Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Connected, episode 338.

00:00:13 ◼   ► It is made possible by our sponsors,

00:00:16 ◼   ► Pingdom, ExpressVPN, and Delete.me.

00:00:19 ◼   ► My name is Stephen Hackett and it is an even episode,

00:00:22 ◼   ► so I get to introduce my friend Federico Vatici first.

00:00:26 ◼   ► - Hello, hi, how are you?

00:00:27 ◼   ► - I'm good, how are you?

00:00:29 ◼   ► I'm fine. Well, I'm upset about something, but I'm also fine at the same time.

00:00:33 ◼   ► You can be both upset and fine if you, you know, if you try and, you know,

00:00:38 ◼   ► people can separate feelings.

00:00:39 ◼   ► Interesting. Maybe if you weren't upset, you'd be good,

00:00:42 ◼   ► but because you're upset, you're fine.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Then I'm upset and good. Like I can, you know,

00:00:47 ◼   ► put the upset feeling in a little drawer and then when I think about it,

00:00:51 ◼   ► I get upset, but otherwise I'm good.

00:00:53 ◼   ► Oh, I'm going to take the upset feeling and put it in a drawer.

00:00:56 ◼   ► I'm gonna push it deep deep down in the drawer lock the drawer and I'll be fine

00:01:00 ◼   ► Myke how are you? I'm I'm both good and fine

00:01:12 ◼   ► Perfect. So no problems here got your emotion and jars on a shelf you go pick one up

00:01:17 ◼   ► Examine it. Mm-hmm. Put it back. We should start the show with follow-up and not feelings

00:01:23 ◼   ► Although this follow-up item is about feelings. Okay. I've been running the iOS 14.5 beta

00:01:29 ◼   ► I don't remember why I put the beta on because I haven't put the beta on the Apple watch

00:01:36 ◼   ► which I don't wear to unlock it with a

00:01:39 ◼   ► Face-mask thing so I don't I don't I just realized I got I'm not sure why I'm running the beta anyways

00:01:44 ◼   ► I have the beta on my phone, and I've got I listen to Apple music

00:01:48 ◼   ► I've got an Apple music account, but I have Spotify installed and

00:01:51 ◼   ► I've gotten just really exhausted of

00:01:54 ◼   ► Siri via CarPlay asking me

00:01:58 ◼   ► What music service would you like to play that album on?

00:02:01 ◼   ► And so I why do you don't you like your assistant to be intelligent?

00:02:06 ◼   ► I would like my assistant to have a setting and I could just pick and so I have uninstalled Spotify for my phone

00:02:12 ◼   ► To keep it from asking me

00:02:14 ◼   ► This reminded me. I think it stopped or maybe after like five years mine has finally learned

00:02:20 ◼   ► but HomePod Siri has this deal like hey, you know, tell me the news and

00:02:25 ◼   ► This is the news from I just said to NPR

00:02:29 ◼   ► I said if you want I can also play news from Fox or whoever else

00:02:34 ◼   ► It's like I don't need you to tell me every single time that I can change the news source

00:02:39 ◼   ► Like if you just had a setting like the Amazon voice assistant does I could just say when I ask for the news

00:02:45 ◼   ► Pull it from this source. I don't want to hear about these other ones

00:02:48 ◼   ► it's just I don't know why Apple all of a sudden is allergic to having this as a setting and

00:02:52 ◼   ► So anyways, I did what Apple wanted. I rage uninstalled Spotify. So you win

00:02:58 ◼   ► That is what they wanted

00:03:01 ◼   ► You're playing the game now. Yes

00:03:03 ◼   ► well, I

00:03:05 ◼   ► Can we talked about this a few episodes ago?

00:03:08 ◼   ► I can I continue to confirm and I wrote this in the in my story that will be out

00:03:13 ◼   ► I'm working on the story like a it's not a review but it's like a this sort of

00:03:18 ◼   ► an overview about 14.5, which I usually don't do because I'm usually exhausted after my

00:03:25 ◼   ► annual reviews. But this update felt like I really wanted to write about it. And so

00:03:30 ◼   ► I'm writing about it.

00:03:31 ◼   ► It's been a while too, though.

00:03:33 ◼   ► It's been a while. And so I can kind of, you know, get a little like writing exercise done.

00:03:37 ◼   ► It's fine. It's good for me. And I've read in the story, like, I can confirm that it's

00:03:42 ◼   ► been over two months that I've been using 14.5, I didn't see any further prompts to

00:03:51 ◼   ► pick a different music service. And I've tried a bunch of things. I've also tried the method

00:03:56 ◼   ► suggested in the "clarification" that Apple sent to TechCrunch, like, hey, when you ask

00:04:02 ◼   ► for playing a playlist or a radio station to a different app, and you specify, like,

00:04:08 ◼   ► Pandora or in Spotify, Siri may prompt you again. But nope, I don't get those prompts.

00:04:16 ◼   ► Like I chose Spotify months ago and it's stuck with that. So I don't know, man. Maybe only

00:04:24 ◼   ► CarPlay Siri is the intelligent one and the one on the phone is like a small brain. CarPlay

00:04:29 ◼   ► Siri is big brain, you know, having all those prompts.

00:04:32 ◼   ► Maybe it's actually the opposite and like they just haven't properly got this set and

00:04:37 ◼   ► running for the CarPlay version. Is that even possible? I don't know.

00:04:44 ◼   ► It's impossible to tell, right? Because obviously there's no page in Settings.

00:04:48 ◼   ► It's like everything is invisible here. And it's so strange how the whole

00:04:55 ◼   ► thing is... Like, I get it. The idea of a default... Again, we talked about this

00:05:02 ◼   ► a while back, the idea of a default for audio is essentially different from browsers and

00:05:10 ◼   ► email clients. If anything, because browsers and email clients, they have a consistent

00:05:17 ◼   ► URL scheme that you can use to launch them. It's HTTP for browsers and Mailto for emails.

00:05:25 ◼   ► There's no such thing as a URL scheme for audio. There's no unified linking system for

00:05:31 ◼   ► podcasts, right? So obviously the idea of what's a default, it mostly involves Siri.

00:05:39 ◼   ► So I get it, why you're asking Siri, "Hey, I want to listen to music via Spotify." Like,

00:05:44 ◼   ► makes sense. But it's the whole idea of that request is invisible. It only exists within

00:05:53 ◼   ► the memory of Siri. There's no proof of it in settings. And the whole thing is weird.

00:06:00 ◼   ► I still... like I understand... I can read Apple's glorification.

00:06:05 ◼   ► I can even understand it to an extent. I still disagree with it. I still think it doesn't make a lot of sense.

00:06:12 ◼   ► In your article, you linked to something about what Spotify are doing.

00:06:17 ◼   ► And I just wanted to just make reference to it here, that you seem to be very happy using Spotify for your podcast listening.

00:06:25 ◼   ► It's one of those things that you can admit that you're liking, but also you can feel

00:06:30 ◼   ► bad about it at the same time instead of like eating too much chocolate. Yes. So I, I, I'm

00:06:38 ◼   ► liking it. Like I was just listening to you and Grey Myke and catching up on cortex and

00:06:43 ◼   ► it's like this morning I was finally listening to the new Obama and Bruce Springsteen Spotify

00:06:51 ◼   ► original show. It's actually really nice. It's a couple of days. Just chillin. Yeah.

00:07:00 ◼   ► I mean, it's Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen. I mean, it's actually talk about serious stuff

00:07:05 ◼   ► too. I don't know. I like it. I like the idea of you open the Spotify app and in the single

00:07:12 ◼   ► home page you have both kinds of audio. Now I get it. This is either something that you

00:07:17 ◼   ► love or something that you hate. Yesterday on Twitter, I got a lot of people saying this

00:07:23 ◼   ► is exactly why I switched from Spotify to Apple Music, because I was tired of Spotify

00:07:31 ◼   ► pushing too aggressively these podcasts that I don't really want on the homepage, because

00:07:36 ◼   ► all I want is music. And I totally get it. I totally understand. On the other hand, I

00:07:40 ◼   ► also got replies from people saying something along the lines of, "That is my favorite thing

00:07:46 ◼   ► about Spotify having access to both kinds of audio so that no matter like when I know

00:07:51 ◼   ► that I want to listen to something I can choose from the same app or even I can have a queue

00:07:58 ◼   ► of audio that mixes and matches both music and podcasts so that if I want to go out for

00:08:04 ◼   ► a walk or out for a run I can have like 10 minutes of a short podcast and then some music

00:08:09 ◼   ► and then another interview. So I think it's something that you either like or fundamentally

00:08:14 ◼   ► dislike. I'm liking it so far. And I know there's always those people that ask me, "How

00:08:20 ◼   ► can you live without chapter markers?" And you know, all those, like, I totally understand.

00:08:27 ◼   ► A lot of people are really serious about their podcast listening habits. They want to have

00:08:30 ◼   ► all kinds of controls. Me personally, I never use chapters. And all I do is I hit play.

00:08:38 ◼   ► And if my girlfriend is talking to me, I press pause. I don't skip around. I don't use

00:08:44 ◼   ► chapters I don't open show notes like I just listen to the audio and it's fine

00:08:51 ◼   ► people could do as they please but just like for me personally I just

00:08:55 ◼   ► diametrically opposed to the idea of thinking I want to listen to audio right

00:09:01 ◼   ► like oh I would like audio let me open my audio app and then what kind of audio

00:09:05 ◼   ► would I like would I like music or podcasts like my brain doesn't think

00:09:08 ◼   ► that way okay you know I just I think like I want to listen to a podcast so I

00:09:12 ◼   ► open my podcast app, you know what I mean? And I'm not saying one is right or one is

00:09:16 ◼   ► wrong. This is just a preference thing. But it's like, as you mentioned, like, you know,

00:09:20 ◼   ► I, you know, I open up Spotify and I choose what I like to listen to. I'm never in that.

00:09:24 ◼   ► Like it's, I either want music or I want a podcast. Like I, I would never choose one

00:09:30 ◼   ► or the other because I was prompted. Like I always know what I want before I start the

00:09:36 ◼   ► process.

00:09:37 ◼   ► All right. And I guess that's really what we're, what we're different maybe because

00:09:40 ◼   ► So I, like, there's many times during the day, like when I'm washing the dishes, for

00:09:46 ◼   ► example, and I'm like, I want to have something in the background because I'm not interested

00:09:50 ◼   ► in what's on TV, for example.

00:09:52 ◼   ► And I'm like, I just want to have some stuff going on.

00:09:56 ◼   ► And then I open Spotify, and I guess what I like is, because of the recommendations,

00:10:01 ◼   ► I don't have to make a decision.

00:10:03 ◼   ► And I think the older I get, the more I appreciate stuff that removes decisions from my life.

00:10:10 ◼   ► having to make decisions all the time. And so it's like I open it and it's like,

00:10:14 ◼   ► "Hey dude, here's a podcast, here's a music you could like." And I appreciate that.

00:10:19 ◼   ► That it's like, "Oh, you're making it easy for me to play something." So, but I

00:10:25 ◼   ► totally understand why a lot of people don't like it. I also feel like, podcast

00:10:31 ◼   ► aside, what Spotify is doing on the homepage is a lot more interesting than

00:10:37 ◼   ► what Apple is doing in the "Listen Now" tab. What they're doing with the... they have

00:10:43 ◼   ► this update coming out this month. They're adding new sections to the home

00:10:47 ◼   ► page. They're adding three months of your recent listening activity. They have

00:10:55 ◼   ► sections for playlists made for you. They can push new releases from your favorite

00:11:02 ◼   ► artists to the top of the page. Like, it's a lot more dynamic, it's a lot more

00:11:06 ◼   ► personalized than what Apple is doing with the ListenNow page, and as I wrote

00:11:11 ◼   ► in my iOS 14 review last year, I'm not a fan of how they changed

00:11:19 ◼   ► the ListenNow page in iOS 14. I think it's a regression from what it used to

00:11:23 ◼   ► be, and it's also the speed of it, like the performance of it. The Spotify

00:11:32 ◼   ► app is really fast, both when you open different sections and when you search, and Apple Music

00:11:37 ◼   ► is... you get that two-second delay when you first open ListenNow or when you search for

00:11:44 ◼   ► stuff, and once you try Spotify you can really see the difference. On the other hand, real-time

00:11:51 ◼   ► lyrics, man, those are super nice in Apple Music, and they're gonna get even better in

00:11:55 ◼   ► 14.5. So I'm still very much in the face of liking Spotify more and more. There's a few

00:12:03 ◼   ► things from Apple Music that I really, really do miss. But I don't know, I think this is

00:12:09 ◼   ► good for me. The whole "let's try Spotify out for a year and see what happens". I recommend

00:12:15 ◼   ► it as an experiment if you're curious about what's going on on the other side. It's really

00:12:21 ◼   ► eye-opening. I could get on board maybe for music but there's just stuff that

00:12:26 ◼   ► they don't support for podcasts that I'm just never gonna be able to reconcile

00:12:31 ◼   ► like I want show notes okay right you know and like you don't know everyone

00:12:36 ◼   ► has to want them I do and they just don't support that you know this stuff

00:12:41 ◼   ► like I wish they would support chapters and chapter images but I can get on

00:12:45 ◼   ► board with them not having that you know like whatever like I would like that but

00:12:49 ◼   ► to me show notes is like super important I like it I like having links the types

00:12:53 ◼   ► of podcasts that I listen to typically have very good show notes so I just I

00:12:57 ◼   ► want that and they just don't have any of that stuff and frankly I don't

00:13:01 ◼   ► understand why like I don't know why they're not supporting any of this stuff

00:13:05 ◼   ► but they're just not. Apple has killed some more computers off they keep to

00:13:11 ◼   ► keep doing this last week some of the 21 and a half inch iMacs they're also for

00:13:19 ◼   ► sale but the options are more limited you can now only get them with a 256 SSD

00:13:24 ◼   ► or one terabyte fusion drive the other options are all gone so simplifying that

00:13:29 ◼   ► lineup it's a not a good time to buy one of those iMacs don't don't buy one of

00:13:35 ◼   ► them and the iMac Pro is completely yeah they that went way faster than I thought

00:13:40 ◼   ► it would it was for sale while supplies last and I guess they had like six of

00:13:44 ◼   ► them in a warehouse and that was it. Someone bought more. Mm-hmm. How fast

00:13:49 ◼   ► that happened it kind of feels pointless to even take that intermediate

00:13:53 ◼   ► step now like in hindsight like you should just got just gone right just

00:13:58 ◼   ► like straight out forget about it because it was like six days from while

00:14:04 ◼   ► supplies last to we don't this is if this product never existed like there

00:14:08 ◼   ► isn't even a product page for it on the website anymore so I think it may as

00:14:11 ◼   ► I've just gone straight to step B, but yeah, yeah, maybe they just wanted to give you know, those people one last shot

00:14:17 ◼   ► Very strange much chance. Did you to make your decision if you wanted to buy it?

00:14:22 ◼   ► Maybe you just want like a cool gray Intel computer. Okay

00:14:27 ◼   ► IOS 14.5 continues to be in beta

00:14:31 ◼   ► developers got beta 5

00:14:34 ◼   ► What was it earlier this week? It was yesterday. Yes yesterday and

00:14:39 ◼   ► There are some secrets in this beta

00:14:42 ◼   ► according to Mac rumors Beta 5 has reference to an

00:14:48 ◼   ► a14x chip

00:14:50 ◼   ► Which we have not seen

00:14:52 ◼   ► and that is believed to go into a

00:14:55 ◼   ► Next generation iPad Pro which seems like should be out any time now. I

00:15:01 ◼   ► Mean at this point it seems like 14.5 is just waiting on

00:15:07 ◼   ► New hardware and then it'll it'll come out although we're gonna talk in a minute about some other things they've done in that beta

00:15:12 ◼   ► But it sure seems like there's a lot of evidence pointing to this new iPad being being here pretty soon. I hope so

00:15:20 ◼   ► This beta also changed some of the language around the Apple TV remote

00:15:26 ◼   ► So it removes reference of the seer remote replacing it with Apple TV remote

00:15:32 ◼   ► I guess someone did like a find and replace across the project

00:15:35 ◼   ► It also changes the home button name to the TV button.

00:15:40 ◼   ► So the Apple TV remote has menu and the next to it,

00:15:47 ◼   ► it looks like a TV.

00:15:48 ◼   ► And for a while that would take you home

00:15:51 ◼   ► and you can make it go to your TV app

00:15:54 ◼   ► back when Apple thought that's what everybody wanted to do.

00:15:57 ◼   ► And they've renamed that from the home button

00:15:59 ◼   ► to the TV button in tvOS 14.5.

00:16:04 ◼   ► So some tweaks to those names.

00:16:05 ◼   ► I don't know if this actually means anything,

00:16:07 ◼   ► but it's interesting.

00:16:09 ◼   ► - It should mean that they're getting rid

00:16:11 ◼   ► of that stupid device.

00:16:12 ◼   ► It's honestly like the worst accessory

00:16:14 ◼   ► that Apple ever designed.

00:16:16 ◼   ► Silvia found out two days ago, two days ago.

00:16:20 ◼   ► So the Apple TV, so this current version of the Apple TV

00:16:23 ◼   ► with the Siri remote and everything,

00:16:25 ◼   ► how long has it existed?

00:16:26 ◼   ► 2014?

00:16:31 ◼   ► When did the first version of the Apple TV

00:16:33 ◼   ► to your remote come out? Let me look. You should know about this stuff. I want to say 2013, 2014 maybe.

00:16:39 ◼   ► It was in 2015. Okay, so 2015. So for almost six years, Sylvia and I, we have watched TV with the

00:16:49 ◼   ► Apple TV. She just found out two days ago that you can swipe on the remote. It supports touch controls.

00:16:57 ◼   ► So was she tapping? I don't know what she was doing. How was she moving around? Well, you can tap on the

00:17:03 ◼   ► edges. Here's the thing. I am pretty sure that she tried to use it a while back, one

00:17:08 ◼   ► of those times when I was at WWDC, and she couldn't get it to work. And I believe that

00:17:14 ◼   ► she kept using the Apple TV in two ways, either from the iPhone with the virtual remote, or

00:17:21 ◼   ► with our regular TV remote, because a regular TV remote, it can also control the Apple TV

00:17:27 ◼   ► UI. And so, and I was like, don't you know how to use an Apple TV remote? And I was like,

00:17:32 ◼   ► You gotta swipe and control via touch."

00:17:35 ◼   ► And she was looking at it, like, "Where am I supposed to touch this?

00:17:39 ◼   ► Don't you see the touchpad?"

00:17:40 ◼   ► It's like a solid 30 seconds of just trying to figure out how the Siri remote worked.

00:17:46 ◼   ► And like, she's not wrong.

00:17:48 ◼   ► Like I get it.

00:17:49 ◼   ► It's a stupid remote.

00:17:51 ◼   ► It's not intuitive at all.

00:17:52 ◼   ► It's bad.

00:17:55 ◼   ► If there were trophies for things you hate the most in the world, I would give number

00:18:01 ◼   ► one price to the Siri remote. Like, it's honestly an object that I fundamentally hate. And,

00:18:08 ◼   ► I mean, I threw one in the trash and I sent you guys video proof of it.

00:18:12 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I remember when you did that.

00:18:15 ◼   ► Honestly, whoever designed the Siri remote should feel bad about the stress and anxiety

00:18:20 ◼   ► they caused in people trying to understand that remote. And, like, I forgive you, but

00:18:26 ◼   ► you should still feel bad about that design.

00:18:28 ◼   ► macOS Big Sur has a corresponding beta 11.3 beta 5 is out as well.

00:18:35 ◼   ► It also contains strings for new hardware iMac 21 comma 1 and 21 comma 2.

00:18:43 ◼   ► So these are models that are not out.

00:18:46 ◼   ► Assumably these would be Apple Silicon iMacs.

00:18:50 ◼   ► I can't imagine there's going to be a new Intel iMac ever again.

00:18:53 ◼   ► And so you know with the iMac Pro and now the low-end iMac either being dropped or sort

00:18:58 ◼   ► of trimmed down. Maybe this is close as well. I really hope we don't have to wait to WVDC.

00:19:05 ◼   ► We may have to, but new Macs are coming too, guys.

00:19:07 ◼   ► Are you guys going to buy this new Apple Silicon iMacs?

00:19:11 ◼   ► Probably not.

00:19:12 ◼   ► Okay. Just to get an idea of what computers are you both waiting for?

00:19:17 ◼   ► I want a replacement for my iMac Pro.

00:19:20 ◼   ► Okay.

00:19:21 ◼   ► Which is probably not going to be the first iMac. Because I would expect, and let's say

00:19:28 ◼   ► surprise us, I expect the first iMacs will have M1 chips in them and then there will

00:19:35 ◼   ► be a second generation chip which will power the MacBook Pro and possibly a more powerful

00:19:41 ◼   ► iMac. That's what I'm waiting for. Or, depending on when they release that, if there's any

00:19:46 ◼   ► more rumblings of this tiny Mac Pro, I'm also intrigued about that. So, I haven't... basically

00:19:53 ◼   ► I want something, I do want something to replace my iMac Pro.

00:19:57 ◼   ► That is Apple Silicon, obviously.

00:20:00 ◼   ► And I'm just, I haven't made my mind up yet about what route I would prefer to go down.

00:20:04 ◼   ► If they showed them to me at the same time, even without seeing them, I would probably

00:20:08 ◼   ► want to get the little small Mac Pro.

00:20:11 ◼   ► But we'll have to wait and see on that.

00:20:13 ◼   ► But the first round of iMacs, I can't imagine that that's something that I would want to

00:20:20 ◼   ► replace this machine.

00:20:21 ◼   ► Even though I'm sure it'll be great and I'll be lusting after it if it has a new, fantastic

00:20:25 ◼   ► design, it will be probably giving me in some areas, if it's anything close to the M1 in

00:20:32 ◼   ► the iMac Pro, similar performance in a lot of areas to what my iMac Pro can do, which

00:20:39 ◼   ► is fantastic, obviously, for those machines, but doesn't make it a compelling upgrade for

00:20:44 ◼   ► me.

00:20:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't have a place for an iMac, really, in my life.

00:20:48 ◼   ► For a while Mary used one, but she's got the M1 MacBook Air and she likes having a notebook

00:20:54 ◼   ► and then when she's at her desk, she uses it in clamshell mode with the LG 4k ultra

00:20:59 ◼   ► fine.

00:21:00 ◼   ► And so she's set.

00:21:02 ◼   ► I don't need it.

00:21:03 ◼   ► I definitely gonna see what Apple silicon Mac Pro looks like and go from there.

00:21:10 ◼   ► I mean, I'm happy with my Intel one, I'm going to continue to run it for a long time.

00:21:14 ◼   ► But when it is time to replace it, if there is an Apple Silicon Mac Pro that I can put

00:21:19 ◼   ► drives in and put cards in, then I would do that.

00:21:22 ◼   ► If the Mac Pro isn't that, if it's not expandable in some way, then I could see myself going

00:21:27 ◼   ► back to an iMac.

00:21:28 ◼   ► But I really enjoy having a bunch of storage and a bunch of other stuff inside my computer.

00:21:35 ◼   ► And so I want to see what that story is before I would make any decisions.

00:21:39 ◼   ► Federico, are you still using the studio dock with the iPad?

00:21:42 ◼   ► Yes, I'm very much liking it. It's still... that's how I worked all week, that's how I've been writing all week.

00:21:49 ◼   ► I continue to believe that I want to free up more space on my desk.

00:21:56 ◼   ► Right now I've just been putting the Mac Mini Magic Keyboard and the Mac Mini Magic Trackpad in a drawer when the Mac Mini is turned off.

00:22:05 ◼   ► But I also... I kind of want to also put the Mac Mini itself under the desk,

00:22:12 ◼   ► try to figure out a better space optimization for it.

00:22:15 ◼   ► I know that there's people who have been using VESA mounts and different strategies.

00:22:20 ◼   ► Just a bunch of Velcro, man.

00:22:22 ◼   ► I mean, it's got to be a lot of Velcro, man.

00:22:26 ◼   ► Yeah, strong Velcro. Have you ever heard of Command Strips?

00:22:29 ◼   ► They're really strong Velcro, basically.

00:22:31 ◼   ► You should just throw a bunch of those on the top of it, stick it under the desk,

00:22:35 ◼   ► or stick it to the back of the monitor, you know, go wild.

00:22:38 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe.

00:22:39 ◼   ► I want to think of ways to free up more space on my desk, but also like, I don't know, we're

00:22:43 ◼   ► going to move eventually, so maybe I shouldn't do too many modifications to my existing setup.

00:22:48 ◼   ► I don't know, we'll see.

00:22:50 ◼   ► Right now, I have a complaint to share with the com- I have a complaint with the company.

00:22:56 ◼   ► So I want to complain to the company named Satechi that because they made a really attractive

00:23:03 ◼   ► Bluetooth keyboard and I want to give them my money but that keyboard is sold

00:23:08 ◼   ► out everywhere so they have this keyboard that 9to5Mac recently reviewed

00:23:13 ◼   ► I also got some comments from Maxories readers who were able to get one

00:23:17 ◼   ► it's called the Satechi Slim X1 it looks like a magic keyboard it looks like a

00:23:22 ◼   ► compact magic keyboard but it's space grey and it supports multi-device

00:23:28 ◼   ► pairing which is all I want like for the longest time all I wanted was a compact

00:23:33 ◼   ► Magic keyboard, not the extended one that, you know, Apple sells with the NumericPad.

00:23:42 ◼   ► It's the only one available in Space Gray. I want a Compact Magic keyboard that is Space

00:23:47 ◼   ► Gray and supports multi-device pairing. And the SLEEMAX one does all that, and it's also

00:23:54 ◼   ► backlit. So, I really want that keyboard, but it's sold out everywhere. I also tried,

00:24:01 ◼   ► on the Satechi website, on Amazon.com, Amazon Italy, Amazon UK, and Amazon Germany. Because

00:24:06 ◼   ► sometimes when I try and be very clever about "Oh, something is not available on Amazon

00:24:13 ◼   ► Italy, I guess the Germans have it." But no, it's not even on Amazon Germany. So I'm really

00:24:19 ◼   ► upset. I mean, I'm joking, but I'm annoyed that this compa- I mean, congrats to them

00:24:23 ◼   ► for selling out this keyboard, but I also want to give them my money, and currently

00:24:30 ◼   ► my money has not left my credit card because it's sold out. But has it actually ever been

00:24:36 ◼   ► available? Because sometimes this happens, right? Like 9to5Mac or Fubo product? Okay,

00:24:41 ◼   ► people have it, okay. Because you know, you see this, it's like, here's this new Belkin

00:24:45 ◼   ► charger, it's not available, right? They're not selling it yet for like a month, you know.

00:24:49 ◼   ► But okay, if people have it then... Let's try again, sateci.net, yeah, out of stock,

00:24:54 ◼   ► you see? Yeah, and I was just looking on Amazon in the UK for you and they don't have it either.

00:24:58 ◼   ► I really want this keyboard because that means I can get rid of a bunch of stuff, I don't

00:25:04 ◼   ► have to put my Magic Keyboard in a drawer anymore, I can just have a single keyboard

00:25:10 ◼   ► that looks good, and that can switch between the Mac Mini and the iPad Pro.

00:25:16 ◼   ► But yes, to go back to your question, Steven, I'm still using the Studio Doc, and I really

00:25:19 ◼   ► like it, but I want to see, of course, what happens with the new iPad Pro.

00:25:25 ◼   ► Hopefully it'll still be compatible.

00:25:28 ◼   ► kidding. This episode of Connected is brought to you by Pingdom. You out there

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00:26:35 ◼   ► code connected at checkout to get a huge 30% off your first invoice. Our thanks to

00:26:41 ◼   ► Pingdom from SolarWinds for the support of the show and Relay FM. Last week we

00:26:47 ◼   ► had a conversation I really enjoyed about things Apple would not do if the

00:26:56 ◼   ► iPhone was starting today and it was and again I would once again like to

00:27:01 ◼   ► commend Federico for coming up with that fantastic topic for last week. In this

00:27:05 ◼   ► topic there is a great foreshadowing.

00:27:10 ◼   ► Among Shortcuts power users we all know that the iCloud.com link you can actually

00:27:17 ◼   ► reverse engineer and look at the API that puts together the shared shortcut.

00:27:21 ◼   ► That is how I can extract things like the icon that a shortcut uses from the

00:27:29 ◼   ► iCloud.com link because if you call on the right web API you can get a bunch of

00:27:35 ◼   ► information, a bunch of details about the shortcut itself. So like I'm pretty sure

00:27:39 ◼   ► that Apple doesn't like it. Sometimes you say things on this show that I wish for

00:27:46 ◼   ► your own sake you didn't say, that's one of them. If you like that you can do that,

00:27:53 ◼   ► you shouldn't say it.

00:27:54 ◼   ► We all know it. I just kind of like to steer the pot and see what happens. So here am I

00:28:03 ◼   ► steering and steering and seeing what happens.

00:28:06 ◼   ► So you have just heard Federico talk about Shortcuts Links and I suggest to Federico

00:28:14 ◼   ► that he is potentially harming himself by talking about these things.

00:28:18 ◼   ► Seven days later, all shortcut links are dead. Can you explain what's going on, Federico?

00:28:27 ◼   ► I woke up this morning, got my phone, checked my Twitter replies, and there was a person saying,

00:28:33 ◼   ► "Hey, do you know why I can't seem to install your Apple Frames shortcut anymore? I go to the link

00:28:40 ◼   ► and it gives me this error." And I was like, "Well, that's weird."

00:28:44 ◼   ► My first thought was that finally Apple got me, and they

00:28:49 ◼   ► manually killed the Apple Frames shortcut on their servers, because maybe they didn't like the fact that I was using their

00:28:57 ◼   ► graphical assets for Apple Frames, which was weird, because I knew that there's people at Apple who actually use Apple Frames,

00:29:04 ◼   ► but I thought, you know, maybe they're changing PR people around. They don't want Apple Frames to be around anymore.

00:29:10 ◼   ► So I just thought that it was an isolated issue

00:29:13 ◼   ► Just about Apple frames and I created a reminder in my task manager saying fix this later

00:29:20 ◼   ► Then a couple of hours later

00:29:22 ◼   ► Somebody told me are you aware of this thing where all shortcuts links ever

00:29:29 ◼   ► Created have been dead since yesterday after iOS 14.5 beta 5

00:29:36 ◼   ► Came out and so here's what's going on

00:29:39 ◼   ► on. Something happened on Apple's iCloud.com servers yesterday, and all iCloud.com links

00:29:48 ◼   ► for shortcuts ever, ever created from the very first version of shortcuts, up until

00:29:54 ◼   ► some point yesterday, Tuesday, March 23rd, all those links are currently dead. They return

00:30:03 ◼   ► a 404 error saying that the shortcut does not exist anymore.

00:30:07 ◼   ► it says on the iPhone, "Shortcut not found. The shortcut link may be invalid or it may

00:30:12 ◼   ► have been deleted."

00:30:14 ◼   ► In addition to that, I'm not sure when this change happened, but for a long time, so Shortcuts

00:30:22 ◼   ► before it was called Shortcuts used to be Workflow. And Apple bought Workflow, kept

00:30:28 ◼   ► it on the App Store for a year, and then it relaunched as Shortcuts. But for the longest

00:30:33 ◼   ► time, Apple kept those old workflow links working. So in workflow, you could also share

00:30:42 ◼   ► your workflows, and they were uploaded to the workflow servers, and they had a workflow.is.is

00:30:50 ◼   ► URL. For a long time, Apple automatically redirected those workflow links to iCloud.com

00:30:59 ◼   ► links. And that was a really great gesture to cap compatibility with those workflows.

00:31:04 ◼   ► Now, I'm not sure when this happened, but those workflow links are also dead. They do not redirect

00:31:10 ◼   ► to iCloud anymore. But I'm not sure this happened yesterday. It may have happened a while back,

00:31:17 ◼   ► I just wanted to mention it because I think it's important to be complete about this.

00:31:23 ◼   ► In any case, the main issue is all shortcuts links created from 2018 until yesterday,

00:31:30 ◼   ► so three years of shortcuts links, are at the moment of recording this down,

00:31:36 ◼   ► and they've been completely wiped out. Now, last week in our section I mentioned how,

00:31:43 ◼   ► for a variety of reasons, I believe that Apple doesn't exactly love the idea of people sharing

00:31:49 ◼   ► shortcuts with one another. And I also mentioned how, and you didn't want me to

00:31:55 ◼   ► talk about it, Myke, how you can look up shortcuts metadata on Apple servers by

00:32:02 ◼   ► using a specific API call. They have a records API that you can use to look up

00:32:08 ◼   ► stuff like the icon and the glyph and the color of shortcuts, the creation date,

00:32:14 ◼   ► stuff like that. Now, this morning when I noticed that all shortcuts links were

00:32:21 ◼   ► down, the first thought was "Oh, Myke was right, obviously, I shouldn't have

00:32:26 ◼   ► mentioned this. Somebody listened to Connected and they took down

00:32:31 ◼   ► all those links to get rid of the metadata lookup method." And here's where

00:32:38 ◼   ► the whole situation is really strange, but at the same time it also gives me

00:32:42 ◼   ► hope. You can still create links to shortcuts. New links, new iCloud.com links are working.

00:32:51 ◼   ► It's just the old ones that are dead.

00:32:53 ◼   ► Maybe they just kill them on a daily basis. Like tomorrow, none of today's will work.

00:32:58 ◼   ► Sure, maybe they just haven't, it just lasts 24 hours. Maybe, could be. I mean, could be.

00:33:04 ◼   ► Do you know if the API call stuff, does that work against new links or have they turned

00:33:08 ◼   ► that off?

00:33:09 ◼   ► what I did, right? So I took a new link and I tested my old metadata shortcuts and it's

00:33:16 ◼   ► still working. You can still look up shortcuts metadata with that method. You can still extract

00:33:22 ◼   ► information from a new iCloud.com link. So all this to me feels like a bug because they

00:33:33 ◼   ► didn't, at least as long as I'm concerned, like they didn't change anything

00:33:38 ◼   ► for that API lookup method. The shortcuts gallery was also down yesterday, so Apple

00:33:46 ◼   ► must have done something with the transition to iOS 14.5 beta 5 and I

00:33:52 ◼   ► guess they accidentally took down all the links. At least that's what I want to

00:33:56 ◼   ► believe. Also, if Apple suddenly decided to kill sharing shortcuts with other people via

00:34:05 ◼   ► iCloud links, they would probably do it the opposite way. They would probably prevent

00:34:10 ◼   ► the creation of new links, and they would keep the old ones around, at least for a while.

00:34:17 ◼   ► So if their intention was to kill those links, they would probably do the opposite of what

00:34:22 ◼   ► doing now. Still, it sucks, because for, like, I woke up this morning and I started getting

00:34:29 ◼   ► tweets and emails from people saying, obviously those people know nothing, they're saying

00:34:33 ◼   ► "Hey, I just came from, like, for example, Wired a couple of weeks ago. They linked to

00:34:38 ◼   ► Apple Frames as one of the most popular shortcuts that you can use on your iPhone." And I got

00:34:44 ◼   ► an email from somebody saying "Hey, I was trying to install your shortcuts from Wired

00:34:48 ◼   ► and it's not working, can you upload it again, please? And now I gotta explain to these people,

00:34:54 ◼   ► like, I have three emails already and a bunch of tweets, and I gotta explain to all these people

00:34:59 ◼   ► why it's not really my fault. But at the moment, I'm basically standing here, and I got 230

00:35:05 ◼   ► shortcuts in the MaxStory shortcuts archive. All those links are dead. There's probably a hundred

00:35:12 ◼   ► more in my previous coverage of shortcuts for stuff that I did not put in the MacStories

00:35:18 ◼   ► shortcuts archive. And obviously this goes beyond MacStories. There's entire communities

00:35:24 ◼   ► that have years of content that is basically useless now. The shortcuts subreddit, RoutineHub,

00:35:30 ◼   ► which is a popular website where people can share shortcuts. Obviously, Matthew Cassinelli,

00:35:37 ◼   ► entire shortcuts library is not accessible at the moment. Shortcuts that Rosemary and

00:35:45 ◼   ► David share on automators here on relay.fm, as well as the shortcuts that the automators

00:35:51 ◼   ► listeners share in the forums, those are dead. Like, it's a very unfortunate situation, and

00:35:59 ◼   ► the lack of communication doesn't help. We reached out to Apple for a comment. They do

00:36:05 ◼   ► not have a comment at the moment, I believe. So, yeah. So, I mean.

00:36:12 ◼   ► I don't like that answer. I don't know.

00:36:18 ◼   ► So we're all... And obviously I have a membership program where people give me money to... At

00:36:24 ◼   ► least part of the perks. One of the perks is accessing exclusive members-only shortcuts.

00:36:32 ◼   ► So yeah, I'm...

00:36:35 ◼   ► I bet they didn't mean to do...

00:36:38 ◼   ► My feeling is they did not mean to do this, but they have done something that's caused

00:36:43 ◼   ► this.

00:36:44 ◼   ► I expect that this is a bug caused by them doing something.

00:36:47 ◼   ► I expect the something is probably something you're not going to like, but I doubt that

00:36:53 ◼   ► they meant to knock out all of these links in one fail swoop, especially because you

00:36:59 ◼   ► can still make them.

00:37:00 ◼   ► want to clarify before he gets out of hand. Apple did not say no comment to us. We just

00:37:06 ◼   ► haven't gotten a reply yet.

00:37:08 ◼   ► Oh, okay. I thought that they were like, "Oh, no, we don't know."

00:37:14 ◼   ► We haven't gotten a reply yet, but we reached out. So the ball is in their court now. So

00:37:21 ◼   ► yeah, we're all just waiting. That's what I was going to say. We're all just waiting

00:37:23 ◼   ► to understand what's going on. Maybe this is nothing. Maybe somebody was making a change

00:37:29 ◼   ► the shortcuts gallery yesterday and they accidentally changed an ownership property in the Amazon

00:37:37 ◼   ► S3 bucket where all these links are stored. I don't know, man.

00:37:41 ◼   ► Apple has a status page for iCloud. It doesn't have anything for shortcuts on that page.

00:37:47 ◼   ► But similarly, there is also, as of right now, no errors on that page for anything.

00:37:53 ◼   ► You could imagine that maybe if some iCloud thing was down it could take this with it.

00:37:59 ◼   ► But as it stands right now, there is no notification of any errors with iCloud.

00:38:06 ◼   ► Who knows what it is.

00:38:08 ◼   ► Grand scheme of things, not that important, but to certain communities incredibly important.

00:38:13 ◼   ► I mean it would suck if three years of work were not accessible anymore.

00:38:19 ◼   ► because Apple removed two years ago the option to share shortcuts with other people as files.

00:38:27 ◼   ► As files, yeah.

00:38:28 ◼   ► It used to be that you could share a dot shortcut file with somebody else and they could import

00:38:35 ◼   ► the shortcut as a file. Then they changed the whole security system around shortcut

00:38:41 ◼   ► sharing in iOS 13. We talked about it before, the whole untrusted shortcut system that you

00:38:49 ◼   ► got enabled in settings, and you cannot import shortcut files anymore. So iCloud.com links

00:38:55 ◼   ► are the only way for installing shortcuts made by other people. And hopefully this is

00:39:02 ◼   ► just a bug. Apple doesn't need to comment, they just need to fix it. But at least I believe

00:39:09 ◼   ► it's a bug. Again, if they were planning to kill the feature, they would probably do it

00:39:17 ◼   ► the opposite way. They would remove sharing for new shortcuts and new links, but they

00:39:23 ◼   ► would keep the old legacy ones around. So it's just a bug. It would be nice to hear

00:39:31 ◼   ► what's going on, but let's wait a couple of days and see what happens.

00:39:35 ◼   ► So strange. So they did something on the server side that corresponds when a beta came out?

00:39:42 ◼   ► I guess. I guess. I mean, my theory is they were doing some work on the shortcuts gallery,

00:39:49 ◼   ► because that was down yesterday, and when it came back, someone did something horrible

00:39:57 ◼   ► to the database. I mean, it's got to be millions of links, right? I assume. And, you know,

00:40:05 ◼   ► somebody changed the permissions of that database or something. I hope they have a backup.

00:40:11 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:40:13 ◼   ► - Backed up on iCloud, it's fine.

00:40:15 ◼   ► - Cool.

00:40:17 ◼   ► - It's got to do a full restore

00:40:18 ◼   ► to bring the one database back of all of iCloud.

00:40:20 ◼   ► Okay, today is the 20th anniversary of Mac OS X,

00:40:25 ◼   ► which is pretty wild to think about.

00:40:27 ◼   ► There's a lot of great stuff out there to go read about it.

00:40:30 ◼   ► I rounded up a bunch of stuff on 512.

00:40:33 ◼   ► Mac Power Users episode 580 is basically all about this,

00:40:38 ◼   ► and we kind of walk through the transition

00:40:41 ◼   ► and the high points of the last 20 years.

00:40:43 ◼   ► So I don't want to do that here because I did it there,

00:40:46 ◼   ► plus the two of you would be bored.

00:40:49 ◼   ► But I do want to talk a little bit--

00:40:51 ◼   ► - You chose the right location for the coverage

00:40:55 ◼   ► in its entirety as it is on Mac Power Uses.

00:40:58 ◼   ► - And I think people would really enjoy that episode,

00:41:02 ◼   ► so go check it out.

00:41:03 ◼   ► I was really proud of how that came out.

00:41:04 ◼   ► So the thing that really, for me,

00:41:08 ◼   ► that I wanna talk about with y'all is

00:41:11 ◼   ► what has come after that.

00:41:13 ◼   ► And so Mac OS X comes out in 2001, five years later,

00:41:18 ◼   ► well, the same year the iPod comes out,

00:41:21 ◼   ► which had really had nothing to do with OS X,

00:41:23 ◼   ► it ran this like weirdo thing they bought for somebody else.

00:41:27 ◼   ► They switched to Intel five years later,

00:41:31 ◼   ► And then six years later, we get the iPhone.

00:41:34 ◼   ► Pretty relatively short period of time.

00:41:38 ◼   ► I often don't think about that in terms of like

00:41:42 ◼   ► how long it was since Genesis of OS X,

00:41:45 ◼   ► but it really was pretty quick.

00:41:47 ◼   ► And so for really for most of its life,

00:41:50 ◼   ► Mac OS, OS X, whatever you wanna call it,

00:41:53 ◼   ► has lived with these sibling OSes.

00:41:56 ◼   ► And of course now it's spun off watch OS

00:41:58 ◼   ► and tvOS and all these other things.

00:42:00 ◼   ► And I don't know if they could have done the iPhone the way they did it had they not done

00:42:04 ◼   ► Mac OS X the way that they did it.

00:42:07 ◼   ► But at the same time, Apple's also not afraid of shedding old baggage.

00:42:10 ◼   ► So things like carbon, 32-bit apps, older apps and services that don't matter anymore.

00:42:17 ◼   ► Even though Mac OS is 20 years old and it looks roughly the same, like it sells the

00:42:23 ◼   ► dock and the mini bar and stuff, I don't think there's much in it that is actually 20 years

00:42:29 ◼   ► old because they've continued to reinvent it and bring new technology into it over the

00:42:34 ◼   ► last few years, reunifying it with iOS under the hood, all these things.

00:42:39 ◼   ► And I kind of want to know what the two of y'all thought about that and what you think,

00:42:45 ◼   ► like how you see Mac OS today kind of fitting into the bigger Apple ecosystem.

00:42:52 ◼   ► I find it interesting to really think about the fact that it all stems from OS X, like

00:43:01 ◼   ► everything now, right?

00:43:03 ◼   ► Like even though watchOS I'm sure shares basically nothing from a technical perspective, it's

00:43:12 ◼   ► still...

00:43:13 ◼   ► I mean like the kernel's the same, you know, some of the like the low level...

00:43:17 ◼   ► Even watchOS?

00:43:18 ◼   ► Yeah, some of the low level like network stack.

00:43:20 ◼   ► I think a lot of the real deep stuff is the same.

00:43:23 ◼   ► Even better to the point that I was trying to make.

00:43:26 ◼   ► To think that without OS X all of this stuff wouldn't exist.

00:43:33 ◼   ► But from many perspectives, like one, I'm sure it could be argued that without OS X

00:43:38 ◼   ► Apple probably wouldn't be around anymore.

00:43:40 ◼   ► But that's like a different conversation.

00:43:43 ◼   ► But it's kind of fascinating really to think of this technology which is older than 20

00:43:49 ◼   ► Some of the underlying technology is next technology, correct?

00:43:53 ◼   ► Yeah, so I mean really like mock BSD and some of the real low-level stuff, it gets roots

00:43:59 ◼   ► go back 30 years.

00:44:01 ◼   ► So I find that quite fascinating really that there is this, I wonder how long it will be

00:44:10 ◼   ► into the future for OS X's legacy to continue from like real terms of technology developed

00:44:18 ◼   ► for OS X still being used, not just like, "Hey, we know how to make operating systems

00:44:22 ◼   ► because of OS X." You know what I mean? Like the real actual, this code that bears similarities

00:44:29 ◼   ► and/or is the same at an underlying level as the stuff introduced in 2001 or whatever.

00:44:37 ◼   ► It's interesting. Yeah, I mean, when they introduced the iPhone

00:44:42 ◼   ► in '07, it was like, "It runs Mac OS X."

00:44:46 ◼   ► It's like, well, I mean, at a certain point, that's true.

00:44:49 ◼   ► Lots of custom stuff on top of it.

00:44:51 ◼   ► And that's still how they work today, where the low-level stuff is the same, but like

00:44:56 ◼   ► watchOS, tvOS, iPadOS, they're all different interpretations of it, and they have their

00:45:01 ◼   ► own application layer on top of it, even though Apple is slowly moving towards unifying that

00:45:07 ◼   ► as well with things like SwiftUI.

00:45:09 ◼   ► It's a nice thing to mock.

00:45:11 ◼   ► with the world though.

00:45:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't have any particular thoughts.

00:45:14 ◼   ► I just feel like it's impressive that the foundation of this operating system is turning

00:45:20 ◼   ► 20, but at the same time, here in 2021, we're all witnessing a new beginning for the platform.

00:45:29 ◼   ► And I think it's very exciting.

00:45:30 ◼   ► I think I honestly feel like there hasn't probably been a better time to be a Mac user

00:45:37 ◼   ► than right now, because you can feel like the company is really committed to it.

00:45:41 ◼   ► As a... I'm not a Mac user, like I don't consider myself a primarily a Mac user,

00:45:48 ◼   ► but I am in a good way, right, jealous of all the excitement that surrounds what's going on with

00:45:57 ◼   ► MacOS, what's going on with M1 Macs, and like it's a good thing, it's a great thing to witness

00:46:02 ◼   ► this sort of comeback for the platform, both in the software and the hardware. So, yeah, it turns 20,

00:46:10 ◼   ► but, you know, in many ways it's, you know, turning one this year. So I think it's really,

00:46:19 ◼   ► really exciting. Yeah, I mean, they're using the foundations that they built so long ago to launch

00:46:25 ◼   ► all this new stuff. I mean, it is, yeah, it is a remarkable run. Yeah, I mean, man, that's six years

00:46:32 ◼   ► between Mac OS X and the iPhone like that is no time. That is the number

00:46:38 ◼   ► that really jumped out of me today. Especially when you then go like six

00:46:42 ◼   ► years to that and then just it's 13, 14 years to now. Yeah. You think about it

00:46:52 ◼   ► felt like OS X have been around forever. Forever. And now it's over twice

00:46:58 ◼   ► stat amount of time since. Yep. Weird. Time is weird. This episode of connected is

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00:49:10 ◼   ► In a report which was detailing a mysterious temperature sensor in the current HomePod

00:49:15 ◼   ► Mini, which is like just a super weird, wonderful report from Mark Gurman, Mark also reiterated

00:49:21 ◼   ► a line that he said in the past which is "Apple has been developing new speakers

00:49:26 ◼   ► i.e. HomePods with screens and cameras" so he's spoken about this in the past I

00:49:31 ◼   ► think there was a report a while ago about the HomePod I think it was

00:49:35 ◼   ► detailing a HomePod mini suggesting that there might be a HomePod which was in

00:49:41 ◼   ► price between the mini and the current HomePod which I mean there could be more

00:49:46 ◼   ► sense to that rumor now than there was before because the other part of that

00:49:50 ◼   ► rumor is because the big HomePod won't exist anymore, so who knows, but also detailing

00:49:55 ◼   ► that Apple's been looking at HomePod versions or models that have screens on them.

00:50:01 ◼   ► Furthermore, Steve Moser at MacRumors, Steve was responsible for finding a bunch of stuff

00:50:06 ◼   ► we were talking about earlier on in the show too, Steve found references in tvOS 14.5 to

00:50:13 ◼   ► FaceTime, iMessage and image capturing frameworks being added to tvOS.

00:50:19 ◼   ► Now you may think to yourself that this sounds peculiar or surely the HomePod already has

00:50:26 ◼   ► FaceTime and iMessage stuff.

00:50:28 ◼   ► It's like yes and no, there's a few things.

00:50:30 ◼   ► So as of 2020, HomePod is part of tvOS not iOS, they changed that over.

00:50:35 ◼   ► So HomePod gets its updates via the tvOS stack, not the iOS stack.

00:50:41 ◼   ► And also it had some of the parts of iMessage and FaceTime in them in the sense of allowing

00:50:47 ◼   ► you to place calls, send messages, that kind of stuff.

00:50:51 ◼   ► But what it seems like this is now being integrated into the platform at a more deep level, it's

00:50:58 ◼   ► probably a deep and open framework.

00:51:00 ◼   ► That's probably what they did by putting iMessage in there.

00:51:03 ◼   ► And the key is this is surely intended for the home pod because it makes not a lot of

00:51:12 ◼   ► sense to put iMessage on the TV.

00:51:16 ◼   ► If these frameworks are going into these devices, it's most likely for a HomePod device, especially

00:51:23 ◼   ► image capturing as well.

00:51:25 ◼   ► They're never going to put a camera on the Apple TV, you would assume.

00:51:28 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense, why would you do that, but it could be on a HomePod.

00:51:31 ◼   ► Dude, you could have a 70-inch FaceTime call.

00:51:33 ◼   ► It would be amazing, right?

00:51:35 ◼   ► I don't think so.

00:51:37 ◼   ► So if we just take this as read, that all of this seems to suggest that there is a likelihood

00:51:43 ◼   ► for a HomePod of a screen.

00:51:46 ◼   ► And I actually think that there is potentially more case for that now that the big home pod

00:51:51 ◼   ► is gone.

00:51:52 ◼   ► You know, like the cheap home pod is just audio, the larger home pod has a screen on

00:51:56 ◼   ► it.

00:51:57 ◼   ► And because there is an existing market growing product offerings that are like this.

00:52:03 ◼   ► You know, Amazon makes stuff like this, Facebook makes stuff like this.

00:52:07 ◼   ► So if we're looking at this landscape now, what would we want this product to actually

00:52:14 ◼   ► do?

00:52:15 ◼   ► to say to us, "Alright, here is the next HomePod. It truly is the center of the home.

00:52:22 ◼   ► The whole family can get around it and have a FaceTime call. It has what else?" So what

00:52:28 ◼   ► would you guys want to see on something like this?

00:52:32 ◼   ► Well, so I guess the idea is that what we are imagining is Apple's version of an Echo

00:52:39 ◼   ► show or a Nest Hub, basically?

00:52:43 ◼   ► Yep.

00:52:44 ◼   ► OK. Well, I guess music, for example, would make a lot of sense. So music, you can follow

00:52:51 ◼   ► real-time lyrics and you can control music that way. Obviously, the idea of a digital

00:52:57 ◼   ► picture frame, right? So you can have your favorite photos and you can have slideshows

00:53:02 ◼   ► and have it be automatic or different versions of a digital clock, obviously, with maybe

00:53:10 ◼   ► even different watch faces that you can choose from. And I guess just generally speaking,

00:53:17 ◼   ► it would be nice to have a centralized hub for things you share in the family. So your

00:53:26 ◼   ► family calendar, your family reminders with the grocery list. Maybe you could have like

00:53:32 ◼   ► "Find My" and have your kids' position automatically show up and it could give you updates when

00:53:39 ◼   ► the location of somebody you're tracking changes.

00:53:42 ◼   ► Like all the things that you share

00:53:45 ◼   ► with iCloud over family sharing, I

00:53:47 ◼   ► think it would be a good place for that

00:53:49 ◼   ► on this kind of device.

00:53:52 ◼   ► My underlying problem with this assumption

00:53:55 ◼   ► is I'm just not sure at this point

00:53:59 ◼   ► how much Apple is committed to the home

00:54:03 ◼   ► and to the idea of building an ecosystem of products

00:54:08 ◼   ► around this, given what happened to the HomePod,

00:54:12 ◼   ► given the slow pace of updates with the Apple TV,

00:54:15 ◼   ► given that there's not really an ecosystem right now.

00:54:19 ◼   ► I mean, a HomePod mini is not an ecosystem.

00:54:22 ◼   ► A HomePod mini is a tiny speaker.

00:54:24 ◼   ► The ecosystem, I guess, is iCloud,

00:54:26 ◼   ► but iCloud is also on the iPhone and iPad, so.

00:54:29 ◼   ► - Or HomeKit. - Or HomeKit, yes.

00:54:30 ◼   ► But also HomeKit is a framework that Apple makes for others.

00:54:34 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, I think what happens

00:54:35 ◼   ► if Apple dives back into this and fails again.

00:54:40 ◼   ► Like if the HomePod mini just kind of like bumbles along

00:54:45 ◼   ► for a while, it never really takes off,

00:54:49 ◼   ► but it's like fine for people who just want Apple Music

00:54:52 ◼   ► and don't want Amazon in their bedroom or whatever.

00:54:55 ◼   ► Like that's not a big market probably,

00:54:56 ◼   ► but it could be enough.

00:54:57 ◼   ► But if they've really launched something like this

00:55:00 ◼   ► that we're talking about with a screen,

00:55:01 ◼   ► which I think would be really compelling,

00:55:03 ◼   ► and it HomePods again, like it doesn't take off

00:55:07 ◼   ► or it fails in some way, like then what happens?

00:55:11 ◼   ► 'Cause then at that point you're O and two

00:55:14 ◼   ► or maybe one and two if the HomePod mini's okay.

00:55:17 ◼   ► I just don't know how willing they are to try again.

00:55:22 ◼   ► I think they should try again,

00:55:24 ◼   ► but I'm not sure how willing they would be to do that.

00:55:27 ◼   ► - They just ended up, I feel like, in a weird spot

00:55:32 ◼   ► where they have perhaps the most popular mobile operating system around.

00:55:39 ◼   ► They have HomeKit, they have Siri, which is not great,

00:55:42 ◼   ► they have iCloud and Family Sharing, all great components,

00:55:47 ◼   ► but the big piece missing from the puzzle is

00:55:53 ◼   ► all these different technologies they don't really resolve

00:55:57 ◼   ► in a unified ecosystem for the home. And it's very weird, because they

00:56:02 ◼   ► I have all these, you know, most of them really solid components. I mean most of them because Siri is not solid

00:56:10 ◼   ► But they're missing a unifying strategy. I would actually like to posit the theory that makes me

00:56:15 ◼   ► Feel better is that the HomePod being discontinued is a signal of Apple's recommitment. Okay?

00:56:23 ◼   ► It's a signal that we are imagining

00:56:27 ◼   ► Potentially suggesting the home pod is the wrong product at its price point

00:56:32 ◼   ► For what it people want it to do, right?

00:56:36 ◼   ► So like that's kind of what I'm positing here and that they have woke up and been like, okay the home pod mini

00:56:42 ◼   ► Does everything the home pod needs to do and so we should not continue to offer this larger product. Yeah

00:56:50 ◼   ► Let's get rid of it now while we make way for our next product and at this point I am hoping for

00:56:57 ◼   ► very good Apple TV like product which incorporates more home stuff that's what

00:57:03 ◼   ► I'm hoping for and or as well like a echo show Google Nest Hub Facebook

00:57:12 ◼   ► portal like device made by Apple and I understand that you could say hey why

00:57:19 ◼   ► not just put an iPad on a stand I'll tell you I tried that it's not great

00:57:26 ◼   ► like it's you're really forcing it to do something that it's not really made to

00:57:33 ◼   ► do yeah you know like my echo show for example the screen is always on and

00:57:37 ◼   ► showing me something the iPad doesn't do that like it's not what it's for right

00:57:43 ◼   ► like it is meant to be a personal device it is yours it's like one person's

00:57:47 ◼   ► device where these other products are built around being a device for a family

00:57:53 ◼   ► even the HomePod, right? Like you can have multiple people talking to it and it recognizes

00:57:58 ◼   ► that and an iPad can't do that.

00:58:00 ◼   ► Sometimes.

00:58:01 ◼   ► Sometimes, but it does do it. I mean, it might not be completely reliable. I don't know how

00:58:05 ◼   ► reliable these other products are at doing it. I found it to be somewhat reliable. There

00:58:10 ◼   ► is a difference in having a device like this, which is built around, okay, this is in a

00:58:15 ◼   ► shared environment first, now what does it do? It's building from a different direction

00:58:22 ◼   ► to and even the HomePod has been built from that mindset where an iPad or an iPhone is

00:58:28 ◼   ► not built for that.

00:58:30 ◼   ► I would really like to see them go down this route.

00:58:33 ◼   ► They could actually make third party apps, right?

00:58:36 ◼   ► Let me put Zoom on this thing and it will be great.

00:58:39 ◼   ► We use an iPad for all this kind of stuff at home.

00:58:43 ◼   ► It would be great for us to just put one of these things somewhere in the house and we

00:58:47 ◼   ► could have these calls and it worked really nice.

00:58:51 ◼   ► I would really be into that. I don't know if they're going to do it, but I do think

00:58:59 ◼   ► I do believe in them when it comes to the home, purely because I've said this before

00:59:05 ◼   ► about AR, right? Like why are they even, you know, AR/VR, why are Apple attacking this

00:59:10 ◼   ► market? Well, because it's a new market. It's an emerging market, right? And if they want

00:59:17 ◼   ► to have the next iPhone hit they've got to try and be in every emerging market

00:59:22 ◼   ► right you've got to have something so I do believe that once the home market is

00:59:28 ◼   ► never gonna be iPhone sized right because I mean you've already taken it

00:59:33 ◼   ► down from say like four divided to one right like if every home had one it's

00:59:37 ◼   ► still gonna be a quarter of the amount of phones there are right because

00:59:40 ◼   ► everyone has their own phone but it's still a emerging market for consumer

00:59:45 ◼   ► technology because Apple's competitors are doing such a good job and are

00:59:53 ◼   ► continually iterating. So do you want to just abandon this emerging market for

01:00:00 ◼   ► the consumer technology? I don't believe that they would want to especially when

01:00:04 ◼   ► the home market really has the ecosystem key. Like it really is a very important

01:00:13 ◼   ► component to locking you into an ecosystem.

01:00:17 ◼   ► Even with this connected home interoperability thing,

01:00:22 ◼   ► that's still not going to be like,

01:00:25 ◼   ► what is your syncing system?

01:00:26 ◼   ► What is your music system?

01:00:28 ◼   ► Where are your photos?

01:00:29 ◼   ► You're still going to want that lock-in,

01:00:32 ◼   ► and it's always going to be better on the device made

01:00:34 ◼   ► by the company that's also making the software part.

01:00:37 ◼   ► Even if they all talk to each other,

01:00:38 ◼   ► it's always going to be better when you have one and one

01:00:41 ◼   ► together, right?

01:00:42 ◼   ► And so I think it would not be a good move for Apple

01:00:45 ◼   ► to allow Amazon or Google to just take all of this market

01:00:52 ◼   ► when it seems like at this point, they haven't really tried.

01:00:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:57 ◼   ► The issue there is that they have a long road ahead

01:01:03 ◼   ► to catch up, especially with Amazon,

01:01:06 ◼   ► when it comes to having lots of options,

01:01:09 ◼   ► when it comes to being aggressive with pricing,

01:01:14 ◼   ► and when it comes to having devices that can be flexible.

01:01:20 ◼   ► You can get an Amazon Echo for cheap,

01:01:22 ◼   ► and you can connect all kinds of accessories

01:01:25 ◼   ► and all kinds of services to it.

01:01:26 ◼   ► Because they have ignored this market for the past three

01:01:30 ◼   ► years, maybe, I guess, at the beginning,

01:01:33 ◼   ► when years ago, four or five years ago,

01:01:35 ◼   ► when everybody was making fun of the icons,

01:01:38 ◼   ► Like, hey, who wants to talk to an assistant stuck

01:01:41 ◼   ► in a cylinder, right?

01:01:42 ◼   ► People, especially in the Apple media ecosystem,

01:01:45 ◼   ► were sort of making fun of the echo at the beginning.

01:01:48 ◼   ► But Amazon kept going.

01:01:50 ◼   ► And they iterated and iterated on it.

01:01:52 ◼   ► And now it's something that, especially

01:01:55 ◼   ► in the past couple of years, I've seen it here in Italy.

01:01:58 ◼   ► As a country in Italy, we tend to be pretty late

01:02:03 ◼   ► to discovering new tech products.

01:02:06 ◼   ► And it's a combination of, well, it's a long discussion.

01:02:09 ◼   ► It's a combination of usually we do not get new tech stuff

01:02:14 ◼   ► as soon as Americans do, but also we tend to be,

01:02:18 ◼   ► as a people, pretty ignorant when it comes

01:02:20 ◼   ► to understanding technology.

01:02:21 ◼   ► But that's a failure of the education system in Italy.

01:02:23 ◼   ► That's a whole other topic.

01:02:25 ◼   ► Still.

01:02:26 ◼   ► - It's a more old-fashioned country.

01:02:29 ◼   ► - Yes, we are.

01:02:30 ◼   ► - And that is also one of Italy's selling points

01:02:33 ◼   ► to the rest of the world,

01:02:34 ◼   ► so you don't wanna completely give it up.

01:02:35 ◼   ► But there's another side to it, which is unfortunate when

01:02:37 ◼   ► it comes to technology.

01:02:39 ◼   ► However, what I've seen in the past two years

01:02:41 ◼   ► is devices like the Amazon Echo and the Google Assistant

01:02:45 ◼   ► as well have totally been accepted as regular appliances

01:02:51 ◼   ► that you can have in the home.

01:02:53 ◼   ► I see my friends referring to them,

01:02:56 ◼   ► using them as something that is just as common

01:02:59 ◼   ► as a phone at this point.

01:03:02 ◼   ► I mean, I went to my accountant's office

01:03:04 ◼   ► a few weeks ago, and I heard one of her colleagues

01:03:08 ◼   ► asking something to the echo.

01:03:09 ◼   ► I was like, wait, do you have an echo in the office?

01:03:12 ◼   ► She was like, yeah, we're using it here as well.

01:03:15 ◼   ► So it's like totally normal now.

01:03:17 ◼   ► And it surprises me that Apple has slept

01:03:20 ◼   ► on this for such a long time.

01:03:23 ◼   ► And so I wonder now, can you come back

01:03:27 ◼   ► from the failure of the HomePod and do it quickly,

01:03:31 ◼   ► and do it in a way that is still interesting enough for people,

01:03:36 ◼   ► that's really my concern.

01:03:37 ◼   ► Because it's really too bad that they

01:03:40 ◼   ► are abandoning the market.

01:03:43 ◼   ► And I don't want to believe that they are.

01:03:44 ◼   ► I believe that they want to do something,

01:03:47 ◼   ► but I'm rightfully so, I think, skeptical that they can succeed

01:03:53 ◼   ► because they don't have exactly a lot of positive points going

01:03:59 ◼   ► them right now. The one other counterpoint that I'll make to Federico

01:04:05 ◼   ► what you're saying about like the things that they need to do to combat Amazon is

01:04:10 ◼   ► you said price and flexibility of offering right? Yes. Because that's

01:04:17 ◼   ► arguably what Amazon have succeeded on right? That they're cheap, they keep

01:04:23 ◼   ► making them cheaper and they put it in everything. And you can get them in

01:04:27 ◼   ► all sizes and flavors and colors.

01:04:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:31 ◼   ► And you don't even have to buy a product from Amazon and you can get it.

01:04:34 ◼   ► You know, maybe you bought this other product and now you have Echo in your house, right?

01:04:38 ◼   ► You have Alexa in your house.

01:04:39 ◼   ► I'm taking a particular stand on this.

01:04:42 ◼   ► I don't know how much I believe it, but I just want to make the point anyway of the

01:04:45 ◼   ► iPhone, right?

01:04:47 ◼   ► That there were already lots of options available for phones.

01:04:53 ◼   ► Everyone had one.

01:04:54 ◼   ► Nokia was killing it, right?

01:04:55 ◼   ► Like Blackberry was destroying everyone like it was all good.

01:04:59 ◼   ► And then Apple created something which was so compelling that even though it was more

01:05:04 ◼   ► limited in some ways like lockdown, more expensive, everyone wanted it because it was so cool.

01:05:12 ◼   ► And they've done that many times.

01:05:15 ◼   ► Do I think that the HomePod is their next place to do this?

01:05:19 ◼   ► No, I actually think even though I have a lot of issues with the idea, I think they're

01:05:23 ◼   ► more likely to do this, have this impact in a future AR product or something?

01:05:27 ◼   ► You know, I'll add the Apple watch actually to that category of stuff I

01:05:31 ◼   ► just mentioned, right? Of like a product where there were already offerings and

01:05:35 ◼   ► people saw this type of product from Apple and they were like, "This is more

01:05:39 ◼   ► expensive than everybody else's but it is actually cool and I'll get it." They

01:05:43 ◼   ► could do that, I mean there's a company that has history of doing it, they could

01:05:46 ◼   ► do that for a home product, right? Where they make this thing where it's like

01:05:51 ◼   ► like halfway between a HomePod and an iPad and a Mac, right, in the sense of like what

01:05:57 ◼   ► you would do with it at home. And, you know, you could, I could imagine a world in which

01:06:03 ◼   ► there isn't a family computer anymore because all of the family computers tasks are taken

01:06:07 ◼   ► up by this Apple home device that has all this shared stuff that the family needs. Uh,

01:06:14 ◼   ► what you know, you know what I'm saying? Like I'm getting a bit like pie in the sky now,

01:06:18 ◼   ► But my point is like they have shown in the past that they can create products that disrupt

01:06:24 ◼   ► an industry and I want them to make something like this.

01:06:29 ◼   ► I don't want them to abandon the home.

01:06:31 ◼   ► Oh, I agree.

01:06:32 ◼   ► And I don't want them to not abandon the home because I'm someone who's terrified about

01:06:39 ◼   ► having Amazon or Google products in my house.

01:06:41 ◼   ► This is not where I'm coming from.

01:06:43 ◼   ► Because I have these products and I'm happy with them.

01:06:45 ◼   ► For me, it's just I think that this is an area that they could do cool stuff in and I want to see them do it

01:06:51 ◼   ► I absolutely I hope that they do and I hope that a device of a screen on it is the root that they take honestly

01:06:58 ◼   ► Like I want them to get weird like you have lots of money do weird stuff

01:07:04 ◼   ► Try all kinds of form factors it

01:07:07 ◼   ► Especially for the home. It's not like everything needs to be this super expensive

01:07:14 ◼   ► highly refined audio speaker for audio files. Do something that sounds crappy but it's easy to use

01:07:21 ◼   ► and it's got Siri that gets the basics right. Like get weird and try stuff. It doesn't have to be

01:07:29 ◼   ► like "oh my god I feel like I'm listening to heaven in my ears and now you can get the like these

01:07:35 ◼   ► six tweeters and a subwoofer?" No, do something that sounds like crap but is easy to use and you

01:07:42 ◼   ► You can get it there and you don't have to use Amazon and Google services and it automatically

01:07:49 ◼   ► is set up with your iPhone super quickly, you touch your iPhone, you set it up and you

01:07:52 ◼   ► can use FaceTime and that's it.

01:07:54 ◼   ► And you can go from something in a box to a functioning speaker with a display in like

01:08:01 ◼   ► two minutes and only you can do it because you're Apple and you control the whole thing.

01:08:05 ◼   ► But like, try lots of different things.

01:08:08 ◼   ► I love when Apple tries weird stuff.

01:08:11 ◼   ► What I dislike is when they don't believe in it, and when they abandon it, and when

01:08:15 ◼   ► it's like they stop doing updates, and we all know what's happening, this thing is gonna

01:08:19 ◼   ► get killed, and then they wait two years to finally kill it.

01:08:24 ◼   ► No, do stuff, like try things.

01:08:27 ◼   ► It's exciting when Apple tries new stuff, like the AirPods Max, I love them.

01:08:31 ◼   ► Like they just did these weird phones that nobody's gonna buy.

01:08:39 ◼   ► More weird things.

01:08:40 ◼   ► That's what I would like to see.

01:08:41 ◼   ► You ready to move on?

01:08:43 ◼   ► Yo, I want to talk about these, Steven.

01:08:46 ◼   ► Okay.

01:08:47 ◼   ► I have been waiting for this next topic for like three weeks.

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01:10:38 ◼   ► -All right. So, what have you done, Steven? -Hello.

01:10:40 ◼   ► -Hi. What's going on here?

01:10:43 ◼   ► Hmm. Please explain yourself.

01:10:47 ◼   ► -I've tried a new task manager. -Okay.

01:10:51 ◼   ► -And it could be the one. -The one? What is the one for you?

01:10:55 ◼   ► -So, happy for you both. -Thank you.

01:10:57 ◼   ► Define the one task manager. The one that it does, it works the way I want it to work.

01:11:03 ◼   ► Okay. And the apps are nice enough and... Okay.

01:11:06 ◼   ► Looks pretty good. Okay. Looks like Todoist to me. Yeah. Just looking at the images now. It is like if Todoist and

01:11:14 ◼   ► Good task had a baby, it would come out. Really? That's high praise. Okay. Yeah, it's got some good tasks sort of vibe to it.

01:11:22 ◼   ► Okay. Anyways, so I for the last month or so have been using TicTic. TicTic.

01:11:27 ◼   ► Which, by the way, you search for it all, it just takes you to TikTok.

01:11:36 ◼   ► I don't really feel for them.

01:11:37 ◼   ► Yeah, their namespace.

01:11:38 ◼   ► I just searched TikTok, like I just typed TikTok into the Omni bar.

01:11:43 ◼   ► Is that what it's called on Safari?

01:11:44 ◼   ► What do they call it?

01:11:45 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:11:46 ◼   ► No, I think that's what Chrome calls it.

01:11:48 ◼   ► The magic bar.

01:11:49 ◼   ► Okay.

01:11:50 ◼   ► The bar where now there isn't a search bar, right?

01:11:53 ◼   ► I just searched TikTok and it just took me to the TikTok website.

01:11:56 ◼   ► It just didn't even take me to Google.

01:11:58 ◼   ► Like, it just, "Nope, I know what you want."

01:12:02 ◼   ► And I'm like, "No, that was wrong."

01:12:03 ◼   ► Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

01:12:06 ◼   ► It's fun to say.

01:12:07 ◼   ► Yes, it is.

01:12:09 ◼   ► Trying this out, there's a bunch of stuff that is very similar to Todoist.

01:12:14 ◼   ► So like, tick, tick, Todoist, remember the milk, good task, kind of.

01:12:20 ◼   ► Like, there are several of these that sort of, in my mind, are on kind of the same,

01:12:25 ◼   ► roughly the same playing field. So it has natural language entry for things like dates

01:12:32 ◼   ► and if you learn the keyboard shortcuts for things like, you know, what list you want

01:12:36 ◼   ► to put something in, the repeating syntax. So you don't have to be clicking around a

01:12:40 ◼   ► bunch to set parameters. Click click. Did you just like click click? Yeah. The sync

01:12:52 ◼   ► - It's pretty solid.

01:12:54 ◼   ► They run their own sync engine.

01:12:57 ◼   ► So they're not on top of reminders like Good Tasks is.

01:13:00 ◼   ► - What's it called?

01:13:01 ◼   ► Sync Sync?

01:13:01 ◼   ► - Sync Sync.

01:13:03 ◼   ► It has some UI customization, not a ton,

01:13:06 ◼   ► but you can set themes and like each list has an emoji

01:13:10 ◼   ► and it's kind of got the basics.

01:13:12 ◼   ► You can also do customization on how lists are sorted

01:13:17 ◼   ► and that sort of thing.

01:13:18 ◼   ► You can do smart lists, which is pretty cool.

01:13:20 ◼   ► In fact, their smart list tool to build them

01:13:22 ◼   ► is actually pretty good.

01:13:24 ◼   ► Wait, wait, tell me more about the smart lists.

01:13:26 ◼   ► How can you put them together?

01:13:28 ◼   ► They're smart smart.

01:13:29 ◼   ► OK.

01:13:29 ◼   ► Smart smart.

01:13:30 ◼   ► List list.

01:13:31 ◼   ► List list.

01:13:33 ◼   ► How do you choose the filtering conditions, whatever?

01:13:39 ◼   ► Yeah, so they have some pre-made ones.

01:13:42 ◼   ► So if you wanted to build one that just showed you

01:13:44 ◼   ► the next five days, they have some dropdown menus

01:13:48 ◼   ► that you can use.

01:13:49 ◼   ► but they also have their own syntax.

01:13:53 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:13:54 ◼   ► - And you can look it up on their website.

01:13:56 ◼   ► I think that's probably the easiest way to do it.

01:13:58 ◼   ► And you can basically build out your like Boolean search

01:14:03 ◼   ► for what you want.

01:14:04 ◼   ► So you could say, I want these parameters.

01:14:07 ◼   ► I want all my lists except this one list.

01:14:10 ◼   ► Or I just want to include this tag with these parameters.

01:14:13 ◼   ► So you can combine different elements to make a smart list.

01:14:16 ◼   ► - Is it more understandable than the third language

01:14:19 ◼   ► have to learn if you want to use to do it. Yeah, it's fine, we support smart list except

01:14:26 ◼   ► you gotta speak a new language. So you need to go to the British Museum, consult the Rosetta

01:14:31 ◼   ► Stone and then maybe you can create a repeating reminder. It's a little bit like that, but

01:14:37 ◼   ► once you kind of get the hang of it, it's not too bad. They've got tags, I don't care

01:14:42 ◼   ► about tags, they got priority which is fine. They also have this cool thing where you can

01:14:49 ◼   ► mark a task partially complete.

01:14:51 ◼   ► Wait, what? Partially complete?

01:14:53 ◼   ► For instance, I have a recurring task every Wednesday to make sure that on 512,

01:14:59 ◼   ► like the blog sponsor for the next week, I have all their content.

01:15:02 ◼   ► I usually send them an email on Wednesday and say, "Hey, you're coming up next week.

01:15:05 ◼   ► This is a reminder. This is the content that I need."

01:15:07 ◼   ► And so what I've started to do is I've marked that 50% complete once I email them

01:15:12 ◼   ► and then fully complete once I actually get the content.

01:15:16 ◼   ► So you can kind of like track.

01:15:18 ◼   ► And what's the like, okay, what's the what how do you do that though? Like what are you doing?

01:15:22 ◼   ► under the task there's like a

01:15:25 ◼   ► You click click you milk it is completely a progress bar you click yeah

01:15:31 ◼   ► Yeah, and then it shows up like a percentage thing in the list. Okay, I haven't seen that in any other task manager

01:15:38 ◼   ► And I kind of dig it. No, it's interesting. I think I can come back to white it isn't a minute. Do you?

01:15:44 ◼   ► Have to say in advance like this is a task which can be partly completed

01:15:49 ◼   ► No, how do you can you do it on the iPhone? Can you do this thing?

01:15:53 ◼   ► How much of what you're saying Steven is exclusive to the Mac or desktop version as far as I know?

01:16:00 ◼   ► Everything is everywhere

01:16:03 ◼   ► Best I can tell I think one of the reasons you've not seen that in other places is like this

01:16:08 ◼   ► As much as you know, I'm sorry to invoke it

01:16:11 ◼   ► just so

01:16:14 ◼   ► in the face of GTD, which so many of these systems have gone through. It's so wrong.

01:16:18 ◼   ► Because it's like, well, actually that's not one task. There's multiple tasks in a project.

01:16:24 ◼   ► Right, but Dave Allen's not the boss of me.

01:16:26 ◼   ► And also, I don't think that way either. But I'm saying, I think the reason you may not have seen

01:16:31 ◼   ► that anywhere else is because it's like, if you think in the more traditional terms of how these

01:16:37 ◼   ► systems should be used, you would never work that way. But now, literally you've said that, and now

01:16:42 ◼   ► that is the feature that has now made me just go and download this application.

01:16:45 ◼   ► That is actually also the thing that stood out the most to me. It's like,

01:16:50 ◼   ► no, because I totally, I totally...

01:16:52 ◼   ► It's truly different, right? Everything else that you said so far, it's like,

01:16:56 ◼   ► okay, what is their interpretation of the features that everybody else has?

01:17:00 ◼   ► But that thing, because I also do it all the time, like, I have something, for example,

01:17:05 ◼   ► that is due on a specific day, but I prepare for it in advance, right? So that when I need to do

01:17:12 ◼   ► it, the work is already done, except that I don't want to mark it as complete because

01:17:17 ◼   ► maybe I'm risking that on the day of, I'm going to forget. So it's like, partially complete

01:17:23 ◼   ► actually makes a lot of sense. And also, like, keep talking, is such a normal way of working

01:17:31 ◼   ► now, and I think we all probably have this, where you have tasks that are dependent on

01:17:34 ◼   ► somebody else doing something. So part of the task is you asking for it, or you do,

01:17:39 ◼   ► know, like, which is exactly the example that you gave Stephen, but that's become such a

01:17:43 ◼   ► more normal way of working that I think is, is more, is much more modern. Like you, you

01:17:49 ◼   ► communicate with somebody and say, I need a thing and then you're waiting for it to

01:17:52 ◼   ► come back. So technically you've done your part or maybe all you need to do, but the

01:17:57 ◼   ► task isn't complete until the other person does what they're supposed to do.

01:18:01 ◼   ► What I love is that we are explaining tic tic to Stephen.

01:18:04 ◼   ► No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not, I'm just trying to like, we're talking about why in

01:18:10 ◼   ► general this is a thing that people might want.

01:18:13 ◼   ► Yeah, or some people may put like a tag on it, like waiting. It's like I don't like tags

01:18:17 ◼   ► in any system, so this has jumped out at me as something unique and kind of useful. You've

01:18:23 ◼   ► got, you can do subtasks too, which I could make that a task and a subtask, right? Like

01:18:31 ◼   ► get sponsorship content and be like sub task one, email them, sub task two, put it in google

01:18:37 ◼   ► docs.

01:18:38 ◼   ► Like I don't, just don't think that way.

01:18:39 ◼   ► Yeah, me too.

01:18:40 ◼   ► I've tried the sub task thing like before and basically what I like to do is just write

01:18:45 ◼   ► the entire thing and all the sub tasks in the task name and then that's just how I work.

01:18:50 ◼   ► Like I don't like the sub task model.

01:18:52 ◼   ► Yeah, sub tasks are just separate tasks holding hands.

01:18:57 ◼   ► It's silly.

01:18:58 ◼   ► Like at that point just create multiple tasks and sort them so that they stick closer together.

01:19:06 ◼   ► Agreed.

01:19:07 ◼   ► A couple other things that I really like in the task description, you can use Markdown.

01:19:16 ◼   ► And so I sent y'all a screenshot of this, but I sometimes, like if I need to post a

01:19:22 ◼   ► show or something, I may just keep a bunch of links that I need handy and I could just

01:19:28 ◼   ► a little markdown list of them. And it's just a nice way to like just have you know progress

01:19:34 ◼   ► or something associated with a task and I like markdown so it's got it's got markdown

01:19:39 ◼   ► markdown.

01:19:40 ◼   ► And it's something I definitely miss from switching from Todoist to OmniFocus.

01:19:44 ◼   ► Yeah Todoist has it but Todoist like it really treats descriptions as comments and so they

01:19:50 ◼   ► get all tagged with like a time and a date I don't necessarily need that. So the description

01:19:57 ◼   ► is a little more flexible, I think.

01:19:59 ◼   ► - Steven, can you mix and match, like in the same list,

01:20:02 ◼   ► can you view both tasks and calendar events?

01:20:06 ◼   ► - So I don't, calendars are one of the things

01:20:07 ◼   ► that I don't mix into my,

01:20:10 ◼   ► into my task manager, but yes, you can.

01:20:14 ◼   ► So like right now I'm in today,

01:20:16 ◼   ► and I see all my calendar items,

01:20:18 ◼   ► and I see my tasks intermixed by time.

01:20:22 ◼   ► So like I have edit and publish connected

01:20:24 ◼   ► and connected pro, do it for 30,

01:20:27 ◼   ► that is in between pick my kid up from school and then like a board meeting I have this

01:20:31 ◼   ► evening so it doesn't end time order which is cool.

01:20:35 ◼   ► Are you on Salesforce, Steven?

01:20:38 ◼   ► Yeah man.

01:20:39 ◼   ► While I guess while I'm here, so it does have calendar integration, I don't use it.

01:20:45 ◼   ► It has a Pomodoro timer which I don't care about.

01:20:51 ◼   ► The only place where Pomodoro has to go is on pizza.

01:20:54 ◼   ► Oh, time tracking?

01:20:56 ◼   ► tomato timer. The tomato is the universal symbol for Pomodoro timers. Yep. You can do habit tracking.

01:21:05 ◼   ► I don't do... well, I kind of do, but in a paper notebook. But if you wanted to create habits to

01:21:11 ◼   ► track in TickTick, you can do that. I don't care about it. So, and what's cool, if you turn those

01:21:16 ◼   ► things off, they disappear from the UI. So it's not like I have like a calendar tab and it's just

01:21:20 ◼   ► empty. Like there's no UI even indicating that this app could show me calendars, which

01:21:26 ◼   ► I think is helpful.

01:21:27 ◼   ► What's the shortcut support like?

01:21:30 ◼   ► Yeah, shortcut support is pretty good. So you can bring things in. So I've got a couple

01:21:36 ◼   ► of like save to the tick tick inbox, save to a certain list. I've talked about this

01:21:40 ◼   ► before, but I have a shortcut to like a link anywhere on my phone, like I want to link

01:21:46 ◼   ► to it on 512. So put it in the 512 list due today. And that works really well. It also

01:21:52 ◼   ► has some shortcuts for shortcut support, I guess, things that have been with donated

01:21:57 ◼   ► to shortcuts. What's the verbiage like the intents?

01:22:00 ◼   ► Yeah, the way do you mean parameters or like,

01:22:05 ◼   ► yeah, yeah, like the actions you can, you can take, okay, there are several others you

01:22:12 ◼   ► You can get tasks from a list.

01:22:15 ◼   ► So if you had like one of those daily boot up shortcuts, it could show you a task from

01:22:19 ◼   ► any list.

01:22:20 ◼   ► You can open any list or calendar directly, you can start or stop the Pomodoro timer,

01:22:26 ◼   ► check in the habit, that sort of thing.

01:22:28 ◼   ► So it's it's pretty good.

01:22:29 ◼   ► I think it's probably on par with something like Todoist in terms of what you can do with

01:22:33 ◼   ► it with shortcuts.

01:22:35 ◼   ► And you can also get stuff into it via Zapier, which I do quite a bit of.

01:22:40 ◼   ► Widgets.

01:22:41 ◼   ► It's got widgets, they're pretty basic.

01:22:44 ◼   ► I think they look nicer than Todoist's.

01:22:47 ◼   ► Todoist has like some weird text rendering stuff

01:22:49 ◼   ► in their iOS widgets, but it's simple enough.

01:22:53 ◼   ► I've got a small one on one homepage

01:22:54 ◼   ► and it kind of shows me the next three or four things

01:22:57 ◼   ► and it works well enough.

01:22:58 ◼   ► - What about, so one of the things

01:23:00 ◼   ► that I really like about using good task

01:23:02 ◼   ► is that it uses reminders as its database,

01:23:06 ◼   ► which means that whenever I wanna save a new task quickly,

01:23:10 ◼   ► I can just talk to my Apple Watch.

01:23:12 ◼   ► I can say, "Remind me about this,"

01:23:13 ◼   ► and because it's all based on reminders,

01:23:16 ◼   ► it shows up in Good Task 2.

01:23:19 ◼   ► Does it have an Apple Watch app?

01:23:21 ◼   ► Does it have Siri integration that,

01:23:24 ◼   ► even if I gotta say, in tic-tac, remind me about this?

01:23:28 ◼   ► Like, how quickly can you save stuff?

01:23:30 ◼   ► - Pretty quick.

01:23:31 ◼   ► So it does have an Apple Watch app,

01:23:33 ◼   ► and it can show you the list that you want,

01:23:35 ◼   ► and you can quickly input things with your voice.

01:23:39 ◼   ► The iPhone app, or I guess the iOS app,

01:23:41 ◼   ► has two different ways you can use it with Siri.

01:23:43 ◼   ► You can do, the first one you said

01:23:45 ◼   ► where you can basically tell it,

01:23:47 ◼   ► tell your phone just to remind me

01:23:49 ◼   ► and TickTick will scrape the reminders inbox

01:23:51 ◼   ► and then just move those things into the TickTick inbox

01:23:54 ◼   ► and then get rid of them in reminders.

01:23:56 ◼   ► Or you can say, add so and so to my list in TickTick.

01:24:00 ◼   ► I've tried both, they work basically

01:24:03 ◼   ► as well as each other.

01:24:05 ◼   ► So I use the in TickTick version

01:24:07 ◼   ► because I do use Apple reminders

01:24:10 ◼   ► for like very specific types of things.

01:24:12 ◼   ► And so I kind of want to keep that a little bit separate,

01:24:14 ◼   ► but it offers both, which is nice.

01:24:17 ◼   ► You can kind of work the way you want to.

01:24:19 ◼   ► - Tell us why we're not gonna like it.

01:24:21 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:24:22 ◼   ► - There's gotta be some stuff-

01:24:23 ◼   ► - There has to be a catch.

01:24:24 ◼   ► - That, you know.

01:24:26 ◼   ► - I don't know, iPad support.

01:24:27 ◼   ► Maybe there's no pointer integration or something.

01:24:30 ◼   ► - That's a good question.

01:24:32 ◼   ► Let's see, I have my iPad here.

01:24:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like, what are we not gonna like?

01:24:36 ◼   ► There's gotta be some stuff we're not gonna like, right?

01:24:38 ◼   ► 'Cause right now, you're painting the picture

01:24:41 ◼   ► of this is the best to-do app ever made, you know?

01:24:43 ◼   ► It sounds fantastic.

01:24:44 ◼   ► Every part of it sounds great.

01:24:46 ◼   ► - Okay, so the trackpad support is very basic.

01:24:50 ◼   ► It doesn't do anything to change shapes or anything,

01:24:52 ◼   ► but it does work, it's just not fancy.

01:24:55 ◼   ► - iPad keyboard shortcuts?

01:24:56 ◼   ► - It has a couple.

01:24:59 ◼   ► It's got Command + N will give you a new one.

01:25:04 ◼   ► I'm trying to see, I'm trying to pull up the shortcut thing.

01:25:07 ◼   ► It's got a few.

01:25:08 ◼   ► It definitely could be better on the iPad,

01:25:10 ◼   ► but it's perfectly functional, but like, totally fine.

01:25:14 ◼   ► Some people won't like that it has its own sync, I think.

01:25:17 ◼   ► I think some people like that it syncs

01:25:18 ◼   ► a top of Reminders or CloudKit, or you can choose,

01:25:21 ◼   ► you know, like the To Do app, you know,

01:25:24 ◼   ► to DO, you can sync on iCloud or Dropbox or whatever.

01:25:28 ◼   ► This is a service with an app, so you know,

01:25:30 ◼   ► you've gotta know and you gotta trust them with your data.

01:25:33 ◼   ► Some people won't like that.

01:25:35 ◼   ► Like a lot of these apps,

01:25:36 ◼   ► it's free with a premium subscription.

01:25:39 ◼   ► And I think where they draw the line

01:25:41 ◼   ► between free and premium is a little stingy.

01:25:44 ◼   ► You know, it's like 28 bucks a year.

01:25:47 ◼   ► So it's kind of in line with what Todoist is, I think.

01:25:49 ◼   ► And I think some people,

01:25:51 ◼   ► I think maybe y'all in particular won't like

01:25:54 ◼   ► that it has all these other features

01:25:55 ◼   ► that you don't want or need.

01:25:58 ◼   ► But because you can turn them off

01:26:00 ◼   ► and they'd basically disappear,

01:26:01 ◼   ► it really hasn't bothered me that much.

01:26:03 ◼   ► but I think that would bother some people knowing that this app does a lot more than what they're using it for.

01:26:08 ◼   ► I don't know how that could annoy people if you can turn them off and don't have to see them anymore.

01:26:12 ◼   ► Outside, out of mind.

01:26:13 ◼   ► Maybe it's just like the overhead maybe, I don't know.

01:26:16 ◼   ► The principle of it, that this company is also working on all these other features.

01:26:21 ◼   ► Getting distracted.

01:26:22 ◼   ► Right, yeah, that's more what I mean.

01:26:24 ◼   ► Yeah, like why are they spending time on a tomato timer? I don't need that.

01:26:28 ◼   ► Right, but that only bothers me if there are core problems with the main application, right?

01:26:33 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm, I will say the Apple Watch app

01:26:35 ◼   ► could be more robust.

01:26:37 ◼   ► It's pretty simple, and at least in the current release,

01:26:39 ◼   ► there's this weird thing where it puts overdue task

01:26:43 ◼   ► at the bottom and at the top of the list,

01:26:44 ◼   ► and I've contacted them, and they say

01:26:46 ◼   ► that that's like a known thing,

01:26:48 ◼   ► so I think that's just a temporary bug.

01:26:50 ◼   ► But the Apple Watch app is relatively straightforward.

01:26:54 ◼   ► There's not a lot of customization you can do there,

01:26:57 ◼   ► which with Todoist and with others,

01:26:59 ◼   ► you can really like more finely control

01:27:01 ◼   ► Apple Watch app but it's basic but it gets it gets the job the job done just

01:27:05 ◼   ► fine. It looks cross-platformy like it doesn't really look Mac ish but neither

01:27:12 ◼   ► does Todoist. I would argue that it is a good task really a good task. This on the

01:27:16 ◼   ► Mac looks like good task. It is a native app so it's not best I can tell it's not

01:27:21 ◼   ► Electron but it's definitely not super native feeling but unless you're using

01:27:26 ◼   ► OmniFocus or things that's pretty much par for the course. Yeah there's no such

01:27:30 ◼   ► thing as Mac like you know like OmniFocus I spoke about it before the

01:27:35 ◼   ► Mac app not good doesn't look nice doesn't really feel that great in a lot

01:27:42 ◼   ► of places like okay great it's a native application but like it's not a

01:27:49 ◼   ► particularly nice one to use all right like you know there is no such thing as

01:27:54 ◼   ► Mac like anymore so it's got URL schemes if you're into that that's exciting on

01:27:59 ◼   ► on the Mac? On iOS. I'm looking at this blog post from their company blog, "20

01:28:05 ◼   ► lesser-known tick-tick features." Let's see, "set time to a task based on flexible

01:28:12 ◼   ► time zone options." Nice, that's a good one to have, I like that. "See how many days

01:28:18 ◼   ► are left for a task with countdown mode." They call Pomodoro "Pomo," which I don't

01:28:26 ◼   ► like when people have those kinds of abbreviations, like when people say let's have a combo or

01:28:32 ◼   ► let's do a pod. It's like no please don't but okay.

01:28:36 ◼   ► So if you did a show together about time tracking it would be a pomo collab pomo colo pod. I'm

01:28:44 ◼   ► trying to put all those words together.

01:28:46 ◼   ► A pomo pod. It's a pomo pod.

01:28:48 ◼   ► Hub, pub sub hubbub. Remember that?

01:28:51 ◼   ► What? What did you just say?

01:28:55 ◼   ► sub. Oh, I remember. Pub-sub-hub-hub. It's a Google thing. An open, simple web scale

01:29:05 ◼   ► and decentralized PubSub protocol. It's now just called WebSub, which is so much sad.

01:29:11 ◼   ► Why didn't you call that years ago? Okay. Yeah. Wow, the Google PubSubHubHubHub. PubSubHubHubHub.

01:29:23 ◼   ► I'm reading this training lesson on features.

01:29:26 ◼   ► Quickly arrange today's tasks with plan your day.

01:29:30 ◼   ► So there's a feature called plan your day.

01:29:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't, I just have a list named today.

01:29:35 ◼   ► That works for me.

01:29:37 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:29:38 ◼   ► - But you can, like, if you had a lot of things do

01:29:40 ◼   ► in today, you could like bring certain things over

01:29:43 ◼   ► to that different view.

01:29:44 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:29:45 ◼   ► So here's my question for you, Steven, and be honest.

01:29:48 ◼   ► Is it one of those apps that when you use it on iOS,

01:29:50 ◼   ► It looks kind of weird and web-appy?

01:29:54 ◼   ► Or does it feel like an actual native app?

01:29:56 ◼   ► Yes.

01:29:57 ◼   ► It looks weird?

01:29:58 ◼   ► It looks cross-platformy, but other than, I guess, the iPad cursor support stuff, like

01:30:04 ◼   ► click and drag and drag and drop, it feels native, but it looks just like their Android

01:30:10 ◼   ► app.

01:30:11 ◼   ► The app looks the same everywhere.

01:30:12 ◼   ► Okay.

01:30:13 ◼   ► So is that similar to Todoist, right?

01:30:15 ◼   ► Todoist feels like a native app, but it looks nothing like iOS apps.

01:30:19 ◼   ► I think out of all of them, most similar to Todoist.

01:30:23 ◼   ► Is it true that there's a Kanban view?

01:30:26 ◼   ► There is.

01:30:27 ◼   ► So you can take any list and you can view it in Kanban view and section things off into

01:30:35 ◼   ► different categories or different columns, I guess.

01:30:39 ◼   ► So I know Todoist added that last year, I think, and TickTick has it as well.

01:30:46 ◼   ► So this is now...

01:30:47 ◼   ► So you can can you can can ban ban sub hub and tick tick.

01:30:53 ◼   ► So this is now a tick tick podcast.

01:30:54 ◼   ► Oh my gosh.

01:30:56 ◼   ► Multiple multiple reminders or annoying alert.

01:31:00 ◼   ► Yep.

01:31:01 ◼   ► I imagine annoying alert is like do you right?

01:31:04 ◼   ► I think so.

01:31:05 ◼   ► I haven't played with that.

01:31:06 ◼   ► One thing I have played with is you can customize the snooze.

01:31:11 ◼   ► And so if if something reminds you at 11 and you want to push it back 30 minutes, like

01:31:14 ◼   ► can customize those quick actions pretty easily.

01:31:19 ◼   ► Oh man, Matt in the Discord has just posted, you know the "Always Sunny in Philadelphia"

01:31:26 ◼   ► meme?

01:31:27 ◼   ► That is perfect.

01:31:28 ◼   ► This is the gang switch at Sick-Tek.

01:31:30 ◼   ► That is perfect.

01:31:36 ◼   ► This looks nice!

01:31:38 ◼   ► argument when we mentioned some people may be concerned that this company is trying too

01:31:45 ◼   ► many things and they may be distracted. You can play white noises inside.

01:31:52 ◼   ► I just, me and you hit the same part of the website at the exact same time. I was like

01:31:58 ◼   ► hang on a minute. Why is there a white noise feature in this

01:32:02 ◼   ► application? It's for the Pomodoro timer.

01:32:05 ◼   ► Those two things would go together because Pomodoro is about focusing

01:32:10 ◼   ► intently on work for a set period of time and you're supposed to leave the

01:32:13 ◼   ► timer up viewable to you I believe and so having white noise kind of makes

01:32:17 ◼   ► sense you would pair them together right I'm gonna focus 15-20 minutes on this

01:32:22 ◼   ► one project I will now put on white noise to help me focus I understand why

01:32:26 ◼   ► you would put those two things together I just don't know if it needs it but if

01:32:31 ◼   ► If you want to be the one-stop shop for somebody's productivity,

01:32:36 ◼   ► a timer is not a huge overhead of resources to put into the application, right?

01:32:42 ◼   ► Right. So this app wants to be like a centralized dashboard for all kinds of productivity, I guess.

01:32:50 ◼   ► Tasks, events, and everything in the middle of that.

01:32:53 ◼   ► Yeah, you can even keep notes in it. But again, if you don't want any of that stuff and you turn

01:32:57 ◼   ► it off you don't you don't see like the shell of those features anywhere which

01:33:01 ◼   ► which I like. Since you guys seem so interested in that there is import

01:33:04 ◼   ► function from Todoist, from Microsoft to do, from Wunderlist, from OmniFocus, from

01:33:12 ◼   ► Toodleoo, and from Ico. Wunderlist, which is dead like that's gone now. All of

01:33:19 ◼   ► those import features never work as good as you know. I hope they will but yeah I I

01:33:24 ◼   ► I just end up taking an hour and just rebuilding from scratch.

01:33:30 ◼   ► But there you go.

01:33:31 ◼   ► I've been really happy with it over the last month or so.

01:33:34 ◼   ► Oh, it's brought up in the Discord.

01:33:36 ◼   ► It also has start dates, which Todoist famously does not have.

01:33:40 ◼   ► So if you're one that needs a span on a task, like I can do this Wednesday through Friday,

01:33:45 ◼   ► but it's due Friday, you can do that in TickTick.

01:33:49 ◼   ► I don't work that way, but if you do, it's there.

01:33:53 ◼   ► updates are also called defer. In omnifocus. In different applications, in different systems.

01:33:59 ◼   ► Or duration. But why are we only discovering this service

01:34:04 ◼   ► in 2021? It's kind of been on my radar for a while,

01:34:08 ◼   ► but one day I was like, I had real work to do that I didn't want to do, and I switched.

01:34:13 ◼   ► I know I heard this before because MKBHD mentioned it in a bunch of videos.

01:34:18 ◼   ► He always talks about it, and so much so that even in the App Store page, like in the first

01:34:22 ◼   ► sentence they reference him like I'm sure he's sent them a ton of business

01:34:25 ◼   ► and I think in my mind I've always thought of tick-tick as a good Android

01:34:31 ◼   ► option and I've never thought to look at it yeah all right well I've downloaded

01:34:37 ◼   ► it I mean I guess I'm gonna start playing around with it yeah I'd be

01:34:41 ◼   ► interested to know what y'all we all think I gotta try it

01:34:45 ◼   ► I'm setting an only focus task to check out Tiktok. I think that's it.

01:34:52 ◼   ► If you want to find links to the stuff we spoke about head on over to the

01:34:58 ◼   ► website relay.fm/connected/338. While you're there you can send us an

01:35:06 ◼   ► email with feedback or follow-up. You can become a member, get connected pro that

01:35:13 ◼   ► That is a longer ad-free version of the show we do each and every week.

01:35:17 ◼   ► This week we talked about the right place to put the dock in macOS.

01:35:22 ◼   ► We talked about the time we saw an iPhone X before it was released and weird art installation

01:35:27 ◼   ► in Chicago.

01:35:28 ◼   ► It's pretty good.

01:35:29 ◼   ► Oh, and we gave a critical breakdown of the System Preferences iconography in macOS.

01:35:34 ◼   ► Yes.

01:35:35 ◼   ► It was a very busy pre-show this week.

01:35:38 ◼   ► So go check that out.

01:35:40 ◼   ► You can find all of us online.

01:35:42 ◼   ► You can find Federico on Twitter as vitiici, V-I-T-I-C-C-I.

01:35:47 ◼   ► He is the editor-in-chief of MaxStories.net.

01:35:50 ◼   ► Federico, I'm looking forward to reading your iOS 14.5 coverage.

01:35:56 ◼   ► When that ships, whenever that ships.

01:35:58 ◼   ► 75,000 words.

01:36:00 ◼   ► Well, no, but it's not going to be a short one.

01:36:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:36:05 ◼   ► Of course it's not.

01:36:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:36:07 ◼   ► Okay.

01:36:08 ◼   ► Federico, I do have a question for you.

01:36:11 ◼   ► If you woke up and you were suddenly wealthy enough you didn't have to work anymore,

01:36:17 ◼   ► was the first thing you would do?

01:36:19 ◼   ► Not like what would you do ultimately like buy a boat and live on the beach but like

01:36:22 ◼   ► first thing in the morning you get a text message from your bank saying you don't have

01:36:25 ◼   ► to work anymore, like what would you do?

01:36:27 ◼   ► Why would the bank be the person to tell you this?

01:36:30 ◼   ► Just what the bank tells me.

01:36:33 ◼   ► I feel like if you become independently wealthy your banker texts you.

01:36:36 ◼   ► Just like hey.

01:36:37 ◼   ► Okay.

01:36:38 ◼   ► Alright.

01:36:39 ◼   ► Fine.

01:36:40 ◼   ► Alright.

01:36:41 ◼   ► Like, would you expect me to be like, original and say something that...

01:36:45 ◼   ► No, no, it'd be you.

01:36:47 ◼   ► Well, okay, so here's the thing...

01:36:50 ◼   ► Like, like what I would do?

01:36:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:36:52 ◼   ► I would, I would probably pay off my house, like, first thing.

01:36:55 ◼   ► I'm gonna be boring and save, like, if I were...

01:36:59 ◼   ► So like, totally rich, like Bill Gates rich?

01:37:03 ◼   ► Yeah, like, you don't ever have to worry about money again,

01:37:06 ◼   ► and your grandchildren won't ever have to worry about money.

01:37:08 ◼   ► All right, cool.

01:37:09 ◼   ► So the first thing I would do is I would just buy an apartment that,

01:37:14 ◼   ► like the dream apartment in Rome. Right?

01:37:18 ◼   ► So like I would get the kind of house that like if I was a millionaire,

01:37:22 ◼   ► I would buy in Rome. Yeah. Well,

01:37:24 ◼   ► it's like there's a list of things that I would do right away.

01:37:27 ◼   ► I would say the house is the first one.

01:37:31 ◼   ► And then I would probably

01:37:37 ◼   ► get a new car. Like, I wanna... actually I want to get a bunch of cars. So you bought

01:37:45 ◼   ► an apartment with no garage. No, no, no, obviously there has to be a garage. There has to be

01:37:49 ◼   ► a garage for like... Jerry Seinfeld lives in an apartment and he has lots of cars. You

01:37:54 ◼   ► can make it work. And a 20th anniversary Mac. Yep, you can make it work. Like, I wanna,

01:37:58 ◼   ► I wanna get, I wanna get a... also the apartment has to have like a, like a movie theater/giant

01:38:07 ◼   ► game room. It's a big apartment. So it's more, I guess it has to be a house. But the problem

01:38:11 ◼   ► with living in a house is like I'm scared of not having neighbors. So like it can be

01:38:17 ◼   ► a house but there has to be someone nearby. Or I can have my own 24/7 security. There

01:38:25 ◼   ► you go. There is also a dream of mine. Like get super rich and have like custom security

01:38:30 ◼   ► around. Bodyguards. Yeah, like bodyguards but also security. But like the front gate,

01:38:35 ◼   ► always somebody, but there also has to be, like I thought about this, there also has

01:38:40 ◼   ► to be, these are the things I think about, there has to be like, when you think about

01:38:44 ◼   ► it, security for security, because what if the security guy eventually gets jealous and

01:38:49 ◼   ► wants to kill you? So like there has to be somebody keeping an eye on the security guy.

01:38:54 ◼   ► So like you gotta have like a two prong system for, if you want to have like three prongs,

01:39:00 ◼   ► what about the second prong? What if prong one and prong two, they gang up?

01:39:05 ◼   ► What I'm saying is, yeah, that's the concern.

01:39:07 ◼   ► So like you gotta have, you gotta have some kind of layering system for your own security

01:39:13 ◼   ► people because those people may also be out to get you if you're super rich.

01:39:19 ◼   ► So the house, but there has to be somebody, someone like, I don't want to, like, what

01:39:23 ◼   ► if something happens to me in the middle of the night and I start screaming and nobody

01:39:27 ◼   ► hears me like that is not good.

01:39:30 ◼   ► So either neighbors or multiple levels of security.

01:39:35 ◼   ► Then I will...

01:39:36 ◼   ► So hang on a second, hang on a second.

01:39:39 ◼   ► It's a busy morning.

01:39:40 ◼   ► I just need to draw a line here.

01:39:45 ◼   ► So Federico, what would you do if you got a text message from your bank that said you

01:39:50 ◼   ► are wealthy?

01:39:52 ◼   ► I might wake up in the night screaming and who's gonna be there?

01:39:59 ◼   ► I just want to make sure we're staying on track here.

01:40:02 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:40:07 ◼   ► You know, the things we think about.

01:40:09 ◼   ► I'm just trying to contextualize the thing.

01:40:12 ◼   ► No, it's good.

01:40:14 ◼   ► So the house, the house, then a beach house, like my own beach house, then a bunch of cars.

01:40:23 ◼   ► Then security?

01:40:25 ◼   ► than security. Like I want to go visit my friends like a manager and Maserati and I

01:40:30 ◼   ► want to walk in there and be like, give me five cars and I'm going to pay cash. I don't

01:40:34 ◼   ► care. I'm super rich and I'm going to buy five Maserati cars just like that. You wouldn't

01:40:40 ◼   ► have the cash. Well, it's in the bank account. Well, that's not cash. I mean, I got the money.

01:40:46 ◼   ► Just paying for it. Yeah. He's not taking a loan out. He's paying for it. Or I could

01:40:50 ◼   ► have like a bunch of duffel bags that my own security guy takes like it's paying cash.

01:40:57 ◼   ► I don't think they would take that. Why not? Right? Because what like they're just ready

01:41:04 ◼   ► to accept like 1.5 million euro like no one can accept that type of cash. You're just

01:41:10 ◼   ► having it in a backpack and be like here you go. Whatever that's gonna be a wire transfer

01:41:15 ◼   ► for that. And lastly, for like the morning of, I will probably acquire my own dog park.

01:41:23 ◼   ► Like I'm gonna have my own facility for letting dogs play and just hang around. Like I wanna

01:41:31 ◼   ► have my own dog park. Just a garden? It's not enough? In your house that you're buying?

01:41:37 ◼   ► Well, no, it has to be, well, it can be, I gotta decide, it can be by the house or it

01:41:43 ◼   ► can be elsewhere. Also what I wanna have, like I don't have, I didn't go to university,

01:41:51 ◼   ► right? But I wanna end up... I wanna buy a degree. I wanna buy, no, I want my, I want

01:41:58 ◼   ► Italy to like, because I'm so rich, right? And I'm so important, like I wanna be one

01:42:03 ◼   ► of those people that receives a degree without going to university. Right. You should just

01:42:10 ◼   ► buy a wing of like, I'm going to buy a wing of yours.

01:42:13 ◼   ► Like now what you're going to give me a degree or what?

01:42:16 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, yeah. Honor an honorary doctorate and being wealthy.

01:42:19 ◼   ► And they give you like when they do those ceremonies, they give you like that,

01:42:23 ◼   ► that fancy coat or something, the fancy hat and everything.

01:42:28 ◼   ► I want to have that.

01:42:29 ◼   ► You should, I mean, look, you come from a, does Viterbo have a university?

01:42:33 ◼   ► They do.

01:42:34 ◼   ► You, you've got to try and get, tell me with the,

01:42:38 ◼   ► with like the dean of Viterbo University because you've got to be one of the most world renowned

01:42:44 ◼   ► people from Viterbo. Sure. Right? I guess. You've got to try and learn who's the journalism

01:42:49 ◼   ► professor at Viterbo University. Well I'm not a journalist right? Right? Try and get

01:42:54 ◼   ► that person and find them on LinkedIn. I gotta log into LinkedIn again. Yeah, find the journalism

01:43:00 ◼   ► professor at Viterbo University and get your honorary degree. Look, if you're that rich,

01:43:06 ◼   ► someone can log into LinkedIn for you. You don't have to see that again.

01:43:09 ◼   ► No, I'm talking about he should do this part now. Like this is, this is the thing in current

01:43:13 ◼   ► day Federico's life. Get, get your paper son. Like the actual paper, which says you got

01:43:19 ◼   ► a degree on it.

01:43:21 ◼   ► Uh, yeah. So that's a busy morning for finding out you're a billionaire, I guess.

01:43:29 ◼   ► It's very productive.

01:43:30 ◼   ► There's a bunch of extras that we can talk about in the future. Like having my own tattoo

01:43:35 ◼   ► studio which is also an investment that I like I'm dreaming to like I have you know

01:43:41 ◼   ► I own the tattoo place now hiring hiring a private chef and then firing the person immediately

01:43:48 ◼   ► saying I cook better than you.

01:43:51 ◼   ► A bunch of things like that.

01:43:59 ◼   ► Is it the University of Naples Federico the second?

01:44:02 ◼   ► This is what they've dug up in the Discord.

01:44:03 ◼   ► called the Tuscia University because it's the local area where Viterbo and

01:44:09 ◼   ► nearby towns are located. It's called Tuscia, T-U-S-C-I-A. I believe it's called

01:44:17 ◼   ► University of Tuscia, something like that. But it's in Viterbo, yes.

01:44:23 ◼   ► It's actually very nice.

01:44:24 ◼   ► You've got a 5001 arrow trying to go to a website.

01:44:27 ◼   ► It doesn't seem good.

01:44:29 ◼   ► Maybe you should have started the day with a donation to the university.

01:44:33 ◼   ► Maybe we just brought their website down just by everyone.

01:44:35 ◼   ► Maybe we just Google it again.

01:44:37 ◼   ► You can find Myke online, @IMYKE on Twitter.

01:44:41 ◼   ► Myke hosts a bunch of shows here on Relay FM and he hosts the cool kids keyboard club

01:44:47 ◼   ► most Fridays at Myke.live over on Twitch.

01:44:50 ◼   ► Yep.

01:44:51 ◼   ► Big keyboard energy over there.

01:44:52 ◼   ► Big keyboard energy.

01:44:54 ◼   ► You can find me online as @ismh and I write over at 512pixels.net.

01:44:59 ◼   ► souls.net. I want to tell you about another show on relay FM that you may enjoy and that

01:45:04 ◼   ► is make do. You don't have to monetize your hobbies. But if you want to make do is ready

01:45:11 ◼   ► to be your cheerleader. Listen as you hobby with Tiff Arment and Julia Scott at relay

01:45:16 ◼   ► dot FM slash make do or search for make do wherever you get your shows. I'd like to thank

01:45:22 ◼   ► the sponsors of this episode of connected. They are Pingdom express VPN and delete me

01:45:29 ◼   ► until next week guys. Say goodbye to cheerio. Bye y'all.