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Connected

280: Peanut Butterpeanut Butterpeanut Butter

 

00:00:00   (upbeat music)

00:00:02   Hello and welcome to Connected episode 280.

00:00:12   It's made possible this week by our sponsors,

00:00:14   Pingdom, Health IQ, and Bowl and Branch.

00:00:17   My name is Stephen Hackett

00:00:18   and I am joined by Mr. Federico Fatici.

00:00:21   - Hello, Stephen.

00:00:22   Hi, how are you?

00:00:23   - I'm good, how are you today?

00:00:25   - I'm good, yes.

00:00:26   - Yeah?

00:00:27   Let's see if we can keep this trend up.

00:00:28   Myke, how are you?

00:00:30   - Bonjourno.

00:00:31   - Okay, okay.

00:00:34   Why?

00:00:35   Care to explain?

00:00:36   - Just that sometimes I hear your voice and I get inspired.

00:00:41   - I thought you missed Europe already.

00:00:42   - And I wished I was, that's, I can't believe you'd do that.

00:00:46   - Wait, was that a Brexit?

00:00:47   - I can't believe you would do that to me.

00:00:49   - I'm sorry, I love you.

00:00:50   - Why would you do that?

00:00:51   Why would you do that?

00:00:52   - It just came out. - What is wrong with you?

00:00:54   - It just fell off my tongue.

00:00:56   Why would you... you know what happened on my birthday?

00:00:59   Happy birthday!

00:01:01   I'm so sorry.

00:01:02   Why would you do that? I just went through like my first passport check, you know?

00:01:08   I apologize.

00:01:09   Coming from Europe into England. Nothing's changed. People think it's changed. Nothing's changed yet. Nothing will change, but...

00:01:15   You're not eating your children yet or, you know?

00:01:18   No, no, no. Things are gonna change, but like, not for a long time, if anything, ever.

00:01:23   it's still terrible. I can't believe you'd do that to me. Why is this how we're starting

00:01:26   the show now? You just remind me of Brexit. No, I regret the error. Yeah. I wish I could

00:01:32   take it back. Federico Fattucci Enterprises apologizes for the error. I am sorry if I

00:01:37   cost you any inconvenience. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. Speaking of inconvenience, can we

00:01:47   talk about Twitter for iPad? Do we have to? Yeah, they fixed it! Well, they quote unquote

00:01:55   fixed it by going back, well by offering it. So we complained about the Twitter for iPad

00:02:02   at length over multiple weeks. Over multiple weeks and there was a whole, you could call

00:02:07   it a whole campaign on Twitter of connected listeners sending us ideas for how to get

00:02:14   rid of the Twitter sidebar, and some very enterprising listeners actually wrote their

00:02:20   own apps to fill, very famously Filler, of course is an entire new category of apps that

00:02:28   fill one side of the screen with useful or not so useful content. Now, the Twitter team

00:02:35   seems to have caught on the criticism, and they rolled out, I think a few days ago, an

00:02:42   option in Settings, so if you go to your Twitter, you open the Twitter app, you go to your Twitter

00:02:48   account settings, and you choose Display, I believe it's the section, you can now find

00:02:55   Toggle that lets you disable the search column, which is the sidebar containing the trends

00:03:01   and the hashtags that we were complaining about.

00:03:04   And when you flip that switch, the search column goes away, and you effectively revert

00:03:10   to the old design of Twitter for iPad, which is not a good design, by the way,

00:03:14   because it's a it's such a wasted space.

00:03:17   Now, this this should like, you know, all of the people that were working on

00:03:22   things to put on the sidebar, you can still do this like,

00:03:25   but make these useful, right?

00:03:28   Like so, you know, we were talking about have like an iOS app or whatever

00:03:32   that can let you save tweets and do something with them.

00:03:35   You could still work on those because we could still

00:03:39   It would still be great to have some kind of like dedicated app that lives on the right hand side to actually make Twitter more useful.

00:03:46   But I'm just super happy about this because now I don't have to ever worry about seeing the trends that I don't want to see.

00:03:55   It's great. I'm so happy about it.

00:03:57   Genuinely, I'm very happy that Twitter have done this.

00:04:03   I'm very surprised that they did this because this doesn't make sense for them because they

00:04:10   are very clearly, they want the searches and the trends because they want people clicking

00:04:15   on them, right?

00:04:16   Drive that hashtag engagement.

00:04:17   But they've obviously, I'm just genuinely, I'm thankful that they have listened to the

00:04:22   complaints of their users, which is for a company of their size or whatever, it's not

00:04:27   something that I would have expected.

00:04:28   So I am genuinely really thankful that they have made this change because it is genuinely

00:04:36   like them caring about user experience over engagement.

00:04:42   So I am surprised they have done this and whoever did it, especially if that person

00:04:46   is a connected listener, I am very thankful that they have made that change.

00:04:51   So I appreciate it.

00:04:52   Yes, we are thankful and I want to, I agree with Myke.

00:04:57   still have work to do, but I do appreciate the fact that there's now an option, because

00:05:03   maybe some people liked the search column, but I'm guessing that most iPad users didn't,

00:05:10   so I'm glad that it's now possible to disable that. Thank you for listening. That said,

00:05:16   I still believe that Twitter for iPad app has a lot of untapped potential in terms of

00:05:20   taking advantage of the screen. Just today I retweeted a very quick concept by one of

00:05:27   the developers of Lookup, the dictionary app for iPhone and iPad. Its name is Vidit, and

00:05:34   Vidit put together a very... it's a quick mockup, it's a quick concept, it's not like

00:05:42   a full-on concept video or anything, just a single animation. But it shows you how,

00:05:50   On the iPad, the Twitter app could let you tap on a tweet and that tweet would create

00:05:56   a panel on the right side of the screen and it would sort of fly in from the right side

00:06:00   so that you could expand the tweet to see more details and follow the conversation and

00:06:05   engage with the retweet and like buttons and basically get more details out of that tweet.

00:06:12   And I was looking at that concept and I thought, "Well, this looks familiar."

00:06:16   And then I realized, oh, this is what the original Twitter for iPad designed.

00:06:21   He's made a new version of the original.

00:06:23   It used to be.

00:06:24   The OG Twitter for iPad app, which had all those sliding panels.

00:06:29   But it was like super weird.

00:06:32   But it was weird.

00:06:34   No, no, no.

00:06:35   Like, it was weird.

00:06:36   Right?

00:06:37   Super weird though.

00:06:38   I mean...

00:06:39   It was.

00:06:40   There was nothing else like it.

00:06:41   I remember at the time, this was...

00:06:43   It was just like...

00:06:44   Yes.

00:06:45   confusing and but ultimately useful application but I remember at the time many people including

00:06:53   myself thought that it was a very strange design for an iPad app at the time but look

00:07:00   you know what Federico they don't need to do any of this if they just implement multi-window

00:07:04   I know then it's great right like let's just do multi-window yeah just do multi-window

00:07:09   you don't need to come up with your own design unique animations just support multiple windows

00:07:14   and in one window I can keep the timeline, and in another I can keep whatever I want.

00:07:19   Maybe I just want to stare at my profile all day. Maybe I just want a window with Myke's

00:07:23   profile and look at Myke's tweets and followers, you know? I should be able to do that if I

00:07:28   want to. It's the principle of it. So anyway, we are glad that the Twitter for iPad app

00:07:35   was fixed. Why is there an item that says "Google AMP versus teaching" in our document?

00:07:41   Well, some people were unhappy with your take on AMP,

00:07:47   and I wanted you to have a chance to address that.

00:07:50   And there was a shortcut that uses JavaScript

00:07:55   to load the full URL if you end up on an AMP page,

00:07:59   which was cool.

00:08:00   And I was hoping that you had taken that for a drive

00:08:02   and could tell us about it.

00:08:04   Yeah, I mean, and the person who made the shortcut,

00:08:08   Louis works at Apple and I believe works on the team that made this integration happen,

00:08:14   so they would know how to use this. I was sort of hoping this would be the kind of feedback

00:08:19   we would get. Yes, this is a perfect example of the advantage of being able to run JavaScript

00:08:26   in Safari. You can now do things like loading the canonical URL of the canonical URL will

00:08:32   will be the real URL of a web page,

00:08:35   and loading that in the current window.

00:08:39   Instead of having to tap the little icon in the AMP toolbar,

00:08:44   you can just run it from the share sheet, which

00:08:46   means you can just keep your thumb

00:08:47   at the bottom of the screen.

00:08:49   You don't need to reach out and find

00:08:50   the tiny icon in the upper corner,

00:08:53   especially if you have a big phone.

00:08:54   I think this is so much more convenient.

00:08:58   Also, I was reminded that Safari tries

00:09:02   to find the canonical URL as much as possible.

00:09:07   For example, in search results, if you long

00:09:11   press to get the context menu preview of a web page--

00:09:15   so if you long press on a search result,

00:09:18   Safari will try to load the preview for the canonical URL,

00:09:22   for the canonical web page.

00:09:24   So the preview will be the non-AMP version.

00:09:27   And if you expand the preview, it

00:09:29   should take you directly to the non-AMP canonical web page.

00:09:33   But if you just tap on a search result,

00:09:36   then Google will take over, and it'll show you the AMP web

00:09:39   page instead.

00:09:40   So the shortcut is amazing.

00:09:41   Thank you, Louis.

00:09:42   And thank you-- we got a bunch of other versions,

00:09:44   but I wanted to link this one, because it

00:09:47   feels like it's coming directly from the source.

00:09:51   So the criticism that we got--

00:09:54   I mean, what's the criticism?

00:09:57   I would like at this point in the show to make a point of order.

00:10:00   So like there's this, I like the thought here,

00:10:04   somebody at Apple tried their best to give you the proper URL, right?

00:10:08   In the share sheet or whatever,

00:10:09   because they think that maybe amp isn't that great.

00:10:12   I would like to raise the point of order of Apple news links because your boy

00:10:17   over here deleted Apple news from his phone because he doesn't want to have to

00:10:23   deal with headlines popping up all over the place, you know? It's difficult. So you play

00:10:30   whack-a-mole with turning it off, right?

00:10:32   So your boy is you?

00:10:35   Your boy is me, yeah, yeah.

00:10:36   Okay, yeah.

00:10:37   Um, because I'm your boy, right? Who else would it be?

00:10:40   Yeah, yes, you're my boy.

00:10:41   Could have been Casey.

00:10:42   Well, yeah, but I said over here as well.

00:10:45   I don't know where Casey is.

00:10:46   Well, that's true, actually. Nobody does.

00:10:47   Casey there?

00:10:48   He could be anywhere, nobody knows. But anyway, so I deleted Apple News. So if somebody has

00:10:53   an Apple news link and I tap that link all I get is the prompt of you should just reinstall

00:10:59   Apple news. It's like well no how about you give me a way to go to the website instead

00:11:06   but no. So if somebody tweets an Apple news link the best I can do is Google the headline

00:11:12   because I can't do it there's nothing else I can do with it so thanks. That really shouldn't

00:11:18   be a thing, right? Like, I feel like I should be able to get the URL some way, and I find

00:11:24   it very frustrating.

00:11:26   Now that you mention Apple News, we are in the process of, and I'm sure that I will annoy

00:11:34   some people, but we are in the process of...

00:11:37   Like me, probably.

00:11:38   No, not at all. Honestly, I think you won't care.

00:11:44   But we are in the process of removing the Apple News integration from Mac Stories.

00:11:48   Although that makes me happier.

00:11:50   Oh, OK.

00:11:51   It does?

00:11:52   Well, yeah, because I don't ever want to have to do with it.

00:11:54   Right?

00:11:55   Well, yeah, I mean, I don't think

00:11:56   you were reading Mac stories in Apple News anyway.

00:11:58   Well, I began because I didn't have it installed.

00:12:01   Yeah.

00:12:01   So we're doing it mostly for us because the plugin

00:12:04   that we're using to enable Apple News integration-- well,

00:12:08   first of all, you know my stance on plugins in general

00:12:13   and external dependencies.

00:12:15   I like to control my stuff as much as possible.

00:12:18   But really, the plugin was slowing down our CMS

00:12:23   by a considerable amount.

00:12:25   Like, every time we were here in Publish,

00:12:27   we had to wait like 20 seconds, for example, for an article

00:12:33   to actually tweet via the Mac Stories account.

00:12:36   And it often led, especially with long articles,

00:12:39   publishing to Apple News with the Apple News format,

00:12:42   it often led to slow loading times and errors

00:12:47   And it's just not a good experience.

00:12:50   But really, nobody's using it.

00:12:53   We can look at our stats.

00:12:55   And Mac Stories readers, they read Mac Stories

00:12:57   either via RSS or via the website.

00:13:00   And the amount of people, the number of people

00:13:03   that we're getting from Apple News

00:13:05   is a very, very, very low amount that is smaller, surprisingly,

00:13:11   than Flipboard.

00:13:13   We have--

00:13:13   What?

00:13:14   I guess-- yeah.

00:13:15   Flipboard is to this day still one of our top referrals after of course Google and Twitter.

00:13:22   Weren't you like really highly rated in Flipboard?

00:13:26   Wasn't there like a thing? I seem to remember that.

00:13:29   So we're talking seven years ago maybe like a cur- like a curator.

00:13:35   Yeah.

00:13:36   But I think what you're thinking of is I had also like I was a recommended user in pocket,

00:13:43   so maybe we are confusing the two things.

00:13:45   I don't know, but I was a Flipboard curator or something, I don't know.

00:13:50   Still, we got more people from Flipboard than from Apple News.

00:13:53   So, but from Flipboard, we don't have to do anything.

00:13:57   It just, Flipboard takes our RSS feed and creates a, you know,

00:14:01   a magazine-like layout or whatever.

00:14:03   Apple News, if you want to use Apple News format,

00:14:06   requires you to have either to hand code your integration

00:14:10   or to use a plugin, and the plugin is terrible,

00:14:12   so we don't want to invest on manual integration because it's not worth it. So what we're going

00:14:18   to do is what basically every website does, we're going back to the standard RSS mirroring

00:14:23   from our website to Apple News. Your icon is so old on Flipboard. Oh yeah? It's like

00:14:29   a million generations of Mac stories old. It's like a... Oh it's the grey one? The grey

00:14:36   one with the shadows and like the weirdly placed M.

00:14:41   Look at that, we got 65,000 followers.

00:14:44   That's why.

00:14:45   That's more than we have on Twitter.

00:14:47   Yeah.

00:14:48   For Mac stories.

00:14:49   People want that sweet flipboard content.

00:14:52   So yeah, I mean, it's just not worth it, you know?

00:14:57   And I know that there's a few Apple News format diehards out there.

00:15:04   like "Yeah, if you don't support the Apple News format, I will stop reading Mac stories."

00:15:08   And that's fine. Like, if you stop reading Mac stories because we don't support your

00:15:12   favorite proprietary type of format, maybe you don't really like Mac stories, maybe you

00:15:17   don't really like what you do, so I'm fine with losing you as a reader, honestly. So

00:15:21   I just want to make sure that the website works fast and causes no technical issues

00:15:28   for us, and really I gotta invest my time and resources where the people are. Therefore,

00:15:35   it makes the most sense for us to get rid of this integration. We tested it for a couple

00:15:39   of years, didn't really work out, and it's fine. We'll go back to... You'll still be

00:15:43   able to find, in theory, Mac stories in Apple News, but it'll just be the standard RSS-powered

00:15:50   look for blogs who have a basic Apple News channel. That's it.

00:15:55   OK, so you'll be able to still get the stuff, but it's not going to have all the fancy formatting

00:15:59   effectively.

00:16:00   Which is not that fancy, really.

00:16:02   That's true.

00:16:03   I mean, Mac Stories has a full text RSS feed anyway.

00:16:07   It's not like if we go back to RSS in Apple News, you will get less content.

00:16:14   You still get the full text.

00:16:15   You still get the images.

00:16:17   I guess you won't get some fancy animations and, I don't know, the ability to change.

00:16:22   I mean, yeah, you will still be able to change the font size.

00:16:24   Yeah, okay. You're not doing the animations though, are you?

00:16:27   No, we're not. So really, what we were getting were like the sections,

00:16:33   like there were some special formatting for like pull quotes and that kind of stuff,

00:16:37   but really it's not worth it. Honestly, I don't even know why I really wanted to test this,

00:16:41   because I guess I wanted to give it a fair shot and at the time it seemed like it was going to be

00:16:46   a big deal. Turns out my feeling on these proprietary platforms is always correct and I

00:16:51   I should always listen to myself. These things never work out. So yeah, going back to RSS.

00:16:58   Good old trusted RSS.

00:17:00   All right, should we take a break?

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00:18:22   - I have some really important real-time follow-up, guys.

00:18:25   And I guess this is a thing that will follow us

00:18:27   throughout today's episode.

00:18:30   So Apple just released the betas of iOS 13.4,

00:18:34   iPadOS 13.4, Xcode 11.4.

00:18:37   - Oh, it's my favorite.

00:18:38   - And watchOS and Mac, well, hold on.

00:18:40   I mentioned it for a reason.

00:18:42   So on iOS, it looks like folder sharing is back

00:18:46   with iCloud drive.

00:18:47   - That will last for another 0.1 beta.

00:18:50   - File pinning is not.

00:18:53   So you can still, you can now share a folder.

00:18:56   You can still not pin files to the top of a folder.

00:19:01   - Over the weekend, a friend of the show,

00:19:04   brother of the show really, John Voorhees,

00:19:07   sent us a screenshot

00:19:10   of a file name called test36,520.txt.

00:19:19   This was something that he said to us had been replicating.

00:19:24   A file had been replicating, and it was up to iteration 36,520.

00:19:30   This was a file that was a test document in a shared folder

00:19:35   that him and Federico have in iCloud Drive,

00:19:37   and he just randomly caught it.

00:19:39   So that was the state of my drive over the summer, that for some reason this file had

00:19:46   replicated itself only on June 12th, 36,000 times.

00:19:50   So hoping they're testing it strong over there.

00:19:53   I bet it's John's fault.

00:19:55   It's always John's fault.

00:19:56   John has the weirdest bugs of anyone I've ever met.

00:20:01   Right?

00:20:02   Go figure.

00:20:03   Do you remember the thing?

00:20:04   to myself thinking about the shopping list problem that he had.

00:20:09   Oh my god.

00:20:14   I think about it a lot. I actually can't remember the last time I laughed so hard. I will find

00:20:21   this and put it in the show notes. I will also provide real-time follow-up once I have

00:20:27   found this and then I will read the shopping grocery list. But yeah, okay.

00:20:33   - Okay, so as I was saying,

00:20:35   there's a big news related to Xcode 11.4.

00:20:40   Coming directly from really friend of the show,

00:20:44   Steve Trout and Smith,

00:20:46   developers can now create a universal purchase

00:20:50   for Mac and iOS apps.

00:20:53   One purchase, both the Mac app and the iOS app together.

00:20:57   - That seems early.

00:20:59   That was supposed to come out in two years, I believe,

00:21:04   in the Catalyst roadmap.

00:21:06   It was not supposed to come out now.

00:21:08   So if you have a Mac Catalyst app,

00:21:11   you can now, in Xcode 11.4,

00:21:14   you can mark it as a universal purchase

00:21:18   and you can distribute it as a universal purchase

00:21:20   so that you can buy an app once.

00:21:24   So you buy it on the iPhone, and if it's universal,

00:21:26   you get it on the iPad and you get it on the Mac.

00:21:29   That is big news if you use Catalyst.

00:21:32   And again, in the original report from Gorman

00:21:36   back when Catalyst was called Marzipan,

00:21:39   I believe this was supposed to be a 2021 feature.

00:21:41   Yeah, so.

00:21:44   - This, it just doesn't really make sense

00:21:48   as to why you would do this now.

00:21:54   It's a pretty big burn if you're, you know, you bought a Mac app separately

00:21:58   already because this stuff's only been out for what is it, like four or five

00:22:01   months. But maybe they're just not happy with how little action there's been.

00:22:07   Or maybe they've heard from developers saying this is holding us up.

00:22:10   So I don't know.

00:22:11   This is one of those things that's funny to me of like, why would this hold

00:22:17   people up? Like, do you think that there are that many developers that are

00:22:22   like, oh, I can't do this because of my customers have to pay again.

00:22:25   So I won't even think about it.

00:22:26   I mean, I think that most developers actually want the opposite.

00:22:30   I don't know. I'm just kind of.

00:22:31   This that's what I'm thinking, right? Which is it's strange to me.

00:22:35   I assume some people would, especially subscription apps.

00:22:40   Right. Right. Because that's that's a bit more of a problem I would expect.

00:22:45   Which is the majority of or if it's not the majority of apps is definitely where things are going.

00:22:50   Yeah, I don't know. It is early. And why would this be in a beta point release?

00:22:57   Why not wait at least until June? Even if you're going to be early and have it at

00:23:01   WWC where you can talk to developers about it, it seems very odd that it's just kind of lumped in with these other changes.

00:23:07   It's enabled by default for new MANT catalyst apps.

00:23:11   That's wild.

00:23:12   Yeah, it's enabled by default for catalyst. I don't think you have to use catalyst.

00:23:16   I think it's enabled by default for those though, which makes sense

00:23:19   because if you have a catalyst app, it's also very likely that you have an

00:23:22   iPhone and iPad version. Right.

00:23:24   Not many people are like Steve John Smith who wrote a Solitaire app

00:23:27   in Catalyst without an iPhone version.

00:23:30   But this is interesting, right?

00:23:32   Because I know you were saying this, but I'm reading it again myself.

00:23:34   Like some of the text talks about just Mac OS app,

00:23:38   like not even Catalyst.

00:23:42   So, I mean, we don't notice, right?

00:23:44   because we're just like reading this it's happening right now but it seems

00:23:47   like potentially you may be able to just have a Mac app with a universal purchase

00:23:53   now which is fascinating. As long as you use like the same bundle ID even if you don't

00:24:00   use catalyst say for example I'm just imagining things here but like the icon

00:24:05   factory folks for Twitterrific on the Mac which is a standard AppKit app in

00:24:09   theory and again in theory they should be able to offer a single universal

00:24:14   And I know that maybe the icon factory folks do not like universal apps, but to prove a

00:24:19   point.

00:24:20   Like even if you have a standard Mac app, you should be able to have a universal purchase

00:24:24   that you buy once and effectively it runs everywhere.

00:24:28   Which is really one of the big features that we were, you know, two years ago and last

00:24:34   year we thought, oh yeah, Catalyst is going to enable this.

00:24:37   And eventually Apple platforms are going down this road of a single purchase and it runs

00:24:42   everywhere.

00:24:43   And now the fact that you may not have to use Keralist even, it makes it all the more

00:24:47   interesting to me. Because like, yeah, you can use Keralist and you can sort of kick

00:24:51   start your app by, you know, translating it from the iPad. But also if you want to go

00:24:57   to the traditional development route on the Mac, you can still offer a universal purchase

00:25:02   with the, with the, with this new feature, which is like, and in the, like, not even

00:25:08   to me this feels like a WWDC announcement but instead it's a February feature release

00:25:15   Robert, here's my thinking. To the WWDC audience, would this be positive news?

00:25:22   I don't know if it would be, right? Like maybe you wouldn't want this to that crowd?

00:25:30   I don't know if this is positive. You know what I mean?

00:25:33   like because I feel like a lot of that crowd I think understandably unhappy

00:25:39   with the fact that they don't have a lot of options to get people to give them

00:25:47   money and this is removing another option and or setting another precedent

00:25:55   which is that all apps should be one purchase. Clearly this is Apple trying

00:26:03   another way to convince people to move to the subscription route, right? That

00:26:08   like we think that all apps should be one app and then people give you money

00:26:13   every month and like if they're trying to set another precedent of bundling

00:26:16   them all together it pushes people down that route which I think ultimately is

00:26:21   probably the the right way to move a lot of software potentially like we've

00:26:26   spoken about this in the past right but I mean we've all seen what's been

00:26:30   happening over the last couple of weeks of fantastical so like this does not

00:26:34   seem like a good message for a lot of especially independent iOS app

00:26:40   developers I feel like and I would be keen to know via Twitter or whatever

00:26:46   like if people if developers agree or disagree with me

00:26:49   But I don't know if this would be like slam dunk good news at WWDC

00:26:54   I don't think it necessarily means that Apple wants to incentivize

00:26:59   Subscriptions. I think it means that Apple

00:27:02   Thinks of apps as a single thing, right?

00:27:06   But my kind of I think really the point I was trying to make is like what they are not doing is saying

00:27:12   that app should be put separate purchases, right? Like basically however you want to take it

00:27:17   It's not good news if that's your thinking. Right. There. Yes, I agree

00:27:21   They are moving away from the idea of oh you purchase the app on the iPhone

00:27:25   Then you purchase the app on the iPad then you buy it on the Mac. No you buy it once

00:27:29   I mean moving away that's gone. That time is gone

00:27:32   That time was effectively gone. But now this makes it even more official

00:27:38   I guess like that mindset is no more now what it means that developers need to adjust like

00:27:46   Either you use a subscription model or you make your apps more expensive or you make your in-app purchases more expensive or you

00:27:53   Split features into multiple in-app purchases, which is like multiple tiers

00:27:58   Which is something that I've also started to see lately like multiple versions of paid features

00:28:03   I don't think it necessarily means that Apple wants you to use a subscription

00:28:07   I think it means they don't want you to sell different versions of the same app anymore.

00:28:13   This is big news, honestly.

00:28:15   I was not expecting it...

00:28:18   Like, I was expecting this to be a WWDC feature.

00:28:21   I guess it makes more sense to do it now.

00:28:23   Right. But WWDC featured two years away, right?

00:28:28   Because the thinking was...

00:28:29   It's interesting, right?

00:28:30   If we go back to the original report, which so far has turned out to be correct, from Mark Gurman,

00:28:35   about what we called marzipan then and everyone said no Mark Gurman you're

00:28:39   wrong but he wasn't wrong was the thinking that it would be iPad to Mac

00:28:45   first then the year after would be iPhone. iPhone to Mac. Also going into the

00:28:52   Mac and then the year after that would be Universal Apps. Now there is a

00:28:57   possibility right that's that this has all changed anyway because of SwiftUI

00:29:02   which may have not been known by Mark Gurman's sources, right?

00:29:07   But what we ended up finding out after,

00:29:10   which is the contrasting thinking from people like John Gruber,

00:29:13   is that this declarative UI approach would be coming up.

00:29:16   So he knew about Swift UI,

00:29:18   but Mark Gurman knew about Catalyst.

00:29:22   Those two things didn't go together because those two things don't go together.

00:29:26   They were set to seem to be separate paths being taken by Apple.

00:29:30   and then one ended up coming quicker than it was expected.

00:29:34   But let's just assume that like, even in a SwiftUI world,

00:29:37   you would still want this universal app purchase thing,

00:29:40   right, that still exists because in theory,

00:29:44   you would be making applications for all systems.

00:29:47   But nevertheless, like SwiftUI still feels like

00:29:50   a long way away, I feel like, right?

00:29:53   Like, I'm not wrong in thinking that,

00:29:55   that still feels like multiple years into the future

00:29:59   at this point, unless they surprise us.

00:30:02   But I think that it maybe makes more sense

00:30:07   that the iPhone stuff to the Mac--

00:30:10   but maybe they're just not doing that.

00:30:11   Maybe iPhone catalysts just will never exist now, right?

00:30:15   Like iPhone apps on the Mac, maybe that's

00:30:17   just never going to be a thing.

00:30:19   I don't know, I'm really curious to see now

00:30:21   how developers react to this.

00:30:23   I don't know.

00:30:25   I think it's great for new developers.

00:30:28   like if you're making new apps, now you

00:30:31   can address all platforms all at once,

00:30:33   and you can come up with your own new business model now.

00:30:37   But if you're an existing developer,

00:30:40   you've got to ask yourself some questions of like,

00:30:42   how do we want to do this moving forward?

00:30:45   Or what's the pricing model that we should follow now?

00:30:48   What do people expect?

00:30:50   Because then it all comes down to people's expectations.

00:30:53   We've seen how over the years, the idea

00:30:56   of offering separate iPhone and iPad versions, for example, of an app, it slowly started

00:31:02   to fade and now I guess The Things is the last really popular app that still comes with

00:31:09   separate iPhone and iPad versions, because now everybody expects to have a universal

00:31:13   version. And really when you think about it, from an ecosystem point of view, it makes

00:31:18   so much more sense to have a universal binary. Like, for example, take a look at features

00:31:23   like shortcuts. If you have things on the iPhone and you want to use shortcuts for things

00:31:29   for iPhone, those shortcuts will not work on the iPad, because you need things for the

00:31:34   iPad. And even if you do have things on the iPad, you've got to set up the shortcuts again,

00:31:39   because technically it is a different app. So I think the more we move forward with this

00:31:46   idea of Apple platforms have feature parity everywhere, it makes so much more sense to

00:31:52   to have app parity everywhere as well.

00:31:55   And with the universal portraits, you can do that.

00:31:58   Now, is it great for indie developers?

00:32:01   I don't, I, you know, I think life finds a way, you know,

00:32:07   and developers can figure it out.

00:32:08   I wanna be optimistic.

00:32:09   I don't wanna say, "Oh, this spells the final, you know,

00:32:12   this is the doom of the indie developer on iOS,"

00:32:15   because now we're being forced

00:32:16   to release universal apps everywhere.

00:32:20   And I think, you know, I've been writing app reviews for 10 years and new apps are still coming out.

00:32:27   New, great new indie apps are still coming out.

00:32:29   I think if you keep up with the times, you can still, you know, this is a much bigger discussion.

00:32:35   But yeah, I think this is big news and I want to see the repercussions of this.

00:32:39   Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about Fantastical, you know, I think it's just like an interesting barometer right now of the way that people feel about stuff.

00:32:48   It's kind of a fascinating thing to watch unfold.

00:32:51   But if they were launching that application,

00:32:58   if this was Fantastic R 1.0 and they did what they did,

00:33:04   it would have been great, right?

00:33:07   Here's a basic calendar app and you get pro features,

00:33:09   you pay a subscription, it's on all platforms.

00:33:11   That's kind of the way applications like that

00:33:15   launch now.

00:33:16   I always come back to it, but I think of Timery, right?

00:33:19   Basic product, but you can pay more and get more features.

00:33:24   And it launches on me.

00:33:26   I really wish they had a Mac app, and I hope that they're working on that.

00:33:29   But, you know, you get it on iPad, you get it on iPhone,

00:33:33   and it's like this is an app and it seems like that's turning into, I hope,

00:33:36   like an actual business for the developer, because they seem to update it

00:33:39   frequently enough that would indicate that it's doing pretty well for them.

00:33:43   So, you know, like if Fantastic Hour 1.0 came about today, like it just wouldn't be the same conversation

00:33:49   that has been being had over the last couple of weeks. But I also maintain my kind of position

00:33:56   on the fact that like this is probably the only way for them to go. Like the writing's on the wall

00:34:01   whether they like it or not with things like this, right? Like in a couple of years time there was

00:34:08   not going to be a business where they could have sell new versions of the application anyway because

00:34:12   because they would have to sell two or three separate apps, right?

00:34:16   To make an upgrade, to make money.

00:34:19   So they would have to have created new apps that they would sell.

00:34:22   Then it would not only just be the complaint of,

00:34:25   "Why are you making me buy new applications?"

00:34:28   or "Why are you deprecating my application?"

00:34:31   or "Why will you no longer support my application?"

00:34:33   which is what always happens when developers have created new versions, right?

00:34:38   And they create a new app.

00:34:40   But it's also going to be, why are you charging me for a separate Mac app as well?

00:34:45   So like, you can see why some of these developers are pushed into the situation where they go

00:34:49   down a subscription route.

00:34:51   Because like, I kind of think of it as like a maze, right?

00:34:58   You know, like those outdoor mazes, like grass hedge mazes or whatever.

00:35:03   You kind of are walking down these pathways and they're being shut off for you.

00:35:08   So like you go down one and it's like Apple's closed up a pathway.

00:35:11   You go down another customer's closing down a pathway.

00:35:13   And so at this point, developers are like going through these mazes,

00:35:17   hoping they're going to find their way to profitability out the other side.

00:35:21   And it's just seeming like it is becoming increasingly more difficult to do it.

00:35:25   And this is just another one of those where it's like, oh, you wanted to make

00:35:29   a Mac app like a separate Mac app.

00:35:31   Well, it has to be free now.

00:35:34   you know, not like "has to be" but like the idea being "it should be".

00:35:39   Well, yeah, I guess you should take it into consideration. It's a very different mindset

00:35:43   now, right? Because when we started, you know, when I started Max Stories, when you guys

00:35:47   started doing podcasts, it was a very different mindset on the App Store. Like, each app was

00:35:52   its own thing, was its own purchase. Now, if you're starting out, or if you're an existing

00:35:57   developer and you want to rethink your business model, it's not anymore like that. It's more

00:36:04   of "I should price my apps", whether it's an in-app purchase or a paid-up front or a

00:36:10   subscription, accordingly to these changes. Like, maybe it shouldn't be $4.99 on the iPhone

00:36:17   and $10 on the iPad and $19 on the Mac. Maybe it should just be, I don't know, $15 everywhere.

00:36:26   And I know that if you add up the numbers, it sounds like you're making less money, but

00:36:33   also you may have a bigger market because of this, because of a universal app that runs

00:36:38   on all platforms.

00:36:39   You may have more users and therefore make up for the difference.

00:36:43   It's a very different approach, which I know that some long-time developers will not accept,

00:36:52   but this is what's happening.

00:36:54   I think from a user's perspective, it's what I like, it's what I want.

00:37:00   Like, yes, it totally makes sense.

00:37:02   I have a single app and it runs everywhere.

00:37:05   And then I don't know.

00:37:07   I guess I want to see what happens.

00:37:08   I think the next few months will be interesting.

00:37:10   I think we'll see some existing apps start taking advantage of this.

00:37:14   By the way, also, additional real-time follow-up, Michael, you will be happy to hear this, you

00:37:19   you will be able to bundle iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and drum roll,

00:37:24   tvOS apps in a single purchase.

00:37:27   - I love it when my platform of choice receives information.

00:37:31   - And these will be available starting March, 2020.

00:37:36   So it looks like these new versions of all the OSs

00:37:40   are coming out next month.

00:37:41   And by next month you will be able to distribute iOS,

00:37:44   iPadOS, macOS, and tvOS versions of your app

00:37:47   as a universal purchase.

00:37:48   I definitely see this as like, I know it's super early to do it,

00:37:52   but you know there's like every, every little while there's like a,

00:37:55   Oh and watch us too. Sorry.

00:37:57   There is like a thing where you're like clearing the decks before WWDC,

00:38:02   you know, like you have these stories, just want to get them out.

00:38:06   This isn't exactly the same, but this is 100% a WWDC announcement,

00:38:11   right? Like through and through, this is a big change to developers.

00:38:16   We need to have some sessions.

00:38:17   But like I genuinely look at this and I'm like,

00:38:20   I think that this is unpopular and they want to get it out and they want to put

00:38:25   it in front of people and let people calm down before WWDC.

00:38:30   What was the thing that happened? Was it the price,

00:38:33   the subscription price changes?

00:38:34   Yes, it was just before WWDC.

00:38:36   So they, I mean that, that was like a week before, right? Like cause something,

00:38:40   The Verge had like a big article and it was really cool and they spoke to

00:38:43   and stuff. But that was like, get it out now, let's not completely upend WWDC this year.

00:38:50   And I think this is maybe a similar-ish type thing. Maybe? I don't know. But like, this

00:38:56   could have at least been mentioned at the last WWDC, right? But it seems like a weird

00:39:01   thing to do it in March. Like it's just like very strange. And to like, oh, here's just

00:39:08   an update or update to Xcode. By the way, in the new features, it's a completely different

00:39:13   business model for you. Good luck, right? So it seems like a curious thing and/or if

00:39:22   something like SwiftUI is closer to being done than we expect and they want to spend

00:39:25   more time talking about that so they're getting stuff like this out of the way. But this is

00:39:29   just like a really weird thing to do now.

00:39:33   Strange. Very strange. All the way around.

00:39:36   Can I ask you both a quick question about 13.4 because we really moved past shared folders

00:39:42   quickly?

00:39:43   I have it on my phone so ask away.

00:39:45   I'm running it right now.

00:39:47   It's more of a conceptual question.

00:39:51   If this comes out in iOS 13.4, you gonna use it?

00:39:56   Because I don't want to.

00:39:58   No I don't want to switch from Dropbox.

00:40:00   I know my Dropbox shares folders work very well.

00:40:04   Like because I've been doing this for over 10 years, right?

00:40:09   Like I know that they work very, very well indeed.

00:40:14   I don't know if I feel like that iCloud drive is going

00:40:19   to work very, very well indeed immediately.

00:40:22   And this is nothing on Apple's development team,

00:40:26   But we're just talking about like tenure here really, right?

00:40:32   Like Dropbox know how to do this.

00:40:33   Dropbox's entire business is built on reliable syncing.

00:40:37   And even more so than ever.

00:40:40   Amongst teams, right?

00:40:42   So like their shared syncing system has to be rock solid

00:40:47   because that's all they have as a company now.

00:40:49   Like they make the majority of their money with the Dropbox

00:40:52   business tools which relies on multiple people sharing files and I just don't know how reliable

00:41:01   iCloud drive sharing folders will be immediately because it just it's a new thing right so I don't

00:41:10   know under what circumstances I would trust any like real sensitive important information to

00:41:20   right now?

00:41:22   - Yeah, I am not gonna use it right away

00:41:25   for production purposes,

00:41:26   especially because Dropbox works really well.

00:41:30   And it's got so many more features that go beyond

00:41:33   shared folders, file requests,

00:41:37   and being able to restore deleted files

00:41:41   with an actual UI within Dropbox,

00:41:43   and to browse versions of files within Dropbox.

00:41:46   The Files app still has about 30% of the features

00:41:51   that I want from a modern cloud-based file manager, you know?

00:41:55   So I could use it for something simple.

00:41:58   And by something simple, I mean maybe sometimes,

00:42:00   like for example, just now, just a few minutes ago,

00:42:04   I needed to share a few SVG files with Silvia.

00:42:08   And the easiest way for me was, because Silvia doesn't,

00:42:12   We don't share like a Dropbox workflow or anything.

00:42:16   We don't have a shared folder.

00:42:19   So the easiest way for me to send those files

00:42:21   was to send them an email, the old fashioned way.

00:42:23   But really I could imagine a scenario where like,

00:42:27   for these, like almost throw away files.

00:42:30   I just throw them in a folder in iCloud drive,

00:42:32   in the finder or in the files app.

00:42:34   And I just share that real quick with a link.

00:42:37   And I send that to Sylvia and we're done.

00:42:39   I wouldn't use it for production purposes.

00:42:41   And by "production" I mean like where I store the drafts for my articles that other people can read,

00:42:48   or to share audio files for podcasts.

00:42:51   You know, I wouldn't do that. At least not now.

00:42:54   Maybe in a few years if it works really well, but for now I'm sticking with Dropbox.

00:42:57   That said, I think there's going to be some convenience to have this feature

00:43:01   for those quick files that you want to share with somebody, but you don't want to put them in your Dropbox.

00:43:06   So maybe I'm gonna say "personal files" for personal use.

00:43:10   I sort of see the utility of that, but not for professional uses.

00:43:14   Yeah, I just can't think of anybody that I need to share files with that I don't already share a Dropbox folder with.

00:43:20   Right.

00:43:21   Right? Like, we just put... or otherwise, just airdrop them?

00:43:27   Yeah, but airdrop... see, that's my issue. Airdrop does weird things depending on the file type that you're sharing.

00:43:33   Sometimes I want to share a PNG, for example, with Silvia.

00:43:38   But if you share a PNG with AirDrop, it gets saved into Photos.

00:43:41   And Photos does not work well with PNG files because it gets rid of the transparency of those files.

00:43:46   And there's no way for me to share a PNG and for Sylvia to say via AirDrop,

00:43:51   "OK, yes, receive this PNG file, but please save it into the Files app, save it into iCloud Drive, not into Photos."

00:43:57   Oh, it's so bad. Like, you know, or like the UI when you get like a PDF and it's like,

00:44:02   Here's every single app on your system in a completely unsorted list that can accept this folder.

00:44:08   Which one do you want it to go into?

00:44:09   And like my thing is none of these, like I want it to be somewhere else, right?

00:44:14   Or like somebody sends you a zip folder and it's like, I don't know, like why do I,

00:44:19   why do you want me to put it in like Google Drive?

00:44:21   No, I just want to like open, just open the folder because I don't even want to save the folder.

00:44:26   I just want something from inside of the folder.

00:44:29   It's just like, what is like, this is a, I hate that UI.

00:44:33   It's so bad.

00:44:34   It's like, imagine, imagine if there was like a system setting to set defaults.

00:44:39   Hey, hold on.

00:44:41   You're just crazy talk.

00:44:43   Whoa.

00:44:44   What is that?

00:44:46   I mean, I just had something like this today where somebody sent me a, a PDF, but

00:44:52   for some reason it didn't have like the .pdf file extension and I opened it on my

00:44:58   iPhone. It's just like, I can't open this. And I went to my Mac and it was like,

00:45:01   immediately opened in preview and it's like, yep. Okay.

00:45:04   Yeah. I have no real desire to move away from Dropbox either.

00:45:08   I've got my whole infrastructure in there and the sharing is really good.

00:45:13   And it lets you share things with people who aren't iCloud users. Right.

00:45:17   And the world is bigger than just people with iCloud space who pay for iCloud

00:45:22   space. So I don't really see this changing anything about the way that I work.

00:45:26   Yeah. And it's like all of the features, like I use the, um,

00:45:29   I use selective sync on some machines and that new,

00:45:32   I can't even remember what it's called. It was called project infinite, right?

00:45:36   Like where you just have nothing downloaded and you just choose what you want

00:45:40   downloaded. And that actually works really well.

00:45:43   Does it still do the thing where if you're, so I,

00:45:46   I had that on for a little while and then I'd go to like an export something out

00:45:49   of logic to Dropbox and it would basically lock up the machine until it had

00:45:54   figure out what was in that folder. It's like, come on, just, just do it.

00:45:59   I've never done what you just explained.

00:46:02   But like there is things that were like, if I open, if I like,

00:46:05   say I'm in pixelmator and I want to drag in an image,

00:46:08   it would just like wait for a second while it's down.

00:46:10   Cause it's like, what else is it going to do?

00:46:12   But they're all for me like expected weights.

00:46:15   Yeah. Okay. You know, like if, if I'm,

00:46:17   we fall in a preview this file and I drag an audio file into forecast on my Mac

00:46:22   mini or whatever. Right. Like I know it's going to take the time until it

00:46:26   downloads this file first but I've never noticed when oh you know like I've saved

00:46:31   things to folders that aren't downloaded and it hasn't been a problem. Cool maybe

00:46:36   it's improved I mean I used it when it first rolled out and and now it's not an

00:46:39   issue because I have a giant SSD in my in my tower but it is a cool feature and

00:46:45   yeah I just my Dropbox is just like too large to install on every machine like I

00:46:50   don't want it right like on all my machines because it would just be madness

00:46:54   right like I'm saving so much stuff in there now like most of except for my

00:46:59   iMac Pro I think my Dropbox account now is larger than any SSD I have right like

00:47:07   it's more than I have on it's definitely more than I have on iMac Pro it might be

00:47:12   more than I have in the Mac Mini even because I keep a lot of stuff in there

00:47:16   everything. I keep everything in there. Um, but it's all backed up. Don't worry.

00:47:22   I use back blaze and that's fine. So it's great.

00:47:25   But it is good to see Apple returning to its list of features from iOS 13 that this is

00:47:30   a feature they should have. Yeah. Right. And it should be great. And I'm, and I think that

00:47:35   they like can make it great because they've had these problems in the past, right? Like

00:47:41   notes and reminders and stuff like that, which is things that were really unreliable and

00:47:46   they made them reliable. But like my point isn't that they can do this. I would just

00:47:51   not trust it immediately. But I am pleased that they didn't roll this one out until they're

00:47:57   comfortable with it. Because it would have been a disaster.

00:48:00   Yeah, this has to go well, right? You can't do this and people lose files or the sharing

00:48:07   spontaneously break or anything like that.

00:48:10   It's like in Notes, when you had the initial sharing in the new Notes app where you could

00:48:15   just share one note and that was kind of janky, but I gotta say where you can set up a folder

00:48:20   and just any note you create in there gets shared automatically, that's been really solid

00:48:25   for me.

00:48:26   Oh, I think I should do that, because I've been having just like... me and Adina have

00:48:30   this problem all the time, we share notes of each other, like single notes, and it shows

00:48:36   to her that I am on it, right? But I have never seen a note in my entire life.

00:48:41   Yeah, so what I did was I created a folder, same thing for myself and Mary, and we, I went through

00:48:48   and basically all the notes that we had individually shared, I put them all in that folder and told it,

00:48:52   "Share all of these." It's a little bit of work.

00:48:54   I'm going to do that.

00:48:55   But now if I create a new one, there's no song or dance. If it's in that folder,

00:48:59   it's automatically shared. And that gives me hope that maybe they have like folder sharing stuff,

00:49:04   figure it out. Like the code bases are probably totally different,

00:49:07   but like they got it working in one place. So I'm now optimistic about a second.

00:49:11   But let me ask you that.

00:49:12   Is it possible to see all of your notes at once if you use folders?

00:49:16   Yes. If you go up well on the, I'm just looking at the Mac. Uh,

00:49:20   if you go to the all iCloud section, you can see all in my case,

00:49:23   all 353 notes. Right. Okay. All my notes are in folders.

00:49:27   I have a two, four, six, eight, 10, 14,

00:49:33   like 20 something notebooks.

00:49:35   - Wow. - Or folders, I guess.

00:49:37   - Yeah, see, I don't have any folders.

00:49:38   - Oh my God, how do you live?

00:49:40   - Well, by searching, I search.

00:49:43   - Everything needs to live in a folder, Myke.

00:49:45   - No, it doesn't, that's not necessary.

00:49:47   It's funny, on my Mac, on my phone,

00:49:49   it says that it's folders,

00:49:51   so my note, sorry, is iCloud, right?

00:49:53   But on my Mac, it says MobileMe.

00:49:55   - Wow.

00:49:56   - Yeah, that's my default Notes account, MobileMe.

00:50:00   - How have you done that?

00:50:01   I don't know man, it's just what it is.

00:50:03   That's incredible.

00:50:04   I have additional real-time follow-up.

00:50:07   Okay.

00:50:08   This is a wild episode, we're like throwing the document away as we go, I love these ones.

00:50:12   There are no changes that I can see in shortcuts, no improvements to the notes, reminders, actions,

00:50:20   no design changes or fixes that I can see, because MusicBot still does not work from the sharesheet,

00:50:29   and I just tried to edit MusicBot by dragging an action around and the app crashed.

00:50:35   But like, look, you need to appreciate that that app, that that shortcut is not a good test

00:50:41   shortcut because it's like a billion actions. Or maybe it is a good test shortcut.

00:50:45   Okay, you know what I mean. It's like the most outlier-y outlier of like over a thousand actions

00:50:51   in a note or whatever, actions in a shortcut. It's not fair to the app, but sure, I get your point.

00:50:58   I've been building some real good shortcuts recently.

00:51:01   You showed some to me.

00:51:02   I'm so happy with myself.

00:51:04   They're all time tracking related, so like everyone's favorite type of shortcut.

00:51:08   But I'm really, I'm just like, I'm having a great time over here building shortcuts.

00:51:14   An additional real time follow up.

00:51:16   Oh my word.

00:51:18   There will be some unification of App Store categories across the iOS and Mac App Store.

00:51:25   You may say, well, that's boring, but I will bring your attention to something that is

00:51:30   very subtle for now.

00:51:31   I don't know if it's pointing at something new down the road, but there's a bullet point

00:51:38   in this Apple blog post that says you will be able to select the following categories

00:51:43   for iOS apps.

00:51:46   Graphics and design.

00:51:47   Well, I mean, OK.

00:51:48   And developer tools.

00:51:50   I mean, if the App Store is becoming a consistent layer across all of their platforms, these

00:51:55   moves make sense over time that you would want it to be as close to a similar experience

00:52:01   no matter where you are.

00:52:02   But developer tools on iOS is a peculiar thing if Xcode doesn't exist, like because it's

00:52:07   the most developed tool.

00:52:08   Well, maybe they'll stuff stuff like working copy or...

00:52:11   Sure, maybe it's just that.

00:52:13   Maybe it's just those two apps.

00:52:15   You click on it, it's just working copy.

00:52:17   It's like, well, coming later.

00:52:18   No, I mean working copy and Pythonista and JSON and Scriptable.

00:52:24   We're up to four now.

00:52:26   I mean, there's the, you know, CODIA and the folks who make CODIA have a new shader app for...

00:52:33   Yeah, there's a bunch of them.

00:52:34   It is not untrue that other developer applications exist, developer tools exist, but like, it is a...

00:52:43   You know it just it could add more to feel to the fire if that is your particular conspiracy theory fit theory flavor

00:52:50   Right that like the Xcode is coming to iOS. I really think wish we it's time for Xcode to come to the iPad

00:52:58   I think you're right. Mm-hmm real-time follow-up and then we're gonna do an ad because I love this document. This is crazy

00:53:05   With the public release of watch OS 6.2. You'll be able to offer in-app purchases directly in your watch OS apps

00:53:12   So users can get premium content, subscriptions and more right from their wrist.

00:53:17   Who asked for that one?

00:53:19   Anyone?

00:53:20   Can anybody raise their hand?

00:53:22   Honestly this feature was made for underscore.

00:53:25   More moons in GenevaMoon.

00:53:27   This is a lot of developer stuff for like a point release.

00:53:32   Maybe they're getting them all buttered up and then it's going to be bad news at WBC.

00:53:36   Bad news.

00:53:37   By the way, Xcode has been deprecated.

00:53:40   Welcome SwiftCode.

00:53:41   Yeah.

00:53:42   This is just weird.

00:53:44   This is just like a weird list of

00:53:46   stuff.

00:53:46   OK, we're going to take a break

00:53:48   because no, no, we need to take a

00:53:50   break because I didn't get to do a

00:53:51   real time follow up.

00:53:52   You can do it after this break.

00:53:53   Real time follow up.

00:53:54   Nine new Memoji sticker types.

00:53:56   Yes, we have seen those.

00:53:58   But no, but no one said it yet.

00:53:59   Well, I was waiting for the break.

00:54:01   Real time follow up.

00:54:03   Minor tweaks to the TV app.

00:54:05   You don't know how podcast

00:54:07   podcasting works.

00:54:09   That's true. Actually, you're

00:54:10   - You're supposed to take the break.

00:54:11   It's your company.

00:54:12   - All right, take the break.

00:54:13   - I'm not supposed to tell you this.

00:54:15   - All right, this episode of Connected

00:54:17   is also brought to you by Health IQ.

00:54:20   At some point over the last couple of years,

00:54:22   you've probably created or maintained a healthy habit,

00:54:25   things like getting enough sleep or working out

00:54:28   or just trying to eat the right foods.

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00:54:59   Over the last couple of years, I've really spent a lot of attention on what I eat and

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00:55:51   thanks to Health IQ for the support of this show and Relay FM.

00:55:56   Real time follow up. Steve Charles Smith is looking at a bunch of new APIs included with

00:56:02   the 13.4 on all platforms.

00:56:04   Couple of potentially interesting changes.

00:56:08   It seems like there's a new API for detecting

00:56:11   key up and key down events from a keyboard.

00:56:14   - That's good.

00:56:15   - So finally, and in theory,

00:56:17   this is supposed to work on iOS and Catalyst.

00:56:20   So for Catalyst, this would mean like proper gaming.

00:56:23   So, you know, if you wanna play a game,

00:56:26   Catalyst game from a keyboard,

00:56:27   key up and down events means you can now, you know,

00:56:31   use controls like standard WASD and that kind of stuff to play a game. And if this is correct,

00:56:38   and if this is true, we don't know yet, because literally the documentation just went up.

00:56:42   On iOS, maybe there's going to be potential for having shortcuts that do not require you

00:56:48   to hold down Command. Again, potentially good for gaming, but also for productivity apps,

00:56:54   maybe. The second one, again, another new API that Steve Chanten-Smith is looking at

00:57:00   right now. This is a good day to follow Steve on Twitter, by the way.

00:57:05   Any day is a good day to follow Steve Transmute.

00:57:07   Today, honestly, Steve is an excellent human being, so it's always a good day to follow

00:57:13   Steve. Today, if you're an Apple nerd, is an especially good one. New UI Datepicker

00:57:19   style. It's called the compact style, so maybe catalyst apps will be able to not have you

00:57:25   scroll a wheel.

00:57:26   That's the one called "Wheels". UiDate picker style wheels. So if you still want your wheels,

00:57:32   you can have them. Otherwise you can go to compact. There's no, as of yet, I'm sure everybody

00:57:37   under the show, Steve, will have an image for us. But as of right now, we don't know

00:57:44   what it looks like, but that would seem to indicate that Apple is in fact continuing

00:57:50   to do the work on Catalyst that has been asked for, which is good. This is good news, right?

00:57:57   And there's a bunch, very good news, and there's a bunch of other changes that Steve and other

00:58:03   developers in my timeline seem to be very excited about. Better keyboard integration

00:58:09   everywhere in general. So yeah, Steve says that somebody's listening on Catalyst and

00:58:15   doing more to bring UIKit from iOS to the Mac. So, it seems that the general reaction

00:58:23   so far in terms of catalyst changes for developers is good.

00:58:27   So we... I remember just a few weeks ago we were discussing here a new mic with JSON on

00:58:33   upgrade, like, where does Apple go from here with catalyst? Is it something that they're

00:58:38   just forgetting about because the future is with UI? We're actually getting a bunch of

00:58:43   updates now, in February.

00:58:45   Now, is it a good sign? Does it mean that SwiftUI is not the future?

00:58:49   I think it's a good sign. I still believe that SwiftUI is the future,

00:58:53   but maybe Apple is not ready to commit to just one future yet.

00:58:58   SwiftUI is a lot, right? Because for a lot of developers, you are asking them to learn

00:59:03   a new language, and that's going to take time. So, you know, like, developers that have been,

00:59:10   who have not yet gone over to join the Swift world,

00:59:14   like, it's gonna take some time for them, I think.

00:59:17   So, I think it's a lot to ask for. This is definitely an easier thing to begin with.

00:59:23   Yeah, and I think, honestly, at this point, that's it for the real-time follow-up.

00:59:27   Well, for now...

00:59:28   For now.

00:59:29   Should we go back to regular follow-up?

00:59:32   It was beautiful until it was over, but the real-time follow-up...

00:59:37   Second episode of ATP over here. We haven't finished follow-up yet.

00:59:40   I'm not familiar with their work.

00:59:42   That's a tennis competition.

00:59:43   Federico, you had some iPad Pro problems.

00:59:49   Oh yeah, I broke my iPad last week.

00:59:53   That's good news.

00:59:54   I shattered my iPad.

00:59:57   You finally decided to switch to a real computer, right?

00:59:59   So you just broke it over your knee.

01:00:01   I am now using a Microsoft Surface.

01:00:05   Oh nice!

01:00:06   The pro one, which I heard was good.

01:00:08   Which one? The X86 one or the ARM one, which is actually called X.

01:00:13   Oh, OK, cool.

01:00:15   The good one. Yeah, yeah. I'm all about.

01:00:17   Real time follow up.

01:00:18   Really? Again?

01:00:19   iOS 13.4 features a new mail toolbar.

01:00:22   Of course it does.

01:00:25   Fixing the... I for the first time yesterday opened mail on iOS 13.

01:00:31   Oh yeah, look at that. It's new.

01:00:33   because I wanted to print a like I wanted to get a PDF of a mail because it was just

01:00:39   easier because I was it was I was using on my iPhone using two different mail apps to

01:00:43   do a thing it's like a whole thing but I wanted to just use the mail app to get a to create

01:00:49   a PDF turns out the way to do that is to press the reply button everything is behind the

01:00:53   reply button I know I know that like this isn't new to anybody else but like what on

01:00:58   Earth made them do that. I mean honestly not that this new toolbar would seem to help that

01:01:05   situation any less but hiding everything under a reply button. I like the UI when you press

01:01:11   the reply button. It's a nice UI under there I think. They've broken things out quite nicely

01:01:16   but just choose any other button design. Reply doesn't make any sense. You get to forward

01:01:25   by pressing reply. Now that's just bananas, right? Like, oh I want to forward a message?

01:01:31   Well, press the reply button first. Like that doesn't make any sense. And also when you

01:01:35   press the reply button, you don't reply. You have to press reply again.

01:01:39   Uh huh. Who? Did the person who made that decision

01:01:42   ever use mail before? Like that's not, that's not anything. So I don't think that this will

01:01:47   fix that, but it at least is changing some of the design. But there we go. I got to do

01:01:52   a real real-time follow-up. What a fun episode of outdated information by the time anybody listens

01:01:57   to the show. Maybe we just don't edit it, maybe we just put it out just as raw as possible.

01:02:03   Yeah, we're not we're not ATP. So you broke your iPad. Yeah, so I broke my iPad, so I was

01:02:13   I was just casually walking around my apartment and because I do not pay attention to my surroundings

01:02:22   I tripped into the cable, the USB-C cable that was charging the iPad, and so the

01:02:29   iPad flew across the kitchen and it landed on the floor. Now, the iPad, as we

01:02:37   talked about, was inside the Switch EZ Cover Body case and also inside the

01:02:42   Smart Keyboard and had the paper-like screen protector on. So, when I first

01:02:49   looked at the iPad, and it was late at night, and the lights were dim. It looked like nothing

01:02:57   happened, like it wasn't like the glass wasn't shattered, and I was like "oh yeah, it's fine,

01:03:03   thankfully like nothing happened". And the edges of the iPad were protected by the case,

01:03:09   so I was like "yeah, I got lucky, nothing broke". The next morning, when I got to work

01:03:14   with sunlight and, you know, it was much, much brighter. I looked at the display and

01:03:21   I saw this relatively thin line running across the bottom right corner of the iPad. So from

01:03:32   corner, from the bottom, basically it was like an entire corner of the display in the

01:03:40   bottom right section had broken. But it wasn't shattered like when I really shattered my

01:03:46   iPad Pro two years ago. It was like broken glass everywhere. But I could tell that it

01:03:51   was no scratch. It was actually broken. So I removed the paper like, and sure enough,

01:03:55   as soon as I touched the display in that area, I could feel that the glass was broken.

01:04:02   So is it safe to say that the cover body does not provide much protection?

01:04:07   Okay, so I went to the Apple store. I have AppleCare+ on this iPad Pro. It's the one

01:04:16   terabyte model. So the guy looks at the iPad and sort of asks me how did it happen, and

01:04:24   he told me that he believes that the case made the impact less bad than it could have

01:04:33   have been. Sure. Sure. He says that if you had no case on, like the whole thing would

01:04:38   actually be shattered with multiple pieces of broken glass instead. And it was just a

01:04:44   single line, like a single thin line of broken glass. And because of that, he said, okay,

01:04:52   so because you obviously obviously had a case on and like we can tell that the glass is

01:04:59   broken but it could have been worse and because we cannot see any damage on the

01:05:04   edges on you know the aluminum edges of the of the iPad we are gonna give you a

01:05:09   replacement totally for free at zero euros right now so we're gonna replace

01:05:15   your iPad and we don't even want the base replacement fee that you're

01:05:21   supposed to pay with AppleCare+ which I believe is around 50 maybe 70 euros

01:05:25   That's cool.

01:05:26   So not even that.

01:05:27   Zero euros just for free because I had a case on.

01:05:29   Whilst I'm happy for you, I'm not sure I follow their thinking here.

01:05:34   Their thinking here is that AppleCare+ covers accidental...

01:05:38   So this is my interpretation of their thinking.

01:05:41   AppleCare+ covers up to two accidents with your device.

01:05:46   So up to two repairs for accidental damage.

01:05:51   Now, the iPad Pro, they don't actually repair it.

01:05:55   When you shatter the display, they give you a new one.

01:05:58   This has always been the case for me.

01:06:00   Even two years ago, when the display was shattered, they just gave you a new one, a replacement

01:06:04   one.

01:06:05   But you gotta pay the basic replacement fee, which, again, I believe is 50 euros.

01:06:10   Now, because...

01:06:13   And this is where my interpretation is.

01:06:15   because it wasn't, like, completely shattered. And because it was obvious that I had a case

01:06:23   on and because it was the one-terabyte model, the guy was like, "Oh, you got the one-terabyte

01:06:28   model." And he told me, basically, "Nobody buys this one." Because of these reasons,

01:06:34   I believe it was like, "Yeah, we're going to give you one for free right now." And I

01:06:37   was like, "Oh, you have it available right now?" And it's like, "Yeah, because nobody

01:06:40   buys the one terabyte version. So we have one in stock always, all the time. Nobody

01:06:45   wants that. So yeah, I have a new iPad Pro, which is the old iPad Pro. I restored it from

01:06:52   a backup and it's fine. And yeah, so that's the story. It was cool though. Zero euros,

01:07:00   totally for free, same day replacement. That was cool. Is it possible this is because you're

01:07:04   famous? I do wonder this too. No, no. Yes. How confident are you that these people don't

01:07:12   know who you are, Federico? I am confident because he saw the work email address and

01:07:19   he said nothing. Usually they comment on something like, "Yeah, I read Mac stories, I'm a fan."

01:07:24   Usually they say something. What if you have like a flag on your account or something?

01:07:29   Oh, well, that I don't know.

01:07:32   That I don't know.

01:07:33   The Federico Fittigia.

01:07:36   You don't know, you don't have to do this to me, especially in public on a podcast.

01:07:40   Do you use a Mac Stories email address when you sign up for these things?

01:07:43   Oh, yeah, I do.

01:07:44   That's the power move.

01:07:45   Yeah, yeah.

01:07:46   See?

01:07:47   You can't be like that.

01:07:48   You can't be like, "Oh, don't do this to me."

01:07:51   Because you...

01:07:52   Look, I'm telling you, 100%, even if they didn't know who you were, they saw that email

01:07:56   address in their queue and someone looked it up. They 100% knew who you were.

01:08:01   You can't be like, "Oh, don't do that kind of thing to me." When you want it to happen

01:08:05   to you, you made it happen to you. Nobody else.

01:08:07   Yeah, but I make it happen in the privacy of my home.

01:08:11   Wait, what?

01:08:12   No, but like, I do it myself. I sign up with my work email address and I don't talk about

01:08:20   it, right? It's not like I want to be recognized and I was like, "Yeah, do you know who I am?"

01:08:25   Like if you notice, fine, and I'm happy.

01:08:27   If you don't...

01:08:28   Don't people typically use their personal email addresses for things like this?

01:08:33   Yeah, I do, so I don't run into this.

01:08:35   Well, my excuse is that the work email address is also my Italian Apple ID.

01:08:41   But don't you need your, ideally, your Italian Apple ID when you fix your iPad in Italy?

01:08:46   Exactly, exactly.

01:08:48   Which is why I...

01:08:49   Oh, okay, how convenient.

01:08:50   I signed up for the Genius Bar with the Italian Apple ID.

01:08:54   Otherwise, it would have looked like Federico Vittucci who lives somewhere in America.

01:08:58   Actually, I think I believe my name is John Ticci with the fake Apple ID with the US account.

01:09:05   It would have looked like John Ticci was visiting from the US and trying to fix an iPad in Rome.

01:09:10   Why is it John Ticci? Why is that?

01:09:14   I don't know. I wanted to make something recognizable, but also obviously fake.

01:09:19   Did you make Jon do something?

01:09:24   No, well Jon helped me out with details that I will not share.

01:09:29   The things he has to do for you.

01:09:35   He's a good friend.

01:09:39   So obviously I wanted to use the Italian Apple ID and Italian Apple ID just happens to be

01:09:44   the work email address.

01:09:45   Happens to be.

01:09:47   Happens to be.

01:09:48   I planned this.

01:09:49   Oh, I got one of those eye visors, the matte screen protector thing.

01:09:55   Oh yeah, that's also what I should have mentioned.

01:09:58   The Paperlike can go away forever, that thing is junk compared to this.

01:10:04   I know, right?

01:10:05   How does it have no bubbles?

01:10:07   Exactly, so you didn't believe me, but it has no bubbles.

01:10:11   Just you put it on the display.

01:10:12   It seems impossible.

01:10:13   I don't know, it's chemistry man, chemists do weird things.

01:10:17   And I like that it's got black edges, it makes it easier to line up.

01:10:21   Exactly.

01:10:22   So because I had to remove the Paperlike and I needed to put on a new screen protector,

01:10:27   I was like, you know what, I'm just going to order another iViser.

01:10:30   I immediately ordered one for my larger iPad.

01:10:33   Yep.

01:10:34   It's absolutely fantastic, this thing.

01:10:37   I have no idea how it is so much better than the Paperlike, but it is, in every single

01:10:43   way.

01:10:44   Do not buy the Paperlike, buy this one instead.

01:10:46   fantastic. So good. Because as well, the Paperlike doesn't make it through like paper, it just

01:10:52   adds a texture. And this thing adds a texture too. It's great. It's brilliant.

01:10:56   So I also put in the iVisor on my big iPad Pro and now I now have the iVisors everywhere.

01:11:03   So I will say it adds a texture. It's not the same texture. The Paperlike is definitely

01:11:07   more textured, right? But I don't know why people buy the Paperlike for the texture thing.

01:11:16   I just don't think it, it does what you want it to do, right?

01:11:19   Like if you want it to actually feel like paper, it doesn't, it doesn't,

01:11:22   it doesn't feel like paper. It just has a texture. Paper comes in all forms.

01:11:27   So, you know, I have paper that's as slippery as an iPad glass screen.

01:11:32   So that's the best paper I own. So, you know,

01:11:35   we're now talking about paper, so we should probably take a break.

01:11:37   This episode of Connected is brought to you by BOL and BRANCH,

01:11:42   The folks who make the softest organic sheets and luxury bedding.

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01:13:32   arrived today. I haven't opened it yet and now I'm extra excited to do that. I want to

01:13:36   be one of those presidents.

01:13:38   Well there's some issues with that, but that's fine.

01:13:42   Does it matter anymore? Anyone can be the president.

01:13:45   Easy.

01:13:46   Right?

01:13:47   Well, it does have a point.

01:13:50   We've moved like 90% of the show document into a heading called the topic graveyard,

01:13:54   but there was one that we still have time for and that is this awesome watch OS 7 wishlist.

01:14:00   If someone wanted to tell us about this.

01:14:02   So this is created by Matt Burchler, who we've spoken, I'm pretty sure we've spoken about

01:14:09   one of Matt's concepts for watchOS in the past.

01:14:14   Yeah, he's got a great blog, he does really good work.

01:14:17   Like, it's a beautiful blog too.

01:14:19   Like, it's a very, I've never seen a personal blog that looks like the way that Matt's does,

01:14:26   so it's worth going.

01:14:27   And this article itself is actually very nicely laid out with a lot of great UI mockups.

01:14:32   This is a very good job.

01:14:34   And Matt seems like somebody who is very focused on watchOS.

01:14:42   Because the information that they put together, there are parts of it where it's like, "I

01:14:48   never would have thought of that."

01:14:50   But that's actually very smart.

01:14:52   So we'll run through some of these.

01:14:54   We can maybe take each point as we go and talk through a bunch of them.

01:15:01   Some of these seem like great additions, some of these seem great if it was a different

01:15:05   company because it really doesn't feel like Apple would do them.

01:15:11   But let's go through them anyway.

01:15:12   So more options and more customization for activity rings.

01:15:19   allowing you to customize the activity rings by adding in your own health things that you

01:15:25   want to track. I think this is really smart. So let's assume because we're going to get

01:15:29   sleep tracking is another one, right? So sleep tracking is another feature that Matt asks

01:15:32   for which just seems like logical. It would be wild if they haven't if they don't do it

01:15:36   in the next either watchOS version or hardware version. But let's say you have sleep and

01:15:41   then maybe you also want to track like your breathe or something, right? Like Apple adding

01:15:48   increasingly more health things that you can track. Like if standing or moving or activity

01:15:57   is not necessarily the thing that you're most caring about right now, wouldn't it be nice to

01:16:02   customize them a little bit? Seems like a good idea, I think. I like to see this go as far as

01:16:08   third-party applications being able to do their own. So something like WaterMinder,

01:16:13   you know, which you can do as a complication.

01:16:15   Yes.

01:16:16   Like, why couldn't I just add that as a ring?

01:16:18   And if I don't care about the others, sort of downplay them.

01:16:21   I think this is a fantastic idea.

01:16:24   I think any health thing that can have a goal related to it

01:16:27   would be great if they could tie it into activity somehow.

01:16:30   It should really be a ring API for developers.

01:16:34   I agree.

01:16:34   Like, WaterMinder, a really excellent example.

01:16:37   I would swap that for the stand

01:16:42   ring right away because I have water mind on my watch face and it's really the one ring

01:16:47   that I care the most these days like hydration so I would use that immediately or maybe in

01:16:52   addition to. And then I would like to have a second like so I could have two on a complications

01:16:57   right one is my activity health rings and then one is like a set of rings for productivity

01:17:03   things right so I could have like you know but like those rings could go down the other

01:17:10   away. I like how you say like it's a dirty secret. Well because like you know they're

01:17:17   not gonna let me do it but I hope that like there will be an API. Why are you whispering?

01:17:23   They're shush. They're gonna be like an API and they're like enterprising developers could

01:17:28   make what appear to be health related things but they're actually not that at all. It's

01:17:35   It's actually how many emails you've replied to today.

01:17:37   Yeah!

01:17:38   Why not?

01:17:39   Gamify, gamify your life, Gamify your life.

01:17:42   Oh, he's back.

01:17:43   Oh no, he's back.

01:17:44   There he is.

01:17:45   Oh my god.

01:17:46   A. Steven M. R. He's back again.

01:17:51   Editing workouts on the phone.

01:17:53   So that just seems like, yeah, why not, right?

01:17:56   Like being able to have more control over your workouts on the phone.

01:18:00   If you, you know, if the watch didn't pick it up correctly or whatever, you know, it

01:18:05   seems fine. This one is a stretch. Web UI to export activity data into CSVs? Doesn't

01:18:13   seem...

01:18:14   No, I don't think this... Like, I get the argument. I get the idea. It doesn't seem

01:18:22   like something that Apple would do. They enabled, I believe, saving your Apple card statement

01:18:32   as a CSV.

01:18:33   Yeah, they did, yeah.

01:18:34   did yeah. So maybe there's some kind of precedent for this, but you have a whole web UI for

01:18:40   it. The reason they did that is because people were getting in trouble with their accountants.

01:18:43   Like if you have a credit card you need to have exportable statements. Like it was bananas

01:18:50   that they had to add that and it wasn't just like a default feature. I think they had PDF

01:18:55   stuff but like accountants can't do anything with PDFs right? You can't put a PDF into

01:18:59   your accountant software right? Like that's not how it works. Like you need to have a

01:19:03   CSV for it. And so like, I assume that they would, that their support teams were just

01:19:07   getting like Lambast at Wibbery's requests. So they put that in there. Uh, unfortunately

01:19:12   there are no health accountants who require CSVs.

01:19:15   I believe they are called doctors though. Health accountants.

01:19:18   Health accountants, Federica, that is an incredibly good joke. You will never get enough credit

01:19:23   in your lifetime for how clever that was. Uh, that was very good. Uh, rest days. I can't

01:19:29   believe they haven't added this like rest days to your activity rings you

01:19:33   need to be able to lose a day right like if someone has a 2000 day activity goal

01:19:41   and they have the flu they don't deserve to lose it yeah it's your fault for

01:19:46   going outside when it's cold right Federico yeah exactly exactly I honestly

01:19:59   challenge you to walk outside in the cold and then tell me that you don't get sick a

01:20:04   couple days later.

01:20:06   I'm not sick right now and I've been in a really cold environment.

01:20:09   Keep moving on, just keep going.

01:20:12   Better responses with smarter default replies and scribble autocomplete.

01:20:16   I read you a quote that I like a lot.

01:20:17   I feel like I tap on my wrist, I look at my Apple Watch, I see a new iMessages come in,

01:20:21   I read the message and immediately drop my other wrist to grab my phone so I can actually

01:20:25   respond to the message.

01:20:26   I thought this was going to be the John Gruber original review for the Apple Watch.

01:20:30   No, no, no, no.

01:20:31   The default. So like I will say this is my thing here.

01:20:36   The default responses inside of the Apple Watch messages app make you sound like a serial killer.

01:20:42   If you respond with any of those. Right. Like, OK. Or yes or no or thank you. Nobody,

01:20:51   except for Jason Snell, texts like this. Nobody sends messages like this. Right.

01:20:56   just okay who says okay with like nobody nothing no emoji nothing it should the

01:21:03   watch this should be actually throughout all of iOS right like the quick type bar

01:21:07   should be doing this to learn how I type and with machine learning and give me

01:21:14   responses based on that right like you should be learning this stuff from me

01:21:20   create like one of those machine learning data set algorithms out of my

01:21:24   own messages conversations right like you could do this this doesn't seem I

01:21:28   mean it's not easy but it doesn't seem like at least starting to do that would

01:21:32   be difficult because there is no such thing as a smart reply on in any of this

01:21:37   stuff it's all madness nobody communicates in these ways so I I

01:21:42   completely agree with with Matt like the there needs to be more there and you can

01:21:48   customize them in the watch app but those defaults are still canned

01:21:52   responses. They're still cans, right? Like even if you're customising them to make them less like you

01:21:58   are a person who hates everybody else in their life, right? Because they're the only, you know,

01:22:04   typically if you just reply with the word "no" to a message it means you hate the person that

01:22:10   you're responding to. I need to tell people why I'm getting distracted right now and it's because

01:22:16   Stephen is texting me quotes from John Gruber's original review of the Apple Watch. We'll put it

01:22:19   in the show notes, you can go check it out. It is impossible to read things from a document

01:22:26   when you're just getting notifications of this. So I just want everybody to know this is happening

01:22:30   to me in my life. My favorite part about this bit of the the watchOS article is adding autocomplete

01:22:37   to the scribble deal because I don't know about y'all, I use the scribble keyboard a fair amount,

01:22:42   especially if I'm in a position where I can't reply with my voice and it is really frustrating

01:22:48   to like spell out every single thing. It's like you have like it already is is guessing your word

01:22:54   to a degree because if you make a typo it kind of corrects it for you. It's like just surfaces so I

01:22:59   can type three letters and select the word and move on to make it faster. It really is annoying

01:23:04   that that's not there. This is if this is all that's in the next version of watchOS I would be

01:23:08   happy. I like that scribble thing. I do too. The ability to have shortcuts actions that perform

01:23:14   watch functions. It would be nice, right? Like being able to turn on the theater mode

01:23:19   or something. That would just be really good if you could do that. You know, the thing

01:23:24   that will be asked for forever, third party watch faces. But I really like, it's not going

01:23:30   to happen. I really like, and this is kind of a thing that I've been asking for for a

01:23:33   while, but Matt puts it in a much better way. Some kind of like build your own watch face

01:23:38   tool in the watch app. Give me a bunch of things that I can put together myself. Let

01:23:43   me build something. This is a computer. Let me customize it more." So that would be kind

01:23:49   of cool. A weekend getaway mode that disables most of the Apple Watch's smart features.

01:23:55   So you're basically just left with time, some really important complications and messaging

01:23:59   notifications. So you can basically still wear the watch that you like, but it being

01:24:06   more chill. If you are like really busy and you don't, or like you want to be busy with

01:24:12   life, not busy with work.

01:24:13   iPad and Android sync.

01:24:15   I mean, mm-mm.

01:24:16   - Yeah, no, it's not gonna happen.

01:24:19   - The way that they will deal with this situation

01:24:22   is just making the Apple Watch completely standalone.

01:24:25   Tying it to more devices feels like a backwards step,

01:24:28   I think, for what Apple want the iPad to be.

01:24:31   But I think they would more clearly like it to be

01:24:33   just a completely standalone thing, right?

01:24:35   And better always-on watch faces,

01:24:39   making them look more like the on watch faces, right?

01:24:42   That they're meant to replicate.

01:24:43   And I really like this, the idea of showing timers.

01:24:47   Like if you have a timer running,

01:24:48   show it on the like always on watch face.

01:24:51   - Oh my God, yes.

01:24:52   - What a great idea, right?

01:24:54   Because you can still, like a timer is only gonna run

01:24:56   for a period of time, just let it run.

01:25:00   Like let it refresh every second like the watch face can

01:25:04   during the period of time that the timer's running.

01:25:06   It's a great idea.

01:25:07   And on the iPhone, if you set a timer, it gets added to your lock screen.

01:25:10   So just put it somewhere on the watch face.

01:25:12   So this is a really great article.

01:25:14   Matt goes into way more detail than we have,

01:25:17   but it's also a really beautiful article,

01:25:19   so I really recommend that people go and check it out.

01:25:22   But I think that this is, as we say,

01:25:24   somebody who really understands WatchOS,

01:25:28   breaking it down, and explaining the types of features that they would want to see.

01:25:33   Is there any more on this?

01:25:35   love to see more workout related things. I believe I was talking about this a few months

01:25:42   ago on Twitter. Maybe on the show. It would be nice to have automatic workout detection.

01:25:48   I still think it's something that Apple should figure out at some point. They do have the

01:25:52   automatic workout detection like taking a walk or, you know, like the basic stuff like

01:25:57   you're running. But to have that expand to more workout types.

01:26:02   I think you're doing X type of workout. Yeah, yeah, that would be great if they

01:26:07   can figure it out somehow. I do believe that Apple acquired the company that was

01:26:11   sort of working on these years ago and then nothing happened. I mean, I guess

01:26:15   maybe what happened was the automatic workout detection for walking and running.

01:26:19   Maybe that was it, I don't know. And also it'd be nice to have built-in support

01:26:22   for high intensity interval training so you don't have to download those

01:26:29   dedicated apps from the App Store, it would be great to have a built-in high-intensity

01:26:38   mode in the Workout app for the watch, and to be able to set your metrics and to set

01:26:42   your intervals, that would be nice to have.

01:26:46   Personally, in addition to this and the rings, which I think is a really good idea, shortcuts

01:26:52   is something that I think Apple should do a better job at restoring on the watch, because

01:26:57   I think there should be a shortcuts app on the watch. They should bring it back. Running

01:27:03   those Siri commands or those suggested shortcuts on the Siri watchways, which by the way I've

01:27:10   never seen myself, I don't think it's a good experience. I think people just want to have

01:27:15   a way to set certain shortcuts to run on the watch. So I guess what makes the most sense

01:27:21   is to have a shortcuts app, and to have a complication that launches the shortcuts app

01:27:24   and then you have shortcuts that you can run with one tap.

01:27:27   Literally what the workflow app used to be on the watch.

01:27:30   Yes. You know, bring it back,

01:27:33   make it run on watchOS 7, whatever it's going to look like.

01:27:35   And I believe shortcuts users will be happy.

01:27:38   I'll probably wrap up today. I said I'd come back to it.

01:27:41   I did find John Voorhees' broken grocery list.

01:27:44   OK. You have to go and read it, but like just some of...

01:27:47   So like one of them is just...

01:27:51   Can I take a look at an image? Is there an image?

01:27:52   Yeah, yeah, it's in there. I'm going to put it in the chat room too.

01:27:56   One is just the word juice, like a million times, just juice juice juice juice juice juice juice juice

01:28:02   with a subheading of pomegranate pomegranate pomegranate pomegranate pomegranate and then

01:28:06   the word butter and then bread bread bread bread bread bread bread bread bread bread bread bread

01:28:11   and sometimes the B in the bread is capitalized and sometimes it isn't and then the note says

01:28:16   Italian, Italian, Italian sandwich space sandwich space sandwich and then sandwich Italian

01:28:20   [laughter]

01:28:24   And then peanut butter peanut butter peanut

01:28:26   [laughter]

01:28:31   Milk pepper pepper pepper pepper pepper

01:28:33   [laughter]

01:28:36   Oh man

01:28:37   [laughter]

01:28:40   What was he doing?

01:28:42   [laughter]

01:28:43   This brings me so much joy

01:28:45   I think he was using like an app that tied into reminders

01:28:50   but was also a grocery list, right?

01:28:53   - He's always using apps.

01:28:54   He's always using apps.

01:28:56   - What I like about this so much is the inconsistencies

01:29:01   in the repeated data that makes it more funny to me.

01:29:05   Like the Italian sandwich one just says Italian.

01:29:08   - That's the best part.

01:29:09   - Italian Italian Italian, no space, right?

01:29:11   Then sandwich space, sandwich space, sandwich space.

01:29:14   And then all one word sandwich Italian, Italian, Italian.

01:29:17   Like it doesn't make any sense.

01:29:19   Look at, he really wanted to buy that bread and make an Italian sandwich.

01:29:24   Peanut, butter peanut, butter peanut butter.

01:29:27   Butter peanut.

01:29:30   And then butter comes again later on.

01:29:32   Oh my god, it's so good.

01:29:34   Pepper pepper pepper.

01:29:37   It's like every time I look at this list, and I have looked at it many times, like I

01:29:42   find something new about it that I enjoy.

01:29:46   Pomegranate pomegranate pomegranate pomegranate pomegranate.

01:29:48   It was very good.

01:29:51   Thank you, Jon, for sharing this tweet many months ago.

01:29:54   I'm going to retweet this tweet again.

01:29:56   It's just like one of my favorite tweets ever.

01:29:58   Oh my God.

01:29:59   Oh dear.

01:30:00   I'm done now.

01:30:01   Okay.

01:30:02   If you want to find links to whatever this was, they're on the website at relay.fm/connected/280.

01:30:11   If you want to leave feedback or follow up, you can email us from that page or you can

01:30:15   find us over on Twitter.

01:30:17   Myke is on Twitter as I M Y K E and he's the host of a bunch of shows here on relay FM.

01:30:23   You can find Federico online is Vittici V I T I C C I and he is the editor in chief of

01:30:29   max stories.net. Unless you're an Apple news. Sorry for you. You can find me on Twitter

01:30:35   as I some H and my work at five 12 pixels.net. I think our sponsors this week for making

01:30:42   this possible Pingdom health IQ and bowl and branch.

01:30:46   And until next week, guys say goodbye.

01:30:48   Adios.

01:30:49   Adios.