Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:07 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode 339.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by PDF pen from SMILE, Story Worth and Privacy.

00:00:18 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley.

00:00:19 ◼   ► I'm joined by Federico Petici.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Hi Federico.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Hello, Myke.

00:00:22 ◼   ► How are you?

00:00:23 ◼   ► Hello.

00:00:23 ◼   ► I'm good.

00:00:24 ◼   ► No Steven this week.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Just the two of us.

00:00:28 ◼   ► But he couldn't depart the connected heads, I guess is the name of our listeners, I suppose.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Did we ever come up with anything? I don't think so.

00:00:38 ◼   ► The connected audience couldn't leave them high and dry.

00:00:40 ◼   ► So you will be hearing from Steven in a couple of parts today, basically the ads.

00:00:47 ◼   ► He gave me all the ads, which was very nice of him to do.

00:00:51 ◼   ► So I'd have less work to do because obviously I'll be picking up the edit today.

00:00:54 ◼   ► So if you find any mistakes in today's edit, just send a feedback to Steven.

00:00:58 ◼   ► Yes, this is what happens.

00:01:01 ◼   ► Look, Steven told me, Steven told me weeks ago, he told me,

00:01:05 ◼   ► Fedeica, I gotta tell you something.

00:01:06 ◼   ► Like this was like a private conversation.

00:01:08 ◼   ► He said, I really love getting feedback emails.

00:01:11 ◼   ► Like he told me that.

00:01:13 ◼   ► But the thing is though, I actually think that's true.

00:01:16 ◼   ► I think that's really genuinely true that he likes getting feedback of an email.

00:01:22 ◼   ► We're feeding into this theory that Steven loves feedback and now everybody thinks it's true.

00:01:27 ◼   ► So, yeah, but like he told me, it's like I secretly love getting feedback emails from people.

00:01:34 ◼   ► I was like, "Really?" I was like, "Yeah."

00:01:36 ◼   ► It's like I love archiving them, organizing them in mailboxes, different folders and tags,

00:01:42 ◼   ► and all the things that Steven does.

00:01:43 ◼   ► He has a rating system that he gives the email.

00:01:45 ◼   ► Some of them go into devontinq for...

00:01:47 ◼   ► Four star feedback.

00:01:49 ◼   ► I think if you want to contact Steven, you can go to relay.fm/connected and there is

00:01:57 ◼   ► a button you can tap for sending an email and it will send it directly to him.

00:02:03 ◼   ► I remember this was a conversation I think that we had very early on because we have

00:02:07 ◼   ► those links on some of the show pages.

00:02:09 ◼   ► It's up to the host if they want to put an email address on there.

00:02:15 ◼   ► I said to Steven for this show, I think you can put it on there if you want to, but I

00:02:20 ◼   ► don't want to get that email because I don't like email for feedback over email.

00:02:24 ◼   ► I like feedback in other places.

00:02:26 ◼   ► I like it on Twitter.

00:02:27 ◼   ► I like it in Discord.

00:02:28 ◼   ► My email inbox is just full of just nightmare most of the time.

00:02:34 ◼   ► I really don't want to have more in there.

00:02:36 ◼   ► This is actually a thing in my actual marriage, my real relationship.

00:02:41 ◼   ► I don't know why I said it like that.

00:02:43 ◼   ► Actual marriage?

00:02:44 ◼   ► way of putting it.

00:02:45 ◼   ► - It's an actual marriage.

00:02:46 ◼   ► - Not my marriage with Steven, my other one.

00:02:49 ◼   ► Where Edina will suggest things to me

00:02:53 ◼   ► or she'll wanna send me an email and I'm like,

00:02:55 ◼   ► don't do it, don't you dare.

00:02:56 ◼   ► Like this is a thing that we have

00:02:57 ◼   ► where she's not allowed to send me things over email

00:03:00 ◼   ► 'cause I don't want more email

00:03:01 ◼   ► than all the email I currently get.

00:03:03 ◼   ► It's like if you have something you wanna send to me,

00:03:04 ◼   ► send it to me over iMessage.

00:03:07 ◼   ► That's perfect.

00:03:08 ◼   ► And then I can deal with it, I don't want email.

00:03:10 ◼   ► I get so much email, I don't want more email.

00:03:12 ◼   ► Interesting. So you forbid her from sending you an email?

00:03:18 ◼   ► I don't like it the way you say it like that.

00:03:21 ◼   ► But like you said in a very polite way, "Please don't send me any more email."

00:03:26 ◼   ► Correct.

00:03:27 ◼   ► It's funny because I actually prefer the opposite with Sylvia.

00:03:32 ◼   ► You just... No texts, only emails.

00:03:34 ◼   ► Please, I'm like, "Please send me emails." Because then I know that... Because, I don't

00:03:40 ◼   ► I'm a very bad person when it comes to keeping up with texts in general.

00:03:47 ◼   ► And I don't know, I feel more efficient in using my email with that.

00:03:53 ◼   ► And so often she's like, "I gotta send you a link."

00:03:56 ◼   ► Right? And I'm like, "Can you please send it over email?"

00:04:00 ◼   ► Because then I know that I will not lose it and that I can...

00:04:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:04 ◼   ► So this is why it's funny that we have the exact opposite approach.

00:04:09 ◼   ► Just like, "What do you want to eat for dinner tonight?"

00:04:12 ◼   ► Just email me. I can't even think about this.

00:04:15 ◼   ► It's not always like that.

00:04:17 ◼   ► And it's really... So, I mean, we're already going off topic here.

00:04:21 ◼   ► So, but whatever. So, do you only use iMessage with Adina?

00:04:27 ◼   ► Or Instagram messages. Like, if we see something on Instagram, we'll send that to each other.

00:04:35 ◼   ► Right, right.

00:04:36 ◼   ► I think that's the only social network that we share,

00:04:39 ◼   ► like that we both visit,

00:04:40 ◼   ► 'cause she doesn't really tweet

00:04:42 ◼   ► and I don't go on Facebook very much.

00:04:44 ◼   ► Actually, I don't go on Facebook.

00:04:46 ◼   ► This isn't like one of those big statements,

00:04:50 ◼   ► I have a Facebook account.

00:04:51 ◼   ► I just, I don't want, there's nothing on there for me.

00:04:54 ◼   ► So like, I don't even, I realized recently,

00:04:57 ◼   ► I was like, oh, I haven't checked Facebook in like forever.

00:05:00 ◼   ► And I typed it and I was logged out,

00:05:02 ◼   ► which made me realize for as long as I've had my iPhone 12,

00:05:06 ◼   ► I have never logged into the Facebook app and I'm fine with that.

00:05:10 ◼   ► I had a similar problem recently. I was talking to my mom on the phone and she was like, "Oh,

00:05:14 ◼   ► by the way, did you see that photo that I posted yesterday on Facebook? That was not

00:05:21 ◼   ► about you." And I was like, "Wait, what?" I was like, "First of all…"

00:05:26 ◼   ► What kind of way is that to start a conversation? Well, the bigger problem here… So first

00:05:31 ◼   ► of all, I said, "First of all, mom, I haven't logged into Facebook in like a month and I

00:05:35 ◼   ► I have no idea what you're talking about.

00:05:37 ◼   ► Second, why are you saying this to me in a way

00:05:40 ◼   ► that makes it sound like you've done something

00:05:42 ◼   ► that I should be aware of?

00:05:44 ◼   ► - Well, it also makes it sound like

00:05:45 ◼   ► it's definitely about you, right?

00:05:47 ◼   ► God, it's not about you. - The thing is,

00:05:49 ◼   ► I then discovered that my mom has become

00:05:52 ◼   ► one of those people who posts,

00:05:54 ◼   ► I don't know how to describe them,

00:05:58 ◼   ► but on Facebook, I guess, there's a way to create a picture

00:06:02 ◼   ► that contains text.

00:06:04 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:06:05 ◼   ► And like, people do that sometimes, especially boomers, I think,

00:06:08 ◼   ► they do that to post like, passive-aggressive messages about other people.

00:06:13 ◼   ► Yeah, you basically create very like, low-rate memes, right?

00:06:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess it's what it is.

00:06:18 ◼   ► Very bad.

00:06:19 ◼   ► And my mom has become one of those people, right?

00:06:21 ◼   ► So that's the bigger problem at hand here.

00:06:24 ◼   ► That's the real issue.

00:06:27 ◼   ► We've gone off the rails from going off the rails.

00:06:30 ◼   ► This started by you asking me if it's the only--

00:06:34 ◼   ► Okay, we're gonna get back to that?

00:06:35 ◼   ► I'm getting back to that.

00:06:36 ◼   ► I agree.

00:06:37 ◼   ► Anyway, so my mom does that and I was like, then I checked out that picture, there was

00:06:40 ◼   ► like a bunch of comments and there's just like a whole thing and I logged out of Facebook

00:06:44 ◼   ► and whatever.

00:06:45 ◼   ► In any case, you don't use WhatsApp, right?

00:06:49 ◼   ► To the annoyance of basically everyone in my life, I do not use WhatsApp.

00:06:54 ◼   ► Okay, okay.

00:06:55 ◼   ► Because what I have found to be really beneficial in my keep, you know, having conversations

00:07:01 ◼   ► with my girlfriend of 14 years.

00:07:07 ◼   ► She would think that I'd gotten better at this over time, but nope.

00:07:12 ◼   ► It's sending each other audio messages, right?

00:07:15 ◼   ► I saw you write about this, and I made a note about it, because I wanted to talk to you

00:07:18 ◼   ► about it.

00:07:19 ◼   ► Yes, and the thing is, it surprised me, because when I talked about this feature with John,

00:07:28 ◼   ► it was like, nope, I've never sent one.

00:07:31 ◼   ► So I kind of want to understand if sending audio messages is popular among WhatsApp users

00:07:39 ◼   ► only?

00:07:40 ◼   ► I think so.

00:07:41 ◼   ► Or European users only?

00:07:43 ◼   ► And I guess WhatsApp is more popular in Europe than America?

00:07:47 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I know people that do the audio message thing.

00:07:53 ◼   ► It's really convenient, right?

00:07:55 ◼   ► Because you can, like, in 30 seconds...

00:07:57 ◼   ► First of all, you don't have to type. And I hate typing long messages on my phone.

00:08:02 ◼   ► Second, you can use your voice. And so you can convey more of the tone that you want

00:08:07 ◼   ► to use in whatever you're saying. But it doesn't have the pressure of a phone call, which I

00:08:13 ◼   ► hate doing. And I've talked about this plenty of times here on the show before.

00:08:17 ◼   ► It's basically your own personal clubhouse environment.

00:08:22 ◼   ► I guess if I were to explain this to Americans, yes, imagine if clubhouse was only for you.

00:08:27 ◼   ► And then you sent the clubhouse to another person.

00:08:31 ◼   ► I need to jump in before we get all the feedback.

00:08:34 ◼   ► Actually, the feedback will just go to Steven this week via email, so it's fine.

00:08:37 ◼   ► Because he loves it.

00:08:38 ◼   ► We know, he just adores it, we know that you can send audio messages in iMessage.

00:08:43 ◼   ► I was getting to that.

00:08:44 ◼   ► It seems like nobody does.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Nobody does, and you know why? Because the UI is horrible in iMessage for that.

00:08:50 ◼   ► It's so stupid. I think it's the kind of feature that somebody saw once.

00:08:57 ◼   ► I was on a trip to Europe this summer and I saw a bunch of folks use audio messages.

00:09:02 ◼   ► We gotta copy this feature. I guess at some point a couple of years ago Craig Federighi went to the Amalfi Coast

00:09:08 ◼   ► and saw somebody send an audio message and came back and was like, "Guys, we have to build audio messaging into iMessage.

00:09:15 ◼   ► Do it. Copy the feature.

00:09:17 ◼   ► And somebody did, but it's like a bad copy of the WhatsApp version.

00:09:21 ◼   ► Holding down the button is weird.

00:09:24 ◼   ► But what's even stranger is listening back to the audio message

00:09:28 ◼   ► in the Messages app.

00:09:30 ◼   ► The Play button, sometimes it just doesn't work and it's super tiny.

00:09:34 ◼   ► There's no progress bar.

00:09:36 ◼   ► There's like a weird, small waveform instead,

00:09:39 ◼   ► which has no purpose whatsoever.

00:09:42 ◼   ► And most of the time you gotta raise your phone to your ear to listen to the audio message.

00:09:48 ◼   ► Why? Why have you done it this way?

00:09:51 ◼   ► So, why are we talking about this, Myke?

00:09:55 ◼   ► We're still in the "how to send feedback" portion of the show.

00:10:00 ◼   ► I did just want to, before we finish,

00:10:02 ◼   ► yeah, my lack of usage of WhatsApp is a bone of contention amongst my friends in the UK and my family.

00:10:11 ◼   ► because everyone talks about the fact, they will reference it to me every now and then, of like,

00:10:17 ◼   ► "Oh, I only use iMessage with you." So like, I have a WhatsApp group with my younger brother

00:10:28 ◼   ► and his wife and me and Adina, and then we have a all-family group, right, that's in WhatsApp.

00:10:37 ◼   ► But outside of that, I do not use it.

00:10:40 ◼   ► Just because, I mean, for me, really, one of the main reasons that I use it and not iMessage

00:10:45 ◼   ► and why I've never tried to convince any of my American friends this is where they need to message me

00:10:50 ◼   ► is the user interface of WhatsApp just upsets me so much.

00:10:54 ◼   ► It's one of the ugliest apps on my iPhone that somehow they've never done anything with.

00:11:00 ◼   ► I really hate the look of WhatsApp.

00:11:03 ◼   ► It's not good, but it... I don't like it, but it feels faster to use than iMessage.

00:11:11 ◼   ► I can see that. I can see that.

00:11:14 ◼   ► It's a bunch of things. It's a bunch of tiny things, right?

00:11:17 ◼   ► We're talking about, I guess, millisecond delays here, but like, the way that in WhatsApp you can

00:11:22 ◼   ► swipe on a message to reply to that message versus the double tapping and choosing reply

00:11:29 ◼   ► In iMessage, the WhatsApp version is ever so slightly faster that...

00:11:33 ◼   ► You know, WhatsApp is ugly, but it's got a bunch of those things that make conversations go by really easily.

00:11:41 ◼   ► Whereas in iMessage, if you want to have a conversation in a group with a lot of back and forth between people...

00:11:46 ◼   ► I mean, let's not even mention the threaded UI that they have done.

00:11:52 ◼   ► I like that it exists, but the UI is so bad.

00:11:56 ◼   ► Those lines, man.

00:11:57 ◼   ► That's so bad.

00:11:58 ◼   ► Whoo!

00:11:59 ◼   ► Whenever I see them, that's what I think, you know?

00:12:02 ◼   ► When they spin around.

00:12:03 ◼   ► When it gets the knot, when it does the little knot.

00:12:06 ◼   ► That's what I'm saying, that sound, it's like, "Whoo!"

00:12:08 ◼   ► You know that it's getting serious when you get the knot?

00:12:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:12 ◼   ► If more people use that feature, that would be a meme, right?

00:12:17 ◼   ► Just like that image is like, you know things have gotten serious now.

00:12:20 ◼   ► You know, things are going off the rails on this thread because you get the little...

00:12:23 ◼   ► Sometimes you get the double knot.

00:12:25 ◼   ► not. And then just leave, just quit. In connected pro today,

00:12:30 ◼   ► we spoke about Firefox and I have a point that I wanted to make there,

00:12:36 ◼   ► but forgot and I will make it here,

00:12:37 ◼   ► which I think is one of the things that's interesting about if you, if it's,

00:12:43 ◼   ► I think it's the same for Firefox and it's the same for WhatsApp and why there

00:12:46 ◼   ► may be in some ways more interesting or in some ways better than say Safari or

00:12:50 ◼   ► messages is if as a company,

00:12:53 ◼   ► all you do is that thing, you're going to optimize and optimize and adapt.

00:12:58 ◼   ► Like I'm sure Apple have a big team that work on Safari and a big team that work

00:13:02 ◼   ► on messages, but they don't have autonomy to do whatever they want.

00:13:07 ◼   ► Right.

00:13:08 ◼   ► But even though WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, it doesn't matter.

00:13:11 ◼   ► Like WhatsApp seems to be its own little thing.

00:13:14 ◼   ► And then obviously Firefox is its own thing from Mozilla.

00:13:17 ◼   ► Like they can just focus the product and make it better in the ways that

00:13:21 ◼   ► make it the best thing for itself rather than Apple, you know, whoever works on Messages,

00:13:26 ◼   ► whoever works on Safari. I'm sure there's things they would love to do but it doesn't meet in the

00:13:31 ◼   ► overall scope or whatever, you know? By the way, if you want to get Connected Pro, which has

00:13:37 ◼   ► additional content, like for example, if you want to understand why on earth we would spend 20

00:13:42 ◼   ► minutes talking about Firefox, there is a good reason for it. You can go to 123membership.com

00:13:49 ◼   ► Wait, what?

00:13:51 ◼   ► I forgot I had that domain.

00:13:54 ◼   ► And I found it today.

00:13:55 ◼   ► 123 membership.com and you can sign up for connected pro.

00:14:00 ◼   ► It's $5 a month or $50 a year and you get longer episodes of connected with no ads.

00:14:08 ◼   ► I can't believe nobody's talking about this link.

00:14:11 ◼   ► 123 membership.com.

00:14:12 ◼   ► It's perfect.

00:14:13 ◼   ► I found it earlier today.

00:14:15 ◼   ► I must have bought this ages ago.

00:14:17 ◼   ► - You found it. - I found it for ages.

00:14:19 ◼   ► And I just found it in-- - You just stumbled

00:14:21 ◼   ► upon a domain. - I just went, whoops.

00:14:23 ◼   ► This was the thing that we were talking about.

00:14:25 ◼   ► I think this was on the livestream

00:14:27 ◼   ► after the Pan-Advoc today, is realizing

00:14:30 ◼   ► I have 71 domain names. - 71.

00:14:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, and like I own two troll domains for you.

00:14:37 ◼   ► I own iosstories.net and storiesmac.com.

00:14:40 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:14:43 ◼   ► - What's the second one?

00:14:45 ◼   ► I think it's stories Mac or something like that is the domain.

00:14:50 ◼   ► Is it stories of Mac?

00:14:53 ◼   ► No, it's not that one. Hang on. I need to sign in now so I can get it.

00:14:57 ◼   ► Cause the iOS stories one, I registered in front of you in a bar.

00:15:01 ◼   ► And then then for a long time that just went to, uh,

00:15:05 ◼   ► that just went to my own website,

00:15:07 ◼   ► but it goes to yours now because I was being less,

00:15:11 ◼   ► - That's a gracious.

00:15:12 ◼   ► - Less of a terrible person.

00:15:15 ◼   ► Storymax, storymax.com.

00:15:18 ◼   ► - Storymax, wow. - Storymax.com.

00:15:21 ◼   ► It's another domain. - You even got

00:15:21 ◼   ► the plurals wrong.

00:15:23 ◼   ► Okay, storymax. - Stories of Mac.

00:15:26 ◼   ► Storymax.com.

00:15:28 ◼   ► I don't know why I have that one.

00:15:30 ◼   ► - Storymax.com goes to Mac stories.

00:15:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, so does iosstories.net as well.

00:15:35 ◼   ► I've moved them both.

00:15:36 ◼   ► - Nice, thank you, Myke.

00:15:39 ◼   ► I appreciate your gesture. - Okay.

00:15:40 ◼   ► So now that we're finished with the how to send him feedback section,

00:15:44 ◼   ► we will hand,

00:15:45 ◼   ► we will now hand it over to the chief of feedback, Stephen,

00:15:50 ◼   ► for him to tell you about our first sponsor of this week's episode.

00:15:53 ◼   ► This episode of connected is brought to you by text expander from our friends

00:15:58 ◼   ► over at smile.

00:15:59 ◼   ► If you're feeling like you have too much to do and not enough time,

00:16:03 ◼   ► if you're wondering how you can call back some time, but don't know where to start,

00:16:07 ◼   ► text expander is your answer.

00:16:09 ◼   ► It helps you work both faster and smarter

00:16:12 ◼   ► so you can focus your time on your most important work.

00:16:16 ◼   ► With just a few keystrokes, TextExpander

00:16:19 ◼   ► keeps you consistent, accurate, and efficient.

00:16:23 ◼   ► With TextExpander, you can speed through emails

00:16:25 ◼   ► in a fraction of the time, expand forms

00:16:28 ◼   ► with fill-in-the-blank fields using quick abbreviations,

00:16:31 ◼   ► and save serious time by storing and expanding

00:16:34 ◼   ► phrases you type frequently.

00:16:37 ◼   ► Get your messages right every time,

00:16:39 ◼   ► by expanding content that corrects your spelling

00:16:41 ◼   ► and keeps your language consistent

00:16:43 ◼   ► with just a few keystrokes.

00:16:45 ◼   ► I've been using TextExpander,

00:16:47 ◼   ► I think since the beginning of time.

00:16:48 ◼   ► It really feels like a long time now.

00:16:51 ◼   ► I can't use my Mac without it.

00:16:53 ◼   ► It is just built into everything I do.

00:16:56 ◼   ► Fun current example is we have switched our recording

00:16:59 ◼   ► to Zoom.

00:17:00 ◼   ► And with Skype, you just open Skype

00:17:02 ◼   ► and click your friends and start a call.

00:17:03 ◼   ► But Zoom, you gotta have a meeting.

00:17:05 ◼   ► And so I have my Zoom invites for various meetings

00:17:09 ◼   ► set in TextExpander so I don't have to open Zoom and find the meeting and copy

00:17:12 ◼   ► their crazy text. I can just type a few letters into iMessage or Slack or email

00:17:18 ◼   ► and send somebody the right meeting invite very quickly. If you haven't tried

00:17:23 ◼   ► TextExpander yet you need to go check it out. There's no better time than now

00:17:27 ◼   ► because connected listeners get 20% off their first year by visiting

00:17:32 ◼   ► expander.com/podcast. That's textexpander.com/podcast.

00:17:38 ◼   ► Our thanks to TextExpander and Smile for their support of the show.

00:17:42 ◼   ► Should we do a follow-up?

00:17:43 ◼   ► Let's do it.

00:17:44 ◼   ► So the shortcuts linking thing got fixed.

00:17:46 ◼   ► Yay! That was really nice to see.

00:17:50 ◼   ► So we talked last week about how in an expected turn of events,

00:17:55 ◼   ► following the release of iOS 14.5 Beta 5, or soon after that at least,

00:18:01 ◼   ► All shortcuts links created before that new version of iOS suddenly disappeared from the Internet.

00:18:09 ◼   ► They stopped working. Everybody panicked.

00:18:12 ◼   ► Some people thought, "Oh, Federico jinxed it in the previous episode of Connected where he said that Apple doesn't like the idea of shortcuts sharing.

00:18:21 ◼   ► Is that the connected curse? A bunch of people were concerned about that.

00:18:26 ◼   ► concerned about that. We covered this issue on the show last week. We had, before the

00:18:33 ◼   ► show, reached out to Apple for a comment, and I said on the show that Apple hadn't gotten

00:18:38 ◼   ► back to us yet. Surprisingly, that was really nice of them, actually. A few hours later,

00:18:44 ◼   ► was actually, you know, was actually my 5 AM, and I was still up because I really wanted

00:18:49 ◼   ► to finish Final Fantasy VII Remake. And so I was like in the middle of this scene with

00:18:54 ◼   ► Tifa and cloud when suddenly I saw an email from Apple PR and

00:18:58 ◼   ► Well, I'm realizing now how this sentence couldn't be any more teachy and in hey

00:19:05 ◼   ► I have Apple PR configured to like one of the few contacts that can send me push notifications

00:19:11 ◼   ► so anyway

00:19:14 ◼   ► That was the context

00:19:15 ◼   ► I get this email saying with with the statement that I shared on Twitter saying that that Apple was aware of the

00:19:21 ◼   ► of the issue, and they were working to bring back those links, they were restoring those links.

00:19:28 ◼   ► And I went to sleep, very happy about that.

00:19:31 ◼   ► And when I woke up the following morning, most of the links in the Max Stories Shortcuts Archive were backups,

00:19:37 ◼   ► not all of them, and by the evening all of the links on Max Stories were restored.

00:19:44 ◼   ► I saw a few people saying that they were also seeing partial rollouts,

00:19:49 ◼   ► in the sense that some of their links were coming back,

00:19:52 ◼   ► but some of them were not.

00:19:54 ◼   ► And I believe that Matthew Cassinelli tweeted

00:19:56 ◼   ► just a few minutes ago how all of the links

00:19:59 ◼   ► on his website at least have been restored.

00:20:02 ◼   ► And Apple also confirmed that the restoration process

00:20:05 ◼   ► has been completed and all of the old shortcuts links

00:20:09 ◼   ► are now working again.

00:20:11 ◼   ► So just out of curiosity, because I haven't,

00:20:13 ◼   ► I'm doing this live.

00:20:17 ◼   ► I want to see if the old workflow links are also working again.

00:20:20 ◼   ► Do you have any feeling on...

00:20:22 ◼   ► I know that I'm confident nobody's said anything to you,

00:20:25 ◼   ► but do you have any feeling on what happened here?

00:20:28 ◼   ► Do you think it was just an error,

00:20:29 ◼   ► or do you think they're changing something and it's broken it?

00:20:33 ◼   ► I honestly have no idea.

00:20:34 ◼   ► My theory is that they did something to the gallery.

00:20:40 ◼   ► They were doing some work on the shortcut gallery

00:20:42 ◼   ► because that also went down briefly last week.

00:20:46 ◼   ► So I think something happened there.

00:20:49 ◼   ► So let me just send this tab to my iPhone

00:20:52 ◼   ► as a push notification.

00:20:53 ◼   ► If you wanna know why I'm doing this,

00:20:55 ◼   ► again, go listen to Connected Pro.

00:20:57 ◼   ► I got the page on my phone.

00:21:01 ◼   ► So let's see, an old workflow link.

00:21:03 ◼   ► I have an article from 2017 about workflow magic variables.

00:21:08 ◼   ► Oh, I was so clever with the title,

00:21:11 ◼   ► with the section titles in this article.

00:21:13 ◼   ► One of them is called "It's a kind of magic".

00:21:16 ◼   ► Ah.

00:21:17 ◼   ► I'm a good blogger.

00:21:20 ◼   ► Someone's so excited about their own work over here.

00:21:23 ◼   ► I'm sure there's a word for this.

00:21:24 ◼   ► Let's see, you can get the workflow here.

00:21:26 ◼   ► Did it work?

00:21:30 ◼   ► No.

00:21:31 ◼   ► Didn't fall off?

00:21:32 ◼   ► So those workflow links are dead.

00:21:36 ◼   ► Again, I believe they were broken before too.

00:21:39 ◼   ► I just wanted to double check and confirm.

00:21:41 ◼   ► So yeah.

00:21:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, that makes sense, though, right?

00:21:46 ◼   ► It feels like it's time for them to go away.

00:21:48 ◼   ► Because I guess if you had it, if you create the original workflow,

00:21:51 ◼   ► you could create a shortcuts link now, right?

00:21:53 ◼   ► Because they all moved over.

00:21:55 ◼   ► Right. I guess there's some of these workflows, like in this article from 2017,

00:22:00 ◼   ► some of these workflows I don't have anymore on my device locally.

00:22:03 ◼   ► And now I cannot download them

00:22:07 ◼   ► from the old workflow.is URL either.

00:22:12 ◼   ► But I mean, that's fine. Right.

00:22:14 ◼   ► We all knew this was going to happen eventually.

00:22:15 ◼   ► It was nice enough of Apple to keep those workflow links working

00:22:19 ◼   ► for a couple of years after they acquired

00:22:22 ◼   ► workflow and it became shortcuts.

00:22:25 ◼   ► Now, in any case, the good news is shortcuts links have been restored.

00:22:30 ◼   ► So if a link was broken, check again, it should be working again.

00:22:34 ◼   ► Recently, I was complaining that Spotify doesn't have show notes for podcasts.

00:22:41 ◼   ► And a couple of people wrote in, including Cameron, to tell me that it has been added.

00:22:46 ◼   ► This is a recent thing, for sure. I know a few months ago, at least, I checked and they did not

00:22:52 ◼   ► have this, but they have full show notes with links and everything there. So that's very good.

00:22:58 ◼   ► I'm very pleased about that. Like that is something that genuinely like makes me very happy

00:23:03 ◼   ► because of the effort that I put into them. So now do chapters. Now do chapter support, Spotify.

00:23:09 ◼   ► That's what I would like next, please.

00:23:11 ◼   ► They have show notes and you can tap on the links

00:23:14 ◼   ► and they open in your system browser.

00:23:16 ◼   ► So it's pretty good.

00:23:18 ◼   ► I'm pleased that they have that, but I would love to see them do chapters too.

00:23:22 ◼   ► And if they're also going to do chapters, I want chapter-specific artwork.

00:23:25 ◼   ► Just go the whole way.

00:23:26 ◼   ► Yeah, they gotta do the whole thing.

00:23:28 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:23:29 ◼   ► On a side note, I saw an article that Spotify has bought a company

00:23:35 ◼   ► that seems like it will give them the tools to make a clubhouse competitor.

00:23:39 ◼   ► Right. Which I think makes a lot of sense for Spotify, honestly.

00:23:42 ◼   ► Especially for, I guess, sports-related podcasts that they own.

00:23:47 ◼   ► The company that they bought was a sports-focused live app.

00:23:54 ◼   ► It's called Locker Room, what's the name of the application.

00:23:57 ◼   ► And it was built to be a kind of clubhouse...

00:24:01 ◼   ► I don't know exactly the timeline, how long that app had been around.

00:24:04 ◼   ► It's been around for a while, I think.

00:24:06 ◼   ► and that's what it was built for, to be like a live sports app. So like for example, if you wanted

00:24:13 ◼   ► to basically be a commentator of a sporting game, you could do that. And I think it really

00:24:18 ◼   ► got some traction with the NBA, like with basketball, I believe. So they've bought this

00:24:24 ◼   ► company, they're going to keep this app around for a while, but they're going to rebrand it at

00:24:27 ◼   ► some point. And it seems like their plans at first is to have it as a separate application.

00:24:33 ◼   ► But you know, it makes a lot of sense that then once you've recorded your broadcast,

00:24:37 ◼   ► it will go to your Anchor account and get turned into a podcast which goes on Spotify, right?

00:24:41 ◼   ► Like that just feels like that's the full stack that they would do if you wanted that.

00:24:47 ◼   ► Why not connect all the pieces together?

00:24:48 ◼   ► But I also found it funny.

00:24:51 ◼   ► It was this is funny to me that kind of this week, I think, LinkedIn and Discord,

00:24:56 ◼   ► what LinkedIn have announced they're making a clubhouse competitor.

00:25:00 ◼   ► Slack has reframed something they previously said they were going to do and

00:25:04 ◼   ► calling it a Clubhouse competitor, which is, we spoke about this ages ago,

00:25:07 ◼   ► when Slack announced that they were doing stories, oh God,

00:25:10 ◼   ► they also referenced making a push to talk type service.

00:25:15 ◼   ► And this would be that, right?

00:25:16 ◼   ► So you could have basically an audio channel open all the time and when people

00:25:20 ◼   ► want to say something, they can, otherwise they're quiet.

00:25:22 ◼   ► But they referenced it being like Clubhouse. And then some code was found,

00:25:27 ◼   ► think over the last 24 hours that Discord seems to be making their own as well. I mean,

00:25:31 ◼   ► what Discord does right now, Discord's audio channels not too far away from Clubhouse,

00:25:36 ◼   ► but just kind of changing some of the UI to make it a bit more Clubhouse-y.

00:25:40 ◼   ► Clubhouse is going to go away soon. It can't survive this. Honestly, I just don't think it

00:25:46 ◼   ► can survive this. Every com- like this was the thing, you know, people were saying this,

00:25:52 ◼   ► this isn't an original thought but like they are Clubhouse is a feature not an app.

00:26:00 ◼   ► So yeah I just thought it was funny.

00:26:03 ◼   ► Yeah yeah I'm really excited about the LinkedIn version though.

00:26:08 ◼   ► Yeah LinkedIn I don't know what you call it but yeah it sounds great right?

00:26:12 ◼   ► Oh you know they're gonna call it like the boardroom or something.

00:26:15 ◼   ► Oh they really should though.

00:26:19 ◼   ► Or even just water cooler.

00:26:22 ◼   ► All of these things will work.

00:26:24 ◼   ► If anything, if they don't give it a good brand name now, I'll be really upset because

00:26:29 ◼   ► we've just given them two great ones.

00:26:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree.

00:26:33 ◼   ► Okay, Koshyaki, I'm sorry, I just butchered this user's name in the Relay FM members discord,

00:26:42 ◼   ► has created a Notion database of the results of Riki's.

00:26:48 ◼   ► I think Kocakius's surname, we're gonna go with Majd, who's in the Discord right now,

00:26:53 ◼   ► so I apologise for the butchering of the name.

00:26:57 ◼   ► This is very very cool because what this Notion database is doing is it's not just saying

00:27:04 ◼   ► who won, like that's great, we have that.

00:27:07 ◼   ► My favourite part of this is they have scored our predictions and our percentages of being

00:27:15 ◼   ► correct.

00:27:16 ◼   ► - Wow, he uses mathematics.

00:27:18 ◼   ► - Yes, and I am cleaning up, baby, kind of.

00:27:23 ◼   ► - How so?

00:27:25 ◼   ► - All right, so this is including the 2020 predictions

00:27:29 ◼   ► and then from the WWDC 2020 RIKIs onwards.

00:27:32 ◼   ► So we've got like four events

00:27:34 ◼   ► and one annual prediction thing in here.

00:27:37 ◼   ► So, and it's got all of our winnings

00:27:38 ◼   ► and everything in there, which is really cool.

00:27:40 ◼   ► But then when we look at the second chart,

00:27:42 ◼   ► we've got like hosts and we have each of us

00:27:45 ◼   ► and our regular pick rate, flexi pick rate, Ricky pick rate.

00:27:48 ◼   ► So of regular picks, 66% of mine are typically correct.

00:27:53 ◼   ► Federico, you get 50% and Steven gets 75%.

00:27:57 ◼   ► So our regular picks are round one and round two picks.

00:28:00 ◼   ► That's our likelihood of getting those correct.

00:28:03 ◼   ► With flexis, I'm 11.5%, you're 6.8% and Steven is 7%.

00:28:08 ◼   ► At Ricky's, I am 50%.

00:28:11 ◼   ► So 50% of the time my Ricky is correct

00:28:14 ◼   ► and both you and Steven are 33%.

00:28:17 ◼   ► So that puts us in, oh, I'm not cleaning up actually.

00:28:22 ◼   ► I come second.

00:28:23 ◼   ► So Steven gets 47% of picks correct.

00:28:26 ◼   ► I get 45% of all picks.

00:28:28 ◼   ► This is the regular picks and Ricky's and Flexy's

00:28:31 ◼   ► all together and you get 34%.

00:28:33 ◼   ► Your passion is bringing you down, my friend.

00:28:36 ◼   ► - Well, first of all, I don't understand

00:28:38 ◼   ► how you can be 33% correct.

00:28:40 ◼   ► You're either correct or you're not.

00:28:41 ◼   ► - Okay, well-- - 33% correct.

00:28:43 ◼   ► Right. Second, I feel like this is a grand scheme organized by Mashed and Steven and you.

00:28:48 ◼   ► Oh, this is a conspiracy.

00:28:50 ◼   ► To confuse, to confuse the hearts of the people with mathematics and numbers.

00:28:56 ◼   ► When people think of the Ricky's, they think of passion, they think of the, of our relationship,

00:29:03 ◼   ► of our, you know, fighting over the picks. They don't think of these numbers. They don't think

00:29:09 ◼   ► of these formulas. What's... I mean, I appreciate... I feel like Majd is in this conspiracy.

00:29:16 ◼   ► Somehow you have convinced a member of our Discord to participate in this scheme of yours.

00:29:25 ◼   ► Majd, it's not too late to come clean. Right. If you want to confess, I'm willing to forgive you.

00:29:38 ◼   ► That's all I'm gonna say.

00:29:39 ◼   ► If people want to see the data for themselves, there'll be a link in the show notes.

00:29:43 ◼   ► What are you gonna look at? This bunch of numbers? A bunch of percentages?

00:29:47 ◼   ► What's it gonna tell you, huh?

00:29:48 ◼   ► What's it gonna tell you?

00:29:49 ◼   ► It's no passion percentage.

00:29:51 ◼   ► No, what's having cold hard numbers?

00:29:54 ◼   ► What's... what are you gonna do with them? Come on.

00:29:57 ◼   ► Nothing. Probably.

00:29:59 ◼   ► I do appreciate all the little figurines.

00:30:01 ◼   ► Yeah, they're good.

00:30:02 ◼   ► Those are really good.

00:30:03 ◼   ► And also this is a very good use of Notion. So thank you, Majd.

00:30:07 ◼   ► Except for all of the lies.

00:30:09 ◼   ► Except for the conspiracy.

00:30:12 ◼   ► But technically, I am praising you.

00:30:16 ◼   ► But on a personal level, I'm really disappointed

00:30:18 ◼   ► that you were convinced by Steven and Michael

00:30:23 ◼   ► to take part in this.

00:30:26 ◼   ► It's too bad.

00:30:27 ◼   ► Beta 6 of iOS 14.5 just came out before we started recording today.

00:30:33 ◼   ► We don't really know of anything new in it,

00:30:35 ◼   ► except for the fact that you're now going to be given the choice of Siri voices.

00:30:41 ◼   ► So when you set up a phone, we assume from new, but I wouldn't be surprised if it pops up as part

00:30:46 ◼   ► of the upgrade process to 14.5. It's rather than just defaulting to one or the other, you'll now

00:30:53 ◼   ► make the decision. Because in different territories, it makes a default. So in America,

00:30:57 ◼   ► it defaults to female and in the UK defaults to male. And so now you'll be able to choose.

00:31:04 ◼   ► and there are some new voices too.

00:31:07 ◼   ► So I don't know if the voices are,

00:31:10 ◼   ► 'cause I haven't set this up yet,

00:31:11 ◼   ► I don't know if the voices are gendered

00:31:14 ◼   ► or if they're just named.

00:31:15 ◼   ► If they're gendered, I don't understand

00:31:17 ◼   ► why they would need to do that.

00:31:19 ◼   ► They could just name the voices and you can just choose.

00:31:21 ◼   ► - So I'm looking at it now.

00:31:24 ◼   ► - Okay, you've got it in front of you.

00:31:26 ◼   ► - They are not gendered anymore.

00:31:27 ◼   ► - That's great, that's fantastic.

00:31:29 ◼   ► So yeah, as well, Niles in the chat is saying

00:31:31 ◼   ► you ever choose voice one, two, three, or four?

00:31:33 ◼   ► Voice 1, it's 4, it says Voice 1 to 2.

00:31:36 ◼   ► I like that. They're not gendering it anymore, they're just giving voice choices for you to make.

00:31:42 ◼   ► Which I think is great, because then you can just choose whichever one appeals to you the most.

00:31:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's the right option. Like, the whole male and female...

00:31:51 ◼   ► For a long time I wondered why, like, I wonder if anybody ever did some kind of study or

00:31:58 ◼   ► some kind of demo on gender neutral voices.

00:32:02 ◼   ► Like, is it possible to build a gender neutral voice?

00:32:06 ◼   ► I'm curious to know if there's any research done on this topic. I think this is the right

00:32:10 ◼   ► approach. Now it just has the accent, which is not even called

00:32:14 ◼   ► "accent", it's called "variety", and you just choose a number.

00:32:18 ◼   ► One, two, three, and four. This is nice. I want to try the Italian voice, because

00:32:22 ◼   ► supposedly the Italian voice also recie... You know what?

00:32:26 ◼   ► Actually, hold on a second, I want to see what happens if I switch voices.

00:32:30 ◼   ► It's not gendered, so even if you don't have the fancy new voices, which is English only,

00:32:35 ◼   ► even the older ones don't have the genders anymore.

00:32:39 ◼   ► They're completely gone.

00:32:41 ◼   ► That's cool.

00:32:42 ◼   ► The Italian voice supposedly, and also Russian and French maybe,

00:32:46 ◼   ► they received the new neural TTS voice,

00:32:50 ◼   ► which uses machine learning to enhance the quality of the voice and the response

00:32:54 ◼   ► to make the tone sound more human and natural.

00:32:57 ◼   ► That was exclusive to English, I think.

00:32:59 ◼   ► It was launched last year.

00:33:01 ◼   ► Apple had a white paper on it, too,

00:33:03 ◼   ► and now it's available in the Italian series as well.

00:33:06 ◼   ► Too bad you still cannot have multiple languages in Siri.

00:33:12 ◼   ► So you still got to choose one language at a time.

00:33:15 ◼   ► And obviously, this is not the case with the Echo,

00:33:17 ◼   ► which lets you use multiple --

00:33:19 ◼   ► and also the Google Assistant, I think.

00:33:21 ◼   ► But still.

00:33:22 ◼   ► This is nice of Apple to do this, I think. It's a good change.

00:33:25 ◼   ► It's a positive change. Again, you can shake off some of this stuff because you don't need it.

00:33:31 ◼   ► And it can actually allow for simplification. And why not go for that? And then more people feel

00:33:37 ◼   ► included or not excluded. There's no harm in doing that, right? These are easy changes to

00:33:44 ◼   ► make for the potential benefit that they could have for other people. So it's super cool.

00:33:50 ◼   ► Last time we spoke about light mode and dark mode,

00:33:54 ◼   ► and three of us worked out that we were all across

00:33:57 ◼   ► the spectrum of what devices we use, which are light and which are dark.

00:34:02 ◼   ► Right. So Stephen, in his wisdom, created a Google form,

00:34:08 ◼   ► which he'd been, which he shared on Twitter last week about with our audience

00:34:14 ◼   ► to see.

00:34:16 ◼   ► What do you all select with your devices for light mode and dark mode?

00:34:23 ◼   ► And I have some very interesting results to share with you.

00:34:28 ◼   ► So 1559 people, Federico, took the connected mode survey

00:34:36 ◼   ► to say if they're going to be light or dark mode.

00:34:38 ◼   ► And basically, all of this is surprising to me.

00:34:45 ◼   ► So the iPhone, we got 11.8% of iPhone users that were, responded to the survey,

00:34:55 ◼   ► said that they use light mode all the time. 11.8%, much lower than I expected.

00:35:04 ◼   ► 42.9% of iPhone users who took the survey said they use dark mode all the time.

00:35:15 ◼   ► and 45.3% go with automatic switching.

00:35:19 ◼   ► Hmm. Now remind me, you're light mode all the time, right?

00:35:24 ◼   ► Yes. Yeah.

00:35:25 ◼   ► So you're in a strong minority now.

00:35:28 ◼   ► 11.8% strong minority. Interesting.

00:35:31 ◼   ► I pad. 19% of iPad users.

00:35:37 ◼   ► Light mode.

00:35:40 ◼   ► 39.9% dark mode and 41.1% automatic switching.

00:35:48 ◼   ► So ultimately the same answers, but slightly different percentages.

00:35:54 ◼   ► It's really surprising to me that the iPad has significantly

00:36:00 ◼   ► more light mode users than the iPhone.

00:36:03 ◼   ► So the iPad is 19% and the iPhone is 11.8%.

00:36:09 ◼   ► That's just that's very surprising to me.

00:36:12 ◼   ► Right. I wouldn't have expected that.

00:36:15 ◼   ► So and then we have with the Macintosh,

00:36:19 ◼   ► thirty point two percent use automatic switching.

00:36:21 ◼   ► Thirty three point three percent use light mode.

00:36:25 ◼   ► And thirty six point five percent of Mac users use dark mode.

00:36:29 ◼   ► This is the most surprising out of all of these to me.

00:36:32 ◼   ► I wouldn't have expected the majority of Mac users

00:36:36 ◼   ► in our survey to be using dark mode.

00:36:39 ◼   ► because I don't know I feel like dark mode is like on the Mac by a lot of

00:36:46 ◼   ► longer time Mac users kind of look down upon because it's like oh this is not

00:36:52 ◼   ► how this is not how the Mac should look but there we go these are our results

00:36:56 ◼   ► this is not what I was expecting no I would say the dark mode across the board

00:37:05 ◼   ► is much higher than I would have expected compared to how light mode came in.

00:37:12 ◼   ► I would have thought there would be more of a split between light mode and dark mode than there is on iOS products.

00:37:21 ◼   ► So the iPhone and the iPad, like it's way more dark mode than it is light mode and then most people tend to be using the automatic switching between them.

00:37:29 ◼   ► them. Which kind of feels to me that adding dark mode to iOS was a good thing

00:37:33 ◼   ► because it shows that like 90% of iPhone and iPad users want to have dark mode by

00:37:42 ◼   ► this statistic, right? Because 40% of them choose to turn it on all the time and

00:37:47 ◼   ► then another 40% of them want it at certain points. So you're definitely in

00:37:52 ◼   ► the minority by keeping one of your devices in light mode all the time. So

00:37:57 ◼   ► So what we have learned is people like dark mode.

00:37:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, that's really the takeaway here.

00:38:03 ◼   ► 36% on the Mac.

00:38:04 ◼   ► I guess it makes, the iPad is really more,

00:38:08 ◼   ► is even more surprising to me.

00:38:09 ◼   ► Almost, basically 40% of iPad users

00:38:12 ◼   ► have dark mode on all the time.

00:38:14 ◼   ► Like, it's even more surprising to me than the iPhone.

00:38:19 ◼   ► The iPad number.

00:38:20 ◼   ► The Mac, I would have expected to be that kind of percentage

00:38:25 ◼   ► because again I think it makes more sense on the Mac where you have

00:38:29 ◼   ► like these pro apps that already use dark UIs.

00:38:33 ◼   ► But on the iPad...

00:38:35 ◼   ► Interesting. Okay. So people use dark mode.

00:38:40 ◼   ► That's the main takeaway.

00:38:41 ◼   ► That's the big takeaway from today is that people use and love dark mode.

00:38:45 ◼   ► So you are a man of the people indeed.

00:38:48 ◼   ► You know what? I really am.

00:38:50 ◼   ► It's you. It's always been you, not Steven.

00:38:53 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:38:55 ◼   ► It's been you all along.

00:38:57 ◼   ► The things we discover when Steven is not around, right?

00:39:00 ◼   ► - This episode of Connected is brought to you by StoryWorth.

00:39:06 ◼   ► It's definitely been the year of getting creative

00:39:08 ◼   ► when it comes to staying in touch with family.

00:39:11 ◼   ► I know we've had a lot more FaceTime calls,

00:39:14 ◼   ► a lot more Skype calls than we ever have before.

00:39:17 ◼   ► It's never been more important to stay in touch

00:39:20 ◼   ► with everyone in my life, and 2020 just made it hard.

00:39:24 ◼   ► StoryWorth, however, can make you feel closer to loved ones no matter the distance.

00:39:28 ◼   ► It's an online service that helps you and your loved ones share stories through thought-provoking

00:39:34 ◼   ► questions about their memories and personal thoughts.

00:39:37 ◼   ► It's a fun new way to engage with family, especially those you can't see in person.

00:39:42 ◼   ► Every week, StoryWorth emails your family member different story prompts, questions

00:39:45 ◼   ► you've never thought to ask.

00:39:48 ◼   ► Things like, "Has your life turned out differently than you imagined it would?" or "What would

00:39:52 ◼   ► you have changed?"

00:39:53 ◼   ► your mind about over the years or if you knew something earlier than you did. Really

00:39:57 ◼   ► thoughtful questions and I

00:40:00 ◼   ► love those questions. Sometimes those questions are hard to ask in person or over FaceTime.

00:40:05 ◼   ► StoryWorth gives you a little breathing room in those questions and it's been a great way to bond with family.

00:40:11 ◼   ► After one year, StoryWorth will compile all of your stories, including photos, into a beautiful keepsake book that's shipped for

00:40:18 ◼   ► free. This is a book that can totally become

00:40:22 ◼   ► This like family heirloom you can give it to your kids they can learn about their great-grandparents or people

00:40:27 ◼   ► They've never met give your loved ones the gift of spending time together wherever you live with story worth

00:40:32 ◼   ► Get started right away with no shipping required by going to story worth comm slash connected

00:40:38 ◼   ► And you'll get ten dollars off your first purchase that story worth comm slash connected for ten dollars off

00:40:45 ◼   ► Our thanks to story worth for the support of the show and relay FM today Apple

00:40:52 ◼   ► kind of announced, or was it announced for them basically, that they're one of the leading

00:40:57 ◼   ► investors in a $50 million investment round in a company called United Masters. United

00:41:05 ◼   ► Masters is a music focused company that aims to help independent artists get started in

00:41:11 ◼   ► the music business. They work with them to get them up and going. They're basically a

00:41:16 ◼   ► label but they make sure that the artists keep the rights to their recording masters

00:41:22 ◼   ► And then they help them work out deals with brands.

00:41:25 ◼   ► They help them understand social media, provide marketing support, connect them with their

00:41:29 ◼   ► audiences better, help them sell concert tickets, merch and stuff like that.

00:41:33 ◼   ► I'd never heard of this company that I was kind of doing a bit of research about them

00:41:37 ◼   ► today.

00:41:38 ◼   ► They sound really good.

00:41:41 ◼   ► Like as a thing for music.

00:41:43 ◼   ► Like I don't.

00:41:45 ◼   ► Had you ever heard of United Masters before?

00:41:47 ◼   ► First time today.

00:41:48 ◼   ► So they've been around since 2017.

00:41:50 ◼   ► They were started by somebody called Steve Stout, who used to work at Sony.

00:42:00 ◼   ► They worked in music at Sony.

00:42:03 ◼   ► And since then, since the founding, I've been bringing on more artists and they've been

00:42:07 ◼   ► doing some interesting stuff.

00:42:09 ◼   ► Like in August 2020, they struck a deal with TikTok.

00:42:14 ◼   ► So TikTok artists could distribute their original songs through other streaming platforms.

00:42:19 ◼   ► So they seem to basically try and find ways to connect emerging musicians with existing

00:42:25 ◼   ► platforms.

00:42:26 ◼   ► And I'm sure they make money across the way, right?

00:42:27 ◼   ► But they're not making money by doing things like existing record labels have done by saying

00:42:32 ◼   ► "we own your music", right?

00:42:34 ◼   ► Which is if you follow Taylor Swift's saga, right?

00:42:38 ◼   ► Like this is a thing.

00:42:40 ◼   ► Looking at the partnership list now, I vaguely remember when Twitch creators made a big deal

00:42:51 ◼   ► out of the fact that they could use more music in their streams.

00:42:55 ◼   ► And this was possible because in September 2020, UnitedMastered partnered with Twitch

00:43:01 ◼   ► to basically allow creators to use licensed music in their streams.

00:43:07 ◼   ► So this I was not aware of the United, that it was United Masters.

00:43:12 ◼   ► Okay, this is a cool company.

00:43:15 ◼   ► So they sound like a super interesting company.

00:43:17 ◼   ► It kind of sounds like this is how you would make a record label today, right?

00:43:22 ◼   ► I think that's kind of what they're going for.

00:43:25 ◼   ► And yeah, I mean, like I said, obviously they make their money, right?

00:43:27 ◼   ► But they're probably taking cuts and stuff like that.

00:43:30 ◼   ► And I bet it's kind of like one of those approaches of scale, you know, like they bring on a bunch

00:43:36 ◼   ► of artists and every now and then one of them breaks through and they make a bunch of money

00:43:39 ◼   ► from it. Now what's interesting here is Apple didn't buy this company. It's a strategic

00:43:45 ◼   ► partnership and Alphabet, Google, is also one of the large investors in this investment

00:43:52 ◼   ► round. I think with Andrzej Sinhorowicz, they led the round. But Apple is working on what

00:43:57 ◼   ► is called a strategic partnership with them. This is interesting. I mean, from talking

00:44:03 ◼   ► to you recently, this is not the kind of stuff that you're looking for from Apple Music.

00:44:07 ◼   ► No, but it's different kind of stuff that is also important, I think. Like, first of

00:44:14 ◼   ► all, I think Apple as an investor is fascinating. Joining with other companies to invest rather

00:44:19 ◼   ► than to purchase, to acquire another company, it's pretty cool.

00:44:22 ◼   ► This feels like a non-cynical political move from them, saying like, "This is how we believe

00:44:31 ◼   ► the music industry should be.

00:44:34 ◼   ► Yes, which is exactly why this may not be like a fancy new feature of Apple

00:44:40 ◼   ► Music, but I think it's something important because going forward, like,

00:44:43 ◼   ► something we've seen during the pandemic is like a lot of artists struggling to,

00:44:50 ◼   ► well, obviously make money, right?

00:44:52 ◼   ► Because of, we already know how artists were really making money more of merchandise

00:44:57 ◼   ► and concerts.

00:44:59 ◼   ► Of course, because it's the only way they could make money.

00:45:01 ◼   ► It's the only way to... I mean, if you're Taylor Swift or Beyoncé, like you make money also from Spotify streams and Apple Music streams.

00:45:08 ◼   ► But most artists make money off of selling their most loyal fans merchandise, exclusive editions, deluxe editions, you know, all that kind of stuff.

00:45:17 ◼   ► And what we've seen during the pandemic was a lot of... there was a lot of uncertainty at first, but especially over the past six months.

00:45:26 ◼   ► I have noticed that a lot of artists have basically started doing all the same thing,

00:45:31 ◼   ► but each on a different platform, which is streaming concerts, right?

00:45:37 ◼   ► Selling virtual tickets to these concerts and investing even more on merchandise,

00:45:44 ◼   ► doing things like what they call graphic novels, for example.

00:45:50 ◼   ► Just in the past month, I've seen three different bands do a graphic novel.

00:45:55 ◼   ► So all of these folks are trying different ways to monetize their audience, to monetize their most loyal fans.

00:46:01 ◼   ► And that was a byproduct of, obviously, the lack of touring and the lack of being able to do concerts.

00:46:07 ◼   ► But I think it speaks to the bigger point of

00:46:11 ◼   ► there has to be an easier way to do this.

00:46:15 ◼   ► Or at least it would be nicer...

00:46:18 ◼   ► I mean, let's not even talk about the thing that

00:46:22 ◼   ► some artists are now doing with selling albums as NFTs, right?

00:46:26 ◼   ► But it seems like the NFTs thing is big artists and not small artists, and it's a marketing

00:46:31 ◼   ► tactic, I feel, from the ones that I've seen anyway, like Kings of Leon did it.

00:46:38 ◼   ► Exactly. I also think Lindsay Lohan did an NFT thing. I think. At least I've seen it

00:46:46 ◼   ► on Twitter. So the thing is, I feel like it would be interesting to see some kind of centralized

00:46:57 ◼   ► way for artists to do this. Like, it's not ideal that if I want to watch the streamed

00:47:05 ◼   ► concert for Jimmy Eat World that I gotta purchase a virtual ticket for, I gotta sign up for

00:47:11 ◼   ► a specific Jimmy Eatwood platform and create an account and do all that. And then if I

00:47:16 ◼   ► want to do the same for domain or for Blink 182, like I gotta repeat the same steps over

00:47:21 ◼   ► and over again.

00:47:22 ◼   ► And I don't know about you, but like I've done a couple of these things like over the

00:47:26 ◼   ► pandemic and it's a real crap shoot as to what the streaming platform is going to be

00:47:31 ◼   ► like.

00:47:32 ◼   ► Yes, yes, performance is not great. Some of those videos you cannot re-download, they

00:47:37 ◼   ► use custom video players.

00:47:38 ◼   ► You can't pause them.

00:47:39 ◼   ► You can pause them, like, it's not great, man, it's not really...

00:47:43 ◼   ► But, at the same time, I empathize with artists, right?

00:47:47 ◼   ► Because, like, what you gotta do?

00:47:50 ◼   ► You gotta find ways to make money.

00:47:51 ◼   ► And to live off your art right now.

00:47:54 ◼   ► And so, I support them because it's the right thing to do.

00:47:57 ◼   ► But I feel like...

00:47:58 ◼   ► I've been saying for the past few years how...

00:48:03 ◼   ► There has to be...

00:48:05 ◼   ► You know, I was...

00:48:06 ◼   ► I've heard about this in the context of Apple Music,

00:48:08 ◼   ► but it applies to other companies as well.

00:48:10 ◼   ► The original idea behind Apple Music Connect was not that bad.

00:48:17 ◼   ► It was just poorly realized and Apple didn't really spend enough time building it.

00:48:24 ◼   ► But I feel like the underlying idea of what if an artist had a much better way to

00:48:32 ◼   ► directly connect with their audience?

00:48:34 ◼   ► The problem is Apple did it in a way that they kind of wanted to do like their own Instagram

00:48:40 ◼   ► But for music artists, which was the wrong approach. The right approach is allow artists to build

00:48:47 ◼   ► Something that resembles a mailing list, right?

00:48:50 ◼   ► Give them a way to sell stuff

00:48:53 ◼   ► Whether it's limited edition whether it's a virtual ticket or a physical ticket when we can go back to having concerts

00:48:59 ◼   ► Give them a direct way to reach their audience and to sell stuff easily in a trusted environment

00:49:08 ◼   ► with a simple payment system.

00:49:10 ◼   ► If you want to sell video, you have a native video player.

00:49:14 ◼   ► You have all these features that the platform takes care of for you. You just connect to your audience. And I feel like

00:49:21 ◼   ► they tried this to an extent, like I wrote about it a couple of years ago when they did it with Billie Eilish.

00:49:29 ◼   ► They had this special page in Apple Music that allowed you to go to a website and use Apple Pay to purchase the

00:49:36 ◼   ► Billie Eilish merchandise, and I still have that Billie Eilish t-shirt that I bought, which is sick.

00:49:42 ◼   ► I love it. But to go back to the point that we were making earlier,

00:49:45 ◼   ► that is an exact example of what you shouldn't do. It's the event of a backwards

00:49:50 ◼   ► Exactly. Just a Billie Eilish and then never do it again. Exactly. So this partnership with this kind of company is interesting.

00:49:57 ◼   ► I would love to see more of this, like, beyond the individual features that, you know, I may appreciate more these days in Spotify rather than Apple Music.

00:50:08 ◼   ► I do think that Apple understands this, and they must have seen, like, the struggle of artists over the past 12 months.

00:50:17 ◼   ► Because, like, the pandemic has completely changed the way that, how the music industry operates.

00:50:24 ◼   ► And the consequences of this...

00:50:26 ◼   ► I mean, it's pretty bad in Italy right now.

00:50:29 ◼   ► I think it's pretty bad everywhere, honestly, but right now, what we keep hearing here is how

00:50:35 ◼   ► the industry that's been impacted the most,

00:50:40 ◼   ► even more than the artists themselves, are the people who work behind the scenes, right?

00:50:45 ◼   ► The people who work in, like, the staff and the engineers and, you know, the people who operate behind the scenes in theaters.

00:50:53 ◼   ► at concerts locations. Like, that unfortunately cannot be fixed.

00:50:58 ◼   ► Yeah, because the...

00:51:00 ◼   ► Because it's all digital, right?

00:51:01 ◼   ► The man, like, who is putting up the rigging, or the person who is serving food, or like,

00:51:10 ◼   ► the woman who's managing the ticket sales, like, they can't go on social media and make money.

00:51:17 ◼   ► Yep.

00:51:18 ◼   ► Right? Like they have no other path there to like continue to make a living.

00:51:25 ◼   ► You know, so it's like yeah it's bad for the artist but all of the support around that...

00:51:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:30 ◼   ► I mean it's tricky. I mean you know and there are some steps like did you see Glastonbury?

00:51:34 ◼   ► See what Glastonbury's doing?

00:51:36 ◼   ► No.

00:51:37 ◼   ► So they're not doing the festival but they are setting up all of the stages or like a

00:51:42 ◼   ► selection of the stages and they're bringing the artists in and they're doing a digital

00:51:47 ◼   ► concert.

00:51:48 ◼   ► can buy a Glastonbury ticket but it's just to watch a performance. They're doing it at Glastonbury.

00:51:55 ◼   ► I love it. See, I mean, folks are figuring things out despite the situation and I feel like when it

00:52:02 ◼   ► comes to music streaming services there should be a way for artists to do this directly in the app

00:52:09 ◼   ► that you use. I mean, let's face it, I shouldn't have to sign up for the Jimmy Eatwood newsletter

00:52:15 ◼   ► so that I know when they're selling a virtual ticket

00:52:18 ◼   ► and sign up and create an account and use their crappy video player

00:52:22 ◼   ► and repeat the same process over and over for Liam Gallagher

00:52:25 ◼   ► and then for the main and then for, you know, a bunch of different...

00:52:29 ◼   ► Like, I'm gonna do it, but it shouldn't have to be this way.

00:52:32 ◼   ► By the way, the Glastonbury lineup looks really good.

00:52:35 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

00:52:36 ◼   ► For me anyway. Coldplay, Damon Albarn and Heim are the headliners.

00:52:40 ◼   ► Perfect. I love it.

00:52:41 ◼   ► I mean, like, I'm just in.

00:52:42 ◼   ► Yes.

00:52:42 ◼   ► Yeah, all right. Thanks.

00:52:44 ◼   ► Don't mind if I do.

00:52:46 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:52:47 ◼   ► I'm gonna give you my money for that.

00:52:50 ◼   ► The other thing though that I think is important for thinking about companies like United Masters

00:52:55 ◼   ► and whatever is if the music industry wants to continue in having labels, they have to

00:53:00 ◼   ► do things like this because stuff like Patreon and YouTube and TikTok means that a lot of

00:53:07 ◼   ► artists do not need labels anymore, right?

00:53:11 ◼   ► You can get money directly and you can get yourself out there in a way that was impossible to do

00:53:17 ◼   ► even

00:53:19 ◼   ► 15 years ago

00:53:20 ◼   ► so really the only way for this industry to continue being

00:53:24 ◼   ► Useful at least in the kind of like early stages of somebody's career is they have to be incentivized that everyone comes out of it

00:53:32 ◼   ► winning because otherwise

00:53:34 ◼   ► You're only getting like labels are only going to get involved in someone gets huge and outside of that

00:53:41 ◼   ► they're not going to be able to find their own artists and even strike deals that are...

00:53:45 ◼   ► They're not going to have any leverage, right?

00:53:47 ◼   ► Because if somebody's massive already, someone's got like 10 million YouTube subscribers or whatever,

00:53:52 ◼   ► and they're getting millions and millions of views,

00:53:54 ◼   ► they're coming to the table with a lot more leverage.

00:53:57 ◼   ► So, you know, unless the labels will start to create more equitable relationships earlier on,

00:54:04 ◼   ► they're just... that part of the industry is just going to go away, I'm sure.

00:54:09 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. And it's especially interesting when you consider how what you mentioned about how some artists are doing their own membership programs, really, to monetize an audience. Like, for example, I personally subscribe to William Ryan Key on Patreon. He's the former singer of the band Yellowcard, and he's now doing his solo project. And it's fascinating because you can subscribe to William Ryan Key, and you get a bunch of things that you like.

00:54:39 ◼   ► Like, until a few years ago, I wouldn't have even imagined that I would be able to do a

00:54:43 ◼   ► Q&A session each month with the singer of Yellowcard.

00:54:48 ◼   ► Or you got, for example, the digital PDF of the handwritten lyrics of a song.

00:54:55 ◼   ► Like you got a bunch of these things that, I mean, yeah, it's super cool.

00:54:59 ◼   ► Like if I'm a superfan, I'm gonna give you money, and you give me these things that make

00:55:04 ◼   ► me feel special, like they make me appreciate the fact that I'm following you as an artist,

00:55:09 ◼   ► and at the same time I'm feeling good about giving you money because I'm supporting your art and your

00:55:14 ◼   ► craft. Like, totally! Like, that is an amazing idea. And so, if you're a label, you gotta consider

00:55:20 ◼   ► this fact that more and more artists are saying, "You know what? I may not be able to go on tour

00:55:28 ◼   ► anymore, at least right now, but we're gonna figure things out on our own. And we're gonna

00:55:37 ◼   ► find ways to reach audiences, whether it's YouTube or Patreon or like, I saw somebody,

00:55:45 ◼   ► was it the main? No, it was somebody else saying they have a Discord server. And like,

00:55:49 ◼   ► they're using technology and they're taking control of these things on their own without

00:55:55 ◼   ► necessarily having the official support of a label and I think it's amazing. It's incredible.

00:55:59 ◼   ► TickTick. So we spoke about TickTick last time because Steven had moved to TickTick and was

00:56:10 ◼   ► selling us on it and we were both pretty intrigued about TickTick and we both had some time to try it

00:56:16 ◼   ► out. I will say just for full disclosure, after hearing the episode somebody at TickTick reached

00:56:22 ◼   ► out and gave us all one year subscriptions. I didn't use it. I did. So thank you TickTick.

00:56:29 ◼   ► Federico did not use it. I just wanted to say that out front. So I have been digging

00:56:35 ◼   ► around a little bit and I haven't spent the amount of time with TickTick that I would

00:56:42 ◼   ► maybe want to but I feel like I might be bumping up against an issue. So I've been using OmniFocus

00:56:51 ◼   ► for most of this year, actually over a year nearly, about a year, sorry that was terrible

00:56:58 ◼   ► the way I said that, about a year is how long I've been using OmniFocus for. And the thing

00:57:04 ◼   ► that made me move was you were using OmniFocus at the time. You and Sylvia were working on

00:57:13 ◼   ► the new perspective icons. And the thing that I really liked was the idea of assigning multiple

00:57:21 ◼   ► tags to one task because something that I was starting to struggle with was my

00:57:29 ◼   ► work was starting to span across multiple areas and I was struggling to

00:57:35 ◼   ► with Todoist find a place to put tasks because Todoist is a project based like

00:57:44 ◼   ► kind of first model and what I like about OmniFocus is it is very flexible

00:57:50 ◼   ► in that you can create projects or tasks but then also just create perspectives

00:57:55 ◼   ► that lumps them all together. And ultimately where I settled on is I don't

00:58:00 ◼   ► use projects anymore. All of the tasks that I put into OmniFocus get tags and

00:58:06 ◼   ► they can have as many tags as I want put on them and then I have a set of

00:58:10 ◼   ► perspectives which group together the tags that I want. So like for example if

00:58:16 ◼   ► if I was doing something for this show, say it was preparing for the episode, I might have like

00:58:23 ◼   ► two tags on it, maybe one that says "Show Prep" and one that says "Connected" and then I can have a perspective

00:58:29 ◼   ► which is just "Connected" which would include this task and any other task which is tagged or connected

00:58:35 ◼   ► but there could be any other task attached to them. Where if I was doing this as a project

00:58:40 ◼   ► I would have to choose a bucket to put them in so it might be either

00:58:45 ◼   ► Show prep project or the connected project, but then all I'm gonna see when I go into those views are

00:58:50 ◼   ► Just the things in that project and so I was I've been enjoying if that makes sense and it's a it's a bit complicated

00:58:57 ◼   ► I think unless you're working like me

00:59:00 ◼   ► but

00:59:00 ◼   ► What I like about the way that I set things up with only focus is every task can have

00:59:05 ◼   ► lots of different tags and those tags can then show up in other views in the application and

00:59:10 ◼   ► I feel like tick tick is definitely more of a

00:59:14 ◼   ► a projects focused app which they call lists, right?

00:59:19 ◼   ► So I would set up a bunch of lists

00:59:21 ◼   ► and I can put tags on them,

00:59:23 ◼   ► but the tags are very much like really one word,

00:59:27 ◼   ► you know, like you can't have any spaces,

00:59:29 ◼   ► you can't have any emoji, it doesn't like any of that.

00:59:32 ◼   ► And so really for me to want to move to this,

00:59:37 ◼   ► I have to be completely blown away

00:59:40 ◼   ► by the other parts of the application

00:59:42 ◼   ► to the point that I'm willing to rebuild my system again,

00:59:46 ◼   ► or like adapt my system again.

00:59:48 ◼   ► And I've done it so many times

00:59:49 ◼   ► and I kind of just get used to it,

00:59:51 ◼   ► but I would say that so far,

00:59:54 ◼   ► the app hasn't really grabbed me in usage

00:59:58 ◼   ► to want to dive in.

01:00:02 ◼   ► Like there's some really nice features in it.

01:00:04 ◼   ► Like I stumbled across a whole template feature that it has.

01:00:08 ◼   ► So you could create like a packing list template

01:00:11 ◼   ► and just save it in the app.

01:00:12 ◼   ► and just bring it up whenever you wanted it.

01:00:15 ◼   ► And that's like a really great feature.

01:00:17 ◼   ► And so I really, I want to spend more time

01:00:20 ◼   ► kicking the tires of the application, honestly,

01:00:23 ◼   ► because there is a bunch of cool stuff in there.

01:00:25 ◼   ► Like all the stuff that Steven was talking about,

01:00:27 ◼   ► I really like that you can have like

01:00:30 ◼   ► just lots of lovely notes really nicely formatted.

01:00:33 ◼   ► I really hate, one of the things I hate about OmniFocus

01:00:35 ◼   ► is it doesn't have nice formatting in the notes, right?

01:00:38 ◼   ► Like I won't mark down in the notes field

01:00:40 ◼   ► the tasks right and you don't get that in the only focus I had that in Todoist and

01:00:44 ◼   ► I could get it here so what I'll say is so far I have spent I don't know like

01:00:49 ◼   ► 45 minutes to an hour just in the application setting some basic stuff up

01:00:55 ◼   ► and I haven't been as blown away in using it as the way Steven was

01:01:02 ◼   ► describing it which is maybe suggesting to me that I actually have to start

01:01:07 ◼   ► putting some data in it and try using it for what it's supposed to be and then

01:01:11 ◼   ► maybe I will start to fall in love of it in the way that Steven has but I am

01:01:16 ◼   ► getting stuck on the fact that I would need to come up with a new system again

01:01:24 ◼   ► when really what I want to do is have tags formatted however I want and then

01:01:30 ◼   ► create some smart lists to bring those tags together which you can do you can

01:01:34 ◼   ► create smart lists. I haven't worked out how you do this yet but they're kind of

01:01:38 ◼   ► like web page and how you create smart lists seems to indicate you can create

01:01:41 ◼   ► smart lists based on multiple tags but then I don't like the way that tags are

01:01:46 ◼   ► formatted so for example if I wanted to have a tag that said podcast recording

01:01:52 ◼   ► it would have to be all one word and I kind of don't like that. So I'm getting a

01:01:58 ◼   ► little stuck on some of the features or basically I'm getting stuck on some of

01:02:02 ◼   ► fundamentals before I'm getting the opportunity to really try out the features.

01:02:06 ◼   ► But that's kind of one of the things about these types of applications is they've all

01:02:11 ◼   ► got a mix and kind of fit with your system and all the way that you approach this stuff.

01:02:18 ◼   ► And I'm just not sure that this one has yet.

01:02:21 ◼   ► Right.

01:02:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I was, um, I tried it out for like a couple of hours last week and I was like immediately

01:02:31 ◼   ► turned off by the custom UI.

01:02:35 ◼   ► That's why I asked Steven last week,

01:02:39 ◼   ► does it feel like you're using a web app?

01:02:41 ◼   ► Does it feel like you're using a custom thing on iOS?

01:02:43 ◼   ► And I got that feeling even more than what I expected

01:02:48 ◼   ► based on Steven's answer.

01:02:51 ◼   ► And it was a bunch of things.

01:02:53 ◼   ► And I found this mix of a bunch of functionalities

01:02:58 ◼   ► this mix of a bunch of functionalities.

01:03:01 ◼   ► Sure, you can disable them, but I didn't get a great feeling out of, you know, thinking,

01:03:07 ◼   ► "Oh, this company is doing both a task manager and a calendar client and a Pomodoro timer

01:03:12 ◼   ► and a habit tracker all in one."

01:03:14 ◼   ► Like, I don't know, it doesn't strike me as a focused product.

01:03:21 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:03:22 ◼   ► Maybe it's just my personal feeling, but I go with my gut feelings a lot here for this

01:03:29 ◼   ► kind of stuff because I try so many, and this is not like, "Oh, humblebrag."

01:03:34 ◼   ► No, it's my job, and I try so many apps on a weekly basis.

01:03:39 ◼   ► If I didn't go with my gut feeling at this point, I would lose not just my hours of my

01:03:47 ◼   ► time but also my mental sanity.

01:03:49 ◼   ► So it's more of a, like, the first impression matters a lot for me these days, and TickTick

01:03:57 ◼   ► doesn't make a great first impression.

01:04:00 ◼   ► At least based on the kind of user I am, I guess.

01:04:04 ◼   ► Maybe Steven doesn't care about that stuff, maybe you don't care about that stuff.

01:04:08 ◼   ► And that's fine, really it's fine, but it's not the kind of...

01:04:12 ◼   ► I like nice user experiences, right?

01:04:16 ◼   ► Like for example, I really like the way that OmniFocus looks and works on iOS.

01:04:23 ◼   ► I bump with it quite a lot on the Mac.

01:04:26 ◼   ► I really don't like the Mac app.

01:04:28 ◼   ► I've kind of grown to just suffer it.

01:04:33 ◼   ► What I don't like about OmniFocus on iOS is the task entry system, but I built a really

01:04:38 ◼   ► good shortcut that I love.

01:04:41 ◼   ► And I never want to enter tasks in a to-do app without being able to create a shortcut

01:04:47 ◼   ► for it.

01:04:48 ◼   ► Because on the home screen now, I just have a shortcut, I hit it, and it just pops down

01:04:53 ◼   ► with a UI, I type in my task, pick a date, and I'm done.

01:04:55 ◼   ► Like I assign a tag.

01:04:57 ◼   ► Like it's so easy, and I love that.

01:04:59 ◼   ► So I never enter tasks in OmniFocus in the application, I just enter them from the shortcut

01:05:04 ◼   ► that I made.

01:05:06 ◼   ► And so any app that I ever move to now I want to be able to create a similar thing for,

01:05:10 ◼   ► but most of the ones that I've tried out seems fine to do.

01:05:13 ◼   ► So you're still using good task then, right?

01:05:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, yes.

01:05:17 ◼   ► - Because it's interesting because whenever I have looked

01:05:21 ◼   ► at it, I do try it for a bit.

01:05:24 ◼   ► I feel like there are parts of the UI of that app

01:05:30 ◼   ► that are really difficult for me to understand,

01:05:35 ◼   ► like especially the quick actions part,

01:05:38 ◼   ► which I know you really like.

01:05:40 ◼   ► Oh, man, those are amazing.

01:05:41 ◼   ► It's like when I look at it, it kind of feels like

01:05:45 ◼   ► there was a UI explosion and now there's just pieces like littered everywhere.

01:05:52 ◼   ► I get it. I get it.

01:05:54 ◼   ► Yes, it's not.

01:05:57 ◼   ► It's the iCab of task managers.

01:05:59 ◼   ► Oh, my God, that's perfect.

01:06:00 ◼   ► Yes, it's got everything, but because it has everything.

01:06:04 ◼   ► But it's got like that's the difference.

01:06:08 ◼   ► It's not that it's got everything the way the tick tick has everything.

01:06:11 ◼   ► It's got all the possible settings for two features, like for a task manager.

01:06:17 ◼   ► No, I mean, it's just it's not even a calendar client.

01:06:20 ◼   ► You can see events, but it's not a calendar client.

01:06:22 ◼   ► It's got all the potential options you will ever want to configure for a task manager.

01:06:28 ◼   ► And yes, it could be better.

01:06:33 ◼   ► And sometimes you come across a typo in the UI, which I'm willing to forgive because the developer is based in Korea.

01:06:43 ◼   ► So I mean, it's fine. Typos are not that important. It's the overall experience that matters to me.

01:06:49 ◼   ► And I feel like a good task I love because it's like this little playground, especially since the developer added

01:07:03 ◼   ► the customizable quick actions.

01:07:05 ◼   ► It's got a steep learning curve, that's for sure.

01:07:09 ◼   ► But it's the combination of complete user control

01:07:14 ◼   ► and native UI elements that got me.

01:07:19 ◼   ► It's that idea of, here you go,

01:07:23 ◼   ► you have all of these native UI tools,

01:07:26 ◼   ► nothing is custom, like it's all native UI kit.

01:07:30 ◼   ► these custom lists and context menus and text fields, all of that stuff is native UI,

01:07:38 ◼   ► behaves the way you expect it to, so whether you're using touch or a pointer on your iPad,

01:07:45 ◼   ► it works the way you know. But you also have complete control over this thing,

01:07:50 ◼   ► and you can build... You know, John has some really wild actions, actually even more complex than

01:07:56 ◼   ► mine, I think, where he's doing things like cleaning up the title and auto-tagging stuff.

01:08:02 ◼   ► He's got like this amazing follow-up action that when he sends an email to somebody and he knows

01:08:09 ◼   ► he's going to follow up with that person in a few days, he's got this action that auto-creates a

01:08:14 ◼   ► follow-up task for him. And I'm like, that's incredible. My quick actions are pretty simple.

01:08:22 ◼   ► I have actions to apply tags and to postpone tasks by a certain number of days, but it's the idea of

01:08:29 ◼   ► having complete control and essentially building your own custom interface using native UI elements

01:08:36 ◼   ► that I really appreciate. Plus, GoodTask is one of those apps that it feels like your patience is

01:08:46 ◼   ► rewarded over time and it pays off to learn and spend a few hours like looking at this

01:08:54 ◼   ► UI explosion as you called it, like this sea of settings that you have. And it pays off over time

01:09:03 ◼   ► because now for example I have this custom dashboard view that I set up months ago and I

01:09:08 ◼   ► never touched it again, which is a Kanban board set up the way I like it so that I can see, you know,

01:09:14 ◼   ► I see a column for Monday and then Tuesday and then Wednesday and then the rest of the week.

01:09:18 ◼   ► Tell me then, can I do what I want? Can I assign multiple tags to a task?

01:09:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:24 ◼   ► Well, I'll download this one again then.

01:09:28 ◼   ► I mean, what you gotta keep in mind is that GoodTask is a Reminders client, right?

01:09:32 ◼   ► So when you say "tags," technically, behind the scenes, the way that it applies quote-unquote

01:09:40 ◼   ► tags is by putting hashtags into the note field of a reminder, meaning in GoodTask they behave like

01:09:49 ◼   ► tags. If you open the reminders app you will see #research in the note field of a reminder.

01:09:55 ◼   ► I wouldn't plan to ever open the reminders app.

01:09:58 ◼   ► That's what I do. I don't know. I never opened it.

01:10:01 ◼   ► I don't know why you would. Like, I don't know why you would use GoodTask and then

01:10:05 ◼   ► ever open reminders. You've chosen GoodTask, right? It's like, I use OmniFocus, I don't open

01:10:09 ◼   ► reminders. I know that the reason you're mentioning that is because GoodTask is somehow using

01:10:16 ◼   ► reminders to make its app. Does it have access to reminders in the way that

01:10:25 ◼   ► FantasticOwl can access my iOS calendars? Yes, it's that API. It's an API, okay.

01:10:33 ◼   ► It's the Event Kit API, which has been around forever.

01:10:37 ◼   ► If anything, the good task developer does something that the

01:10:43 ◼   ► Fantastical doesn't do, I think, which is...

01:10:48 ◼   ► I'm going to make this easy to explain on a podcast.

01:10:52 ◼   ► So you know how in Reminders they added rich links?

01:10:56 ◼   ► Like, last two years ago?

01:10:58 ◼   ► So if you save a web page from Safari to Reminders, it gets the little visual preview of the link.

01:11:05 ◼   ► Well, that rich link apparently is using like a private API.

01:11:11 ◼   ► It's not the native URL field of the Reminder, which means that if you save a Reminder with a rich link in Safari,

01:11:19 ◼   ► you don't see the link in Fantastical, I think.

01:11:22 ◼   ► But the GoodTask developer figured this out, and so you can see the rich links in GoodTask too.

01:11:28 ◼   ► The thing you do not get, because it's not exposed in the Reminders API, are native Reminders subtasks.

01:11:38 ◼   ► So, if you create nested Reminders in the Reminders app, which is a feature that not everybody knows about,

01:11:48 ◼   ► knows about, but you can create subtasks, like subtasks in Reminders. Those subtasks

01:11:56 ◼   ► will not show up in GoodTask, or Fantastical for that matter. But GoodTask lets you create

01:12:03 ◼   ► your own custom subtasks. So the developer figured out a way, but it's a custom thing.

01:12:10 ◼   ► So that's, I think, the only limitation when it comes to like...

01:12:15 ◼   ► But again...

01:12:16 ◼   ► Oh, and you cannot, I guess, you cannot assign reminders to other people, which is also a native

01:12:23 ◼   ► reminders-only functionality.

01:12:26 ◼   ► Yeah, but again, it's like I'm not gonna use them both, right? I'm not gonna use reminders and

01:12:34 ◼   ► good tasks. I'm sure people do, but I wouldn't. I'm gonna choose one or the other. Well, all right,

01:12:42 ◼   ► Alright, well I've got another one to try out then.

01:12:44 ◼   ► I guess two apps to try.

01:12:47 ◼   ► And honestly I wouldn't be surprised if I'm still back in OmniFocus, but who knows.

01:12:53 ◼   ► I'm always looking for new things.

01:12:55 ◼   ► And it is because I like what I can do with OmniFocus more than I like OmniFocus.

01:13:01 ◼   ► You know?

01:13:02 ◼   ► That's a really good way to put it.

01:13:06 ◼   ► I would pay serious money, but like serious money, for an OmniFuckus that looked and behaved like things.

01:13:21 ◼   ► Oh my god, don't even.

01:13:23 ◼   ► Don't even.

01:13:27 ◼   ► I know, right? I mean, imagine that.

01:13:33 ◼   ► If Spotify wants to buy this podcast, we could pool our money to buy Culture Code and the

01:13:39 ◼   ► Omni Group and smoosh them together.

01:13:42 ◼   ► It's like "Now kiss", you know the meaning?

01:13:46 ◼   ► Yes.

01:13:47 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:13:51 ◼   ► What will happen first?

01:13:55 ◼   ► OmniFocus looks like things or things gains advanced features like OmniFocus?

01:14:02 ◼   ► Neither of those things are gonna happen.

01:14:04 ◼   ► You have to like, which one is gonna get closer.

01:14:07 ◼   ► And honestly, I, at this point,

01:14:10 ◼   ► I'm more likely to believe OmniFocus to get a new UI

01:14:14 ◼   ► that is nice to like across everything

01:14:17 ◼   ► than for things to change its underlying structure.

01:14:22 ◼   ► Because I feel like OmniFocus has taken more of those steps

01:14:26 ◼   ► than things has.

01:14:27 ◼   ► Like genuinely, like OmniFocus on the iPhone,

01:14:31 ◼   ► I like it.

01:14:32 ◼   ► It's got some stuff that I would wanna change,

01:14:34 ◼   ► but it's gotten better,

01:14:35 ◼   ► where I feel like things has gotten more beautiful,

01:14:39 ◼   ► but it's still dealing with these like fundamentally

01:14:42 ◼   ► weird, bad issues.

01:14:44 ◼   ► - They still have that thing with the repeating tasks.

01:14:49 ◼   ► - Yes, that you can only check them off on the day

01:14:52 ◼   ► that they're set to repeat on.

01:14:53 ◼   ► - And it's still not fixed.

01:14:55 ◼   ► - They have acknowledged that it is something

01:14:57 ◼   ► that needs to be fixed, but haven't done it.

01:15:00 ◼   ► - And that's what I get it. - Yeah, this is like,

01:15:03 ◼   ► I needed, I acknowledged two years ago

01:15:06 ◼   ► that I needed to work out more.

01:15:08 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, I acknowledged it.

01:15:11 ◼   ► - What more do you want?

01:15:12 ◼   ► - But the thing is, things looks really nice.

01:15:17 ◼   ► And every time I look at it, - It's beautiful.

01:15:19 ◼   ► - And then I remember how you can swipe down

01:15:21 ◼   ► to open search.

01:15:23 ◼   ► It's got all those fancy things and it's beautiful.

01:15:27 ◼   ► - Yep, I use it once or twice a month.

01:15:29 ◼   ► And every time I, cause I have, uh, whenever I post an episode of cortex,

01:15:34 ◼   ► I have a shortcut that throws a list of like 30 items into things.

01:15:41 ◼   ► Right.

01:15:42 ◼   ► Because I don't remember you explaining this to me.

01:15:45 ◼   ► Yes.

01:15:45 ◼   ► Because I don't want these tasks in OmniFocus because now I have 30

01:15:50 ◼   ► random tasks in OmniFocus and I just have one task in OmniFocus, which I

01:15:54 ◼   ► check off, which is post cortex.

01:15:56 ◼   ► But then there is a list of tiny tasks that I want to make sure I've done correct,

01:16:00 ◼   ► which is a list that just seems to keep growing over time.

01:16:03 ◼   ► And it's to make sure that I post everything just right,

01:16:06 ◼   ► because it's much more complicated than my other shows.

01:16:08 ◼   ► And I only really do it once every four weeks or six weeks or whatever.

01:16:13 ◼   ► So I want to make sure I get it just right.

01:16:15 ◼   ► So I have a shortcut that has a list of tasks that all get put in things

01:16:19 ◼   ► and they've all got headers and all that stuff.

01:16:22 ◼   ► And it's just so beautiful and so satisfying.

01:16:27 ◼   ► It is a satisfying app, yes.

01:16:29 ◼   ► I just really wished that it worked the way I work,

01:16:34 ◼   ► and it just doesn't.

01:16:36 ◼   ► Like, it wouldn't need--

01:16:38 ◼   ► like, it really wouldn't need much.

01:16:40 ◼   ► Like, two things that I would really appreciate

01:16:45 ◼   ► would be the repeating task fix and the rich link previews,

01:16:51 ◼   ► Which, by the way, I wanted to clarify, the Rich Links are an open API.

01:16:56 ◼   ► It's the link presentation framework, and every developer can use it.

01:16:59 ◼   ► It's just that the way the Reminders implements it, I think it's not exposed by default in the Event Kit framework.

01:17:07 ◼   ► But yeah, things with repeating tasks that you can check off whenever, and Rich Links instead of raw URLs.

01:17:17 ◼   ► and I will probably consider it again.

01:17:21 ◼   ► Because it's got everything else, right?

01:17:22 ◼   ► - Yeah. - It looks beautiful.

01:17:23 ◼   ► - It could do with some tidying up.

01:17:25 ◼   ► Like, there's too many containers for tasks, you know?

01:17:30 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, the areas I never fully understood.

01:17:34 ◼   ► - I think they've tidied some of that up.

01:17:36 ◼   ► I think they also could do with just some general refinement

01:17:39 ◼   ► into just adding due dates and stuff.

01:17:46 ◼   ► I think they try and be a little bit too clever

01:17:48 ◼   ► about the way that they're--

01:17:48 ◼   ► - Don't you have due dates and things?

01:17:50 ◼   ► - You do, but there's the whole,

01:17:52 ◼   ► like today, and like someday, just you know.

01:17:55 ◼   ► - Someday, like, someday I never,

01:17:59 ◼   ► I don't understand, like what is someday?

01:18:01 ◼   ► - Just delete the task, you're never gonna do it.

01:18:03 ◼   ► - Or don't put a date, like keeping in your notes app

01:18:06 ◼   ► or whatever, like it's not a,

01:18:08 ◼   ► I don't know, tasks for me are things I'm gonna do

01:18:10 ◼   ► on a specific day, and I know that you and I

01:18:13 ◼   ► think similarly of this, like each task has a date.

01:18:16 ◼   ► Otherwise it's not a task.

01:18:18 ◼   ► No, it's just an idea.

01:18:20 ◼   ► Yes.

01:18:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, yes.

01:18:24 ◼   ► You can change the date, but just set a date.

01:18:26 ◼   ► I do not enter a task.

01:18:28 ◼   ► I don't understand inbox.

01:18:31 ◼   ► You know, people that use the inbox?

01:18:34 ◼   ► Just add a date! You're at the end of the day!

01:18:38 ◼   ► Change the date if you want to.

01:18:39 ◼   ► But like the idea of just like throwing things into an inbox

01:18:42 ◼   ► and then going to them later and adding a date to them.

01:18:45 ◼   ► It just doesn't work for me.

01:18:46 ◼   ► And I know it works for people.

01:18:48 ◼   ► I know so many people that work this way.

01:18:50 ◼   ► I just can't fathom it.

01:18:52 ◼   ► How much longer does it take to add just any date?

01:18:54 ◼   ► Just set it for next week or something, whatever.

01:18:57 ◼   ► - I have a theory.

01:18:59 ◼   ► I wonder if the whole inbox thing,

01:19:02 ◼   ► and if you think about it,

01:19:05 ◼   ► at least a good portion of the whole GTD methodology

01:19:09 ◼   ► around the inbox,

01:19:12 ◼   ► I wonder if the inbox was merely a byproduct of old technology limitations at the time.

01:19:21 ◼   ► No, Federico, all of this is a byproduct of physical notecards.

01:19:26 ◼   ► But when task managers, when the physical notecards became digital task managers, I

01:19:35 ◼   ► I wonder if the inbox stuck around because it was not possible at the time to have, for example, features like

01:19:43 ◼   ► extensions

01:19:44 ◼   ► saving your tasks into a specific project.

01:19:47 ◼   ► Or into, like, it wasn't possible to have a shared extension with a list picker, or

01:19:53 ◼   ► it wasn't possible to have a digital assistant with support for

01:19:58 ◼   ► saving your task into a specific list. And so, developers came up with this approach where

01:20:05 ◼   ► where it's really simple. You just create a task and it goes into this inbox and then

01:20:09 ◼   ► you got to open the app later and process your inbox.

01:20:12 ◼   ► But like inbox in software, though, I mean, it's been an OmniFocus server that predates

01:20:17 ◼   ► any type of iPhone or anything.

01:20:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:21 ◼   ► I just think it's just a case of like following that methodology, the GTD methodology, too

01:20:27 ◼   ► closely.

01:20:28 ◼   ► But again, let's riff off the connected episode that we did about this. If the task manager

01:20:34 ◼   ► didn't exist today. And if you're like, if my Curly is inventing the very first task

01:20:40 ◼   ► manager in 2021 with the with the technology available right now, does the inbox exist?

01:20:47 ◼   ► No. Right? Just put it somewhere. Yeah. Even if you're not going to put a date on it, put

01:20:53 ◼   ► it somewhere. Yeah. I don't know. I just I fundamentally think that the inbox is a bad

01:20:59 ◼   ► idea. Remember we said at the start of the show the best way to send in feedback for

01:21:05 ◼   ► this episode is to go to relay.fm/connected and there's a button which says to contact

01:21:11 ◼   ► us and it sends an email. That is 100% categorically the very best way to send your opinions to

01:21:17 ◼   ► us. Yeah, Stephen loves it. Because Stephen will love it. He can't wait. If you think

01:21:21 ◼   ► about it, like, if you have something in your brain, like, you're keeping something in your

01:21:27 ◼   ► brain for something that you gotta do. You always associate that something with an area

01:21:33 ◼   ► of your life, right? You don't have in your brain this gray area of the inbox. Like, what

01:21:43 ◼   ► is the equivalent of the inbox in your brain? You either have things that you gotta do at

01:21:49 ◼   ► home or at the office. You have things that you gotta do for your family. Each of the

01:21:54 ◼   ► things that you gotta do has an association with an area of your life, or a time of your

01:22:00 ◼   ► day, right? You don't have that sort of unlabelled area of "oh, there's something I need to do,

01:22:09 ◼   ► but I don't exactly know why I'm doing it." It's like, what would be the equivalent of

01:22:16 ◼   ► an inbox being in your brain? Nothing. And I know people say it's just so you can quickly

01:22:22 ◼   ► enter stuff. It doesn't take that much time to add any other type of information to these

01:22:28 ◼   ► tasks, right? It really doesn't. We're saying that we love dates, but even if you don't

01:22:34 ◼   ► add dates, even if you add a tag or a project, it's not that much more mental energy. How

01:22:40 ◼   ► quickly do you need to get these ideas out? I couldn't even possibly wait for a second

01:22:45 ◼   ► longer.

01:22:46 ◼   ► I now need to sit down and enter a date.

01:22:50 ◼   ► I mean, it's not a job, it takes like two seconds.

01:22:53 ◼   ► Everything has got natural language now.

01:22:55 ◼   ► And input.

01:22:57 ◼   ► - But again, if you do this,

01:22:59 ◼   ► and you're thinking that we're wild,

01:23:01 ◼   ► I mean, not only should you send us

01:23:03 ◼   ► the email feedback as requested,

01:23:05 ◼   ► just understand that like, we don't,

01:23:08 ◼   ► we're talking here about like,

01:23:10 ◼   ► how our brains perceive this type of stuff.

01:23:12 ◼   ► - Look, you know, it's the two of us,

01:23:14 ◼   ► and we gotta do a show.

01:23:15 ◼   ► And at some point we've got to be controversial about something.

01:23:18 ◼   ► Right. Otherwise, why would you even listen?

01:23:21 ◼   ► I mean, if you listen to I mean, nobody likes when you're like, you know, I

01:23:26 ◼   ► listen to this podcast and I agree with them all the time.

01:23:29 ◼   ► Yeah. Then just talk to yourself or something like I don't know.

01:23:32 ◼   ► At some point you've got to have the spice in it.

01:23:34 ◼   ► You know, you have something that is spicy.

01:23:37 ◼   ► And this is the spice.

01:23:38 ◼   ► The inbox is the spice.

01:23:40 ◼   ► So this episode of connected is brought to you by privacy.com.

01:23:45 ◼   ► Look, we've all done the thing where we buy something online and from a website

01:23:53 ◼   ► and you're like, I'm going to give you my credit card number,

01:23:55 ◼   ► but I am scared to do so. Well,

01:23:58 ◼   ► privacy is a tool that makes it easy to manage your financial life online while

01:24:02 ◼   ► keeping your most important information secure.

01:24:05 ◼   ► See it generates virtual numbers that mask your bank information so you never

01:24:09 ◼   ► have to worry about giving it out to people that you don't know online. We've

01:24:13 ◼   ► all been through the situation where your debit card or credit card number is

01:24:18 ◼   ► stolen, maybe they've spent a bunch of money on it, you've got to work all that

01:24:21 ◼   ► out with your bank. It's a real pain. My wife and I have gone through this

01:24:24 ◼   ► several times over the years and privacy.com means that you're protected from

01:24:30 ◼   ► that type of activity while you shop online. So take back control of your

01:24:34 ◼   ► payments, decide who can charge your card, how much and how often, and you can close

01:24:39 ◼   ► a card at any time. Plus you can make sure you never accidentally bill twice

01:24:43 ◼   ► or upgraded to another service without your consent. Privacy.com is partnered

01:24:48 ◼   ► with our friends over at 1Password so you can create use and save privacy cards

01:24:53 ◼   ► directly within the 1Password application. Cards created in 1Password have the same

01:24:59 ◼   ► security benefits as other privacy cards so you can set spending limits create

01:25:03 ◼   ► single-user merchant lock cards whenever you want. So head over to privacy.com

01:25:09 ◼   ► slash connected to sign up for an account new customers will automatically get five dollars to

01:25:14 ◼   ► spend on their first purchase that's privacy.com slash connected five bucks for your first purchase

01:25:22 ◼   ► after you sign up our thanks to privacy and their support of this show and relay fm wwdc 2021

01:25:31 ◼   ► It's happening June 7 to 11 in San... No, it's online.

01:25:38 ◼   ► Isn't 7-Eleven like a thing?

01:25:39 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like a convenience store, right?

01:25:43 ◼   ► But I don't think it's got anything to do with it.

01:25:46 ◼   ► I wouldn't read too much into that.

01:25:47 ◼   ► There's a lot of stuff to read into that I don't think this is one of those things.

01:25:50 ◼   ► Okay.

01:25:51 ◼   ► So as expected, I mean, obviously this one was announced a bit later than normal because

01:25:56 ◼   ► there is no need to do anything.

01:26:00 ◼   ► It feels kind of strange to me, like, WWDC was announced and I was like, okay, I added

01:26:06 ◼   ► it to my calendar and did nothing else.

01:26:09 ◼   ► I'm still not used to that.

01:26:11 ◼   ► Cause usually WWDC gets announced and me and you need to get on the phone together and

01:26:14 ◼   ► we need to start booking, you know, it's like, it doesn't happen anymore.

01:26:19 ◼   ► All online.

01:26:20 ◼   ► It's okay.

01:26:21 ◼   ► It, this definitely isn't ever going to happen again, but we'll have other events that we

01:26:24 ◼   ► can go to together.

01:26:25 ◼   ► Wait, what?

01:26:26 ◼   ► No, don't say that.

01:26:27 ◼   ► No, don't say that.

01:26:29 ◼   ► My theory, I don't think, look, we can get to this another time.

01:26:32 ◼   ► I don't think that it's coming back to in person.

01:26:35 ◼   ► But June 7 to 11, all online, Susan Prescott, who is the new vice president of worldwide

01:26:40 ◼   ► developer relations and enterprise and education marketing, by the way, huge job title.

01:26:46 ◼   ► So Susan Prescott just took over developer relations.

01:26:51 ◼   ► I think this was a story that was reported on recently.

01:26:54 ◼   ► I think Prescott had other tasks and they've just mushed them together.

01:26:59 ◼   ► So Susan Prescott is the vice president of worldwide developer relations and

01:27:02 ◼   ► enterprise and education marketing. Susan said,

01:27:05 ◼   ► "We are working to make WWDC 21 our biggest and best yet,

01:27:09 ◼   ► and are excited to offer Apple developers new tools to support them as they

01:27:14 ◼   ► create apps that change the way we live, work, and play."

01:27:17 ◼   ► I just want to give you one of my little things as to why I think there is a

01:27:23 ◼   ► possibility of no WWDC in the future.

01:27:26 ◼   ► There is not a word in this press release, which is talking about in person.

01:27:32 ◼   ► There is no, no words about like, well, we can't be together this year.

01:27:40 ◼   ► None of that, right?

01:27:41 ◼   ► All it talks about is how successful last year's was and how this one's

01:27:46 ◼   ► going to be bigger and better.

01:27:47 ◼   ► So anyway, this is not a conversation for today.

01:27:52 ◼   ► It was my favorite time of the year. It's like they took Christmas away from me.

01:27:56 ◼   ► Well, nobody's taken anything away from you yet.

01:27:59 ◼   ► No, you're saying that they're never gonna have a physical WWDC again.

01:28:03 ◼   ► And that would be horrible.

01:28:06 ◼   ► Well, at most it will be, I think, severely shrunken down because they want to...

01:28:13 ◼   ► Look, because this... the online stuff has gone so well and they seem to be suggesting

01:28:18 ◼   ► they are going to be doing more this year for the online stuff.

01:28:22 ◼   ► Considering the response that they keep getting to it,

01:28:25 ◼   ► I think it's difficult to then be like,

01:28:27 ◼   ► you remember how we spoke about it being the most inclusive?

01:28:31 ◼   ► Now we're going back to this is only good if you can be here.

01:28:35 ◼   ► I think it's going to be tricky.

01:28:37 ◼   ► I don't know how they're going to get back from it.

01:28:39 ◼   ► And that's why I think but we'll find out anyway.

01:28:41 ◼   ► Let's not talk about that. Let's talk about other things.

01:28:43 ◼   ► So the developer app has been updated as well.

01:28:45 ◼   ► It's got some new functionality.

01:28:46 ◼   ► It looks like it's better on iPad.

01:28:48 ◼   ► I'm sure you're happy about that.

01:28:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:28:50 ◼   ► Like put the nav, look at the sidebar is in there.

01:28:52 ◼   ► Sidebar is in, shows you more stuff on the homepage.

01:28:56 ◼   ► It's really nice.

01:28:57 ◼   ► Um, the artwork, I enjoyed it very much because it's, uh,

01:29:02 ◼   ► the Federighi meme of the MacBook.

01:29:05 ◼   ► But, all right, everyone's talking about the fact that they're all wearing glasses.

01:29:08 ◼   ► So you kind of can't avoid the AR glasses thing from this.

01:29:12 ◼   ► And you've got to be sure that whoever designed this artwork

01:29:17 ◼   ► knew that this would be a thing right like there's a whole other conversation as to whether

01:29:21 ◼   ► Apple actually do bother to theme this stuff but you you know if you're going down this

01:29:27 ◼   ► route if every single one of the Memoji and all of the variations are all wearing glasses

01:29:33 ◼   ► like I know it's to show the like that what they're showing with the artwork which is

01:29:37 ◼   ► applications reflecting off of them but nevertheless everyone's now gonna talk about like is this

01:29:43 ◼   ► going to be the year where they show off AR glasses. Do you think that at WWDC 2021 we

01:29:49 ◼   ► get anything about Apple's AR products?

01:29:54 ◼   ► Well I don't think we get the glasses.

01:29:56 ◼   ► It's definitely not glasses, right? Because what we know is first is a headset. But a

01:30:00 ◼   ► headset is clearly the precursor. And I think even when Apple talk about the headset, I

01:30:05 ◼   ► think they will talk about it as a first step in this thing, right? I feel like it's going

01:30:12 ◼   ► to be spoken about as like, here is the first product we're doing in this idea or whatever.

01:30:18 ◼   ► They're not going to say, oh, we're going to have glasses in a couple of years time,

01:30:21 ◼   ► I would assume, but I could imagine them whenever they do start talking about this stuff, start

01:30:25 ◼   ► talking about it as like a new technology that they're working on. But do you think

01:30:30 ◼   ► we would get anything?

01:30:31 ◼   ► I don't think we'll get any, oh, this will age poorly, I'm sure. I don't think we'll

01:30:36 ◼   ► get any hardware at WWDC. I think we'll get a new version of ARKit. I could see Apple

01:30:44 ◼   ► doing something more on the software side with something like a dedicated AR app on

01:30:53 ◼   ► your iPhone. Like, I could see Apple maybe in the future split up the App Store and have

01:31:01 ◼   ► a dedicated AR app store that is just for AR experiences. I could see that sort of stuff.

01:31:10 ◼   ► I would be skeptical about it because we've seen how those separate app stores have gone

01:31:15 ◼   ► with the watch and with the iMessage app store.

01:31:19 ◼   ► I think they can only do something like that if they're saying, "Because we have this product

01:31:25 ◼   ► launching later in the year."

01:31:28 ◼   ► Yeah, but also is the headset ready?

01:31:30 ◼   ► That's the question.

01:31:31 ◼   ► Well, but it could be six months away and it'd be fine.

01:31:35 ◼   ► So you're thinking they could do a preview at WWDC?

01:31:37 ◼   ► Well, no, so here's what I'm going to say.

01:31:40 ◼   ► I think they will do a preview, but I do not think it's at WWDC.

01:31:46 ◼   ► I think they're going to have a separate event like they did for the Apple Watch.

01:31:53 ◼   ► That's what I think they're going to do.

01:31:55 ◼   ► I think they should do that.

01:31:57 ◼   ► I think it should be, it's gonna be the first product

01:32:02 ◼   ► in a new category of devices,

01:32:04 ◼   ► and I think it shouldn't be part of the IWC.

01:32:07 ◼   ► - I know why you would, or why people suggest it,

01:32:10 ◼   ► 'cause obviously they're gonna need developer buy-in.

01:32:11 ◼   ► - Exactly, yes.

01:32:12 ◼   ► - But you can do that at any point, right?

01:32:14 ◼   ► As long as you give them a six to eight month lead time.

01:32:18 ◼   ► Right?

01:32:19 ◼   ► - I guess what's kinda strange is

01:32:25 ◼   ► when they did the transition to Apple Silicon,

01:32:29 ◼   ► they explained to developers exactly what was gonna happen

01:32:32 ◼   ► to the software platform.

01:32:34 ◼   ► Now, hardware initially wasn't mentioned,

01:32:37 ◼   ► and then the following year they did the,

01:32:39 ◼   ► what's it called, the developer transition kit.

01:32:43 ◼   ► But in this case,

01:32:47 ◼   ► how much can you explain to developers

01:32:50 ◼   ► about the software platform

01:32:53 ◼   ► without explicitly saying, "Oh, there's going to be a headset."

01:32:57 ◼   ► But I think they can, though.

01:33:00 ◼   ► The only reason they don't talk about hardware

01:33:04 ◼   ► is when they have other hardware that is going to be killed

01:33:07 ◼   ► by the new hardware, right?

01:33:09 ◼   ► Like the Apple Watch, they showed off the Apple Watch hardware

01:33:12 ◼   ► six months before, did the same with the iPhone, same with the iPad.

01:33:15 ◼   ► Like, they could show off, if they have a product

01:33:18 ◼   ► that they're launching later on in the year

01:33:20 ◼   ► and they want to show you the developer kit,

01:33:22 ◼   ► they'll show you the hardware.

01:33:23 ◼   ► This is what we're working on.

01:33:25 ◼   ► But I think that that's not...

01:33:28 ◼   ► Personally I just think they're not going to do it at WWDC.

01:33:30 ◼   ► I think they're going to do it before or after, but I think that they will want to give it its own stage, I think.

01:33:37 ◼   ► I mean personally I even wonder if they're going to do it this year at all.

01:33:42 ◼   ► I don't know. I don't know.

01:33:47 ◼   ► Because if the headset is not launching until 2022...

01:33:51 ◼   ► I guess it depends on how long a lead time you want to have for the developers.

01:33:58 ◼   ► That's how complicated it is, I guess.

01:34:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:34:01 ◼   ► So the dates of June 7 to 11, I assume they make you feel better from the reviewing standpoint.

01:34:10 ◼   ► Yes, yes. Back to an early June schedule.

01:34:13 ◼   ► Makes me feel a lot better compared to last year when WWC started on June 22.

01:34:20 ◼   ► So yeah, I feel a lot better

01:34:22 ◼   ► It's also nice because it gives me like this

01:34:25 ◼   ► Deadline for all the things that we're doing at max stories now we know that

01:34:31 ◼   ► When we have to be ready with those things because you're doing some stuff that you want to all be done before

01:34:37 ◼   ► I want to make sure that it launches before

01:34:40 ◼   ► WDC yes for sure. I guess for your for your works, but it has to write because once WDC starts you're in review mode

01:34:47 ◼   ► So exactly working anything else?

01:34:49 ◼   ► Well, the things that we are doing, I will have to adjust, let's say, my presence.

01:34:58 ◼   ► Like I will not be able to fully disappear again, but that's like a thing that I wanted

01:35:03 ◼   ► to do anyway.

01:35:06 ◼   ► So I'm feeling a lot better and especially given, like last year was weird and difficult

01:35:15 ◼   ► in a lot of ways for me throughout the whole summer. And it took me... I haven't really

01:35:24 ◼   ► talked about it publicly, but it took me months to recover from those things. And I'm feeling

01:35:29 ◼   ► like now, if you see my name, my byline more often on Mac Stories, it's because I'm feeling

01:35:35 ◼   ► a lot better, and it's because I'm feeling the itch to write again finally, and to try

01:35:41 ◼   ► stuff, but last year, especially the second half, and going up until a few weeks ago was

01:35:47 ◼   ► super weird and, you know, challenging. But, now, I'm feeling very good about these dates

01:35:56 ◼   ► and I am thinking that given the dates, given my current mood, I don't wanna wait a month

01:36:06 ◼   ► until the new version of iOS has released to publish my review.

01:36:11 ◼   ► Like, I kind of want... I know that we talked about this before and I said,

01:36:15 ◼   ► "Oh, it's nice that I published whenever I wanted to publish and people still paid attention."

01:36:21 ◼   ► No, I mean, I kind of ignored everything you were saying and knew that you would,

01:36:25 ◼   ► if given the chance, would publish on launch day if you could.

01:36:29 ◼   ► You knew I was going to change my mind. Yeah, you called.

01:36:32 ◼   ► It is the best time to do it. You had a great success with it, but you were always going to,

01:36:37 ◼   ► but if you could choose between launch day or not, you would always choose launch day. Why wouldn't you?

01:36:42 ◼   ► So that's your plan then, right? Your plan will be start on June 8 or June 7 and publish in

01:36:51 ◼   ► September whatever when iOS comes out. Yeah, I think so. I already talked about it with Sylvia.

01:37:01 ◼   ► This thing obviously affects our plans in the summer, but who knows what our plans this summer will be?

01:37:08 ◼   ► We don't even know if we will be able to get vaccinated before September, so...

01:37:14 ◼   ► Who knows? But I like the idea of going back to, you know, start working on the review June 12,

01:37:23 ◼   ► and publish three months later in mid-September.

01:37:26 ◼   ► Because now, I also like, last year, taught me a very important lesson.

01:37:31 ◼   ► That no matter what, not even a pandemic stopped Apple from releasing a new version of iOS in mid-September.

01:37:38 ◼   ► So if the pandemic didn't stop him last year, it's never going to stop him again.

01:37:43 ◼   ► So I know this thing is launching in September.

01:37:46 ◼   ► They don't care. Like, remember last year?

01:37:50 ◼   ► They released the GM version of iOS the day before.

01:37:55 ◼   ► the public launch. And everybody was upset. But that taught me how it doesn't matter how

01:38:03 ◼   ► close they are cutting it to their mid-September deadline, they are gonna do it. And therefore,

01:38:09 ◼   ► it means my deadline is in mid-September. And it's not changing. So, I think I can make

01:38:15 ◼   ► it happen. I think I can go back to the usual schedule of a few years ago. And also, I didn't

01:38:23 ◼   ► really like stretching my work all the way to October. You know, that extra month of

01:38:30 ◼   ► work was also responsible for my problems. I didn't really like it. I mean, it was necessary,

01:38:37 ◼   ► but it's too long. It's too long. Four months is too long. Three months is enough.

01:38:43 ◼   ► Yeah, because up until WWDC there was just a lot of fratting and trying to get ready.

01:38:49 ◼   ► So you're in the mode, but this time having it start earlier, I mean, I'm happy that it's

01:38:55 ◼   ► starting earlier.

01:38:56 ◼   ► It's just going to be a better flow through the year.

01:38:58 ◼   ► Just the flow that I'm used to.

01:38:59 ◼   ► It's the flow we're all used to.

01:39:00 ◼   ► We built, you know, everything's built around it being the, this process.

01:39:06 ◼   ► And so I'm happy about it.

01:39:08 ◼   ► I know like already I'm like, okay, so I know during WWC week this year, I'm going to move

01:39:13 ◼   ► everything because last year I didn't, I tried to keep my regular schedule and add WWC on

01:39:17 ◼   ► top of it, which is a nightmare.

01:39:18 ◼   ► So for me personally, obviously I'm not dealing with anything like you are, but like, you

01:39:23 ◼   ► know, we've done this once, so we're ready to do it again, I feel like so.

01:39:30 ◼   ► Pretty good.

01:39:31 ◼   ► I'm excited.

01:39:32 ◼   ► I'm looking forward to it.

01:39:34 ◼   ► Me too.

01:39:35 ◼   ► It's um, it brings back that sense of normalcy, you know, at least for me to go to see the

01:39:44 ◼   ► in early June and now there's a rumor of a spring event and then it's WWDC time and then

01:39:49 ◼   ► I know it's coming out in September. I like it, even though things are not normal, especially

01:39:55 ◼   ► over here in Italy. They're not normal right now. But at least this thing is something

01:40:01 ◼   ► that makes me feel... it's familiar and so it feels nice.

01:40:06 ◼   ► Do you think there's going to be an event?

01:40:08 ◼   ► Oh, I think so.

01:40:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so too. I think that, you know, we were talking about 14.5 earlier.

01:40:15 ◼   ► I don't think that that's coming out until there's new products and I think that they all have an event to show them off.

01:40:20 ◼   ► I hope you're right.

01:40:20 ◼   ► You've been working on a 14.5 story, haven't you?

01:40:22 ◼   ► Yes, I have these beautiful 7,000 words about iOS 14.5 and iPadOS, of course.

01:40:31 ◼   ► Probably going to be a little more given that I gotta cover the Siri changes, but yeah, it's a...

01:40:37 ◼   ► It's sort of like a nice mini-review of a new version of iOS. It's like a chapter from a full iOS review.

01:40:47 ◼   ► And there's gonna be lots of screenshots, lots of images, lots of comparisons between before and after, you know, the whole thing.

01:40:54 ◼   ► It was fun to write that kind of in-depth story again.

01:41:03 ◼   ► I will take the extra time to edit it. Beta 6 came out today, so I know that, you know, I told you John Voorhees has been teasing me these past few days.

01:41:16 ◼   ► He's been threatening me with the idea of iOS 14.5 is gonna come out tomorrow morning and you're not ready.

01:41:25 ◼   ► More like one true meanie.

01:41:27 ◼   ► Yes. But no, the fact that we got Beta 6 today makes me feel good about the rest of the week,

01:41:36 ◼   ► which means that I can take the next few days editing the story, taking screenshots, and

01:41:40 ◼   ► then if it comes out Monday, I should be fine. But I don't think it will come out Monday.

01:41:49 ◼   ► I think that does it, Federico. Yeah, I think so too.

01:41:54 ◼   ► All right, if you would like to get in touch with us, don't forget, relight.fm/connected.

01:41:59 ◼   ► Oh yeah, we love it.

01:42:02 ◼   ► And you can send an email there. While you're there, you can also sign up for Connected

01:42:05 ◼   ► Pro, which is longer ad-free episodes of Connected every single week. If you'd like to find Federico

01:42:13 ◼   ► online, go to maxstories.net and he is @Vittici, V-I-T-I-C-C-I. I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E. And

01:42:21 ◼   ► and Steven is @ismh on Twitter, but don't forget, he loves email.

01:42:26 ◼   ► I am going to ask you a question, Myke.

01:42:28 ◼   ► Oh, great, keeping up with the tradition.

01:42:30 ◼   ► Because last time Steve wasn't here, I flipped the roles and I asked you the question.

01:42:35 ◼   ► So I think, let's say, I want to ask you something about your job.

01:42:42 ◼   ► My question for you, Myke, is if you could change one thing about your job, what would

01:42:50 ◼   ► it be? I feel like I have too many things on my calendar. So I was... Well it's

01:43:05 ◼   ► either lots of recordings in the same intervals or lots of meetings and stuff

01:43:10 ◼   ► and so sometimes I look at my calendar and I'm like oh man look how much stuff

01:43:18 ◼   ► is on this calendar. I think I would like to have more kind of unstructured time in

01:43:28 ◼   ► my calendar. I think that's the biggest thing that I would like. To have fewer things that

01:43:35 ◼   ► are all going to happen at set times, I think I would prefer that. A little bit less kind

01:43:41 ◼   ► of rigid structure in my calendar. Because even though it's not like an overabundance

01:43:46 ◼   ► of things. It's not like I'm back to back meetings all the time constantly, but having all of those

01:43:52 ◼   ► things there feel like I have too much mental load rather than actual time load and I just think

01:44:03 ◼   ► that's just like a thing that I've been trying to think about recently as to how I could change that

01:44:08 ◼   ► to reduce the amount of stuff that I have on my calendar. Steven, you hear that? Your boy wants

01:44:15 ◼   ► fewer Zoom calls. To be fair, we're actually pretty good on each other with that. We have,

01:44:21 ◼   ► me and Steven only have one call on Mondays. Oh, that's nice. That's cool. And then everything

01:44:28 ◼   ► else is just dealt with via text and Slack. But we have our Monday morning stand up as

01:44:35 ◼   ► it's called. So fancy. And then that usually dovetails into recording either backstage

01:44:40 ◼   ► or ungeniused as well. So like every couple of weeks we do one of those, but then every

01:44:45 ◼   ► other like in the off weeks it's just that meeting. But I would like less stuff on my

01:44:51 ◼   ► calendar. That's what I would change if I could. Thanks for listening to this week's

01:44:56 ◼   ► episode of Connected. Until next time, say goodbye Federico.

01:45:01 ◼   ► Arrivederci. Cheerio.

01:45:03 ◼   ► Before you go, it's me, your friend Steven again. I'm not on the show this week, but

01:45:07 ◼   ► I want to tell you about another show on relay. I think you're really going to enjoy and that's top four

01:45:12 ◼   ► Tiff and Marco can make a top four list out of anything if you look at the archives of this show

01:45:18 ◼   ► They have ranked some amazing things like different brands of bottle of water and hot and cold

01:45:25 ◼   ► Starbucks drinks and lettuces. It's not all food, but the food ones are my favorite it is

01:45:32 ◼   ► Delightful and infuriating all at the same time so you can check it out at relay.fm/top4

01:45:37 ◼   ► or search for top4 wherever you get your podcast and I'll see you next week