Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Connected, episode 340.

00:00:12 ◼   ► It's made possible by our sponsors,

00:00:14 ◼   ► Hello, Smile, and Squarespace.

00:00:17 ◼   ► My name is Stephen Hackett,

00:00:19 ◼   ► and I'm joined by Mr. Federico Vittucci.

00:00:21 ◼   ► - Hello, Stephen, how are you?

00:00:22 ◼   ► Welcome back.

00:00:24 ◼   ► - It is good to be back.

00:00:25 ◼   ► I am well.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Thank you all for holding down the fort last week.

00:00:28 ◼   ► - How was your email?

00:00:29 ◼   ► It's great. We will get into that. We have a lot of follow up.

00:00:32 ◼   ► We are also joined by Mr. Myke Hurley.

00:00:36 ◼   ► Arrivederci.

00:00:38 ◼   ► That's not what you say when you say hi.

00:00:40 ◼   ► That's literally goodbye. Why would you say goodbye?

00:00:44 ◼   ► One and done today. I've cashed my check. I'm out of here.

00:00:48 ◼   ► That was it. I put in my little moment.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Myke, there's no check.

00:00:53 ◼   ► Then I'll stick around.

00:00:55 ◼   ► Alright, let's do the show then.

00:00:59 ◼   ► follow up. We got a lot of email because you guys wanted people to email me, which I enjoy,

00:01:04 ◼   ► and I really enjoyed this email from listener Carlos, who wrote in just to say

00:01:10 ◼   ► that he missed me having on the episode. Carlos, right, quote-unquote Carlos.

00:01:17 ◼   ► Yeah, everyone knows that Steven's middle name is Carlos.

00:01:20 ◼   ► That's not true at all. Steve- Carlos is you, right?

00:01:22 ◼   ► No. Steven Carlos Hackett.

00:01:24 ◼   ► I mean, come on, it's fine, come on. No.

00:01:27 ◼   ► We all know, it's really you. I'm pretty sure at some point you said to us years ago on iMessage

00:01:33 ◼   ► that if you could have like a like a like a like an exotic name you would pick Carlos and now of

00:01:39 ◼   ► all people who wrote in to say that they really miss Steven, Carlos wrote in? Sure. Carlos at

00:01:46 ◼   ► 512pixels dot net. Full URL there. It's like the name that Steven uses when he doesn't want to be

00:01:55 ◼   ► recognized online? Carlos Voorhees. One true Carlos. One true Carlos. All right. We also

00:02:06 ◼   ► got email from Jed about the shortcut URLs. Federico, can you take this one for us?

00:02:11 ◼   ► I ask, Jed notes how last week we mentioned how Apple was never able to

00:02:18 ◼   ► recover the old workflow dot is links for old workflows shared by people but

00:02:25 ◼   ► But it turns out that there's sort of a workaround way to actually use those links still in 2021.

00:02:32 ◼   ► And the way you do them is you've got to open them in a new or background tab in Safari

00:02:38 ◼   ► or another browser on your device, and then it redirects you to the iCloud link.

00:02:44 ◼   ► So it seems like if you tap those links directly, it takes you to shortcuts and it doesn't work

00:02:50 ◼   ► anymore.

00:02:51 ◼   ► you open in a background tab, it loads the web version of the link, and so it appears that

00:02:57 ◼   ► Apple is still doing that migration from workflow.is to iCloud.com. So just make sure that you open

00:03:04 ◼   ► them in a background tab, and from there you will get the installation button, the "Get Shortcut"

00:03:10 ◼   ► button on the iCloud.com web page. Just remember, do not open those links in Shortcuts directly.

00:03:17 ◼   ► So you can go back and visit one of my old workflow stories

00:03:20 ◼   ► and you can still download those workflows as shortcuts.

00:03:23 ◼   ► See, this feels like something that's going to stop working now because you mentioned it.

00:03:27 ◼   ► Yes, yes.

00:03:28 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:03:29 ◼   ► Thank you, Jed.

00:03:31 ◼   ► I feel like this is just one of those things where when it's trying to open the app automatically

00:03:37 ◼   ► it's failing, right?

00:03:38 ◼   ► So like these links do exist, it's just if it does the "oh now I'm going to open it in

00:03:44 ◼   ► in the app, the app doesn't know what to do about it, even the link exists.

00:03:47 ◼   ► Like, you know, like sometimes you would get this where you're trying to like,

00:03:50 ◼   ► I don't know, open a YouTube video or whatever,

00:03:52 ◼   ► and you don't want it to open in the YouTube app.

00:03:54 ◼   ► So you just open it in the in like a tab and it stops from the what is that

00:03:58 ◼   ► redirection called?

00:04:00 ◼   ► You know, like when it when it opens up for you in the application

00:04:03 ◼   ► instead of where you want it to go, like just in a web browser.

00:04:06 ◼   ► Deep linking.

00:04:07 ◼   ► Deep linking. There you go.

00:04:08 ◼   ► Because that's what I think that's what this seems like, right?

00:04:10 ◼   ► that this is an issue with workflow links, deep linking to shortcuts that don't work.

00:04:15 ◼   ► Yeah, it looks like it. I have some real-time follow-up, guys.

00:04:20 ◼   ► Amazing.

00:04:21 ◼   ► iOS 14.5 Beta 7 is out. Also, watchOS 7.4, but all the Beta 7s are out today, which is

00:04:30 ◼   ► just fantastic news for me because I took like 50 screenshots a few days ago. And now,

00:04:38 ◼   ► I don't think I'm going to have to redo them. I think it's fine. I don't think there's going

00:04:44 ◼   ► to be anything new in this beta either because they did the new Siri Voices last week. I

00:04:50 ◼   ► believe 14.5 is coming out soon, so it's good that they're ramping up the beta releases.

00:04:54 ◼   ► Did you see that Apple did a press release just before we began the show today about

00:05:00 ◼   ► the title?

00:05:01 ◼   ► For "Find My..." Yes. That is also something that Apple announced today. They had an official

00:05:07 ◼   ► introduction for the third-party integrations in the Find My app. I only skinned the press

00:05:13 ◼   ► release but it seems like Apple teamed up with a bunch of third-party manufacturers

00:05:17 ◼   ► for all kinds of accessories, including Steven, a bike, I believe, that you will be able to...

00:05:24 ◼   ► I think the official terminology is "locate with Apple Find My". There's an official badge

00:05:30 ◼   ► and everything, so you will find this logo on this new accessories that say... the logo

00:05:36 ◼   ► says locate with Apple Find My. Why isn't it find? Why not find with Find My? Like it's just

00:05:43 ◼   ► that's more fun. Apple Find would have been nice as a name with Apple Find. I don't know what

00:05:49 ◼   ► they must really like Find My. So yeah. VanMoofs S3 and X3 e-bikes, Belkin Soundform, Freedom True

00:05:58 ◼   ► Wireless Earbuds and the Chipolo One Spot Item Finder. Just gonna say guys don't think there's

00:06:05 ◼   ► been a great take-up. Did you say Chipotle? I know Chipotle. Yeah Chipotle. Where's my burrito?

00:06:12 ◼   ► Find your burrito. I'm just gonna say don't think there's been a great take-up for the Find My

00:06:20 ◼   ► program so far because this is a real ragtag group of stuff. I mean I kind of really want the Van Moof.

00:06:30 ◼   ► Where can I shop VanMoof?

00:06:33 ◼   ► Yeah, those bikes are sweet.

00:06:35 ◼   ► I think that's very much clearly the winner of these, right?

00:06:39 ◼   ► The VanMoof?

00:06:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, who's buying Belkin Soundform Freedom True

00:06:44 ◼   ► wireless earbuds?

00:06:44 ◼   ► You know John Gore, he's just going to buy them.

00:06:47 ◼   ► You know he's going to do it.

00:06:48 ◼   ► The Chipotle tracker doesn't ship until June.

00:06:50 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:06:53 ◼   ► And it's just one of these little tracking things.

00:06:56 ◼   ► What is Chipolo?

00:06:57 ◼   ► I've never heard of this company before.

00:06:59 ◼   ► Chipolo, Chipolo they do, what do they do?

00:07:03 ◼   ► - The finder with the reminder.

00:07:05 ◼   ► This is, it seems like this is their whole thing.

00:07:07 ◼   ► It's just--

00:07:08 ◼   ► - We need a Chipolo one spot.

00:07:09 ◼   ► A special edition of the, it's like a tile tracker?

00:07:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's all it is.

00:07:14 ◼   ► - Okay. - Yeah.

00:07:15 ◼   ► - It's a tile tracker.

00:07:17 ◼   ► - But it's just a company that doesn't care

00:07:20 ◼   ► about having their own service, I guess.

00:07:22 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:07:23 ◼   ► - They make no money on just selling you--

00:07:24 ◼   ► - Life is messy, finding your things doesn't have to be--

00:07:26 ◼   ► - They make a keyboard thing,

00:07:27 ◼   ► have one that looks like a card but it looks like the one spot the keychain one is what's

00:07:34 ◼   ► going to ship in june i mean maybe 14.5 is never coming out

00:07:38 ◼   ► it's just gonna be in beta forever and then 14.6 is gonna happen all right i put my my email in

00:07:47 ◼   ► their list to contact me when it's available i'm torn between buying the chipola one spot or the

00:07:53 ◼   ► VanMoof, mostly because I really like saying VanMoof. Like it's a satisfying word to say.

00:08:01 ◼   ► So well, the VanMoof X3 costs £1798, Federico, so choose your poison, really. I don't think

00:08:13 ◼   ► the Chipolo is going to cost that money. I've bought headphone cables that cost that much.

00:08:17 ◼   ► Nah, nah. No, don't say that. Don't say that.

00:08:20 ◼   ► What do you mean don't say that? You said that. No one else said it.

00:08:24 ◼   ► I was saying that to myself. I was reminding it to myself.

00:08:28 ◼   ► Anyway, yes, that was a Realtime follow-up.

00:08:32 ◼   ► Speaking of content creators and their money,

00:08:36 ◼   ► Clubhouse is here to save us all. They announced

00:08:40 ◼   ► the other day that they are going to be rolling out payments, which is monetization

00:08:44 ◼   ► within Clubhouse. Basically, you can select

00:08:48 ◼   ► a creator in Clubhouse and the amount that you want to send, you give Clubhouse your

00:08:54 ◼   ► credit card number and they use Stripe and send the money to the creator. So it's not

00:09:00 ◼   ► using in-app purchase or anything like that, it's just a credit card form in an app using

00:09:06 ◼   ► Stripe which...

00:09:07 ◼   ► An app only is okay with it?

00:09:08 ◼   ► Well, see, that's the thing. It seems like they wouldn't be okay with this because it's

00:09:13 ◼   ► basically bypassing their cut. So I don't know.

00:09:18 ◼   ► Technically, this is a person-to-person payment because you don't get anything from what I

00:09:23 ◼   ► can understand. So if I want to give Steven money in Clubhouse...

00:09:28 ◼   ► Please.

00:09:29 ◼   ► Okay. I don't get anything for it, right? Except for having given Steven some money.

00:09:35 ◼   ► So it's not a digital good. There's no digital good that's been exchanged. I've just given

00:09:41 ◼   ► him some money and if Clubhouse takes no money from it.

00:09:46 ◼   ► So it's like a Venmo type thing which is like your...

00:09:49 ◼   ► Yeah it's more like a person to person payment via Stripe.

00:09:54 ◼   ► So like yeah it's kind of like I can buy things in other applications like I can in Instagram

00:10:01 ◼   ► I can put my credit card number in in the web browser.

00:10:04 ◼   ► Yeah same with the Amazon app.

00:10:06 ◼   ► And so I don't know about this because I don't see what Apple could want to take money for.

00:10:16 ◼   ► And you might think to yourself, "Hey, but what about Twitch?"

00:10:19 ◼   ► But on Twitch, Amazon Twitch is taking money.

00:10:24 ◼   ► And you also get benefits for subscribing to somebody on Twitch.

00:10:30 ◼   ► You actually get stuff for that.

00:10:32 ◼   ► So you think that's the line that if they were doing this and you could unlock special

00:10:36 ◼   ► paid only streams, then maybe they'd run afoul of the rules?

00:10:40 ◼   ► And or if Clubhouse took a cut.

00:10:41 ◼   ► I think if Clubhouse took a cut, it would also have to go through a net purchase.

00:10:46 ◼   ► But Clubhouse is taking no money, so there's no 30% to take from.

00:10:52 ◼   ► This is an interesting line.

00:10:55 ◼   ► It's publicized enough that Apple definitely know about it if they didn't before.

00:10:59 ◼   ► They know about it now.

00:11:00 ◼   ► I'm going to be keen to see what happens with this, but I can't see how they would...

00:11:07 ◼   ► I don't know what argument Apple has for this.

00:11:10 ◼   ► There's no digital good being exchanged of any kind here, from what I can see.

00:11:14 ◼   ► Okay, but I mean, at this point, the real question is, which one of these growth hackers

00:11:19 ◼   ► do we want to support on Clubhouse?

00:11:22 ◼   ► Whichever one's the best one, I guess, so we can hack our growth most efficiently.

00:11:27 ◼   ► I kinda wanna give my money to a bunch of those people

00:11:29 ◼   ► but like, one dollar? Can you send one dollar to a Clubhouse growth hacker?

00:11:35 ◼   ► Probably.

00:11:36 ◼   ► Cool.

00:11:37 ◼   ► They're rolling this out at the moment, like anyone can pay

00:11:41 ◼   ► but only a certain select amount can actually receive money if that makes sense

00:11:45 ◼   ► so, you know Federico you could go find your favorite growth hacker

00:11:48 ◼   ► but it has to be one of your favorite growth hackers who's part of the Clubhouse club

00:11:53 ◼   ► I only tip my favorites

00:11:55 ◼   ► Absolutely, yes. Well, I can do it now because my iPhone is rebooting to install the beta,

00:12:00 ◼   ► but I will do it as soon as it's back. Myke, can you close out the story of the AirPods Max?

00:12:06 ◼   ► Yeah, actually, because the battery life problem seems to have been completely solved.

00:12:10 ◼   ► Sweet! Like, I've left, I left my AirPods for a week, like, just purposely, just left them,

00:12:16 ◼   ► and they, I don't remember where I started and where I ended up, that wasn't the thing,

00:12:20 ◼   ► because basically if I would have done that before, it would 100% have been dead,

00:12:23 ◼   ► and there was still battery life. Like I picked them up today, I hadn't touched them for a week,

00:12:27 ◼   ► I had 60% battery, I hadn't charged them. So I believe that the firmware update from a couple

00:12:34 ◼   ► of weeks ago or a month or so ago has fixed all of the battery life issues that I was having with

00:12:39 ◼   ► the AirPods Max. And so now I am enjoying them again because I didn't really want to say this

00:12:43 ◼   ► at the time but I'd stopped using them because they were so frustrating to me. But now this week

00:12:48 ◼   ► I've been using them again because I don't feel like I'm playing Russian Roulette with the battery

00:12:53 ◼   ► every time I pick them up. So I'm very pleased that my expensive, but I think very nice earphones,

00:13:00 ◼   ► AirPods, whatever they're called, are working again. I never stopped using them, but I also

00:13:06 ◼   ► noticed the battery life improvement. So yes, I'm very happy with them. Yeah, I had like a bad taste

00:13:13 ◼   ► from them, you know what I mean? Like it was just like, I didn't, I wasn't enjoying the product

00:13:19 ◼   ► because every time I was picking them up I was getting angry about it.

00:13:21 ◼   ► So I just stopped using them for a bit.

00:13:23 ◼   ► But now I'm back on the AirPods Max train again.

00:13:28 ◼   ► - Nice.

00:13:29 ◼   ► Cool.

00:13:30 ◼   ► I'm glad it fixed it.

00:13:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm just happy that it wasn't like a hardware flaw, it seems like.

00:13:36 ◼   ► Because that was my concern, right?

00:13:37 ◼   ► Like my theory was it was the proximity sensors.

00:13:40 ◼   ► I still think it might have been the proximity sensors that were causing the issue,

00:13:43 ◼   ► but they seem to have done something in the firmware that has changed,

00:13:47 ◼   ► I guess the way that they're being, that's the way something's working anyway, so I'm pleased.

00:13:52 ◼   ► I have some real-time breaking news.

00:13:55 ◼   ► Okay.

00:13:55 ◼   ► Breaking news.

00:13:56 ◼   ► Breaking news just because we didn't need the help.

00:13:58 ◼   ► Just because it came out when we were recording so we were skimming it, but that PR release

00:14:02 ◼   ► about Apple Find My stuff says that the new products will be available beginning next week.

00:14:08 ◼   ► So 14.5 out next week.

00:14:13 ◼   ► Uh-oh!

00:14:15 ◼   ► I'm ready. No, no, no. I have over 7,000 words ready to go, baby. It's all done, all taken care of.

00:14:23 ◼   ► I don't care anymore. Thank you to Jay Bradley in the Discord for pointing that out to us.

00:14:29 ◼   ► Uh, hopefully we can, uh, check this stuff out.

00:14:31 ◼   ► What is that thing you're doing? It's the breaking news sound. What is the breaking news sound?

00:14:40 ◼   ► That sounds...

00:14:41 ◼   ► But like a fanfare? What is it?

00:14:43 ◼   ► It's like a little Morse code type thing.

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00:16:46 ◼   ► All right, this caught my eye.

00:16:47 ◼   ► There was a report on MacRumors yesterday

00:16:50 ◼   ► about the adoption rate of iOS 14.

00:16:54 ◼   ► So according to data collected by Mixpanel,

00:16:57 ◼   ► iOS 14 is now installed on 90% of all compatible devices.

00:17:02 ◼   ► That's less than seven months after launch.

00:17:07 ◼   ► And it got me thinking, like, is that fast?

00:17:09 ◼   ► Is that slow?

00:17:10 ◼   ► Is it good?

00:17:11 ◼   ► Is it bad?

00:17:12 ◼   ► And so I went and looked up the iOS 13 numbers.

00:17:16 ◼   ► So in June, 2020, so nine months after iOS 13

00:17:20 ◼   ► had been released, it was pretty far behind.

00:17:24 ◼   ► The company said then that 81% of iPhone and iPod touch devices were running iOS 13, while

00:17:33 ◼   ► just 73% of iPads were running iPadOS.

00:17:36 ◼   ► So I think 13's reputation in the beginning, I don't think it ever really outgrew that.

00:17:42 ◼   ► It's kind of how I read this.

00:17:44 ◼   ► Yeah, and people were burned from all those bugs and issues that iOS 13 had at launch.

00:17:52 ◼   ► And if you remember, there was a report on Bloomberg by Mark Gurman

00:17:56 ◼   ► saying how, following the bad reception to iOS 13,

00:18:00 ◼   ► Apple was going to change how they were going to make iOS.

00:18:04 ◼   ► And I mean, which was kind of ironic,

00:18:06 ◼   ► because after all, they did have to change how they worked on iOS

00:18:11 ◼   ► because the pandemic happened.

00:18:13 ◼   ► So yeah, you did change your process

00:18:15 ◼   ► for working on new versions of iOS,

00:18:18 ◼   ► but I guess for different reasons.

00:18:20 ◼   ► Still, I do remember when iOS 13 came out,

00:18:25 ◼   ► that was the super weird initial release

00:18:28 ◼   ► when they did, first only iOS came out,

00:18:33 ◼   ► then iPadOS came out at the end of the month,

00:18:37 ◼   ► but iPadOS 13.0 never really came out.

00:18:40 ◼   ► The first version of iPadOS was 13.1.

00:18:43 ◼   ► - Well, don't forget that, well, 13 did ship,

00:18:47 ◼   ► but only if you bought the new iPhone.

00:18:49 ◼   ► No, I think you could also download it.

00:18:52 ◼   ► No, but like, do you remember that was the year where it came out on the iPhone first,

00:18:58 ◼   ► because they had to put it on there.

00:18:59 ◼   ► Yes, it came to the iPhone first.

00:19:00 ◼   ► And it was only on the new ones, and then 13.1 or whatever it was shipped on the older

00:19:05 ◼   ► phones, it was like super up and down, it was a very weird one.

00:19:08 ◼   ► And then they did like, before the end of the year, I think there were like 8 or 9 software

00:19:16 ◼   ► updates to iOS 13.

00:19:18 ◼   ► It was not good.

00:19:19 ◼   ► it was a yeah, but Apple can thank underscore David Smith for that 90% because of

00:19:24 ◼   ► We just made widget Smith. I genuinely believe this totally like widgets in general and I think widget Smith

00:19:30 ◼   ► Predominantly because it was the most popular. I think that that drove adoption of iOS 14 in like the first few months and

00:19:39 ◼   ► those statistics make me feel like if like it just

00:19:44 ◼   ► Confirms what I think we were all thinking anyway that there will be some kind of enhancements to widgets this year

00:19:49 ◼   ► I think that for a little bit you feel like young people are still using we just mean than like custom home screens

00:19:55 ◼   ► I mean, I think so. I did look recently and in the UK at least like Widget Smith was like still in the top 20

00:20:02 ◼   ► I think it's still a thing. I mean, I know I use it. I think if you get used to using widgets

00:20:08 ◼   ► You don't you don't like stop using them. They just become a part of your home screen. You know what I mean?

00:20:14 ◼   ► I really hope that those young people refer to David as "Widget Daddy." That's what I would

00:20:21 ◼   ► call David. That's what I would do. But seriously, though, I really do feel like there's a case

00:20:28 ◼   ► to be made for having more home screen customizations in iOS 15 than maybe Apple would have expected

00:20:36 ◼   ► last year because of the response that we've seen to apps like Widgetsmith and, in general,

00:20:42 ◼   ► the response to widgets and customization. I think Apple must have seen this coming to

00:20:47 ◼   ► an extent, right? But I think they must have also been surprised by just how much people

00:20:54 ◼   ► have been into it. And when you think about it, this is also part of my conclusion in

00:20:59 ◼   ► the iOS 14 review. I think it's also because of the times that we're living in right now

00:21:04 ◼   ► that people were so into home screen customization. First of all, because it was like a nice way

00:21:11 ◼   ► spend your time at home just fiddling with your iPhone. We're all locked in and we have

00:21:18 ◼   ► time to waste. And so let's just make a bunch of custom icons and spend time finding the

00:21:23 ◼   ► perfect wallpaper and all of that. And also, more broadly speaking, I feel like now more

00:21:28 ◼   ► than ever, personalization and customization are really important more than before because

00:21:34 ◼   ► we are using these devices so much, whether it's for, again, wasting time or for starting

00:21:41 ◼   ► from home or working from home. And so it was kind of the, obviously not ideal that

00:21:45 ◼   ► we're living in a pandemic, but as far as home screen customization goes, it was sort

00:21:49 ◼   ► of like the perfect storm scenario for Apple this time around. And so they should do more

00:21:55 ◼   ► things in iOS 15. My concern is that by focusing on iOS 15 again, we're going to have to wait

00:22:03 ◼   ► another year to get widgets on iPad, which that would be super annoying.

00:22:08 ◼   ► I think that we might see stuff like the home, like customization and widgets and that kind

00:22:12 ◼   ► of stuff be like for the first version of iOS, what like emoji is for the later ones

00:22:18 ◼   ► of like picking people up, you know?

00:22:21 ◼   ► And so I think that's something that we could see for sure.

00:22:26 ◼   ► Is seeing more of this stuff to try and bring people in.

00:22:28 ◼   ► It's always, I think it's in Apple's best interest to find things that can get people

00:22:34 ◼   ► to upgrade, right?

00:22:35 ◼   ► Like that's what they want to happen.

00:22:36 ◼   ► and this is clearly something that took off in the mainstream like emoji.

00:22:41 ◼   ► I would be very surprised if we don't see like, "Hey, this is what we're doing with

00:22:46 ◼   ► widgets this year!"

00:22:47 ◼   ► Like I would be really surprised if they don't have some kind of updated WWDC for that.

00:22:53 ◼   ► Talking about the visuals, there was a sort of on MacRumors, Apple has an app called Apple

00:23:01 ◼   ► Music for Artists, which is effectively the Apple Music version of App Store Connect, which

00:23:08 ◼   ► is also pertinent to this discussion.

00:23:10 ◼   ► Both of these applications in the last five or six months have received updates for their

00:23:15 ◼   ► icons.

00:23:16 ◼   ► App Store Connect was first in October, and then the Apple Music for Artists was a couple

00:23:23 ◼   ► of days ago.

00:23:24 ◼   ► And they both have a very distinct visual style.

00:23:27 ◼   ► They're both white icons with a kind of line that runs around the outside and then the

00:23:34 ◼   ► logo in the middle, the App Store logo or the music logo, which is recessed and has

00:23:39 ◼   ► some depth to it, has a bit of life to it. Also kind of reminiscent honestly of a Big

00:23:44 ◼   ► Sur icon, like there is actual depth in the icons.

00:23:49 ◼   ► like the opposite depth, right? Like Big Sur icons are like coming out of the icon?

00:23:56 ◼   ► Yeah, there's also an app called Transporter, which I don't know what that is, but that came from...

00:24:03 ◼   ► How did we decide on saying Joe's name?

00:24:08 ◼   ► Rossiniola.

00:24:09 ◼   ► There you go. Of MacRumors who's in the Relay FM members discord right now. I don't know what

00:24:14 ◼   ► Transporter is, but it's an application where you quote "upload content to Apple".

00:24:18 ◼   ► It says right there, "Upload content to Apple."

00:24:22 ◼   ► I guess we all use Transporter all the time.

00:24:25 ◼   ► You know, look, it could be easy to say that this is just like a... could be anything,

00:24:29 ◼   ► but this also could be a design trend that they will be going on for iOS 15

00:24:35 ◼   ► of adding a bit more depth and life to these application icons.

00:24:41 ◼   ► Because it's something they started with Big Sur, maybe they would bring it to iOS too.

00:24:47 ◼   ► My theory that I shared privately in iMessage last night, which I am going to make public right now,

00:24:53 ◼   ► is that they are going to use the Big Sur icons as like the model for the iOS icons, in the sense that

00:25:01 ◼   ► you know how you have like, you know like, wok seals, right? That you stamp when you're stamping

00:25:07 ◼   ► things? So like the Big Sur icons, because they are 3D, right? What's the opposite of recessed,

00:25:13 ◼   ► Myke? You deal with paper and that kind of stuff, you must know these things.

00:25:17 ◼   ► It's like embossed and debossed.

00:25:19 ◼   ► Yeah, that thing.

00:25:20 ◼   ► So basically the Big Sur icons will...

00:25:23 ◼   ► Like, these new iOS icons are what happens if you

00:25:27 ◼   ► stamp a Big Sur icons on a screen,

00:25:30 ◼   ► you get the recessed effect.

00:25:32 ◼   ► That's my theory.

00:25:34 ◼   ► Oh, so, okay.

00:25:35 ◼   ► If you took, like, the maps icon

00:25:38 ◼   ► and smushed it onto some clay,

00:25:40 ◼   ► what you'd be left with is the iOS icon.

00:25:42 ◼   ► That's how they go together now.

00:25:44 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:25:45 ◼   ► What you get is the new style. So you take a Vixr icon, you smush it on a piece of...

00:25:53 ◼   ► Smush it?

00:25:54 ◼   ► Yes.

00:25:55 ◼   ► Will they be backwards then?

00:25:57 ◼   ► They can't think too much about this.

00:25:59 ◼   ► Okay.

00:26:00 ◼   ► Well, they can't. No, they will be backwards, obviously.

00:26:04 ◼   ► That's not good. You don't want that. So, okay. So we smush the icons together and then

00:26:09 ◼   ► put them in a mirror.

00:26:10 ◼   ► Right. There you go. Yes.

00:26:13 ◼   ► I mean the transporter one is like you could pour liquid into that arrow and it would hold it. I like the look

00:26:19 ◼   ► I think it's cool. I hope we see more of this depth returning to the interface. I

00:26:24 ◼   ► tried good task out so

00:26:26 ◼   ► Okay, so we were talking so last time

00:26:30 ◼   ► Both Federico and I decided that tick-tick wasn't for us. How did that make you feel Steven?

00:26:35 ◼   ► Were you okay with that? I have a lot of things to talk to you about that but not for today. So, okay

00:26:40 ◼   ► So I decided TikTok wasn't for me. So I thought all right, I'm gonna download good task again

00:26:45 ◼   ► Good task also doesn't do the main thing that I want to do

00:26:48 ◼   ► Which is the thing that I described like that. I like with only focus. I didn't like it tick tick which is

00:26:54 ◼   ► adding

00:26:56 ◼   ► multiple tags to a task

00:26:58 ◼   ► That can be arbitrarily named

00:27:00 ◼   ► Good task also wants the tag to be all one word

00:27:04 ◼   ► which I don't like. What I like in OmniFocus is like a multiple words. It's just like a

00:27:09 ◼   ► little thing that I attach, I put emoji in it and stuff and I like that.

00:27:13 ◼   ► And it also kind of, you know, it...

00:27:16 ◼   ► Good task is daunting. It really is. It's... Tick-ticking good tasks are almost like mirror images of each other

00:27:24 ◼   ► where like, tick-tick looks really simple, but you can

00:27:30 ◼   ► that's got like so many features if you just look around for them and

00:27:34 ◼   ► Good task just has a lot of features and you see them immediately

00:27:37 ◼   ► Like it's like care about hiding them. It's very much in your face

00:27:42 ◼   ► Ultimately, I've realized that the system that I have built for myself and that I like right now

00:27:48 ◼   ► It's just it's best it's best served by OmniFocus. So it's what I'm gonna stick with

00:27:53 ◼   ► I will say I I don't like the UI of either of these applications

00:27:58 ◼   ► ultimately like good task or tick-tick for very different reasons. Like I think I kind of touched

00:28:03 ◼   ► on it already but good task is like super busy you know like it doesn't feel like an iOS app in its

00:28:10 ◼   ► own way it's like there's just how about everything and then I remembered the thing that annoyed me

00:28:16 ◼   ► the most which I know I can turn off but this annoyed me the first time I tried it which is the

00:28:20 ◼   ► the the good morning notification the good task sends you and it says good morning my friend

00:28:27 ◼   ► Yeah, and I just like, I don't want an application to wish me good morning.

00:28:34 ◼   ► And we're not friends also.

00:28:36 ◼   ► But it's like, this is an application, like my task manager for me is like,

00:28:42 ◼   ► this application's notifications are some of the more important notifications that I get.

00:28:48 ◼   ► So I like, like I see it's like, Oh, what does it say?

00:28:51 ◼   ► Oh, it's like, you know, like, I look at my phone, look on my phone, and it's locked.

00:28:54 ◼   ► So I don't get the notification preview. Right.

00:28:56 ◼   ► And it's like, "Good task." "Oh, pick it up." "Good morning." "Shut up, good task."

00:29:01 ◼   ► Right? Like, I don't want this.

00:29:03 ◼   ► That was the reason I uninstalled the app. Because before then, I was like, "Ah, I don't think this

00:29:11 ◼   ► is right for me. Maybe I'll come back to it." And I started a notification. And I thought to myself,

00:29:16 ◼   ► "This isn't going to work." And then I removed both "good task" and "tick-tick" from my phone.

00:29:21 ◼   ► Because I just realized like I don't need a new task manager right now.

00:29:26 ◼   ► I'm, as I said before, mostly happy with OmniFocus.

00:29:30 ◼   ► And the ways that I've got it, the things that I don't like about it,

00:29:34 ◼   ► I've mostly been able to build my own functionality and shortcuts and stuff for it to get rid of it.

00:29:39 ◼   ► But I just, I really like the flexibility that I've been able to build in that system

00:29:46 ◼   ► via the use of tags and perspectives.

00:29:49 ◼   ► and this is just not really a thing that other applications want to do in the same way.

00:29:54 ◼   ► All of these apps are built with different mentalities in mind, and this is the OmniFocus one.

00:30:02 ◼   ► >> No, that makes sense. I understand why this is not the app for you, and especially with all

00:30:08 ◼   ► those settings and all that complexity. You know, a lot of the -- I think a lot of the best apps on

00:30:14 ◼   ► on Apple platforms are the ones that strike that balance

00:30:18 ◼   ► of hiding complexity from you,

00:30:20 ◼   ► but also having tons of power user features.

00:30:23 ◼   ► And GoodTask has a lot of power user features,

00:30:26 ◼   ► but it just doesn't care about

00:30:27 ◼   ► hiding the complexity from you or

00:30:29 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:30:30 ◼   ► having a scalable sense of complexity, right?

00:30:33 ◼   ► That when you start with the app, it looks simple,

00:30:37 ◼   ► but then it's sort of like progressive disclosure,

00:30:39 ◼   ► if you will, that that complexity

00:30:41 ◼   ► is progressively revealed to you.

00:30:43 ◼   ► No, it just doesn't care about that.

00:30:45 ◼   ► - It's one of the only apps that I've ever used

00:30:48 ◼   ► that does that thing that so many apps does,

00:30:51 ◼   ► which is like, "Hey, let me talk you through

00:30:53 ◼   ► how we work here."

00:30:55 ◼   ► You know, like, and you're going,

00:30:56 ◼   ► and then it's like, all of a sudden here's everything.

00:30:59 ◼   ► Like, usually applications that bother to have

00:31:02 ◼   ► one of those like splash screen intro things,

00:31:05 ◼   ► would then, I don't know,

00:31:06 ◼   ► try and hold your hand a little bit more.

00:31:08 ◼   ► This one does not.

00:31:10 ◼   ► It does not want to hold your hand.

00:31:12 ◼   ► Yeah, no, it just doesn't hold anything. No, it doesn't carry. Throws you off a cliff and

00:31:17 ◼   ► leaves you there. So here's what I've been thinking about task managers, which is sort

00:31:24 ◼   ► of also connects us to our next topic, because I think they're kind of related. I've been

00:31:29 ◼   ► doing, especially over the past year, I've been rebuilding and rethinking about a lot

00:31:36 ◼   ► of aspects of my setup in general. We talked about how I switched email clients. I've been

00:31:42 ◼   ► on a whole journey with read later apps that eventually concluded last week in Mac Stories

00:31:48 ◼   ► Weekly. I've been changing a lot of things. And the one aspect that I'm still not sure

00:31:58 ◼   ► about is the Task Manager, right? I'm using Good Task and I'm happy about it. And of all

00:32:04 ◼   ► the ones that I tested, it's definitely the best one for me at the moment. But the more

00:32:09 ◼   ► I think about myself in the context of Federico as a person managing tasks, the more I realize

00:32:16 ◼   ► that where I really struggle in my professional life is in reconciling. How much time I spend

00:32:26 ◼   ► taking notes and writing and creating tasks for that text content. Like, I keep struggling

00:32:36 ◼   ► with this problem of writing documentation for Mac stories or working on a long-form

00:32:45 ◼   ► article for the site. And there's a task that, you know, imagine these long documents, there's

00:32:52 ◼   ► a task that belongs to a specific portion of the document, and there's this disconnect between the

00:32:59 ◼   ► document I'm working on. Again, it can be creative work or it can be admin work, it doesn't matter.

00:33:04 ◼   ► I'm still working with text. And there's this disconnect between the document and the task

00:33:10 ◼   ► manager. And I've tried to solve this issue in a bunch of different ways over the years,

00:33:16 ◼   ► and I still haven't found the solution.

00:33:18 ◼   ► And what I end up doing is, yeah, I can work with my Task Manager

00:33:23 ◼   ► and my writing app of choice side by side in SplitView,

00:33:28 ◼   ► but it's just that disconnect between this line of text

00:33:35 ◼   ► that contains something that I gotta do,

00:33:37 ◼   ► and the Task Manager that contains the same task,

00:33:41 ◼   ► but it's completely disconnected from that piece of text.

00:33:44 ◼   ► And so I end up creating like this double references

00:33:49 ◼   ► in my system, right?

00:33:50 ◼   ► So I leave a reminder in IARider, for example,

00:33:54 ◼   ► but then I also recreate a task that says the same thing,

00:33:58 ◼   ► but it's in my task manager,

00:33:59 ◼   ► because that's the only place where I can have a date

00:34:02 ◼   ► and I can have like proper task attributes.

00:34:05 ◼   ► And so I feel like I'm doing this work twice,

00:34:09 ◼   ► and I've been doing this for years.

00:34:11 ◼   ► Like I leave reminders in my iOS reviews

00:34:14 ◼   ► when I'm writing them in IARider.

00:34:16 ◼   ► And I leave little tasks for me in craft

00:34:20 ◼   ► when I'm working on documents for Mac stories and for the club.

00:34:24 ◼   ► I've always been doing this.

00:34:26 ◼   ► The only time when I sort of found a solution for this--

00:34:32 ◼   ► I think it was three or four years ago--

00:34:35 ◼   ► when I was using drafts at the time as my text editor.

00:34:40 ◼   ► And that's the only time where I kind of put together a system that fixed this.

00:34:47 ◼   ► I remember I had a script and I wrote about it.

00:34:51 ◼   ► It must be in a Mac Sorry's Weekly newsletter.

00:34:53 ◼   ► Boy, if only there was an easy way to search those.

00:34:56 ◼   ► It's like "burn, but also..."

00:35:01 ◼   ► I had this script that scanned my document for reminders I left to myself with a specific

00:35:09 ◼   ► syntax that I came up with, and basically that script created reminders in the Reminders

00:35:15 ◼   ► app and linked those with drafts. So I put together this two-way communication between

00:35:23 ◼   ► drafts and reminders that was sort of close to my ideal. Because I feel like I've always

00:35:31 ◼   ► been chasing this dream of, "Can I connect my task manager and my note-taking app or

00:35:39 ◼   ► my text editor in some way?" And I don't know. Sometimes I think about it and I realize,

00:35:47 ◼   ► "Boy, what I'm really seeking here is HyperCard and having these systems that can embed one

00:35:55 ◼   ► within the other?" I mean, what an idea, right? But yeah, so that thing, it still doesn't

00:36:01 ◼   ► exist. I came close to it years ago, but it was sort of hacky and, you know...

00:36:07 ◼   ► Does it make sense what I'm trying to explain? Yeah, it does. I don't think it's ideal that I

00:36:14 ◼   ► end up creating these tasks twice, basically. Well, you know TicTic has full markdown support

00:36:21 ◼   ► in the notes, so you can just write... No, I'm not writing my articles in TicTic, Steven.

00:36:25 ◼   ► Nope. Nope.

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00:37:57 ◼   ► So we had an email from Matthew saying,

00:38:01 ◼   ► "You guys talk a lot about task managers.

00:38:03 ◼   ► "What do you use to track ideas for the future?"

00:38:07 ◼   ► So they listed some examples like future discussions,

00:38:11 ◼   ► content, features, app ideas, et cetera.

00:38:16 ◼   ► And I thought this was really interesting

00:38:17 ◼   ► because I actually just went through this,

00:38:20 ◼   ► where before I would leave,

00:38:24 ◼   ► like say ideas for 512 articles,

00:38:27 ◼   ► just at the bottom of my 512 pixels to-do list.

00:38:31 ◼   ► And then every once in a while,

00:38:32 ◼   ► I would just promote one of them with a date

00:38:34 ◼   ► and say, I'm gonna write this one today.

00:38:36 ◼   ► But I was never really happy with that

00:38:38 ◼   ► because it was sort of all intermixed with other stuff.

00:38:41 ◼   ► And so I actually recently took this sort of idea tracking

00:38:46 ◼   ► tracking and put it into things. And so I have a things list for columns I want to

00:38:52 ◼   ► write, streams I want to host, videos I want to make. And then I can go through

00:38:57 ◼   ► there and pick what looks good and then you know bring it into my task manager

00:39:01 ◼   ► when I'm going to actually do it. And I've enjoyed that separation so far.

00:39:06 ◼   ► What made you want to use things for this? Because it's beautiful and I will

00:39:12 ◼   ► never have a repeating content idea so I'm not gonna hit their limitations.

00:39:18 ◼   ► So like this is one of those things where like I'm just trying to get in your headspace

00:39:22 ◼   ► for this.

00:39:23 ◼   ► If you just like you're like oh I want say like I want to write an article about this

00:39:27 ◼   ► you would just go and put it in things you would never put it in tiktik because like

00:39:31 ◼   ► oh remind me to do it on Wednesday.

00:39:34 ◼   ► If I had a date in mind it would go in tiktik like oh I want to cover this on this date

00:39:39 ◼   ► But for other ideas, like for instance,

00:39:44 ◼   ► like YouTube videos I want to put on the channel,

00:39:47 ◼   ► basically that's just like a list of computers.

00:39:49 ◼   ► And at some point when I get back around

00:39:51 ◼   ► to making another video, I'll go in there

00:39:53 ◼   ► and see which one sort of tickles my fancy in the moment.

00:39:56 ◼   ► So they're more, they're not as tied

00:40:00 ◼   ► to a schedule in this state.

00:40:03 ◼   ► But if an idea does come up that I know,

00:40:07 ◼   ► hey, I want to do this next week,

00:40:08 ◼   ► or I wanna do it on this date to hit an anniversary

00:40:10 ◼   ► or whatever it is, then it'll become a task.

00:40:12 ◼   ► But these are sort of like floating ideas in the mist

00:40:16 ◼   ► and I can just reach out and grab one if I want it.

00:40:18 ◼   ► - Because like all of this stuff for me,

00:40:20 ◼   ► this is what goes in a Notes app.

00:40:23 ◼   ► Like this is how I think of it in my mind.

00:40:26 ◼   ► So if I had something specific where I was like,

00:40:30 ◼   ► oh, I wanna do this thing or I have this idea

00:40:33 ◼   ► and if I can ever think of any way

00:40:36 ◼   ► at which a date could be attached to it,

00:40:37 ◼   ► it would go in OmniFocus. But if it's like an idea, like you're saying like, oh, I have

00:40:43 ◼   ► something I want to make an episode of a show about, or I've had an idea for like a product

00:40:49 ◼   ► or a merch thing that I want to do or whatever, then it would go into notes for me because

00:40:55 ◼   ► I would consider these kinds of things as like parts of brainstorms, or they would be

00:41:01 ◼   ► a jumping off point for more thinking.

00:41:03 ◼   ► So it either goes into, depending on what it's about,

00:41:07 ◼   ► it will either go into notes or craft, because I have basically now at this point

00:41:13 ◼   ► for like the two areas of work that I think about, I like split it down the middle.

00:41:17 ◼   ► Most of it goes in notes.

00:41:19 ◼   ► I also put personal stuff in notes and then craft for other types of work stuff.

00:41:23 ◼   ► Right now, it's anything to do with Cortex brand.

00:41:27 ◼   ► It all goes in to craft, because that's where like

00:41:30 ◼   ► come out with product ideas and all that kind of stuff. That all goes in craft.

00:41:34 ◼   ► I'm actually really enjoying craft more and more, like

00:41:37 ◼   ► text and images and drawing and multimedia are all living in one place.

00:41:41 ◼   ► The structure and organization is good and the more I'm getting

00:41:45 ◼   ► used to it the more I'm like looking past the parts that I find to be a bit

00:41:49 ◼   ► weird because I'm benefiting so much from what I enjoy

00:41:52 ◼   ► about it. I could imagine moving more and more stuff to craft in the future

00:41:57 ◼   ► because I'm genuinely enjoying everything that it can do, the way it works, the way I can format,

00:42:03 ◼   ► and how often they're adding new features. But to me, like all of this kind of stuff,

00:42:08 ◼   ► it always just finds its way into a note of some kind until it's ready to become a task,

00:42:15 ◼   ► if that makes sense. Like if I was doing what you were doing, Steven, if I was like making YouTube

00:42:21 ◼   ► videos right? I would just have a YouTube videos note, like video ideas note and I would put all

00:42:27 ◼   ► my video ideas in there until I was ready to then go ahead and do one of those. An example for me

00:42:34 ◼   ► is the keyboard stream stuff. I'll have an idea, I'll be like oh I want to try doing this thing

00:42:39 ◼   ► and I have a stream ideas note and I put all my ideas in there and then every Wednesday I have

00:42:47 ◼   ► a task in OmniFocus to confirm what I want to do for that Friday's stream. So like that's kind of

00:42:54 ◼   ► the way that this stuff works in me. It's like if it's not like a task of a due date and stuff,

00:43:00 ◼   ► it's just going to go in a note somewhere because that's kind of like how I think and feel about

00:43:05 ◼   ► all that kind of content. It just lives in a notes app. That's what I used to do.

00:43:10 ◼   ► Something about having it just as a list kind of in its own place just seems to make more sense

00:43:15 ◼   ► to me, but I totally get it. I've been thinking about this a lot, as I said a few minutes

00:43:20 ◼   ► ago, especially in the context of not just the tension that I mentioned between the text

00:43:27 ◼   ► editor and the task manager, but also something that I do, which is how do I decide what is

00:43:34 ◼   ► an idea and what is a task and where do you draw the line when it comes to things that

00:43:43 ◼   ► have on your mind, like things that you're thinking about, how do you know

00:43:48 ◼   ► when those things become actionable, as the GTD people would say? And so I think

00:43:53 ◼   ► it's important for me to clarify here how anything I put into my Task Manager,

00:43:58 ◼   ► Myke said this before, I think we're very similar in that regard, anything that

00:44:03 ◼   ► goes into the Task Manager has a date attached to it. At the very least there's

00:44:07 ◼   ► a date. Most of the times, personally, there's also a time, because I try to

00:44:12 ◼   ► to schedule my day pretty, well, not down to the minute, but I try to save some things

00:44:19 ◼   ► for the morning and some things for the afternoon and try to follow that sort of structure.

00:44:25 ◼   ► But anything that goes into my Task Manager anyway has a date. And by giving it a date,

00:44:32 ◼   ► it means I'm making it actionable on a specific day and usually at a specific moment of the

00:44:38 ◼   ► But at the same time, I find myself doing this a lot, where I may have a few things

00:44:44 ◼   ► on my mind of like ideas for stories or ideas for shortcuts, right?

00:44:51 ◼   ► But I need to think about them some more.

00:44:54 ◼   ► And something that I guess I do a lot, and maybe it's not optimal in terms of saving

00:45:01 ◼   ► brainpower resources, I let those ideas simmer for a long time. And I guess maybe I continually

00:45:12 ◼   ► process them in the background. I don't have an exact way to describe this, but when I think of

00:45:18 ◼   ► something, I tend to be very deliberate, especially as I grow older with the articles that I write and

00:45:24 ◼   ► with the shortcuts that I make. And I don't know, I just feel like I need to think about stuff for

00:45:29 ◼   ► a while before I commit to it. But in that time period, when I have the idea and when

00:45:38 ◼   ► I let the idea just sit there for a while, is that a task? Is that still an idea? I think

00:45:45 ◼   ► I personally classify it as an idea. I don't think it's a task. It's not a clear item that

00:45:51 ◼   ► can be checked off a list. But it's also more than an idea, right? Because I'm developing

00:45:58 ◼   ► the idea. And I guess maybe I am part of the problem, because maybe I need to be more,

00:46:05 ◼   ► let's say, official in like taking notes about the idea and literally documenting every single

00:46:12 ◼   ► thought that is in my mind about that idea. Maybe I don't do that as often as I should,

00:46:19 ◼   ► but I still don't think it makes that jump right away from idea to task. And I find it

00:46:27 ◼   ► really weird as a concept, which is why maybe I keep wishing for a two-way communication

00:46:35 ◼   ► between my note-taking app and my task manager, because those lines are very blurry, at least

00:46:40 ◼   ► in my mind. And so what I've started doing for the past year or so, and I think I mentioned

00:46:49 ◼   ► this before, I have this personal note that I open many, many times every single day called

00:46:55 ◼   ► the dashboard, which is literally like a text note that has a bunch of, I call them, quick

00:47:03 ◼   ► links at the top.

00:47:05 ◼   ► Those are basically launchers for things that I do frequently, so taking notes for connected,

00:47:12 ◼   ► taking notes like saving ideas for app stories, or saving an idea for an article.

00:47:19 ◼   ► And so those are quick links that take me to other notes where I save those ideas.

00:47:23 ◼   ► And then there's a line break, like a horizontal line separator, and then it's just a blank

00:47:30 ◼   ► note.

00:47:32 ◼   ► And when I think of something that is not a task, but is also something that is semi-actionable,

00:47:40 ◼   ► I save it there.

00:47:42 ◼   ► Because then I gotta decide, okay, what am I gonna do with this?

00:47:44 ◼   ► Like for example, yesterday, a friend of ours, so my friends have started doing this thing

00:47:50 ◼   ► where when they need to do translations from Italian to English, they ask me. It's like,

00:48:02 ◼   ► "Hey, can you give this like a second read to make sure that it's proper English?" And

00:48:07 ◼   ► I'm happy to do it. It's fine. So this friend, she texted me yesterday saying, "Hey, I have

00:48:13 ◼   ► this pages document that I translated to English, but I'm not sure about the English translation.

00:48:20 ◼   ► you do it at some point. And what I did was I just put a reminder in the dashboard note

00:48:26 ◼   ► saying at some point this week you gotta do this. I don't know when, I don't know when

00:48:32 ◼   ► I will have the time to do this, I know that I have to do it eventually, I don't like the

00:48:37 ◼   ► idea of scheduling it right away, but I also don't want to forget about it, right? And

00:48:44 ◼   ► so I save it there. And then it's a bunch of other things like, oh, let me look right

00:48:48 ◼   ► now I guess.

00:48:49 ◼   ► I think without making a joke, I'm not trying to make a joke, but this sounds like the kind

00:48:55 ◼   ► of way that a lot of people use tools like Notion. Like people have what they call these

00:48:59 ◼   ► personal dashboards and stuff like that where it's pulling data from.

00:49:04 ◼   ► Mine is not fancy, mine is just text.

00:49:07 ◼   ► No, no, no, I know, I know, I know, it's very manual. But I'm just saying like it's like

00:49:12 ◼   ► a similar idea I think.

00:49:15 ◼   ► So the idea is, yes, I guess it's similar to that. I guess the idea is I just want to

00:49:22 ◼   ► have an in-between space where I can save things that technically they are not tasks,

00:49:30 ◼   ► in the GTD sense. Sometimes they are ideas for, like sometimes I just open the note and

00:49:36 ◼   ► say, "Think about a connected topic." Right? For example, it's not a task. I'm reminding

00:49:46 ◼   ► myself to think about something that will become a task eventually, but I just feel

00:49:51 ◼   ► better about having this space that is sort of like a brain organizer. I don't know how

00:49:57 ◼   ► to call it. I guess "dashboard" is a good word for it. It's a place where I can organize

00:50:03 ◼   ► everything that's on my mind, even though those things are not tasks. I don't know.

00:50:09 ◼   ► Maybe I'm weird, but it's just I'm feeling a lot better since I've been

00:50:13 ◼   ► doing this. I still forget about stuff sometimes, which is why like sometimes I

00:50:21 ◼   ► when we're driving and Silvia and I were talking and she's like she should she

00:50:26 ◼   ► suggests like things to try for the club or things to try for Mac stories, I'm like

00:50:30 ◼   ► can you please open the dashboard? No, can you please save it there because

00:50:33 ◼   ► otherwise I'm going to forget. And she never wants to do it.

00:50:35 ◼   ► And I tend to forget about those things.

00:50:39 ◼   ► So what I've noticed about myself is I have to write down everything that I'm

00:50:43 ◼   ► thinking about.

00:50:44 ◼   ► And I like having this middle ground for things that are future tasks, I guess,

00:50:51 ◼   ► would be another way to call them.

00:50:53 ◼   ► These are future tasks that haven't taken shape yet.

00:50:56 ◼   ► But the seed of those tasks exist somewhere.

00:51:02 ◼   ► but I'm not ready to put them in a task manager yet.

00:51:06 ◼   ► I don't feel comfortable creating tasks

00:51:08 ◼   ► that say, think about topic, right?

00:51:12 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:51:13 ◼   ► - I don't know, a task for me is like an actual thing to do.

00:51:17 ◼   ► Like sit down and write for 30 minutes, that's a task.

00:51:21 ◼   ► I guess maybe sit down and think would be, I don't know,

00:51:25 ◼   ► there's something about it that makes me feel odd.

00:51:28 ◼   ► - I do think that there is an element of these tools

00:51:32 ◼   ► becoming more prevalent for people, like stuff like Notion and Roam and

00:51:37 ◼   ► Craft, and as an idea of providing a place for these types of things to go, I

00:51:43 ◼   ► do think that it's becoming a thing that people are finding use in and

00:51:50 ◼   ► you've just got your own way of doing it. How often do you check in with this note?

00:51:55 ◼   ► Oh, multiple times a day.

00:51:57 ◼   ► Okay.

00:51:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I got a custom icon in my iPhone dock to open the note.

00:52:03 ◼   ► Nice. Oh, the dock. Fancy.

00:52:04 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah.

00:52:07 ◼   ► Yeah, also, I feel like part of the reason is it creates less pressure than seeing, like, 25 tasks

00:52:18 ◼   ► due today in your task manager.

00:52:20 ◼   ► manager. Because when I open the dashboard, I see, "Oh, these are not critical and urgent

00:52:26 ◼   ► tasks. These are like, reserve some time for thinking and consider this idea." I don't

00:52:34 ◼   ► know. I tried to be sort of like a hyperscheduler before, right? I tried to live that kind of

00:52:40 ◼   ► lifestyle and it was just terrible. And then everything becomes overdue and everything

00:52:46 ◼   ► gets like a red font and you get the badge on the icon. So I don't like to do that anymore.

00:52:53 ◼   ► I tend to be very... my task manager doesn't have a lot of tasks and that's not because

00:52:59 ◼   ► I don't have work to do, not because I'm lazy, but because I try to be very, again, very

00:53:04 ◼   ► deliberate with the things that I put in there and I try to be realistic also. Like, what's

00:53:10 ◼   ► the purpose of scheduling five tasks at 5 p.m.? It's not like at 5 p.m. I can do five

00:53:15 ◼   ► things, right? So yeah, I don't know. It is tricky and I think that it's okay if it is

00:53:24 ◼   ► fluid and changes over time. The problem of "I need to remind myself to have time to think

00:53:31 ◼   ► about something" is definitely tricky. Sometimes I do put those as a task of like, you know,

00:53:38 ◼   ► usually with the verb being like "plan", like "plan for this series" or "plan for this episode",

00:53:45 ◼   ► I like that. I like that.

00:53:47 ◼   ► Yeah, but even that's kind of fuzzy.

00:53:50 ◼   ► It's thinking time, most of the time, I guess. Yeah.

00:53:54 ◼   ► I make tasks like that, too,

00:53:56 ◼   ► which are, like, instructing me to do something.

00:53:58 ◼   ► Think about this.

00:54:00 ◼   ► So you make tasks for those with a due date and a due time.

00:54:04 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

00:54:07 ◼   ► I see. I guess also part of the problem,

00:54:11 ◼   ► at least on Apple platforms

00:54:12 ◼   ► and at least, I guess, on iOS and iPadOS,

00:54:15 ◼   ► is the capturing of these ideas, right?

00:54:18 ◼   ► Really the fastest way on iOS is to use reminders

00:54:22 ◼   ► and to use either Siri on the iPhone or the Apple Watch

00:54:25 ◼   ► to say, "Hey, remind me about this."

00:54:27 ◼   ► And that's by far the easiest way.

00:54:29 ◼   ► But I think folks feel this problem a lot less on the Mac,

00:54:34 ◼   ► because you don't have those kinds of limitations.

00:54:39 ◼   ► You can add the OmniFocus quick entry window,

00:54:42 ◼   ► and it's the same for things and Todoist,

00:54:44 ◼   ► and you can have Apple scripts launching system-wide.

00:54:47 ◼   ► But I'm feeling that on iOS.

00:54:50 ◼   ► That's why I end up creating a custom icon that

00:54:52 ◼   ► launches my dashboard.

00:54:53 ◼   ► Because having the fastest possible capture

00:54:58 ◼   ► for these ideas, for these tasks, and semi-tasks,

00:55:03 ◼   ► is really important for me.

00:55:06 ◼   ► Making it easy and super fast to be

00:55:07 ◼   ► able to get an idea out of my brain

00:55:10 ◼   ► and into some kind of page.

00:55:13 ◼   ► Which is why, in the context of the evolution of iOS and iOS 15,

00:55:19 ◼   ► I really hope that Apple expands this thing that they don't want

00:55:24 ◼   ► you to call changing the default in Siri,

00:55:27 ◼   ► but it's basically what it is.

00:55:29 ◼   ► I really hope that they continue down

00:55:31 ◼   ► this path of letting you pick a default for Siri

00:55:35 ◼   ► and that the next domains for this

00:55:38 ◼   ► will be note taking and task management.

00:55:41 ◼   ► Imagine if you could just say, hey, Assistant,

00:55:45 ◼   ► remind me about this.

00:55:46 ◼   ► And it goes into things, or it goes into OmniFocus.

00:55:49 ◼   ► And same for like make a note instead of going into Apple

00:55:52 ◼   ► Notes and goes into drafts, right?

00:55:54 ◼   ► Or craft or something else like that.

00:55:56 ◼   ► So I really hope that Siri, they continue

00:55:58 ◼   ► to expand that intelligent recommendation engine

00:56:02 ◼   ► that they have for 14.5.

00:56:05 ◼   ► But otherwise, yeah, I don't know.

00:56:08 ◼   ► I'm continuing to think about where I'm at at the moment.

00:56:13 ◼   ► Like the relationship between my note-taking app

00:56:17 ◼   ► and my task manager,

00:56:18 ◼   ► and how do I understand when something is a note

00:56:25 ◼   ► and when it becomes a task.

00:56:28 ◼   ► It's a, I don't know, it's a topic that I,

00:56:31 ◼   ► not something that I think I've solved.

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00:58:20 ◼   ► So Lauren Goode wrote a really wonderful article at Wired talking about how the devices and

00:58:27 ◼   ► services that she uses kept reminding her of painful memories after having ended a relationship

00:58:36 ◼   ► and calling off a wedding in late 2019. It is truly fantastic, incredibly well considered

00:58:43 ◼   ► researched piece that you should read. She speaks to people at companies like Google

00:58:48 ◼   ► and Pinterest about how they create their memories, features, the impacts that they

00:58:52 ◼   ► think this stuff might have. And it is, I think, a rare article around technology which

00:59:03 ◼   ► interweaves personal with the technology in the sense of like she moves backwards and

00:59:08 ◼   ► forwards as she tells the story between this is tech and this is me interviewing someone

00:59:14 ◼   ► in one of these companies, now let me tell you a bit more of the personal side of it

00:59:18 ◼   ► again as she kind of like tells her story of the last year at the same time.

00:59:23 ◼   ► It really, I'm not doing it justice like you really should read it.

00:59:26 ◼   ► It's incredible.

00:59:27 ◼   ► I had seen people linking to it but I hadn't read it until I just hadn't gotten to it yet.

00:59:32 ◼   ► And then I saw Steven's link to it on 512 which was a also beautiful, heartfelt and open

00:59:42 ◼   ► discussion about some of the experiences that he has faced with family struggles which

00:59:48 ◼   ► it you should also read and they will both be on the show notes. I don't know how much of it you want to

00:59:52 ◼   ► necessarily touch on

00:59:54 ◼   ► right now or if you feel like it's worthy of touching on right now for the context. Yeah, I mean just just briefly

01:00:02 ◼   ► I think longtime listeners will know our oldest son was diagnosed with brain cancer as a as a baby and underwent

01:00:08 ◼   ► chemo and treatment and surgery all at St. Jude. That's why Relay FM raises money for St. Jude every year

01:00:16 ◼   ► because of their life-saving work not only in our family's life, but in lots of families lives. So

01:00:20 ◼   ► that clearly was a very traumatic time and

01:00:24 ◼   ► and yeah, that's kind of where this article picks up.

01:00:27 ◼   ► And so I wanted to talk about some of this stuff a little bit because

01:00:32 ◼   ► like to you know

01:00:34 ◼   ► This is definitely something I've been thinking about. I think everyone the three of us as well

01:00:41 ◼   ► The last year or two, there have been some difficult things that have happened in our lives.

01:00:46 ◼   ► And as I'm sure, you know, like many people have had tough times over the last year,

01:00:53 ◼   ► but I think we've all had some uniquely weird or tricky things occur

01:00:59 ◼   ► that aren't necessarily COVID related or not COVID related at all.

01:01:03 ◼   ► And one of the things that is very strange is that you don't have to

01:01:11 ◼   ► Look for memories anymore, or you don't have to be nostalgic and go and check your photos

01:01:18 ◼   ► because

01:01:20 ◼   ► Your memories come find you

01:01:22 ◼   ► and sometimes

01:01:25 ◼   ► These memories include things or people that you might not want to necessarily be thinking about at that moment

01:01:32 ◼   ► Sometimes this comes about in really

01:01:37 ◼   ► beautiful

01:01:39 ◼   ► moments

01:01:40 ◼   ► Yeah, or memories that hit you out of the blue and you're like, oh, it's so good

01:01:46 ◼   ► Like I really miss that person, but it's a good thing, you know

01:01:48 ◼   ► Like I see pictures of the three of us together and it's like I really missed that but I know it will happen again

01:01:53 ◼   ► You know, so like it's it's an optimistic type of thing

01:01:56 ◼   ► but sometimes there are things that pop up that you either would want to forget or it's like I

01:02:03 ◼   ► Didn't necessarily want my day derailed by seeing this person's face right now

01:02:09 ◼   ► And there is almost like this feeling of our memories being weaponized against us in some way

01:02:18 ◼   ► to make us feel things like good.

01:02:22 ◼   ► I mean, by intention, I believe with these systems, they're meant to make you feel good things

01:02:27 ◼   ► so therefore you love your device or love your service more because it's reminding you of these good things.

01:02:34 ◼   ► But there is no real distinction between what's good and bad.

01:02:41 ◼   ► The system doesn't care, the system doesn't know what's good or bad, right?

01:02:47 ◼   ► Because you were gonna say the system doesn't care, I actually think that is also relevant.

01:02:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:54 ◼   ► Because like, I do believe that there is work that can be done, which is complicated to

01:03:03 ◼   ► try and alleviate some of these issues. Like I'll give an example and this just

01:03:09 ◼   ► feels like an example to me which I feel like could be written into say the

01:03:14 ◼   ► photos widget right? If I have lots of photos of someone over a period of time

01:03:19 ◼   ► and then there are no more photos of that person. I was about to suggest that

01:03:25 ◼   ► yes. Stop showing me photos of that person for a bit.

01:03:28 ◼   ► Yep.

01:03:29 ◼   ► Because what could that mean?

01:03:31 ◼   ► That could mean that person died.

01:03:33 ◼   ► That could mean that person has broken up with somebody else.

01:03:37 ◼   ► Right. Like, you know, especially breakups. Right.

01:03:41 ◼   ► But I think this is one or like it could be of a pet as well.

01:03:45 ◼   ► Right. It's not just a person.

01:03:47 ◼   ► But like, especially if I have tagged this person in my photos library

01:03:52 ◼   ► to suggest that they're that important of me.

01:03:54 ◼   ► And if I take a picture of them once a week

01:03:58 ◼   ► and then for a month there are no pictures, maybe just don't show me them for a bit and see if it changes.

01:04:05 ◼   ► If it doesn't, let's just chill for a bit on reminding me of that person.

01:04:11 ◼   ► Because this is a big thing for breakups, it's the thing that Lauren is talking about in her article.

01:04:16 ◼   ► Like, you know, relationships end and when they do, typically what you don't want is to keep having to think about that person.

01:04:27 ◼   ► right? But like, you know, like, and I think that this is also sometimes I think even more so with

01:04:35 ◼   ► death because that person's gone, right? I've been having this very issue. I haven't

01:04:46 ◼   ► mentioned it publicly, but I guess this is the right segment for it. So my dad passed away

01:04:54 ◼   ► six months ago. Actually, on the day that I had to publish my iOS 14 review, actually,

01:04:59 ◼   ► 30 minutes before I had to publish my iOS 14 review. And the reason why I don't use the

01:05:06 ◼   ► photos widget and the reason why I, like, it stops me in my tracks whenever I sometimes

01:05:14 ◼   ► accidentally, like, open the people section of the photos app, it's that it keeps recommending photos

01:05:23 ◼   ► of my dad and he comes up at the very top of the people list and it's like...

01:05:29 ◼   ► I know how to get rid of that "face" like as photos calls it, like people, faces, whatever.

01:05:38 ◼   ► But that doesn't stop the memories.

01:05:39 ◼   ► But it doesn't stop the memories and it doesn't stop the photos widget and it doesn't...

01:05:43 ◼   ► Like the system, again, the system doesn't care, the system doesn't know, but it should, right?

01:05:49 ◼   ► It should, like, the algorithms, they should be infused with some sense of humanity.

01:05:56 ◼   ► I think it's what we're getting at here, because, like, I shouldn't have to...

01:06:02 ◼   ► Software on my phone shouldn't make me feel bad, I think. And the same applies to social networks,

01:06:11 ◼   ► the same applies to, you know, Facebook recommending a memory from seven years ago

01:06:18 ◼   ► with somebody that you either broke up with or maybe that person died. And I think the more we

01:06:25 ◼   ► are now using these devices and the more personal they get, because they have so much data about us,

01:06:30 ◼   ► they have so much information, and arguably these algorithms have gotten really smart at things like

01:06:38 ◼   ► identifying people, identifying animals. Like, they are very good at being computers and they are very

01:06:44 ◼   ► bad at being human. That's the thing. And so, yeah, I can, like, I don't have a good

01:06:53 ◼   ► solution for this. I think, practically speaking, I also had the same idea that you had, Myke,

01:06:58 ◼   ► of like, maybe if you can find this person in photos in a while, maybe use that as a

01:07:05 ◼   ► signal, right? That it means something. And I know that Apple, you know, I talk about

01:07:10 ◼   ► Apple because that's the topic that I know more closely. I know that they do things like,

01:07:14 ◼   ► oh, and now we can recognize in photos when somebody's smiling,

01:07:18 ◼   ► or when they're looking straight at the camera,

01:07:21 ◼   ► or we recognize blurry photos.

01:07:23 ◼   ► I mean, that's great, technically speaking.

01:07:26 ◼   ► But also, you should account for the other side of this,

01:07:30 ◼   ► which is like in the Lawrence story,

01:07:31 ◼   ► you know, I broke up with this person.

01:07:34 ◼   ► Or what Steven wrote, like, you know,

01:07:36 ◼   ► maybe those memories from years ago, from a different--

01:07:40 ◼   ► you know, from a different time.

01:07:43 ◼   ► you can find those photos, but you shouldn't make assumptions

01:07:47 ◼   ► that those are happy photos.

01:07:50 ◼   ► - It's not that even that the tools aren't good enough,

01:07:53 ◼   ► because the tools aren't good enough,

01:07:55 ◼   ► but at least the way that Apple does it,

01:07:57 ◼   ► you know, say a photo comes up

01:07:59 ◼   ► and I don't want it in the widget, for whatever reason,

01:08:02 ◼   ► I can only act on that photo once it's shown it to me.

01:08:05 ◼   ► I mean, it's like getting punched in the face

01:08:08 ◼   ► and then saying, "Please don't punch me a second time."

01:08:10 ◼   ► It's like, you've already hit me with it,

01:08:13 ◼   ► and now I've got to go in and tell it,

01:08:14 ◼   ► I want you to keep this image out of featured images

01:08:17 ◼   ► or block this memory or forget this face, whatever it is.

01:08:21 ◼   ► And again, like I'm with you Federico,

01:08:22 ◼   ► I don't know how all that's fixed,

01:08:24 ◼   ► but there should be better tools around this,

01:08:29 ◼   ► whether that's some sort of opt-in,

01:08:31 ◼   ► like yes, I want memories, but only from these five people

01:08:35 ◼   ► and not necessarily everybody else, whatever it is.

01:08:39 ◼   ► But it just, it really just struck me in her article that,

01:08:44 ◼   ► you know, something that I've dealt with

01:08:45 ◼   ► and I think a lot of other people deal with.

01:08:47 ◼   ► And, you know, most of the time,

01:08:49 ◼   ► I really love the photos,

01:08:50 ◼   ► which I have it on my second screen on my phone.

01:08:53 ◼   ► And most of the time it's fantastic.

01:08:55 ◼   ► But there are those times where there is an image

01:08:58 ◼   ► that I don't want to be reminded of,

01:09:00 ◼   ► or that I know that if I see it,

01:09:03 ◼   ► it's gonna put me in a place I don't want to be.

01:09:05 ◼   ► And that's just, it's just really tricky

01:09:10 ◼   ► to find that balance.

01:09:12 ◼   ► And we're gonna talk about some ways,

01:09:13 ◼   ► maybe some other ways to go about this,

01:09:15 ◼   ► but yeah, I really wanted to talk about

01:09:16 ◼   ► how that actually affects us as people

01:09:20 ◼   ► because I think it's something that anyone could deal with.

01:09:24 ◼   ► - And so, you know, similarly to Federico,

01:09:27 ◼   ► at the end of 2019 and then the beginning of 2020,

01:09:31 ◼   ► we had two surprising and pretty significant family deaths.

01:09:35 ◼   ► Like, they just was pretty tough.

01:09:39 ◼   ► And these people pop up still.

01:09:45 ◼   ► And it's just like, I know why you're showing me this, but like, you know, and

01:09:51 ◼   ► I just think after, I think that there's going to be a bit of a reckoning for this

01:09:55 ◼   ► type of stuff after what 2020 has been, you know, like so many people have lost

01:10:01 ◼   ► family members this year that like I can only assume that these types of features are just

01:10:09 ◼   ► going to start to get like people are just going to start getting more and more upset

01:10:13 ◼   ► at them. You know, and like there are a couple of ways to do things. I mean, one of them

01:10:20 ◼   ► is one that I have done and it's not great really. It's like I've had to delete some

01:10:25 ◼   ► images and it's like this is not really the solution. You know I can in a way

01:10:30 ◼   ► to handle that is like if there are images that I think I might want in the

01:10:35 ◼   ► future I just remove them from photos right like I save them somewhere else

01:10:40 ◼   ► and maybe I will bring these back later on but that's also kind of like a real

01:10:48 ◼   ► ham-fisted way to handle this and like so we're talking about the widget but

01:10:53 ◼   ► But it's not just the widget, right?

01:10:54 ◼   ► Because like the photos app like is now really wanting these things in your face.

01:11:00 ◼   ► And again, I want to just say like when I find so more frequently I find good things,

01:11:07 ◼   ► but the good feeling that I feel is not as strong as the bad feeling if I find a bad

01:11:13 ◼   ► image, right?

01:11:14 ◼   ► It's like the misbalance is so off that like I could go I could have like six days in a

01:11:22 ◼   ► row all happy memories but then one day a bad thing and then I'm upset more in

01:11:28 ◼   ► that day for seeing that image than I am in others. I will give everybody a tip

01:11:34 ◼   ► though for a thing that I've done which makes me happier and I've recommended

01:11:39 ◼   ► some people in my life. We've previously spoke about Widgetsmith. If you like the

01:11:45 ◼   ► idea of the photos widget but the photos widget has stuff in it that's painful for

01:11:50 ◼   ► you pick a bunch of images over a period of time and put them into a folder like

01:11:55 ◼   ► an album in the photos app and then create a widgetsmith widget which pulls

01:12:01 ◼   ► images from an album and then you can have them in all sizes and it can show

01:12:06 ◼   ► up and then you're just gonna see only the images that you've chosen so all

01:12:10 ◼   ► happy memories right so like because honestly like ever we all know this AI

01:12:18 ◼   ► AI, machine learning, it's not clever.

01:12:21 ◼   ► Like every company tries to talk about

01:12:23 ◼   ► how smart their systems are.

01:12:24 ◼   ► The systems are stupid, right?

01:12:26 ◼   ► These systems aren't smart, right?

01:12:28 ◼   ► It's like trying to cut something with a hammer.

01:12:33 ◼   ► It's like, it will break it in half, right?

01:12:36 ◼   ► Like you keep smashing it.

01:12:37 ◼   ► You are gonna cut this thing in half,

01:12:39 ◼   ► but you're doing it in a very, very blunt way.

01:12:43 ◼   ► This is not the way that you want to do this.

01:12:46 ◼   ► And that's where we are with this stuff.

01:12:48 ◼   ► And all of the tech companies are trying to talk,

01:12:51 ◼   ► they try and talk about how smart their systems are,

01:12:54 ◼   ► but they just aren't, right?

01:12:56 ◼   ► And so I think that there is an element

01:12:59 ◼   ► of trying to be aware of yourself,

01:13:03 ◼   ► and especially like with taking an example from Steven

01:13:07 ◼   ► of like looking at yourself, trying to understand

01:13:10 ◼   ► what is the thing that's upsetting me,

01:13:12 ◼   ► and then taking steps for it before it becomes a problem.

01:13:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's really why I wrote what I did.

01:13:20 ◼   ► It wasn't so much about the system should be better,

01:13:22 ◼   ► although that is totally true.

01:13:25 ◼   ► But for me, I was in a situation where,

01:13:27 ◼   ► okay, there's a set of photos from a specific time span

01:13:31 ◼   ► before our son was diagnosed.

01:13:33 ◼   ► And now I can see the symptoms that he was experiencing,

01:13:37 ◼   ► but I couldn't then 'cause I didn't know to look for them.

01:13:40 ◼   ► parent would. They're subtle and neuro stuff is weird, but you know for a long

01:13:47 ◼   ► time I've really struggled when one of those photos has popped up really feeling

01:13:51 ◼   ► really bad and and it got to a point where it was inhibiting me from really

01:13:59 ◼   ► moving on, you know, moving forward in life and when something is like that you

01:14:04 ◼   ► know where it can really derail you in a way or it can it can cause you know

01:14:09 ◼   ► shame and fear and anxiety and all those things and like, you know, maybe it is time to deal

01:14:14 ◼   ► with those on a more serious or professional level. And that's, that's kind of where I

01:14:20 ◼   ► was. And I wrote about that in the piece. But, you know, I think there's levels of this.

01:14:25 ◼   ► Yeah, there may just be pictures I don't want to be reminded of like a spring break trip

01:14:28 ◼   ► that went sideways. But then there's other images like, okay, if I have this visceral

01:14:32 ◼   ► reaction to them every time, you know, that that's, it feels like a different thing.

01:14:37 ◼   ► I also wanted to have one final tip when it comes to apps.

01:14:41 ◼   ► Like, if you want to have a photo widget, and if you like Myke, also keep your best photos in a separate album.

01:14:48 ◼   ► But if you want to have, like, a photo widget with a bunch of extra controls, I believe the developer of Launcher,

01:14:56 ◼   ► they released a new app a few days ago called Smart Photo Widget.

01:15:02 ◼   ► And it's really nice because it's got a bunch of filters.

01:15:04 ◼   ► So you can point the app at an album and they have filters for automatically skipping photos

01:15:11 ◼   ► where your eyes are closed, or overexposed photos, blurry photos, screenshots.

01:15:18 ◼   ► They have a bunch of settings that you can tweak.

01:15:20 ◼   ► And so it's a similar take on other photo widgets that you may have found on the App Store.

01:15:26 ◼   ► But this one is really nice because it's got a bunch of options and a bunch of different filters for picking your best photos.

01:15:32 ◼   ► So all of this should really be built into the default photo widget by Apple,

01:15:39 ◼   ► but hey, that's where third-party developers come in.

01:15:42 ◼   ► What's the name of that one Federico?

01:15:44 ◼   ► Smart photo widget. If it doesn't come up in search, you can find it by looking for launcher

01:15:51 ◼   ► and then clicking on the developer profile page.

01:15:55 ◼   ► Yes, Steven just put in a link in the discord as well. That is the correct one.

01:16:00 ◼   ► Japes.

01:16:02 ◼   ► Sometimes.

01:16:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:06 ◼   ► Sometimes it's like, what if

01:16:08 ◼   ► Japes were sad?

01:16:10 ◼   ► Right?

01:16:12 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:16:14 ◼   ► Well...

01:16:16 ◼   ► It was just something that

01:16:18 ◼   ► I don't know, it felt important.

01:16:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, we can be serious

01:16:22 ◼   ► too, you know?

01:16:24 ◼   ► It is important, especially if you're

01:16:26 ◼   ► kind of in the situation that

01:16:28 ◼   ► that I was in with it where it was just overwhelming.

01:16:31 ◼   ► And if that's where you are with this stuff,

01:16:34 ◼   ► then I would encourage you to find somebody

01:16:36 ◼   ► to talk to about that.

01:16:38 ◼   ► I said this in my tweet, I didn't really expect

01:16:40 ◼   ► to talk about my PTSD on the internet this week,

01:16:43 ◼   ► but I believe that it was a good response to Lauren's piece

01:16:47 ◼   ► and that we're talking about it for a reason.

01:16:49 ◼   ► So if you have something like this

01:16:51 ◼   ► that you're struggling with,

01:16:53 ◼   ► take some time and consider it.

01:16:54 ◼   ► And it's always good to ask for help.

01:16:58 ◼   ► There's absolutely no shame or embarrassment about that whatsoever.

01:17:02 ◼   ► It can be a very useful tool to speak to somebody else.

01:17:05 ◼   ► Something that I discovered over the past few months is like,

01:17:08 ◼   ► don't be afraid to ask for help and just to talk even to like a

01:17:13 ◼   ► relative or a friend about it. Like people are willing to listen to you.

01:17:18 ◼   ► If you, if you're, you know, if you have somebody close to you,

01:17:20 ◼   ► don't be afraid to open up and talk about stuff. That's what I did.

01:17:24 ◼   ► And it really helps.

01:17:26 ◼   ► Please read Lauren Goode's articles.

01:17:27 ◼   ► It's just sublime.

01:17:29 ◼   ► - I think that does it this week.

01:17:32 ◼   ► If you wanna find links to the stuff we spoke about,

01:17:34 ◼   ► they're in your podcast app choice probably,

01:17:37 ◼   ► but they're also on the web all the time

01:17:40 ◼   ► at relay.fm/connected/340.

01:17:45 ◼   ► While you're there, you can send us an email.

01:17:48 ◼   ► I love emails.

01:17:49 ◼   ► Send me some emails.

01:17:50 ◼   ► - Do you know why he loves them?

01:17:51 ◼   ► He can't get enough of them.

01:17:53 ◼   ► He's always texting us saying, "Oh, I love these emails."

01:17:57 ◼   ► - I printed him out a mail them to y'all.

01:17:58 ◼   ► You'll get them soon.

01:17:59 ◼   ► - Good luck.

01:18:00 ◼   ► - You can also become a member

01:18:02 ◼   ► and get access to Connected Pro,

01:18:04 ◼   ► which is a longer ad-free version of the show.

01:18:07 ◼   ► This week, we decided on what to call listeners of the show.

01:18:12 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

01:18:13 ◼   ► - And I'm just gonna leave it at that for now.

01:18:15 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

01:18:16 ◼   ► - You can find us all online,

01:18:18 ◼   ► if for some reason you want more of us.

01:18:20 ◼   ► You can find Myke on Twitter as @IMYKE.

01:18:24 ◼   ► Myke hosts keyboard streams over on Twitch at Myke.live,

01:18:29 ◼   ► and he hosts a bunch of other shows here on Relay FM.

01:18:33 ◼   ► You can find Federico on Mac Stories,

01:18:36 ◼   ► where he is the editor-in-chief,

01:18:37 ◼   ► keeping out for his 14.5 article

01:18:40 ◼   ► whenever Apple decides to update iOS again.

01:18:43 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:18:45 ◼   ► Whenever that is.

01:18:45 ◼   ► - They're right next week, can't wait.

01:18:48 ◼   ► You can find him on Twitter as @Vatici as well.

01:18:51 ◼   ► Now, for the last several months,

01:18:53 ◼   ► I've been asking Federico questions.

01:18:56 ◼   ► Right, to better get to know him

01:18:58 ◼   ► as you would on a first date.

01:19:00 ◼   ► Oh, you're done now?

01:19:03 ◼   ► They're over?

01:19:04 ◼   ► Are we moving to the second date?

01:19:06 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:19:08 ◼   ► I'm building up to my question.

01:19:12 ◼   ► Tell me about your and Silvia's first date.

01:19:15 ◼   ► Oh boy.

01:19:16 ◼   ► Uh, so she's gonna hate me.

01:19:21 ◼   ► We haven't exactly dated in the sense that before

01:19:27 ◼   ► becoming a couple, we had been friends,

01:19:31 ◼   ► really close friends for like five years.

01:19:34 ◼   ► We did the entire five years of high school together.

01:19:39 ◼   ► And it was in the last three months of high school that

01:19:44 ◼   ► we realized we actually liked each other as more than friends.

01:19:49 ◼   ► And...

01:19:50 ◼   ► How long have you two known each other?

01:19:52 ◼   ► Ooh.

01:19:53 ◼   ► Well, like, she used to...

01:19:56 ◼   ► Actually, she was very mean to me back in middle school.

01:20:01 ◼   ► To be fair...

01:20:02 ◼   ► That's that kind of mean when you like one person.

01:20:04 ◼   ► To be fair, like Sylvia in middle school, she was like one of the mean girls at the

01:20:08 ◼   ► school.

01:20:10 ◼   ► And I mean, I was also like, I was short and kind of, you know, chubby and like, with glasses,

01:20:18 ◼   ► like I was a bit of a nerd. And I like, you know, it's not like I was bullied or anything,

01:20:27 ◼   ► which is, I was not one of the cool kids at all. Thankfully, I always made it up in terms

01:20:32 ◼   ► of like being fun. Like having, like I've always been this way, like I was a bit of

01:20:36 ◼   ► a nerd but I always had like the joke ready to go in class. So Sylvia didn't really notice

01:20:42 ◼   ► me back in middle school. I did notice her for sure. But then we ended up in high school

01:20:49 ◼   ► together and high school in Italy is different from America in that it's the same class with

01:20:56 ◼   ► the same people for five years. And so we had been in high school in the same class,

01:21:04 ◼   ► same group of 25-something kids for five years. And then it was in the very last few months

01:21:11 ◼   ► of high school that I realized, you know, I actually like her more than as a friend.

01:21:18 ◼   ► And she thought the same, but we were like not admitting that to each other. And so in

01:21:24 ◼   ► Italy, in Italian high school, I guess there's this tradition. I don't know if it's the same

01:21:29 ◼   ► elsewhere, Myke, in the UK, maybe, I don't know. We call it the 100 days lunch, where

01:21:37 ◼   ► basically 100 days before the final exams, the class has a lunch together with the alongside

01:21:44 ◼   ► the teachers at a restaurant.

01:21:46 ◼   ► How nice. That's fun.

01:21:48 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a nice tradition. It's fun. It's like three months, basically three months

01:21:52 ◼   ► and something before the final exams, we go, we all go to lunch together at a restaurant.

01:21:58 ◼   ► And so the first date I guess will be, Sylvia and I got drunk and they found us making out

01:22:04 ◼   ► outside.

01:22:07 ◼   ► Along with 98 of your fellow students. The most intimate of first dates.

01:22:14 ◼   ► No, it's not 98 people. It's 100 days, Myke, not 100 people.

01:22:20 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

01:22:22 ◼   ► Yes.

01:22:23 ◼   ► Was it?

01:22:24 ◼   ► And then my best friend, one of my best friends back then, he found us and was like, "Oh,

01:22:30 ◼   ► you guys have finally realized."

01:22:31 ◼   ► He said something along the lines of, like, "It was about time," or something like that.

01:22:38 ◼   ► They were all really happy for us.

01:22:40 ◼   ► And my friend, he actually, he brought us back home and we kept making out in the back

01:22:45 ◼   ► seat.

01:22:46 ◼   ► And then we never stopped being together.

01:22:48 ◼   ► All making out.

01:22:49 ◼   ► Never stopped.

01:22:50 ◼   ► To this day.

01:22:51 ◼   ► To this day. Yeah, so there was really never like a proper date. You can find me on Twitter as ISMH

01:22:59 ◼   ► I host a bunch of other shows here on Relay FM and I have

01:23:04 ◼   ► my

01:23:06 ◼   ► Blog. Blogs are still a thing. I write it over at 512pixels.net. Go check it out. Before we go

01:23:12 ◼   ► I want to tell you about another show here on Relay FM that I think you would enjoy and that is

01:23:16 ◼   ► Clockwise they are live on Wednesdays just before us

01:23:20 ◼   ► But that's not a problem because they cover for tech topics and just 30 minutes

01:23:25 ◼   ► It's a lot of fun rotating panel go check it out at relay FM slash clockwise or search for clockwise

01:23:32 ◼   ► Wherever you get your podcasts. I like to thank the sponsors of this show

01:23:37 ◼   ► Hello, smile and Squarespace and until next week guys say goodbye. I do that you cheerio. Bye y'all