Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:07 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Connected episode 334. Today's show is brought to you by Pingdom,

00:00:14 ◼   ► Bombas and Baronfig. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Federico Fatici. Hi Federico.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Hello. Hi. You've jumped the gun there. Well I'm very, I'm very excited to talk to you today.

00:00:25 ◼   ► It's just me and you today.

00:00:27 ◼   ► That's the reason.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Babe, he's in the city today.

00:00:30 ◼   ► Yeah, he's cheating on us.

00:00:33 ◼   ► I know, I know he's cheating on me.

00:00:36 ◼   ► I know he is.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Okay.

00:00:38 ◼   ► But yeah, it's just me and you today.

00:00:40 ◼   ► We have a bunch of fun topics, the kind of stuff that Steven wouldn't let us talk about.

00:00:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I believe my message to you was let's make it weird.

00:00:48 ◼   ► Yes, as always.

00:00:50 ◼   ► So we're gonna be a little bit weird today.

00:00:52 ◼   ► We should start with follow-up though.

00:00:54 ◼   ► I guess. I do actually have follow-up this time. Usually I like to eschew follow-up when

00:01:01 ◼   ► Steven's not here, but there are some things that I legitimately want to talk about and

00:01:06 ◼   ► I guess they could technically be classed as follow-up, or we could give this whole

00:01:10 ◼   ► segment a new name for today.

00:01:13 ◼   ► What if it wasn't called follow-up? How would you call it? Like in 2021, if you were to

00:01:18 ◼   ► describe this kind of section for a podcast...

00:01:21 ◼   ► I don't really have a good name.

00:01:23 ◼   ► The warm-up?

00:01:24 ◼   ► Warmer reflections.

00:01:28 ◼   ► Reflections.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Boomerang, TJ suggested in the chat room.

00:01:35 ◼   ► Which I guess is interesting because we're kind of reflecting on what is coming back from last time.

00:01:40 ◼   ► Anywho, Mark Gurman reports that Apple are working on a MagSafe battery pack.

00:01:45 ◼   ► So on last week's episode, we were talking about a MacRumors article.

00:01:50 ◼   ► call where I think it was Stephen Moser at MacRumors was digging through some of the

00:01:56 ◼   ► code to find reference to what seemed to be a battery pack and Mark Gorman has reported

00:02:02 ◼   ► that Apple are in fact working on one. But whether we see it or not, who knows? I assume that they're

00:02:09 ◼   ► probably being careful. They don't want to get themselves into an air power like situation,

00:02:14 ◼   ► but it doesn't matter anyway because Anker gone done did it and they've released one already. So

00:02:20 ◼   ► Anker have a new product, what is it called? The Anker PowerCore Magnetic 5K Wireless Power Bank,

00:02:28 ◼   ► which just rolls right off the tongue as a name. Yeah, Anker and Sony, they should really get

00:02:33 ◼   ► together and collaborate on product names. Then it would be called like the Anker PowerCore 566609.

00:02:40 ◼   ► No, the WF PowerCore Magnetic 1000 XM5. At least for both of them it might be an upgrade

00:02:49 ◼   ► in their naming right because at least it would give sony naming at least some kind of description

00:02:54 ◼   ► with english words yes so this is a 5000 milliamp hour battery which will take the pro max from zero

00:03:02 ◼   ► to 75 in charge all of the other phones that will have smaller batteries it will basically take them

00:03:08 ◼   ► to full if not full charge it is magsafe compatible like all of our anchors other products in this

00:03:16 ◼   ► MagSafe, it's MagSafe compatible.

00:03:18 ◼   ► Meaning it has magnets in it and it G-charges, but it's not official.

00:03:23 ◼   ► So I've seen different websites reporting different figures,

00:03:28 ◼   ► but it will charge somewhere between five to 7.5 watts.

00:03:32 ◼   ► So you're going to get regular G-charging speeds,

00:03:35 ◼   ► not the faster MagSafe speed.

00:03:39 ◼   ► The Amazon page for this that I was looking at,

00:03:43 ◼   ► which was linked to the 9to5Mac article.

00:03:45 ◼   ► had an illustration, like an image on it, which seemed to suggest to me that you could

00:03:52 ◼   ► put the battery pack on a Qi charger and then your phone on top of that so you could charge

00:03:57 ◼   ► them both at the same time. I love my family enough to not do that because I am convinced

00:04:06 ◼   ► that that would set my house on fire. That is literally the stack of battery pancakes

00:04:11 ◼   ► that we mentioned last week. That we should be doing that.

00:04:14 ◼   ► That is exactly it. I wouldn't want to do that. I don't know, man. None of this makes

00:04:25 ◼   ► me feel comfortable. I don't like the thought of this product. I don't know. It's not for

00:04:31 ◼   ► me.

00:04:32 ◼   ► The fact that Anker is not doing official MagSafe accessories, in this case it's a pretty

00:04:38 ◼   ► big deal because they are effectively limited to charging to half or maybe even lower than

00:04:46 ◼   ► the lower than half of the officially supported charging rate for MagSafe.

00:04:52 ◼   ► MagSafe, official MagSafe accessories, they can deliver up to 15 watts of charging.

00:04:58 ◼   ► I believe the MagSafe Duo charger that Apple makes peaks at about 14 watts.

00:05:06 ◼   ► But that could be because it's splitting the power out to two different things though, right?

00:05:10 ◼   ► Exactly, but I believe that officially MagSafe can deliver up to 15 watts of charging.

00:05:14 ◼   ► So if Apple does this, I assume they will release a MagSafe battery pack that snaps to the back of the phone

00:05:23 ◼   ► and delivers 15 watts of fast charging to your device.

00:05:28 ◼   ► It's a pretty big difference compared to 5 or 7.5 watts.

00:05:33 ◼   ► It's like going to the first generation Qi charging for the iPhone, whatever, the iPhone 10, 11? I don't remember.

00:05:40 ◼   ► And it used to be very slow, and then Apple, the following year, maybe two years later, they supported the faster 15W charging for Qi.

00:05:50 ◼   ► So, the moment I saw that Anker had one of these devices, I almost wanted to get one.

00:05:58 ◼   ► and then I remember that they're not doing official MagSafe, but MagSafe compatible

00:06:03 ◼   ► and I think I'm just gonna wait for Apple to release their one

00:06:07 ◼   ► which, obviously, is gonna be super expensive

00:06:10 ◼   ► and it's gonna be thicker, I think

00:06:15 ◼   ► but I still wanna get the faster charging

00:06:19 ◼   ► I'm really intrigued by the idea of...

00:06:23 ◼   ► and I wanna see how it works in practice

00:06:26 ◼   ► But the idea of me going out with an iPhone and a bunch of different things that I can sort of attach to the back of my phone, depending on the situation.

00:06:35 ◼   ► I guess, you know, it would be nice to have an iPhone and then when you need it, you put on the wallet.

00:06:41 ◼   ► When you don't need the wallet, you put on the battery pack.

00:06:44 ◼   ► It's almost like you're constantly exchanging things to attach to the back of your iPhone.

00:06:48 ◼   ► It's like modular, which is cool.

00:06:50 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:06:51 ◼   ► Yeah. You know? And you keep each of these things in a different pocket?

00:06:57 ◼   ► You just get like a utility vest, you know, like a fishing vest and basically you just

00:07:03 ◼   ► put all of these things facing out and you just stick the iPhone onto the vest magnetically

00:07:07 ◼   ► wherever you need it. So you put it like on your right breast pocket when you want it

00:07:11 ◼   ► charged. If you need your wallet, you just like clip it to the pocket and slide it out

00:07:15 ◼   ► and the wallet will come out with it.

00:07:17 ◼   ► Man, somebody should make that product.

00:07:20 ◼   ► It definitely will now. This is like some like conference in the future.

00:07:24 ◼   ► Federico's walking around with his like MagSafe vest.

00:07:27 ◼   ► MagSafe vest.

00:07:29 ◼   ► We have a we have a talent for willing jokes into existence.

00:07:33 ◼   ► So I'm sure that this will somebody will think of this.

00:07:36 ◼   ► It's a great idea. That's why.

00:07:38 ◼   ► Sure. You can.

00:07:39 ◼   ► I'm sure you will not look ridiculous going

00:07:42 ◼   ► out and about wearing that MagSafe vest.

00:07:45 ◼   ► But yeah, I'm going to get the Apple one regardless,

00:07:49 ◼   ► Because it's like my tradition, I always get the Apple battery cases or packs when they release them annually.

00:07:57 ◼   ► So moving on in follow up, last week we talked and to an extent we criticized the latest Craft update.

00:08:06 ◼   ► Craft, it's the note taking app that we're both using.

00:08:10 ◼   ► I believe, Myke, in your collection of note taking apps, Craft has a place.

00:08:14 ◼   ► It is one of the three or four apps that I'm currently using.

00:08:17 ◼   ► Yes.

00:08:17 ◼   ► Perfect.

00:08:18 ◼   ► The thing we criticized was the new feature called Toggle List,

00:08:23 ◼   ► which is sort of like a mini outliner built into Craft

00:08:28 ◼   ► that allows you to create lists that you can expand and collapse.

00:08:33 ◼   ► So you can there's a little toggle icon that you can click to reveal children

00:08:38 ◼   ► nodes, I guess, and you can expand and collapse the list as you go.

00:08:43 ◼   ► It wasn't really intuitive to use in its first release.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Thankfully, it appears that a bunch of people complained

00:08:50 ◼   ► and the team at Craft listened.

00:08:53 ◼   ► And in the update released over the weekend,

00:08:56 ◼   ► it is now much easier to operate.

00:08:58 ◼   ► So there's a couple of differences

00:08:59 ◼   ► that I wanna point out from the original version.

00:09:02 ◼   ► You can now see these vertical lines

00:09:04 ◼   ► connecting all the different toggles.

00:09:07 ◼   ► So it's easier to see the structure and the indentation

00:09:10 ◼   ► of the nodes and the indented items within them.

00:09:15 ◼   ► items within them. It's much easier to follow the structure of a toggle list.

00:09:20 ◼   ► And also there's a new keyboard shortcut to expand all nested notes.

00:09:27 ◼   ► You can option click and you will basically open, expand all of the children nodes within a list, which is really nice.

00:09:37 ◼   ► So it's easier to use. I still wish that it was... I believe you mentioned this, Myke,

00:09:43 ◼   ► that when you're using the iPhone app, dealing with indentation, it's not great.

00:09:50 ◼   ► Obviously, it's better on iPad because you have a physical keyboard attached.

00:09:54 ◼   ► But sometimes I really wish that the iPhone software keyboard had a tab button.

00:10:02 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I mean, lots of applications manage indent left and indent right quite nicely

00:10:11 ◼   ► with tapping the enter key twice, that kind of stuff.

00:10:16 ◼   ► A lot of apps manage it, and at this point,

00:10:22 ◼   ► with some of them, say like even Google Docs and Apple Notes,

00:10:24 ◼   ► they do a really good job, and they sometimes use swipe gestures or something.

00:10:28 ◼   ► And I think Croft can still have ways to go there,

00:10:32 ◼   ► because now they have two outlining modes.

00:10:34 ◼   ► You can use bulleted lists, or you can use their toggling lists.

00:10:38 ◼   ► And I think it would now be cool if they spent a bit of time observing how other apps manage

00:10:44 ◼   ► outlining features, especially on the iPhone, and what you can and can't do with the keyboard,

00:10:49 ◼   ► and kind of integrate some of those gestures and shortcuts effectively into the app. Because if they

00:10:55 ◼   ► did that, I mean this is, I'm not putting them in like some kind of hostage situation here,

00:10:58 ◼   ► but like if they did do that, I would find it way easier to move some of my other stuff to Craft,

00:11:04 ◼   ► because I tend to write in an outline format.

00:11:07 ◼   ► Two other things I want to mention in this craft update.

00:11:11 ◼   ► Document preview when searching. This is super cool.

00:11:15 ◼   ► So both on the Mac and an iPad, when you open the search UI,

00:11:18 ◼   ► it's like Spotlight.

00:11:20 ◼   ► So there's the list of search results on the left side of the search window.

00:11:25 ◼   ► But on the right, you will see a preview,

00:11:27 ◼   ► like a thumbnail preview of the selected document.

00:11:30 ◼   ► So it's a very nice touch because you can, in addition to the title,

00:11:33 ◼   ► you can visually preview the document you're about to open from search.

00:11:36 ◼   ► That's nice.

00:11:37 ◼   ► I wish it wasn't available on iPhone too.

00:11:40 ◼   ► And also, you can now create spaces.

00:11:43 ◼   ► This is part of the, one of the initiatives of the Kraft team of

00:11:48 ◼   ► putting you in control of your data.

00:11:50 ◼   ► And one of the things they're doing, in addition to exporting and sharing data from Kraft to other applications,

00:11:57 ◼   ► now you can create a space in an external location on your device.

00:12:02 ◼   ► So this means you can, instead of using the Kraft servers,

00:12:05 ◼   ► you can create a space in iCloud Drive or Working Copy,

00:12:08 ◼   ► any other compatible location on your device.

00:12:12 ◼   ► So that's cool.

00:12:13 ◼   ► If you don't want to use the online Kraft Sync,

00:12:17 ◼   ► you can create the space that is entirely offline,

00:12:19 ◼   ► or you can use iCloud Drive,

00:12:21 ◼   ► or you can use any other storage location provider

00:12:24 ◼   ► on your device.

00:12:25 ◼   ► So that's pretty nice.

00:12:26 ◼   ► I'm not going to do this, but that's cool.

00:12:28 ◼   ► -That surprised me, honestly.

00:12:30 ◼   ► -Yeah.

00:12:31 ◼   ► It seems like something that they don't have to do.

00:12:35 ◼   ► I thought it was cool.

00:12:37 ◼   ► Well, I think a lot of people are...

00:12:39 ◼   ► They prioritize the idea of data ownership these days,

00:12:47 ◼   ► which I totally understand.

00:12:48 ◼   ► So it's cool.

00:12:50 ◼   ► It's your right.

00:12:50 ◼   ► So I think it's cool that they are addressing this

00:12:53 ◼   ► within a few months of their first release, really,

00:12:57 ◼   ► instead of saying, "Yeah, this is one of the things

00:12:58 ◼   ► that we're going to do down the road."

00:13:00 ◼   ► as a lot of companies promise and few of them actually deliver upon.

00:13:05 ◼   ► And this is also taking advantage of a built-in iOS and iPadOS API.

00:13:10 ◼   ► So it's like it's very cool to see that

00:13:13 ◼   ► it's both the message and the implementation of it that I appreciate.

00:13:18 ◼   ► But, you know, I get it and they make it clear

00:13:21 ◼   ► if you use that, you lose some features.

00:13:23 ◼   ► So obviously collaboration tools, which is powered by their engine,

00:13:26 ◼   ► well, you're not going to get that.

00:13:27 ◼   ► But I think that's perfectly fine.

00:13:29 ◼   ► like this is what you're trading off against.

00:13:32 ◼   ► I saw a friend of the show, underscore David Smith,

00:13:36 ◼   ► posted a tweet showing the usage of the kind of the Apple watches

00:13:43 ◼   ► that he can see in use in WatchSmith.

00:13:46 ◼   ► And I wanted to bring this up to touch on what we were talking about

00:13:50 ◼   ► in regards to if the Apple Watch SE is successful or not.

00:13:56 ◼   ► because I figured that whilst David's data is obviously going to be skewed to WatchSmith users,

00:14:05 ◼   ► that probably also skews it, I think maybe to early adopters, I'm not sure. But basically,

00:14:14 ◼   ► what did the conclusion that David was drawing from his data is that series 3 watches are still

00:14:20 ◼   ► very much in use. So 26% of WatchSmith users have a Series 3 watch which is quite high.

00:14:27 ◼   ► It's actually the highest of any watch, any of any watch at all that uses WatchSmith.

00:14:33 ◼   ► So Series 3 has stuck around for a long time. Now I wanted to say that like there's a couple

00:14:40 ◼   ► of things that are interesting here. The other is the SE is 6% which is really small. You

00:14:47 ◼   ► So the Series 4 is 20%, Series 5 is 23%, Series 6 is 18%, and the SE watch is 6%.

00:14:56 ◼   ► So kind of indicating that there aren't a lot of WatchSmith users with an SE.

00:15:03 ◼   ► And I just thought that that was interesting.

00:15:06 ◼   ► I think what I'm looking at here is I think people would look at the SE and say, "Oh,

00:15:12 ◼   ► there's like a cost thing there."

00:15:14 ◼   ► But I think what's happening and the reason we're seeing so many Series 3 watches still

00:15:19 ◼   ► in use is the Apple Watch probably is not a year-over-year purchase for most people.

00:15:26 ◼   ► And I wouldn't assume that those Series 3 users are going to migrate to the SE because

00:15:31 ◼   ► of price.

00:15:32 ◼   ► They'll probably migrate to the Series 7 or Series 8 because it will be multiple years

00:15:36 ◼   ► between purchase.

00:15:37 ◼   ► Well, I was not expecting this kind of slow upgrade cycle though for an Apple Watch.

00:15:44 ◼   ► Because the Series 3 came out three years ago?

00:15:48 ◼   ► Mhm.

00:15:48 ◼   ► Almost four?

00:15:49 ◼   ► Mhm.

00:15:50 ◼   ► Hm.

00:15:51 ◼   ► But, the main thing that you don't get is the always on display, right?

00:15:58 ◼   ► But outside of that, you don't really...

00:16:00 ◼   ► Yeah, but I think whilst that is a cool feature, right?

00:16:04 ◼   ► I don't know if people are clamoring for it, right?

00:16:07 ◼   ► Gotta get my ECG.

00:16:08 ◼   ► Like, it's a great feature if you have it, but like, I don't, you know.

00:16:12 ◼   ► Clearly it's not enough of a driver because there's a lot of people still using series 3 watches.

00:16:16 ◼   ► I just think it's one of those things where, like, most technology products, people do not buy one every year.

00:16:24 ◼   ► Phones, people do, because they're so important.

00:16:27 ◼   ► But everything else, by and large, like, why would you get a new one every year?

00:16:33 ◼   ► Especially if you have to buy a new phone, right? Or you want to buy a new phone.

00:16:36 ◼   ► At that point, how are you using the Apple Watch?

00:16:40 ◼   ► If like, what does the casual Apple watch user that upgrades every three to four years

00:16:46 ◼   ► use the Apple watch for?

00:16:47 ◼   ► As a watch?

00:16:49 ◼   ► What? Notifications, watch and fitness.

00:16:52 ◼   ► There's a series 3 plus all that.

00:16:54 ◼   ► But I guess you're not really that into fitness if you're...

00:16:58 ◼   ► Because if you are, you will get a new one with a better sensors and the ECG and the

00:17:04 ◼   ► blood oxygen rate.

00:17:05 ◼   ► That's if you're...

00:17:06 ◼   ► See, you're thinking of health and not fitness.

00:17:09 ◼   ► Because fitness is fitness tracking, which it does, right?

00:17:15 ◼   ► The things that you're mentioning, they are mostly towards the health end, right?

00:17:21 ◼   ► I want the Apple Watch to make sure I'm alive, you know what I mean?

00:17:26 ◼   ► And so I think for most people, those features tend to be nice, but not necessary, where

00:17:36 ◼   ► a lot of the sensors are maybe more necessary.

00:17:38 ◼   ► I want something to track my steps or I want something to track just my general health

00:17:43 ◼   ► and fitness. But I would expect most users that are on a Series 3 watch are probably

00:17:51 ◼   ► using it for the connected stuff like the text messages and notifications.

00:17:55 ◼   ► I think you're right. I think you're right. I think it's perfectly fine for that.

00:17:59 ◼   ► They are exactly like my mom who uses a Series 3 Apple watch and she uses it because she

00:18:05 ◼   ► She thinks it's cool that she's got the Mickey Mouse watch face and she can look at the time

00:18:12 ◼   ► and she can read iMessage and WhatsApp notifications.

00:18:16 ◼   ► That is literally all she does with an Apple Watch.

00:18:20 ◼   ► So I actually think that there's a lot of people like that.

00:18:23 ◼   ► I thought it was just my mom.

00:18:25 ◼   ► Clearly not.

00:18:26 ◼   ► No, and also I could imagine it's a lot of people that they have it and they like it.

00:18:33 ◼   ► They don't love it.

00:18:34 ◼   ► So they're not in a rush to get the best thing.

00:18:37 ◼   ► Maybe some days they forget to put it on and it's fine.

00:18:43 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:18:44 ◼   ► They're different from us.

00:18:46 ◼   ► Well from me.

00:18:47 ◼   ► Well, from you.

00:18:48 ◼   ► But you know, I just think like some of the fitness stuff, right, is if you're not necessarily

00:18:55 ◼   ► a fitness person but you like the fact that your watch does the tracking for you, it's

00:19:00 ◼   ► like nice and easy, right?

00:19:02 ◼   ► you know, it's like, oh good, all my steps have been counted. It's reminding me to stand

00:19:06 ◼   ► up every hour. It's like super basic stuff that people are happy with, but they're not

00:19:10 ◼   ► necessarily clamoring for what is my heart rhythm, what is my blood oxygen level as things

00:19:17 ◼   ► that, you know, I mean, we lived before Apple watches, you know, I know that that isn't

00:19:25 ◼   ► necessarily the case for everyone. There's lots of really great stories, but I don't

00:19:30 ◼   ► know if it is a driver for enough people. I think clearly it's not a driver for enough

00:19:36 ◼   ► people. A lot of people, but not everyone to upgrade all the time.

00:19:40 ◼   ► I think you can maybe every few years, you know, like people might want to get it for

00:19:45 ◼   ► like the three or four sensors that they're missing.

00:19:48 ◼   ► And maybe because the battery lasts longer.

00:19:50 ◼   ► Yep. And they're always on display. See, always on display I think a lot of people don't realize

00:19:55 ◼   ► how good it is until they've used it. Unless it's something that you're particularly

00:20:00 ◼   ► after maybe you don't notice it? I don't know. But I just thought that these statistics were

00:20:05 ◼   ► interesting, especially because I would have assumed Underscore's app users would skew

00:20:11 ◼   ► more towards "I upgrade my watch more frequently".

00:20:14 ◼   ► Well, he's a global developer now.

00:20:19 ◼   ► Yeah, but WatchSmith is surely more, is much more niche still, you know?

00:20:24 ◼   ► Sure, but also I think, I don't know.

00:20:30 ◼   ► I was not expecting this, so this was fascinating for sure.

00:20:36 ◼   ► That's also a very good point, like what kinds of people are using WatchSmith?

00:20:40 ◼   ► Man, look at that series.

00:20:46 ◼   ► This is the SE numbers, which is very interesting to me.

00:20:50 ◼   ► I'm not surprised.

00:20:51 ◼   ► I really don't think it has a huge amount.

00:20:55 ◼   ► What they'll probably do is, I wouldn't be surprised if whatever is the series 3 goes

00:20:59 ◼   ► away and the SE is just then the base cheap model going forward.

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00:22:21 ◼   ► It happened Spotify HiFi for Fi. I don't like the name though I said it out loud. Spotify

00:22:27 ◼   ► HiFi Spotify. Yes, they should have done that Spotify. It doesn't the name out loud doesn't

00:22:37 ◼   ► work for me but written down it's perfectly fine. This is what is it high quality is that

00:22:43 ◼   ► what they're calling it? CD quality as they call it. CD quality lossless streaming coming

00:22:50 ◼   ► later this year at some point in selected markets as they always say. Do you have an

00:22:57 ◼   ► American account? I do, I do. So at the very least I think I will be able to upgrade to

00:23:03 ◼   ► that this is in reference to the lyrics feature, which is also coming at some point later this

00:23:08 ◼   ► year in selected markets. But yes, they announced this with Billie Eilish of all artists, by

00:23:16 ◼   ► the way.

00:23:17 ◼   ► Apple's favorite?

00:23:19 ◼   ► Yeah, which is... John mentioned this in the linked post on Mac, so it's quite a nice coincidence

00:23:26 ◼   ► that they used Billie Eilish to announce this feature.

00:23:30 ◼   ► It's coming in a few months,

00:23:31 ◼   ► and there are basically no details,

00:23:35 ◼   ► no technical details at the moment about Spotify HiFi.

00:23:39 ◼   ► They mentioned CD quality.

00:23:41 ◼   ► I assume this is gonna be...

00:23:45 ◼   ► So I'm basing all of this on personal speculation

00:23:49 ◼   ► at this point.

00:23:50 ◼   ► I assume that this is going to be different

00:23:55 ◼   ► from things like Tidal Masters, for example. It's going to be more similar to what Amazon is doing

00:24:01 ◼   ► with Amazon Music HD. So we can expect, I would say, by mentioning CD quality, I guess Spotify

00:24:09 ◼   ► is going to do 16-bit, pretty standard, 44.1 kHz kind of encoding, instead of what they're doing

00:24:21 ◼   ► now which is mp3 320 kilobits per second streaming literally just they're just

00:24:28 ◼   ► gonna do CD quality I don't even think they're gonna do 24-bit high-resolution

00:24:33 ◼   ► audio which Amazon music HD does for some recordings I think they're gonna

00:24:37 ◼   ► stick to CD quality based on what they're saying and it's gonna be

00:24:41 ◼   ► different from title masters it's gonna be different from what Tidal is doing

00:24:45 ◼   ► with MQA, which is another encoding technique.

00:24:48 ◼   ► And obviously, I want to see what they're going to do in terms of pricing, because

00:24:55 ◼   ► as we talked a few weeks ago, Amazon entered the space of high lossless music

00:25:03 ◼   ► streaming a few months ago and they undercut the competition on all fronts,

00:25:07 ◼   ► basically. And they are very competitive.

00:25:09 ◼   ► And the Amazon Music HD app, it's pretty terrible on desktop.

00:25:15 ◼   ► It's OK on mobile, I think.

00:25:17 ◼   ► What's interesting here, besides the sort of going against Amazon and what they're

00:25:25 ◼   ► going to do for pricing, I think it's the implication behind Spotify getting into

00:25:32 ◼   ► the lossless music streaming space and what it means for the ecosystem of Spotify

00:25:38 ◼   ► Connect enabled speakers made by third party manufacturers.

00:25:43 ◼   ► So Spotify Connect is this technology that allows you to instantly connect your Spotify account to any device that wants to support Spotify.

00:25:53 ◼   ► Spotify Connect works on the Amazon Echo, it works on PlayStation, on Xbox, and it works on a collection of speakers made by all kinds of companies.

00:26:02 ◼   ► And it's different from AirPlay because it talks directly to your Spotify account, which means you can control those speakers from an iPhone, from an iPad, from your Mac.

00:26:13 ◼   ► It's not like device to speaker sort of streaming like Airplay does.

00:26:17 ◼   ► It works over the internet.

00:26:19 ◼   ► It's kind of like Chromecast.

00:26:21 ◼   ► It's kind of like that.

00:26:23 ◼   ► So I think it will be interesting to see, because there is a...

00:26:28 ◼   ► There's so many companies making high-end gear, high-end speakers,

00:26:33 ◼   ► with Spotify Connect integration, and I think having a high-fi tier

00:26:39 ◼   ► is going to be a pretty compelling offer.

00:26:41 ◼   ► If you're that kind of user, and if you have those kinds of speakers, you're probably going

00:26:46 ◼   ► to want to upgrade your Spotify account to the Hi-Fi tier.

00:26:50 ◼   ► What's also interesting here is the fact that at this point everybody has, or will soon

00:26:58 ◼   ► have some kind of Hi-Fi tier for their music streaming service, except the very company

00:27:06 ◼   ► making high-end prosumer products, which is Apple.

00:27:11 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:27:12 ◼   ► And I think it's very fascinating that Apple, you know, the company that makes the HomePod

00:27:17 ◼   ► and AirPods Max, and has Apple Music, and has a pretty perfect use case for a bundle

00:27:25 ◼   ► of this kind of more expensive tier, they're not doing it.

00:27:30 ◼   ► But like, whether it was in their plans or not, now that Spotify's done this, I kind

00:27:36 ◼   ► of have to now, right?

00:27:38 ◼   ► Well, I think so.

00:27:41 ◼   ► We were having this conversation months ago, and we were already saying they have to.

00:27:46 ◼   ► Like, why are you not doing this?

00:27:48 ◼   ► You have Apple One, you have Apple One Premier, which is the more expensive one, and you have

00:27:53 ◼   ► a HomePod and these really expensive and really good sounding headphones.

00:27:58 ◼   ► why are you not taking advantage of this? But at this point, you know, when Spotify

00:28:04 ◼   ► does it, I think it lights a fire under Apple, and I think they're going to do it at this

00:28:10 ◼   ► point.

00:28:11 ◼   ► Well, because Apple do have to, I believe, they do have to match Spotify feature for

00:28:17 ◼   ► feature if they want to remain competitive against them. And you may say, "This isn't

00:28:24 ◼   ► important to me and that's fine, but you just don't want to look like you're

00:28:29 ◼   ► falling behind.

00:28:30 ◼   ► Right. Right.

00:28:31 ◼   ► And it's very surprising to me the idea that Apple would leave that money on the

00:28:36 ◼   ► table, even if it's a niche kind of offering, even if and look, every time we

00:28:42 ◼   ► talk about this stuff, we always get the tweets from people saying this is all

00:28:45 ◼   ► snake oil. You cannot hear high resolution audio.

00:28:49 ◼   ► You cannot hear difference.

00:28:50 ◼   ► OK, that's your opinion.

00:28:52 ◼   ► we're talking about like in the broader context of companies.

00:28:55 ◼   ► There is a difference between like MP3 to CD though. Like that is, you know,

00:29:00 ◼   ► you can argue maybe pass there, like some people wouldn't hear it and it gets to a

00:29:05 ◼   ► certain point and there is smaller.

00:29:07 ◼   ► I think you could tell, like if you care about music and you have good equipment,

00:29:11 ◼   ► you can tell the difference between an MP3 and a CD.

00:29:14 ◼   ► Some people will even argue against that,

00:29:17 ◼   ► but that's beyond the scope of this argument.

00:29:20 ◼   ► here we're just discussing the fact that multiple companies have, at this point, different tiers of

00:29:25 ◼   ► their music streaming services, and Apple, which you would typically associate with the idea of

00:29:31 ◼   ► having premium services and making premium hardware, for arguably their most important

00:29:39 ◼   ► service, they do not. And I think it's very surprising at this point. It's like if

00:29:47 ◼   ► the Apple TV wasn't 4K.

00:29:50 ◼   ► Right. Well, yes. That is a very good analogy. Yes. Imagine that.

00:29:56 ◼   ► Well, actually, maybe a better analogy is the Apple TV box is 4K, but Apple TV's content is 1080p.

00:30:05 ◼   ► Right? So, like, for all mankind, it's a 1080p show that you can watch. You can't get it higher quality than that.

00:30:13 ◼   ► Yeah, so I think it would make sense to offer this in Apple One Premier, the more expensive

00:30:22 ◼   ► bundle that they have.

00:30:25 ◼   ► And I would imagine that would fit in nicely with that kind of more expensive bundle.

00:30:32 ◼   ► It would be nice because you will be able to have lossless streaming shared with the

00:30:37 ◼   ► family.

00:30:38 ◼   ► it would work really well with the HomePod, with AirPods Max.

00:30:43 ◼   ► I can't imagine this tier existing.

00:30:48 ◼   ► But then again, why haven't they done it before?

00:30:53 ◼   ► And will they do it now just because Spotify has it?

00:30:57 ◼   ► I think they have to, but we were wrong before on this.

00:31:01 ◼   ► But I could imagine them thinking that maybe the consumer appetite wasn't there, or at

00:31:07 ◼   ► least like maybe they've been working on it but it's not been high priority for

00:31:10 ◼   ► that reason but now their main competitor has done it I wouldn't be

00:31:16 ◼   ► surprised if it lit a fire under them and the idea of making it I think

00:31:22 ◼   ► actually exclusive to Apple one premiere is interesting as an idea I think there

00:31:29 ◼   ► is something to be said for adding features like that to the Apple one

00:31:35 ◼   ► bundles as a way to encourage the bundles like sweeten the bundles a

00:31:40 ◼   ► little bit more like you get some extra stuff rather than it just being like you

00:31:46 ◼   ► get all of the things slightly cheaper actually being like oh and you also get

00:31:51 ◼   ► access to these additional things I think that would be a good idea too yeah

00:31:56 ◼   ► but at this point it aligns with every incentive Apple has as a company to do

00:32:03 ◼   ► this because you could charge more money, which is services, and you care about that.

00:32:07 ◼   ► It aligns with your high end audio equipment and you now need to do it to remain competitive

00:32:13 ◼   ► with your number one competitor who are unusually for Apple, at least modern day,

00:32:21 ◼   ► something that Apple cares about a lot. And they are they have a smaller market in,

00:32:27 ◼   ► Right, which is Spotify.

00:32:29 ◼   ► Spotify is much, much larger than Apple Music worldwide, at least.

00:32:33 ◼   ► So, yeah, it's intriguing.

00:32:36 ◼   ► I think that they should do it.

00:32:37 ◼   ► I don't know when, but I would be surprised

00:32:43 ◼   ► if we went out this whole year without them doing it.

00:32:46 ◼   ► Did you make it an annual pick?

00:32:47 ◼   ► I don't remember.

00:32:49 ◼   ► Did I? Let's look at the bottom of our document.

00:32:51 ◼   ► I'm taking a look here now.

00:32:53 ◼   ► It's not in your actual picks, picks.

00:32:56 ◼   ► No, you didn't.

00:32:57 ◼   ► You didn't make it a pic.

00:32:59 ◼   ► See, this is what happens when I don't trust my instincts.

00:33:03 ◼   ► Passion. Where's the passion?

00:33:04 ◼   ► Where's the passion? I let myself down here.

00:33:08 ◼   ► Well, last night you tweeted an app idea that I want to read.

00:33:12 ◼   ► I just thought it was intriguing.

00:33:14 ◼   ► Here's a free, sustainable, I have no clue, idea for an app I find myself

00:33:19 ◼   ► increasingly wish existed.

00:33:21 ◼   ► Choose friends from Twitter whose taste you trust.

00:33:24 ◼   ► Only show me the tweets that they loved, which I assume you mean like, right?

00:33:28 ◼   ► Like that what we say, like it's like the heart icon.

00:33:31 ◼   ► Yeah. Give me filters for articles, photos and videos that they like.

00:33:35 ◼   ► Literally nothing else for context.

00:33:37 ◼   ► Over time, I've noticed I have a regular group of 10 to 15 people

00:33:41 ◼   ► that I follow on Twitter who always like interesting articles, videos,

00:33:45 ◼   ► threads or photos.

00:33:46 ◼   ► And instead of opening each profile manually,

00:33:48 ◼   ► I just want to see a unified timeline for those liked tweets.

00:33:52 ◼   ► Yes. OK, so the.

00:33:54 ◼   ► the subsequent tweet explains exactly what I do.

00:33:58 ◼   ► I'm trying to spend less time just scrolling my Twitter timeline during the day,

00:34:04 ◼   ► and what I've noticed about myself doing lately, two things.

00:34:08 ◼   ► One, I use the algorithmic timeline at the end of the day, like in the evening,

00:34:13 ◼   ► if I want to spend like 15 minutes to see what I missed,

00:34:17 ◼   ► I switch to that timeline and I get the highlight from the day.

00:34:22 ◼   ► The second thing I do is I have this group of like close friends, and this is different from a list.

00:34:31 ◼   ► Pay attention. I don't want to see their timelines. I just want to see the tweets they liked.

00:34:37 ◼   ► You don't want to see what they have to say. You want to see what they enjoyed.

00:34:39 ◼   ► No, I just want to see the things they liked. Because usually I always find a lot of good stuff in there

00:34:46 ◼   ► that they don't necessarily re-share, but they hit the like button on.

00:34:51 ◼   ► Right?

00:34:52 ◼   ► See, I would like to...

00:34:54 ◼   ► Don't answer yet.

00:34:55 ◼   ► I would like to believe that I'm on this list because you like my tastes.

00:34:59 ◼   ► However...

00:35:00 ◼   ► It's you, Steven, Steve Canton Smith, Jason, our friend, Mohammed Taher, a bunch of writers

00:35:09 ◼   ► from Polygon, for example.

00:35:11 ◼   ► That group of people that I know, they are very active on Twitter and they always say

00:35:17 ◼   ► interesting stuff.

00:35:18 ◼   ► Because I was going to say, I am a... I consider myself a serial liker. I like way too much stuff.

00:35:26 ◼   ► I don't know if that means that I'm good or bad for this list. I would assume that meant I'm bad.

00:35:32 ◼   ► So I appreciate that you at least say that I'm on it.

00:35:35 ◼   ► Yeah, and the thing is, this is different from... because obviously, when you tweet something...

00:35:42 ◼   ► something that I've noticed lately, I guess lately means the last 10 years. Whenever you

00:35:52 ◼   ► tweet something, even the thing that you think, "Well, I cannot be possibly criticized for

00:35:58 ◼   ► this tweet." There's literally nothing you can point and criticize, but no, even in this

00:36:05 ◼   ► case... If that's what you think, Federico, you are not trying hard enough. Even for the

00:36:09 ◼   ► the safest politically correct tweet, there's still gonna be something that people criticize

00:36:15 ◼   ► you for. And in this case, a bunch of people told me, "Oh, so you wanna have a bubble for

00:36:20 ◼   ► your bubble?" Okay, sure. Whatever. Just say, "I just wanna see what my friend liked." No,

00:36:28 ◼   ► that's not okay. Still. How dare you? How dare you wanna see what your friends like?

00:36:34 ◼   ► Yes, that was also something that was said.

00:36:38 ◼   ► What's funny about this is that a few years ago, Jason Kotke launched exactly this service that I forgot about.

00:36:47 ◼   ► It was called Stellar.io, and it was a web service that aggregated likes from a bunch of different social networks, including Twitter and Flickr, which obviously used to be a thing.

00:36:59 ◼   ► I have a vague memory of Stellar.

00:37:02 ◼   ► I know that a lot of people were really into it,

00:37:05 ◼   ► and obviously it was shut down a few years ago.

00:37:07 ◼   ► I believe-- - Sold the name,

00:37:09 ◼   ► 'cause it's now the five-star influencer marketing platform.

00:37:11 ◼   ► - Yes, now it's the domain.

00:37:13 ◼   ► I hope that Jason sold it for a really nice amount of money

00:37:18 ◼   ► to those people.

00:37:19 ◼   ► But yeah, I believe it was shut down

00:37:22 ◼   ► because of obviously the Twitter API.

00:37:25 ◼   ► And the thing is, yes, I just wanna have a system

00:37:30 ◼   ► to an app, whatever, a place where I can go in,

00:37:35 ◼   ► and there is a timeline.

00:37:36 ◼   ► However, the timeline is not the tweets or the retweets,

00:37:41 ◼   ► but just the things they liked.

00:37:43 ◼   ► It seems, obviously, I got a bunch

00:37:48 ◼   ► of really interesting replies to this.

00:37:50 ◼   ► Obviously, once again, the problem is the Twitter API.

00:37:53 ◼   ► It appears that, and I included the response

00:37:57 ◼   ► by Nathan Lawrence, I believe.

00:38:01 ◼   ► Yes, they're one of the developers of Nighthawk,

00:38:04 ◼   ► which is a very unique Twitter client.

00:38:07 ◼   ► And according to the API information that Nathan shared,

00:38:12 ◼   ► you can only get the 20 most recent tweets,

00:38:17 ◼   ► but they seem to be limited to,

00:38:21 ◼   ► there seems to be like whether you're the type of developer

00:38:26 ◼   ► that you are for the Twitter platform,

00:38:29 ◼   ► you can get either 20 or 75,

00:38:31 ◼   ► but you're still limited to throttle

00:38:34 ◼   ► that request every 15 minutes.

00:38:36 ◼   ► So there's obviously limitations in the Twitter API.

00:38:38 ◼   ► You cannot get, say, hundreds of likes every two minutes.

00:38:42 ◼   ► I don't think that would be strictly necessary

00:38:45 ◼   ► for the kind of application that I would like to use,

00:38:48 ◼   ► but still, that's worth keeping in mind.

00:38:50 ◼   ► So I started to look around.

00:38:54 ◼   ► Ideally, somebody will take this free idea and do something with it.

00:39:00 ◼   ► And I will give you my money if you do so.

00:39:03 ◼   ► It's literally the app that I want to use at the end of the day, every day.

00:39:07 ◼   ► But I've been looking at potential alternatives right now.

00:39:11 ◼   ► So a bunch of things were recommended to me.

00:39:14 ◼   ► One of them is called OneFeed, which is this web app to sort of create a very lightweight

00:39:20 ◼   ► RSS client.

00:39:22 ◼   ► However, what sets it apart is that you can paste in links to YouTube channels, to blogs,

00:39:31 ◼   ► obviously, but also to Twitter profiles, and it gives you the latest updates from those

00:39:36 ◼   ► places, but it doesn't support Twitter likes.

00:39:40 ◼   ► So it's different from that.

00:39:44 ◼   ► Right now I'm hoping that the developers, who are, by the way, Italian, so that makes

00:39:49 ◼   ► me always happy, of this service called MailBrew will be able to do what I asked. So MailBrew

00:39:56 ◼   ► is a really fascinating web service that I should have tried years ago and I always forgot,

00:40:02 ◼   ► and now I did try it and I think I really like it. The idea is that it's an aggregator

00:40:09 ◼   ► for newsletters and social updates and RSS feeds, and at the end of the day you get a

00:40:16 ◼   ► single newsletter containing links to all of that stuff. It's like a daily digest, basically.

00:40:22 ◼   ► So you create an account and say, "Hey, I want to subscribe to these newsletters and

00:40:26 ◼   ► I want to get updates from these YouTube channels and these Twitter profiles. Send me a single

00:40:31 ◼   ► thing at the end of the day." And you can specify the time. It's very nice. The UI is

00:40:36 ◼   ► really well done. And I'll tell you, Myke, the thing I think you're going to appreciate.

00:40:41 ◼   ► It's a very good PWA on iOS.

00:40:44 ◼   ► Ah, you know I love it good.

00:40:46 ◼   ► What is it? I can always forget. It's like...

00:40:49 ◼   ► Programs of Attitude. That's it?

00:40:51 ◼   ► It's a program of attitude.

00:40:54 ◼   ► I know you love it.

00:40:56 ◼   ► Why don't they make an app, though?

00:40:58 ◼   ► It's really well done.

00:40:59 ◼   ► This feels like an app.

00:41:01 ◼   ► I hope that they make it a native thing.

00:41:05 ◼   ► So, today, they launched top links from Twitter,

00:41:10 ◼   ► which is basically what Nasl... Remember Nasl?

00:41:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I remember Nasl.

00:41:13 ◼   ► used to do. So in your daily digest it gives you your most shared links from your Twitter timeline.

00:41:20 ◼   ► And they told me they're gonna look into likes, Twitter likes. So maybe this could be a solution.

00:41:28 ◼   ► Like at the end of the day I get a digest and it contains likes from select accounts that I follow on Twitter.

00:41:35 ◼   ► However, a few minutes ago, as we were preparing for the show, listener and reader Ben

00:41:41 ◼   ► Ben told me that this is possible in Fitbin.

00:41:45 ◼   ► It appears that you can subscribe to anyone's likes via Twitter on Fitbin.

00:41:53 ◼   ► So I was not aware of this.

00:41:57 ◼   ► This is now really fascinating to me, because I am a Fitbin user, I am a Fitbin subscriber.

00:42:03 ◼   ► And Ben shared a screenshot. Let me see if I can paste this link in the Discord.

00:42:11 ◼   ► It appears that there's an actual setting that allows you to do this.

00:42:15 ◼   ► And you can subscribe to anyone's like just by appending /likes to their Twitter profile URL.

00:42:22 ◼   ► So I'm gonna consider this. However, at the same time, MailBrew is also like as a concept.

00:42:28 ◼   ► very fascinating to me. I am now trying it for, I believe, the first couple of newsletters that you get are free.

00:42:37 ◼   ► And what I did is I took all the newsletters that I'm subscribed to, like the Pitchfork one, the one from The Verge,

00:42:45 ◼   ► I put them into the Mailbrew account, added a bunch of Twitter accounts, a couple of RSS feeds,

00:42:53 ◼   ► and I received my digest at 7pm just before doing the show and it's very nice.

00:42:57 ◼   ► So, I don't know, maybe I will be able to do this with Fitbin, maybe I will be able to do this via

00:43:05 ◼   ► Mailbrew if the developers add support for Twitter likes, maybe somebody will make a native application

00:43:11 ◼   ► for this. But, as always, I was literally in my pajamas in bed and I thought "Hey, you know, this is

00:43:20 ◼   ► a fun idea for a tweet." And I was not expecting that kind of response.

00:43:25 ◼   ► Story of your life there.

00:43:30 ◼   ► Yes, yes. Sometimes the best tweets are always issued in those conditions, yes.

00:43:37 ◼   ► This episode of Connected is brought to you by Bombas. Bombas makes the most comfortable socks

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00:45:09 ◼   ► So, hey, we're gonna talk about hey.

00:45:14 ◼   ► -Hey. -Uh, we're good.

00:45:16 ◼   ► Steven's not here, let's talk about email.

00:45:18 ◼   ► Um...

00:45:19 ◼   ► There's two things I wanted to talk about with hey today,

00:45:22 ◼   ► -and the first one... -Okay.

00:45:23 ◼   ► ...is kind of not really about email at all.

00:45:25 ◼   ► Um, so Jason Fried, one of the co-founders,

00:45:28 ◼   ► posted on Twitter, like, a link to an article called Hey World,

00:45:33 ◼   ► And it is a blog post that was created by Hay, by emailing something, right?

00:45:41 ◼   ► So he, within the Hay app, sent an email to an email address,

00:45:47 ◼   ► which then took the text and created a blog post out of it.

00:45:51 ◼   ► Basically publishing a blog over email,

00:45:55 ◼   ► using the text editor built into the Hay app,

00:45:59 ◼   ► including formatting and media attachments, because there's also an image.

00:46:03 ◼   ► in this blog post, and it was sent to a specific email address.

00:46:09 ◼   ► The subject becomes the title of the blog post, and the blog post leaves at a world.hey.com

00:46:17 ◼   ► webpage that includes support for subscribing via RSS, or obviously via email as a newsletter.

00:46:29 ◼   ► And Jason said, "We don't know what we're gonna do

00:46:32 ◼   ► with this right now.

00:46:33 ◼   ► It's just an experiment that we're testing."

00:46:35 ◼   ► Jason is doing it.

00:46:38 ◼   ► What's the name of the other Hey co-founder?

00:46:40 ◼   ► - David Hanomani has it. - David.

00:46:43 ◼   ► Yes, they each have their own Hey world pages.

00:46:48 ◼   ► And I just think this is very,

00:46:50 ◼   ► oh, there's a bunch of posts in here on the homepage.

00:46:54 ◼   ► I just thought it was a single blog post.

00:46:56 ◼   ► Jason published more stuff after that.

00:46:58 ◼   ► Cool. So this instantly reminded me of a service that used to exist years ago called "Posturus".

00:47:09 ◼   ► Remember Posturus, Myke?

00:47:11 ◼   ► When I saw this in the show notes, I felt like a wave of nostalgia hit me in the face.

00:47:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I remember Posturus.

00:47:19 ◼   ► Yes. So this was a service that existed in 2010, 2011. It was later, obviously, as many,

00:47:30 ◼   ► many good things that we used to use back in the day. It was acquired and then shut

00:47:35 ◼   ► down by, guess what, Twitter. That obviously did nothing with it.

00:47:40 ◼   ► Oh my god. Really?

00:47:42 ◼   ► Yes. Why did they do that?

00:47:46 ◼   ► Twitter years ago, years ago, in 2013, acquired a service that potentially could have solved

00:47:57 ◼   ► the problems of tweet storms, for example, that potentially could have solved, or could

00:48:05 ◼   ► have been like the original version of things like Substack, which is now so popular as

00:48:11 ◼   ► a newsletter platform.

00:48:14 ◼   ► It could have been all of that and nothing ever came of it.

00:48:19 ◼   ► It was Postgres was kind of like Tumblr, right?

00:48:23 ◼   ► Right.

00:48:24 ◼   ► Am I remembering that right?

00:48:26 ◼   ► Right.

00:48:27 ◼   ► Well, you could email a blog post into your Postgres account and it would be published

00:48:33 ◼   ► on this very lightweight, very simple, kind of like a Tumblr blog webpage.

00:48:42 ◼   ► And you could send, like from mobile devices, you could send obviously an email, but also

00:48:47 ◼   ► the email could include attachments, so photos, mp3s, video.

00:48:53 ◼   ► And it was a very simple sort of a frictionless way to have a blog without having to publish

00:48:59 ◼   ► via like a text editor, via an API.

00:49:03 ◼   ► Just you could email your thoughts.

00:49:05 ◼   ► And it was a very simple way to publish something on the web, including attachments, without

00:49:11 ◼   ► complication typically involved with a blogging, with the CMS, really. And it was like a lot of

00:49:18 ◼   ► people were really into Posterous back then. Remember, those were the days of South by Southwest

00:49:24 ◼   ► when it was a big deal, sort of being the hot new startup in that space. And then, yeah, Twitter acquired

00:49:32 ◼   ► Posterous and they did nothing with it. Yeah, there was an iPhone app to email photos

00:49:41 ◼   ► into your posteros page. Pick posteros. Pick posteros, yes. And I think it's, as a few

00:49:49 ◼   ► minutes ago we mentioned, this is literally how history works. It always repeats itself

00:49:53 ◼   ► with familiar patterns presented in new ways. And in a way this is what the folks at Hay

00:49:59 ◼   ► are testing now. If history truly repeats itself, Twitter's gonna buy Hay. Well, let's

00:50:05 ◼   ► Let's hope that this is only true to an extent.

00:50:11 ◼   ► But I think it's fascinating that we're now circling back to that idea.

00:50:15 ◼   ► Having a blog is still too difficult, which I will not argue with that, because I think

00:50:21 ◼   ► there's some truth to that.

00:50:22 ◼   ► I think the barrier to having your own domain and your own space and CMSs are still too

00:50:30 ◼   ► difficult to explain.

00:50:33 ◼   ► And yes, I don't fully disagree with that.

00:50:37 ◼   ► What if it could be easier?

00:50:39 ◼   ► What if you could just send an email, which is something that basically everybody can

00:50:43 ◼   ► relate to?

00:50:45 ◼   ► What if it was as simple as that?

00:50:47 ◼   ► You write the email as if it was a blog post, and you can include attachments, you can include

00:50:51 ◼   ► photos, and you put it in a little subject field, and then it becomes a blog post, and

00:50:57 ◼   ► you have a link that you can share with your friends, you can share on social media.

00:51:00 ◼   ► I think it's a beautiful idea, and I really hope that it becomes part of the personal

00:51:07 ◼   ► "hey" subscription plan.

00:51:09 ◼   ► I would love to have this kind of feature, just even as a simple way to publish something

00:51:14 ◼   ► that doesn't fit in a tweet, but is obviously not a post for Mac stories in my case.

00:51:20 ◼   ► Some personal news.

00:51:21 ◼   ► Yeah, just some...

00:51:22 ◼   ► Yes, exactly.

00:51:23 ◼   ► Some personal news.

00:51:25 ◼   ► Some personal news.

00:51:26 ◼   ► I have now quit my job.

00:51:28 ◼   ► And I'm now a professional...

00:51:30 ◼   ► I forgot how to use email.

00:51:32 ◼   ► Yes.

00:51:33 ◼   ► I do see stuff like this.

00:51:35 ◼   ► I will be honest, my initial thought is,

00:51:39 ◼   ► "Hey, focus!"

00:51:41 ◼   ► Right?

00:51:42 ◼   ► Like, I see something like that and it's kind of like,

00:51:45 ◼   ► "Okay, new email service, you've probably got a bit of work to do,

00:51:49 ◼   ► why don't we focus on the email service and not the blogging platform that you now want to build because..."

00:51:55 ◼   ► the Evernote syndrome. You can't just do this, you're gonna have to give people tools to

00:51:59 ◼   ► go in and edit it in case there's spelling errors, right? Like, gotta, you know, keep

00:52:04 ◼   ► the focus, come on, you can do it. I don't know, man. Fun, yes, definitely. Fun little

00:52:10 ◼   ► feature. I'm sure people would love it, but I do kind of... That's my initial feeling

00:52:18 ◼   ► when I saw it, to be honest. It was kind of like, okay, make your email up, please. I

00:52:24 ◼   ► I also don't disagree with that.

00:52:25 ◼   ► - But maybe I'm cynical.

00:52:27 ◼   ► - Well, it helps to be cynical these days.

00:52:31 ◼   ► So I think it's cool.

00:52:34 ◼   ► I also don't disagree with you,

00:52:37 ◼   ► especially because Hey is such a young service

00:52:40 ◼   ► with a long way to go in terms of addressing,

00:52:42 ◼   ► as we're gonna talk about shortly,

00:52:44 ◼   ► features that compete in email services,

00:52:47 ◼   ► especially for professional users, they already offer.

00:52:51 ◼   ► So I think it's cool.

00:52:52 ◼   ► I also think you have a point.

00:52:54 ◼   ► So I'm not really siding with anybody, but I just think as an idea in isolation, the idea is the right one.

00:53:02 ◼   ► Because lowering the barrier to entry for publishing thoughts online,

00:53:06 ◼   ► I welcome all solutions when it comes to that.

00:53:11 ◼   ► But then strictly speaking about, hey, yes, maybe they should focus more on the...

00:53:18 ◼   ► But they did say this is like a thing that we built and we're not sure if we're going to do anything here.

00:53:24 ◼   ► Don't tell anyone.

00:53:25 ◼   ► Why do you have to tell anyone?

00:53:28 ◼   ► Right?

00:53:29 ◼   ► It's just your little fun thing that you've got.

00:53:31 ◼   ► It's just for you.

00:53:32 ◼   ► But it's kind of like this isn't your problem to solve.

00:53:37 ◼   ► Email service.

00:53:39 ◼   ► Like the idea of making it more simple to post online.

00:53:44 ◼   ► Like this isn't...

00:53:46 ◼   ► You don't have to solve this problem.

00:53:48 ◼   ► And you do open, you know, every time you do something like this as a paid service,

00:53:54 ◼   ► especially a new one, you open yourself up to people being more frustrated at you.

00:53:59 ◼   ► Because if there are things that you're still working on, that your cost paying

00:54:04 ◼   ► customers want you to do for the service that you're paying them for, and then

00:54:07 ◼   ► you're like, "LOL, but we just made a blogging platform."

00:54:10 ◼   ► It's like, "Uh, okay.

00:54:12 ◼   ► Can you get around to this feature that I need, please?"

00:54:16 ◼   ► You know, I'm not saying not to do it, but I'm just I don't know how I feel about it.

00:54:21 ◼   ► It just seems a little peculiar to me.

00:54:23 ◼   ► Yeah. So what are these features that you as a Hey user are frustrated about?

00:54:30 ◼   ► Well, over the past few months, it came a time when we had to convince Sylvia that she

00:54:38 ◼   ► also needed to use because of the things she does at Mac Store is that she also needed to

00:54:42 ◼   ► use hate. And she tends to be, rightfully so, very picky with the services and the apps

00:54:51 ◼   ► that she has to use for work.

00:54:53 ◼   ► Well, because as well she doesn't have, I assume, the natural curiosity about new apps

00:54:58 ◼   ► and services that you do. So she gets none of that benefit out of it and only gets the

00:55:03 ◼   ► downsides.

00:55:05 ◼   ► She hates, and hate doesn't quite describe it. She actually deeply despises the idea

00:55:12 ◼   ► of trying new stuff. She just wants to use one app and stick with it effectively forever.

00:55:20 ◼   ► Which is funny considering what I do for a living, but hey, that's a different thing.

00:55:27 ◼   ► And having seen how she's complaining about "Hey", I have identified, I think, at least

00:55:35 ◼   ► two core issues that maybe eventually Hay will have to figure out. The lack of folders

00:55:42 ◼   ► is one of them. She really doesn't... and I think this is one of the things that you also wanted to

00:55:49 ◼   ► talk about, Myke. The fact that... the way that the inbox works, the fact that you cannot archive,

00:55:59 ◼   ► The fact that you cannot move a message from the inbox to another folder and just leave it there

00:56:06 ◼   ► that's one of our issues.

00:56:09 ◼   ► Yeah, you can tag, you can label, you can add to collections, but she just wants to take one message

00:56:18 ◼   ► and put it in a different folder for, you know, however you want to call it.

00:56:25 ◼   ► The second issue is she misses a lot the more advanced filtering system from Gmail,

00:56:33 ◼   ► and especially the fact that you can create a complex search query for things like if a

00:56:40 ◼   ► message contains these words in the subject field and if it comes from this particular sender,

00:56:47 ◼   ► then label the message as such and such or delete it or archive it, whatever. And you can,

00:56:55 ◼   ► Again, you can label in "Hey", but you cannot create those kinds of more advanced filters yet.

00:57:01 ◼   ► You cannot say "If it comes from this address and..." so you can combine multiple conditions.

00:57:08 ◼   ► "And if it contains these words in the subject field, then do something."

00:57:12 ◼   ► And she used to do that a lot in Gmail, especially for like receipts, for particular

00:57:19 ◼   ► emails related to the business. So I think eventually, especially on the second one,

00:57:26 ◼   ► on the filtering, I can see Hay doing this and I think they should focus on this, especially for

00:57:31 ◼   ► their Hay for Work professional accounts. But personally this is not a big deal for me,

00:57:40 ◼   ► the overall flow of Hay works for me as Federico, but I know that both John and Silvia,

00:57:49 ◼   ► they have a different kind of email volume to deal with,

00:57:53 ◼   ► and they have different kinds of emails to deal with.

00:57:56 ◼   ► Like me, I just get mostly emails from developers,

00:58:02 ◼   ► like actual people.

00:58:04 ◼   ► Like I don't get receipts, I don't get invoices,

00:58:07 ◼   ► that kind of stuff.

00:58:08 ◼   ► And I understand where they're coming from.

00:58:12 ◼   ► - Okay, so you do get, there is a labeling system.

00:58:14 ◼   ► I wasn't even sure if there was a labeling system.

00:58:16 ◼   ► - There is one, there is one.

00:58:18 ◼   ► Which is cool, but as you say, automatic assigning of labels is a powerful feature, really, you

00:58:26 ◼   ► know?

00:58:27 ◼   ► Especially considering the fact that, hey, their whole thing is like trying to be smart

00:58:32 ◼   ► about the email that's coming in, right?

00:58:37 ◼   ► I signed up for Hey Today.

00:58:40 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:58:41 ◼   ► So I put this in the show notes because I was just wondering how it was going.

00:58:48 ◼   ► And it seems like for you it's going fine, the issues in the Vitici household are Sylvia's, not yours.

00:58:54 ◼   ► So I assume that you seem very happy with Hay, right?

00:58:58 ◼   ► I am, she's not. I'm still trying to smooth the situation.

00:59:04 ◼   ► I have a lot of work to do.

00:59:08 ◼   ► Because I received the Hay for Work email and I wanted to try it and I got an invite.

00:59:15 ◼   ► but then realized today it took me so long to set it up.

00:59:17 ◼   ► Anyone can just sign up now. It's like I went to sign up. It's like, all right,

00:59:21 ◼   ► where to put my code? And I never needed to do that.

00:59:24 ◼   ► So I think it's open to everybody now.

00:59:26 ◼   ► And so here's the thing for me.

00:59:29 ◼   ► I was always assuming that I would probably try hang out under

00:59:34 ◼   ► the terms that I've done it,

00:59:36 ◼   ► which is there is an email address that I use,

00:59:40 ◼   ► which is a legitimate email address that I want to use more.

00:59:44 ◼   ► and I purposefully want to keep it outside of Spark.

00:59:48 ◼   ► And this is the Cortex brand email address.

00:59:51 ◼   ► So, uh, business@cortexbrand.com is the email address. Um,

00:59:56 ◼   ► I've spoken about it publicly in the past.

00:59:58 ◼   ► People can send in suggestions there for like,

01:00:01 ◼   ► if they have products that they think could be cool for us or whatever. Uh,

01:00:06 ◼   ► but also it's going to be like a, as time goes on,

01:00:08 ◼   ► a public facing email address, uh, that I manage. Um,

01:00:13 ◼   ► people are already asking if I'm making Gray use Hay, no I manage that email account. If

01:00:18 ◼   ► he ever wants to and I stick with Hay then he's going to have to get Hay account too.

01:00:24 ◼   ► And I also thought like I could with Hay's thing I could easily set up like Myke@cortexbrand.com

01:00:31 ◼   ► because they have that thingamajig whatever they call it, the aliases or whatever. So

01:00:36 ◼   ► So I thought I was keeping this, it was in Gmail, and I was keeping it in Outlook, right?

01:00:44 ◼   ► Because I didn't want this, I wanted this to be an email account that I would just go

01:00:47 ◼   ► to when I wanted to see that we would say, but in case there was a large volume of email,

01:00:54 ◼   ► which isn't now, but when I was originally talking about it, there was way more email

01:00:58 ◼   ► coming in than I would have wanted to be in my regular email inbox.

01:01:03 ◼   ► So I thought, well, this seems like a perfect use case for me to try it out.

01:01:07 ◼   ► And also there hasn't been a lot of volume to that email account recently, so I would

01:01:14 ◼   ► be fine with making the change in case I have any downtime.

01:01:18 ◼   ► And also I've dealt with pretty much all of the email that I want.

01:01:22 ◼   ► And I don't really need that backlog because anything that I wanted to pursue in there

01:01:28 ◼   ► I've taken out and stored in craft anyway.

01:01:32 ◼   ► It's just like, here's some ideas and that kind of stuff.

01:01:35 ◼   ► But I exported the email because I still want that Google

01:01:40 ◼   ► Apps address. I still have the Gmail there.

01:01:43 ◼   ► Like I'm not going to get rid of my Google Apps account also,

01:01:45 ◼   ► because I'm not convinced that I'm going to stick with.

01:01:47 ◼   ► Hey, but I set it all up today.

01:01:49 ◼   ► The sign up process is pretty easy.

01:01:52 ◼   ► DNS records are a terrible system for anything.

01:01:55 ◼   ► And I can't believe it still exists and we're still doing this.

01:01:58 ◼   ► MX records especially for email.

01:02:02 ◼   ► Just all of it. I can't believe we're still doing it.

01:02:05 ◼   ► There should be some kind of API that all of these applications and domain registrars could talk to each other from.

01:02:11 ◼   ► And they are a sponsor of the show, but Hover do have a thing called Hover Connect

01:02:16 ◼   ► where with some services that they work with, you can just press a button, it takes you to one,

01:02:21 ◼   ► takes you back to the other and it's done. Which I just think is like, that's how this stuff should work.

01:02:25 ◼   ► work, right? Like a kind of OAuth-like system. You know, like I'm deleting things and it's

01:02:31 ◼   ► like, oh, it could take up for an hour. I mean, maybe you did it right, maybe you broke

01:02:35 ◼   ► it. We'll find out in an hour. And it's like, this is horrific as a system. But I set it

01:02:40 ◼   ► up. It took a while for a little while, weirdly. Email was appearing in both places. I don't

01:02:46 ◼   ► know how that was the case, but like I was sending some test emails to myself and I was

01:02:51 ◼   ► getting them both in Hay and Gmail even though I'd already removed Gmail from all of the

01:02:56 ◼   ► AMX records and then eventually that stopped happening.

01:03:01 ◼   ► I didn't set up a forward or anything and it didn't really feel like it was necessary.

01:03:05 ◼   ► So I've only really tinkered around in Hay today and this is going to be a long term

01:03:09 ◼   ► process for me because I want to see how it goes over a long period of time.

01:03:18 ◼   ► I don't get a lot of email to his email address and there's probably something I will do more

01:03:22 ◼   ► I will start sending from that email address as well.

01:03:27 ◼   ► But I can't really put it through its paces until I receive a lot, right?

01:03:30 ◼   ► Because that's the whole thing.

01:03:31 ◼   ► But there was a few things that I did.

01:03:34 ◼   ► So you kind of asked one.

01:03:35 ◼   ► There's no archive function and I think that that's bananas.

01:03:39 ◼   ► And then I have to constantly see the recently seen email.

01:03:43 ◼   ► I don't want to see it.

01:03:44 ◼   ► I want it gone.

01:03:45 ◼   ► See, you're like Sylvia, yes. Why do I need it there? I've dealt with it.

01:03:51 ◼   ► Why do you keep showing it to me? Well, the idea is that they want to remove

01:03:57 ◼   ► the burden of archiving messages. Right, but then I have the burden of always

01:04:03 ◼   ► seeing the email, right? Sometimes I reply to things and I'm annoyed

01:04:09 ◼   ► by the reply that I send. So I reply, I archive the message so I don't have to think about

01:04:14 ◼   ► So I come back to my email three hours later, I'm not reminded about how annoyed I was about that email

01:04:18 ◼   ► But if I do that with hey, it's always there in my face

01:04:22 ◼   ► I don't know why

01:04:26 ◼   ► Like the feed and the paper trail they're sequestered into their own areas

01:04:30 ◼   ► But recently seen has to be at the bottom of the im box

01:04:33 ◼   ► It should be its own view very valid or could or collapsible even I don't know why

01:04:41 ◼   ► Collapsible could work.

01:04:43 ◼   ► It's like, it's my inbox, and my inbox is empty but also full all the time.

01:04:49 ◼   ► Yeah, it's the Schrodinger's inbox.

01:04:51 ◼   ► It is, and I don't understand it.

01:04:55 ◼   ► What are notifications like?

01:04:57 ◼   ► Do you use them at all?

01:04:59 ◼   ► You...

01:05:00 ◼   ► Yes I do.

01:05:01 ◼   ► You can set notifications on a per contact basis.

01:05:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:05:05 ◼   ► And also I noticed that they're off by default, which I thought was interesting, and I like

01:05:09 ◼   ► that they said, and I would need to test, you could turn off notifications for an entire

01:05:13 ◼   ► domain, and I just thought that was very clever.

01:05:17 ◼   ► Yeah, and you can also mute threads, you can turn off domains, and you can enable them

01:05:24 ◼   ► for contacts. Which is what I do, I only turn them on for specific contacts or specific

01:05:30 ◼   ► threads, but mostly contacts. So I just go into the contact page, and from there you

01:05:36 ◼   ► can choose where to auto file messages from that contact and to enable notifications or

01:05:41 ◼   ► not.

01:05:42 ◼   ► I have another question for you. How do I know when there's new email in either the

01:05:48 ◼   ► feed or the paper trail?

01:05:50 ◼   ► You do not, unless you enable notifications for those addresses.

01:05:53 ◼   ► Right, and so you see this is an issue for me. So let me explain to you why I think this

01:05:57 ◼   ► is a problem.

01:05:58 ◼   ► Well, or you could use the widget.

01:05:59 ◼   ► I could use the widget. So it shows you in the widget but not inside of the app?

01:06:05 ◼   ► Well, it doesn't... well, no, there's no badges or anything like that. You just gotta open

01:06:10 ◼   ► the menu and switch to those pages.

01:06:12 ◼   ► So every time I check "Hey, I have to check three places if I want to see how much email

01:06:17 ◼   ► I've got." And I don't know how that's supposed to help me, right? So like, you would... the

01:06:25 ◼   ► automatic filing of stuff is meant to keep you focused on your email, right? That's the

01:06:30 ◼   ► idea makes perfect sense but for me to check how much email I ever have I have

01:06:35 ◼   ► to check everywhere potentially four places if I've got a screener hmm yeah I

01:06:41 ◼   ► don't know because this is this is the type of person that I mean maybe they're

01:06:47 ◼   ► not building for me where I am the type of person that wants to know and so like

01:06:55 ◼   ► for example, I have, uh, I use SaneBox, right?

01:06:59 ◼   ► And I have SaneLater and SaneNews,

01:07:01 ◼   ► which are basically the feed and paper trail, right?

01:07:04 ◼   ► It's like that's kind of what they're doing.

01:07:05 ◼   ► But in my email clients, they badge them.

01:07:10 ◼   ► Now I can see those badges and choose to go in if I want to,

01:07:14 ◼   ► because I can see that there's new email there. But with Hey,

01:07:19 ◼   ► I would have to be going there every single time to check if there's new email

01:07:24 ◼   ► there and most of the time there wouldn't be. But I still want to know what's in there.

01:07:30 ◼   ► I guess you got to use the widget.

01:07:31 ◼   ► But I don't want to use the widget though.

01:07:33 ◼   ► Right?

01:07:34 ◼   ► But then you're out of luck. Yeah.

01:07:36 ◼   ► Do you know what I mean? It's like I don't...

01:07:38 ◼   ► I know. Yeah.

01:07:39 ◼   ► I definitely don't want my email app as a widget because I don't want to know how much

01:07:47 ◼   ► email I've got when my email app is closed. Right? Because now we're like if... Because

01:07:53 ◼   ► You see that the failure in logic here for me is if you use the widget it's okay to know

01:08:00 ◼   ► if you have email in the feed or the paper trail but if you're in the app it's not okay.

01:08:07 ◼   ► So they think it's okay sometimes to show you the numbers but not all the times?

01:08:13 ◼   ► Plus I hate that their app is just a web view on the Mac.

01:08:18 ◼   ► That is also a concern, yes.

01:08:20 ◼   ► So I know that right now all I have is the frustration because I've not had the opportunity

01:08:28 ◼   ► to really use the service.

01:08:31 ◼   ► I have not yet gotten to a stage where it's doing stuff to my email for me, which is clearly

01:08:37 ◼   ► what's good about this.

01:08:39 ◼   ► That's why people like it, it's why you like it, it's why lots of people like it.

01:08:43 ◼   ► Because it can free up your email inbox for just the stuff you want to see.

01:08:49 ◼   ► And so I have to give it some time and I'm in it for the long haul.

01:08:51 ◼   ► I'm not going to move away.

01:08:53 ◼   ► I want to give this a long time trial because also it's not my most important email.

01:08:59 ◼   ► So I'm fine with it for right now.

01:09:03 ◼   ► Right.

01:09:04 ◼   ► Like I'll just leave it for a while and I'll see how it goes.

01:09:06 ◼   ► But my first run experience has not been very positive.

01:09:12 ◼   ► And I think it's purely because for whatever reason this system wasn't built for the type

01:09:17 ◼   ► of email user I am, which is totally fine.

01:09:20 ◼   ► Not everything has to be built for me, but I can still

01:09:23 ◼   ► communicate what I think are some issues with the service.

01:09:27 ◼   ► Yeah. And you are an email power user

01:09:30 ◼   ► who deals with a lot of email, much more than I do.

01:09:35 ◼   ► And I totally understand these issues.

01:09:38 ◼   ► And hopefully, like as you start working with it, as you start receiving

01:09:42 ◼   ► more emails, you will also appreciate the things that I appreciate.

01:09:46 ◼   ► Like for example, it's stack season right now in the US, and like John and I,

01:09:51 ◼   ► we've really been taking advantage of things like collections to file messages

01:09:56 ◼   ► and to keep a timeline of messages belonging to a particular topic.

01:10:01 ◼   ► Obviously leaving a comment on messages, which is something that you do in Spark, for example.

01:10:08 ◼   ► We use that a lot in Hay as well.

01:10:11 ◼   ► And personally speaking, for my own usage, just the separation between the inbox and the feed.

01:10:17 ◼   ► The paper trail, I just I don't really care about.

01:10:20 ◼   ► I keep things like confirmation emails.

01:10:23 ◼   ► I basically never check it.

01:10:24 ◼   ► I mostly split between the inbox and the feed.

01:10:27 ◼   ► And having also the reply later area that I use a lot.

01:10:35 ◼   ► Just I like the idea of having no new stuff under the new for you section.

01:10:42 ◼   ► So hopefully over time you will also appreciate these things.

01:10:46 ◼   ► And otherwise you're just going to have to switch back to something else.

01:10:51 ◼   ► But I think give it a few months and see how it goes.

01:10:54 ◼   ► And hopefully, as you do this, hopefully the company will add some new functionality.

01:11:03 ◼   ► Like this week, for example, they finally, I would say,

01:11:06 ◼   ► they made it easier to switch between multiple accounts.

01:11:09 ◼   ► They have a proper account switcher UI

01:11:11 ◼   ► that is pretty fast to use,

01:11:13 ◼   ► and they also have a unified view for all accounts.

01:11:15 ◼   ► So they are working on catching up with the competition

01:11:19 ◼   ► and hopefully search, filters, that kind of stuff is next.

01:11:23 ◼   ► Although I really like your idea of collapsing

01:11:28 ◼   ► the recently seen section,

01:11:30 ◼   ► and I would like to see folders.

01:11:34 ◼   ► Just maybe let me create my own section.

01:11:38 ◼   ► Just let me create my own reply later.

01:11:41 ◼   ► Let me create, basically, those are,

01:11:43 ◼   ► if you think about it, those are folders.

01:11:44 ◼   ► So let me create my own area.

01:11:46 ◼   ► You can call it a folder,

01:11:48 ◼   ► you can call it a section, whatever,

01:11:49 ◼   ► but basically a way to move a message

01:11:51 ◼   ► from one place to another.

01:11:52 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:11:54 ◼   ► I hope that they're not too stuck on the original idea,

01:11:59 ◼   ► and that they are willing to listen to users.

01:12:04 ◼   ► This is always the problem with opinionated software,

01:12:07 ◼   ► if you will.

01:12:09 ◼   ► The developer has some really deeply rooted ideas

01:12:14 ◼   ► and it's hard to move them away from those,

01:12:17 ◼   ► but I think you gotta find the balance eventually.

01:12:19 ◼   ► - I don't know how normal or not I am,

01:12:23 ◼   ► but I probably get about 50 to 60 emails a day.

01:12:27 ◼   ► And you know a lot of that is stuff that requires my attention. Quite a

01:12:35 ◼   ► portion of it is stuff that I would love to be automatically just obliterated but

01:12:43 ◼   ► unfortunately a lot of that stuff is stuff that as of yet like I can't get

01:12:48 ◼   ► rid of until it's come in the first time which is like hey you should have this

01:12:52 ◼   ► person as a guest on a show and I can get that I could put those in the same

01:12:56 ◼   ► black hole thing that I use and then I never hear from that person again but it

01:13:00 ◼   ► doesn't mean I'm not gonna get enough of five of those emails tomorrow from

01:13:04 ◼   ► different people like you know my email is a constant game of whack-a-mole but

01:13:09 ◼   ► there is also a vast majority of email that I get does require my attention

01:13:15 ◼   ► it's not like email newsletters like I get those but not a lot of them I may

01:13:22 ◼   ► I have the type of job where I deal with a lot of email.

01:13:27 ◼   ► So I'm always interested in things that can try

01:13:29 ◼   ► and make that easier for me.

01:13:31 ◼   ► And so I wanna give it a shot,

01:13:36 ◼   ► 'cause I'm willing to let go of things that I want

01:13:40 ◼   ► for something that is better overall.

01:13:42 ◼   ► Like I'm willing to let go of some of my particulars

01:13:47 ◼   ► if I can get a better system,

01:13:49 ◼   ► which is like how I felt with Spark.

01:13:51 ◼   ► I was willing to let go of some things about how I like an email app to be designed because

01:13:55 ◼   ► the service is so good.

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01:16:27 ◼   ► So a couple of weeks ago, you asked me a question, which was, are there new apps anymore?

01:16:34 ◼   ► And I put a pin in this because I figured we would want to talk about it at some point

01:16:37 ◼   ► and today's that time.

01:16:38 ◼   ► So I want to know where this feeling is coming from for you.

01:16:42 ◼   ► So I've been thinking about this and I think it's a combination of different things that

01:16:48 ◼   ► I believe and that I've noticed, especially over the past year or so.

01:16:55 ◼   ► The idea that more than before I am frequently resisting the urge to try new stuff.

01:17:07 ◼   ► And I've been thinking about it and obviously the first, almost default answer was, "Hey,

01:17:11 ◼   ► that's what happens when you grow old."

01:17:12 ◼   ► And I don't think that is it necessarily because when I find something new, I get very excited

01:17:23 ◼   ► still.

01:17:24 ◼   ► I mean, look at, hey, look at Spotify.

01:17:26 ◼   ► Like just in recent months, we've seen examples of me being excited and, you know, happy to

01:17:33 ◼   ► try new stuff.

01:17:35 ◼   ► Doing your thing.

01:17:36 ◼   ► my thing. The problem is it's much harder for me to be surprised these days by new apps.

01:17:46 ◼   ► And so I've been thinking about this. Why is that? And I've come up with a few points

01:17:51 ◼   ► that I would like to mention and discuss. The first one I think is that over time I've

01:17:58 ◼   ► I've been doing Mac stories for the past 12 years at this point.

01:18:03 ◼   ► And I have obviously developed my own tastes, my own needs, my own requirements.

01:18:10 ◼   ► And especially when it comes to work-related apps, I think more than ever I sort of demand some kind of maturity,

01:18:20 ◼   ► some kind of a high degree of maturity and flexibility from the apps that I know I'm going to rely on.

01:18:27 ◼   ► So I think my threshold for something new is higher than ever.

01:18:33 ◼   ► And it gets very challenging for developers to meet that, especially with the 1.0 release.

01:18:40 ◼   ► Which again, when it happens, again, look at Kraft, for example, when it happens, I'm the

01:18:48 ◼   ► happiest man on earth.

01:18:50 ◼   ► When I see the 1.0 that ticks all those boxes, I am blown away.

01:18:56 ◼   ► but it's much, much harder, and it used to happen more frequently before.

01:19:01 ◼   ► Now it's a very rare thing.

01:19:04 ◼   ► The second issue I see lately on the App Store, on places like, what's it called, the public thing for test flights, airport?

01:19:17 ◼   ► App airport.

01:19:18 ◼   ► App airport, yeah.

01:19:19 ◼   ► I see a lot of, John calls them cookie cutter apps.

01:19:25 ◼   ► They basically all look similar. I don't want to say the same.

01:19:29 ◼   ► Is that SwiftUI?

01:19:31 ◼   ► I've been thinking about this.

01:19:33 ◼   ► Thinking SwiftUI.

01:19:35 ◼   ► Maybe that's the downside of something like SwiftUI.

01:19:38 ◼   ► It democratized and it made it easier for a lot of people to get into app development.

01:19:43 ◼   ► Well, the second thing too, maybe it's not just that.

01:19:48 ◼   ► Something like App Airport exposes you to more applications from first-time developers

01:19:56 ◼   ► and smaller developers than you would otherwise see.

01:19:59 ◼   ► Yeah. Yes. Yes.

01:20:01 ◼   ► And I try not to think about that too much because I know that Airport is not like the App Store.

01:20:06 ◼   ► There's a lot of apps that always stay there and they never come out publicly.

01:20:10 ◼   ► And there's, look, there's a lot of gems that I discovered on airport.

01:20:18 ◼   ► One of them, denim. It's this really well done utility that allows you to make custom cover images for your Apple Music playlists.

01:20:28 ◼   ► This is very pretty.

01:20:30 ◼   ► Yeah, I discovered it on airport. It's now on the App Store. So I'm not saying that all test flights are bad and they never turn into shipping products because experience proves otherwise. But a lot of them, they are either similar or pretty much, you know, almost the same. And yeah, so there's that.

01:20:53 ◼   ► So there's that. The other problem, this is an obvious one.

01:20:56 ◼   ► I get demoralized when I see a new application

01:21:02 ◼   ► and I start keeping an eye on it.

01:21:06 ◼   ► We have our own internal tool at Mac Store is called UpdateBot,

01:21:11 ◼   ► which is a thing that keeps track of app releases on the App Store.

01:21:15 ◼   ► And I get...

01:21:17 ◼   ► It's very sad when I see this new, potentially promising utility

01:21:23 ◼   ► and it obviously gets abandoned after like two updates.

01:21:28 ◼   ► It's like, well, this could have been something,

01:21:31 ◼   ► but it's been six months and I don't see any updates,

01:21:34 ◼   ► so I guess the developer's done.

01:21:37 ◼   ► So that, you know, yeah, it makes me sad.

01:21:41 ◼   ► It's just, eh, you know, could have been interesting.

01:21:44 ◼   ► I guess they're not working on it anymore.

01:21:47 ◼   ► The other major turnoff for me is apps that are

01:21:52 ◼   ► that are, again, potentially interesting, and then you download them, and one of two

01:21:59 ◼   ► things happen on first launch. They want me to create an account.

01:22:05 ◼   ► Everything's a service now.

01:22:08 ◼   ► Everything's a service. Create an account. Just let me... Which I think it's actually

01:22:12 ◼   ► against App Store review guidelines. You should provide some kind of demo functionality without

01:22:18 ◼   ► requesting...

01:22:19 ◼   ► Wasn't that the exact thing that got "Hey"?

01:22:22 ◼   ► I think so.

01:22:24 ◼   ► I think that was what they said.

01:22:26 ◼   ► "You just give us a login screen,

01:22:28 ◼   ► and you won't let anyone create an account."

01:22:30 ◼   ► Remember how they had to create the demo version of the app?

01:22:36 ◼   ► Yes.

01:22:38 ◼   ► Vidit makes a really good point in the Discord.

01:22:42 ◼   ► SF Symbols have also made a lot of apps look similar to each other.

01:22:46 ◼   ► Very good point.

01:22:47 ◼   ► Because there's no custom iconography anymore.

01:22:49 ◼   ► In a lot of apps there's no custom iconography anymore. So that definitely contributes to that.

01:22:54 ◼   ► So as I was saying, they either asked me to create an account, which like I could understand for like a

01:23:00 ◼   ► document collaboration service, sure, I need to create an account.

01:23:04 ◼   ► Why do I need to create an account for a calculator or a note-taking app? Help me understand here.

01:23:10 ◼   ► What am I exactly creating an account for? So that annoys me.

01:23:13 ◼   ► The other thing is you download something and the first thing it shows you,

01:23:18 ◼   ► "Hey, subscribe! There's a free trial, but first I'm gonna throw a subscription screen in your face

01:23:25 ◼   ► and you cannot demo the product, you cannot try it. First

01:23:29 ◼   ► give me your confirmation that you want to try this thing for free for two weeks,

01:23:32 ◼   ► and then you'll get the chance to try the app." Which,

01:23:35 ◼   ► you know, I hate to

01:23:38 ◼   ► mention names, but we're gonna talk about this in a few minutes. These new apps by...

01:23:44 ◼   ► what's it called?

01:23:45 ◼   ► Andy Works?

01:23:46 ◼   ► - Andy Works, yeah.

01:23:47 ◼   ► - No more boring apps.

01:23:49 ◼   ► They released a calculator, a weather app.

01:23:52 ◼   ► The first thing you see is a subscription screen.

01:23:54 ◼   ► You can like, and I thought the dichotomy between,

01:23:59 ◼   ► hey, this is not a boring app.

01:24:02 ◼   ► This is the most fun you've ever seen

01:24:04 ◼   ► on the App Store in years.

01:24:06 ◼   ► And, but first, here's a subscription screen for you.

01:24:09 ◼   ► Otherwise you cannot try the super fun thing we built.

01:24:12 ◼   ► I thought that was a fascinating contrast

01:24:16 ◼   ► for a first run experience.

01:24:18 ◼   ► So to sum up, the combination of all these problems,

01:24:23 ◼   ► but mostly I would say apps that look similar to each other,

01:24:28 ◼   ► like, yeah, I've seen this before,

01:24:30 ◼   ► and I've seen this before, and I've seen this before,

01:24:33 ◼   ► that makes me bored.

01:24:35 ◼   ► But also the fact that over time

01:24:39 ◼   ► I've been doing this long enough

01:24:41 ◼   ► that I think I have a very high threshold for being surprised.

01:24:49 ◼   ► And lately it's happened like a cannon on one hand.

01:24:53 ◼   ► Like the times that I've been like...

01:24:55 ◼   ► genuinely blown away by a new product.

01:25:01 ◼   ► In most recent memory,

01:25:04 ◼   ► Kraft.

01:25:06 ◼   ► For sure.

01:25:07 ◼   ► Or Tio, maybe the new text editor.

01:25:10 ◼   ► Like it happens very...

01:25:13 ◼   ► Oh, Tai...

01:25:15 ◼   ► We never talked about this?

01:25:16 ◼   ► Oh, I mentioned it on App Stories.

01:25:17 ◼   ► There's this new text editor, which is like the spiritual successor to editorial.

01:25:22 ◼   ► It's called TAIO.

01:25:23 ◼   ► T-A-I-O.

01:25:25 ◼   ► It stands for Text All-In-One, which...

01:25:28 ◼   ► I know, it's not the best acronym.

01:25:32 ◼   ► But it's an amazing and very...

01:25:36 ◼   ► See, that's one of the very promising new apps that I'm keeping an eye on.

01:25:41 ◼   ► Oh, I know what this is now. I heard you talk about it.

01:25:43 ◼   ► It combines a text editor...

01:25:44 ◼   ► I thought you said "tile".

01:25:46 ◼   ► No, "tai-yo".

01:25:47 ◼   ► "Tai-yo".

01:25:48 ◼   ► "Tai-yo".

01:25:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:25:50 ◼   ► "Tai-yo".

01:25:51 ◼   ► T-A-I-O. Text all in one.

01:25:53 ◼   ► But it happens very rarely.

01:25:56 ◼   ► And I am very...

01:26:00 ◼   ► Sometimes I see, like, for example, a few days ago, everybody tweeted about this new weather app,

01:26:06 ◼   ► this new timer and calculator app, and I thought,

01:26:09 ◼   ► "Yeah, well, that looks fun, but is it really doing anything different besides showing you numbers with a 3D effect?"

01:26:18 ◼   ► It's like, where's the innovation?

01:26:21 ◼   ► Alright, so I brought this to your attention, I think, the Antiborgz apps.

01:26:25 ◼   ► because I don't remember how I saw them but I saw somebody retweet them and it

01:26:29 ◼   ► was like a couple weeks ago or whatever and I know this because I got the

01:26:34 ◼   ► subscription thing today. I'd let them bill me because I'm intrigued

01:26:40 ◼   ► and this is like a collection of applications that are intending to be

01:26:50 ◼   ► different. So they're made of a game engine I'm not sure which one but that's

01:26:55 ◼   ► one of the reasons why they look so incredibly different. I agree with you that one of the things

01:27:00 ◼   ► that they do is the first thing when you either download any of the three apps that they make,

01:27:04 ◼   ► one is a timer, one is weather and one is calculator, is they try to have you subscribe,

01:27:10 ◼   ► which I think is not the best thing to do. I get it, right? But I think maybe they should try and

01:27:17 ◼   ► have something. So Vidit Sanks will SceneKit in SwiftUI, right? So SceneKit is an interesting way

01:27:23 ◼   ► to build apps like this, right? Like SceneKit is a game engine. And I understand, right?

01:27:29 ◼   ► Make your money, like I get it, but I think at least some kind of idea of what I was paying for

01:27:33 ◼   ► would have been helpful. But I was approaching these as a information research exercise,

01:27:42 ◼   ► so I was willing to pay. What I will say is none of these applications have something to them

01:27:52 ◼   ► where I feel like it's the app that I need to use for its purpose.

01:27:57 ◼   ► But what I will say is I appreciate what they are trying to do.

01:28:03 ◼   ► And the way that I take, by looking through their materials,

01:28:09 ◼   ► this isn't the end result for what they're attempting here.

01:28:14 ◼   ► This is like a beginning of a movement.

01:28:18 ◼   ► And I think that the movement that they are attempting to get to is coming from what you are finding, right?

01:28:27 ◼   ► That there is potentially could be argued that apps are becoming a bit boring sometimes now.

01:28:36 ◼   ► And so like, I think what, you know, whether I don't know if they would say that what they've done here is like the perfect encapsulation of what they're attempting.

01:28:46 ◼   ► But they're trying to, I think, bring back some of the more playfulness of, say, iOS 6 applications

01:28:58 ◼   ► in a more modern aesthetic. And if that is what they have attempted to do, I think that they have

01:29:04 ◼   ► succeeded greatly on that. Because these applications feel playful, they have sound to them, and lots of

01:29:11 ◼   ► really good tactics and animations. And so they're fun to just play with, but they feel

01:29:18 ◼   ► modern. Most applications that I have tried that harken for that old time feel old when I use them,

01:29:25 ◼   ► right? Or it's that, what is that halfway point that I see a lot now? What is that called? You

01:29:33 ◼   ► know what I'm talking about? Where like, it's that design style, which is, it looks like a kind of

01:29:39 ◼   ► a SwiftUI type app, but is it Neomorphism?

01:29:42 ◼   ► Oh yeah, yeah.

01:29:44 ◼   ► Well is it?

01:29:46 ◼   ► I don't remember the name, but that really doesn't do it for me.

01:29:50 ◼   ► It looks like the application elements are popping out of a piece of paper.

01:29:55 ◼   ► Oh yeah, Neomorphism, yeah that thing, yeah, it just makes no sense.

01:30:00 ◼   ► That style I don't particularly like, and there is something that I find intriguing

01:30:04 ◼   ► about the design of these applications.

01:30:09 ◼   ► And I'm not necessarily advocating for them as great apps, but as a project for "I want

01:30:21 ◼   ► to do something a little bit different."

01:30:25 ◼   ► I like it.

01:30:26 ◼   ► Now, again, I also think that there is a spectrum of feeling on here, and I don't think I'm

01:30:33 ◼   ► exactly in the same boat as you, but we had come at things differently, right? Where I don't look

01:30:40 ◼   ► for new apps as much as you do, but a couple of years ago I did note that I've had this similar

01:30:49 ◼   ► feeling. And this was during one of the State of the Apps episodes that we did for Cortex every year

01:30:54 ◼   ► where I felt like there wasn't really anything. And the conclusion that I came to for myself was

01:31:02 ◼   ► I had gotten to the point where moving to something else felt like such a hassle for

01:31:08 ◼   ► a lot of the tools and services that I used that it had to be really good for me to want to do it

01:31:14 ◼   ► and that was something that I was noticing but maybe it was more of a me problem.

01:31:19 ◼   ► But I do find interesting what you're saying about design that maybe...

01:31:28 ◼   ► So there was a time when design would be the reason.

01:31:33 ◼   ► But I think what's happened is the bar of design has raised, right?

01:31:39 ◼   ► Because like just a standard SwiftUI application

01:31:42 ◼   ► looks so much better to me than any standard UIKit application did.

01:31:48 ◼   ► So the bar of like this is a baseline app

01:31:52 ◼   ► I think is a lot better now than it ever was. So I think it

01:31:56 ◼   ► it makes it harder to stand out? I don't know. Is there anything else on this? Like, what do you want?

01:32:03 ◼   ► Right? What do you want that will make this better for you, do you think?

01:32:07 ◼   ► Well, I noticed that I now tend to gravitate toward really mature and flexible apps. And by

01:32:17 ◼   ► flexible I mean look at things like Carrot Weather, for example, right?

01:32:21 ◼   ► Carrot Weather, I mean, we said this when it came out. That's a trend that we all want to

01:32:25 ◼   ► to see, right? Like really heavy customization, toolkits in applications.

01:32:30 ◼   ► Yes, heavy customization. Things like Good Task also is a really good example. You can

01:32:36 ◼   ► make your own utility, basically. Or the other end of the spectrum is no customization but

01:32:45 ◼   ► a lot of, like, a lot of care for a lot of details. Again, look at Craft or Timery. Like,

01:32:53 ◼   ► Obviously, even if you don't have customization, even if you don't have a toolkit for making your

01:33:01 ◼   ► own UI, but a lot of attention to things like multiplatform, shortcuts integration, keyboard

01:33:10 ◼   ► shortcuts, widgets, implementing the latest APIs. And I think what's really tricky these days is

01:33:22 ◼   ► coming up with trying to match all of this aspect in a 1.0 for a new developer, I realize

01:33:32 ◼   ► it's difficult. But I think it happens in any market, right? And the App Store has existed for

01:33:41 ◼   ► we're going into our 13th year of the App Store. And there's obviously developers who've been

01:33:48 ◼   ► around since the beginning, like Peacock for example. And imagine being a new developer

01:33:55 ◼   ► in 2021 who wants to make a calculator for pro users and you're like, "Well, I have 13 years

01:34:03 ◼   ► of Peacock to catch up with here. Is it even possible?" And I don't have a straight answer

01:34:10 ◼   ► to that, right? It's obviously very challenging, so either you try something different like

01:34:15 ◼   ► Andy works, even though I dislike their implementation of the first run experience.

01:34:20 ◼   ► Or maybe you just go for it and you try to take advantage of the things that Apple has simplified

01:34:27 ◼   ► and made easier for you, maybe like design. Maybe you try to differentiate on having a

01:34:33 ◼   ► universal app, having shortcuts integration, having Siri integration, that kind of stuff.

01:34:37 ◼   ► But I think personally speaking, I look at my home screen and when I see stuff like

01:34:44 ◼   ► Good Task, Kraft, Timery, what's the other one, Carrow Weather, Music Harbor, Apollo.

01:34:55 ◼   ► And I look at these apps and I'm like, well, there's something in common between all of

01:34:59 ◼   ► these, which is the developers are always working on these apps, right?

01:35:05 ◼   ► They're constantly updating them.

01:35:07 ◼   ► They're constantly taking advantage of new features.

01:35:11 ◼   ► And most of them, even Apollo, I would consider one of the most customizable apps I've tried

01:35:17 ◼   ► on my devices, they prioritize that idea of the ecosystem is mature enough, apps are mature

01:35:26 ◼   ► enough, what's a good way to differentiate, to bring back the fun?

01:35:31 ◼   ► Customization.

01:35:32 ◼   ► You make it your own.

01:35:34 ◼   ► And I think that's it.

01:35:35 ◼   ► In 2021, especially considering what we witnessed in iOS 14.

01:35:40 ◼   ► I think that's a pretty safe way to ensure that you can keep the passion from people

01:35:47 ◼   ► like me, I think.

01:35:48 ◼   ► Maybe customisation removes the concern of apps looking similar on the...

01:35:55 ◼   ► I absolutely agree with that, yes.

01:35:58 ◼   ► It's a good way to ensure that you can stay fresh and interesting, I think.

01:36:03 ◼   ► Because look, we all like to customise, and those who say they don't, they just don't

01:36:09 ◼   ► know it yet. I firmly believe this. Lastly, what I would say is something that would not

01:36:20 ◼   ► rekindle because there's nothing to rekindle here. I still love testing and writing about

01:36:25 ◼   ► apps. Something that would help. Well, two things. More pro apps for iPad, but especially

01:36:37 ◼   ► made by Apple. Like, I want to see Apple lead by example here. There are pro apps on iPad.

01:36:43 ◼   ► I still think that Apple should come out and say, "Hey, here's Logic, Final Cut, and Xcode."

01:36:50 ◼   ► Like, the bare minimum they should do. And the second thing is, I feel like it would

01:37:00 ◼   ► be generally like a new beginning for me and for Mac stories if there ever was Gatekeeper

01:37:07 ◼   ► on iOS and iPadOS. If Apple were ever to bring proper side loading to iPhone and iPad so

01:37:14 ◼   ► that you can install apps from other sources. Because I've also considered like, the fact

01:37:23 ◼   ► that I have this thought and that I have this question for Myke, "Are apps boring now? Are

01:37:28 ◼   ► there any new apps anymore? Is it because after 12 years of Mac stories I'm now bumping into

01:37:38 ◼   ► App Store limitations? Is that one of the potential issues? Maybe. And I know that if folks like Panic,

01:37:46 ◼   ► for example, could bring their apps without any restrictions to iPad and could charge for them,

01:37:57 ◼   ► however they want, I know that that would do a lot in terms of, you know, "Hey, here's a whole new market of apps for you."

01:38:06 ◼   ► I don't think it's ever going to happen.

01:38:10 ◼   ► In a way that it could do is people that feel like they might be pushing,

01:38:15 ◼   ► have an idea that will push the boundaries might say, "I'm not going to bother with this."

01:38:20 ◼   ► Right? And there's an app you potentially lost out on because they figure it won't get through App Review.

01:38:26 ◼   ► But if there was side loading, then they might be more willing to give it a go.

01:38:33 ◼   ► Because no one can stop them.

01:38:36 ◼   ► But you're not going to get that.

01:38:38 ◼   ► No, I don't think so.

01:38:39 ◼   ► You'd have to hope for other stuff, I don't think you're going to get that.

01:38:44 ◼   ► So to sum up, it's not like I don't like apps anymore.

01:38:50 ◼   ► It's that I... it's becoming increasingly more difficult for me to be genuinely surprised

01:38:57 ◼   ► by new apps for all the reasons we mentioned here.

01:39:01 ◼   ► Well, thank you for sharing.

01:39:03 ◼   ► Sure, it felt like therapy.

01:39:06 ◼   ► If you would like to find out more about this episode of Connected, you can use the web

01:39:11 ◼   ► if you like, or the relay.net/connect/334.

01:39:13 ◼   ► We have links there, but of course there'll be a new podcast app of choice.

01:39:19 ◼   ► If you want to get longer episodes of Connected, more awesome content, Japes, discoveries and

01:39:25 ◼   ► more go to getconnectedpro.co and you'll get the show with our ads as well.

01:39:31 ◼   ► Anybody that has signed up, thank you so much.

01:39:33 ◼   ► If you are going to sign up, also thank you so much.

01:39:36 ◼   ► I would also like to take a moment to thank our sponsors of this week's episode.

01:39:39 ◼   ► They're the fine people at Pingdom, Bombas and Baron Figg.

01:39:43 ◼   ► If you want to find Federico online, you can go to maxstories.net and he is @Vittici.

01:39:47 ◼   ► I am @imike, I M Y K E and Steven, who will be back next week, is at ISMH. The episode

01:39:56 ◼   ► of Liftoff that Steven did with Ron Moore from For All Mankind is super good. I recommend

01:40:02 ◼   ► trying that out. And hey, if you like this show, let me tell you about another show here

01:40:06 ◼   ► at Reel AFM. It's a show called Pictorial. So look, we all love art in some way, right?

01:40:11 ◼   ► But maybe we're tired of elitism keeping beautiful art stories out of reaching expensive classrooms.

01:40:16 ◼   ► Soa Quinn and Betty, they host a pictorial podcast all about art history.

01:40:20 ◼   ► You can find pictorial to listen more and learn yourself at relay.fm/pictorial or search

01:40:27 ◼   ► for pictorial wherever you get your podcasts.

01:40:31 ◼   ► We'll be back next time.

01:40:32 ◼   ► Oh, hold on, Myke.

01:40:34 ◼   ► Oh, whoa.

01:40:35 ◼   ► Hold on.

01:40:36 ◼   ► I have a question for you.

01:40:37 ◼   ► Hey, look at that.

01:40:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I wasn't going to do it.

01:40:40 ◼   ► Okay, go on.

01:40:41 ◼   ► You have a question.

01:40:42 ◼   ► Okay.

01:40:43 ◼   ► Would you rather be invincible but not immortal?

01:40:50 ◼   ► Like you can be invincible but you're still gonna leave this world someday?

01:40:56 ◼   ► Or would you prefer to be very weak, like no physical strength whatsoever, but immortal?

01:41:05 ◼   ► So weak forever or invincible for a short period of time?

01:41:10 ◼   ► Well to find short, is that like a regular life expectancy?

01:41:13 ◼   ► Mm-mm.

01:41:14 ◼   ► Yeah, invincible but regular life expectancy.

01:41:18 ◼   ► Okay, interesting.

01:41:20 ◼   ► I don't like the idea of being incredibly weak and living forever.

01:41:24 ◼   ► That sounds horrible.

01:41:25 ◼   ► Plus I don't think-

01:41:26 ◼   ► You can live forever, you can try a lot of stuff.

01:41:30 ◼   ► I don't think anyone should live forever if they're gonna be unique in that.

01:41:34 ◼   ► Really?

01:41:35 ◼   ► Really? You have to watch everyone you love die.

01:41:40 ◼   ► But still, you can witness a lot of cool things and you can do everything you can possibly

01:41:45 ◼   ► want to do, travel the world multiple, multiple times over and over?

01:41:48 ◼   ► Right, but that means you are eventually going to run out of things to do?

01:41:53 ◼   ► No, you can never run out of things to do. There's always new things to do.

01:41:57 ◼   ► No, I would prefer strength and regular life expectancy.

01:42:01 ◼   ► - Invincible but regular life expectancy.

01:42:03 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Okay.

01:42:04 ◼   ► - Thank you for that question.

01:42:06 ◼   ► What would you prefer?

01:42:07 ◼   ► - See, I'm not as sure as you.

01:42:13 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:42:13 ◼   ► - Because the idea of living forever

01:42:15 ◼   ► is actually pretty compelling.

01:42:17 ◼   ► I think we gotta define weakness,

01:42:19 ◼   ► like because I say incredibly weakness.

01:42:21 ◼   ► - You defined it, Federico.

01:42:22 ◼   ► You defined it. - Would you like to be

01:42:23 ◼   ► very frail and--

01:42:25 ◼   ► - That was how I described,

01:42:27 ◼   ► 'cause what I thought you were gonna say was invincible

01:42:30 ◼   ► and mortal or immortal and... invincible? I don't know the opposite of invincible.

01:42:38 ◼   ► Fallible? That's what I thought you were going to say and then it's like oh that's a bit

01:42:42 ◼   ► more interesting of a thought process right? Like I can be hurt but I can't die. But you

01:42:49 ◼   ► went with very weak. So I was kind of like well I don't want to be very weak. That sounds

01:42:55 ◼   ► horrible. So you set the parameters on that one. I still don't think I'd change my answer

01:43:02 ◼   ► though.

01:43:03 ◼   ► Yeah, because, yeah, maybe I'm, like, if I had to pick I would say invincible and regular

01:43:06 ◼   ► life expectancy, because man, imagine being invincible.

01:43:10 ◼   ► Sounds pretty great, right?

01:43:11 ◼   ► But also, like, would you care about being invincible? Like, are you the type of person

01:43:15 ◼   ► who prioritizes being invincible? Like, do you get into many fights?

01:43:20 ◼   ► I would if I was invincible.

01:43:22 ◼   ► If it was invincible, I'd just go solve everything I wanted to solve, right? Like, I can't be

01:43:28 ◼   ► hurt. I like this idea of an invincible but mortal person, that they couldn't be hurt

01:43:34 ◼   ► by anything and then one day, gone.

01:43:37 ◼   ► You know what made me think of it? You know what made me think of it? When you collect

01:43:40 ◼   ► the star in Super Mario, you are invincible but for a short period of time.

01:43:45 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I hope it would be longer than Mario, because that's really not very long.

01:43:49 ◼   ► Like I guess if you want to put it in Mario terms, would you want to get the star, or

01:43:53 ◼   ► would you want to be short Mario, you know, before you get the mushroom forever?

01:43:57 ◼   ► But again, you're not giving, like, much of a... who wants to be the tiny Mario forever?

01:44:04 ◼   ► That sounds horrible.

01:44:05 ◼   ► Hey, maybe there's some... hey, maybe some folks like to do that.

01:44:09 ◼   ► That's why I asked you.

01:44:10 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I definitely like invincible but mortal.

01:44:14 ◼   ► Yeah, okay.

01:44:15 ◼   ► Okay, alright.

01:44:16 ◼   ► Thank you for that question.

01:44:17 ◼   ► Sure.

01:44:18 ◼   ► you like getting these questions actually. It's very intriguing. Alright, we'll be back

01:44:24 ◼   ► next time. Until then, say goodbye Federico.

01:44:26 ◼   ► Adios, El Chirio.