Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Connected, episode 323. It goes both ways. What's that word called?

00:00:16 ◼   ► A palindrome.

00:00:17 ◼   ► Yes, that's right. That's where we are this week.

00:00:20 ◼   ► I feel like that someone messed up.

00:00:24 ◼   ► That word should be a palindrome.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:00:26 ◼   ► The word palindrome should be a palindrome, but also palindrome, does it work for numbers

00:00:32 ◼   ► or is it just for words?

00:00:34 ◼   ► It works in the terms of what we're talking about right now. We're fine with that. They

00:00:38 ◼   ► should have picked a word that went both ways, right?

00:00:42 ◼   ► Like "anna", for example.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, maybe something slightly more complicated than that, but sure.

00:00:53 ◼   ► Is there a way that we can modify the word palindrome to be a palindrome?

00:00:56 ◼   ► Uh, well, how far do you want to go? Maybe we could call it like-

00:01:00 ◼   ► Very far.

00:01:01 ◼   ► Go like up to palin, right? And then like reverse it?

00:01:05 ◼   ► Palinilap.

00:01:06 ◼   ► Palinilap.

00:01:07 ◼   ► What?

00:01:08 ◼   ► P-A-L-I-N-I-L-A-P.

00:01:09 ◼   ► Palinilap.

00:01:10 ◼   ► Palinilap.

00:01:11 ◼   ► Right? Palinilap.

00:01:12 ◼   ► Is this a show?

00:01:13 ◼   ► Hi, my name is Myke Hurley and I'm part of this podcast.

00:01:21 ◼   ► Well, yes, Steven, come on, be a pro.

00:01:24 ◼   ► It's not episode, so Myke Hurley gets to go first. Myke, how are you?

00:01:28 ◼   ► I'm fine, my friend.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Good. I'm glad you were fine. Federico is also here. Federico, how are you?

00:01:35 ◼   ► Hello. Hi, I'm good. How are you?

00:01:37 ◼   ► I'm good. We're back together again doing a podcast.

00:01:40 ◼   ► That's what we love.

00:01:42 ◼   ► It's every Wednesday. Just anchors the week right in the middle, you know?

00:01:45 ◼   ► Yeah, if you want to listen to that podcast, get a really ton of them. Like, it's so sad.

00:01:51 ◼   ► We were promoting it!

00:01:53 ◼   ► So if you want to check it out, just go to wherever you get your podcasts.

00:01:56 ◼   ► That's right.

00:01:57 ◼   ► Wait, why would we promote our podcasts on our podcast?

00:02:00 ◼   ► In case somebody's like overhearing it.

00:02:02 ◼   ► "Connected" makes my week a palindrome because we record at noon my time on Wednesday, the middle of the week.

00:02:10 ◼   ► Is that a quality? Like making your week a palindrome?

00:02:14 ◼   ► No, if you wanted it to be a palindrome, we'd have to start at like 11.

00:02:18 ◼   ► So halfway through the show is the middle.

00:02:21 ◼   ► We're a little lopsided.

00:02:22 ◼   ► Okay.

00:02:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:24 ◼   ► Well, the start of the show is the middle of my week.

00:02:26 ◼   ► Okay.

00:02:27 ◼   ► It's all downhill from here.

00:02:28 ◼   ► Congratulations.

00:02:29 ◼   ► Yep.

00:02:30 ◼   ► Do you prefer the first half or the second half of the week?

00:02:32 ◼   ► The first half of the week is when I record all my shows, so I enjoy that, but then the

00:02:36 ◼   ► second half of the week I don't have to talk to anybody, and I also enjoy that.

00:02:39 ◼   ► I love both sides.

00:02:40 ◼   ► I'm very much a second half of the week person myself.

00:02:43 ◼   ► Are you?

00:02:44 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:02:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:46 ◼   ► big brother on Friday evening, which I know that Myke loves.

00:02:51 ◼   ► Isn't it every day?

00:02:53 ◼   ► No. Well, okay. There's the daytime programming that you can watch every day. There's a special

00:03:00 ◼   ► channel and they have the internet streaming service now where you can switch between multiple

00:03:05 ◼   ► cameras even. And they disabled the multi-camera feature a few weeks ago and people went crazy

00:03:13 ◼   ► and the network had to send like a public apology

00:03:16 ◼   ► and they restored the multi-camera option

00:03:19 ◼   ► like a week later.

00:03:20 ◼   ► Anyway. - Why did they get rid of it?

00:03:22 ◼   ► - COVID. - Because of COVID,

00:03:23 ◼   ► yeah, they needed to have less staff in their studios.

00:03:28 ◼   ► - Oh, like the cameras are not robotic?

00:03:32 ◼   ► - Well, some of them are manual.

00:03:34 ◼   ► So anyway, they restored the multi-camera option now.

00:03:39 ◼   ► And so there's the daytime, you can watch every day,

00:03:42 ◼   ► but there's also the prime time show with the actual host

00:03:45 ◼   ► and like, you know, the people like who were eliminated

00:03:50 ◼   ► from the game, they joined the host in the studio

00:03:54 ◼   ► and they talk and they show you little segments

00:03:57 ◼   ► from the week.

00:03:58 ◼   ► So basically the prime time show on Friday

00:04:00 ◼   ► and Monday evening is like a recap of the past few days,

00:04:04 ◼   ► plus like who got in a fight, who's falling in love,

00:04:07 ◼   ► you know, all that kind of stuff.

00:04:08 ◼   ► - All the good stuff.

00:04:10 ◼   ► - All the good stuff.

00:04:11 ◼   ► And you can vote, you can vote, and of course there's like the voting from home, you can

00:04:16 ◼   ► vote via the app, via text messages, whatever.

00:04:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:21 ◼   ► Why are we talking about this?

00:04:22 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:04:23 ◼   ► Follow up.

00:04:24 ◼   ► Did you even introduce Federico?

00:04:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I said Federico's here too, and we talked about it in a very sort of a...

00:04:30 ◼   ► Nonchalant way.

00:04:32 ◼   ► Yeah, nonchalant.

00:04:34 ◼   ► The former keynote chairman Federico Medici.

00:04:38 ◼   ► Wow.

00:04:40 ◼   ► And soon to be former annual chairman too.

00:04:43 ◼   ► Okay, what about me, former friend, Stephen Hackett?

00:04:47 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:04:51 ◼   ► What have I done?

00:04:53 ◼   ► We have a bunch of follow-up. Can we talk about that?

00:04:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:56 ◼   ► Okay.

00:04:56 ◼   ► A couple things here. J.W. Hamilton has made a website that if you click the big button that says "Hey" on it,

00:05:03 ◼   ► it just is one of us saying "Hey" over and over.

00:05:07 ◼   ► Perfect. Perfect.

00:05:08 ◼   ► My favorite thing is JW Hamilton's recreation of the Hey logo, which looks like one of those hand turkeys.

00:05:16 ◼   ► But to be honest, that's what the Hey logo looks like anyway.

00:05:19 ◼   ► I am saving this website for Max Stories Selects Awards.

00:05:24 ◼   ► It's really, really...

00:05:25 ◼   ► Do you award websites now?

00:05:28 ◼   ► No, we don't, but I will make the case for this one in particular.

00:05:32 ◼   ► Really good website. Thank you.

00:05:34 ◼   ► So thank you, thank you Justin for making this.

00:05:36 ◼   ► It is absolutely fantastic.

00:05:38 ◼   ► I've been using Hay this week.

00:05:42 ◼   ► You may have noticed that my email address

00:05:44 ◼   ► was last week's show title, ISMH.

00:05:47 ◼   ► - Best show title.

00:05:48 ◼   ► - At hay.com.

00:05:49 ◼   ► Episode title.

00:05:50 ◼   ► What did I say?

00:05:51 ◼   ► - I said it was the best title.

00:05:52 ◼   ► - Show title.

00:05:53 ◼   ► Just the best title, okay.

00:05:55 ◼   ► - That's a good title.

00:05:56 ◼   ► - That's pretty good.

00:05:57 ◼   ► I've gotten lots of emails from people.

00:05:59 ◼   ► Everyone's very nice.

00:06:00 ◼   ► I've gotten pictures of pets.

00:06:02 ◼   ► I've gotten offers of old technology,

00:06:03 ◼   ► some of which I hit up to adopt.

00:06:06 ◼   ► Lots of emails that just say, "Hey,"

00:06:08 ◼   ► and I've been responding to most of those with Yo.

00:06:11 ◼   ► Do you remember that app, Yo?

00:06:13 ◼   ► Yo, Yo, Yo, Yo.

00:06:14 ◼   ► - Oh my God, Yo.

00:06:16 ◼   ► Was that like five years ago?

00:06:18 ◼   ► - Yo.

00:06:19 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:20 ◼   ► - What was it about?

00:06:21 ◼   ► You could just send, you could just Yo people?

00:06:24 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

00:06:25 ◼   ► You could just send somebody a notification

00:06:27 ◼   ► and it said, "Yo," right?

00:06:28 ◼   ► - Was that the one that did the pizza thing

00:06:30 ◼   ► or was that a different thing?

00:06:31 ◼   ► No, it was that one that did the pizza thing.

00:06:34 ◼   ► Yo did Yo for Pizza?

00:06:35 ◼   ► I think so, you could Yo for Pizza.

00:06:38 ◼   ► They, didn't they have at some point

00:06:41 ◼   ► like a bunch of spin-offs

00:06:43 ◼   ► because they were trying to make it work

00:06:44 ◼   ► and it was like Yo for Slack and Yo for P...

00:06:47 ◼   ► Am I making this up?

00:06:49 ◼   ► I'm probably making this up.

00:06:50 ◼   ► According to their Wikipedia page,

00:06:52 ◼   ► their website is down now,

00:06:53 ◼   ► but Yo was shut down in 2016.

00:06:55 ◼   ► It was sunsetted.

00:06:57 ◼   ► Wow.

00:06:58 ◼   ► Sad, very sad.

00:06:59 ◼   ► They opened a Patreon to keep it going though.

00:07:01 ◼   ► Let's see how that's doing.

00:07:02 ◼   ► Can I become a member?

00:07:04 ◼   ► Let's see how this Patreon's doing.

00:07:05 ◼   ► Yo.

00:07:06 ◼   ► Yo.

00:07:07 ◼   ► Yo.

00:07:08 ◼   ► Patreon.

00:07:09 ◼   ► Yo is creating joyful moments.

00:07:11 ◼   ► Oh, that's nice.

00:07:12 ◼   ► I agree.

00:07:13 ◼   ► That's nice.

00:07:14 ◼   ► 41 patrons.

00:07:16 ◼   ► Is this the yo?

00:07:17 ◼   ► I mean, it's a purple logo.

00:07:18 ◼   ► Yeah, no, that's linked from the Wikipedia page and a Mashable article.

00:07:22 ◼   ► Okay, so I want to know about these 41 people.

00:07:25 ◼   ► What are they doing?

00:07:28 ◼   ► Well, they needed 50, they needed 5,000 to keep you running. So.

00:07:33 ◼   ► What are these funny one people? Why are they donating money to yo four years after he shut

00:07:39 ◼   ► down? Why like are these employees? I don't know. Like, I just want to understand what

00:07:48 ◼   ► are they getting out of it? The satisfaction that they're keeping a young

00:07:54 ◼   ► startup afloat. Oh, but no, you're not keeping it afloat. No. Anyway, yeah. Okay, so I've

00:08:04 ◼   ► been using hay a lot. I've gotten hundreds of emails. If you haven't emailed me, now's

00:08:07 ◼   ► the time. I assume h@hay.com. I'm answering all of them, so you'll get a reply from me.

00:08:14 ◼   ► I have to say after using it daily for a week, a lot of the features and hay are really awesome.

00:08:20 ◼   ► everything you talked about Federico is cool and then I listened to App Stories

00:08:25 ◼   ► and I thought I need to switch all my email to Hey but it's really not

00:08:29 ◼   ► something I'm going to do I'm not willing to move to something so locked

00:08:33 ◼   ► in and definitely not for like business email and and I understand the way you

00:08:38 ◼   ► and do your email I like my accounts to be separate so I'm not moving to it but

00:08:42 ◼   ► they have a lot of really interesting neat things in Hey and I think it's uh I

00:08:48 ◼   ► I think it's pretty cool. So what did you like the most? I like Screener a lot because of course,

00:08:55 ◼   ► when you just put an email address on the internet, you get started getting spam. So I've

00:08:59 ◼   ► gotten a lot of messages from listeners, but I've also gotten some messages that are that are not

00:09:05 ◼   ► things that I want. And I can just get rid of those. The thing where you can what is it called,

00:09:10 ◼   ► I'm trying to open the app, when you say like, deal with it later, and it pins it to the bottom

00:09:16 ◼   ► set aside. That's what it is set aside is really cool. So you can just like come back to something.

00:09:21 ◼   ► I don't love the Mac app. We talked about that like something stupid you have to upload your

00:09:28 ◼   ► own contacts. It failed for me. I exported my contacts from contacts app at 753 contacts,

00:09:35 ◼   ► and it just didn't upload that it would just spend forever. It's like, you're a Mac app. If you were

00:09:40 ◼   ► a real Mac app that was good, you could just use my local contacts. But of course it can't.

00:09:44 ◼   ► That's a bummer, but all in all, it's pretty cool.

00:09:49 ◼   ► Pretty cool.

00:09:51 ◼   ► - I'm pleased you liked it.

00:09:53 ◼   ► Maybe at some point you will reconsider.

00:09:56 ◼   ► - Maybe.

00:09:57 ◼   ► You know, if I cancel, if I don't renew my thing,

00:10:01 ◼   ► I saw something in this Discord or whatever,

00:10:04 ◼   ► maybe when I was looking through the documentation.

00:10:05 ◼   ► So if you don't pay, you don't have access

00:10:09 ◼   ► to your email address anymore, is that right?

00:10:12 ◼   ► Yeah, so listen to Daniel Stryker sent some stuff in about like there are issues with

00:10:19 ◼   ► mail forwarding, that it's not completely accurate. So if you are relying on mail forwarding,

00:10:25 ◼   ► that won't work because he's been getting a lot of bounced email. And so when you cancel

00:10:31 ◼   ► your account, you get given this kind of selection of things that it tells you. So it says, all

00:10:37 ◼   ► right, so when I cancel your account, here's what happens. We won't charge a credit card

00:10:41 ◼   ► again, you'll no longer be able to send and receive emails using your Hey address.

00:10:46 ◼   ► Since you've paid for your Hey address, it's reserved forever, but no one else will be

00:10:50 ◼   ► able to claim it, but you won't be able to resume using Hey with this address in the

00:10:54 ◼   ► future.

00:10:55 ◼   ► If you think you might want to keep that address, keep your account open.

00:10:58 ◼   ► I hate that.

00:10:59 ◼   ► That is...

00:11:00 ◼   ► Lame.

00:11:01 ◼   ► Like it literally says that, and it says you'll be able to set up email forwarding for up

00:11:06 ◼   ► to 30 days after you cancel, and your data will be deleted from our servers within 30

00:11:10 ◼   ► But the issue being right like yeah, you can set up the forwarding but the forwarding isn't completely reliable

00:11:17 ◼   ► and of course this only applies to

00:11:19 ◼   ► The at hey calm email addresses, right?

00:11:24 ◼   ► Which I don't think people should use like if you really want to go in for hey

00:11:28 ◼   ► Wait until you can get your own domain

00:11:30 ◼   ► I think plus that would be my recommendation is to just to wait and do the hey for work thing

00:11:35 ◼   ► But yeah, I find some of that stuff

00:11:39 ◼   ► Like I will mention it again of like this doesn't really seem to be coming from the same company from that guy

00:11:46 ◼   ► Who's like really really against Apple for and calling a mean and bad and and and doodoo heads or whatever real say

00:11:53 ◼   ► you know like that kind of feels a little bit like

00:11:56 ◼   ► Organized crime like to me, you know, like oh, don't worry. We'll reserve it

00:12:01 ◼   ► But you're not allowed to use it anymore. If you ever want to come back don't cancel. I guess I don't like that

00:12:08 ◼   ► Yeah, and I do think that one of the things the company should try and do is try and

00:12:14 ◼   ► How can I say this

00:12:17 ◼   ► Have a conversation with what's-his-name

00:12:21 ◼   ► David something I'm sorry David. How am I yeah about DHH about is is these tweets

00:12:29 ◼   ► you know because it's like I

00:12:32 ◼   ► I don't think it's necessarily a good look and like if that's his personal opinion then great, but it reflects on the business

00:12:39 ◼   ► I think especially when you say something things like like you said Myke like

00:12:43 ◼   ► you know calling somebody or saying somebody is acting like

00:12:48 ◼   ► Members of organized crime like that's you know a little too much

00:12:52 ◼   ► taking things a little too far so I do think that the

00:12:57 ◼   ► public image that they have on Twitter is problematic, but also like, you know, we are

00:13:06 ◼   ► now in week two, week three of using it for Mac stories and the service is really good.

00:13:12 ◼   ► Like we love it, it's helping us a lot, but I do feel like especially in our community

00:13:18 ◼   ► the tweets are the problem from that person. They don't reflect positively on people's

00:13:27 ◼   ► opinions on the service which is I think if you're the head of the company I think you

00:13:33 ◼   ► should see that as problematic.

00:13:37 ◼   ► Yeah it's like people get upset about Tesla right?

00:13:42 ◼   ► Exactly and they did have a conversation with him right?

00:13:47 ◼   ► And then I don't know if he's following the advice.

00:13:49 ◼   ► Well I mean he kind of then just decided to keep doing whatever he wanted.

00:13:54 ◼   ► So I have been thinking about this, I have been hearing what you two have been saying,

00:14:00 ◼   ► I have listened to App Stories, and I'll say I'm intrigued, but the things that I've heard

00:14:06 ◼   ► both of you say, it enforces why I don't think this is a service for me, right?

00:14:11 ◼   ► So the thing that I found the most interesting in Federico is on App Stories, you refer to

00:14:15 ◼   ► the idea of wanting to treat email like you would Slack, which we can talk about later

00:14:23 ◼   ► And I am totally on board with that idea, right, of like, this is a tool for work,

00:14:29 ◼   ► so I would just treat it like all of the other tools for work that I use, you know,

00:14:33 ◼   ► like Dropbox, like even like G Suite, right, Slack, these business tools that I

00:14:43 ◼   ► use, right, where I'm paying and I'm in the ecosystem of the company and whatever.

00:14:49 ◼   ► like email is kind of an outlier at this point that there is this like you pay

00:14:57 ◼   ► for services and you can use the the tools from that service but you can also

00:15:01 ◼   ► just use something completely different and it will all tie in there aren't many

00:15:04 ◼   ► business focused things that will allow you to do that and I thought that was

00:15:10 ◼   ► really interesting but I just for me I think Hayes lock-in is too much and and

00:15:19 ◼   ► it makes me uncomfortable especially the idea of I really just don't like this

00:15:26 ◼   ► point that I would have this fragmented point of email history and I understand

00:15:32 ◼   ► if you are not the type of person that searches your email a lot that's great

00:15:36 ◼   ► but I search my email for stuff constantly.

00:15:41 ◼   ► Maybe this is unique to working in a sales environment,

00:15:45 ◼   ► like quite a reasonable scale sales environment.

00:15:50 ◼   ► Like so John was talking about how on App Store is about

00:15:55 ◼   ► like this is when he would need to go back

00:15:58 ◼   ► through some email for sale stuff,

00:16:00 ◼   ► but over time that will go away.

00:16:02 ◼   ► For me that I know that's not the case,

00:16:04 ◼   ► because I very frequently will be searching for email for stuff for

00:16:09 ◼   ► conversations from like nine months ago and I think it would take a really long

00:16:15 ◼   ► time for me to rebuild all of that for benefits that definitely exist but right

00:16:24 ◼   ► now right now I'm not sure that it outweighs for me and as I said I'm gonna

00:16:30 ◼   ► to do what I said I was going to do, which is once they unveil this pay for work for

00:16:36 ◼   ► everyone, I will move one of my own domain email addresses to it so I can actually really

00:16:44 ◼   ► try it out with my own real email. But the idea of moving, again, it would require everybody

00:16:53 ◼   ► to agree, but the idea of moving my real AFM email address to this seems like a non-starter

00:16:58 ◼   ► for me at the moment just because I'm too deep in the old system now. I'm just too deep

00:17:04 ◼   ► in it. And we'll talk about this later on, but if I was starting something fresh from

00:17:10 ◼   ► new, maybe I would think about it more seriously, right? Because then I'm starting from ground

00:17:14 ◼   ► zero so it doesn't matter so much. But the idea of me switching all of my stuff into

00:17:20 ◼   ► it, it's lacking some stuff. And Hay could fix this and Hay should fix this. If they

00:17:26 ◼   ► They do want to offer a business product and expect to be able to get businesses to switch

00:17:30 ◼   ► to it.

00:17:32 ◼   ► Importing of archives is going to be a big sticking point for a lot of people, not just

00:17:37 ◼   ► me.

00:17:39 ◼   ► I know that they haven't actually fully launched their work thing.

00:17:44 ◼   ► Maybe by the time they do, they would have gotten this feedback enough that they will

00:17:47 ◼   ► do it.

00:17:48 ◼   ► But for me, there are a lot of sticking points, but right now that is the biggest one.

00:17:53 ◼   ► Yeah, that makes sense.

00:17:55 ◼   ► I get it.

00:17:56 ◼   ► And I think especially if it doesn't work for you because you do search your email a lot.

00:18:00 ◼   ► I think that's absolutely like the showstopper in this case.

00:18:03 ◼   ► Like, I get it. There's nothing you can do at this point.

00:18:06 ◼   ► Because then I'm still keeping the whole email service and app around, right?

00:18:10 ◼   ► And it's like, you know, at that point it would become quite a major frustration.

00:18:15 ◼   ► But I do look forward to the point where I can put it through its paces with a, quote,

00:18:19 ◼   ► "real email address" to me and then see where I go from there.

00:18:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:24 ◼   ► Apple's much

00:18:26 ◼   ► Beloved highly anticipated leather sleeve for the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro has been released

00:18:33 ◼   ► Mac rumors has a hands-on thing. I really wanted to bring this up for two reasons one to mock it a little bit

00:18:41 ◼   ► but one thing I really like about it and I like this on Android phones that do it too is

00:18:48 ◼   ► That it has this cool like always on screen

00:18:53 ◼   ► Factor so the leather sleeve like it's like a sleeping bag for your phone. The whole thing goes in there. There's a little cutout

00:18:59 ◼   ► so you can see the time and for some reason the earpiece or I guess that's the front facing speaker works and

00:19:07 ◼   ► It shows the time in there and the color on the screen is tinted to match the leather sleeve

00:19:14 ◼   ► so this one is red and the clock shows up red I

00:19:19 ◼   ► like this sort of always on display thing.

00:19:22 ◼   ► - It's not always on though.

00:19:23 ◼   ► - Is it not always on?

00:19:24 ◼   ► - No, it goes off.

00:19:26 ◼   ► - What?

00:19:27 ◼   ► Well, why are we talking about it?

00:19:28 ◼   ► - You put it in the notes.

00:19:29 ◼   ► - I thought it was always on.

00:19:31 ◼   ► - No, you can turn it on by moving the phone or whatever,

00:19:35 ◼   ► but it's not always on.

00:19:37 ◼   ► - Are you sure?

00:19:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, you have to tap it or shake the phone

00:19:40 ◼   ► or pick the phone up.

00:19:42 ◼   ► - Even in the sleeve?

00:19:43 ◼   ► - Even in the sleeve, it's not always on.

00:19:45 ◼   ► - Okay, well, the cutout will also display

00:19:48 ◼   ► incoming phone calls although you can't as macromers points out you can't answer

00:19:52 ◼   ► a call when the phone is in the leather sleeve so what's the point of having the

00:19:56 ◼   ► ear hole then I figured that the earpiece hole would exist because you

00:20:01 ◼   ► could maybe swipe on that little screen and answer the phone the earpiece hole I

00:20:06 ◼   ► think if you're playing music and then you shove it in the little leather

00:20:09 ◼   ► sleeping bag it that lets the front speaker you know because they use that

00:20:14 ◼   ► for the second speaker so I think it's just for audio listening. I don't know.

00:20:19 ◼   ► Also this is more expensive than a HomePod Mini. Just don't understand. Who is

00:20:25 ◼   ► this for? Like seriously, does anyone anyone out there if you are out there

00:20:29 ◼   ► listening to my voice and this interests you or you bought one email me in the

00:20:33 ◼   ► next seven days. Not interests. ISMH. We want to know if you've you have to be a

00:20:37 ◼   ► person who's bought it. Okay. Just be like I think this looks cool. Okay if you bought this

00:20:42 ◼   ► tell me why. Because I want to understand clearly Apple thinks people want this I

00:20:48 ◼   ► just want to understand the benefit of it. This makes me think of something

00:20:55 ◼   ► that I wanted to mention. So I received my MagSafe wallet this week. Oh yeah. Yeah

00:21:04 ◼   ► And I actually really like it. And in liking it, I realized how lately, on a few different

00:21:14 ◼   ► occasions, I have found myself going against the sort of common wisdom of Apple nerds and

00:21:23 ◼   ► their opinions. So I'm here to share some unpopular opinions. One of them is the wallet,

00:21:30 ◼   ► The MagSafe wallet case is totally fine and I really like it.

00:21:34 ◼   ► So do you feel like it gives...

00:21:36 ◼   ► So the thing that people didn't like about it or were critical of it was that it wasn't

00:21:42 ◼   ► a very strong magnetic connection.

00:21:45 ◼   ► It's totally fine unless you're wearing super skinny jeans.

00:21:50 ◼   ► That would be my interpretation of it.

00:21:52 ◼   ► Like I can put it in...

00:21:53 ◼   ► How pretty are your jeans?

00:21:56 ◼   ► Well I can...

00:21:57 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:21:58 ◼   ► I can put it in my pocket and it stays attached.

00:21:59 ◼   ► I don't get it. Or usually like I keep it in a pocket of my coat in the winter or like

00:22:05 ◼   ► if I go outside just wearing a hoodie for example and I have pockets, right, I can just

00:22:11 ◼   ► put it in the pocket of the hoodie and it's fine. And I really like how it attaches and

00:22:18 ◼   ► you get the little animation. And then when I'm driving in my car, because I have a MagSafe

00:22:22 ◼   ► stand now, I can just put the wallet by the keys holder thing that I have in the car while

00:22:29 ◼   ► the phone is on the stand and then when I need to get out of the car I can just reattach

00:22:33 ◼   ► the MagSafe wallet, put everything in my pocket and I'm done. I think it works just fine.

00:22:38 ◼   ► So I think this is one of those situations though where it's like if you are not this

00:22:45 ◼   ► type of person it's difficult to judge it. You are a wallet-phone combo person, right?

00:22:54 ◼   ► And I would say that maybe a lot of people aren't.

00:22:59 ◼   ► Right?

00:23:00 ◼   ► Like clearly the minority of people is people who want to have their wallet and their phone

00:23:06 ◼   ► be one and the same.

00:23:08 ◼   ► Right?

00:23:09 ◼   ► And because you are a wallet phone person, I am like totally willing to accept that you

00:23:17 ◼   ► like it.

00:23:18 ◼   ► But if you're not a wallet phone person, I can also see why people would be like,

00:23:23 ◼   ► "I don't get this, plus it doesn't attach very well." You know what I mean?

00:23:28 ◼   ► That's the point though, you want to be able to detach it relatively easily if you need to take

00:23:33 ◼   ► out a card. So it's like, it's a balance there that you need to hit. Because like, you're in

00:23:38 ◼   ► line at the supermarket, you don't want to like stop and be like, "Hey, hold on 30 seconds, I need

00:23:42 ◼   ► to detach this super strong connection between my wallet and my phone." You know? So like, I think,

00:23:48 ◼   ► and I think they hit a perfectly fine balance there. So that's one thing. Second thing,

00:23:52 ◼   ► I have three things, but the next one is also our tiny topic. The second thing,

00:23:56 ◼   ► there were, and I didn't necessarily pay a lot of attention to this, but I saw them,

00:24:01 ◼   ► and I skimmed those articles, there were entire blog posts and tweets and opinions

00:24:07 ◼   ► being shared about the measuring system for buying a solo loop for the Apple Watch.

00:24:15 ◼   ► And my question is, what is so difficult about it?

00:24:20 ◼   ► Well, I just took some measures... Lots of people who did it got the wrong thing.

00:24:25 ◼   ► How? How can you get it wrong? Have you never bought a watch before?

00:24:28 ◼   ► I don't know man, ask the people who did it.

00:24:30 ◼   ► Like, I just took some measuring tape, and I measured my wrist,

00:24:34 ◼   ► and I had a number, because that's how measuring tapes work, they give you a number.

00:24:39 ◼   ► What was it? 18 centimeters.

00:24:41 ◼   ► Oh you see, I think the reason that we're having an issue here is, I think the problem was people were printing out Apple's tool.

00:24:49 ◼   ► So Apple provided...

00:24:50 ◼   ► Don't people have measuring tapes?

00:24:52 ◼   ► Right, but Apple said, "Hey, if you want a solo loop, just print out our handy-dandy tool."

00:24:58 ◼   ► So people go, "Alright then."

00:25:00 ◼   ► No, that's not what they say. When you go to the product page, they tell you, "Use our tool or do it yourself."

00:25:07 ◼   ► Well, alright, but it said use the tool, so people used the tool, right? So people used the tool that

00:25:14 ◼   ► Apple created and apparently the tool that Apple created doesn't necessarily produce the greatest

00:25:20 ◼   ► results. So you want to make me believe that people have printers in 2020 but they don't have

00:25:28 ◼   ► measuring tape? Look, I'm not saying people don't have measuring tape. What I'm saying is people

00:25:35 ◼   ► took Apple's advice to print the tool, right? Why can't you just... See, I see this as

00:25:42 ◼   ► nerds sometimes wanting to go the more difficult route for something that is so obvious.

00:25:49 ◼   ► Just measure your wrist. I'm a man of the people and I am trying to defend the voiceless here on

00:25:58 ◼   ► this show who struggle to get their solo loops, right? There's nothing to struggle with. Well,

00:26:04 ◼   ► I'm a man of the people. I also don't want a solar loop, so I've never tried to do this.

00:26:12 ◼   ► You know?

00:26:13 ◼   ► I just... Okay.

00:26:15 ◼   ► But like, I'm on Apple's website right now, right? And it says band size.

00:26:21 ◼   ► So it says the band comes in different sizes. First, use our guide to find your exact size.

00:26:27 ◼   ► you click start your measurement and then all it tells me is to download the printable

00:26:35 ◼   ► tool.

00:26:36 ◼   ► It says do it yourself for me. There's like two tabs. One is user tool, the other is do

00:26:41 ◼   ► it yourself.

00:26:43 ◼   ► On apple.com.

00:26:44 ◼   ► And on the Italian web. Maybe Italians are doing it better, as always. I don't know.

00:26:49 ◼   ► Okay, so the apple.com, on the tabs it says printable tool or everyday items. I would

00:26:55 ◼   ► never think to click everyday items and then when I go to everyday items it

00:27:00 ◼   ► suggests using measuring tape.

00:27:02 ◼   ► Fascinating. So you would never think of doing

00:27:05 ◼   ► everyday items? You would rather print out a thing?

00:27:09 ◼   ► As a phrase, everyday items?

00:27:12 ◼   ► It's very likely that you have them because they are everyday items.

00:27:15 ◼   ► I mean I do have them, I have like three of these things at home.

00:27:18 ◼   ► But the thing is, okay, look, you know what, fine. I understand what you're saying, I'm just merely trying to

00:27:25 ◼   ► provide a counterpoint to you because I do know a lot of people struggle to get this thing right

00:27:32 ◼   ► and I don't want to say that they're stupid. Okay, no, no I'm not saying that. And I'm saying that

00:27:39 ◼   ► sometimes, and I see this in people that I follow, sometimes they like to go to certain lengths

00:27:50 ◼   ► Because maybe they're, you know, those are geeky solutions even though there's a more obvious

00:27:57 ◼   ► and practical solution right under their nose. Right. You know, it's like, oh it's a whole project,

00:28:03 ◼   ► let's print out the tool from Apple and let's criticize how it works. Just measure your wrist

00:28:07 ◼   ► and you're done. You know? So every day the solo loop is fantastic and I really like it.

00:28:16 ◼   ► I have no interest in that watch band but I'm pleased that you like it.

00:28:19 ◼   ► Okay. Lots of disagreements happening. I love it. And I'm sorry if I upset anyone. I know that

00:28:24 ◼   ► people don't like it when I criticize nerds and geeks. Like, I'm one of them, but sometimes

00:28:30 ◼   ► you gotta be practical about it, you know? Just... It doesn't... Not everything needs to be a huge

00:28:37 ◼   ► project to write a blog post about when you just need to measure your wrist. That was my point.

00:28:43 ◼   ► You also need me. Can we move on? We good?

00:28:46 ◼   ► I have something.

00:28:47 ◼   ► Yeah, what is this? You are populating our document with keyboard links.

00:28:51 ◼   ► This is purely for you.

00:28:54 ◼   ► Oh, I need this.

00:28:55 ◼   ► Yes, you do. So, as of today, on drop.com, there is a keycap set designed by my favorite keycap

00:29:04 ◼   ► designer, who goes by the name of Beep. They have created their own version of the Apple Extended 2

00:29:11 ◼   ► keyboard keycaps. So it's called extended 2048. It is a custom keycap set. It is

00:29:18 ◼   ► available to pre-order now and it ships I think in May or something. And so they

00:29:24 ◼   ► have done a great job of replicating the visual design or not replicating this is

00:29:31 ◼   ► a design is clearly inspired by the old Apple keyboard style from the way that

00:29:38 ◼   ► the lettering looks and then also Beep has created a selection of add-on kits that you

00:29:44 ◼   ► might want to go for that include iconography and stuff.

00:29:48 ◼   ► So there are some accents or modifier keys that look like the finer logo and stuff, like

00:29:58 ◼   ► a lot of old Apple stuff.

00:30:00 ◼   ► Like there's little Macs and save icons and some of the replications of the Susan Kerr

00:30:06 ◼   ► iconography but in a slightly more modern style. I really really really like Beep's stuff and

00:30:14 ◼   ► this is, I've been waiting for this set, I've been knowing that this set was coming for a couple of

00:30:20 ◼   ► months and I am going to be ordering it. So it's a little tricky like if you're coming to this for

00:30:25 ◼   ► the first time especially if you've never ordered a keycap set before, make sure that you read

00:30:31 ◼   ► through the pages, make sure that you look through all of the different kits

00:30:36 ◼   ► that they have because you might need to buy one or two of them to fill out a

00:30:41 ◼   ► keyboard that you own or may want to own in the future. So I think this is super

00:30:46 ◼   ► cool. I'm gonna be going in on a bunch of this kit. I'm gonna want to

00:30:51 ◼   ► steal this from you. Well that's not how that works. So these are just the

00:30:56 ◼   ► keycaps right? Yeah. And then you can choose the keyboard you want to use them on.

00:31:00 ◼   ► on yeah you will buy your own keyboard and they'll fit on any any kind of

00:31:04 ◼   ► popularish regular keyboard that you would buy nice yeah this looks really

00:31:09 ◼   ► cool this makes me wish that I could type on a mechanical keyboard who's to

00:31:14 ◼   ► say you can't I've tried I tried earlier this year I have hang on let me see I

00:31:18 ◼   ► have a whatever the popular key cron is yeah so the case which is did you get

00:31:25 ◼   ► the least I'm looking at my email now the least impactful one because it's

00:31:30 ◼   ► the it's the like the the lowest force actually because it's the force I have

00:31:37 ◼   ► to put through my fingers that hurts so I did I did back there k3 the ultra slim

00:31:42 ◼   ► one and I got the what is it the laser switches or something whatever was like

00:31:46 ◼   ► the least mechanical laser switches mm-hmm what did they do on cool yes that's lasers sure so

00:32:00 ◼   ► we'll try it we'll see how that works if anyone wants a cake Ron Keith k2 send me an email is

00:32:07 ◼   ► mh at hey calm we have done a lot of stuff what if we take a break and then come back and talk about

00:32:12 ◼   ► about our tiny topics.

00:32:14 ◼   ► - But what if we don't?

00:32:15 ◼   ► What would happen?

00:32:16 ◼   ► - Then to be a short show.

00:32:18 ◼   ► - Sure, we can take a break.

00:32:19 ◼   ► - This episode of Connected is brought to you by Pingdom

00:32:22 ◼   ► from our friends at SolarWinds.

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00:33:37 ◼   ► Our thanks to Pingdom from SolarWinds for the support of the show and Relay FM.

00:33:42 ◼   ► Big news in the charging world.

00:33:43 ◼   ► That's what we're talking about first.

00:33:44 ◼   ► We're going to talk about charging first.

00:33:46 ◼   ► Let's start with the MagSafe Duo.

00:33:48 ◼   ► Federico, you want to tell us about this?

00:33:51 ◼   ► The MagSafe Duo became available for ordering last night with deliveries happening this

00:33:56 ◼   ► week.

00:33:57 ◼   ► And for context, this is the foldable, portable MagSafe charger thing that Apple announced

00:34:04 ◼   ► with the iPhone 12.

00:34:06 ◼   ► And it folds, so it contains both an iPhone charger, a MagSafe iPhone charger, and an

00:34:11 ◼   ► Apple Watch charger. And it requires external power, of course, which is not included in

00:34:17 ◼   ► the box. And it's also not a cheap charger at all, because this costs $129. And I also

00:34:29 ◼   ► absolutely cannot wait for this accessory. This was the third thing that I wanted to

00:34:34 ◼   ► mentioned. I bought it last night immediately and I got a notification

00:34:42 ◼   ► saying that it was going to arrive on Friday, but just a few minutes ago as we

00:34:46 ◼   ► were recording I got an update saying that it's coming tomorrow on Thursday. So

00:34:51 ◼   ► I am excited about this because for a very specific reason I love MagSafe,

00:34:56 ◼   ► right? And for the past month my nightstand, I've removed all of the

00:35:01 ◼   ► previous chargers that I had because I wanted to go all in on the MagSafe

00:35:04 ◼   ► experience and I've been using this very this very simple and actually not even

00:35:12 ◼   ► good looking setup I just have a MagSafe charger and an Apple watch charger on

00:35:18 ◼   ► the nightstand with the cables going underneath the nightstand so very very

00:35:24 ◼   ► basic and very simple and I love it like I just love that when I'm done I can

00:35:29 ◼   ► just place the iPhone on the MagSafe thing and it aligns and attaches. And of course

00:35:33 ◼   ► the Apple Watch, it just stands there and I can place it down or I can put it horizontally

00:35:40 ◼   ► in what's it called, nightstand mode. And so, but those are like, they have the cables,

00:35:48 ◼   ► you know, like just floating there. And the two chargers are separate. And so in thinking

00:35:54 ◼   ► about this and thinking how much I like MagSafe, and the idea of the MagSafe Duo became really

00:36:00 ◼   ► appealing to me, also because it means it's going to be a little more neat to see, you

00:36:06 ◼   ► know, as an object on my nightstand, instead of like these two lonesome chargers just hanging

00:36:12 ◼   ► by. And also it means that when I'm ready to start the day and I remove my phone and

00:36:18 ◼   ► my Apple Watch from the charger, I can also fold it, so it occupies even less space on

00:36:23 ◼   ► my nightstand during the day and it doesn't bother me visually. So I'm really into this

00:36:30 ◼   ► little object even though it's slightly more expensive than I would have liked. And even

00:36:34 ◼   ► though I continue to believe that Apple is doing a bunch of stupid things by not including

00:36:37 ◼   ► chargers with phones and watches and in this case a hundred and twenty nine charger that

00:36:44 ◼   ► doesn't actually have a charger. Regardless I am very I am very keen to receive this item

00:36:52 ◼   ► You know what, listening to you, you almost talked me into it because...

00:36:57 ◼   ► I can look at... if there's one thing that I think positively about myself is that I

00:37:03 ◼   ► can talk a lot of people into spending money on this kind of stuff.

00:37:06 ◼   ► Yeah, you are good at that.

00:37:08 ◼   ► Because all those things you said, and it only takes up one outlet, which is nice.

00:37:12 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:37:13 ◼   ► So I also love MagSafe.

00:37:15 ◼   ► I've ordered the studio neat material dock

00:37:20 ◼   ► that has the, you can put the MagSafe puck in it

00:37:25 ◼   ► because I have this issue, especially now

00:37:26 ◼   ► because I'm using my phone without a case

00:37:28 ◼   ► because the 12 Pro is nice like that.

00:37:31 ◼   ► I'm always nervous that I'm gonna like knock it off the felt

00:37:34 ◼   ► on top of their wireless charger I use now.

00:37:36 ◼   ► And I don't want that, that would be bad

00:37:38 ◼   ► but the magnet it's like stuck on there.

00:37:40 ◼   ► So I'm excited to get the new material dock.

00:37:44 ◼   ► If this thing weren't $129 and I personally

00:37:48 ◼   ► just don't really care for the looks,

00:37:50 ◼   ► I think I'd be all over it.

00:37:52 ◼   ► Now, if this were 2019 and I had like 30 flights

00:37:56 ◼   ► like I did last year, I traveled all year,

00:37:58 ◼   ► it felt like this would be nice while traveling.

00:38:03 ◼   ► But that's not something I'm doing currently.

00:38:05 ◼   ► So this is not for me for now,

00:38:08 ◼   ► but I'm really interested to see how you like it

00:38:11 ◼   ► and in particular, like how it holds up over time.

00:38:14 ◼   ► Like, does it get dirty?

00:38:16 ◼   ► Like if you fold and unfolded a bunch,

00:38:17 ◼   ► does that thing begin to crease in the middle?

00:38:19 ◼   ► 'Cause it looks kind of cheaply made on the website.

00:38:23 ◼   ► I'm very curious about how that holds up.

00:38:26 ◼   ► - I'm more keen to hear about this next week.

00:38:30 ◼   ► Like, I want to know how you feel about it actually

00:38:34 ◼   ► after having used it.

00:38:35 ◼   ► 'Cause I understand what you mean about like,

00:38:38 ◼   ► it's the two cables you already used,

00:38:39 ◼   ► you used two things separately.

00:38:41 ◼   ► But I just wonder if you combine them, do they get better or do both of them become worse?

00:38:49 ◼   ► If you know what I mean.

00:38:50 ◼   ► Like the floppiness of it all is such a...

00:38:54 ◼   ► It seems like such a downside to me, like a frustration.

00:38:58 ◼   ► So I'm intrigued if it works the way you want.

00:39:02 ◼   ► Floppiness is an issue if you touch it all the time.

00:39:06 ◼   ► No, but what I mean is, you're not constantly going to be attaching and detaching your phone

00:39:12 ◼   ► from the charger, right? So it makes for a good demo in a video, in a tweet. Like, "Oh,

00:39:19 ◼   ► look how floppy this is. It's totally not a quality product." But like, at least the

00:39:24 ◼   ► way that I charge my phone, I just, I tend to place it on my nightstand once.

00:39:29 ◼   ► Just once and then go to bed and then pick up.

00:39:30 ◼   ► And go to bed. Exactly. Because if I want to top up my phone during the day, I have

00:39:34 ◼   ► other chargers for that that gave me, you know, quick lightning-based charging with

00:39:39 ◼   ► like a 20. I have the 29-watt USB-C charger and I can use that if I want.

00:39:44 ◼   ► 100 watts just pumped straight into the phone.

00:39:47 ◼   ► I get it. Maybe I'm gonna end up sticking like adhesive tape to the bottom of it. I

00:39:53 ◼   ► don't know. I don't think it's gonna be an issue because all I want to do is just

00:39:56 ◼   ► place it there and rest assured that it will align and snap to the charger so that my phone

00:40:02 ◼   ► in the morning will always be at 100%.

00:40:04 ◼   ► Apple's apps of 2020.

00:40:07 ◼   ► Mmm.

00:40:08 ◼   ► Some interesting selections, for sure.

00:40:12 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:40:14 ◼   ► I don't like disagree with anything.

00:40:18 ◼   ► It's like I feel like last year I remember being

00:40:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:40:23 ◼   ► more perturbed about some of the pics that Apple made.

00:40:26 ◼   ► Perturbed is a really good,

00:40:28 ◼   ► you have these really good words that you use sometimes.

00:40:31 ◼   ► It's the best words.

00:40:33 ◼   ► Perturbed.

00:40:34 ◼   ► It's because it's all English, right?

00:40:37 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:40:39 ◼   ► And so they picked a bunch of applications.

00:40:42 ◼   ► I was actually quite surprised that I have never heard of Apple's iPhone app of the year,

00:40:48 ◼   ► which is an app called Wakeout.

00:40:51 ◼   ► But let me tell you, I've been meaning to download this

00:40:55 ◼   ► because it just sounds like a clever application.

00:40:59 ◼   ► It is an app to give you little stretches and movement workouts to do throughout the day when working from home.

00:41:06 ◼   ► And I just think it's quite a clever idea for an app and also I can see one of the reasons that they've picked it.

00:41:14 ◼   ► It's kind of "of the now".

00:41:16 ◼   ► Quite a lot of the... actually all of the app picks have some kind of 2020 link to them, I think.

00:41:25 ◼   ► So I show this to Sylvia. I show Wake Out to Sylvia. So for context, she took advantage

00:41:33 ◼   ► of the lockdowns in 2020 to, in addition to being a dance teacher, to also become an officially

00:41:39 ◼   ► registered Pilates instructor. And she'd been doing a bunch of courses. She now has like

00:41:45 ◼   ► two levels of degree. I don't know what it means. In any case, whenever she sees this

00:41:51 ◼   ► like stuff of like exercises to do yourself at home. She always tells me that the gist

00:41:59 ◼   ► of it is that she's very skeptical of these apps and services because she says that most

00:42:08 ◼   ► people just hurt themselves by doing these exercises wrong.

00:42:13 ◼   ► Yes, this is always a problem for me, right? But I don't know how involved this is. This

00:42:21 ◼   ► This application seems really simple, like from what they're asking you to do, looking

00:42:27 ◼   ► from their screenshots.

00:42:28 ◼   ► It looks like a lot more stretching than exercising.

00:42:32 ◼   ► Which should be fine.

00:42:33 ◼   ► I think stretching should be fine.

00:42:36 ◼   ► So you know, I'm intrigued.

00:42:39 ◼   ► This is an application that I've been meaning to check out.

00:42:41 ◼   ► Their iPad app of the year is Zoom, which is a funny pic, but I get it at the same time.

00:42:48 ◼   ► Funny?

00:42:49 ◼   ► Funny?

00:42:50 ◼   ► in like, it's just a weird pick, right? Like, it's a bad app. It's a bad app. It's a huge

00:42:56 ◼   ► company. I get the message like, yeah, zoom for iPad. Spoiler alert, Apple don't use zoom.

00:43:02 ◼   ► You know, like there's just like a lot of funny parts about it, but you know, it's not,

00:43:08 ◼   ► it's not, it's the most popular iPad app of 2020 and I think they may be conflating popularity

00:43:14 ◼   ► for quality. Yeah. And it's also just kind of funny, it's like Apple make FaceTime. Mm-hmm.

00:43:21 ◼   ► Yeah, well, yeah, they don't make FaceTime for business though, so I... But they should

00:43:26 ◼   ► have. Should they? Why not, right? Well, Apple doesn't make really any... Do they make any

00:43:33 ◼   ► business tools for like... iMessage for business or whatever it is? Business chat. Business

00:43:38 ◼   ► chat but before we move on you guys miss the most important thing about wakeout

00:43:43 ◼   ► okay look at that icon I know character just soak it in the green monster it's

00:43:50 ◼   ► the blah blah car guys cousin it's a bear on a chair it's a green bear no

00:43:54 ◼   ► it's like a it's not a bear I think it's a it's bearish it's it's definitely a

00:43:59 ◼   ► mammal type of animal I think it has some bear traits do terrible it's a bad

00:44:07 ◼   ► icon. It's a bear on a chair. You know the most concerning aspect of that bear are the

00:44:12 ◼   ► nails. The claws. The claws. The claws. The claws. The claws. Yes. Those are very concerning.

00:44:19 ◼   ► Like to me. It says that it's a bear and it's friendly but you don't want to mess with it.

00:44:28 ◼   ► Don't screw with the bear. Because that bear. Don't screw with the wake up bear. Will get

00:44:33 ◼   ► you. Mac app, Fantastic Health 3. This is a great app, big fan. It's one of my favorite

00:44:40 ◼   ► apps. Apple TV app, Disney Plus. Okay. Sure. Why not? Apple Watch is an application called

00:44:49 ◼   ► Endel, which is algorithm driven soundscapes for sleep, relaxation and focus. This sounds

00:44:55 ◼   ► like something Federico would have used. Good pick, I know folks who use Endel and also

00:45:03 ◼   ► this category. This was one of the things we were complaining about last year. They

00:45:07 ◼   ► had no Apple Watch category and they've done one. So good job. You did it. This is very

00:45:13 ◼   ► nice. All the platforms are covered, I guess. Yeah, they are.

00:45:17 ◼   ► Games. So they're the apps. I think they're fine, right? Like I say, overall, this is

00:45:22 ◼   ► a better showing than last year. They've picked relevant stuff. Zoom is a weird app to give

00:45:28 ◼   ► an app of the year to, but at the same time I can understand why they've done it.

00:45:33 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. I get it. It's just...

00:45:36 ◼   ► It's funny.

00:45:37 ◼   ► I mean, at the very least, Zoom for iPad was recently updated with the option to use the

00:45:44 ◼   ► front-facing camera while in split view.

00:45:47 ◼   ► Really?

00:45:48 ◼   ► until two weeks ago. It didn't even support this. And I will tell you, I will not be surprised

00:45:56 ◼   ► if Apple went to Zoom and they were like, "Look, we really want to give you this award,

00:46:01 ◼   ► but please support this API and support this feature. Otherwise it's going to be kind of

00:46:06 ◼   ► ridiculous." Yeah. It was a thing that a lot of people...

00:46:10 ◼   ► Most apps don't do this. Most video apps don't do this.

00:46:14 ◼   ► Yeah. They got it like a couple of weeks ago.

00:46:16 ◼   ► I mean FaceTime was this way until recently, right?

00:46:20 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:46:22 ◼   ► iPhone game of the year, Genshin Impact.

00:46:24 ◼   ► I've been meaning to play this one, yeah.

00:46:26 ◼   ► I've been meaning to play it too.

00:46:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:29 ◼   ► What really the turn off for me is the, what's it called, the gacha system?

00:46:36 ◼   ► The gacha, you know, free to play system.

00:46:38 ◼   ► If you want to know what gacha system is, it's Crossy Road where you will, like, you

00:46:42 ◼   ► basically you can get new characters by the roll of a dice, but also hey if you give us

00:46:48 ◼   ► some money you get better odds. The money makes everything better. But it is apparently

00:46:54 ◼   ► like Breath of the Wild like. Yeah it's huge and it looks fantastic and this is part of

00:47:02 ◼   ► the waves, the wave of games that are now coming out inspired by Breath of the Wild.

00:47:09 ◼   ► this week for example Ubisoft put out Phoenix Rising which is basically Breath of the Wild

00:47:14 ◼   ► they ripped it off the Greek mythology edition yeah basically and Genshin Impact is basically

00:47:20 ◼   ► Breath of the Wild anime edition with a free-to-play business model so and Genshin Impact is also

00:47:27 ◼   ► one of these new types of games where the mobile versions the actual versions like Among

00:47:34 ◼   ► us is a similar type of thing where it's like it's the same game on PC on console on iOS

00:47:43 ◼   ► so Android iPad game legends of Runeterra I don't know this game don't know this game

00:47:50 ◼   ► it looks like a kind of Hearthstone like game it's made by riot which is Apple's best friend

00:47:55 ◼   ► because they broke up with that right right Mac game disco Elysium I also don't know this

00:48:02 ◼   ► game really. Oh this collision is amazing it's a really it's a really really really

00:48:06 ◼   ► good game and I believe it won best indie game at the game awards last year

00:48:12 ◼   ► I think so yeah it's a really good game. I knew the name but I don't know the game that makes

00:48:17 ◼   ► sense the name rang a bell but I couldn't place it. Yeah. The Apple TV game of the year is Dandara

00:48:24 ◼   ► Trials of Fear I also don't don't really know much about this game but it looks like a

00:48:30 ◼   ► -

00:48:55 ◼   ► I know this was one that people liked and it was a little bit out of left field. They

00:49:03 ◼   ► also created the app trend of the year. Now this is interesting because they created an

00:49:08 ◼   ► award called app trend but then they give an app, a single app. Like a representative

00:49:15 ◼   ► of the trend. Yeah that is representative of that trend. Now the trend this year is

00:49:19 ◼   ► highlighting self-care and they gave the award to an application called shine which is all

00:49:25 ◼   ► about doing that. I think it was meditation last year, right? And mindfulness. I don't remember

00:49:32 ◼   ► that but that makes sense, sure. I think the uptrend last year was meditation, yeah, okay.

00:49:38 ◼   ► So currently all of the trends just relate to people being super stressed out and needing

00:49:44 ◼   ► ways to take care of that. They for the first time made physical awards, they made these beautiful

00:49:52 ◼   ► interpretations of the App Store icon.

00:49:55 ◼   ► They look really cool.

00:49:56 ◼   ► Yeah, they do. Nice.

00:49:58 ◼   ► It's nice to...

00:49:59 ◼   ► It's a nice thing to do,

00:50:02 ◼   ► speaking as someone who makes

00:50:05 ◼   ► physical awards for apps.

00:50:06 ◼   ► I think it's the right approach.

00:50:10 ◼   ► You know, I was like,

00:50:12 ◼   ► I felt like starting a timer.

00:50:14 ◼   ► To like, when does Federico mention

00:50:16 ◼   ► either that or like, huh, good idea, Apple.

00:50:19 ◼   ► Where'd you get that one from?

00:50:21 ◼   ► I think it's a good idea. Apple is not new to making physical awards. They have the Apple

00:50:28 ◼   ► Design Awards.

00:50:31 ◼   ► And the Music Award.

00:50:32 ◼   ► Yeah, they did that a couple of weeks ago. They did it again.

00:50:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:50:37 ◼   ► The Music Awards.

00:50:38 ◼   ► It's a good idea.

00:50:39 ◼   ► Apple also showed off the most downloaded apps of the year. Something happened, which

00:50:45 ◼   ► I hoped would happen, and it did happen, which is _DavidSmith's WidgetSmith is on that list,

00:50:51 ◼   ► which is unbelievable because this app was out for three months, three months.

00:50:58 ◼   ► And he got in that list.

00:51:00 ◼   ► You see Zoom, you're like, okay, pandemic, you see TikTok, Disney Plus, YouTube, the

00:51:05 ◼   ► usual names, right? Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook. Then you scroll to the bottom. Okay, I want

00:51:10 ◼   ► to start from the bottom. Google Meet. It's like, okay, poor man's Zoom. Google, WhatsApp,

00:51:17 ◼   ► Spotify, DoorDash, makes sense, people are saying at home, and they're right there.

00:51:22 ◼   ► Widgetsmith.

00:51:23 ◼   ► You're looking at a slightly different list of the ones that I have.

00:51:26 ◼   ► This is the US App Store, I think.

00:51:28 ◼   ► I think I'm looking at the US App Store one as well.

00:51:30 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:51:31 ◼   ► I don't think they're necessarily an order of downloads, maybe?

00:51:34 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:51:35 ◼   ► The order is not changing for me.

00:51:38 ◼   ► But nevertheless, what I'm seeing is from the bottom up, Google Meet, Google, Venmo,

00:51:43 ◼   ► WhatsApp, Widgetsmith.

00:51:45 ◼   ► I imagine there's some sort of order to it, whatever, but I think the biggest one to beat

00:51:51 ◼   ► here was Google Meet, because the other applications, apps like Google and WhatsApp, you could argue

00:51:59 ◼   ► lots of people already have them, right? But Google Meet is surely an application that

00:52:05 ◼   ► lots of people needed to download this year, right? Throughout the whole year because of

00:52:10 ◼   ► their organizations moving to video conferencing or whatever. But nevertheless, we're under

00:52:15 ◼   ► score sits on this list, the fact that he is on this list, and every other app on this list

00:52:23 ◼   ► is multi-million if not billion dollar companies. Every single one of these is a massive company

00:52:32 ◼   ► except Widgetsmith, right? What, you've got Zoom, TikTok, which is ByteDance, Disney,

00:52:40 ◼   ► Google, Facebook, Snapchat,

00:52:43 ◼   ► Cash, is Cash owned by Square?

00:52:47 ◼   ► - I think so.

00:52:48 ◼   ► - Right, Amazon, Netflix, - Netflix.

00:52:50 ◼   ► - DoorDash, Spotify, Venmo,

00:52:54 ◼   ► and then Cross Forward Console.

00:52:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:52:58 ◼   ► - Which is incredible.

00:52:59 ◼   ► - These are your apps.

00:53:01 ◼   ► - Is underscore what the kind of person

00:53:04 ◼   ► that we refer to now as a celebrity developer?

00:53:08 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:53:09 ◼   ► - It is, right?

00:53:10 ◼   ► Based on this, Underscore is the, of 2020,

00:53:15 ◼   ► the best performing solo developer.

00:53:21 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Right?

00:53:22 ◼   ► He is--

00:53:23 ◼   ► - He should have gotten the award for developer of the year.

00:53:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, he gets mine.

00:53:27 ◼   ► In 2020, nobody downloaded an application

00:53:31 ◼   ► made by one person more than Dave.

00:53:33 ◼   ► - Unreal.

00:53:34 ◼   ► - 'Cause every other app on this list

00:53:37 ◼   ► is made by teams of hundreds, if not thousands, right?

00:53:40 ◼   ► - Makes you think, right?

00:53:42 ◼   ► Deep stuff. - It's incredible.

00:53:43 ◼   ► It's incredible.

00:53:44 ◼   ► - And it couldn't happen to a better guy.

00:53:47 ◼   ► Like, I love Underscore.

00:53:49 ◼   ► - He deserves it more than anybody else.

00:53:51 ◼   ► I knew this list was coming, right?

00:53:54 ◼   ► It comes every year, and I have been hoping so much

00:53:58 ◼   ► that he would be on it.

00:53:59 ◼   ► And so I'm very pleased.

00:54:01 ◼   ► I'm very proud of him, and I'm very pleased

00:54:03 ◼   ► to see him there, and it's awesome.

00:54:04 ◼   ► And by the way, if you haven't checked out

00:54:06 ◼   ► WidgetSmith recently. Dave's been doing some really cool stuff because he's

00:54:09 ◼   ► leaning into what the people were using it for. So there's like, there's new

00:54:13 ◼   ► themes and there's new like, there's like a whole new theming system so you can

00:54:17 ◼   ► create one theme and apply it to all of your widgets and also like seasonal

00:54:24 ◼   ► stuff so there's a lot of like holiday focused stuff now. He's doing good stuff

00:54:28 ◼   ► of it. He's leaning into what it's about and I think that's very smart. What I

00:54:32 ◼   ► love about it is that we just made this the OG, right? It's like this is the app that

00:54:38 ◼   ► started it all. And so when David adds new stuff to it to respond to like the whole aesthetic

00:54:45 ◼   ► thing, for example, it doesn't sound desperate because that's the person who made it happen.

00:54:52 ◼   ► And unlike all these other copycats that I now see on the app store, all these folks

00:54:57 ◼   ► they're like changing their app titles, like a static home screen.

00:55:01 ◼   ► Like I see hundreds of those apps on the App Store.

00:55:04 ◼   ► They all seem kind of desperate to an extent, you know,

00:55:07 ◼   ► and WidgetSmith is the original and it's still the best one.

00:55:11 ◼   ► Like just a few days ago,

00:55:12 ◼   ► I wanted to have like a very specific time zone widget.

00:55:16 ◼   ► And of course I was able to make it with WidgetSmith.

00:55:21 ◼   ► So like this,

00:55:22 ◼   ► And I love how he's leaning into what became a trend without necessarily altering the nature

00:55:30 ◼   ► of the app because this app was born for that kind of purpose when that purpose did not

00:55:38 ◼   ► exist. It's incredible.

00:55:42 ◼   ► It's one thing to have this success happen to you, which happened to him, right? That's

00:55:48 ◼   ► one thing but then to be able to adapt and move forward of it it's like a whole

00:55:55 ◼   ► other thing and that's what Underscore has been able to do and I think that is

00:55:59 ◼   ► the truly impressive thing here is like he was able to capture lightning in a

00:56:03 ◼   ► bottle but he's held on to that and he's moving forward of it and and I think

00:56:08 ◼   ► it's it's pretty awesome to see and like the changes that he's making they're

00:56:14 ◼   ► like the app is legitimately better now, right?

00:56:18 ◼   ► It's just like, it is better at what it does.

00:56:20 ◼   ► But yeah, anyway, these awards were, I would say,

00:56:23 ◼   ► much better than last year.

00:56:25 ◼   ► I think Apple have clearly, I think,

00:56:29 ◼   ► no, I'm not saying that they are responding to criticism

00:56:31 ◼   ► 'cause I don't really think many people

00:56:33 ◼   ► criticize it other than us.

00:56:35 ◼   ► 'Cause it's just, people are just like,

00:56:36 ◼   ► "Okay, that's what happens."

00:56:37 ◼   ► - Maybe they are responding to us.

00:56:39 ◼   ► - Maybe they are responding to us directly.

00:56:41 ◼   ► But the more the point that I'm making is I can see a lot more thought went into it this year, I think.

00:56:48 ◼   ► I mean, and that is borne out by the fact that they now have awards for it.

00:56:54 ◼   ► They clearly see it as being more important.

00:56:56 ◼   ► One thing they didn't bother spending any time with is Apple Music Replay.

00:57:00 ◼   ► Ah, this is so sad.

00:57:02 ◼   ► So it's the end of the year, so we can all finally go to that with our site and get our...

00:57:08 ◼   ► Like, why does it not show up in the Apple Music app?

00:57:11 ◼   ► Right?

00:57:12 ◼   ► I have to go to the stupid website,

00:57:14 ◼   ► re-authenticate myself again,

00:57:16 ◼   ► and just get some janky playlist that I can add to my library.

00:57:20 ◼   ► And it's like a time where Spotify are continuing to add more features, right?

00:57:26 ◼   ► Like, Apple had to do this to respond to Spotify wrapped,

00:57:31 ◼   ► and then just didn't bother to do anything else.

00:57:34 ◼   ► And Spotify this year have added a bunch of new features,

00:57:36 ◼   ► including you can play a quiz to guess what your favorites are, which I think is quite clever.

00:57:42 ◼   ► You can take your most favorite song, like your top song, and you're able to watch like on a timeline

00:57:49 ◼   ► how that song became popular, which is cool.

00:57:52 ◼   ► So like if you really love that song, you love that artist, you get to see the timeline of like,

00:57:56 ◼   ► "Oh, this is how long it took to get to 100 streams and this is where it blew up."

00:58:00 ◼   ► You now have more, they also like expanded it last year to include podcasts.

00:58:06 ◼   ► and now they're doing more listening stats and I will say as a podcaster I've

00:58:11 ◼   ► really liked the past few days where people have been tagging me and the

00:58:14 ◼   ► stuff that they're sharing from Spotify to be like oh look at all this which is

00:58:18 ◼   ► by the way podcast app developers you should be doing this right I will now

00:58:23 ◼   ► hold you to your feet to the fire the same way I want Apple to do this for

00:58:27 ◼   ► Apple Music Replay because if you care about keeping your users you've got to

00:58:35 ◼   ► stop them from saying, "Hey Spotify does this stuff better." I want stats like that, right?

00:58:40 ◼   ► So this is the same thing that Apple Music should be doing this. Podcast app developers

00:58:45 ◼   ► should be doing this kind of stuff too. And they're also doing more personalized, so that

00:58:49 ◼   ► also includes Apple Podcasts, more personalized playlists using the music data as well. So

00:58:54 ◼   ► it's not just like you get this one, this is your most played stuff. They use the data

00:58:58 ◼   ► from that to build more playlists for you. And I just think that it's ridiculous that

00:59:04 ◼   ► Apple isn't doing something here because this is genuinely a thing where people

00:59:09 ◼   ► feel FOMO for not using Spotify and you do not want that for the service that

00:59:16 ◼   ► you make right you as Apple or as any provider of audio now do not want to be

00:59:23 ◼   ► in a situation where people going if I use Spotify for a year I could join in

00:59:29 ◼   ► this social media thing that happens on a yearly basis?

00:59:33 ◼   ► I have a funny story. I woke up this morning and I checked my website analytics and I saw

00:59:42 ◼   ► over 3,000 clicks on a specific link and I saw that it was an iCloud.com link and I thought

00:59:50 ◼   ► well that must be a shortcut, an iCloud.com link on Mac stories and 3,000 people wanting

00:59:56 ◼   ► to install it. And I then realized what it was.

01:00:00 ◼   ► Oh, I know what it is. Yep.

01:00:02 ◼   ► Because Spotify Wrapped is out, people have been Googling "Apple Music Wrapped." And they

01:00:09 ◼   ► are finding on the first page of Google results my shortcut from two years ago called "Apple

01:00:15 ◼   ► Music Wrapped" that generates, I believe, a much more fun and informative report than

01:00:22 ◼   ► what you get from Apple Music Replay, and it does it all in shortcuts, and it creates

01:00:27 ◼   ► a landing page in Safari for you and a playlist in the music app for you. And they've been

01:00:32 ◼   ► reinstalling it, and I've been getting a lot of tweets of people saying "hey, thanks for

01:00:40 ◼   ► the report" and they've been sending me screenshots of their top artists and top songs and whatnot.

01:00:47 ◼   ► So it's nice that this is still useful and I tried it again, it's still working just

01:00:54 ◼   ► fine in Safari and shortcuts in iOS 14.

01:00:59 ◼   ► So ideally this should be an Apple Music feature, I really don't understand why they're not

01:01:06 ◼   ► doing this.

01:01:08 ◼   ► And I can't think of a reason, it's not a data thing because they produce something.

01:01:15 ◼   ► They must be aware of this, right?

01:01:19 ◼   ► Surely the Apple Music team is aware of this

01:01:23 ◼   ► pop culture phenomenon that happens

01:01:25 ◼   ► at the end of the year every year.

01:01:27 ◼   ► I'm not sure why they're not putting the resources to it.

01:01:30 ◼   ► Like, does it fall outside of like,

01:01:33 ◼   ► Apple's like typical capability, right?

01:01:37 ◼   ► Like, they don't build stuff like this, right?

01:01:40 ◼   ► This is like a little web environment for a lot of people.

01:01:44 ◼   ► But you could put it in that.

01:01:45 ◼   ► I don't care what the reason is, they need to do better here.

01:01:47 ◼   ► They just do.

01:01:48 ◼   ► 'Cause this is a competitive advantage

01:01:50 ◼   ► that Spotify is getting.

01:01:51 ◼   ► You can choose if you think it's important

01:01:53 ◼   ► to keep your competitive advantages.

01:01:56 ◼   ► I can assure you it is, Apple, right?

01:01:57 ◼   ► Like, if Apple Music is important to you,

01:02:01 ◼   ► which it seems like it is,

01:02:03 ◼   ► you need to make it a full and complete service.

01:02:06 ◼   ► And I think Spotify is starting to make this kind of thing

01:02:10 ◼   ► table six.

01:02:11 ◼   ► - What I think is also interesting is how Spotify Wrapped

01:02:14 ◼   ► is it sheds light on an idea of if you make it fun and if you make it so that people have that fear

01:02:25 ◼   ► of missing out on something fun, people are fine. They don't even think about, actually, the idea of,

01:02:32 ◼   ► in a way, being tracked in their behavior, right? Because they don't see it that way.

01:02:39 ◼   ► because they get these colorful, informative and useful report at the end of the year.

01:02:45 ◼   ► And I wonder if that's maybe what Apple has a problem with, the idea of sort of in a way

01:02:51 ◼   ► confirming that they keep track of all of these different data points about you, and balancing

01:02:58 ◼   ► that with some people like us saying, "But yeah, I'm fine with this because I find this useful and

01:03:03 ◼   ► I find this fun. Please aggregate this data and give it to me at the end of the year."

01:03:08 ◼   ► But like, they do. They are. I mean, like Apple make this stuff available to you, right?

01:03:12 ◼   ► I'm not sure if the Apple... That's the problem. I'm not sure if the Apple Music web service

01:03:18 ◼   ► has all the data points that Spotify has. And personally, I see that as a limitation.

01:03:25 ◼   ► Because I would love to have a native Apple Music wrapped with all of the stats being aggregated

01:03:33 ◼   ► from all of the different ways that you can use Apple Music, right?

01:03:37 ◼   ► From all the kind of speakers and devices and TVs that you want to use Apple Music from.

01:03:41 ◼   ► And I wonder if that's the limitation they're getting stuck upon.

01:03:45 ◼   ► Right, but again, like, you can solve any problem.

01:03:49 ◼   ► Oh, absolutely you can. In fact, I think it's a...

01:03:53 ◼   ► No, what I'm saying is, I think it's a political decision.

01:03:56 ◼   ► Internally, I have...

01:03:59 ◼   ► My concern is that they do not want to do this.

01:04:03 ◼   ► Not that they can't.

01:04:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I understand what you're saying.

01:04:07 ◼   ► I know that you buy this too, but that's the wrong move.

01:04:13 ◼   ► Oh, I agree.

01:04:15 ◼   ► They should do this.

01:04:16 ◼   ► They should have done this years ago.

01:04:17 ◼   ► And they're like five years late to do this at this point.

01:04:21 ◼   ► So it's too bad.

01:04:24 ◼   ► What I miss about--

01:04:26 ◼   ► I'm totally fine with Apple Music.

01:04:27 ◼   ► But what I miss from Spotify is exactly this, like their willingness to try these ideas

01:04:36 ◼   ► with data collection and intelligent recommendations that go the extra mile.

01:04:46 ◼   ► Because on Apple Music, yeah, you got the mixes and you got the "Listen Now" page in

01:04:48 ◼   ► iOS 14, but it always feels kinda like the old way of doing things.

01:04:55 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, here's some suggestion for you.

01:04:58 ◼   ► I can make an additional point on your, I think, well-argued point about it being a political decision.

01:05:06 ◼   ► I think that if Apple truly believed this stuff, you know, then they need to be able to provide tools

01:05:16 ◼   ► that stop people from wanting to use the companies that they believe collect too much data.

01:05:22 ◼   ► Right, like if you have this in your DNA as a company that you believe that data should be harvested

01:05:29 ◼   ► accurately and kept securely and with privacy in mind

01:05:34 ◼   ► The alternative that you're creating needs to provide the functionality that people

01:05:39 ◼   ► Feel they're missing

01:05:42 ◼   ► You're following what I'm saying? Like

01:05:44 ◼   ► One of the best ways to stop people from having their data collected by Spotify is to make Apple music

01:05:52 ◼   ► equally comparable. Absolutely, yes. Right? Yes. So like if that is your like cross to bear,

01:05:59 ◼   ► then make it in your product. And you know, like Apple Photos does a good enough job here,

01:06:07 ◼   ► right? It's not as good as Google Photos, but it does a good enough job with like machine learning

01:06:13 ◼   ► and picking up people and letting me search for things within Photos. It's not as good as Google,

01:06:18 ◼   ► But it's enough to keep me there because I get most of what I need, but it's good enough

01:06:22 ◼   ► Yeah, it's good enough. And and I don't think that

01:06:25 ◼   ► Apple music is good enough compared to Spotify like they they do a decent job with the

01:06:32 ◼   ► Playlists, but the best playlists to Apple maker the curated ones

01:06:36 ◼   ► Not the stuff based on your data

01:06:39 ◼   ► Spotify seems to still have a leg up on there based on the people that I know that care about this kind of stuff

01:06:46 ◼   ► and I think that the Spotify wrapped is the perfect encapsulation of

01:06:50 ◼   ► their inability to

01:06:53 ◼   ► Accurately serve this information back to the user

01:06:56 ◼   ► Agree. Yeah, and and I and I wrote this in my iOS 14 review

01:07:00 ◼   ► I I generally believe that Apple music has such a terrific advantage

01:07:05 ◼   ► compared to other services when it comes to what they're doing as a

01:07:10 ◼   ► As a music company if you will as as think about it as a subsidiary to Apple what they're doing with

01:07:16 ◼   ► with the interviews, and especially in 2020 with the pandemic, what they have done with all the

01:07:21 ◼   ► Apple Music at Home series of interviews, what they have done with the Apple Music 1 relaunch

01:07:26 ◼   ► for radio, what they have done with all this slate of original programming that they have

01:07:32 ◼   ► on Apple Music. That's awesome. How much they're wasting this opportunity by making effectively

01:07:39 ◼   ► all of this essentially undiscoverable on Apple Music and not taking advantage of all these things

01:07:45 ◼   ► that they have to recommend it to you in a more, I don't want to say intrusive way, but just in a

01:07:51 ◼   ► better way. Like, a lot of people have no idea all these interviews, all these shows that they can

01:07:58 ◼   ► find on Apple Music. And you know why? Because it's been five years since they've been doing radio,

01:08:03 ◼   ► they don't even have a schedule page in their app. Like a proper schedule page where you can see all

01:08:09 ◼   ► the shows coming up in your time zone and where you can set notifications. You know, like, the

01:08:13 ◼   ► basics for following. I remember us complaining about this when it began. Yeah, and it's still

01:08:19 ◼   ► the case. It's like, what are you doing? You're investing money, but then you're not actually

01:08:25 ◼   ► making it easy for people to discover any of this. So yeah, I don't know. I just feel

01:08:31 ◼   ► like if Spotify were doing this, you know how much they would be pushing it. Look at

01:08:36 ◼   ► what they're doing for podcasting. They just got into it and look how much they're behind

01:08:41 ◼   ► And, you know, it just feels like they're wasting a pretty big opportunity here with

01:08:48 ◼   ► Apple Music.

01:08:49 ◼   ► All right, Myke, you want to tell us about our second sponsor?

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01:10:04 ◼   ► Alright, so up next, we gotta talk about this.

01:10:09 ◼   ► Salesforce buying Slack for a cool $27.7 billion.

01:10:13 ◼   ► That's a lot of money!

01:10:17 ◼   ► That's a lot of money.

01:10:18 ◼   ► It's 27 Instagrams.

01:10:20 ◼   ► Almost 28!

01:10:22 ◼   ► It's like 27 and then an insta-g-

01:10:25 ◼   ► That's nice.

01:10:26 ◼   ► It's about the rest of the work.

01:10:27 ◼   ► Yeah, that's good.

01:10:28 ◼   ► It took me a minute to work out what that meant, but...

01:10:30 ◼   ► It's not a palindrome.

01:10:31 ◼   ► Well, no, we didn't call them palindromes.

01:10:34 ◼   ► What do we call them?

01:10:35 ◼   ► Pali, Paliani, Palinalip, I don't know.

01:10:40 ◼   ► Palinalip.

01:10:41 ◼   ► Palinalap.

01:10:42 ◼   ► Palinalap.

01:10:43 ◼   ► So people are freaking out about this, right?

01:10:46 ◼   ► Myke, what do you think about this?

01:10:49 ◼   ► I have a lot of thoughts about this.

01:10:50 ◼   ► So one of the things that I've been seeing a lot is people talking about this being like

01:10:56 ◼   ► a failure for Slack.

01:10:59 ◼   ► Right?

01:11:00 ◼   ► that's kind of like, oh, everything they could have done.

01:11:05 ◼   ► $27.7 billion is a big failure if it's a failure.

01:11:11 ◼   ► Like, you know, I can understand the argument

01:11:14 ◼   ► of people saying that they could have done more

01:11:17 ◼   ► in time with their stock valuation, their stock price,

01:11:23 ◼   ► you know, and also that they kind of not had a great 2020,

01:11:28 ◼   ► especially when it came to market cap.

01:11:30 ◼   ► But $27.7 billion is quite, is a success, right?

01:11:35 ◼   ► Like, that's a lot of money when it comes to acquisitions.

01:11:42 ◼   ► You know, like I don't think anyone called it a failure

01:11:45 ◼   ► when Instagram got bought for a billion, right?

01:11:48 ◼   ► Like, I understand that people kind of wanted something,

01:11:52 ◼   ► wanted a different path for Slack,

01:11:55 ◼   ► but this is a lot of money.

01:11:57 ◼   ► And also I think it was 40% increase, I think,

01:12:02 ◼   ► on their current valuation or something like that,

01:12:03 ◼   ► or on their current stock price.

01:12:06 ◼   ► But this was a huge exit, if you would call it that.

01:12:11 ◼   ► One of the things that I'm interested in seeing

01:12:15 ◼   ► is how and if the leadership at Slack changes.

01:12:19 ◼   ► I haven't seen anything to indicate that.

01:12:21 ◼   ► This seems like one of those, for the moment,

01:12:23 ◼   ► one of those typical like,

01:12:25 ◼   ► we're gonna leave the company how it is

01:12:27 ◼   ► kind of acquisitions.

01:12:29 ◼   ► Now, in all of the reporting of this,

01:12:34 ◼   ► I was reminded of the fact that Salesforce own Heroku.

01:12:38 ◼   ► And as a Heroku customer, I did not know this.

01:12:43 ◼   ► So there is definitely some precedent

01:12:46 ◼   ► for Salesforce buying companies

01:12:48 ◼   ► that they think is good for them to own

01:12:50 ◼   ► and not messing around with it, right?

01:12:53 ◼   ► So there is some precedent there.

01:12:57 ◼   ► So there could be a situation where Salesforce owns Slack

01:13:02 ◼   ► and help Slack be Slack, right?

01:13:07 ◼   ► So I heard Ben and John on Dithering talking about this,

01:13:12 ◼   ► which is where I found out that Salesforce owned Heroku,

01:13:15 ◼   ► that maybe this whole acquisition could help Slack

01:13:21 ◼   ► go back to being what they were good at

01:13:23 ◼   ► and what we liked them for years ago,

01:13:25 ◼   ► before they became like, we must push for the enterprise

01:13:30 ◼   ► and be the best enterprise customer we can be.

01:13:32 ◼   ► And now we're publicly traded,

01:13:34 ◼   ► which means we now need to be the best for our investors.

01:13:37 ◼   ► And where of course, I'm sure that they're only going

01:13:39 ◼   ► to double down on enterprise, right?

01:13:42 ◼   ► Because that's what Salesforce is all about.

01:13:44 ◼   ► They may at least be able to refocus the company

01:13:48 ◼   ► on trying to be the best at what Slack is,

01:13:51 ◼   ► rather than like pushing to integrate stories into the product,

01:13:55 ◼   ► pushing to integrate video into the product

01:13:57 ◼   ► because they got their butt handed to them by Zoom, right?

01:14:01 ◼   ► Like, and that was outside pressures, especially in 2020.

01:14:06 ◼   ► I don't think it's been very good for Slack

01:14:07 ◼   ► and it's probably been quite a distraction for them.

01:14:10 ◼   ► So, you know, clearly Slack were not in a position

01:14:14 ◼   ► to be able to grow in the way

01:14:16 ◼   ► that the pandemic needed of them.

01:14:17 ◼   ► So one, Slack is expensive.

01:14:21 ◼   ► It's especially expensive when you compare it to Teams,

01:14:24 ◼   ► where a lot of companies get Teams for free

01:14:27 ◼   ► because they're already Office 365 customers.

01:14:30 ◼   ► Because most, I mean, what business doesn't need Word?

01:14:35 ◼   ► Right?

01:14:37 ◼   ► Like any business that deals with a business

01:14:40 ◼   ► outside of their own needs Microsoft products.

01:14:44 ◼   ► So they probably already have licenses for Teams

01:14:48 ◼   ► because it's free if you have any of the other Microsoft stuff.

01:14:52 ◼   ► Slack lacks video chat, so Zoom and then Teams took another big chunk out of them.

01:15:01 ◼   ► Standing alone is difficult and has been difficult for Slack for breaking into large companies

01:15:12 ◼   ► because Slack have to go in and say, "Hey, move to us."

01:15:17 ◼   ► right? And where Microsoft can be like, you already use our products, so why not have

01:15:25 ◼   ► your chat with us as well? And I think Salesforce might be able to help them especially with

01:15:31 ◼   ► that last piece. Because similarly to Office, Salesforce is used in every medium to large

01:15:40 ◼   ► right? Like I said, most large companies, right? Again, like if you're in a sales

01:15:47 ◼   ► organization, you probably have some kind of Salesforce product. And again, I, we

01:15:54 ◼   ► pay for a Salesforce product and didn't know that, right? So there might be some

01:15:59 ◼   ► element where Salesforce can help bring Slack into businesses by being

01:16:06 ◼   ► like hey you already have access to our CRM tool or whatever our marketing platform tools

01:16:13 ◼   ► it's easier to integrate these with your communications if you use our product hey our

01:16:20 ◼   ► product's called slack so they might be able to help there so you know this is interesting there

01:16:24 ◼   ► are people you know like there are people that know more about this than me i'm like

01:16:28 ◼   ► merely an armchair observer of this stuff but i find it interesting anyway i am not in the

01:16:34 ◼   ► train of like "oh well now I've got to leave Slack" like I'm not you know I know you are right

01:16:39 ◼   ► and we can get to that and I understand so like what I would say though is that this has solidified

01:16:45 ◼   ► the point of view that I think we were talking about on this show a couple of weeks ago like

01:16:49 ◼   ► when I originally came to Slack like the rest of us I wanted to use Slack because it was different

01:16:56 ◼   ► I had hopes that it would push things forward and it definitely did right like company communication

01:17:03 ◼   ► So much easier in slack than all the ways that we would have done it before

01:17:05 ◼   ► But I don't think that it lived up to the promise of what I hoped it would

01:17:10 ◼   ► Right, it got to a certain point and then it from our uses and our beliefs kind of stagnated

01:17:18 ◼   ► and I think that this can be tied in exactly when

01:17:22 ◼   ► Slack grew as a company and decided that they wanted to go for the enterprise which made total sense for them as a company

01:17:28 ◼   ► I know where they know why they did it, but this idea of like this handcrafted

01:17:33 ◼   ► Chat tool for design focused indie people, which is definitely what it was when it started that kind of went away, right?

01:17:41 ◼   ► So as I said, I said before this acquisition was even rumored

01:17:47 ◼   ► I stand by if I was starting something fresh today, I would look at other options right now for me

01:17:52 ◼   ► probably be Discord but I would look around more because there are, right, and

01:17:57 ◼   ► and this is a thing like me and Grey were talking about this a couple of

01:18:01 ◼   ► weeks ago on a State of the Apps episode of Cortex. Over the next couple of years

01:18:05 ◼   ► you will be able to trip and fall into 12 different companies making

01:18:10 ◼   ► something like Slack because so many people are now using these tools so

01:18:15 ◼   ► there's more investment in it and also so many small companies are going to be

01:18:19 ◼   ► frustrated by the tools that they're using and try and make something that's

01:18:23 ◼   ► like Slack, which is how Slack began in the first place. Slack was made by a

01:18:28 ◼   ► company that was making a web video game and they needed a collaboration tool so

01:18:33 ◼   ► they made a tool that tool became Slack. You know, it's a wonderful little story

01:18:38 ◼   ► right like genuinely but now I am not sure that the comp that Slack's goals

01:18:44 ◼   ► are gonna you know I don't know if they're gonna align with mine any more

01:18:47 ◼   ► or less than what they did before. I could imagine them being able to focus

01:18:53 ◼   ► the product in ways that I like but I also imagine them to go more enterprisey.

01:18:58 ◼   ► Right? So you know I am not in, even if it was my sole decision to move the real

01:19:04 ◼   ► AFM Slack to another service I wouldn't do it because there's nothing out there

01:19:08 ◼   ► right now where I feel the need to disrupt like 40 people and like if Slack

01:19:17 ◼   ► would have sold to Facebook right? I would think about it right? I don't know if I

01:19:24 ◼   ► want all of that data in a company that makes their money on data right? But

01:19:32 ◼   ► Salesforce I don't know I'm fine with it but like I don't feel the desire or

01:19:36 ◼   ► need to jump but if I was starting something new I wouldn't go for my

01:19:42 ◼   ► default which was spin up a new slack. I want to touch back on the pricing a

01:19:49 ◼   ► little bit so Microsoft 365 is $5 a month for business but you only get

01:19:57 ◼   ► online versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint and a lot of businesses want

01:20:01 ◼   ► like native versions and they want Outlook so that makes 365 $12.50

01:20:07 ◼   ► since a user a month if you buy it for a year.

01:20:11 ◼   ► So I looked up our billing for Slack.

01:20:14 ◼   ► We have 41 active users in Slack.

01:20:17 ◼   ► We're on the standard plan.

01:20:18 ◼   ► So we paid $328 last month for Slack as a company.

01:20:23 ◼   ► So it is, Slack is a little bit more expensive

01:20:29 ◼   ► on the plan that we're on,

01:20:31 ◼   ► but if you're looking at what you actually want

01:20:34 ◼   ► out of Microsoft 365,

01:20:36 ◼   ► you're going to spend more than that a month.

01:20:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, but you get all of Office 365.

01:20:43 ◼   ► - Right, right.

01:20:44 ◼   ► I mean, yeah, that's the important thing.

01:20:46 ◼   ► - So that $328 a month, we get just Slack.

01:20:50 ◼   ► - Right, and if we wanted just Teams,

01:20:53 ◼   ► we could get by with the $5 a month.

01:20:56 ◼   ► But I really wanted to highlight,

01:20:57 ◼   ► like comparing them apples to apples is tricky

01:21:00 ◼   ► because you get all these other things.

01:21:04 ◼   ► And if you move up a level in Slack

01:21:05 ◼   ► from where we are, it's 1250 a month, just like Microsoft 365 business standard.

01:21:10 ◼   ► So you're paying 1250 ahead for Slack or 1250 ahead for all of the Office apps locally,

01:21:17 ◼   ► like on your Mac or PC, and Teams and Exchange and OneDrive and stuff in the cloud.

01:21:22 ◼   ► So 365 is more approachable, because you're just paying one fee and you just get something

01:21:33 ◼   ► like Slack thrown in.

01:21:35 ◼   ► You know, it's interesting, my wife is teaching

01:21:38 ◼   ► and our two kids in public school,

01:21:40 ◼   ► like they're virtual right now and they're using Teams.

01:21:43 ◼   ► Like the whole school year has been built

01:21:45 ◼   ► around Microsoft Teams.

01:21:46 ◼   ► It's been interesting to see how quickly they've evolved it

01:21:49 ◼   ► because a lot more people are relying on it in 2020,

01:21:52 ◼   ► just like everything else, like we mentioned Zoom earlier.

01:21:55 ◼   ► And it just, it boggles my mind

01:21:58 ◼   ► that Slack basically didn't do anything.

01:22:01 ◼   ► That Slack today is more or less the same

01:22:04 ◼   ► as Slack was a year ago.

01:22:05 ◼   ► And Teams has gotten much better.

01:22:07 ◼   ► - I don't doubt that they were working on it, right?

01:22:10 ◼   ► But like, they just didn't get there, and Microsoft did.

01:22:13 ◼   ► And that, I mean, that's why they are now in the position

01:22:17 ◼   ► where they can be bought by Salesforce,

01:22:19 ◼   ► because they're not as valuable as they should be.

01:22:21 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm, it's really,

01:22:23 ◼   ► it's really kind of disappointing, actually.

01:22:26 ◼   ► And I'm with you, like, I don't want to move us.

01:22:28 ◼   ► I have no interest in that, but it is a,

01:22:33 ◼   ► is a very interesting time if this was if this was part of your setup in your

01:22:38 ◼   ► business and you don't have any other stuff with Salesforce and who knows what

01:22:42 ◼   ► they'll do on the business side but I think for people who are using slack for

01:22:48 ◼   ► free which you can do up to a certain point they also give away their standard

01:22:52 ◼   ► accounts if you're a registered nonprofit and I've set several people up

01:22:57 ◼   ► on that and they're all nervous that is you know a Salesforce gonna make us

01:23:01 ◼   ► start paying for this. There's a lot of unknowns.

01:23:03 ◼   ► Yeah, it's too much of a publicity error.

01:23:06 ◼   ► I think so too, yeah, you can't. That's basically what I told them, was like, they're not, they

01:23:10 ◼   ► can't do that. Like, that would be a nightmare from a PR perspective.

01:23:12 ◼   ► Like every nonprofit in America is just like, nah, you can't.

01:23:16 ◼   ► Yeah, you can't do that.

01:23:17 ◼   ► You can't have accounts anymore.

01:23:18 ◼   ► But yeah, it's interesting. So Federico, I want to know why you think, like, is this

01:23:23 ◼   ► why you're thinking of moving away from Slack? Because on App Stories you've been talking

01:23:26 ◼   ► about how you and Jon are just kind of burning down all your Mac Stories infrastructure and

01:23:30 ◼   ► rebuilding it, does this acquisition feed into that decision-making at all?

01:23:36 ◼   ► Yes. So I just want to say a couple of things about this. One, I don't really

01:23:42 ◼   ► like the idea of a tool that I use being owned by this sort of business-y, very

01:23:47 ◼   ► corporate mega-corp. I don't know. I just don't like it. It just doesn't sit well

01:23:53 ◼   ► with sort of my personal taste. And I don't like the idea that I go to their

01:23:58 ◼   ► website and I don't understand what they do. You know? I just go to Salesforce.com and

01:24:04 ◼   ► I see a bunch of pictures of white guys saying that they are CEOs. I don't really like it.

01:24:09 ◼   ► I don't understand what Salesforce is. That's probably my limitation, right? It's just one

01:24:14 ◼   ► of those like first impression type of thing and it's not really good for me. And I don't

01:24:22 ◼   ► I just don't like it. But the other thing is, I think because we are a smaller, you

01:24:29 ◼   ► know, we're a lean operation, you mentioned how for Relay you would have to disrupt 41

01:24:37 ◼   ► people. And for Max Stories at this point we would have to disrupt 3 people, that's

01:24:43 ◼   ► including me, plus the occasional collaborators. Collaborators do whatever you tell them, right?

01:24:48 ◼   ► Exactly. Hey, you can't boss me around. They can keep logging into Slack, there's

01:24:52 ◼   ► nobody else is there.

01:24:53 ◼   ► Exactly. Considering that, I think we are in a position, by default, by nature of our

01:25:02 ◼   ► own company, we would be in a position to say, "Okay, we can try new stuff without making

01:25:07 ◼   ► any major change, without making any major disruptions and we're going to be fine." But

01:25:11 ◼   ► also it feeds into what we're doing now, what we've been doing for the past couple of months.

01:25:18 ◼   ► ahead of 2021, we're changing a lot of the ways that we operate, because we want to expand

01:25:25 ◼   ► in 2021. We have a lot of ideas, and I've been, you know, my admin timers in Timery

01:25:33 ◼   ► have logged a lot of hours in the past few months, and I've been doing a lot of manager-type

01:25:40 ◼   ► stuff lately. But that's part of the reason why, because we are doing this now. We are

01:25:47 ◼   ► in this process now of rethinking our operation. And this is kind of perfect timing for it, because

01:25:55 ◼   ► of all the alternative services that we were looking into, Discord was one of them for some

01:26:02 ◼   ► other ideas that we have in terms of using Discord in 2021. And I'm looking at alternatives, right,

01:26:10 ◼   ► for our internal team-based communications. I want to... I've been taking a look at Teams,

01:26:16 ◼   ► and the fact that it leans heavily into the Office 365 integration, and you know,

01:26:23 ◼   ► I don't think I'm gonna need that, I don't think we're interested in that.

01:26:27 ◼   ► But I'm looking at, you know, I'm looking at HipChat, I'm looking at the...

01:26:32 ◼   ► What's the service by the Todoist folks called Twist?

01:26:35 ◼   ► Twist?

01:26:35 ◼   ► Twist! I'm looking at, like, I'm keeping all my options open, but I'm leaning toward Discord,

01:26:41 ◼   ► because if it's a tool that I'm going to be using anyway, I might as well jump in for

01:26:45 ◼   ► the Mac source team internal communications too. And I also, I personally, because ultimately

01:26:53 ◼   ► I get to make these decisions, I personally gravitate toward these kinds of companies,

01:27:00 ◼   ► you know? The medium-sized company that is still independent, that has good taste, that

01:27:06 ◼   ► a clear communication that is not, you know, like a bunch of suits telling you what you gotta do.

01:27:12 ◼   ► And I gravitate towards something like Discord in 2020, just like I used to gravitate towards

01:27:19 ◼   ► Slack six years ago. And I am a little bit turned off by the likes of Salesforce. And,

01:27:28 ◼   ► you know, lots of people are saying really interesting things and how Slack may be a super

01:27:33 ◼   ► smart acquisition and everything is going to be fine." And I believe them. They know

01:27:38 ◼   ► more than I do about this stuff. They may be right, but it's the general feeling that

01:27:43 ◼   ► I get, and I tend to value my feelings a lot for these things. And that's why I'm leaning

01:27:48 ◼   ► toward, you know, it's been a fun six, seven, what, I don't even remember, years using Slack,

01:27:54 ◼   ► but I think we are in a position to try something new.

01:27:58 ◼   ► And I think that's fair and there are a lot of alternatives.

01:28:03 ◼   ► And I think Myke and Gray are right,

01:28:04 ◼   ► there's gonna be a lot more in the coming year.

01:28:08 ◼   ► So, the Salesforce, way to go.

01:28:12 ◼   ► Let's take our last break, how does that sound?

01:28:14 ◼   ► - Go for it.

01:28:15 ◼   ► - This episode of Connected is brought to you by StoryWorth.

01:28:19 ◼   ► For many of us, the holidays look a bit different this year.

01:28:22 ◼   ► Friends and family reunions might not quite be the same,

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01:30:04 ◼   ► their support of this show and Relay FM. I have a story to tell. Okay? Okay. You guys,

01:30:12 ◼   ► you guys sound excited. Yeah. Well, you're not really selling it. I got a great story

01:30:16 ◼   ► for y'all. Okay. Let's do this! Yes. Let's get into it. So I bought my wife a M1

01:30:26 ◼   ► MacBook Air. It's fantastic. If you were looking for a computer and a

01:30:30 ◼   ► MacBook Air fits the bill, you should go buy a MacBook Air because it's really

01:30:35 ◼   ► great. It's so great in fact that after using it for just a few days I

01:30:40 ◼   ► I thought I need an M1 MacBook Pro.

01:30:44 ◼   ► And so I ordered a MacBook Pro for myself with the M1.

01:30:48 ◼   ► Really like it, really awesome.

01:30:49 ◼   ► Never hear the fan, the battery life's ridiculous.

01:30:52 ◼   ► But doing this the way that I did it

01:30:54 ◼   ► meant that I had to juggle data around.

01:30:57 ◼   ► So at first I moved my user and applications

01:31:00 ◼   ► from my 16 inch MacBook Pro to the MacBook Air.

01:31:04 ◼   ► And then my MacBook Pro came in

01:31:06 ◼   ► like a week later or something.

01:31:07 ◼   ► So I went from the Air to the new MacBook Pro,

01:31:12 ◼   ► and then I was going to erase the MacBook Air,

01:31:14 ◼   ► reinstall Big Sur, and put Mary's information on it

01:31:19 ◼   ► from her Intel MacBook Air

01:31:20 ◼   ► that we were replacing with this new M1.

01:31:23 ◼   ► So I had four, three or four data transfers to do

01:31:27 ◼   ► all in the course of, you know, a couple of days.

01:31:29 ◼   ► So it went pretty well.

01:31:31 ◼   ► I, you know, moved my stuff from the M1 Air

01:31:34 ◼   ► to my M1 Pro with a Thunderbolt 3 cable.

01:31:37 ◼   ► It was really fast, completely silent

01:31:40 ◼   ► because the M1 Macs are really good.

01:31:42 ◼   ► And then I figured, okay, let me wipe this M1 Air.

01:31:47 ◼   ► And I will say recovery mode is way nicer

01:31:51 ◼   ► on the Apple Silicon Macs.

01:31:52 ◼   ► Remember you have to like press Command + R

01:31:55 ◼   ► or like Command + Option + R if you wanted something else.

01:31:57 ◼   ► It was really confusing.

01:31:59 ◼   ► Now you just press and hold the power button

01:32:01 ◼   ► and you just keep holding until you say,

01:32:04 ◼   ► load it until you see loading startup options.

01:32:08 ◼   ► And then you just click the option that you want.

01:32:10 ◼   ► Like it's way better, way cleaner.

01:32:13 ◼   ► I wish they would bring this to the Intel Macs

01:32:15 ◼   ► but I guess they're not going to.

01:32:16 ◼   ► It's like a firmware change, I guess.

01:32:18 ◼   ► But really, really cleaned up and nice.

01:32:22 ◼   ► So anyways, I figured, okay, well, I'll go in,

01:32:25 ◼   ► I'll delete the APFS volume, make a new one.

01:32:29 ◼   ► You name it, you know, Macintosh HD or whatever.

01:32:31 ◼   ► and then I'll just install Big Sur from recovery mode.

01:32:35 ◼   ► No big deal, done it a thousand times on Intel Max,

01:32:37 ◼   ► it feels like.

01:32:38 ◼   ► The container erased, set up a new one,

01:32:42 ◼   ► very easy, very fast.

01:32:45 ◼   ► But then Big Sur would start to install

01:32:47 ◼   ► and then it would fail with the weirdest install message

01:32:52 ◼   ► I've ever seen.

01:32:53 ◼   ► So I wrote it down.

01:32:54 ◼   ► An error occurred while preparing the update.

01:32:57 ◼   ► Failed to personalize the software update.

01:33:00 ◼   ► Please try again.

01:33:02 ◼   ► Personalized?

01:33:03 ◼   ► Failed to personalize the software update.

01:33:05 ◼   ► What does that mean?

01:33:06 ◼   ► I want my software updates handcrafted or I just don't want them.

01:33:10 ◼   ► Custom personalized handcrafted software updates.

01:33:13 ◼   ► Perfect.

01:33:14 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:33:15 ◼   ► Artisanal software updates.

01:33:17 ◼   ► That's right.

01:33:18 ◼   ► My guess is that at some point it installs specific things for specific machines.

01:33:23 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:33:24 ◼   ► Anyways, I don't know.

01:33:26 ◼   ► Super weird.

01:33:27 ◼   ► I find stuff like that so strange, right?

01:33:29 ◼   ► someone wrote that like the computer didn't write that yeah a person thought that was

01:33:33 ◼   ► a good sentence and like how does that help the user like at all it doesn't it really

01:33:39 ◼   ► seems weird really doesn't and so like oh that's that's weird but you know I'm a relatively

01:33:46 ◼   ► like smart Mac person so I figured well I have another armac sitting here let me download

01:33:54 ◼   ► Big Sur on that and I'll make a USB key installer, you know, maybe for whatever reason,

01:33:58 ◼   ► the the version in recovery on the recovery partition is is goofy, no big deal. Plenty of

01:34:04 ◼   ► time. Download Big Sur make a USB installer and go to install. Same thing. Same weird error.

01:34:15 ◼   ► Can't personalize the update. At this point, I'm like, Okay, I need to start looking on the

01:34:21 ◼   ► the internet. Other people have had this problem. So there's this Apple support document saying it

01:34:25 ◼   ► could happen when reinstalling big Sur on an M one Mac running 11.0. But the support document seems

01:34:35 ◼   ► to think that 11.0 point one fixes this, that you won't won't run into it. That was not the case in

01:34:45 ◼   ► for me. Now, I don't know if it's because I erased the APFS volume. So it didn't know the system used

01:34:53 ◼   ► to run 1101 or 1101 is supposed to update the recovery version, and it didn't somehow. But I

01:35:01 ◼   ► couldn't get it to work. And doing some googling and even like in Discord, people were talking

01:35:06 ◼   ► about Yeah, I've had this too already, like something is going on weird. This document

01:35:12 ◼   ► is bananas. So it tells you, you know, you saw this error, don't really know what you can do about

01:35:19 ◼   ► it. You can use Apple configurator to restore the firmware. This actually I don't think was even on

01:35:27 ◼   ► this document at the time. I'm not sure that it was. But I went to the later the later section.

01:35:34 ◼   ► So you go in, into terminal and like reset the password and then you erase the Mac from recovery

01:35:42 ◼   ► mode which is not in disk utility it's like this other utility what's the

01:35:46 ◼   ► difference nobody knows wait there's another the most yeah what's the other

01:35:51 ◼   ► utility it's called erase Mac and it's just a menu bar item in recovery

01:35:55 ◼   ► assistant all right I don't know why that is there but it is occasionally to

01:36:00 ◼   ► erase your Mac I guess I guess so so I erase the Mac with their utility yes

01:36:05 ◼   ► erased it and still couldn't get it going. Still still failed. So erase it again. It's

01:36:13 ◼   ► like the fourth time I've erased this poor this poor little MacBook Air. And I had to

01:36:20 ◼   ► use terminal to re install it because I'd extinguished all my other options.

01:36:24 ◼   ► And so the this support document has you open Safari in the utilities window, go to this

01:36:32 ◼   ► knowledge base article. And then you copy a block of text, which what this text does is basically

01:36:37 ◼   ► it creates a temporary folder on the SSD that you download the Big Sur installer from Apple clean

01:36:47 ◼   ► onto this volume. And then you basically wait and wait for it to download and like the little

01:36:56 ◼   ► progress bar fills up in terminal like it's 1976. And then you can begin the install once

01:37:05 ◼   ► it's done. And that command includes this line of text that maybe it's been in Mac OS

01:37:12 ◼   ► before I haven't seen it before. Install assistant underscore springboard. Now we all know what

01:37:18 ◼   ► springboard is right. It's the thing that yeah, it's the home screen on the iPhone and

01:37:22 ◼   ► iPad. I don't know what it's doing on the Mac. I don't know why it's in charge of opening

01:37:26 ◼   ► the new installer I downloaded, but this was mind-blowing that this was the fix.

01:37:32 ◼   ► Did you mess something up here?

01:37:33 ◼   ► Me?

01:37:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:37:36 ◼   ► No.

01:37:36 ◼   ► Like did you... how did this start? What were you doing?

01:37:40 ◼   ► I wanted to erase the Mac and reinstall Big Sur.

01:37:45 ◼   ► Right.

01:37:45 ◼   ► Why did you do that? Why did you want to do that?

01:37:48 ◼   ► Because it had my stuff on it and I needed Mary's stuff on it.

01:37:51 ◼   ► Okay. Alright.

01:37:52 ◼   ► Because it was her machine that I had borrowed.

01:37:54 ◼   ► I was just double checking that this wasn't caused by like you being too much of a nerd.

01:37:59 ◼   ► I don't think so. I mean I went to this utility.

01:38:00 ◼   ► I wouldn't use migration assistant. I need to root into the sub folder and

01:38:05 ◼   ► tinker with the...

01:38:06 ◼   ► Maybe if I'd used the erase mac menu bar command it wouldn't have happened,

01:38:12 ◼   ► but it didn't stop me from erasing it. It didn't stop me at any point to say,

01:38:20 ◼   ► "Hey, if you do this, you're gonna need to download it through the terminal."

01:38:25 ◼   ► It's all very strange.

01:38:27 ◼   ► Do you think that, like, there was like a day one update, basically, right?

01:38:33 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:38:34 ◼   ► For the...

01:38:35 ◼   ► Do you think that might have been a problem?

01:38:37 ◼   ► I don't know, because I had run that update, and the Knowledge Base article says, "If you've

01:38:43 ◼   ► run the update, you won't have this problem," but I still had the problem.

01:38:48 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:38:49 ◼   ► It's fixed now and it runs great. We both have M1 notebooks running a Big Sur and it's fantastic.

01:38:54 ◼   ► They are very good. I love my MacBook Pro.

01:38:57 ◼   ► Yeah, it's, it's, they're really good and I'm really excited about what comes next.

01:39:01 ◼   ► I just was like a really rough start to kind of the under the hood stuff for me.

01:39:05 ◼   ► I guess you haven't tried to erase yours.

01:39:07 ◼   ► I haven't, I don't plan on doing that anytime soon.

01:39:13 ◼   ► And I wouldn't erase a Mac for me to use.

01:39:17 ◼   ► Like that would become the problem of the next person, right?

01:39:21 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:39:22 ◼   ► - Like I don't know if I would ever need

01:39:24 ◼   ► to erase a computer and then reuse it again.

01:39:27 ◼   ► - Federico, do you have any M1 Macs?

01:39:30 ◼   ► - No, not at the moment.

01:39:34 ◼   ► - You filled out?

01:39:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't.

01:39:37 ◼   ► I've been using my Mac mini slightly more often these days.

01:39:41 ◼   ► again because I'm on Skype all day.

01:39:43 ◼   ► But no, I don't have a particular desire

01:39:48 ◼   ► for more performance at the moment or using,

01:39:53 ◼   ► I'm intrigued by it, I'm very intrigued by it,

01:39:55 ◼   ► but there's, like if I were to waste money,

01:39:57 ◼   ► I would waste it on other stuff.

01:40:00 ◼   ► - Okay, that's fair, that's totally fair.

01:40:02 ◼   ► All right, well that was my Mac story.

01:40:05 ◼   ► - That's a website.

01:40:06 ◼   ► - Look what I did.

01:40:07 ◼   ► - Oh, I got it.

01:40:09 ◼   ► - That's good.

01:40:10 ◼   ► while I got it. I think that's it this week. Okay. If you want to find links to

01:40:15 ◼   ► the stories we spoke about head on over to the website relay.fm/connected/323

01:40:21 ◼   ► While you're there there's a bunch of cool stuff you can do. You can

01:40:27 ◼   ► become a member, support the show directly and get connected pro which has

01:40:31 ◼   ► some sort of surprise from Federico this week which we're both Myke and I are

01:40:35 ◼   ► really scared of just don't know what's gonna happen there. You can also send us

01:40:40 ◼   ► feedback or follow up there's an email link on that page. You can find us all on

01:40:44 ◼   ► Twitter Myke is there as @IMYKE. Myke are you building any keyboards this week?

01:40:51 ◼   ► I'm not gonna be building a keyboard but I am gonna be streaming some keyboard

01:40:55 ◼   ► related activities so that's gonna be on Friday at 11 a.m. Eastern I have some new

01:41:02 ◼   ► keycaps and I'm gonna put on a keyboard. You can find Federico on Twitter as

01:41:07 ◼   ► Vittici, V-I-T-I-C-C-I. He's the editor-in-chief of MacStories.net, which runs atop Microsoft

01:41:13 ◼   ► Teams this week, apparently.

01:41:15 ◼   ► Federico, I have a question for you.

01:41:18 ◼   ► Okay.

01:41:19 ◼   ► How have you changed from when you were in high school?

01:41:23 ◼   ► These questions!

01:41:25 ◼   ► How much time do we have?

01:41:29 ◼   ► I will give you two minutes.

01:41:31 ◼   ► I'll try to be shorter than that.

01:41:34 ◼   ► I used to get a lot more angry in my younger years and I think temper. I, yeah, I have

01:41:43 ◼   ► a, I'm more moderate from that that way now. I have very strong opinions about stuff, but

01:41:51 ◼   ► I try not to get angry as frequently. I guess the biggest realization over the past decade

01:42:01 ◼   ► plus was that I can be just fine without... wow, this is deep... I can get by just fine

01:42:10 ◼   ► and I feel happy and satisfied with my life despite having lacked what a lot of other

01:42:17 ◼   ► people have in terms of family relationships. And that was a big thing for me to realize

01:42:23 ◼   ► over the years. And I also have a lot more money than when I was a kid because I didn't

01:42:30 ◼   ► have a job and now I do. And so that freedom, you know, it's really nice to be able to live

01:42:36 ◼   ► on your own and buy the things that you want to buy and invest money and, you know, save

01:42:41 ◼   ► it. Whereas I, you know, when I was in high school, I didn't have money because I was,

01:42:47 ◼   ► I didn't have a job. So yeah, those, those three things I would say. Oh, and also I've

01:42:51 ◼   ► changed a lot in terms of my relationship with pets and with dogs specifically. I've

01:42:56 ◼   ► become a I've really become a dog person. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's good you sound like a

01:43:01 ◼   ► better person now than you used to be and that's the goal, right? I think so

01:43:04 ◼   ► that's ideally that that should be the expected you know outcome so I think

01:43:10 ◼   ► it's a pretty positive difference you know pretty positive change from from

01:43:16 ◼   ► 2007. You can find me on Twitter as ismh and I blog over at 512pixels.net. I'm

01:43:23 ◼   ► I'm gonna go through like a tech tour thing of my backpack on Twitch at 2 p.m. Eastern

01:43:30 ◼   ► on Thursday the 3rd.

01:43:32 ◼   ► So keep an eye out for that twitch.tv/ismh.

01:43:36 ◼   ► I'd like to thank our sponsors this week, Pingdom and StoryWorth, and until next time,

01:43:40 ◼   ► gentlemen, say goodbye.

01:43:41 ◼   ► Arrivederci.

01:43:42 ◼   ► Cheerio!