

01:25:22 ◼   ► But Stephen also doesn't really like the new Safari on the Mac.

01:25:27 ◼   ► Yeah, because some of this stuff does kind of get worse

01:25:30 ◼   ► on the Mac, because it's like you really

01:25:35 ◼   ► aren't lost for space there.

01:25:39 ◼   ► Fundamentally, at a principle level,

01:25:41 ◼   ► the fact of hiding some buttons behind different--

01:25:43 ◼   ► if there's one platform where you have more screen space,

01:25:46 ◼   ► you can have it on the Mac.

01:25:48 ◼   ► And so it kind of gets, I think, even more egregious

01:25:50 ◼   ► in some instances there.

01:25:52 ◼   ► Yeah, what I would do personally, like I hope they will make tweaks. I think they will change a few things, like move things around.

01:26:02 ◼   ► I feel like if they absolutely want to keep the unified top bar approach and the floating bar at the bottom, I don't think it should be a floating element.

01:26:16 ◼   ► element, I think it should be a fixed element, I don't think it should jump all the way to

01:26:22 ◼   ► the top of the screen when you tap it.

01:26:25 ◼   ► They should go back to a standard, like, bottom toolbar that does not interfere with the contents

01:26:30 ◼   ► of a webpage.

01:26:32 ◼   ► That's on the iPhone, I mean.

01:26:34 ◼   ► On the iPad, they should make the tabs wider, and they should ditch the animations.

01:26:40 ◼   ► Like you can keep the unified design, but please avoid all those animations when you

01:26:45 ◼   ► select the tab, just make the tabs bigger and wider.

01:26:48 ◼   ► With more than like six or seven tabs on the iPad, it can be hard to open them without

01:26:53 ◼   ► closing them with the trackpad.

01:26:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:26:56 ◼   ► Like the trackpad wants to just select the X.

01:26:57 ◼   ► It's like, "No, I want to open the tab."

01:27:02 ◼   ► Allow people to, I mean, restore share extensions, allow people to customize the sidebar.

01:27:08 ◼   ► Like why can I customize the start page with those really nice controls, but I cannot customize

01:27:15 ◼   ► the sidebar. Customizable sidebars were a feature of iPadOS 14. So the sidebars should be customizable as well. And lastly,

01:27:23 ◼   ► I'm just gonna say it,

01:27:25 ◼   ► maybe it's time to offer a setting.

01:27:27 ◼   ► Say, do you want to see the address bar at the bottom on iPhone or not?

01:27:32 ◼   ► Maybe it should be a setting. Safari has lots of settings already.

01:27:37 ◼   ► Maybe this is the kind of thing where you cannot please everyone.

01:27:42 ◼   ► There's gonna be a group of people who are gonna say no, I absolutely want to have the floating bar at the bottom

01:27:49 ◼   ► I don't care about these other trade-offs

01:27:51 ◼   ► Let me put it at the bottom. Maybe this has to be a setting and it's fine. I mean, it's fine browsers are

01:27:57 ◼   ► It's it's hard to please everyone

01:28:00 ◼   ► But it what doesn't work for me right now is the imposing of this new design and the trade-offs that come with it

01:28:06 ◼   ► To all users, right? Well, maybe maybe the solution is just to offer a setting

01:28:12 ◼   ► Maybe by next week we'll know.

01:28:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:28:15 ◼   ► Alright I think that does it for this episode.

01:28:17 ◼   ► Before we go, let me tell you about another show here at Relay FM that you might enjoy

01:28:20 ◼   ► and that's called Rocket.

01:28:21 ◼   ► Rocket covers all of the hard tech news of the week, but in a really fun way.

01:28:25 ◼   ► From the latest Apple news, to scams of fake blood testing companies, Rocket is there and

01:28:30 ◼   ► you can be too at relay.fm/rocket or search for Rocket wherever you listen to podcasts.

01:28:36 ◼   ► I would like to thank our sponsors for this week's episode, Indeed, ExpressVPN and Pingdom.

01:28:41 ◼   ► If you'd like to find us online, you go to MacStoriesNet and @Fatici for Federico.

01:28:46 ◼   ► Steven is at 512pixels.net and he's @ismh.

01:28:49 ◼   ► And I am @imike.

01:28:51 ◼   ► I M Y K E.

01:28:52 ◼   ► And I stream keyboard stuff every Friday.

01:28:55 ◼   ► Myke.live if you want to check that out.

01:28:57 ◼   ► Federico, I have a question for you.

01:28:59 ◼   ► Oh!

01:29:00 ◼   ► The comeback of the question for me, okay.

01:29:02 ◼   ► If you could live anywhere in the world...

01:29:05 ◼   ► Ah.

01:29:06 ◼   ► That wasn't Rome.

01:29:08 ◼   ► So I'll even let you keep Italy if you want to.

01:29:11 ◼   ► but if you could move to anywhere in the world, where would you go?

01:29:16 ◼   ► And don't worry about politics for the sake of this discussion.

01:29:18 ◼   ► Right, right. I feel like it would be a small town in Japan.

01:29:26 ◼   ► Oh, nice.

01:29:28 ◼   ► Like Nagano, for example. I saw some pictures of Nagano that looked like, you know, the contrast

01:29:35 ◼   ► between modern Japan and sort of rural Japan, those small towns that look like

01:29:42 ◼   ► they're straight out of a manga, they, I don't know, I could see myself sort of

01:29:47 ◼   ► spending my retirement years there. Or, and we've been saying this with Sylvia

01:29:55 ◼   ► for a few years now, once in many years, if in many years we're tired of all this,

01:30:04 ◼   ► you know, city life and whatever, I would just love to open like a small sort of

01:30:11 ◼   ► like cocktail bar on a beach somewhere like in Hawaii. This is

01:30:17 ◼   ► different to the dog farm? Is it a dog farm you wanted to have? The dog, yes.

01:30:22 ◼   ► Those two things with Sylvia we keep mentioning over and over like either

01:30:26 ◼   ► farm with all kinds of animals but especially dogs or like a

01:30:32 ◼   ► small bar on the beach somewhere you know like in like in southern America

01:30:38 ◼   ► for example I was living the life there by the beach you know serving cocktails

01:30:42 ◼   ► surfing I don't surf but I like to watch people surf so you know kind of like

01:30:48 ◼   ► that you know with the palm trees you know drinking tequila that sort of stuff

01:30:53 ◼   ► Do you drink tequila? Well I used to but then I had a bad night with it.

01:31:00 ◼   ► Fair enough. Maybe that will be a question for another time. Thanks so much for listening

01:31:06 ◼   ► to this week's episode of Connected. We'll be back as a trio next time. Until then, say

01:31:10 ◼   ► goodbye Federico. Arrivederci. Cheerio.