Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► - Hello and welcome to Connected, episode 296.

00:00:10 ◼   ► It's made possible by our sponsors,

00:00:12 ◼   ► ExpressVPN, Pingdom, and Squarespace.

00:00:15 ◼   ► My name is Steven Hackett and I am joined, as always,

00:00:18 ◼   ► by Mr. Federico Vittucci.

00:00:20 ◼   ► - Hey Steven, happy Space Day.

00:00:23 ◼   ► - Yes, it is the International Day of Space today.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Thank you. - Yes.

00:00:28 ◼   ► We're joined by Myke Hurley as well.

00:00:30 ◼   ► Hi!

00:00:31 ◼   ► Hey buddy.

00:00:32 ◼   ► That's a long hi.

00:00:34 ◼   ► You had your coffee yet?

00:00:35 ◼   ► International Space Day is actually 12th of April.

00:00:38 ◼   ► Wait, it really exists?

00:00:39 ◼   ► Yeah, of course it is.

00:00:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm sure it does.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Myke, how long could you say the word "hi"?

00:00:43 ◼   ► Could you just give us a demo?

00:00:44 ◼   ► Okay.

00:00:45 ◼   ► [

00:01:00 ◼   ► Multiple.

00:01:01 ◼   ► Oh, that hurt.

00:01:02 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:03 ◼   ► Stop, just stop.

00:01:05 ◼   ► Wow.

00:01:06 ◼   ► You test me and I'll do it, right?

00:01:09 ◼   ► Like don't be like, "Here's a fun joke,"

00:01:12 ◼   ► 'cause I will take you seriously.

00:01:14 ◼   ► Your lungs are massive.

00:01:16 ◼   ► I feel like I could have gone longer, but I laughed.

00:01:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:19 ◼   ► Yeah, once you break the stream, it's over.

00:01:21 ◼   ► Oh, I'm a little lightheaded now.

00:01:23 ◼   ► Are you?

00:01:24 ◼   ► Yeah, a little.

00:01:25 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:26 ◼   ► Do you need to lie down?

00:01:26 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:01:29 ◼   ► I feel lightheaded and the coffee's kicking in so I can't. Oh no, it's a bad combo. I'm gonna start seeing unicorns in a minute.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Bass is dropping over at Myke's house. This is a professional podcast guys. Come on. We have some follow-up to do

00:01:45 ◼   ► iOS 13.5

00:01:48 ◼   ► Came out and a lot of a lot of people want to know if it ended the green gate

00:01:54 ◼   ► So you where you get a green tent on your phone after it wakes up. I have not seen it

00:01:59 ◼   ► There are people in the Relay members discord who say they continue to see it and there

00:02:04 ◼   ► may be something to this that it's only affecting iPhone 11 pros.

00:02:14 ◼   ► So if you're in the Green Gate gang and you don't have an 11 pro, let me know.

00:02:19 ◼   ► Is that what it's called?

00:02:20 ◼   ► The GGG?

00:02:21 ◼   ► Yeah, GGGs.

00:02:22 ◼   ► I don't like that.

00:02:24 ◼   ► Yeah, me neither.

00:02:27 ◼   ► This is not very scientific, this whole thing.

00:02:29 ◼   ► What are you talking about?

00:02:30 ◼   ► It's certainly not.

00:02:31 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:02:32 ◼   ► Okay.

00:02:33 ◼   ► I saw a headline today that Skullcandy, the headphone people, have launched a line of headphones

00:02:40 ◼   ► with tile tracking built in.

00:02:43 ◼   ► And I wondered, could this be something that Apple do with their AirPods studio, like to

00:02:49 ◼   ► put their tracking system in them?

00:02:53 ◼   ► Do people ever lose headphones?

00:02:56 ◼   ► I feel like you lose AirPods.

00:03:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:01 ◼   ► I have phones.

00:03:02 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:03:03 ◼   ► I mean, you could, I mean.

00:03:05 ◼   ► You could lose them for sure.

00:03:06 ◼   ► You could lose anything if you try hard enough.

00:03:09 ◼   ► Or if you don't try hard enough, I guess.

00:03:12 ◼   ► You would lose things.

00:03:13 ◼   ► But yeah, it just made me wonder more really that if Apple built this tracker or AirTags,

00:03:22 ◼   ► If they would ever embed that technology inside of a non-internet connected product.

00:03:28 ◼   ► You see what I'm saying?

00:03:30 ◼   ► Because all of the internet connected products that Apple make won't need something like

00:03:36 ◼   ► this because they use Bluetooth, they use cell connections and they get to go.

00:03:42 ◼   ► But I wonder if they would do it for a Bluetooth thing or if they could end up like just embedding...

00:03:50 ◼   ► You know what, probably with the Bluetooth system

00:03:53 ◼   ► that they've built, they wouldn't need it anyway, right?

00:03:56 ◼   ► Like maybe it would just do this out of the box

00:03:58 ◼   ► because their Bluetooth headphones,

00:04:00 ◼   ► they could still ping other Bluetooth devices.

00:04:03 ◼   ► Maybe that would be it.

00:04:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, but if the headphones are like asleep,

00:04:06 ◼   ► are those Bluetooth radios on?

00:04:08 ◼   ► I don't know, it's a super interesting question.

00:04:12 ◼   ► It did get me looking into how Find My works with AirPods,

00:04:16 ◼   ► and I've got a link in the show notes

00:04:18 ◼   ► to the support document and I want to point this document out for a few reasons.

00:04:22 ◼   ► One, there's some like errors on this page.

00:04:25 ◼   ► Like good.

00:04:26 ◼   ► There's a sentence that says if you set up find my and then in brackets device, it's

00:04:30 ◼   ► like, well, it's called a find my now it's not it was never called find my iPad or from

00:04:35 ◼   ► my Mac and it's kind of funny.

00:04:37 ◼   ► It's called find my iPhone.

00:04:38 ◼   ► Yeah, it was.

00:04:40 ◼   ► But like, if you've already set up find my bracket device with an iPhone, it's that that

00:04:46 ◼   ► When you go through to the page that that links to,

00:04:48 ◼   ► it refers to it that way again,

00:04:50 ◼   ► find my bracket device, that's weird.

00:04:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's weird.

00:04:53 ◼   ► I think we've all experienced this,

00:04:56 ◼   ► like you can't find your AirPods.

00:04:58 ◼   ► In fact, these screenshots are taken from John Voorhees'

00:05:01 ◼   ► phone, look, John's AirPods, John's Apple Watch.

00:05:04 ◼   ► John loses his stuff, that happens when you--

00:05:06 ◼   ► - It does, it really does.

00:05:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, and you break your stuff.

00:05:10 ◼   ► John loses everything, you break everything.

00:05:13 ◼   ► - I haven't broken anything recently.

00:05:15 ◼   ► yourself. I did. I did have a slight scooter accident. Yep. But I didn't break my phone

00:05:21 ◼   ► or my watch. You call it slight? It's not a slight accident. Steven went over the handlebars

00:05:27 ◼   ► onto concrete. There's a video that we can't share, unfortunately. I tell you what, we

00:05:32 ◼   ► can share it in the Relay Members Discord livestream chat. Can I give them the gif?

00:05:39 ◼   ► Give them the gif. Alright, I'll give them the gif. And remember, there's a Discord

00:05:42 ◼   ► rule that you can't share it outside of the gif. I did not give you permission to share

00:05:45 ◼   ► it outside of the discord so if you remember you'd see my crash how about that you look

00:05:50 ◼   ► like an olympic diver in that video steven that's this is one of those things where he

00:05:56 ◼   ► so basically steven sent this the video from uh his nest cam yeah and it was one of those

00:06:05 ◼   ► things where whilst i was asking him if he was okay i was also downloading the video

00:06:10 ◼   ► to make the GIF out of it.

00:06:13 ◼   ► These were parallel processes of one, is he OK?

00:06:16 ◼   ► Two, I cannot wait to make a GIF out of this, which I can use

00:06:19 ◼   ► all the time.

00:06:21 ◼   ► Did you use shortcuts to make a GIF, Myke?

00:06:24 ◼   ► Yes, actually.

00:06:25 ◼   ► I did use the shortcuts app.

00:06:27 ◼   ► I need a shortcut, because I've been using some sort of app

00:06:29 ◼   ► that's janktastic.

00:06:31 ◼   ► Oh, no, this one I used an app.

00:06:34 ◼   ► In my experience, you can use shortcuts

00:06:37 ◼   ► to turn some things into GIFs, but the quality

00:06:39 ◼   ► isn't good enough. And I tried it and it just wasn't smooth enough and I wanted a real good

00:06:45 ◼   ► GIF for this. What app are you using?

00:06:47 ◼   ► I used two, I mean, okay, so I don't have a good system for this. I use two different

00:06:52 ◼   ► applications. I use one called Into Live, which turns it into a live photo, and then

00:06:59 ◼   ► I have another app called Lively, which can take a live photo and turn it into a GIF.

00:07:04 ◼   ► So yeah, I knew about Lively, but I didn't know how you got from movie to GIF. Okay.

00:07:08 ◼   ► But they're both good applications anyway because you can take GIFs and videos and turn

00:07:13 ◼   ► them into live photos. So I do also have a live photo version of you falling off the

00:07:18 ◼   ► scooter.

00:07:19 ◼   ► You could use that as a dynamic wallpaper on your lock screen. And whenever you press,

00:07:26 ◼   ► you see Steven fall.

00:07:28 ◼   ► That's actually a really nice idea. I'd forgotten about that.

00:07:33 ◼   ► There's an activity that we covered on Mac stories at some point that lets you turn any

00:07:38 ◼   ► live photo into a live wallpaper for your lock screen.

00:07:43 ◼   ► So when you press on the lock screen...

00:07:44 ◼   ► Oh, this @IntoLive does it.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:07:46 ◼   ► It might have been this one.

00:07:47 ◼   ► So you could use that one.

00:07:50 ◼   ► But yeah, you could do that for a Steven fan.

00:07:53 ◼   ► Does that even still work with the Haptic Touch?

00:07:55 ◼   ► I have no idea.

00:07:57 ◼   ► I have no idea either.

00:07:58 ◼   ► I've never used a live wallpaper, I think.

00:08:01 ◼   ► If you want to become a relay FM member, you can click the link in the top of the show

00:08:05 ◼   ► notes actually and you can just become a relay FM member, support connected, and then you

00:08:10 ◼   ► can find that gif.

00:08:11 ◼   ► It will be in the chat somewhere.

00:08:13 ◼   ► And I wasn't seriously hurt, but my hands kind of look like Swiss cheese.

00:08:17 ◼   ► I wish you'd stop saying that.

00:08:18 ◼   ► Do you have any idea how gross that sounds when you say that?

00:08:21 ◼   ► That sounds very gross.

00:08:22 ◼   ► You should see my hands.

00:08:23 ◼   ► They're all...

00:08:24 ◼   ► I don't want to, but that's the thing.

00:08:25 ◼   ► I don't want to see your hands and I don't want to hear about what they look like either.

00:08:30 ◼   ► I'm happy you're okay enough to be here,

00:08:32 ◼   ► you know, that you didn't.

00:08:33 ◼   ► You're always injuring yourself.

00:08:35 ◼   ► You ever break phones or your own body?

00:08:37 ◼   ► Why does this happen to you all the time?

00:08:39 ◼   ► - I did come down on the side

00:08:41 ◼   ► where my phone is in my pocket,

00:08:43 ◼   ► and I was like, oh no, I broke my phone, but it was fine.

00:08:45 ◼   ► - Can you imagine if you would have broke that phone, though?

00:08:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I am gonna have a bruise on the hip,

00:08:50 ◼   ► that's for sure.

00:08:51 ◼   ► Okay.

00:08:52 ◼   ► - We were talking about AirPods before the whole tangents.

00:08:57 ◼   ► - So find my AirPods.

00:08:59 ◼   ► So I think we've all been in a situation

00:09:00 ◼   ► where you lose them, they fly out of your pocket

00:09:03 ◼   ► during a scooter accident,

00:09:05 ◼   ► and I've had very mixed luck using Find My

00:09:09 ◼   ► with the AirPods.

00:09:11 ◼   ► - Okay, so I was about to mention this.

00:09:13 ◼   ► It's never worked well for me.

00:09:15 ◼   ► Like I've never been able to successfully find my AirPods.

00:09:19 ◼   ► Back when I used to sleep with my AirPods on,

00:09:22 ◼   ► which I don't do anymore,

00:09:24 ◼   ► but back then sometimes like one of them

00:09:27 ◼   ► would end up somewhere in the sheets or under the bed,

00:09:31 ◼   ► for example, and I would try to do the whole

00:09:35 ◼   ► make a sound thing, it just never worked.

00:09:37 ◼   ► And so I do feel like it would be interesting

00:09:40 ◼   ► to have a different system that uses proximity tracking

00:09:44 ◼   ► to make it more reliable.

00:09:46 ◼   ► I just, I don't know, I feel like it would be more useful

00:09:51 ◼   ► on the smaller, on the regular AirPods,

00:09:56 ◼   ► Because I've never lost headphones in my life.

00:09:59 ◼   ► But at that point, why not just put it everywhere?

00:10:03 ◼   ► Why not just put proximity tracking based on Bluetooth

00:10:05 ◼   ► or based on something else on any accessory

00:10:08 ◼   ► that you use with your Apple products?

00:10:10 ◼   ► So I would be in favor of it because the regular

00:10:15 ◼   ► Find My AirPods feature has never really worked,

00:10:18 ◼   ► for me at least.

00:10:19 ◼   ► - I haven't used it in a long time.

00:10:23 ◼   ► - Not because you never lose things.

00:10:24 ◼   ► You don't strike me as the kind of person who loses things, Myke.

00:10:27 ◼   ► Not very much.

00:10:30 ◼   ► I lost some clothes once in a hotel.

00:10:33 ◼   ► I think I remember that story.

00:10:36 ◼   ► It was just like, where did these three shirts go?

00:10:40 ◼   ► Who knows? I must have left them in a hotel somewhere.

00:10:43 ◼   ► But aside from that, I'm pretty good at not...

00:10:46 ◼   ► I don't really lose things very often.

00:10:47 ◼   ► It's not like you lost a heart rate monitor at WWDC or anything.

00:10:50 ◼   ► No, my heart rate monitor was stolen from me.

00:10:53 ◼   ► No one would steal it.

00:10:54 ◼   ► It was stolen from me either from Michael or the cleaning crew stole my heart rate monitor.

00:11:02 ◼   ► Again, I will state for the official record on this, I have shared rooms with Federico

00:11:07 ◼   ► very often.

00:11:09 ◼   ► Federico is one of these people that just removes clothing and it lands where he was,

00:11:14 ◼   ► right?

00:11:15 ◼   ► As if he'd disappeared.

00:11:17 ◼   ► So like a tornado.

00:11:18 ◼   ► just the clothes come off, the heart rate comes up, monitor comes off and it's just

00:11:24 ◼   ► gone forever. Like because I think it was either on that trip or the next trip you lost

00:11:29 ◼   ► your ring, do you remember? No, I didn't lose the ring, it was... but it was that thing

00:11:34 ◼   ► of... we found it together. It was, you lost it, you were convinced it had been stolen

00:11:39 ◼   ► from you and then we had to tip the room upside down and it was under the bed basically. But

00:11:44 ◼   ► But Federico goes from "I've lost it" to "There was a heist very quickly" when people

00:11:51 ◼   ► were breaking through the windows.

00:11:53 ◼   ► What's the most likely explanation? That it just disappeared? It was either lost or stolen

00:11:58 ◼   ► from me. And in this case the heart rate monitor was such a coveted item, it must have been

00:12:05 ◼   ► stolen from me.

00:12:07 ◼   ► Who coveted it?

00:12:10 ◼   ► The thief.

00:12:11 ◼   ► I don't know. Either you or the thief.

00:12:13 ◼   ► Why would I want your heart rate monitor?

00:12:16 ◼   ► Although now that I think about it, you know that day when I was in the gym in San Jose,

00:12:20 ◼   ► in the hotel?

00:12:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:22 ◼   ► After I was done exercising, I was stopped inside the gym by a guy who was speaking Italian

00:12:32 ◼   ► and told me he worked at Google.

00:12:34 ◼   ► So maybe the enemy stole it from me.

00:12:36 ◼   ► Google stole it.

00:12:38 ◼   ► They want your heart rate data.

00:12:40 ◼   ► They didn't have an update or about you already so they wanted that as well.

00:12:43 ◼   ► I don't know though, I don't know.

00:12:45 ◼   ► It suspiciously disappeared when I came back in the room.

00:12:49 ◼   ► And only you were in the room.

00:12:50 ◼   ► I don't think Jon Borges was in the room.

00:12:53 ◼   ► It was either you or the cleaning crew.

00:12:55 ◼   ► So have fun with my hardware monitor, Myke.

00:12:58 ◼   ► I will.

00:12:59 ◼   ► I'll use it the next time I do an intro.

00:13:01 ◼   ► I still get so lightheaded.

00:13:06 ◼   ► Should we take a break?

00:13:07 ◼   ► Yes please.

00:13:08 ◼   ► Yes.

00:13:09 ◼   ► Thank you.

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00:14:32 ◼   ► Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of Connected

00:14:37 ◼   ► and all of Relay FM.

00:14:39 ◼   ► - So I've done a bit of a cleanup today.

00:14:44 ◼   ► So it all started because I noticed in my updates

00:14:47 ◼   ► that I had the HBO Max icon.

00:14:51 ◼   ► And so I'm aware of what HBO Max is.

00:14:55 ◼   ► I didn't remember signing up for HBO Max and then I realized, oh, this is an update,

00:15:00 ◼   ► which means one of the two HBO apps that I had on my iPad must have changed from, I think,

00:15:09 ◼   ► HBO...

00:15:11 ◼   ► There's two things, like there's HBO and HBO Now, and I think one of those two apps...

00:15:15 ◼   ► I think it was Go and Now.

00:15:17 ◼   ► Go and Now, and I think Go is now HBO Max, maybe?

00:15:21 ◼   ► One of them.

00:15:22 ◼   ► So one of them, right?

00:15:23 ◼   ► So here's what happened.

00:15:25 ◼   ► A few months ago, in preparation for Westworld season 3, I signed up...

00:15:31 ◼   ► This is gonna make me sound stupid again, and I'm... okay.

00:15:34 ◼   ► But I do these things to myself. So I...

00:15:37 ◼   ► Basically, I wanted to... I thought I was gonna watch Westworld season 3, right?

00:15:42 ◼   ► And so I preemptively signed up for HBO, right?

00:15:46 ◼   ► You hit... you struck first, right? You were like, "You're not gonna beat me, I'm gonna beat you."

00:15:50 ◼   ► Exactly. I was like the dude in Star Wars who shot first.

00:15:56 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. Greedo.

00:15:58 ◼   ► Yes. I know my references. Come on.

00:16:00 ◼   ► So I...

00:16:02 ◼   ► Gained off.

00:16:02 ◼   ► Yes. Before...

00:16:04 ◼   ► It is also in the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.

00:16:08 ◼   ► Before Westworld season 3 came out, like a couple of weeks before, I signed up.

00:16:14 ◼   ► Now, I don't know what happened, honestly. I don't know what I did, but I signed up for two separate HBO subscriptions.

00:16:19 ◼   ► So, for the past few months, I've been paying like $30 a month, $15 and $15 for HBO.

00:16:27 ◼   ► And I think one of them is HBO for Apple TV, and another is HBO for like iOS devices.

00:16:34 ◼   ► So, don't ask me why or how, but I've been paying two separate HBO things for three months.

00:16:41 ◼   ► And the best part is that I never even watched Westworld Season 3.

00:16:46 ◼   ► because I watched the first episode and I got kind of bored and I thought, well, I'm

00:16:51 ◼   ► gonna keep, I'm gonna continue watching it eventually. And then I forgot that I was paying

00:16:56 ◼   ► for HBO, so basically I've been, I wasted like a couple of hundred dollars maybe. No,

00:17:04 ◼   ► maybe 150 or something. But yeah, I've just lost money on an HBO subscription, for two

00:17:10 ◼   ► HBO subscriptions for something that I've never even watched. Anyway. So I noticed the

00:17:17 ◼   ► HBO icon and I realized, "Oh no, I gotta go clean up my subscriptions." So I went into

00:17:24 ◼   ► the subscription management screen in my App Store account and I, sure enough, cancelled

00:17:29 ◼   ► HBO Go, which is now HBO Max, I think, and HBO Now, so both of those are gone. And then

00:17:36 ◼   ► I started taking a look around at all the other subscriptions that I have in my Apple ID.

00:17:43 ◼   ► Some of them were already expiring, some of them I hit cancel myself, and then I stopped

00:17:49 ◼   ► because I saw a subscription that I needed to think about for a couple of hours.

00:17:57 ◼   ► So Apple Arcade, right? $5 a month. So I cancelled my Apple Arcade subscription.

00:18:06 ◼   ► And I cancelled because, like, this is part of a series of thoughts that have been mulling over for quite some time at this point,

00:18:16 ◼   ► and I've mentioned this with you, Myke, and Jon in our gaming chat, where Steven does not participate because he's not, you know, a gamer.

00:18:25 ◼   ► He was in it, but we spoke about Pokemon once, and then he left and came back.

00:18:29 ◼   ► Yeah, Steven is not a capital G gamer, so cannot be part of our group.

00:18:34 ◼   ► So, basically for quite some time I've been feeling that no Apple Arcade game has really grabbed me

00:18:42 ◼   ► in a way that makes me go "Oh wow, I'm so happy that I'm paying five dollars a month to get access

00:18:48 ◼   ► to this service." Because initially I was super impressed by Apple Arcade and the initial lineup

00:18:52 ◼   ► and the rollout of like 50, 60 games, and we've talked about this before, we were all super excited

00:18:58 ◼   ► and super impressed. But what has happened is that essentially I've accumulated all these games on my

00:19:05 ◼   ► iPhone and iPad and I've stashed all of them in a folder called "arcade". And to tell you the truth

00:19:13 ◼   ► I've only played like one of those games for real and all the others I just kept in a folder saying

00:19:20 ◼   ► "well I'm gonna play these games eventually". But the reality is that when I want to play a game

00:19:26 ◼   ► And for the past few months that game has been Pokemon Sword, but that's not the point here.

00:19:31 ◼   ► It's that when I want to play something I play on my Nintendo Switch, right?

00:19:35 ◼   ► I don't really feel compelled to play a video game on my iPhone or my iPad.

00:19:41 ◼   ► There's that, the fact that I just needed to face the reality of the situation of this folder of games that I had not played at all.

00:19:50 ◼   ► And also the fact that all the games that have been coming out on Apple Arcade lately,

00:19:55 ◼   ► And now this is just my personal opinion. This is just my personal taste.

00:19:58 ◼   ► I completely understand if Apple Arcade is such a good deal for other people. If you like the games that come out on Apple Arcade,

00:20:05 ◼   ► I'm not judging you. But for me personally,

00:20:07 ◼   ► I just feel like I've had enough of all these family-friendly puzzle games and like small adventure games and

00:20:15 ◼   ► multiplayer games, like

00:20:18 ◼   ► It's not what I'm looking for. And yes, I know that it's just $5 a month, but those $5 a month,

00:20:23 ◼   ► Well, first of all, it's money, right? And again, I'm not the best.

00:20:28 ◼   ► You don't have to spend money for something you don't want.

00:20:30 ◼   ► I don't have to spend money for something I'm not using at all.

00:20:33 ◼   ► And this is not like the HBO thing, which I completely forgot because I'm stupid.

00:20:38 ◼   ► This is like a thing that I kept repeating to myself, like, "Yeah, it's just $5,

00:20:42 ◼   ► and you're gonna play these games eventually, but you know what?

00:20:44 ◼   ► When does eventually become... Look, you gotta make a decision about this now."

00:20:50 ◼   ► because Arcade came out in September, so it's like over six months at this point that these games have been just sitting in a folder,

00:20:59 ◼   ► never played. And so I realized,

00:21:02 ◼   ► I want to see what happens if I stop paying for Apple Arcade, so I don't get access to these games anymore,

00:21:08 ◼   ► and let's see what happens. So I deleted those games from my iPad and I cancelled my Arcade subscription, and

00:21:15 ◼   ► I guess maybe there's potential in the future for something to come out on Apple Arcade which will convince me to

00:21:21 ◼   ► start paying for a subscription again

00:21:23 ◼   ► But we'll see what happens if that if that you know, such kind of game ever comes out right now

00:21:31 ◼   ► I'm not interested in the catalog of games. The the latest release is

00:21:36 ◼   ► really I

00:21:38 ◼   ► have no interest in those types of games and

00:21:42 ◼   ► And I've never played the full catalog.

00:21:45 ◼   ► So maybe...

00:21:47 ◼   ► Maybe I'm not the kind of person who needs Apple Arcade.

00:21:51 ◼   ► You know, I have such a huge backlog of games on my Nintendo Switch,

00:21:54 ◼   ► and those are like...

00:21:56 ◼   ► - Yes. - ...longer and more full, richer experiences.

00:22:02 ◼   ► You know, something like Luigi's Mansion, for example, I still need to play.

00:22:05 ◼   ► I have Final Fantasy VII Remake on my PS4 that I gotta play.

00:22:08 ◼   ► There's the DLC for Pokémon coming out next month.

00:22:11 ◼   ► And like, I wanna play those games, I'm not interested in a puzzle game from Apple Arcade.

00:22:17 ◼   ► So I think me and you are similar in the games that we enjoy in different platforms,

00:22:22 ◼   ► and I would like to see more quick, waste-in-time games in Apple Arcade.

00:22:30 ◼   ► Something like a Threes or a Card of Darkness, which is one of the original launch games.

00:22:36 ◼   ► Because that's the type of games I like to play on my iPhone.

00:22:39 ◼   ► like simple games like that. You know like, was it Grindstone was another one, like it's a more

00:22:45 ◼   ► simple puzzle game right, like they're good and the like platforming games and all that kind of

00:22:53 ◼   ► stuff which there are a lot of on Apple Arcade, I don't like playing those games without a controller

00:22:58 ◼   ► and if I'm gonna play a game with a controller I will play a game on my Switch and they will be

00:23:01 ◼   ► better platform games typically because it's a bigger platform itself like that it's got more

00:23:08 ◼   ► power going on. I will say for me personally I still think that Apple

00:23:16 ◼   ► Arcade is a very good deal. I don't play a lot of games on it now.

00:23:23 ◼   ► There's like one or two I'll pick up every now and then so like I'm kind of

00:23:27 ◼   ► happy with the subscription that I'm paying but what I'll say though is I

00:23:33 ◼   ► I think in hindsight, Apple didn't launch Apple Arcade the best way because there are

00:23:41 ◼   ► like 30 games that I still think to myself I would like to play sometime that were at

00:23:47 ◼   ► the launch and I've never played them.

00:23:50 ◼   ► If they would have maybe released those games over a longer period of time, I think it would

00:23:59 ◼   ► have changed both mine and your opinion on the service because they had a lot of good

00:24:04 ◼   ► games and they pushed them all out at once and then they would go week over week over

00:24:09 ◼   ► week and they would release some good some okay some like not interested kind of games

00:24:13 ◼   ► but if they would have maybe split out some of the launch stuff over a longer period of

00:24:17 ◼   ► time it may have ended up being a little bit more compelling than it has been for you maybe

00:24:25 ◼   ► for me. But I still think that the value, personally I think the value is there, but

00:24:29 ◼   ► it's like with everything. It's the same as your HBO thing. Don't pay for something if

00:24:33 ◼   ► you're not enjoying what it's giving you. It's pretty simple.

00:24:38 ◼   ► Yeah, especially now, you know, right now, I think we can all use saving a bit of money

00:24:45 ◼   ► if it's not a necessary expense of like if you're paying for something and you're not

00:24:48 ◼   ► actually using it. It's always good advice. But also at the same time, if you're looking

00:24:53 ◼   ► for some games and you have time to spend, you really won't find a bigger selection of

00:24:59 ◼   ► games for a cheaper price. Whether you will like those games or not is up to you, but

00:25:04 ◼   ► it's only $5 to try them, and you can try them all, right? Like in a month if you really

00:25:09 ◼   ► want to. So yeah, I think it's one of those things where you've done the right thing for

00:25:13 ◼   ► you, which is you've assessed if you think it's worth continuing the description or not,

00:25:18 ◼   ► and you've decided not to. And again, I reckon at some point there will be an Apple Arcade

00:25:24 ◼   ► game you want to play, but the good thing is it's super easy to just sign back up again.

00:25:28 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. Maybe. I do feel like we still haven't seen that, as in the gaming industry

00:25:37 ◼   ► they would say, the killer application for Apple Arcade. Like this must-have revolutionary

00:25:44 ◼   ► game that is like 3s but exclusive to Apple Arcade. There have been some really good games,

00:25:50 ◼   ► but there hasn't been a single game that has completely changed your expectations in terms

00:25:56 ◼   ► of like mobile gaming like, I don't know, 3s or Tiny Wings or Angry Birds did back in

00:26:01 ◼   ► the day. There's a bunch of really good games, but I don't think a really good game is enough.

00:26:09 ◼   ► now with this abundance of just media and content everywhere, I don't think just being

00:26:15 ◼   ► really good is enough.

00:26:16 ◼   ► Well, this is the exact same argument to make about Apple TV+.

00:26:20 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:26:21 ◼   ► They have not had the killer show yet.

00:26:25 ◼   ► They've had some good shows, they've had some really good shows, but they haven't yet had

00:26:29 ◼   ► a show that would get a lot of people to sign up for it if it was free.

00:26:34 ◼   ► They just haven't had it yet.

00:26:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree.

00:26:37 ◼   ► happens to all those apps when your subscription ends? You just can't launch

00:26:41 ◼   ► them? Do you know yet? I don't know. I don't know because I think it's

00:26:47 ◼   ► expiring in like a couple of weeks. Follow up! Yeah I can still launch them

00:26:52 ◼   ► but... Yeah keep some of them installed so just to see what happens. Like do

00:26:56 ◼   ► they delete? Like what ends up happening? I'd be interested to know that.

00:27:00 ◼   ► I'll try that. Okay. Okay. I want to talk a little bit about the finder,

00:27:06 ◼   ► Everyone's favorite topic. It's your game. Yes, sometimes using the finder is like a

00:27:11 ◼   ► game. Where did this folder go? Why have my preferences changed? Okay, so there's

00:27:16 ◼   ► been a lot of conversation about how Catalina feels slower than it needs to

00:27:19 ◼   ► be. I'm not really having that conversation today, although I think

00:27:22 ◼   ► there's a lot of stuff there. But I was having a lot of beach balls, like

00:27:27 ◼   ► opening and saving documents or even like navigating around the finder. So

00:27:32 ◼   ► like being in finder and hitting a shortcut to go to my home folder, I get a beach ball

00:27:36 ◼   ► for like three or four seconds and the window would open, which is unacceptable on any computer,

00:27:41 ◼   ► let alone a very powerful one.

00:27:44 ◼   ► So that was going on.

00:27:46 ◼   ► I would also have hangs on like shut down or reboot.

00:27:49 ◼   ► I think john talked about an ATP recently, an SMC reset fix that for him.

00:27:55 ◼   ► So I decided as I could look I have a kind of like this weird stuff going on.

00:27:59 ◼   ► And so last week, I opted to reinstall Mac OS from the recovery partition, which is really

00:28:05 ◼   ► easy to do.

00:28:07 ◼   ► You just boot into the recovery partition, you say, Hey, I want to reinstall on this

00:28:10 ◼   ► drive and it just does it.

00:28:12 ◼   ► That cleared up almost all of the issues, including another issue I was having where

00:28:16 ◼   ► every time I logged in, I would get a notice that a firmware update was available for my

00:28:22 ◼   ► video card, but it wouldn't ever run.

00:28:25 ◼   ► Like it was just, I did okay, nothing would happen.

00:28:28 ◼   ► got cleared up as well. But I was still having some hangs and finder and so I went in and

00:28:35 ◼   ► deleted all the finder preference files from my home folder rebooted and yeah, like you

00:28:41 ◼   ► lose some settings, but it just takes a few seconds to fix them. And it's totally cleared

00:28:46 ◼   ► up my issues. So I don't know if I needed to reinstall Mac OS I probably did that the

00:28:51 ◼   ► more extreme fix first. It's like the worst way to fix any problem with Mac OS is to reinstall

00:28:58 ◼   ► it. Yeah, it's terrible. Yeah, but because I was having some other issues like that video

00:29:02 ◼   ► card from or thing is like, you know, let's just, let's just reinstall this. I've migrated

00:29:08 ◼   ► my same account over and over and over that may have hurt the Finder preferences issue.

00:29:13 ◼   ► I don't know. But it shouldn't know. It should know it shouldn't like none of this should

00:29:17 ◼   ► happen. But it does sometimes. And this was before Mac OS Catalina 10.15.5 came out yesterday

00:29:25 ◼   ► on the 26th. And maybe that has fixed it for some people. But I've heard from people I've

00:29:31 ◼   ► seen people online talking about how finder can be can be slow or can can hang on them

00:29:37 ◼   ► in Catalina. And for me, at least some combination of these things. That's pretty much just cleared

00:29:42 ◼   ► it up for me. The 15 five notes include, like big file copies to and from raid arrays. I

00:29:51 ◼   ► don't have any rate arrays in my life anymore so I don't think that was the

00:29:55 ◼   ► issue I was having but maybe it's related somehow some sort of issue and

00:29:59 ◼   ► finder as far as moving files around but it also includes the notebook battery

00:30:05 ◼   ► changes we spoke about this last month Jason got to look at it in the beta and

00:30:11 ◼   ► wrote this great post about how it works where and it is enabled by default and

00:30:16 ◼   ► this Catalina update I think I think everyone should leave it on where it

00:30:19 ◼   ► will do some of the smart battery health stuff. So if you're like my wife, you know, Mary

00:30:24 ◼   ► leaves her MacBook Air plugged in, basically all the time, she uses it in clamshell mode

00:30:29 ◼   ► behind an LG 4k display. And now it will basically do things to keep that battery healthy, it's

00:30:35 ◼   ► not always going to be charging, it's going to let it run down, it won't charge it all

00:30:38 ◼   ► the way back up, it's got a bunch of stuff it can do. And so that's out as well. In 10

00:30:45 ◼   ► I have it on my MacBook Pro, it seemed to be fine.

00:30:49 ◼   ► The battery stuff, I went in there, there's a new section in the energy settings, it's

00:30:53 ◼   ► just a preference as you can see what it's doing, you can turn it off if you want.

00:30:56 ◼   ► But again, it's on by default, and I think that that's a good default.

00:31:01 ◼   ► I mean, this is, I guess, a good example of learning something from iOS and bringing it

00:31:06 ◼   ► to the Mac, right?

00:31:07 ◼   ► Like this is knowledge that they've accumulated through devices where they have to do this,

00:31:13 ◼   ► right?

00:31:14 ◼   ► good and bad, right, like in Apple's history. I think it was very obvious why they spoke

00:31:19 ◼   ► to some people in the press about these before, like as it came out in the beta channel, because

00:31:25 ◼   ► obviously there was such a big brouhaha when this was discovered on the iPhone, right?

00:31:33 ◼   ► And like people were thinking that their batteries were getting throttled and Apple was forcing

00:31:38 ◼   ► the obsolescence thing, right, which is like such a tantalising story that people like

00:31:43 ◼   ► to grab on to. So it makes sense that they came out ahead of this with the with the max

00:31:50 ◼   ► stuff. But it seems good though, right to to be monitoring this to make sure that your

00:31:55 ◼   ► battery is is staying staying good and healthy. There's no no harm in it.

00:32:01 ◼   ► No and there's language in the screen is like hey, batteries are consumable they wear down

00:32:05 ◼   ► over time. So I think they've learned their lessons from the iPhone thing where they're

00:32:08 ◼   ► really explaining what this is doing. And you can totally go turn it off if you want.

00:32:13 ◼   ► But I think for most people it'll be a good thing for their notebooks.

00:32:17 ◼   ► I think a lot of people are like Mary, right?

00:32:19 ◼   ► With their notebooks just plugged in a lot of the time, if not all the time.

00:32:23 ◼   ► I really wonder what the next version of macOS is going to look like.

00:32:28 ◼   ► Maybe we can do this in one of our Anticipate in WWDC segments.

00:32:33 ◼   ► We can maybe hand that one over to you, Steven, to kind of think that through a little bit,

00:32:37 ◼   ► because I have no idea.

00:32:40 ◼   ► But I say this purely because Catalina has been, I think, pretty unfavorably received

00:32:47 ◼   ► throughout its life.

00:32:48 ◼   ► Like iOS 13, we're good now, you know?

00:32:53 ◼   ► It had a rocky start, but I feel like it's fine now.

00:32:59 ◼   ► I don't have any problems with my iOS devices where I'm like, "Oh man, iOS 13."

00:33:03 ◼   ► Right?

00:33:04 ◼   ► Do you guys ever feel that anymore?

00:33:05 ◼   ► Like it was bad to begin, but it feels better now.

00:33:08 ◼   ► But I still feel like I'm hearing complaints like this about Catalina not really being

00:33:13 ◼   ► in the best possible shape.

00:33:15 ◼   ► Do you, I guess the bigger question is, do you ever hear good things from Mac users about

00:33:23 ◼   ► macOS?

00:33:26 ◼   ► Not so much these days I feel like.

00:33:29 ◼   ► Maybe that battery thing was was warmly received but maybe Stephen is better placed for this

00:33:35 ◼   ► question.

00:33:36 ◼   ► As an outsider, I just feel like there's always some kind of complaining going on with MacOS

00:33:42 ◼   ► more than iOS for sure.

00:33:44 ◼   ► Like as you mentioned, iOS 13 was bad at the beginning, but then it kind of slowed down

00:33:48 ◼   ► because Apple released a ton of updates.

00:33:51 ◼   ► But with MacOS, there's always some kind of controversy going on.

00:33:54 ◼   ► Well, I feel like, again, as like kind of partly an outsider on this, I'm like running

00:34:00 ◼   ► Catalina, right?

00:34:01 ◼   ► Like this is a thing that I always stay behind.

00:34:04 ◼   ► I feel like it would be likely to be more frustrated when there are issues being introduced

00:34:11 ◼   ► and not a lot of really good new features.

00:34:15 ◼   ► At least on iOS, we get big features every year that are new and are tailor-made for

00:34:23 ◼   ► the platform.

00:34:24 ◼   ► It feels like macOS doesn't really get a lot unless it has to have it because iOS has it.

00:34:33 ◼   ► So I can imagine that if you are somebody that really cares about Mac OS, that it would

00:34:38 ◼   ► make you more likely to be frustrated if one, you're not getting a lot of development that

00:34:44 ◼   ► you're happy about, and two, just more bugs are being introduced into what was previously

00:34:50 ◼   ► a solid system.

00:34:52 ◼   ► In the case of Catalina, not even bugs, just worse user experiences in the sake of something

00:34:57 ◼   ► you feel like is not necessary because you've been using Macs for however many tens of years

00:35:02 ◼   ► and you've been fine and now it's asking you 20 times if you want to install something.

00:35:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that that's a real issue here. The user base has maybe been around longer,

00:35:15 ◼   ► that for the most part Mac people who would complain about MacOS are very die-hard Mac fans,

00:35:23 ◼   ► right? So they're maybe more plugged in, they're more sort of ready to go for this sort of thing.

00:35:27 ◼   ► But I think too, the age of the platform comes into play as well, where those days of big,

00:35:34 ◼   ► big new features are pretty much behind macOS. And really, I think iOS is coming to that point too.

00:35:41 ◼   ► I think the long list of big features we had for iOS five years ago is way longer than it would be

00:35:46 ◼   ► now. Not that there's still not things we want in both, but those big, like, "It really needs this,"

00:35:51 ◼   ► you know, a lot of those boxes have been checked now.

00:35:54 ◼   ► Yeah, iPad OS has more of them than iOS now.

00:35:57 ◼   ► Absolutely. Totally agree.

00:35:59 ◼   ► But like I figure, you know, like if the platform was just stable and they mostly left it alone,

00:36:06 ◼   ► people would probably feel better about it, but I think it's when you introduce

00:36:10 ◼   ► things which are taken negatively that it makes it feel worse, you know?

00:36:16 ◼   ► Yep. And you know, maybe just the Mac OS people are a little more cranky.

00:36:20 ◼   ► It's true too, I think.

00:36:21 ◼   ► And that's also a factor to consider.

00:36:24 ◼   ► I think it is, you know.

00:36:25 ◼   ► I think there's also...

00:36:26 ◼   ► There should be like a Venn diagram

00:36:29 ◼   ► of like people who complain about macOS in public

00:36:32 ◼   ► and have a blog and age.

00:36:35 ◼   ► I do feel like there's a correlation there, you know.

00:36:39 ◼   ► I would like to excuse myself from this debate.

00:36:42 ◼   ► No, I mean, what... like, there's...

00:36:45 ◼   ► What's the URL in your blog again?

00:36:47 ◼   ► It's not really a debate.

00:36:48 ◼   ► -For the record? -Grubstories.com.

00:36:49 ◼   ► I think it's perfectly natural that the older you grow,

00:36:53 ◼   ► the crankier you get. Well I know I'm getting crankier. Me too!

00:36:57 ◼   ► There's nothing like aging is natural like we should you know it's not

00:37:03 ◼   ► something that I'm discriminating against it's just it's a natural thing

00:37:06 ◼   ► and people who have blogs where they complain about things they're also people

00:37:12 ◼   ► a certain age I don't think you will find a blog by a 15 year old where

00:37:16 ◼   ► they're complaining about things all the time because it's only natural that

00:37:20 ◼   ► you tend to be optimistic and have a more positive outlook on things when you're younger.

00:37:24 ◼   ► I would like to introduce you to the gaming industry.

00:37:27 ◼   ► Yes, exactly. So...

00:37:29 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:37:30 ◼   ► That's young angry people.

00:37:32 ◼   ► However, I also feel like it would be nice, and I'm using that adjective,

00:37:37 ◼   ► it would be just nice to hear some positive things every once in a while.

00:37:43 ◼   ► Not because you want to excuse Apple, not because you're a fanboy and blah blah blah,

00:37:47 ◼   ► but just because it's nice to hear, like...

00:37:49 ◼   ► Like, here's something that works, you know?

00:37:51 ◼   ► I think it is becoming more difficult.

00:37:54 ◼   ► Oh yeah, it's out of fashion, right?

00:37:56 ◼   ► Being a nice person.

00:37:57 ◼   ► No, that's not what I'm saying.

00:37:58 ◼   ► I know what you mean.

00:37:59 ◼   ► And you know what I mean.

00:38:00 ◼   ► I know what you're saying, but I do feel like

00:38:02 ◼   ► that the rhetoric now surrounding the Mac.

00:38:07 ◼   ► That's a good word.

00:38:09 ◼   ► You use all the right words.

00:38:11 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:38:12 ◼   ► It warrants itself, like I believe that they're,

00:38:16 ◼   ► Look, it's like, how can you be happy about your laptop when the keyboard keeps breaking?

00:38:27 ◼   ► How can you be happy about the hardware that you're using when the company seems completely

00:38:33 ◼   ► lost?

00:38:35 ◼   ► Which is where Apple seemed to have been a couple of years ago, right?

00:38:38 ◼   ► But they're not anymore.

00:38:39 ◼   ► The keyboards are terrible.

00:38:40 ◼   ► No, but like, okay, I know, I'm getting to it.

00:38:41 ◼   ► The keyboards are terrible.

00:38:43 ◼   ► The Mac Pro is catching on fire.

00:38:45 ◼   ► it's all bad and we're going to fix it. But then when they say they're going to fix it,

00:38:48 ◼   ► it's going to take them a long time. So they say they're going to fix it, but then they

00:38:51 ◼   ► release like three more laptops that have the bad keyboard in them, right? So you're

00:38:55 ◼   ► getting more frustrated and you're looking for some kind of release from it, but there

00:39:05 ◼   ► isn't any because nothing's really happening on the software side, right? Because it is

00:39:10 ◼   ► this mature platform and a lot of I think the software enhancements that people want

00:39:15 ◼   ► maybe also need hardware. So like I'm talking like having LTE in the Mac or whatever right

00:39:20 ◼   ► but like you can't do that without the hardware component but they're already behind on the

00:39:24 ◼   ► hardware so the software kind of has to wait and then also it can be I sympathize with the idea of

00:39:33 ◼   ► like I feel like my thing isn't being cared about and the company that tells me they care

00:39:40 ◼   ► about my thing seems to be very occupied with other things that aren't what I want, right?

00:39:48 ◼   ► Like oh they make TV shows now and I know it's like a joke that we make like it's not

00:39:52 ◼   ► the same people, that's true but leadership's still the same, right? So like the focus of

00:39:58 ◼   ► the company may be put into other areas and it gets to a certain bottleneck at the top

00:40:04 ◼   ► and they're like, just give them that keyboard again, right? Like, I don't know. But I'm

00:40:08 ◼   ► just saying like that this is like a perception that can be drawn, I think. So I have some

00:40:15 ◼   ► sympathy for people that feel like they're getting left out in the cold, because I feel

00:40:21 ◼   ► like I can put myself in that situation. Because I remember what it was like with the iPad

00:40:27 ◼   ► like two or three years ago. Yeah, but even then, if you kept using the

00:40:33 ◼   ► iPad or in this case if you kept using a Mac, there must have been something you liked about

00:40:37 ◼   ► it, right? Otherwise, why haven't you switched to something else? And there have been people

00:40:42 ◼   ► who switched to something else. I mean, because you can try, but the reasons

00:40:49 ◼   ► that you like the Mac become very apparent when you start using Windows, right?

00:40:53 ◼   ► Exactly. So I don't know, I just feel like, and this is again just my personal opinion,

00:40:58 ◼   ► I don't think that constant complaining, making everything sound like it's the apocalypse,

00:41:02 ◼   ► I don't think it makes for good entertainment, but that's just me.

00:41:05 ◼   ► Well, it depends on your audience.

00:41:07 ◼   ► Sure, sure. I guess I'm not that kind of person then.

00:41:11 ◼   ► But yeah, I mean, we're gonna complain about shortcuts in a bit.

00:41:14 ◼   ► Yeah, so like, you know, I was gonna say, you've got the rest of this document here.

00:41:18 ◼   ► It's just like, I always try to keep this angle in life, you know, even when I complain about things,

00:41:22 ◼   ► even when things are not great and we always try to look at the positive side of it. It's

00:41:26 ◼   ► just, I don't know, it's just who I am as a person. But yeah, why are we even talking

00:41:33 ◼   ► about this?

00:41:34 ◼   ► I don't know how we got here.

00:41:35 ◼   ► Yeah, me neither.

00:41:36 ◼   ► Because people are upset about Catalina.

00:41:38 ◼   ► Oh yeah, Catalina.

00:41:39 ◼   ► I just think that it is perfectly fine to be frustrated and to be disappointed and to

00:41:47 ◼   ► express that. But I also subscribe to the second part of your theory of "but still try

00:41:52 ◼   ► to look for the positive things. I think it's really important. Because it will make you

00:41:56 ◼   ► happy. But just because you want to be positive doesn't mean that you can't be critical as

00:42:02 ◼   ► well. No, no, no, no, for sure. And it's a very tricky balance to make those two things

00:42:07 ◼   ► go exist, right? Especially if you are, like if you have a podcast or if you have a blog

00:42:11 ◼   ► where you write things. It's really hard to try and be critical and enthusiastic is not

00:42:20 ◼   ► the right word, but I have a positive outlook on technology at the same time, especially

00:42:24 ◼   ► during these times. But me personally, I think I always try to do that. So even when I complain

00:42:31 ◼   ► about things, I try to look at the bigger picture and realize there must be something that I like

00:42:35 ◼   ► about this service or this computer or this product, otherwise why would I even use it?

00:42:40 ◼   ► And I think it's important to keep that in mind, because I don't want to sound like the kind of

00:42:43 ◼   ► person who creates content, right? Ugly expression, but it is what it is. Just to complain about

00:42:49 ◼   ► stuff. I understand that there's an audience for that type of entertainment.

00:42:54 ◼   ► It's just not the kind of entertainment that I crave personally and that I want

00:42:58 ◼   ► to create. So this is like, like, ah, so many people are gonna be so upset. But, you

00:43:06 ◼   ► know, whatever. Just what I feel. If people want to be critical to you, they also

00:43:10 ◼   ► have to tell you one thing they like about you. Right? Just imagine, just

00:43:15 ◼   ► Just imagine in life, if everybody operated like that, imagine how much better off we

00:43:23 ◼   ► would all be.

00:43:24 ◼   ► What if we all tried to look on the bright side a little bit more?

00:43:27 ◼   ► But no, like if we complimented each other more often, even.

00:43:31 ◼   ► You know?

00:43:32 ◼   ► Like people get upset that they don't compliment even their friends.

00:43:36 ◼   ► You know, this is like a huge tangent.

00:43:39 ◼   ► Have you listened to the latest record by the 1975s?

00:43:42 ◼   ► Not yet.

00:43:43 ◼   ► Okay.

00:43:44 ◼   ► There's one song at the end called "Guys", the very last song of the album. It's called

00:43:48 ◼   ► "Guys". And all the song is, is basically a love letter from Matt Healy, who's the main

00:43:55 ◼   ► singer of the 1975, to his bandmates. It's basically the whole premise of the song is

00:44:01 ◼   ► "I love you guys". It's just nice, you know, to say something nice to other people. And

00:44:10 ◼   ► That's my outlook on life.

00:44:13 ◼   ► Anyway, please let's...

00:44:14 ◼   ► Federico, I love the way you think.

00:44:16 ◼   ► I love the way your brain works.

00:44:17 ◼   ► Yeah, thank you.

00:44:19 ◼   ► I appreciate it.

00:44:20 ◼   ► Steven, best live show.

00:44:22 ◼   ► Device, computer breaker, and personal faults.

00:44:25 ◼   ► And also very good at live shows.

00:44:27 ◼   ► Steven's very good at live shows.

00:44:28 ◼   ► Which is a shame, because we're not doing them.

00:44:30 ◼   ► It's not a useful tool this year.

00:44:32 ◼   ► Yeah, as soon as we get to do them, you're going to be the best.

00:44:36 ◼   ► All right, well let's take a break.

00:44:39 ◼   ► This episode is brought to you by our friends Pingdom at SolarWinds.

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00:44:59 ◼   ► affect your visitors experience so you can take action before your business is impacted.

00:45:05 ◼   ► how visitors experience your website that differs depending on their browser,

00:45:08 ◼   ► device, platform, location, there's a lot of stuff that goes into this. So you want

00:45:14 ◼   ► to identify how visitors are experiencing your site so you can make

00:45:17 ◼   ► informed decisions when building in optimizations to deliver a great

00:45:21 ◼   ► performance to those who matter most. This real user monitoring is an event

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00:45:40 ◼   ► Pingdom. Go to Pingdom.com/RelayFM right now for a 14-day free trial with

00:45:47 ◼   ► no credit card required. When you sign up use the code "Connected" at checkout to

00:45:51 ◼   ► get an awesome 30% off your first invoice. Our thanks to Pingdom from

00:45:55 ◼   ► SolarWinds for the support of this show and Relay FM. I'm very afraid, guys.

00:46:01 ◼   ► Why? You shouldn't be. Because Tiny Topic 2, all it says in our document is "leave

00:46:06 ◼   ► this to Federico for surprise." Oh no, I have a tattoo! How did that happen?

00:46:12 ◼   ► No, no, no tattoo, no new tattoos. But I do have a surprise. So if you are a Relay

00:46:20 ◼   ► FM member, you have access to the Discord, and by having access to the Discord you will

00:46:27 ◼   ► get to participate live in this surprise, so I guess that's one of the incentives of

00:46:32 ◼   ► signing up for a real FM membership. I'm gonna upload a photo here of something that I've

00:46:38 ◼   ► been using for the past few weeks without telling anybody, except Sylvia. So...

00:46:43 ◼   ► Can I share this with the show notes though? So people listening later can still see it?

00:46:49 ◼   ► See, now I get to complain about macOS. Why is this photo getting rotated when I paste it into the Discord?

00:46:55 ◼   ► Just let it go, people can work it out.

00:46:57 ◼   ► No, it looks stupid if it's rotated.

00:47:01 ◼   ► Okay.

00:47:01 ◼   ► Upload it right now to the Discord, again sign up for a little if I'm membership, and you will get to see what I've been losing for the past few weeks.

00:47:10 ◼   ► Oh yeah!

00:47:11 ◼   ► Steven was right!

00:47:12 ◼   ► Steven was right.

00:47:13 ◼   ► Time! Right there!

00:47:14 ◼   ► Steven was right.

00:47:15 ◼   ► Steven was right.

00:47:16 ◼   ► was right. It is an iPad mini. Yes, yes it is an iPad mini that I've been using for the

00:47:23 ◼   ► past few weeks and I think I'm in love. So I, first of all, as with all things, I blame

00:47:31 ◼   ► John Borhis. Yup. Poor John. John published a really, really good story about the iPad

00:47:39 ◼   ► mini as this sort of hybrid work and entertainment device a couple of months ago on Mac Stories.

00:47:45 ◼   ► And I've been itching to try one ever since, and I...

00:47:50 ◼   ► Yeah, so I've been using this for the past couple of weeks, but primarily as an entertainment

00:47:55 ◼   ► machine, and I really, really love it.

00:47:59 ◼   ► Like in a way that I was not expecting to, honestly.

00:48:02 ◼   ► So I primarily use this iPad to read stuff and to watch videos.

00:48:08 ◼   ► So either YouTube or Twitch.

00:48:10 ◼   ► And it's just...

00:48:11 ◼   ► First of all, it's just so comfortable to hold.

00:48:13 ◼   ► And I thought, you know, the old, the industrial design with the home button, I thought that

00:48:18 ◼   ► was gonna be a deal breaker for me, having this old design and huge bezels, with huge

00:48:23 ◼   ► bezels.

00:48:24 ◼   ► Honestly, yeah, it's not as good looking as the 11 inch iPad Pro.

00:48:30 ◼   ► Boy, is it so much more comfortable to hold.

00:48:33 ◼   ► It's so lightweight.

00:48:35 ◼   ► It just feels fake when you hold it the first time.

00:48:39 ◼   ► Like it's almost as if my brain had forgotten how thin and small and lightweight an iPad

00:48:47 ◼   ► Mini was.

00:48:48 ◼   ► But I guess the funny thing is though, right, that like it's thicker than the iPad Pro.

00:48:53 ◼   ► It is?

00:48:54 ◼   ► In other words, it doesn't feel like that.

00:48:57 ◼   ► The at least the 11 inch, yeah that was the thing, the 11 inch iPad Pro is the thinnest

00:49:02 ◼   ► iOS device ever made.

00:49:04 ◼   ► Well, it doesn't feel like that.

00:49:06 ◼   ► I haven't, yeah.

00:49:07 ◼   ► There's going to be a weight and density thing which is going to make it feel different.

00:49:10 ◼   ► But that, I remember that being one of the things that we were, again, at the time, really

00:49:17 ◼   ► surprised about.

00:49:18 ◼   ► That like, how is this possible?

00:49:20 ◼   ► But it is.

00:49:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:22 ◼   ► But yeah.

00:49:23 ◼   ► So reading stuff, either in Safari or in Reader, which I use both for RSS and Read Later material,

00:49:31 ◼   ► it feels really good to do in portrait, just holding the iPad with one hand.

00:49:35 ◼   ► basically a bigger iPhone, but it's smaller and more comfortable to hold than the 11-inch

00:49:41 ◼   ► iPad Pro, because it's so much lighter. And it just basically feels like a Kindle, but

00:49:47 ◼   ► it's an iPad, which means I also get to install apps on it. And this is the perfect size iPad

00:49:54 ◼   ► for when I'm doing the dishes in the kitchen, I can just place this iPad in landscape, propped

00:50:02 ◼   ► with the Smart Cover that I have and watch either Twitch streams or YouTube videos, like on the side.

00:50:08 ◼   ► It fits just perfectly in that side, one corner of the kitchen countertop. So as I do the wishes,

00:50:16 ◼   ► I can watch videos and keep it like an AirPod on without bothering Sylvia. It's really, really good.

00:50:23 ◼   ► And I've been using it to just like... You're not gonna like this mic, but I've been using it to

00:50:29 ◼   ► enter quick notes into tot. Yes, but I don't like it. I'm using tot, it's open on my Mac.

00:50:35 ◼   ► Okay. It's great to type on the iPad mini in portrait. It's so good to type again, like with

00:50:43 ◼   ► proper thumb typing in portrait, I agree. And I haven't put in any other work stuff on it.

00:50:50 ◼   ► I do have my shortcuts because they sync with iCloud and basically all the work-related

00:50:58 ◼   ► stuff that I have, you may consider maybe Reader, Twitter, and Apple Notes. But I don't have my email

00:51:05 ◼   ► accounts, I don't have stuff like my text editor, for example, because I have not been using this as

00:51:13 ◼   ► a work device at all. But if I come across a link that I want to save for later, then sure, I'll

00:51:19 ◼   ► throw it in there. And maybe I think I will also put devon.think on this iPad, because if I'm going

00:51:25 ◼   ► I'm gonna read stuff, then I should be able to read the PDF that I save into Devontinq as well.

00:51:30 ◼   ► But yeah, it's primarily an entertainment device. I really love the size.

00:51:35 ◼   ► I was really surprised, honestly, about how much I'm liking this iPad Mini.

00:51:40 ◼   ► I am considering to install AltStore on it and try and play GameCube games on this iPad Mini using a controller.

00:51:53 ◼   ► I already installed AltStore, which is this third-party app store that allows you to install stuff that wouldn't be allowed on the Apple App Store.

00:52:03 ◼   ► We are not endorsing this to anyone.

00:52:08 ◼   ► No, we are not. But it's something that exists.

00:52:10 ◼   ► This iPad is still on iPadOS 13.4 for this very reason.

00:52:15 ◼   ► You're holding off the update in case you want to do it, right?

00:52:18 ◼   ► Yeah, because I want to do it.

00:52:20 ◼   ► Basically, I'm holding off because I have a bit of a craving for playing Metroid Prime again.

00:52:28 ◼   ► And I could play Metroid Prime using an emulator that is available via Alts Store.

00:52:35 ◼   ► But there's also a rumor going around again that Metroid Prime, the trilogy, may be coming with the remastered version on the Nintendo Switch.

00:52:42 ◼   ► Yeah, it's definitely going to do it.

00:52:44 ◼   ► So, I am definitely going to do it.

00:52:46 ◼   ► Also, I wanted to buy the Gamevice accessory for this iPad Mini, because I do feel like...

00:52:54 ◼   ► And we just spoke about Apple Arcade, but there are some almost console quality experiences from the App Store

00:53:02 ◼   ► that I kind of want to try on this iPad Mini, like Dead Cells, for example, really excellent roguelike

00:53:07 ◼   ► that I actually played on the Nintendo Switch a couple of years ago that I could play on the iPad Mini again.

00:53:13 ◼   ► and John recommended the Gamevice Mini accessory for the iPad Mini.

00:53:17 ◼   ► However, the only Gamevice Mini that I found on Amazon Italy

00:53:21 ◼   ► does not show compatibility for this specific iPad Mini model.

00:53:26 ◼   ► So I'm...

00:53:28 ◼   ► And I guess I gotta buy it directly from the Gamevice website. Anyway...

00:53:32 ◼   ► Really good for reading, really good for watching videos.

00:53:36 ◼   ► However, I will mention that I can absolutely tell the difference in terms of

00:53:42 ◼   ► it doesn't have the four speaker system.

00:53:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, the speaker's pretty bad.

00:53:48 ◼   ► - Speakers are pretty bad.

00:53:49 ◼   ► - Also, it's like the speakers on the other iPads

00:53:52 ◼   ► are so good that you start to realize

00:53:57 ◼   ► that other speakers aren't as good.

00:54:01 ◼   ► It is unfair to the iPad Mini

00:54:04 ◼   ► because of how good the iPad Pro speakers are.

00:54:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that's true.

00:54:09 ◼   ► One thing that I have found too nice about the the iPad mini is to have something that is

00:54:16 ◼   ► It doesn't really fit in your pocket

00:54:20 ◼   ► But like if you need to take it somewhere like the 11-inch especially since I put the keyboard on it

00:54:26 ◼   ► It's like oh, I'm taking a laptop around and I don't always

00:54:29 ◼   ► want that so like

00:54:31 ◼   ► The other day like just watching some video and reading in the hammock like I left the big iPad inside and just took the mini

00:54:37 ◼   ► Even though I'd prefer the better speakers like this is like really lightweight

00:54:41 ◼   ► And I don't have to leave the keyboard somewhere if I don't want it. It's just kind of nice to have something. That's really

00:54:45 ◼   ► simple

00:54:47 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. Yeah, in fact. I don't have a keyboard for this

00:54:50 ◼   ► I only have a cover which I bought in the cactus color. It looks really nice

00:54:55 ◼   ► And yes, so this is basically the surprise nothing fancy. I'm just using an even smaller iPad for entertainment stuff

00:55:03 ◼   ► So just I have this specs. It's the iPad minis 300 grams the

00:55:08 ◼   ► 11 inch iPad Pro just that was 471

00:55:12 ◼   ► It is 6.1 millimeters thick and the iPad pros both of them are 5.9. Oh

00:55:18 ◼   ► Wow, it's pretty close. Yeah, I know that sounds like one of those things

00:55:23 ◼   ► It's like there's no way you can be right about that. Like it doesn't make any sense. I mean, I don't know

00:55:28 ◼   ► Does the iPad mini have tapering? It doesn't anymore. Does it like it's flat on the back?

00:55:32 ◼   ► it's just got rounded edges. It does have the rounded... But it's not like... it's just rounded,

00:55:38 ◼   ► it's not like tapered, it's not like there is a... no it's like thinner than the middle.

00:55:42 ◼   ► Yeah. I wanted to just bring up here while we're talking about the iPad Mini I saw a rumor go by

00:55:51 ◼   ► a week or so ago about... from Ming-Chi Kuo about a new iPad Mini supposedly coming in 2021 with an

00:55:59 ◼   ► 8 somewhere between 8.5 to 9 inch screen. It's currently 7.8 I believe is the so it's a bigger

00:56:08 ◼   ► screen so you'd probably assume maybe smaller smaller bezels. Quo did also report that in-screen

00:56:14 ◼   ► touch id is coming to the iPad but didn't say which model specifically but I think that like

00:56:20 ◼   ► an eight and a half inch iPad mini with iPad pro sized bezels better speakers and in-screen touch

00:56:29 ◼   ► I would buy that product. It would be amazing. I already love the iPad Mini with the old

00:56:36 ◼   ► design, with a brand new design. Man, sign me up instantly. Can you imagine if they just

00:56:42 ◼   ► brought that right in? It's just this tiny book-sized thing. Oh my god, it would be amazing.

00:56:50 ◼   ► It would be incredible. That would be a really cool product for stuff like this. But yeah,

00:56:53 ◼   ► So I guess I can consider myself once again a multi-pad person.

00:56:59 ◼   ► Yeah, me for the first time.

00:57:01 ◼   ► Oh no, I've joined the club.

00:57:04 ◼   ► Welcome to the club.

00:57:05 ◼   ► You're not doing it the same way I am, but I'm happy you're all part of it.

00:57:08 ◼   ► The club doesn't discriminate.

00:57:09 ◼   ► That's true.

00:57:11 ◼   ► We are #ipadminifamily.

00:57:15 ◼   ► What's the name for this?

00:57:17 ◼   ► We have club, gang, and crew taken already.

00:57:22 ◼   ► So iPad mini.

00:57:23 ◼   ► - iPad mini menagerie?

00:57:25 ◼   ► - iPad mini collective?

00:57:26 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:57:27 ◼   ► - Collective.

00:57:28 ◼   ► - That feels like something to work on maybe.

00:57:33 ◼   ► - Sure, we need better branding, Steven.

00:57:36 ◼   ► - Okay, put that on the list.

00:57:38 ◼   ► Well, I'm glad you're liking it.

00:57:41 ◼   ► I think it's a fantastic little device.

00:57:42 ◼   ► And the rumor of one that maybe grows in size a little bit

00:57:46 ◼   ► or loses the bezels would be really exciting.

00:57:49 ◼   ► 'Cause there's a bunch of old iPads in my house.

00:57:51 ◼   ► like my kids have the regular iPad from I think one generation ago, my wife has my 10

00:57:56 ◼   ► and a half inch iPad Pro. And those bezels aren't as noticeable in the mini, it's like

00:58:00 ◼   ► the bezel to screen ratio on the mini is way worse because the screen is smaller. But I

00:58:05 ◼   ► think to the in print the in screen fingerprint reader is really interesting, because it means

00:58:10 ◼   ► all the iPads could look the same, but only the nice ones have face ID. And that really,

00:58:15 ◼   ► you know, that more expensive component and what's required to do that. That's a pretty

00:58:19 ◼   ► interesting deal because I think a lot of people notice that the other iPads

00:58:23 ◼   ► will look older and that's not gonna get any better with time. I don't know if

00:58:27 ◼   ► they're gonna get the flat sides though. I doubt that. Yeah but if they

00:58:31 ◼   ► brought the bezels and just modernized it some. It would just be better. Do you remember when the iPad

00:58:37 ◼   ► Mini launched how wild it was that the bezels are so thin on the side? Uh-huh.

00:58:42 ◼   ► Because it was the first one that got slimmed down. It was and then the iPad

00:58:46 ◼   ► Air basically copied its design. You know, for a while like the iPad and iPad

00:58:52 ◼   ► Mini were more or less the same. Yeah, that was the original, you know, like we

00:58:56 ◼   ► have the iPhones now it's mostly like, oh, they're the same device you just choose

00:59:01 ◼   ► your screen size or whatever. That was what that iPad, do you remember that? When

00:59:05 ◼   ► it was like the iPad Mini and the iPad Air and they were completely the

00:59:09 ◼   ► same spec wise. And that was like a real positive because it was this iPad Mini,

00:59:15 ◼   ► because everybody loved the iPad mini more at that time, it made I think the most sense

00:59:19 ◼   ► for most people, was this incredibly powerful device in such a small form factor.

00:59:28 ◼   ► You know, honestly, for nostalgia's sake, I would like to see a new iPad mini, right?

00:59:33 ◼   ► Because I have so much nostalgia for that original iPad mini, which honestly, I think

00:59:38 ◼   ► basically looks exactly the same as the one that you've got now.

00:59:42 ◼   ► I don't think it changed at all.

00:59:44 ◼   ► It hasn't. They added the Touch ID ring and that's basically it. Yeah, and I would love to see a

00:59:50 ◼   ► 2021

00:59:52 ◼   ► reimagined product

00:59:54 ◼   ► And that would be exciting. I just think it would be nice to see the iPad mini kind of

00:59:58 ◼   ► Kind of get its rise again, you know. Yeah, it deserves it

01:00:03 ◼   ► I think I think there are a lot of people who like that size

01:00:06 ◼   ► especially if your

01:00:07 ◼   ► Other iPad is big and you want something that you can just like very easily put in your bag and go if your other

01:00:15 ◼   ► iPad has become a laptop or even a desktop replacement for you. Yep

01:00:19 ◼   ► Cool stuff congratulations. Welcome to the the mini cohort

01:00:27 ◼   ► cohort

01:00:30 ◼   ► Trying trying names on cool

01:00:32 ◼   ► It's good, right?

01:00:35 ◼   ► Well better than family I think

01:00:38 ◼   ► You really are against families today on the show

01:00:42 ◼   ► You don't like family because of the games

01:00:46 ◼   ► Well, yeah, it's because of my family. I I only play games. What about like mini click? Oh

01:00:52 ◼   ► With the one goes in click me click put the click on the 8-track

01:00:59 ◼   ► My name is your buddy Georgia, but everybody calls me, Georgia

01:01:05 ◼   ► more Daft Punk Myke mm-hmm yeah please

01:01:14 ◼   ► Steven yes we're just waiting for you to do the break now let's take our third

01:01:20 ◼   ► break how about that we'll take a break that's a good idea

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01:03:08 ◼   ► We are officially one month away from WWDC now, so we only have like two more of these

01:03:14 ◼   ► segments after this time.

01:03:16 ◼   ► So today we're going to do Anticipate in WWDC and Shortcuts.

01:03:23 ◼   ► On the last episode, there was a wonderful list from _DavidSmith about WatchOS, which

01:03:28 ◼   ► helped me kind of inform what I wanted to talk about in this episode.

01:03:33 ◼   ► And I saw a couple of weeks ago as well a list of improvements from Jordan Merrick,

01:03:38 ◼   ► which I saw floating around.

01:03:40 ◼   ► I even saw Federico link it on Mac Stories and kind of say, "Yes, I want all these things."

01:03:45 ◼   ► So I figured we...

01:03:46 ◼   ► I pulled out some of the things that I wanted to touch on here for improvements to shortcuts,

01:03:50 ◼   ► of course we will then cede the floor to Federico to talk about what he wants to see as someone who

01:03:56 ◼   ► is much deeper in this. You know like for me the things that I've picked out from Jordan's list

01:04:01 ◼   ► are stuff that I can understand or I feel right like as a user and then of course Federico will

01:04:09 ◼   ► have much much more to say right because that's his thing. So one is a big one this is one that

01:04:19 ◼   ► that I really love to see. I don't know how exactly they would do it, but copy and pasting

01:04:23 ◼   ► of actions I think would be really nice. Maybe this could even be, if it's that difficult,

01:04:30 ◼   ► just let me do this with trackpad support, where I can just click and drag with the trackpad,

01:04:33 ◼   ► select a bunch of things, copy them and paste them. I don't know, but I would really love

01:04:37 ◼   ► to see this. I have a shortcut where I want to make an edit, and I know what I need to

01:04:44 ◼   ► do, but to make that edit I need to recreate 10 actions and I just can't be bothered to

01:04:51 ◼   ► do it. So I'll just jump through the extra hoop that I need every time rather than making

01:04:55 ◼   ► it as easy as it could be for me.

01:04:59 ◼   ► This is something that editorial and its developer, Ole Zorn, figured out years ago with the ability

01:05:07 ◼   ► to create action presets, for example. In editorial you could do things like, if you

01:05:13 ◼   ► an action that you're always going to use with some particular configuration.

01:05:20 ◼   ► Maybe you want to present an alert that has a specific title, or maybe you do a particular

01:05:25 ◼   ► thing with the text field, and so you have an action that you're going to reuse multiple

01:05:30 ◼   ► times.

01:05:31 ◼   ► In editorial, you could just save that action as a preset, and then with the top of a button,

01:05:36 ◼   ► you could do things like open my presets and paste this action in.

01:05:40 ◼   ► and all the fields are already filled in for you.

01:05:44 ◼   ► So copy and paste plus the ability to save presets

01:05:47 ◼   ► for one action or even blocks of actions.

01:05:51 ◼   ► As you mentioned, you often have like two, three,

01:05:54 ◼   ► 10 actions that you're gonna reuse over and over.

01:05:57 ◼   ► It would just be nice to speed up that process

01:05:59 ◼   ► because I'm in the same situation as you.

01:06:01 ◼   ► Sometimes, especially for longer shortcuts,

01:06:04 ◼   ► like I know where I need to put in a series of actions,

01:06:09 ◼   ► But it's just so tedious to go in and scroll and do the drag and drop.

01:06:14 ◼   ► And then when you're dragging the editor, like jitters around and it's like,

01:06:19 ◼   ► just give me like a pace feature that lets me put in a bunch of stuff with like

01:06:24 ◼   ► a single command. So yeah, totally agree.

01:06:26 ◼   ► This would be a really nice, a really nice addition. I mean,

01:06:31 ◼   ► maybe it requires a lot of changing to the editor, which, you know,

01:06:36 ◼   ► the kind of the layout of the editor, which obviously has not changed that much, really,

01:06:40 ◼   ► like its general structure of how you create the shortcut from top to bottom from its workflow

01:06:46 ◼   ► days. And maybe, like I can understand that something like this gets left behind if you

01:06:51 ◼   ► are really trying to change what this whole thing is all about, right? Like shortcuts

01:06:57 ◼   ► is a different thing to workflow. Like fundamentally the idea of what it can do is different now.

01:07:03 ◼   ► there is a strategy behind it being led, right? So you can imagine how things get left off,

01:07:09 ◼   ► but at a certain point you do need to return to things like this to help for power users.

01:07:15 ◼   ► You know, like there are power user features in this app. It kind of needs some of the

01:07:18 ◼   ► basics. You know, it's worth remembering we didn't have a copy and paste on the iPhone

01:07:23 ◼   ► until what was it, iOS 3?

01:07:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:26 ◼   ► You know.

01:07:27 ◼   ► Took a little while.

01:07:28 ◼   ► up and versioning, if you are working on something very complicated, the ability to be able to

01:07:36 ◼   ► roll back a change that you may have messed up along the way could be a pretty nice feature,

01:07:41 ◼   ► especially if you're kind of up into the hundreds of actions inside of a shortcut, which can

01:07:46 ◼   ► be surprisingly easy to get to.

01:07:48 ◼   ► Yeah, this is especially needed because Apple removed the ability to import your shortcuts

01:07:58 ◼   ► as files in iOS and iPadOS 13.

01:08:02 ◼   ► So you can still export a shortcut as a .shortcut file.

01:08:07 ◼   ► And it used to be that you could reimport those files

01:08:10 ◼   ► as shortcuts into the app.

01:08:12 ◼   ► But due to the tighter security measures

01:08:15 ◼   ► in shortcuts for iOS 13, that feature has been removed.

01:08:20 ◼   ► So there are still some workarounds,

01:08:22 ◼   ► but basically the workarounds would be get the file

01:08:25 ◼   ► and upload it to iCloud and re-import the shortcut

01:08:28 ◼   ► as a new iCloud link, that's not really what users want.

01:08:32 ◼   ► I just wanna have a local backup system

01:08:34 ◼   ► that allows you to backup your shortcuts library

01:08:37 ◼   ► and re-import it at any time in batch.

01:08:41 ◼   ► And also versioning, because I can tell you,

01:08:43 ◼   ► like when I was working on MusicBot Pro,

01:08:45 ◼   ► that has got like 15,000 actions, 1,500 actions.

01:08:49 ◼   ► - Oh, well. - Sorry.

01:08:50 ◼   ► - Not something terrible had happened.

01:08:52 ◼   ► But still, 1,500 actions is still a lot of actions.

01:08:56 ◼   ► Having versioning would be excellent,

01:09:01 ◼   ► because if you mess something up,

01:09:05 ◼   ► it's a lot of work to then roll back in a shortcut

01:09:09 ◼   ► that it even takes you a long time to scroll even

01:09:14 ◼   ► and to find your spot inside that shortcut.

01:09:18 ◼   ► So yeah, absolutely, backup and versioning,

01:09:22 ◼   ► are related to each other. There are two separate things and I would like Apple to...

01:09:26 ◼   ► Honestly, what I'm gonna say here is that I would just like Apple to introduce an "expert mode" for

01:09:33 ◼   ► shortcuts. I know that some people have basically made the same argument for macOS Catalina. I'm

01:09:38 ◼   ► gonna make the same argument for shortcuts. I want an expert mode that removes a lot of the

01:09:43 ◼   ► restrictions, if not all of them, that were introduced in September. Because basically,

01:09:51 ◼   ► the argument boils down to "I know what I'm doing and don't put these gates in for me because I know

01:09:57 ◼   ► my way around shortcuts and now you're removing functionality from the app that I was perfectly

01:10:02 ◼   ► fine with using before." And I understand why you want to make it the default for new users,

01:10:07 ◼   ► for everybody else. I think that's the absolute right move, but I also think that power users

01:10:13 ◼   ► need to be able to remove those flags and to say "No, no, I don't want you to hold my hand,

01:10:21 ◼   ► anymore, I'm just going to take care of these myself. So, an expert mode, enable

01:10:25 ◼   ► backup, a backup feature to export and reimport shortcuts as files, and enable

01:10:30 ◼   ► versioning for those users who want to roll back to an older version of a

01:10:33 ◼   ► shortcut. Yeah? I think the shortcuts as files thing is a problem though. I don't

01:10:37 ◼   ► know if that one's an easy thing to deal with because of that idea of you get

01:10:42 ◼   ► people sharing stuff and you don't necessarily know what you're installing

01:10:45 ◼   ► and that's a bit that's a more awkward but they haven't solved that either

01:10:50 ◼   ► right so if I download something or Federico I'm just a scroll through it

01:10:54 ◼   ► and I guess I'm supposed to understand what it's doing and can't you know I

01:10:58 ◼   ► could sure look at it be cut off isn't that the case or am I thinking of

01:11:03 ◼   ► something else they can cut off the links to sharing links what do you mean

01:11:08 ◼   ► cut off so like doesn't Apple have the ability to stop people from sharing oh

01:11:13 ◼   ► Oh yeah, sure, sure they can, but I mean at that point the difference between installing a shortcut from iCloud and installing it from a file,

01:11:21 ◼   ► you can still let people install directly from a file and still keep the same alerts and dialogues and confirmation boxes that you have when you install from a link.

01:11:34 ◼   ► Because if you install a shortcut from a link, it's still going to request your permission

01:11:38 ◼   ► to access the internet or use Apple Music or the clipboard and that kind of stuff.

01:11:45 ◼   ► And you can still keep those security measures in place, but just let people also install

01:11:51 ◼   ► from a file.

01:11:52 ◼   ► Because also by removing the ability to install a shortcut from a file, they have effectively

01:11:57 ◼   ► killed a bunch of these websites that allowed you to install shortcuts directly without

01:12:03 ◼   ► going through iCloud first. So I understand why Apple wants to control that, but I don't

01:12:09 ◼   ► buy the argument that enforcing iCloud was necessary for better security, because you

01:12:15 ◼   ► can still have a bunch of boxes that tell you this is an untrusted shortcut, it's going

01:12:21 ◼   ► to do this and it's going to do that, but just even when you install it from a file.

01:12:27 ◼   ► I think that what I'm trying to understand, I mean I don't know if this is the case, but

01:12:32 ◼   ► If shortcuts are tied to an iCloud link, if you install it and then Apple found out a

01:12:38 ◼   ► shortcut was doing something it shouldn't, could they cut it off for everyone that's

01:12:41 ◼   ► installed it?

01:12:42 ◼   ► No.

01:12:43 ◼   ► Okay.

01:12:44 ◼   ► Because that's what I'm wondering.

01:12:46 ◼   ► If that was the case, I would understand why they went with the iCloud thing.

01:12:50 ◼   ► You want to potentially have that in place if you're saying, "Oh, who knows what could

01:12:55 ◼   ► happen?"

01:12:56 ◼   ► It could be possible for a shortcut that you've downloaded from somewhere else to be uploading

01:13:00 ◼   ► things that you don't know.

01:13:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, for sure.

01:13:03 ◼   ► Well, shortcuts now tells you the first time you run it,

01:13:06 ◼   ► this shortcut wants to access this server

01:13:10 ◼   ► and it gives you like the domain name

01:13:12 ◼   ► that it's gonna access.

01:13:13 ◼   ► But again, you can keep that feature

01:13:17 ◼   ► even if you install a shortcut from a file.

01:13:19 ◼   ► - Okay, that makes sense then.

01:13:21 ◼   ► Revamped organization, take it away.

01:13:23 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:13:24 ◼   ► - You know, you both care about this more than I do.

01:13:26 ◼   ► I believe in it, but okay, here we go.

01:13:28 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:13:29 ◼   ► - Give us folders.

01:13:30 ◼   ► - Folders.

01:13:30 ◼   ► so difficult. I mean, it's not difficult. My understanding is that it's just one of those features that got

01:13:37 ◼   ► further down the list multiple times.

01:13:41 ◼   ► I have to assume that they're very much aware that people have been requesting folders.

01:13:47 ◼   ► And I know there's potential for

01:13:52 ◼   ► fancier ideas in terms of like, well, when you say folders, maybe you don't mean folders,

01:14:00 ◼   ► you mean like a smart sorting feature or like a smart tagging feature that shows you, I

01:14:08 ◼   ► don't know, just give me a better way.

01:14:10 ◼   ► Do all of it, right?

01:14:11 ◼   ► Give me folders, give me sorting options.

01:14:14 ◼   ► I don't know, I just feel like it would be amazing to have, in addition to folders, something

01:14:19 ◼   ► like filters that allow me to quickly filter my list of shortcuts by what are the shortcuts

01:14:24 ◼   ► that you use as widgets?

01:14:26 ◼   ► What are the shortcuts that you use as extensions?

01:14:29 ◼   ► or I don't know, let me sort by the number of actions

01:14:32 ◼   ► contained in a shortcut.

01:14:33 ◼   ► Basically, what I'm getting at is,

01:14:35 ◼   ► take a look at the third-party app called LaunchCuts

01:14:38 ◼   ► and copy most of those features.

01:14:40 ◼   ► And I'm sorry, the LaunchCuts developer,

01:14:42 ◼   ► but LaunchCuts is this third-party utility

01:14:45 ◼   ► that gives you folders and gives you a bunch of sorting

01:14:48 ◼   ► and display options for your shortcuts library.

01:14:52 ◼   ► And it's more than what most users need,

01:14:57 ◼   ► I think in shortcuts, but the basics of it

01:15:00 ◼   ► are exactly what I wanna see,

01:15:01 ◼   ► filters, folders, and sorting options.

01:15:04 ◼   ► - I would like to see all of that as well.

01:15:08 ◼   ► I mean, even with just a relatively small shortcuts library,

01:15:12 ◼   ► it can be difficult to kind of see where you are.

01:15:15 ◼   ► There's not enough color options.

01:15:17 ◼   ► There's not enough icon options.

01:15:18 ◼   ► I know you can bring in external icons,

01:15:20 ◼   ► some guy with a website, put a bunch of those on the web.

01:15:23 ◼   ► - Hello.

01:15:24 ◼   ► But it's it's it just feels like it was just built for people with six shortcuts and not

01:15:29 ◼   ► with 60 or 600.

01:15:32 ◼   ► In that main screen, though, I would also like to see them clean up the mechanism in

01:15:36 ◼   ► which you move and edit and duplicate shortcuts.

01:15:40 ◼   ► I feel like I'm perpetually like trying to delete one and then it wants to move it or

01:15:46 ◼   ► just I know some of that's just inherent to iOS 13.

01:15:49 ◼   ► of those controls kind of overlapping, but I feel like the app just hasn't grown in terms

01:15:54 ◼   ► of UX the way that the user base wants it to.

01:16:00 ◼   ► Agreed.

01:16:03 ◼   ► And there's a... what about like, okay, sandbox mode, right? And so this idea would be, imagine

01:16:09 ◼   ► that you have a video of your friend falling off of a scooter, and you think to yourself,

01:16:18 ◼   ► I know shortcuts can take this video and turn it into a GIF for me, but I don't have that

01:16:23 ◼   ► shortcut made. But you could open an action extension and build it in like a little window

01:16:28 ◼   ► that pops up. It's quite a complex feature, but would be kind of nice, right? Like, here

01:16:32 ◼   ► is a thing I know shortcuts can do. I'm sure it can, but I don't have that shortcut. Let

01:16:37 ◼   ► me build it kind of in line with a couple of quick actions and let it go. This feels

01:16:42 ◼   ► like a very in the future feature, but I like it.

01:16:45 ◼   ► That's an interesting idea. I have never considered that. I do find myself in that situation of

01:16:51 ◼   ► I need to do something, and then I've got to open shortcuts and create the shortcut,

01:16:55 ◼   ► then return to what I was doing and find the shortcut in the share sheet. It would be a

01:17:01 ◼   ► really interesting idea to create it on the spot in there. That would be really cool.

01:17:09 ◼   ► The last item in this list that you prepared, Myke, this is so simple and yet so true.

01:17:16 ◼   ► Don't add to the widget. Don't add every shortcut to the widget. I don't get it. It's such a

01:17:22 ◼   ► strange decision to by default do that. It's weird. It's weird to me.

01:17:28 ◼   ► You end up with all those shortcuts that have the magic wand icon by default.

01:17:32 ◼   ► They're all there.

01:17:34 ◼   ► Yeah, it's really long.

01:17:35 ◼   ► "Untitled Shortcut."

01:17:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:17:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:17:38 ◼   ► I agree strongly with that.

01:17:43 ◼   ► I have a lot more things to share.

01:17:45 ◼   ► Please.

01:17:46 ◼   ► Most of these were...

01:17:47 ◼   ► I already covered these in my iOS and iPad OS 13 review in September.

01:17:52 ◼   ► And also, that list from September came...

01:17:55 ◼   ► Most of it came from a story in May of 2019 called "Beyond the Tablet."

01:18:00 ◼   ► So this wishlist of mine has been pretty consistent.

01:18:05 ◼   ► There are some new additions, of course.

01:18:08 ◼   ► I really want to see deeper integration with files.

01:18:12 ◼   ► Since Shortcuts was workflow, we've only been able to do two things in terms of file access.

01:18:22 ◼   ► We can either show the document picker, so actually show a visual files picker when you

01:18:30 ◼   ► want to pick a document from the Files app, or if you don't want to show any

01:18:35 ◼   ► interface, any UI, if you want to pick a file, you can have programmatic access to

01:18:43 ◼   ► a folder, but that folder has to be the shortcuts subfolder of iCloud Drive.

01:18:48 ◼   ► That's because, due to sandboxing, shortcuts can only access files and subfolders

01:18:56 ◼   ► folders contained within that folder, that document container, which is the shortcuts

01:19:01 ◼   ► folder inside iCalc Drive.

01:19:03 ◼   ► This is what you're saying, just so I can confirm this, like, if a shortcut relies on

01:19:07 ◼   ► something inside of a file, right?

01:19:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:19:11 ◼   ► Because obviously shortcuts can access all the files when you're building that, and it's

01:19:16 ◼   ► like a picker, like pick the file, right?

01:19:19 ◼   ► But you need to manually interact with...

01:19:21 ◼   ► You need to go and pick it.

01:19:22 ◼   ► if you have like a string of text which will be in a file you have to make you

01:19:30 ◼   ► have to like put that in the shortcuts iCloud container. Yes, that's correct.

01:19:35 ◼   ► In the shortcuts iCloud drive container and I really think it's time to have

01:19:40 ◼   ► better file automation in this regard. We've seen how third-party apps can take

01:19:47 ◼   ► advantage of a system feature that has been around for a couple of years at

01:19:51 ◼   ► this point, bookmarks that allow you to essentially poke a little hole in the

01:19:57 ◼   ► sandbox and say "give me access to this folder or this file that belongs to a

01:20:03 ◼   ► different application that is not located inside my sandbox but give me

01:20:07 ◼   ► access to it in the future". And the way that it works, if you take a look at apps

01:20:11 ◼   ► like iA Writer or Working Copy, there's a bunch of others, Scriptable even, you need

01:20:17 ◼   ► to pick it manually, but only the first time. And after you've done it once, you've granted

01:20:22 ◼   ► the app permission to access that stuff, whether it's a folder or a file, outside of its own

01:20:29 ◼   ► sandbox. And I really think it would be great to have a similar system in Shortcuts, where you

01:20:34 ◼   ► could say "okay, I want to create a shortcut that accesses my markdown documents

01:20:42 ◼   ► inside the IA writer. Well, maybe the first time I need to be able to give it access manually,

01:20:48 ◼   ► with confirming manually access to that folder, but then once the authorization has been granted,

01:20:54 ◼   ► in the future the shortcut can just run on its own without showing me any UI, without any manual

01:21:00 ◼   ► confirmation, because I have already given it access once. So that kind of file automation,

01:21:07 ◼   ► which is so commonplace on the Mac and has been for decades at this point,

01:21:12 ◼   ► I really think it needs to happen in shortcuts as well.

01:21:14 ◼   ► Speaking of automation, the automation feature, like the actual automation in shortcuts that

01:21:21 ◼   ► allows you to run certain shortcuts on a schedule or when something happens,

01:21:26 ◼   ► it's a really nice feature. I don't use it much myself because I don't have that many

01:21:32 ◼   ► things that need to happen on a schedule or based on location or other criteria.

01:21:37 ◼   ► But I really think it would be so much more useful if all automation triggers

01:21:44 ◼   ► could run in the background without manual confirmation. Again, it goes back

01:21:49 ◼   ► to the idea of an Expert Mode. Some triggers for automation inside

01:21:54 ◼   ► shortcuts, like for example when a time of day occurs, they always require your

01:22:00 ◼   ► manual confirmation, your manual authorization for that automation to run. What this means is you

01:22:06 ◼   ► get a notification and you need to tap on the notification to say "yes, run this automation in

01:22:10 ◼   ► shortcuts". And I think expert users or just people who... you don't have to be an expert,

01:22:19 ◼   ► people who rely on shortcuts, they should have a way to say "look, this automation I created it

01:22:25 ◼   ► myself, I know what it's doing, let it run in the background on its own without my manual

01:22:31 ◼   ► confirmation every single time. There's a jailbreak tweak called TrueCuts that enables

01:22:37 ◼   ► this for jailbreak users. It basically disables the confirmation for all kinds of triggers.

01:22:43 ◼   ► What's going on with jailbreaking?

01:22:45 ◼   ► It's possible again.

01:22:46 ◼   ► What's jailbreaking now?

01:22:47 ◼   ► It's possible again.

01:22:48 ◼   ► Oh, is that why?

01:22:49 ◼   ► Yeah. 13.5 even.

01:22:50 ◼   ► Yeah, big time possible.

01:22:51 ◼   ► Big time possible.

01:22:52 ◼   ► Big time possible.

01:22:53 ◼   ► Big time possible.

01:22:54 ◼   ► But what does that mean, though?

01:22:56 ◼   ► It's a zero-day exploit that they're using that they haven't disclosed, I think.

01:23:01 ◼   ► So yeah, enjoy it while it lasts, I guess.

01:23:04 ◼   ► But yeah, it's possible big time again.

01:23:09 ◼   ► And in my review, I think I shared—so in September, I shared this idea.

01:23:14 ◼   ► What if all automation, all triggers required a confirmation, but only for a limited time

01:23:21 ◼   ► period?

01:23:22 ◼   ► So maybe shortcuts could see, "Hey, you've confirmed this automation for like a month.

01:23:29 ◼   ► Do you want to enable automatic execution of this automation?"

01:23:35 ◼   ► They could learn from your habits.

01:23:36 ◼   ► They could see that once you've confirmed an automation for a couple of weeks, maybe

01:23:41 ◼   ► you could go in and disable the toggle that says "Ask Every Time".

01:23:46 ◼   ► I just feel like there could be ways to say, "We want to make sure that this thing you

01:23:52 ◼   ► you want to actually run on a schedule or when you enter a specific location a few times,

01:23:58 ◼   ► and then we're going to give you the option to disable it. So that would be cool. I'm

01:24:04 ◼   ► just going to go on unless you guys stop me.

01:24:07 ◼   ► This is your time, right? Everything I have I've already said. Well, actually, I have

01:24:13 ◼   ► two things. Shortcuts on the Mac. I just want it. I want shortcuts on the Mac.

01:24:18 ◼   ► Why not, right?

01:24:19 ◼   ► Exactly, and I've said this already in other things we've spoken about, but to be able to activate shortcuts by keyboard shortcut.

01:24:28 ◼   ► I'm gonna set keyboard shortcuts to them.

01:24:30 ◼   ► And yes, I know we're gonna get people saying, "Oh, in 13.4 they added full keyboard access and now you can assign..."

01:24:37 ◼   ► It's not what we want. It's not as good. We actually want like a system-wide hotkey that you press and you run the shortcut instantly.

01:24:46 ◼   ► No notification stuff that you need to confirm.

01:24:49 ◼   ► So this is kind of very much a niche idea, but I'm still going to mention it.

01:24:59 ◼   ► I would really like to have different widgets on different devices, because certain shortcuts...

01:25:05 ◼   ► I always want to use hash widgets on my iPad, others I only want to use on my iPhone.

01:25:12 ◼   ► But instead, when you enable a shortcut as a widget now, it's enabled everywhere.

01:25:17 ◼   ► So I understand why it's the easiest approach, but I just thought I'd mention it because I think it would be interesting to have

01:25:23 ◼   ► more control over where shortcuts can be presented as widgets.

01:25:29 ◼   ► I do different things on different devices.

01:25:30 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:25:31 ◼   ► Like, I have some shortcuts in my widget that cannot run on my iPad because the app isn't installed.

01:25:38 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. Yeah.

01:25:39 ◼   ► So it's just a dead shortcut. It doesn't do anything on my iPad.

01:25:44 ◼   ► Yeah. I forgot to put this on the list, but I just thought of it and I'm going to mention it.

01:25:48 ◼   ► Shortcuts on the watch.

01:25:50 ◼   ► Yeah, what happened there?

01:25:52 ◼   ► So Workflow used to be a watch app and it was removed when Workflow became Shortcuts.

01:25:58 ◼   ► So two things here. One, I want a Shortcuts app on the watch.

01:26:03 ◼   ► I can imagine something like a list of my Shortcuts or like a grid of my Shortcuts.

01:26:08 ◼   ► Take a look at something like Home Run, which is this excellent HomeKit app to run HomeKit

01:26:14 ◼   ► scenes on the watch.

01:26:16 ◼   ► So imagine a customizable grid with these tiny icons for shortcuts, but on your watch,

01:26:21 ◼   ► that you press and you run negatively on the watch and they do something, it would be incredible.

01:26:25 ◼   ► So that, but I also want to be able to create individual complications for specific shortcuts

01:26:32 ◼   ► on the watch.

01:26:33 ◼   ► I really think that would be an incredible functionality, especially now the shortcuts

01:26:37 ◼   ► on the watch could support interaction. So I could press a complication and then maybe

01:26:42 ◼   ► I could choose from a list or I could dictate some text, right? I can only imagine how nice

01:26:49 ◼   ► that would be to have customizable complications that would open the door to all kinds of actions

01:26:55 ◼   ► that you could quickly run from the watch. Yes, you can run a shortcut from Siri, but

01:27:00 ◼   ► once again, I don't want functionality to be exclusive to Siri because I don't want

01:27:05 ◼   ► I just want to use my fingers, my human fingers. Not that my voice is not human, but you get my point.

01:27:12 ◼   ► More and better actions for Apple apps. Two really common examples.

01:27:22 ◼   ► The Apple Notes integration in shortcuts is limited to plain text.

01:27:27 ◼   ► text. You cannot retrieve or create a rich text or append images to an Apple

01:27:35 ◼   ► note using shortcuts. You have to use the extension in the share sheet because

01:27:40 ◼   ► shortcuts and Apple Notes integration only works for plain text.

01:27:44 ◼   ► If I could have the links put in in a way that they would be seen as like the

01:27:48 ◼   ► rich links, I would be a very happy camper.

01:27:51 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. And also reminders. None of the new reminders features in iOS 13, so attachments and sub-tasks and rich links, none of that is integrated with shortcuts.

01:28:07 ◼   ► I really would like to see tighter and more extensive integration between Apple apps and shortcuts.

01:28:16 ◼   ► And also, slightly related to this, I would love to have more UIKit controls.

01:28:26 ◼   ► And by this I mean, let me create new and again more extensive interfaces inside Shortcuts.

01:28:35 ◼   ► So, in Shortcuts right now you can do things like choose one item from a list of multiple items,

01:28:42 ◼   ► or you can have a quick look preview, or you can have an alert that comes up in the middle of the screen.

01:28:49 ◼   ► You can enter text in a text field. Those are all native UIKit elements that Shortcuts basically allows you to create programmatically.

01:28:59 ◼   ► You can make create a list or create a text box and whatnot.

01:29:03 ◼   ► And I would like to have more of that. So I would say maybe take a look at the

01:29:10 ◼   ► rich lists that you can create with Toolbox Pro. Those are based on a hack,

01:29:14 ◼   ► those are based on a workaround. I would love to have something native

01:29:19 ◼   ► that lets me put images and text next to each other,

01:29:24 ◼   ► or to have things like labels and captions and sub-headlines, for

01:29:29 ◼   ► example, in a list. Or to have text fields, for example, that support multiple fields, or that

01:29:35 ◼   ► support rich text input, formatted text, for example. Maybe I would love to be able to create

01:29:42 ◼   ► a collection view, to present multiple things in a grid, instead of having a quick look preview

01:29:48 ◼   ► that is limited to one image at a time. Maybe I want to present multiple images at a time.

01:29:53 ◼   ► So more extensive integration with the native UI system of the iPhone and iPad, that would be lovely.

01:30:03 ◼   ► And now returning to the geekier side of things. I'm just gonna mention this, debugging tools.

01:30:12 ◼   ► Again, especially for people who work on long shortcuts, it's really difficult to do so.

01:30:19 ◼   ► So I can imagine to have things like breakpoints,

01:30:23 ◼   ► for example, so the idea that you could stop a shortcut

01:30:26 ◼   ► when you reach a certain point to confirm

01:30:28 ◼   ► that everything is working correctly

01:30:30 ◼   ► or to debug what is going on,

01:30:32 ◼   ► what is going wrong in a shortcut, that would be amazing.

01:30:35 ◼   ► What I do and what I think lots of other

01:30:37 ◼   ► heavy shortcuts users do is we have to put in

01:30:41 ◼   ► an alert action with the contents of the previous action

01:30:45 ◼   ► to debug what is going on, what the data flow is doing.

01:30:49 ◼   ► inside of a shortcut, and I really think this should be a native feature.

01:30:52 ◼   ► Like, don't force me to use the alert action.

01:30:55 ◼   ► Which, by the way, how annoying is the fact that the alert action always has some default text in it

01:31:01 ◼   ► that you gotta remove every single time?

01:31:03 ◼   ► Oh my god, I really dislike that.

01:31:06 ◼   ► So yeah, the ability to stop a shortcut at a specific point and see what is happening behind the scenes,

01:31:12 ◼   ► that would be amazing.

01:31:15 ◼   ► I would love to more quickly browse the structure of a long shortcut.

01:31:21 ◼   ► So I don't know how this could work. Maybe folding could be an idea.

01:31:25 ◼   ► You know, like some code editors allow you to...

01:31:29 ◼   ► They have code folding, so you can grab a chunk of code and fold it so that it saves vertical space,

01:31:37 ◼   ► and a long document becomes so much more easy to browse. And I can imagine like folding...

01:31:43 ◼   ► I don't know if actions like conditional blocks or

01:31:47 ◼   ► repeat loops inside shortcuts that would be so convenient or

01:31:51 ◼   ► I could go one step further and say maybe let me highlight

01:31:55 ◼   ► Certain actions with like an actual color like let me make some actions red

01:32:01 ◼   ► Because the color red means something to me again all is orn

01:32:05 ◼   ► Got this right seven years ago with editorial with folding and with highlights. So

01:32:12 ◼   ► So I think it was a really good idea back then, I still think it would be a fantastic idea now.

01:32:17 ◼   ► So what would that allow you to do if it was colored?

01:32:22 ◼   ► What would be the thing for that?

01:32:24 ◼   ► So first of all, the collapsible blocks would save vertical space and would make it easier.

01:32:31 ◼   ► And the highlights, just for me as reference, I could create a little scheme for myself

01:32:38 ◼   ► where I say, "Okay, the color yellow means that these actions are unfinished, maybe the green color

01:32:43 ◼   ► means that this block of stuff is done." You know, just stuff like that. And then I could imagine,

01:32:49 ◼   ► like, take a look. I think the best thing, one of the best things about shortcuts is that

01:32:53 ◼   ► it's this combination of traditional programming ideas, but done in a visual way. And I imagine

01:33:03 ◼   ► things like the mini map that you have in certain code editors, like in Sublime Text or

01:33:11 ◼   ► or in Xcode. You have this mini map on the right side of the editor that shows you this

01:33:17 ◼   ► zoomed out view of your code, because if you're a programmer you can tell the structure

01:33:24 ◼   ► of your code just by looking at that mini map. And imagine that sort of feature, but done visually,

01:33:29 ◼   ► We like colors and like little icons. I don't know but imagine that in shortcuts for longer shortcuts

01:33:35 ◼   ► I really think it would be like an amazing feature to make it easier for you to browse a long shortcut

01:33:40 ◼   ► and to navigate its structure

01:33:42 ◼   ► And I also would love to see and I think maybe this is a bit more

01:33:48 ◼   ► relatable by

01:33:51 ◼   ► lots of people

01:33:53 ◼   ► Shortcuts should be able to integrate with the iPad OS multitasking system

01:33:57 ◼   ► Like, why am I not able to create Windows or manage SplitView or, like,

01:34:03 ◼   ► recreate some of my favorite spaces using shortcuts?

01:34:08 ◼   ► Shortcuts does not integrate with multitasking at all, if you think about it.

01:34:12 ◼   ► And I think it would be incredible if I could create shortcuts that manage Windows on my iPad on my behalf.

01:34:19 ◼   ► So, I don't know, maybe let me create a shortcut that says,

01:34:23 ◼   ► create a new split view, create a new space, as Apple calls them,

01:34:28 ◼   ► with Apple Notes on the left and Safari on the right.

01:34:31 ◼   ► Yes, I can do this manually, but also it would be nicer if I could just create a shortcut like a recipe

01:34:36 ◼   ► that recreates that space with just one tap. So multitasking integration would be, I think it would be really useful.

01:34:43 ◼   ► And I saw this mentioned on Twitter a few days ago by

01:34:46 ◼   ► Craig Ockenberry.

01:34:50 ◼   ► the ability for shortcuts to directly

01:34:53 ◼   ► integrate with text selection inside apps. So this is a bit of an esoteric idea, but I'm gonna try my best here.

01:35:01 ◼   ► Imagine if a shortcut

01:35:05 ◼   ► could do things inside of any text field and

01:35:10 ◼   ► do things like rearrange lines of text or

01:35:15 ◼   ► take your current selection and

01:35:18 ◼   ► replace your selection with something else in line without you having to do manual copy and paste.

01:35:25 ◼   ► So imagine like in Apple Notes, maybe take all my links and turn them into titles of the linked web page

01:35:36 ◼   ► in line without me having to do Command+V to paste the result.

01:35:41 ◼   ► Yeah, you could do markdown stuff or whatever.

01:35:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I could do that. I could, yeah, exactly.

01:35:48 ◼   ► Now, two last points. One, this is gonna sound kind of obvious, bug fixes. So for real, over the past year,

01:35:56 ◼   ► I have created so many shortcuts. I feel like I've been very prolific in terms of creating new

01:36:03 ◼   ► shortcuts and coming up with new ideas. And I've only been able to share a third of them

01:36:08 ◼   ► because of bugs that prevent me from sharing those shortcuts publicly. I've run into all kinds of

01:36:16 ◼   ► issues. Some of them, thankfully, were fixed by Apple in 13.4, others in 13.5, but just a few

01:36:23 ◼   ► days ago, for example, I came up with this entirely brand new shortcut that I wanted to share with club

01:36:28 ◼   ► members, and I cannot, because there's a problem that prevents the third-party app that I'm using

01:36:35 ◼   ► from running one of their actions correctly. And the issue is not the developer's fault,

01:36:44 ◼   ► it's the buggy integration in shortcuts right now.

01:36:48 ◼   ► And I have so many different shortcut ideas

01:36:52 ◼   ► that they're just sitting there

01:36:54 ◼   ► waiting for bug fixes from Apple.

01:36:57 ◼   ► Otherwise I would have been able to share them,

01:36:58 ◼   ► but I cannot because they crash or like,

01:37:01 ◼   ► I have so many shortcuts that crash the shortcuts app.

01:37:03 ◼   ► Like it's not just that they're buggy,

01:37:06 ◼   ► they just crash the entire thing,

01:37:09 ◼   ► which is not supposed to happen, you know?

01:37:11 ◼   ► - Ideally.

01:37:12 ◼   ► Ideally. And like MusicBot, for example, which is one of my most successful shortcuts that I've done to date,

01:37:19 ◼   ► it still cannot be reliably used

01:37:22 ◼   ► inside the sharesheet because it crashes the whole thing.

01:37:26 ◼   ► I

01:37:28 ◼   ► needed to put in so many workarounds that basically what they do is, whenever you share a song from Apple Music

01:37:35 ◼   ► to MusicBot using the sharesheet,

01:37:38 ◼   ► It always needs to take you into the main shortcuts app because otherwise the share sheet is gonna crash

01:37:45 ◼   ► If you try and run music bot in there, the share sheet is gonna crash and do nothing. So, you know

01:37:52 ◼   ► Just a frustrating fix to have to make like oh we have to open the app even though

01:37:57 ◼   ► Technically you shouldn't have to but we have to because otherwise it won't run

01:38:02 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, and lastly I guess

01:38:08 ◼   ► A brief point about the bigger picture of shortcuts.

01:38:14 ◼   ► You mentioned, Myke, a few minutes ago that certain power user features need to come to

01:38:21 ◼   ► shortcuts eventually.

01:38:23 ◼   ► And honestly, that's my concern.

01:38:25 ◼   ► I'm not so sure that they have to happen, because my fear -- well, obviously my fear

01:38:34 ◼   ► is that Apple is not gonna add any more power user features because they have

01:38:40 ◼   ► this vision of opening up shortcuts to the masses and if that's the goal

01:38:45 ◼   ► then maybe power users are not a priority anymore. So I guess what's the

01:38:50 ◼   ► long-term plan with shortcuts would be my question. Does Apple

01:38:56 ◼   ► want to keep adding features for power users or are they just gonna go down the

01:39:01 ◼   ► road of simplifying shortcuts, making it easier to use for everybody else, and

01:39:07 ◼   ► while they're doing that ignoring the, basically most of the stuff that we just

01:39:13 ◼   ► covered. I guess my biggest question is can they keep addressing these two

01:39:21 ◼   ► different markets, these two different types of users in shortcuts forever? Can

01:39:27 ◼   ► Can they keep doing that? Or do they have to make a decision eventually?

01:39:31 ◼   ► Do they have to say, "Okay, we simplified as much as possible, but then from now on,

01:39:37 ◼   ► we're just gonna keep focusing on adding more powerful stuff to shortcuts."

01:39:41 ◼   ► Because I could see this go both ways, honestly. I could see Apple say, "No, we don't want

01:39:48 ◼   ► to invest in adding all these programmer-friendly features. We just want to open up shortcuts

01:39:57 ◼   ► and Siri to as many people as possible, and that means we have to simplify the whole thing,

01:40:02 ◼   ► because there's still so much friction involved with creating shortcuts and using them.

01:40:07 ◼   ► Or I could see Apple saying, "Okay, maybe this thing didn't necessarily take off as much as we

01:40:13 ◼   ► hoped with the masses, but maybe we do have a core audience that really loves using shortcuts,

01:40:19 ◼   ► and maybe part of the reason why so many more people are using the iPad Pro now is because they

01:40:24 ◼   ► can make their own little enhancements to the system using shortcuts. So maybe we should

01:40:28 ◼   ► keep investing on that, because it's a thing that maybe not 50 million people love, but

01:40:34 ◼   ► maybe 3 million people absolutely love, and we really care about those 3 million people.

01:40:40 ◼   ► You know? Well, you've got to assume they bought the company for a reason. It wasn't

01:40:44 ◼   ► just for fun. And they included it in iOS by default, as opposed to just having it in

01:40:50 ◼   ► the App Store. So all signs are pointing in a positive direction, ideally, right?

01:40:56 ◼   ► And I mean, you gotta believe that these were conversations that were held

01:41:01 ◼   ► years ago and we're just talking about them now, sort of like remaining in, like,

01:41:07 ◼   ► in a space-themed day, sort of like a message that has traveled through

01:41:12 ◼   ► galaxies and it's only reaching us now. We're only talking about this now, but

01:41:16 ◼   ► this is probably a conversation that was held three years ago when Apple bought

01:41:19 ◼   ► Shortcuts like and they had this entire vision already for where to go and now we're just wondering. Oh what happens now?

01:41:26 ◼   ► Because now you have integrated shortcuts with Siri and you have a new editor and you have this new parameter based system

01:41:33 ◼   ► so where do you go next and

01:41:35 ◼   ► You know usually with Apple these conversations happen two years ago, and now we're just considering them from the outside

01:41:43 ◼   ► So I am really

01:41:45 ◼   ► curious to see what happens in a month and

01:41:49 ◼   ► because I don't know what I feel about this.

01:41:54 ◼   ► I mean, I love shortcuts and I,

01:41:57 ◼   ► I mean, knowing the people who work on shortcuts,

01:42:00 ◼   ► I would be really surprised if they basically say,

01:42:04 ◼   ► yeah, we don't care about power users stuff anymore.

01:42:07 ◼   ► We're just gonna simplify the whole thing once again

01:42:12 ◼   ► and remove a bunch of features for power users.

01:42:16 ◼   ► I would be really surprised if that happens.

01:42:18 ◼   ► But you never know. Well, maybe we will, Jose, in just a few weeks time, maybe. Probably.

01:42:26 ◼   ► We'll know something. We'll know something. Or maybe we'll know nothing, which will be

01:42:31 ◼   ► even more concerning, like no changes. Right, but that's something, isn't it?

01:42:36 ◼   ► That's still something. Yeah, that's called the iPad story every other

01:42:39 ◼   ► year. I don't know what it says, but it's something.

01:42:42 ◼   ► Well, are we done?

01:42:45 ◼   ► This seems like a good place to end it.

01:42:49 ◼   ► If you want to find show notes this week, head on over to relay.fm/connected/296.

01:42:58 ◼   ► While you're there, you can send us an email with feedback or follow up.

01:43:00 ◼   ► You can become a member to support the show directly.

01:43:04 ◼   ► Or you can find us on Twitter.

01:43:07 ◼   ► You can find Myke there as @imyke.

01:43:11 ◼   ► You can find Federico on Twitter as @vittici, V-I-T-I-C-C-I, and you can find me there as

01:43:15 ◼   ► @ismh.

01:43:16 ◼   ► I'd like to thank our sponsors this week, ExpressVPN, Pingdom, and Squarespace.

01:43:22 ◼   ► Oh, oh, real-time follow-up.

01:43:24 ◼   ► Yes.

01:43:25 ◼   ► There's a teaser from Federico.

01:43:27 ◼   ► I totally forgot to mention this in follow-up, and I should have, so this is real-time follow-up

01:43:31 ◼   ► for follow-up.

01:43:34 ◼   ► If everything goes according to plan, I should have a bit of a surprise tomorrow on Mac Stories.

01:43:39 ◼   ► So something that we've been working on for a few months, honestly, at this point.

01:43:46 ◼   ► And yeah, just what I'm gonna say right now, because it doesn't fully depend on me.

01:43:53 ◼   ► Hopefully people will understand when this eventually comes out.

01:43:57 ◼   ► But if the plan goes well, I should have something that I don't think people are expecting necessarily

01:44:04 ◼   ► tomorrow on Mac stories.

01:44:06 ◼   ► So stay tuned.

01:44:07 ◼   ► and I really hope that we can finally show it off.

01:44:11 ◼   ► - Cool, yeah, it's really exciting.

01:44:12 ◼   ► All right, well, I don't know where we were,

01:44:16 ◼   ► but I guess until next time, say goodbye.

01:44:18 ◼   ► - Whoa, whoa, whoa.

01:44:19 ◼   ► - What?

01:44:20 ◼   ► - I didn't get my, where do people find me?

01:44:22 ◼   ► - You don't wanna find Myke?

01:44:24 ◼   ► - No, I did the Twitter thing.

01:44:25 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:44:26 ◼   ► - Did you, for my--

01:44:27 ◼   ► - I don't think you did.

01:44:28 ◼   ► - I think-- - You did.

01:44:30 ◼   ► - People should be able to find Michael.

01:44:33 ◼   ► - I hope so. - Yeah.

01:44:35 ◼   ► He's in your heart at all times.

01:44:36 ◼   ► Okay, say goodbye.

01:44:38 ◼   ► - Adios, irchí.

01:44:38 ◼   ► - Cheerio.