Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Connected episode 279.

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

00:00:15 ◼   ► Pingdom, Smile, and Booz Allen.

00:00:18 ◼   ► My name is Stephen Hackett

00:00:19 ◼   ► and I am joined by Mr. Myke Hurley.

00:00:21 ◼   ► - Hello, happy birthday.

00:00:23 ◼   ► - Happy birthday to you too.

00:00:25 ◼   ► It's our birthday week.

00:00:26 ◼   ► - Birthday week.

00:00:28 ◼   ► and Federico, your birthday is not this week.

00:00:31 ◼   ► - Well, happy birthday week to you both.

00:00:35 ◼   ► - Thank you. - Yes.

00:00:36 ◼   ► - It is weird that our, I mean,

00:00:37 ◼   ► we are several years different in age,

00:00:40 ◼   ► but it is weird that it's the same week.

00:00:42 ◼   ► - It's many. - It's strange.

00:00:43 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:00:45 ◼   ► Yeah, that's how calendars work.

00:00:46 ◼   ► Like, even if it's decades apart,

00:00:48 ◼   ► it can still be the same week.

00:00:49 ◼   ► - Thank you, Federico.

00:00:50 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:00:54 ◼   ► - Fantastic, L3. - Let me start

00:00:54 ◼   ► and let you know.

00:00:55 ◼   ► - Teach you that in your review?

00:00:57 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. Well, we'll get to Fantastic Health 3, but first we have some follow-up. So last time, Federico, you were speaking about your must-have apps

00:01:06 ◼   ► 2019 article and it has come out and I really enjoyed it. Do you want to tell the lovely people about this article?

00:01:14 ◼   ► Thank you. Yes

00:01:17 ◼   ► So it's 50 apps. So it's the

00:01:20 ◼   ► it's basically the usual story that I do every year. I was a bit late this time because I was

00:01:26 ◼   ► doing a few things. First of all, I basically spent the month of December deciding whether

00:01:33 ◼   ► I wanted to use Overcast or Apple Podcasts. Marco has got a new version of Overcast coming out with

00:01:40 ◼   ► a new version of Voice Boost. It's really good, we'll have a story on the site eventually. And I

00:01:44 ◼   ► And I was also playing around with a few additions to my home screen in the form of the shortcuts icons.

00:01:51 ◼   ► So I got the story out a bit later than usual.

00:01:56 ◼   ► Shouldn't happen again, but I still wanted to do it and I still...

00:02:00 ◼   ► Yeah, you better not let it happen again.

00:02:02 ◼   ► No, I will not. Sorry.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Disgrace. Disgrace.

00:02:07 ◼   ► I will not. So 50 apps, 50 apps, bit of a...

00:02:11 ◼   ► Nearly February over here.

00:02:13 ◼   ► No, it came out on January 23rd, which is also my favorite number.

00:02:17 ◼   ► That's nearly February, it's been one week away from February.

00:02:20 ◼   ► Sure, I don't care.

00:02:22 ◼   ► This is a reflection of my home screen in 2019, as of December 31st.

00:02:28 ◼   ► Bit of a format change, there's a new category, home screens, which collects

00:02:33 ◼   ► the apps that I have on my home screen for the iPhone and iPad.

00:02:36 ◼   ► Otherwise, the usual stuff, work, entertainment, images, health, home and utilities.

00:02:42 ◼   ► 50 apps, some of them have moved to subscriptions.

00:02:46 ◼   ► And there's the, I mean there's Raindrop, we've talked about it, it was the

00:02:50 ◼   ► the new app that a lot of people wanted to hear more about. I also got a bunch of

00:02:54 ◼   ► tweets and emails. There's always an app in your story that

00:02:59 ◼   ► is like the big one for the year, right? Like I

00:03:02 ◼   ► think, I feel like every year there's always like

00:03:05 ◼   ► an app that you spend a lot of time focusing on and I think Raindrop was

00:03:10 ◼   ► was the one this time, right?

00:03:12 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, definitely.

00:03:14 ◼   ► And it was fun because I got a lot of

00:03:16 ◼   ► tweets and questions from people about it.

00:03:21 ◼   ► Which, incidentally, by the way, I just got

00:03:23 ◼   ► I just saw that the Raindrop Service just today

00:03:27 ◼   ► announced that

00:03:29 ◼   ► they have full text search and the permanent library feature.

00:03:36 ◼   ► which means they are archiving a full copy of every webpage that you have in your Raindrop account.

00:03:41 ◼   ► So this is very nice and I'll make sure to check it out and see how it works.

00:03:45 ◼   ► So yeah, Raindrop was definitely the highlight.

00:03:48 ◼   ► The home screen on the iPad has a bit of a...

00:03:51 ◼   ► I mean, we talked about this, it's got this custom layout with the icons.

00:03:55 ◼   ► Otherwise, I think it's a pretty good reflection of where I'm at at the moment.

00:04:02 ◼   ► I'm using Reminders.

00:04:04 ◼   ► the Apple Calendar icon is not there anymore because I'm now using the new version of Fantastical

00:04:10 ◼   ► and then there's shortcuts and Timery and all the other custom shortcuts that we've talked about

00:04:15 ◼   ► so yeah I'm curious to see what will happen to the home to this home screen in the 2020 edition

00:04:22 ◼   ► which will not come out in February 2020 or actually 2020/2021 per Myke's request

00:04:30 ◼   ► But we'll see. There's some apps I don't feel like, for example, Codex, which I really like,

00:04:37 ◼   ► it's a text editor. It barely gets updated and it's one of those apps that like, it's like the

00:04:44 ◼   ► only app in its category basically, like a lightweight version of Sublime Text for iOS,

00:04:51 ◼   ► with like multiple cursors and custom key bindings, all those kinds of features.

00:04:55 ◼   ► There's nothing else like it on the iPad than on the iPhone, but it's a free app and it doesn't really make any money for the developer.

00:05:02 ◼   ► I don't understand why and so it never gets updated.

00:05:05 ◼   ► So I don't know, hopefully the developer will go back to updating codecs in 2020, but I don't know.

00:05:10 ◼   ► We'll see how it goes, I guess.

00:05:13 ◼   ► It is the end of January, so we are just in iPhone rumor season because it starts earlier every year and

00:05:19 ◼   ► there is a

00:05:22 ◼   ► this

00:05:23 ◼   ► Rumor of that a navy blue color could replace the midnight green finish in the iPhone

00:05:29 ◼   ► 12 Pro now Myke you're a big proponent of midnight green. Does this does this make you sad?

00:05:35 ◼   ► No as much as I am a fan of midnight green at the time remember when they showed it off

00:05:41 ◼   ► I didn't like it and I was on like team blue because their people were mocking up blue phones

00:05:46 ◼   ► So I would be all over this if they made a blue one. I also think it would be so this came from

00:05:53 ◼   ► leaker Max Weinbach

00:05:55 ◼   ► He has been like at the forefront of all of the Samsung Galaxy s20 leaks that have been going on over the last few weeks

00:06:01 ◼   ► like this guy

00:06:03 ◼   ► Has been getting all this information. So is he the new Mark Gurman?

00:06:08 ◼   ► I think he's maybe more than you like ev leaks, you know

00:06:12 ◼   ► You get these people he writes and does video stuff at XDA developers, which is like a very big Android community, right? Yeah

00:06:21 ◼   ► And it seems like he's been getting information and he's had some Apple information before that's turned out to be correct

00:06:27 ◼   ► Macrumis has a bit of a breakdown or some of that in their article

00:06:30 ◼   ► but I think that this makes sense because

00:06:32 ◼   ► clearly Apple only did the midnight green because

00:06:38 ◼   ► It just provided like another colorway which would indicate that you had the new phone, right?

00:06:45 ◼   ► So like, so I think it would make a lot of sense if there was that fourth spot that they

00:06:49 ◼   ► just kept rotating out every year of a different color. Like don't do green and blue, just

00:06:55 ◼   ► do blue. You know what I mean? So that we end up with black, silver, gold, and a color

00:07:00 ◼   ► in the pro line. Um, I've think that that would be quite clever. Uh, but nevertheless

00:07:05 ◼   ► I want the blue one because I like blue.

00:07:09 ◼   ► Doesn't surprise me.

00:07:10 ◼   ► But it looks nice though, like this mock-up that they did on the MacRumors page, like it looks really nice.

00:07:15 ◼   ► Not for me, but totally for you.

00:07:19 ◼   ► Why? What don't you like about it?

00:07:21 ◼   ► I don't know. I feel like I'm a boring person when it comes to colors.

00:07:26 ◼   ► You like your phones black, don't you?

00:07:28 ◼   ► I do, and I also like my wallpapers black or really dark gray.

00:07:34 ◼   ► That's a more recent thing for you though. You used to have lots of color.

00:07:38 ◼   ► Yes, yes, it's a very recent thing for me. I still have a super colorful like clown vomit wallpaper on the lock screen

00:07:46 ◼   ► But on the home screen, it's gotta be simple. I don't know. It's it's an age thing. I think.

00:07:53 ◼   ► I guess you're maturing.

00:07:55 ◼   ► Growing up with my wallpapers.

00:07:57 ◼   ► A couple of weeks ago. We spoke about the unofficial Apple archive. Yeah, which was that wonderful beautiful web page

00:08:06 ◼   ► Which was the guy's name Sam Sam gold?

00:08:09 ◼   ► Sam gold that was it. I was gonna say Goldman, but no, it's just Sam gold. That's that's half the bank Goldman and Sam's perfect

00:08:16 ◼   ► Goldman Sam's that's their name Goldman Sam

00:08:19 ◼   ► Created the unofficial Apple I every time I say weblog in my brain and I have to stop myself

00:08:27 ◼   ► The Apple archive right every time I go for two are like that's hitting me right back in the stand

00:08:35 ◼   ► Well, now they have something in common. They've both been partially shuttered.

00:08:38 ◼   ► That's not fair. But it's basically, it was kind of incredible to see,

00:08:45 ◼   ► Sam on Twitter was posting, basically Apple sent to Vimeo, where they were hosting their videos,

00:08:52 ◼   ► a bunch of copyright notices, right? Like this is, you know, it's affecting the copyright, blah,

00:09:00 ◼   ► blah blah blah blah take it down and they took a screenshot of their email notifications

00:09:07 ◼   ► and you could watch them just like counting up in like tens it was kind of incredible

00:09:14 ◼   ► as every single video was copyright claimed so it's basically dead now yeah it's what

00:09:23 ◼   ► it's a shame but like it like what were we expecting honestly yeah it was obvious that

00:09:28 ◼   ► this was gonna happen, right? Like, I don't want it to have happened, but I don't really

00:09:33 ◼   ► know what else could be expected. Is this something that the blockchain could have fixed?

00:09:41 ◼   ► You know what, probably. Or Pirate Bay. No, what's the other word that people like to

00:09:48 ◼   ► use and throw around? AI? No, no no no. 5G? What if the Apple Archive, no, no 5G, Steven,

00:09:56 ◼   ► an actual thing. No, it's not. What if? Yes, it is. What if the unofficial archive was

00:10:02 ◼   ► decentralized? I don't even know what it means. But what if it was someone's gonna break up

00:10:09 ◼   ► big advertising, that's what's gonna happen. There was a rush on the part of some Reddit

00:10:16 ◼   ► users to try to scrape this stuff and have it in a torrent. I don't think that got finished

00:10:21 ◼   ► before it was taken down. And we just say the site is still up at as far as this recording,

00:10:26 ◼   ► least and the images are still there but all the videos are gone again they sent

00:10:31 ◼   ► takedown requests to Vimeo the host that was being used for the videos it seems

00:10:37 ◼   ► to me like a the photos I would imagine will follow at some point but you know

00:10:42 ◼   ► the the most of the hard work that he put in I would imagine was on the video

00:10:47 ◼   ► side and it's a shame that it didn't last very long but it's also not like a

00:10:53 ◼   ► Certain point what is the problem like what is Apple's problem? Yeah?

00:10:59 ◼   ► I wrote some about this for a forthcoming Club Max stories column, but I

00:11:03 ◼   ► Think that Apple painos no spoilers, but I think apples in the wrong here like yes clearly they have copyright

00:11:11 ◼   ► Claims on their own keynote videos and and yeah like maybe some of the internal stuff that he was publishing

00:11:17 ◼   ► Maybe you could say okay. Well, that's that's internal

00:11:20 ◼   ► you know, I can understand why Apple would do that but like

00:11:23 ◼   ► Video of people on stage that happened as a historical event. I think Apple should either let the point of the ad

00:11:31 ◼   ► Was you made it you paid for it for people to see it right and you put it out into the world

00:11:37 ◼   ► and I think it's a shame that Apple treats them this way, you know without a

00:11:41 ◼   ► centralized thing like what Sam did you're just off searching YouTube and the quality is pretty bad and and

00:11:47 ◼   ► And Apple has some of this available,

00:11:50 ◼   ► but it doesn't go back very far.

00:11:51 ◼   ► Definitely not to the early 2000s or 90s.

00:11:54 ◼   ► And it's a shame.

00:11:56 ◼   ► And I wish Apple wasn't this way about this sort of thing

00:11:58 ◼   ► because, I mean, selfishly,

00:12:00 ◼   ► I would like to have better quality stuff

00:12:02 ◼   ► than what's available.

00:12:04 ◼   ► And I have some stuff personally

00:12:05 ◼   ► that's not available anywhere else

00:12:07 ◼   ► that I've gotten my hands on over the years,

00:12:09 ◼   ► but it should be a resource that anyone could use anywhere.

00:12:13 ◼   ► It's a bummer.

00:12:15 ◼   ► It is, however, the year of Steven.

00:12:19 ◼   ► - It is not. - It is.

00:12:20 ◼   ► - It isn't. - It really isn't.

00:12:21 ◼   ► - The year of Steven part two.

00:12:24 ◼   ► - No. - There was this thing

00:12:27 ◼   ► in Forbes, we're gonna link to the nine to five article

00:12:30 ◼   ► about it where content creators on Apple TV+

00:12:34 ◼   ► are going to be using podcasting

00:12:37 ◼   ► to talk about their episodes.

00:12:38 ◼   ► This is in conjunction with Little America,

00:12:41 ◼   ► which I haven't seen any of.

00:12:43 ◼   ► Is it even out?

00:12:44 ◼   ► don't actually know. So the people behind the series were talking to Forbes about why

00:12:51 ◼   ► they worked with Apple and how they're going to be using podcasts to sort of build the

00:12:55 ◼   ► story around the video content. And it's basically what we talked about in the prediction show.

00:13:00 ◼   ► It's just sort of a concrete example of this happening.

00:13:04 ◼   ► Or going to happen. It hasn't happened. But they spoke about, I think they were talking

00:13:09 ◼   ► about the second season. So I don't know when the second season is coming out, but you might

00:13:14 ◼   ► not get in this year, which could be... wouldn't that be beautiful? They are doing it, but

00:13:19 ◼   ► it's not going to be in 2020. That would be hilarious for no real reason, right Steven?

00:13:25 ◼   ► That'd be funny.

00:13:26 ◼   ► What just means that 2021 is also the year, Steven?

00:13:29 ◼   ► I don't think it does because the pick is gone. We've never spoken about this before,

00:13:33 ◼   ► but I don't think we should reuse picks. Just keep going round and around and around again.

00:13:37 ◼   ► We can just add another rule.

00:13:38 ◼   ► Do we need to add that to the rule section of the Google document?

00:13:42 ◼   ► I don't think we need to do it now.

00:13:44 ◼   ► Well, I'm here.

00:13:45 ◼   ► Regular rules.

00:13:46 ◼   ► Well then do it then.

00:13:47 ◼   ► Pics.

00:13:48 ◼   ► We shouldn't be able to reuse pics.

00:13:49 ◼   ► Cannot be reused.

00:13:52 ◼   ► So there you go.

00:13:53 ◼   ► That looks like that podcasts are coming.

00:13:55 ◼   ► But we can also talk about the year of Myke because during Apple's earnings call, Tim

00:14:00 ◼   ► Cook didn't answer anything positively about 5G but was asked questions about 5G and was

00:14:06 ◼   ► doing the usual Tim Cook thing of like, we're excited about products in our pipeline. Like

00:14:11 ◼   ► it's coming man. 5G on the iPhone this year it's happening and there's nothing Steven

00:14:16 ◼   ► can do about it.

00:14:18 ◼   ► Are you ready to accept defeat Steven?

00:14:22 ◼   ► There's a lot of year left for Puerto Rico. There's a lot, a lot of year left.

00:14:25 ◼   ► A lot of year for you two proven wrong.

00:14:28 ◼   ► September will be here before you know it.

00:14:31 ◼   ► That's true. Time only speeds up. Well, that is follow up. We made it. We survived through

00:14:36 ◼   ► the follow-up tunnel. We have emerged on the station of our first ad break.

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00:16:01 ◼   ► Fedrico, last week we spoke about what you were doing with your iPad.

00:16:05 ◼   ► You have since had an "Adapt" episode come out about it, but do you want to confess your

00:16:11 ◼   ► sins?

00:16:12 ◼   ► Well, yes.

00:16:14 ◼   ► So you may remember that a few years ago we very, very kindly and lovingly somewhat poked

00:16:25 ◼   ► fun at Michael for wanting to experiment with his iPad Pro.

00:16:32 ◼   ► You're lying.

00:16:33 ◼   ► A screen protector called the Paperlike.

00:16:37 ◼   ► And it was all, you know, done in good faith and just very, from, you know, out of the

00:16:45 ◼   ► kindness of our hearts, we just, you know, it made for good entertainment on the show.

00:16:52 ◼   ► And lies.

00:16:54 ◼   ► So what I... so okay, so here's the short version. I am currently using the Paperlike

00:17:03 ◼   ► screen protector on my 12.9" iPad Pro and a different screen protector on the 11" iPad

00:17:11 ◼   ► Pro called the MOSHI iVisor AG. I don't even know what the AG stands for, but it's called

00:17:20 ◼   ► the Moshi iVicer. So here's my why I'm doing this. I've always wanted to have an

00:17:29 ◼   ► iPad Pro with a matte display. I love matte displays, I wish that Apple would make a version

00:17:36 ◼   ► of the iPad Pro that had one, even if it cost like 500 euros more, I would spend the money

00:17:42 ◼   ► for that, because I really like matte displays.

00:17:45 ◼   ► buy a Pro Display XDR and carry it around with you?

00:17:48 ◼   ► Sure, or I could have done the research on matte screen protectors, which is what I've done.

00:17:58 ◼   ► Buy a really powerful laser and do the etching yourself.

00:18:01 ◼   ► Also a possibility, yes. It could be actually less expensive than the Pro Display XDR.

00:18:08 ◼   ► I wanted to see if this was something that I could like, because a problem that I ran into last year

00:18:16 ◼   ► was I basically could not get any work done at the beach. And yes, this is a first world problem for

00:18:23 ◼   ► me. The biggest. I know, I spend a lot of time at the beach in the summer. You're just a tally on

00:18:29 ◼   ► and what do people want from you?

00:18:30 ◼   ► Yeah, and I, you know, I could have...

00:18:36 ◼   ► I like the idea of knowing that if I want to, I can read my review, my iOS review that

00:18:42 ◼   ► I usually work on in the summer, and read through a few chapters and do a few edits

00:18:48 ◼   ► while I'm at the beach.

00:18:50 ◼   ► It's basically impossible with the default display, the LCD display of the iPad Pro.

00:18:56 ◼   ► Even if you're under a beach umbrella with strong direct sunlight, the thing is going

00:19:02 ◼   ► to reflect everything, and it's really hard to see.

00:19:05 ◼   ► So I was talking to Ryan and I mentioned, like, I want to see if there's... if... maybe

00:19:11 ◼   ► this is a solution for me to use the Apet Pro at the beach in the summer, or in general,

00:19:17 ◼   ► like if I want to work outside, it becomes something... it's something that it becomes

00:19:21 ◼   ► possible for me.

00:19:23 ◼   ► So I ordered the Paperlike in two versions in two sizes, but as I was waiting for the

00:19:30 ◼   ► Paperlike, somebody listened to someone on Twitter. They listened to the Adapt episode

00:19:39 ◼   ► and they recommended to me this Moshi iVisor alternative.

00:19:43 ◼   ► AG.

00:19:44 ◼   ► AG. So I put in an order for that from Amazon US for the small iPad Pro. So now I'm testing

00:19:54 ◼   ► both at the same time. There's a major difference between them. The Paperlike, it's called Paperlike

00:19:59 ◼   ► for a reason. It's got a Paperlike texture.

00:20:04 ◼   ► By the way, I just need to state this for a second because you were talking about this

00:20:07 ◼   ► on Adapt too. This thing does not feel like paper, right? Like I just need to state that

00:20:12 ◼   ► as a pen and paper user. It doesn't feel like paper.

00:20:14 ◼   ► Oh, here we go.

00:20:15 ◼   ► It just has a texture. It doesn't feel like paper.

00:20:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:18 ◼   ► Right. Like, it doesn't feel like you're using a pen on paper

00:20:24 ◼   ► when you use the Apple Pencil on a paper.

00:20:25 ◼   ► Like, it just has more of a texture.

00:20:28 ◼   ► Like, it's closer, but it doesn't feel anything like pen and paper.

00:20:32 ◼   ► I just need to state that.

00:20:34 ◼   ► It adds friction to the screen.

00:20:36 ◼   ► Which is nice.

00:20:38 ◼   ► Like, I think it is much nicer to use the Apple Pencil on this

00:20:41 ◼   ► than on the regular screen.

00:20:46 ◼   ► By the way, thank you listener "Veg" from the chat room.

00:20:53 ◼   ► AG stands for anti-glare.

00:20:55 ◼   ► Mmm.

00:20:56 ◼   ► Definitely. So AG is anti-glare.

00:20:59 ◼   ► So the Paperlike as a texture adds friction when you're using the pencil on screen,

00:21:06 ◼   ► And it comes with a bit of an involved process for applying the paper like to your iPad.

00:21:14 ◼   ► Oh boy, does it.

00:21:15 ◼   ► Let's just say there's a website that you need to visit, there's a video, there's multiple

00:21:20 ◼   ► stickers that you need to use, there's a... it's a whole thing.

00:21:23 ◼   ► I would say, whilst I agree it is very complex, they have really done an excellent job of

00:21:33 ◼   ► making a complex thing followable.

00:21:36 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely. Yes.

00:21:38 ◼   ► The actual experience of applying it, whilst difficult,

00:21:42 ◼   ► is made much easier by how good the tutorial stuff is.

00:21:46 ◼   ► And the packaging also, like all the different pieces are labeled

00:21:52 ◼   ► and everything is explained very clearly.

00:21:55 ◼   ► I had Silvia do it, obviously,

00:21:57 ◼   ► because I knew that I was going to do a whole mess.

00:22:01 ◼   ► And she was perfect. It's basically perfect. It's got no bubbles underneath these.

00:22:06 ◼   ► I feel like I need to send you my iPad. All right, so inspired by you, I applied my paper.

00:22:14 ◼   ► Ah, okay.

00:22:15 ◼   ► I messed up the first one so bad I had to use the second one.

00:22:18 ◼   ► Oh no.

00:22:19 ◼   ► Just so many bubbles. Just bubbles everywhere. Like, tiny ones. I reckon I'm going to have to

00:22:26 ◼   ► to take this one off again just because the bubbles are so bad. But I do really like the

00:22:33 ◼   ► matte screen as well. I think the matte finish is really nice.

00:22:37 ◼   ► Okay. The Moshi iVizer AG has no texture, so it is smooth. Completely… well, it's

00:22:47 ◼   ► different of course from the glass of the iPad's display, but it doesn't have friction

00:22:53 ◼   ► like the paper-like. It's matte, it's very similar in practice to the paper-like. And

00:23:02 ◼   ► the big advantage of this one is that it creates no bubbles when you apply it. Like completely

00:23:09 ◼   ► bubble free. I don't know how.

00:23:10 ◼   ► I was going to say, how is that possible?

00:23:13 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:23:15 ◼   ► It's removable this one though, right? Like it's not one and done as well.

00:23:19 ◼   ► I think it's removable and washable also, I'm pretty sure.

00:23:24 ◼   ► I'm gonna buy this.

00:23:25 ◼   ► I was really skeptical of this one.

00:23:27 ◼   ► I was like, yeah, how can it be possible

00:23:29 ◼   ► that it's washable and bubble-free?

00:23:31 ◼   ► I mean, I haven't washed it, but it is bubble-free,

00:23:34 ◼   ► like zero bubbles underneath the screen protector.

00:23:39 ◼   ► Now, if I knew, honestly, if I knew

00:23:42 ◼   ► that the MOSHI iVisor AG existed,

00:23:45 ◼   ► I would have probably gone with this one

00:23:47 ◼   ► on the big iPad Pro as well. Now I have the Paperlike on and I don't really... I mean,

00:23:53 ◼   ► maybe she's listening to me right now. I don't really feel like I want to tell Sylvia, "Hey,

00:23:56 ◼   ► you gotta remove the Paperlike. Apply a different one."

00:24:00 ◼   ► Do you think if you removed it and replaced it with the iVisor that she would realize?

00:24:05 ◼   ► Probably. Because she used the iPad Pro for drawing with the pencil for basically like

00:24:13 ◼   ► 30 minutes and if she's ever gonna try again she's gonna notice the lack of a

00:24:18 ◼   ► texture. So it's possible. What I want to say is that I was really skeptical of

00:24:26 ◼   ► these screen protectors in general for one main reason. I was afraid they would

00:24:31 ◼   ► change the color or like just the definition, the resolution of the image

00:24:38 ◼   ► shown on screen. And while that happens to an extent, like, text is... I don't know

00:24:47 ◼   ► how to describe it, but the... it looks a bit different, but it's not as big a deal

00:24:52 ◼   ► as I feared. It's totally usable. I've been writing with the paper, like, on my

00:24:58 ◼   ► big iPad Pro for an entire week at this point. It's fine. And I love it. I love

00:25:03 ◼   ► I love that it's matte, I love that it reflects less light.

00:25:07 ◼   ► I think this is gonna work for me, honestly.

00:25:13 ◼   ► And the bigger point I guess is that all these modifications that I'm doing to my iPad Pro

00:25:20 ◼   ► we talked about the Coverbody Zwicheasy case last week

00:25:26 ◼   ► I since have added also a silicone sleeve for my Apple Pencil.

00:25:32 ◼   ► What I love... So, to recap what's going on at the moment, I have a smart key portfolio

00:25:40 ◼   ► with four metal kickstands in the back. I have a zwicheasy cover body case around the

00:25:46 ◼   ► eye for throw. I have a... This is a funny name, I got it from Amazon Italy. I think

00:25:51 ◼   ► it's also available in Amazon US. It's an Apple Pencil sleeve, it comes in black and

00:25:56 ◼   ► It's duotone, which is super nice to look at, but it's called the AHA style.

00:26:02 ◼   ► AHA style, it's all one word, it's the AHA style.

00:26:08 ◼   ► Apple Pencil sleeve, that's AHA style.

00:26:13 ◼   ► And the paper-like screen protector.

00:26:17 ◼   ► But what I like about this setup, so it's a lot of accessories,

00:26:22 ◼   ► But, I'm still using the iPad Pro with the SmartKey portfolio.

00:26:27 ◼   ► It's not like my iPad Pro is so rugged now, it's become like those OtterBox cases,

00:26:37 ◼   ► that suddenly your iPad is now a full brick that you have to lug around.

00:26:41 ◼   ► The increasing weight is minimal.

00:26:44 ◼   ► Basically the only weight that I added was the Coverbody case,

00:26:47 ◼   ► body case because the kickstands and the screen protector and the Apple Pencil

00:26:52 ◼   ► sleeve, they weigh nothing essentially. So I'm still using the iPad Pro with a

00:26:57 ◼   ► smart keyboard. It's still a pretty standard setup in terms of the writing

00:27:02 ◼   ► experience, but it's so much more flexible for me because with a matte

00:27:07 ◼   ► display I can work outside. The Apple Pencil sleeve, by the way, fits inside the

00:27:14 ◼   ► opening in the cover body case and it charges and it connects, it pairs

00:27:20 ◼   ► magnetically to the iPad Pro, but now the Apple Pencil is also protected. And I got

00:27:25 ◼   ► the kickstands so I have multiple viewing angles as well. So it is a

00:27:28 ◼   ► completely custom smart keyboard setup which is sort of, that was my priority.

00:27:34 ◼   ► Like, I want to keep using the smart keyboard but I also want to customize it

00:27:38 ◼   ► to add a bunch of options. And yes, you can make the argument that "oh look at

00:27:42 ◼   ► this guy spending money to fix something that Apple should have fixed. Yes, I agree with

00:27:46 ◼   ► you, but also I am a pragmatic person. So I took it upon myself to customize it and

00:27:53 ◼   ► now it works for me. And you, the complainer, have a smart keyboard that is not as flexible

00:27:58 ◼   ► as mine. So I think I'm... I got a win situation over here for me. Don't you agree?

00:28:04 ◼   ► I agree that you have a situation.

00:28:06 ◼   ► I... okay, okay. Look, when you look at it, it looks like an iPad with a smart keyboard.

00:28:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:15 ◼   ► I mean, and if you take a closer look, you will see the Switch Easy Case, which is, again,

00:28:22 ◼   ► you just see the additional pencil holder, basically. And the metal kickstands are very

00:28:32 ◼   ► strategically placed around stickers that I have all over the smart keyboard. So they

00:28:40 ◼   ► are sort of a, you know, a camo situation going on. You barely notice them. And otherwise,

00:28:46 ◼   ► it is just a smart keyboard.

00:28:48 ◼   ► I don't agree that you barely notice the stickers.

00:28:51 ◼   ► No, no, it's a smart keyboard.

00:28:53 ◼   ► And not the kickstands. Look, you do you, man. It's pretty obvious that I would be

00:29:01 ◼   ► excited for you in all of your things but don't try and say that you can't notice them.

00:29:07 ◼   ► You can.

00:29:08 ◼   ► The kick sense?

00:29:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:29:10 ◼   ► Honestly?

00:29:11 ◼   ► Like, I...

00:29:12 ◼   ► No, I don't.

00:29:14 ◼   ► Like I notice them in the sense that they, like, the iPad, like, doesn't...

00:29:20 ◼   ► Like when you put it on a table...

00:29:22 ◼   ► It doesn't sit flat.

00:29:24 ◼   ► It doesn't sit flat but I like, I don't care.

00:29:26 ◼   ► But I guess it's balanced, so...

00:29:28 ◼   ► Yeah, it is.

00:29:29 ◼   ► Because there's four of them.

00:29:30 ◼   ► so it's balanced and it's fine.

00:29:32 ◼   ► But yeah, I mean, and the best part, like,

00:29:35 ◼   ► if I don't wanna... if I don't have to type or write anything,

00:29:39 ◼   ► it's a smart... again, it's a smart keyboard.

00:29:41 ◼   ► Now I just remove the iPad,

00:29:43 ◼   ► and the Switch is the case, it's easy enough to remove,

00:29:46 ◼   ► and I got an iPad. So...

00:29:48 ◼   ► I think this is more flexible for me than something like a bridge keyboard,

00:29:53 ◼   ► when I wanna have an iPad in portable mode.

00:29:56 ◼   ► All this to say that I'm really happy that I made fun of you for screen protectors,

00:29:59 ◼   ► screen protectors a few years ago. I regret the mistake. I can see the appeal now. It's

00:30:06 ◼   ► still made for good entertainment on the show, so I do not regret the entertainment that

00:30:10 ◼   ► we provided, because that's what we do. But I will say that I understand now why people

00:30:17 ◼   ► like it. Regardless of the texture and whether it feels like paper or not, having an anti-glare

00:30:24 ◼   ► matte display is very nice.

00:30:27 ◼   ► Should be a default option on the Apple Pro.

00:30:29 ◼   ► I would pay serious money for it.

00:30:31 ◼   ► - You seem pretty happy, right, about all of this.

00:30:35 ◼   ► You did not seem very happy on Twitter a couple of days ago,

00:30:38 ◼   ► and I wanted to ask you about it.

00:30:40 ◼   ► You tweeted the following,

00:30:41 ◼   ► "I've had enough of Google's broken, intrusive,

00:30:44 ◼   ► "user-hostile AMP pages that are constantly shoved

00:30:47 ◼   ► "down my throat in mobile search results.

00:30:50 ◼   ► "I can't stand them anymore.

00:30:51 ◼   ► "I'm trying DuckDuckGo again for a while."

00:30:54 ◼   ► How's that going for you? Also, can we talk about AMP? Can we talk about that for a minute?

00:31:02 ◼   ► We can. We can. I believe it's the worst thing that has ever happened to the mobile

00:31:07 ◼   ► web.

00:31:08 ◼   ► How often are you seeing that? I feel like I don't get AMP.

00:31:10 ◼   ► Every single day.

00:31:12 ◼   ► Yep. All the time.

00:31:13 ◼   ► I am so fed up.

00:31:15 ◼   ► Let me ask though. I want to ask. I feel like I need to understand this. Because I only

00:31:19 ◼   ► ever realize I'm on an AMP page when I need the URL.

00:31:23 ◼   ► Oh, no, no, no.

00:31:25 ◼   ► But I don't feel like I notice most of the time.

00:31:27 ◼   ► I can tell because the scrolling is weird.

00:31:30 ◼   ► What is that? What do you mean by that?

00:31:32 ◼   ► I'm just intrigued. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just intrigued.

00:31:35 ◼   ► So, there's a bunch of issues.

00:31:38 ◼   ► On the iPad Pro, usually, when I open a Google AMP page,

00:31:45 ◼   ► half of the screen is blank, is white,

00:31:50 ◼   ► And the article is displayed with a smaller font on the left side of the screen,

00:31:59 ◼   ► because it's completely broken for some websites on the iPad Pro with Safari at the moment.

00:32:06 ◼   ► Wait, explain that again?

00:32:07 ◼   ► When I open certain, actually several AMP websites on my iPad Pro,

00:32:15 ◼   ► The result is a page that has the right half of the screen completely blank, white, with no content,

00:32:27 ◼   ► and the actual article is cramped on the left side of the screen.

00:32:33 ◼   ► Is this in landscape?

00:32:36 ◼   ► Yes, it is.

00:32:38 ◼   ► I haven't seen this.

00:32:39 ◼   ► That's a thing that happens on my Appet Pro.

00:32:41 ◼   ► Of course, the regular annoyance of being unable to share the actual permalink of a

00:32:48 ◼   ► web page on the iPhone, I can tell when I'm visiting an AMP page because it does weird

00:32:55 ◼   ► things to scrolling the page. Like it's not the native Safari scrolling, the native

00:33:00 ◼   ► WebKit scrolling, it's different. Text selection is usually weird. Using extensions from the

00:33:07 ◼   ► share sheet becomes impossible because they ingest the google.com AMP URL instead of the

00:33:14 ◼   ► actual link. And there's just a lot of weird things that happen in terms of rendering and

00:33:21 ◼   ► scrolling and the interaction. So not only do I believe that it's... My main problem

00:33:28 ◼   ► with AMP, and we've talked about this years ago, I was actually quoted, and this is not

00:33:33 ◼   ► to brag. It's something that I've been thinking for years now. I've been quoting

00:33:39 ◼   ► the New York Times when I originally complained about this. Yes. It is such a short-sighted

00:33:48 ◼   ► view of the web from both Google and website owners. And I see this all the time. Like,

00:33:59 ◼   ► You have a website, and instead of making it better, and by better I mean like, don't

00:34:05 ◼   ► use 50, 60 different trackers, or you know, have published web pages that weigh 60, 70

00:34:14 ◼   ► MB, have all kinds of user hustle behaviors going on. These websites, they embrace these

00:34:21 ◼   ► technologies that are supposed to make your website better. This applies to Google AMP,

00:34:26 ◼   ► This applies to a service that I saw yesterday that launched called Scroll that lets you

00:34:31 ◼   ► pay $5 a month to browse certain websites without ads. Well, guess what? The best way

00:34:39 ◼   ► to pay...

00:34:40 ◼   ► Re-ability! Re-ability is back.

00:34:42 ◼   ► Yes, it's basically readability that failed miserably. Remember they were sending checks

00:34:46 ◼   ► to website publishers years ago and I got mine in the mail, it was like $70. Thank

00:34:51 ◼   ► you, readability.

00:34:53 ◼   ► They would if you didn't sign up to claim the money, they just keep the money.

00:34:56 ◼   ► Yeah, they will keep it.

00:34:57 ◼   ► Well, guess what the best solution to have people come to your mobile website actually is.

00:35:04 ◼   ► Make a good mobile website.

00:35:06 ◼   ► Don't track people.

00:35:07 ◼   ► And if you really want to like I have a single thing on my website, Google Analytics, I don't have 60.

00:35:14 ◼   ► And 60 is not an exaggeration.

00:35:16 ◼   ► I there are programs that let you see how many trackers you have on certain websites.

00:35:22 ◼   ► You want to have one analytic service because you need the metrics? Fine.

00:35:26 ◼   ► But don't publish web pages that eat up your data connection.

00:35:30 ◼   ► That's just ridiculous.

00:35:32 ◼   ► Don't make a good website that respects people,

00:35:36 ◼   ► that behaves in a way that a good website should behave,

00:35:39 ◼   ► and you don't have to use all these different plugins and all these different

00:35:43 ◼   ► services. Make a main website that works well.

00:35:46 ◼   ► You can have ads, but just, you know,

00:35:49 ◼   ► and maybe this is just my way of thinking and maybe it's a limited world view,

00:35:52 ◼   ► but it's my opinion.

00:35:53 ◼   ► - So I do not disagree with the large point

00:35:58 ◼   ► that you're making, but the reason is because

00:36:01 ◼   ► a lot of websites can't make money

00:36:03 ◼   ► without those types of ads.

00:36:04 ◼   ► That's why it exists, right?

00:36:06 ◼   ► Where you have found a very great business model

00:36:09 ◼   ► and work with people that are like-minded,

00:36:11 ◼   ► but that's why we are in this situation, right?

00:36:15 ◼   ► - Sure. - Because publishing

00:36:17 ◼   ► seems to be becoming more and more difficult

00:36:19 ◼   ► for people to make money in.

00:36:20 ◼   ► I am not excusing those trackers, merely stating for the devil's advocacy, right, of just like...

00:36:27 ◼   ► But especially Google AMP. Google AMP, what's the reason to implement Google AMP? Google

00:36:34 ◼   ► AMP is, and I'm going to say this, I take full responsibility, Google AMP is basically

00:36:38 ◼   ► extortion from Google.

00:36:41 ◼   ► In what way?

00:36:42 ◼   ► In a way that they obviously promote, in search results, websites that use AMP stuff, right?

00:36:49 ◼   ► They have a whole thing for news that you tap on an AMP result and then you can swipe

00:36:53 ◼   ► through multiple websites.

00:36:55 ◼   ► But what is Google's benefit though?

00:36:58 ◼   ► That you keep using Google because, oh my god, these websites are so fast.

00:37:06 ◼   ► It feels like it's a whole evil plan to have these websites implement Google Ads.

00:37:13 ◼   ► Google ads, obviously, they slow down web pages and they come with all kinds of different

00:37:20 ◼   ► trackers and now these websites are not making, you know, they have users complaining about

00:37:26 ◼   ► the fact that these websites are slow. And so Google comes in and says, "Okay, look,

00:37:30 ◼   ► this very problem that we created, but don't think about it that way for now. What if we

00:37:34 ◼   ► also gave you a plugin that speeds up your website?"

00:37:37 ◼   ► I don't know about this part. I don't know about this part.

00:37:40 ◼   ► My website is slow because you gave me ads that are slow.

00:37:43 ◼   ► But do Google's ad systems slow pages down or is it all the other stuff that people...

00:37:47 ◼   ► I don't know if it's Google's, right?

00:37:50 ◼   ► Those 60 trackers or whatever, they're like all these crazy companies with their tracking

00:37:54 ◼   ► pixels, right?

00:37:55 ◼   ► I don't know if it's Google.

00:37:57 ◼   ► Well, yeah, but it's part of the problem though.

00:38:00 ◼   ► Yes, a problem that they did create, but I don't know if it's Google's thing.

00:38:06 ◼   ► I get your point of they want the web to be faster for various reasons.

00:38:11 ◼   ► One of those reasons is because then Google's version of the web is faster for you as the

00:38:16 ◼   ► user.

00:38:17 ◼   ► And why would Google care about that?

00:38:18 ◼   ► Because they want to keep people using Google because that's where the money comes in.

00:38:22 ◼   ► Look, I am firmly convinced that all these websites are going to regret adopting AMP

00:38:32 ◼   ► years from now.

00:38:33 ◼   ► Oh, of course they are.

00:38:34 ◼   ► will break and it'll stop it's like anything it's like anything in publishing

00:38:38 ◼   ► right like there's the darling for a bit and then everybody regrets it right like

00:38:42 ◼   ► that's all pivot to video let's all etc etc right like I've seen these these

00:38:47 ◼   ► kinds of comments from like the virgin stuff right that they they implemented

00:38:51 ◼   ► amp and now they hate it but like what are they supposed to do like they need

00:38:55 ◼   ► it because they need people to come and see the the pages I'm pretty sure I've

00:38:59 ◼   ► seen articles from them like that right am I am I speaking wrong there that

00:39:03 ◼   ► feels about right. Never, never, ever trust plugins. Control the stuff that you publish.

00:39:12 ◼   ► Have it be basic web standards and you're going to be fine. Don't trust these fads that

00:39:20 ◼   ► come about, even if they last for three, four years. Have it be standard stuff. Text. It's

00:39:26 ◼   ► all about text and HTML. That's what it should be. Don't trust plugins because you're going

00:39:30 ◼   ► to regret it. This stuff happens all the time, and now there's this scroll service and people

00:39:36 ◼   ► are going to be all excited about scroll and then it's going to stop working in a few years,

00:39:40 ◼   ► and the cycle repeats itself over and over and over. It's demoralizing, and as a user,

00:39:48 ◼   ► AMP results are just terrible. It's a terrible user experience. So now I am so annoyed by

00:39:54 ◼   ► I am looking for two things. One, recommendations from people. If you know of any extensions for Safari on iOS that somehow make it easier to de-amp a webpage,

00:40:09 ◼   ► because yes, you can get to the actual URL, but you need to tap on the very small icon in the top left corner, and then you also need to tap on the link.

00:40:19 ◼   ► I wish there was a way, maybe a bookmarklet or maybe an extension from the sharesheet that's easier to access

00:40:25 ◼   ► or I

00:40:27 ◼   ► want to see if there's a way for me to write a shortcut

00:40:30 ◼   ► that uses JavaScript in Safari to

00:40:34 ◼   ► extract the actual permalink of a page and take me there. I think that's possible, but I'm not sure so

00:40:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I

00:40:45 ◼   ► fundamentally despise AMP on principle

00:40:48 ◼   ► at a practical level. So you're having a great time with DuckDuckGo and it's in Google's

00:40:56 ◼   ► place? No, that's also the problem. So I'm back to Google, spoiler alert, because I remembered

00:41:07 ◼   ► we've been over this two years ago when I was quoted in the New York Times, or three

00:41:11 ◼   ► years ago, I can't remember the problem. I thought that DuckDuckGo improved in the meantime.

00:41:18 ◼   ► It is still very bad in terms of search results for me for two types of content, news results

00:41:25 ◼   ► and Italian content, Italian results from Italian websites.

00:41:30 ◼   ► News, I realized I use Google a lot for.

00:41:33 ◼   ► I type something in Safari and either I see the top news at the very top of the standard

00:41:39 ◼   ► search page or I select the News tab on Google.

00:41:46 ◼   ► in DuckDuckGo are really bad and basically non-existent. Italian search results I essentially

00:41:54 ◼   ► couldn't find. It is such a dramatic difference between the Italian stuff that I can find

00:42:02 ◼   ► using Google and what I can find using DuckDuckGo. Also, I noticed that Google has much, much

00:42:10 ◼   ► better support for indexing content from online forum boards, like communities where people

00:42:17 ◼   ► share and talk about stuff like Reddit, for example. The results for that type of websites

00:42:23 ◼   ► that you get in DuckDuckGo are also really bad. So I understand, and I believe people

00:42:29 ◼   ► when they say "I've been using DuckDuckGo for like two years and I'm totally fine and

00:42:34 ◼   ► I always find what I'm looking for", that doesn't apply to me. Maybe it's the things

00:42:39 ◼   ► that I search for, maybe it's the fact that I have this mix of English and Italian content,

00:42:43 ◼   ► it doesn't really work for me, man. Like, I cannot find what I'm looking for. And if I'm using

00:42:48 ◼   ► DuckDuckGo, but then I always have to append the exclamation mark "G" to take me to Google,

00:42:54 ◼   ► what's the point, right? I'm just gonna use Google as the default.

00:42:57 ◼   ► You just wanna use Google. Like, look, we need to be real about this. Like, I agree,

00:43:01 ◼   ► I know people, I have friends who use DuckDuckGo, but like, there are search engines and there is

00:43:06 ◼   ► Google. Everything else is something else, Google has it all. And that's just how it

00:43:14 ◼   ► is. I'm sorry.

00:43:17 ◼   ► So I was hoping it was better, and I do appreciate the message and what Dr. Go is trying to do,

00:43:29 ◼   ► but it's not as good as Google for me.

00:43:32 ◼   ► And again, just to make this clear before the many things happen, none of this is about

00:43:37 ◼   ► like tracking and all that kind of stuff. This is purely about AMP, because like people

00:43:42 ◼   ► will tell you to do this to Google, that to Google. That's not what you're looking for.

00:43:47 ◼   ► It's not about like minimizing Google's hole on you. It's purely because you don't like

00:43:52 ◼   ► AMP. Look, I got principles, all right, in life

00:43:55 ◼   ► in general. This is not a case of principles. It's just a pure personal problem with search

00:44:02 ◼   ► results. Well, the principle is you hate AMP. Yes, that's the principle. My north star

00:44:08 ◼   ► is I hate AMP, how do I get rid of AMP? I thought using a different search engine would

00:44:14 ◼   ► be a solution, but no it isn't. And no, I don't want to try Bing or... What about

00:44:19 ◼   ► Jeeves, ask Jeeves. No. So, yeah. I've actually been trying out Bing a little bit recently

00:44:27 ◼   ► for other reasons. And it's not Google either. It really isn't. It's very different.

00:44:34 ◼   ► So Federico, MaxStories had, just to close this loop, MaxStories had AMP for a while, right?

00:44:40 ◼   ► Yeah. Yes.

00:44:41 ◼   ► And then you got rid of it because of this personal stance.

00:44:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:44:45 ◼   ► Did you see any difference that you're willing to share in mobile traffic or how MaxStories

00:44:50 ◼   ► showed up in search after that change?

00:44:53 ◼   ► No, not really. Search traffic is up every year. It's doing fine. For some results,

00:45:03 ◼   ► we're on the first page of Google, some other results may be on page 2. Obviously, the big

00:45:11 ◼   ► stories that get shared, like my iOS reviews or some major app reviews, they tend to rank higher

00:45:18 ◼   ► in Google search. So I would say it's fine. I see traffic from news.google.com, whatever

00:45:27 ◼   ► the domain is, but we're just not as... obviously we do not end up in the featured Google AMP

00:45:35 ◼   ► carousel of websites that support Google AMP. But that is a trade-off that I'm willing to

00:45:41 ◼   ► accept. We will never be featured in that special view that lets you flip through pages

00:45:47 ◼   ► from different websites, but it's fine because I don't want to use AMP.

00:45:50 ◼   ► I want to have a website that is lightweight and fast

00:45:55 ◼   ► and that uses as little JavaScript as possible.

00:45:58 ◼   ► So that's my priority.

00:46:01 ◼   ► And look, I'm totally fine with not getting millions,

00:46:04 ◼   ► tens of millions of views every month. It's fine.

00:46:07 ◼   ► It's something that I came to terms with years ago, really.

00:46:13 ◼   ► I, you know, all, you know, my stance on these plugins and these services, like I want to control everything that I do.

00:46:19 ◼   ► That's my priority.

00:46:21 ◼   ► And so I we tried AMP years ago for like a month and then realized this is stupid.

00:46:28 ◼   ► We should just make our website faster.

00:46:30 ◼   ► And that's what we did. We focused on we removed AMP and we worked on making Mac stories super fast and as lightweight as possible.

00:46:38 ◼   ► We removed all the legacy JavaScript that we had.

00:46:42 ◼   ► We switched to HTML and CSS for certain types of content

00:46:48 ◼   ► inside Stories as much as possible.

00:46:50 ◼   ► And now we played around with not using Google Analytics.

00:46:53 ◼   ► We tried to use a service called Matomo.

00:46:56 ◼   ► And we tested it for a couple of months.

00:46:59 ◼   ► And then also I realized these results are not

00:47:01 ◼   ► as good as Google Analytics.

00:47:03 ◼   ► And so I decided Analytics is the only service

00:47:06 ◼   ► that I'm willing to put on Mac Stories.

00:47:08 ◼   ► and that's the only one that we have.

00:47:10 ◼   ► So yeah, now we're even using the native font

00:47:15 ◼   ► on Apple platforms, the native San Francisco font,

00:47:18 ◼   ► season font, so we're not even loading

00:47:20 ◼   ► a remote font anymore, so.

00:47:22 ◼   ► - Well, we've got a lot more to talk about,

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00:48:12 ◼   ► One payment process reuse requires the name to be typed

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00:49:09 ◼   ► Our thanks to TextExpander for their support

00:49:11 ◼   ► of this show and Relay FM.

00:49:13 ◼   ► So this week marks the 10th anniversary

00:49:17 ◼   ► of the iPad keynote.

00:49:18 ◼   ► It came out in what, March or April, several months later.

00:49:22 ◼   ► But the keynote anniversary is this week.

00:49:25 ◼   ► And we wanted to sort of point it out here.

00:49:30 ◼   ► There's a bunch of stuff in the show notes.

00:49:32 ◼   ► Myke, you and Jason spoke about it, Upgrade 282.

00:49:35 ◼   ► Federico, you and John spoke about the iPad

00:49:38 ◼   ► as far as like from the app angle

00:49:41 ◼   ► on App Stories episode 147.

00:49:44 ◼   ► And several people asked us to cover it

00:49:46 ◼   ► like play by play on Connected.

00:49:48 ◼   ► Well, we did that five years ago on episode 24 of Connected.

00:49:53 ◼   ► So you can go listen to much younger versions of us.

00:49:56 ◼   ► Do that if you want.

00:49:58 ◼   ► I have literally no memory of this episode.

00:50:00 ◼   ► Yeah, me neither.

00:50:01 ◼   ► I do not remember doing this, which is hilarious.

00:50:04 ◼   ► Was it us?

00:50:05 ◼   ► Do we actually do it?

00:50:06 ◼   ► It looks like it.

00:50:07 ◼   ► But if you're looking for another play-by-play, I watched this on a plane.

00:50:11 ◼   ► Steven watched the entire thing, which was wonderful.

00:50:15 ◼   ► Yeah, so I did like a commentary track sort of thing and posted that on YouTube and it

00:50:22 ◼   ► was fun to rewatch it.

00:50:23 ◼   ► wild how much the how much of the the iPad is the same but in and how many

00:50:32 ◼   ► ways it's totally different than it was in the beginning like the very vision of

00:50:37 ◼   ► the iPad has changed so much and it's it was it was fun to revisit it I loved

00:50:44 ◼   ► some of the stuff that dated it like when they were saying that like we make

00:50:48 ◼   ► more mobile devices than even Nokia. Yeah. And it's like, oh my god, oh my god, it's so good.

00:50:55 ◼   ► Yeah, there's that there's, I mean, it opens with like an iPod update. It really is funny. And,

00:51:03 ◼   ► and the whole thing, you know, he, he is really interesting, because they feel like they justify

00:51:10 ◼   ► the product's existence. Like when there's a new iPad Pro or a new Mac, like, oh, yeah, like,

00:51:14 ◼   ► we know what this is, but with this, with the new category, it is really different because

00:51:22 ◼   ► they have to define the category.

00:51:24 ◼   ► And so they compare it against netbooks, which was the hot thing in 2010.

00:51:28 ◼   ► A bunch of people wanted Apple to build one, and it is really interesting how they sort

00:51:34 ◼   ► of decimate them, and now they're totally gone.

00:51:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I skimmed the keynote video again and it's still so...

00:51:43 ◼   ► I don't know, it's still so fun to look at, like, and remember

00:51:48 ◼   ► like, the things that we were expecting and all the rumors back then and

00:51:52 ◼   ► like, the names that we thought they were gonna use for this device

00:51:57 ◼   ► It's just, it's something that I remember so clearly, for me it is the...

00:52:01 ◼   ► It's the keynote that I associate with starting MacStories, because it was the first big new

00:52:08 ◼   ► Apple product since I started the website in April 2009.

00:52:12 ◼   ► And so in January 2010, the website was still very much new.

00:52:17 ◼   ► And like, I don't want to say that I, well, yeah, to an extent, I had no idea what I was

00:52:22 ◼   ► doing, but I know that this was going to be a big deal.

00:52:24 ◼   ► And like, this is for me the event that really convinced me, oh, this is something that I

00:52:30 ◼   ► cover. So it doesn't feel like 10 years but also looking at it and like the Nokia

00:52:37 ◼   ► reference for example, yeah it's been 10 years, it's been a decade, so it's been a

00:52:41 ◼   ► long time. And it also highlights like this decade, this 10 years. We talked

00:52:48 ◼   ► about this last week I think but you can see the clean break in the middle in

00:52:52 ◼   ► 2015 with the iPad Pro. Like you can absolutely see the separation between

00:52:58 ◼   ► the first five years. Like, the first couple of years, the first iPad and the

00:53:04 ◼   ► iPad 2 and the retina iPad 3, which was called the new iPad, and then basically

00:53:10 ◼   ► nothing. Like, yeah, there was the iPad 4 and the iPad Mini, but the software

00:53:15 ◼   ► really suffered and Apple made no new apps, basically, for the iPad. And then the

00:53:22 ◼   ► iPad core came out in 2015, but Apple was already a very

00:53:26 ◼   ► different company then. So it feels to me it feels longer I know that it's you

00:53:33 ◼   ► know that's not how it works but to me if the time between the original iPad

00:53:39 ◼   ► and the first iPad Pro in 2015 feels longer than from 2015 to now. Well because

00:53:47 ◼   ► we were kind of stuck in limbo it was stuck in limbo I mean the

00:53:50 ◼   ► introduction of the iPad mini was a big moment but the regular iPad was just

00:53:55 ◼   ► like this is what it is and that will be it for a while right like and it really

00:54:02 ◼   ► was like that for a long time and then you know they brought like a retina

00:54:06 ◼   ► screen to it they made it lighter like they made this sort of change you should

00:54:09 ◼   ► expect but it needed the change that it got in 2015 which then that you know

00:54:17 ◼   ► changing to the iPad Pro then trickled down to the rest of the iPad line making

00:54:20 ◼   ► all of the other iPads better in the meantime as well.

00:54:23 ◼   ► And look, I'm just gonna adjust the elephant in the room and see it.

00:54:27 ◼   ► The iPad will all, I think, will at this point will always be the kind of product that every few months

00:54:35 ◼   ► a few people get together on their websites, on their blogs, and write about how a failure it is.

00:54:41 ◼   ► How it's not a replacement for traditional computers, how Apple dropped the ball, and the Mac is a better computer,

00:54:50 ◼   ► and nobody's using the iPad.

00:54:53 ◼   ► I think this has happened so many times already. It happens, it's a cycle that repeats itself

00:54:59 ◼   ► multiple times a year almost on a regular predictable schedule at different times of the year.

00:55:06 ◼   ► Usually in the winter, right after WWDC, and sometimes in the fall. It can be twice or

00:55:16 ◼   ► three times a year, but it's a very regular schedule that some people all like it flares

00:55:22 ◼   ► up and everybody starts talking about the iPad again, how much of a failure it is, and

00:55:28 ◼   ► it's a tragedy, and then it blows over again. Now, I don't really feel like, and specifically

00:55:36 ◼   ► I think Myke and I, we've talked about this topic so many times over... We've been doing

00:55:45 ◼   ► the prompt and are later connected since 2013. We've been talking over seven years about

00:55:51 ◼   ► this topic so many times that there's nothing that we can possibly add to the

00:55:57 ◼   ► conversation that we haven't already said. Which is... and I think Myke agrees

00:56:03 ◼   ► with me, it's fine. Like, the iPad has problems, had problems, Apple got to a

00:56:09 ◼   ► better place with the iPad Pro. But then if you don't want to use it, you don't

00:56:13 ◼   ► have to use it. We're not saying that it's a us versus them

00:56:19 ◼   ► situation, like if you want to use a Mac it's fine. We just enjoy using the iPad more. Personally,

00:56:27 ◼   ► like it's our personal preference. And personally, I do not believe that nobody is using the

00:56:37 ◼   ► iPad as others would have you believe. I think that's inaccurate. But there's nothing

00:56:44 ◼   ► else that we can say if you don't like the iPad, we're obviously not going to change

00:56:47 ◼   ► your mind. Yes, it's got problems. There's some features of iPadOS that could use a lot

00:56:55 ◼   ► more work. But I personally don't believe that the iPad is, at the moment, in an unusable

00:57:04 ◼   ► state. I strongly disagree with John Gruber on his article about iPad multitasking. I

00:57:11 ◼   ► think, yes, it could be improved. I do not think it...

00:57:15 ◼   ► But it's also ignorable. Like, if you don't want to use iPad multitasking and you want

00:57:21 ◼   ► to use your iPad as one app at a time, you don't even have to set that mode where you

00:57:25 ◼   ► do one app at a time. Because it's kind of like, if it's so undiscoverable, you should

00:57:31 ◼   ► never discover it by accident, so it shouldn't be a problem for you, right?

00:57:35 ◼   ► What I think is funny is that every time this cycle repeats itself, and there's the latest

00:57:42 ◼   ► installment of these stories. People feel compelled to tell me about it. And while,

00:57:50 ◼   ► you know...

00:57:51 ◼   ► Don't you know? Don't you know? Don't you know, Federico? You must not know. It's

00:57:56 ◼   ► kind of silly, really, that you've been using the iPad all this time, but yet you don't

00:58:00 ◼   ► know how bad it is. I feel sorry for you.

00:58:03 ◼   ► That's what I think it is. It is a very funny phenomenon that happens every single time.

00:58:08 ◼   ► of like, I'm just minding my own business and, you know, I'm doing my job and I'm writing my stories.

00:58:17 ◼   ► Every once in a while I give people an update on how I've been using the iPad and the things that

00:58:22 ◼   ► I'm doing with the iPad, but it's not like I spend my life constantly obsessed with proving a point

00:58:29 ◼   ► about the iPad. Like every once in a while I have a story or maybe we talk about the latest

00:58:33 ◼   ► the successor is that about, but then that's it. Like, I'm not on a mission. I'm not on

00:58:38 ◼   ► a quest to prove a point. I had a point to prove years ago and that was it. And now it's

00:58:44 ◼   ► like, it's what I don't understand. It's this, "Oh, don't you know that you're wrong? How

00:58:50 ◼   ► can I be wrong if it's working for me?" So this like, this, "We need to show you the

00:58:56 ◼   ► truth of like, we need you to see the light," is what I don't really understand.

00:59:02 ◼   ► That people just want to help you Federico.

00:59:04 ◼   ► And that's like this insistence on why don't you accept our help and don't you change your

00:59:10 ◼   ► opinion.

00:59:11 ◼   ► That I think is really, it's a really fascinating psychological thing going on.

00:59:17 ◼   ► But it's like, imagine the opposite.

00:59:20 ◼   ► Imagine if every few months we start, you know, me and you and Jason and maybe John

00:59:25 ◼   ► worries, like, you know, publishing stories about the Mac is useless.

00:59:32 ◼   ► Maybe we should.

00:59:33 ◼   ► And like, we started getting in touch, like, Jehovah Witness style, you know, getting in

00:59:39 ◼   ► people's mentions and DMs and be like, "Hey, don't you know that you're using the wrong

00:59:43 ◼   ► computer?"

00:59:44 ◼   ► It's like, why?

00:59:46 ◼   ► What's the point?

00:59:47 ◼   ► I might start writing articles about the Mac App Store.

00:59:50 ◼   ► See now, that's a whole, that's a whole, that's a whole thing.

00:59:53 ◼   ► But yeah, so the iPad, a 10. Not a perfect product, but also not a doomed product. And

01:00:02 ◼   ► I don't think, I mean, this is where I draw the line. I don't think it's multitasking

01:00:08 ◼   ► is a catastrophe. I don't think it ruined the iPad. I also don't think the iPad should

01:00:15 ◼   ► have stayed the same way forever. I think I want to see what iPadOS means. I want to

01:00:20 ◼   ► let the facts speak. I want to see what Apple actually does. This whole thing of like, it's

01:00:26 ◼   ► useless. No, it's useful. No, it's just like this is this. This, what we're doing now is

01:00:32 ◼   ► useless. This entire conversation has no point. If only just to talk about like what happens

01:00:38 ◼   ► every few months. So I think we've had our share of this conversation and this topic

01:00:44 ◼   ► for a while. Maybe we can talk about it again in a couple of years. Maybe when the iPad

01:00:48 ◼   ► turns 15 and if we'll still be doing connected together, I hope so.

01:00:53 ◼   ► No, it's coming up again in April.

01:00:55 ◼   ► It's yeah, I fear so.

01:00:59 ◼   ► Because there'll be another news cycle like this one, right? And I know that you're working

01:01:02 ◼   ► on it because like April is the anniversary of the product's release. Like what we've

01:01:06 ◼   ► just experienced was the anniversary of its introduction. I guarantee you this comes up

01:01:11 ◼   ► again in April.

01:01:12 ◼   ► Yeah. And look, I also want to clarify, I don't mean that because we like the iPad,

01:01:18 ◼   ► shouldn't hold Apple to a higher standard and complain about stuff. That's the point.

01:01:23 ◼   ► If you go to my iPadOS review, there's a single page that I dedicated. It's called

01:01:33 ◼   ► the complexities of multi-window. It's basically a single page of complaining about things

01:01:39 ◼   ► that do not work with actual examples and screenshots and videos. So like, yeah, I know

01:01:45 ◼   ► that we should complain to Apple and share criticism.

01:01:49 ◼   ► But also, I don't like hyperboles, you know?

01:01:53 ◼   ► I don't think things are useless.

01:01:55 ◼   ► I don't say the Mac is useless because it's not.

01:01:57 ◼   ► It's got problems, and it's, you know,

01:01:59 ◼   ► I apply my taste and opinion to judging it,

01:02:03 ◼   ► but it's not useless, so it's black and white, you know?

01:02:07 ◼   ► I don't like it.

01:02:09 ◼   ► - I mean, I think some of it comes from the era

01:02:12 ◼   ► where people were afraid that the iPad

01:02:13 ◼   ► was going to replace the Mac.

01:02:15 ◼   ► And for a while, Tim Cook and others sort of talked

01:02:18 ◼   ► like that was going to be true.

01:02:20 ◼   ► The future of computing is this, and that

01:02:22 ◼   ► means that the way you compute is old fashioned.

01:02:24 ◼   ► And I think people read a lot into that.

01:02:27 ◼   ► And I think if anything, Apple has

01:02:29 ◼   ► proven over the last couple of years

01:02:31 ◼   ► that these two platforms are going to be

01:02:33 ◼   ► in parallel for a long time.

01:02:36 ◼   ► You don't invest in things like Mac Catalyst or the Mac Pro

01:02:41 ◼   ► or our Macs, if, SwiftUI, if you think that the Mac has

01:02:46 ◼   ► had its time and that the iPad is gonna take it over.

01:02:49 ◼   ► And that's kind of a separate discussion,

01:02:52 ◼   ► but I feel like people who are still afraid of that

01:02:56 ◼   ► just haven't been paying attention

01:02:58 ◼   ► the last couple of years.

01:02:59 ◼   ► And I find that frustrating.

01:03:01 ◼   ► - Let's talk about what Michiko Spoke reported today.

01:03:04 ◼   ► There's an article from MacRumors outlining

01:03:07 ◼   ► a selection of products that were all expected

01:03:10 ◼   ► to be released in the first half of 2020,

01:03:14 ◼   ► most likely in the spring, so probably around March time.

01:03:18 ◼   ► So I have a list of products,

01:03:20 ◼   ► and a few of them have some additional details.

01:03:23 ◼   ► One of them is Ultra Wideband Tags.

01:03:26 ◼   ► This is the product that we've been pretty familiar with

01:03:30 ◼   ► from leaks and screenshots and all kinds,

01:03:32 ◼   ► and MacRumors in their article even have the screenshots

01:03:35 ◼   ► that they were able to unearth of the UI inside of iOS

01:03:39 ◼   ► that enables and allows you to register these tags.

01:03:43 ◼   ► They're believed to be called AirTags,

01:03:45 ◼   ► and this is like the tile thing, right?

01:03:48 ◼   ► So Apple will create a little plastic doohickey

01:03:52 ◼   ► that you put inside of your wallet,

01:03:53 ◼   ► you put inside of your backpack,

01:03:55 ◼   ► and then those products, those items, I should say,

01:03:59 ◼   ► will then show up inside of Find My.

01:04:02 ◼   ► Quo believes that the tags will support ultra wideband,

01:04:06 ◼   ► which is currently the most useless thing

01:04:08 ◼   ► Apple's ever put into an iPhone because I'm telling you, whatever is supposed to happen

01:04:13 ◼   ► to airdrop doesn't work, right? I'm not alone here, right? Like nothing changed with airdrop.

01:04:21 ◼   ► Has anybody ever gotten anything different to happen in airdrop? Like I noticed sometimes

01:04:27 ◼   ► it taps. Yes. Yes. And it taps me. Yes. And then it says, hold up the phone and I do it

01:04:32 ◼   ► and nothing happens. Right? Like, so currently there is a chip inside of our iPhones that

01:04:38 ◼   ► does nothing but is most likely there for support of things like this. Ultra wideband

01:04:45 ◼   ► would allow you to find these products with much greater accuracy than Bluetooth or Wi-Fi

01:04:51 ◼   ► apparently right like if it works so that would be pretty cool so you'd be able to find

01:04:56 ◼   ► these tags and of course because of the way the iPhone works and you would be able to

01:05:02 ◼   ► in theory be on the other side of the world with one of these tags and you'd still be

01:05:07 ◼   ► be able to find your product because it is talking to other devices that are around it.

01:05:12 ◼   ► It doesn't just have to talk to yours. It's very clever stuff and obviously would be great

01:05:16 ◼   ► for Apple because you don't, you know, with products like Tile and Tracker, they have

01:05:23 ◼   ► these mesh networks, right, where like every, the devices can talk to anybody that has the

01:05:27 ◼   ► Tile app installed. So to do that thing where like if I left my bag in Rome and Federico

01:05:33 ◼   ► have the tile app installed for his tile products. It could, in theory, my tile could talk to

01:05:39 ◼   ► his app to help tell me where my bag is. Right. That's how these products work.

01:05:44 ◼   ► Remember when I found your bag in an elevator at E-Thro?

01:05:47 ◼   ► Pause that for a second because that's a great story. But so then, then, yes. But, but like

01:06:00 ◼   ► Like we all have to be using the app, which is way fewer users than every single iOS or

01:06:07 ◼   ► macOS product on the planet of the earth, right, that is using iOS 13 or macOS... what

01:06:15 ◼   ► are we on now?

01:06:16 ◼   ► Catalina.

01:06:17 ◼   ► Catalina.

01:06:18 ◼   ► Or more, right, like that is, that's like so much stuff you'd be able to find your bag

01:06:22 ◼   ► again.

01:06:23 ◼   ► Federico, do you want to tell the story quickly of when you found my suitcase?

01:06:25 ◼   ► Yes.

01:06:26 ◼   ► We were coming back from WWDC and of course we landed in London and I had a layover to

01:06:34 ◼   ► go back to Rome.

01:06:35 ◼   ► So we were flying together so we wait for our bags together, we get our bags at baggage

01:06:44 ◼   ► claim and then we go outside, I needed to basically exit the airport and go back in

01:06:49 ◼   ► for departures.

01:06:51 ◼   ► Because it was like a four hour layover.

01:06:53 ◼   ► So we say goodbye, Myke goes to one elevator, I go to another elevator.

01:06:59 ◼   ► And I need to take this lift to go up, I guess, from Arrivals back to departures at Ithro.

01:07:05 ◼   ► So I get in the elevator and I'm looking at my phone and I'm sitting by... not sitting,

01:07:10 ◼   ► I'm standing by the door.

01:07:13 ◼   ► The door opens on another floor, which was not departures yet, and somebody says "Excuse

01:07:20 ◼   ► me, because I was standing in front of the door. So I move to let this person pass, and

01:07:27 ◼   ► with the corner of my eye, I take a look at this, at the case that this person was holding,

01:07:35 ◼   ► and I see a sticker with Myke's cartoon face on it. And it was like a fraction of a second

01:07:44 ◼   ► like, like, Oh yeah, that's Myke's face. And I go back to look at my phone and like,

01:07:49 ◼   ► it dawns on me, like, wait, what is Myke's face doing on that case? Suddenly I burst

01:07:59 ◼   ► out like, uh, sir, that is not your case. And we're all standing inside of an elevator

01:08:09 ◼   ► packed full of people. Right. And everybody's looking at me like, and this person is like,

01:08:14 ◼   ► And I was like, "Yes, are you coming from San Francisco?"

01:08:18 ◼   ► And this man is like looking at me strange and be like, "Yeah?

01:08:24 ◼   ► How do you know?"

01:08:25 ◼   ► Like so that is more, I'm like, and again, everybody's looking at me and I'm like,

01:08:30 ◼   ► "That case is my friend's case.

01:08:33 ◼   ► I know that because of the sticker.

01:08:36 ◼   ► So what we're going to do now is we're going to exit the elevator and I'm going

01:08:39 ◼   ► to call my friend because he definitely has your case."

01:08:42 ◼   ► And so everybody's looking at us and we get out at a parking level, definitely not the

01:08:51 ◼   ► departures floor, and I call Myke on the phone.

01:08:55 ◼   ► And so this guy is still standing there with Myke's case and looking at me like I'm some

01:08:58 ◼   ► crazy person.

01:09:00 ◼   ► And I call Myke and I'm like, "Myke, your case that you have with you is not your case."

01:09:07 ◼   ► I was very confused by all of this.

01:09:10 ◼   ► Myke was like, "What?"

01:09:12 ◼   ► I was like...

01:09:14 ◼   ► And then when I get there, so I go find Federico, luckily I was just about to get on the train but hadn't yet.

01:09:19 ◼   ► And I get there and this guy's like all annoyed at me.

01:09:22 ◼   ► But the thing was, he picked up my bag first.

01:09:25 ◼   ► And the reason I know this is because I got to the carousel and I saw my bag, but it was like it had passed me.

01:09:31 ◼   ► So I just let it go, right? Like I let it go back into the thing and come out.

01:09:35 ◼   ► And I was waiting there for ages, right? Federico's bag had come out and I was waiting for ages.

01:09:40 ◼   ► And then the other bag comes and I picked it up thinking it was mine

01:09:43 ◼   ► So I know my bag he had picked it up before it went back into the thing

01:09:48 ◼   ► Like I just taken my eye off it

01:09:49 ◼   ► So he picked up my bag first and then I picked up his bag because it was one of the last bags left on the carousel

01:09:54 ◼   ► So but then the guys all agree. He was all annoyed at me, but he did it

01:09:58 ◼   ► He should have checked his bag silly old man. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, so if we had the air tugs, this would have never happened

01:10:05 ◼   ► No, it could have still happened. It could have still happened. Yes, but can you imagine if we man?

01:10:10 ◼   ► I often think about that. I often think about that like yeah, how would that have been resolved? I have no idea

01:10:16 ◼   ► I had no idea any who yeah that means you quoted not report on that

01:10:21 ◼   ► That was that was not part. I don't know if he made it clear

01:10:24 ◼   ► But that whole story was not part of Ming Chi quos report. It was just the air tags part

01:10:28 ◼   ► That's a bummer it was my the story of me losing my suitcase was not in there. Here's a fun one

01:10:34 ◼   ► I was talking about just like two weeks ago of you guys high-end wireless headphones

01:10:38 ◼   ► coming in the first half of the year from Apple.

01:10:41 ◼   ► Head pods are back baby!

01:10:44 ◼   ► There's no more details on this one except to say that these things exist but it makes

01:10:49 ◼   ► sense right?

01:10:50 ◼   ► It makes as much sense as it made then, actually probably more right?

01:10:54 ◼   ► The AirPods Pro seem to have done so well it makes so much sense for Apple to just keep

01:10:57 ◼   ► making all the great headphones.

01:11:00 ◼   ► 4.7 inch iPhone with an LCD display, touch ID and the home button but with a faster A13

01:11:07 ◼   ► chip and three gigabytes of RAM. This is I feel like this this this new version of what

01:11:14 ◼   ► we expect is the SE right? I can't think of a product in a long time where the specs of

01:11:19 ◼   ► it have changed so frequently in rumors. Because if you remember last time we heard it was

01:11:25 ◼   ► going to be a smaller version of a 10 with face ID and then there was going to be it

01:11:31 ◼   ► it's not going to have face ID but have a touch ID sensor in a side button, right?

01:11:37 ◼   ► That was when Steven thought iPhone 9, but now I don't know what it's going to be now.

01:11:43 ◼   ► It could just be the iPhone SE 2.

01:11:44 ◼   ► They could still call it the iPhone 9, but it definitely feels much more like an iPhone

01:11:48 ◼   ► 8 than anything else, I guess.

01:11:50 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that makes the most sense if this is to be a low-cost phone/bridge phone

01:11:58 ◼   ► to get people who want the old design into newer technology, then I think that all sort

01:12:02 ◼   ► of jives with that.

01:12:03 ◼   ► $399 is a great price for a new iPhone, if that's the case.

01:12:09 ◼   ► Refreshed iPad Pro models featuring a triple lens rear camera system that supports 3D sensing

01:12:14 ◼   ► for augmented reality.

01:12:15 ◼   ► Okay.

01:12:16 ◼   ► I've had this rumor for a while, right, that this was something that was coming to the

01:12:19 ◼   ► iPad.

01:12:20 ◼   ► I think we even heard about the 3D sensor thing before the iPhone got three cameras.

01:12:26 ◼   ► room has been around for a long time. I think it makes a lot of sense that they would be

01:12:30 ◼   ► updating the iPads in the spring. But I think it is really going to be interesting to see

01:12:36 ◼   ► whether they get many more substantial updates, including 5G radios. Like I think that's the

01:12:43 ◼   ► key part. Quo didn't really say anything more other than this. So that's kind of where we

01:12:48 ◼   ► we are right now. It is unclear exactly what laptop quo is talking about here, but there

01:12:56 ◼   ► will be an update to a laptop whether MacBook Pro and/or MacBook Air updates. There isn't

01:13:03 ◼   ► really much information about what that will be, but we'd expect some keyboard changes

01:13:07 ◼   ► and/or an introduction of a smaller MacBook Pro.

01:13:12 ◼   ► And then one that has been, like it was, I thought, hilariously to me, kind of overlooked

01:13:17 ◼   ► in the MacRumors report is a quote "smaller wireless charging mat" it's coming back boys

01:13:22 ◼   ► air power is coming back air power is coming back

01:13:25 ◼   ► oh no why smaller? like smaller than what it was supposed to be?

01:13:31 ◼   ► yeah because it's not going to be air power they're just going to make an apple charging

01:13:36 ◼   ► mat I tell you what I think it is right? Qi charging only? and then Qi charging comes

01:13:41 ◼   ► to the Apple Watch that's what I think they're going to do

01:13:45 ◼   ► So for now it's gonna be iPhone plus AirPods and eventually also the watch.

01:13:50 ◼   ► But the watch is gonna switch to...

01:13:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:13:53 ◼   ► That's what I think they're gonna do.

01:13:55 ◼   ► Can the Apple Watch switch to Qi charging though?

01:13:58 ◼   ► Who knows man.

01:14:00 ◼   ► If they can put a Qi charger inside of the AirPods case I'm sure they can put one inside

01:14:03 ◼   ► of the Apple Watch.

01:14:04 ◼   ► That's a good point.

01:14:05 ◼   ► I don't know but I do feel like it's not AirPower, right?

01:14:10 ◼   ► It's not.

01:14:11 ◼   ► if anything they needed to make air power bigger so they could get all the tech in it.

01:14:15 ◼   ► I can't imagine that they are able to deliver on a smaller version of air power whilst also

01:14:21 ◼   ► never delivering on the original one. Those two things don't seem to jive in my brain.

01:14:26 ◼   ► Well you want the fire to be more contained so smaller makes sense.

01:14:30 ◼   ► That's true, a smaller fire, we all know that smaller fires, they don't grow because they're

01:14:34 ◼   ► too small to attach to anything.

01:14:36 ◼   ► So two questions. When do we think new iPad Pros and is the triple lens camera system

01:14:46 ◼   ► all that we should expect? I mean obviously it's gonna have like maybe a new CPU and that

01:14:51 ◼   ► kind of stuff. Oh definitely a new CPU. They wouldn't do it without putting a new CPU in

01:14:56 ◼   ► it. But when and what else I guess? I think March and I do think 5G. Hmm. Okay. Yeah that's

01:15:06 ◼   ► That's a good guess.

01:15:08 ◼   ► - March makes sense.

01:15:09 ◼   ► There's a lot of past March events, right?

01:15:11 ◼   ► So that's a month that they've played in before.

01:15:13 ◼   ► I think the triple camera thing,

01:15:16 ◼   ► we spoke about it weeks ago,

01:15:18 ◼   ► if this really is like a big move in AR,

01:15:20 ◼   ► having it out with the iPad six months

01:15:22 ◼   ► before it comes to the iPhone gives developers

01:15:26 ◼   ► time to be playing with it.

01:15:28 ◼   ► And when it ends up coming to the iPhone later,

01:15:31 ◼   ► with the depth sensing and all that junk,

01:15:33 ◼   ► then they can say, "Look, we've had this out for a while.

01:15:36 ◼   ► all these apps that take advantage of it and now you get this great experience on your

01:15:40 ◼   ► iPhone as well.

01:15:41 ◼   ► They don't even have to say we can't wait to see what you do with it because people

01:15:44 ◼   ► already have done something with it.

01:15:46 ◼   ► So they can say instead like three developers would have we're so we're so happy to see

01:15:51 ◼   ► what you have already done with it.

01:15:52 ◼   ► That's what Tim will say.

01:15:53 ◼   ► What do you think?

01:15:54 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:15:55 ◼   ► I was I was kind of hoping to to have a repeat of the 2017 10.5 announcements.

01:16:03 ◼   ► So like WWDC and iPad Pro announcement in the same keynote.

01:16:07 ◼   ► I thought that was really fun, especially because now they could do new iPad Pro, add

01:16:12 ◼   ► WWDC with new sessions for the AR stuff and iPadOS features in the same keynote.

01:16:20 ◼   ► So that would be a nice combo of like more iPadOS and more iPad Pro and it all works

01:16:26 ◼   ► together.

01:16:28 ◼   ► So that could be interesting, but I could also definitely see a March event, especially

01:16:32 ◼   ► if they have a bunch of stuff to announce, they can maybe throw it all together in a

01:16:36 ◼   ► single keynote. Although Apple has also been doing a bunch of press releases for things

01:16:43 ◼   ► that we expected they would do a keynote for. I mean, look at the AirPods Pro and the AirPods

01:16:49 ◼   ► 2, they were just press releases. So like, I don't even know if you should expect a

01:16:53 ◼   ► keynote to have a bunch of features, a bunch of products.

01:16:56 ◼   ► I don't even, I'm not set on this, all of these things coming out in an event.

01:17:01 ◼   ► They could just be they could easily be press releases.

01:17:04 ◼   ► I mean, even the headphones, even if they would be completely new products, they could

01:17:08 ◼   ► easily just do a press release.

01:17:10 ◼   ► The new iPhone model also maybe that's what that's what makes me think they'll be a press

01:17:15 ◼   ► release.

01:17:16 ◼   ► If there's an iPhone in this mix, I think that's got to be an event.

01:17:20 ◼   ► See that stat.

01:17:21 ◼   ► See, you see, I completely disagree.

01:17:23 ◼   ► I feel like this is an iPhone you don't want on an event.

01:17:26 ◼   ► Yeah, because it's bad.

01:17:28 ◼   ► It's bad.

01:17:29 ◼   ► I know offense.

01:17:30 ◼   ► No offense. But like it's hardly an exciting product, right? Like what does Santa say?

01:17:35 ◼   ► He'd be like, "With our amazing Touch ID, that's..."

01:17:38 ◼   ► That's not your face.

01:17:40 ◼   ► Definitely not better than Face ID, right? Like I can't even perceive of how they would like spin this in an event.

01:17:48 ◼   ► In the way that if they just did a press release, they could do it way more reserved.

01:17:53 ◼   ► For our customers with fingers...

01:17:56 ◼   ► And no faces.

01:17:59 ◼   ► Oh god. Yeah, it's not the iPhone that you wanna roll up the red carpet for and be like

01:18:08 ◼   ► "here's the event for a new iPhone that is cheap and has Touch ID." I don't know.

01:18:13 ◼   ► Because I guess really the only things... I mean like, the wireless headphones I would

01:18:19 ◼   ► have said "oh they'll definitely do an event for it" except they didn't for the AirPods

01:18:22 ◼   ► Pro. And you've got like the AirTags which I just don't think are that exciting. It's

01:18:27 ◼   ► It's like a nice add-on product. It's like, it's not exciting, but it's,

01:18:31 ◼   ► it's not exciting. I,

01:18:33 ◼   ► I don't know about this cause like you can point to that Brooklyn event,

01:18:39 ◼   ► right? But that Brooklyn event,

01:18:42 ◼   ► which showed off the iPad pro that was like a big deal.

01:18:45 ◼   ► That iPad pro is a big deal. It's a huge deal. They're not doing that again.

01:18:49 ◼   ► Nope. Right. It's going to be an update in this current design.

01:18:54 ◼   ► Even all of this stuff here based on the last couple of years,

01:18:58 ◼   ► I don't know if you've got an event in there.

01:19:00 ◼   ► Because it's a bunch of things, a bunch of like, yeah, refresh MacBook Pro could also easily be a press release.

01:19:07 ◼   ► They didn't have an event for the 16-inch with a...

01:19:10 ◼   ► Exactly, like you'd see, we would have said before that, oh that 16-inch is a big deal.

01:19:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:19:16 ◼   ► But like what they did instead was like a huge coordinated press effort that just wasn't an event, right?

01:19:23 ◼   ► It's like, we're going to give this person in advance, we're going to put this person on a podcast,

01:19:27 ◼   ► we're going to have these people come, like, they were able to do a bunch of stuff,

01:19:32 ◼   ► which is probably much more effective than having an event.

01:19:35 ◼   ► So I think that they're more likely to just do more of that.

01:19:38 ◼   ► And really, I think at this point, unless Apple have something huge,

01:19:42 ◼   ► we get June and we get September and that's it.

01:19:44 ◼   ► I think we, I think we will, there's potential to have like a week of Apple announcements like last year,

01:19:51 ◼   ► Because this miscellaneous collection of things to me feels like another.

01:19:56 ◼   ► Remember when they did the whole Tim Cook tweets last year?

01:19:59 ◼   ► I think that I think that did great for them.

01:20:01 ◼   ► Because like people were excited.

01:20:03 ◼   ► They were expecting stuff.

01:20:04 ◼   ► I think that that was like somebody got a bonus for having that idea.

01:20:09 ◼   ► Right.

01:20:10 ◼   ► Like it was a very good idea.

01:20:11 ◼   ► Very well executed.

01:20:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:13 ◼   ► Anything else about this March event or stuff in these rumors?

01:20:17 ◼   ► No, I think so.

01:20:19 ◼   ► Not really.

01:20:20 ◼   ► I feel like a lot of this has been around for a while, right?

01:20:23 ◼   ► A lot of the detail that Quo's given is the same detail he's been giving for a long time,

01:20:28 ◼   ► but he has now collected them all up and said, "This is all coming in the first six months."

01:20:33 ◼   ► Now some of these products, like for example the laptop stuff, he's been saying that they're

01:20:39 ◼   ► coming next month for the last six months, right?

01:20:43 ◼   ► He's been really banging the drum on these and none of it's happened.

01:20:47 ◼   ► We only got some of it.

01:20:48 ◼   ► So I don't know, but all of this stuff feels logical to me to come out in the first half

01:20:54 ◼   ► of the year because I can't imagine Apple going all the way until June without any of

01:20:59 ◼   ► these products coming out.

01:21:00 ◼   ► But the first half of the year does include June, so they could announce those iPads in

01:21:05 ◼   ► the MacBooks at WWDC, but I'd be surprised.

01:21:08 ◼   ► Yeah, that's like the one sticking point in my mind for the iPad is if this depth sensing

01:21:14 ◼   ► camera stuff requires iOS 14 or some big update, then like does it get tied to a

01:21:19 ◼   ► software announcement? I don't know. They've put huge AR updates in

01:21:24 ◼   ► point releases. ARKit 2.0 was iOS 12 or 11.3 or whatever.

01:21:30 ◼   ► Right, but they were not using new hardware for that. Yeah, but still. I get

01:21:36 ◼   ► your point, but like I think there's a middle ground, right? It could go either

01:21:40 ◼   ► way I think. Yeah. Well, let's take one last break and thank our sponsor Booz Allen.

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01:22:49 ◼   ► We'd like to thank Booz Allen for their support of the show.

01:22:52 ◼   ► So Fantastical 3 launched this morning,

01:22:55 ◼   ► Wednesday, January 29th.

01:22:56 ◼   ► It is a overhaul of the calendar app that we have known

01:23:01 ◼   ► And I think all of us have really enjoyed using over the years fantastic al has always been known

01:23:06 ◼   ► I think for nice design as well as natural language processing so

01:23:10 ◼   ► Normally when you enter a calendar and you know event on the stock calendar app on your iPhone or iPad or even on the Mac

01:23:16 ◼   ► There's a lot of like clicking buttons and tapping things and fantastic al kind of got away from all of that with this really smart

01:23:23 ◼   ► natural language processing engine and

01:23:26 ◼   ► Version 3 brings a lot of new stuff that are good you want to walk us through what's new

01:23:30 ◼   ► The big change is that Fantastical is now a free app powered by a subscription to unlock

01:23:37 ◼   ► what is called Fantastical Premium, which is the service that unlocks more additional

01:23:42 ◼   ► features.

01:23:43 ◼   ► And on iOS it's a universal app that runs on the iPhone, runs on the iPad, and it comes

01:23:48 ◼   ► with an Apple Watch version.

01:23:51 ◼   ► And in terms of feature highlights, I guess there's now a consistent design across platforms.

01:23:57 ◼   ► The iPad version looks like the Mac version.

01:24:01 ◼   ► Finally!

01:24:02 ◼   ► Finally, they got rid of that month view that they had before.

01:24:08 ◼   ► That's gone.

01:24:10 ◼   ► There's support for calendar sets everywhere and they sync with iCloud.

01:24:14 ◼   ► Also finally used to be a Mac only feature, now it's available even on the Apple Watch.

01:24:19 ◼   ► You can pick a calendar set.

01:24:22 ◼   ► There's new full screen views on the iPhone and the iPad.

01:24:25 ◼   ► So now you can do week view, you can do month view on the iPhone, the year view, I don't

01:24:31 ◼   ► understand why it's there but some people use it. As I mentioned the iPad app is all

01:24:37 ◼   ► new but it needs some additional work. I pointed out a bunch of problems in my review today,

01:24:43 ◼   ► like multi-window doesn't really work the way that it should work in that it doesn't

01:24:47 ◼   ► let you have different types of content in different windows, which is entirely the point

01:24:52 ◼   ► of multi-window.

01:24:53 ◼   ► Oh good, I get to see the same calendar side by side. How great.

01:24:58 ◼   ► I can see what they're going for. I get the point that you can then have your calendar

01:25:05 ◼   ► next to your email and the calendar next to your message. I get that, but you really want

01:25:10 ◼   ► to sometimes it would be nice to maybe compare two different sets. So yeah, it would be good

01:25:18 ◼   ► if they make that change.

01:25:20 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. Like as soon as I saw multiple windows, I was like, yeah, I guess I'm able to have one calendar in a window and another calendar in another, but no, that's not possible.

01:25:29 ◼   ► And also the keyboard shortcut selection is really bad in the iPad app compared to the Mac version.

01:25:36 ◼   ► Like you cannot even switch between calendar sets with keyboard shortcuts, which is too bad.

01:25:40 ◼   ► And then I guess there's event proposals, like you can create proposals with multiple

01:25:49 ◼   ► time slots and send that proposal to invitees to that event, to multiple people.

01:25:56 ◼   ► And when they do, they will get an email with a link that takes them to a web app, to a

01:26:00 ◼   ► Flexibits web app, where they can pick a time slot that works for them.

01:26:05 ◼   ► And when there's a unanimous decision around the same time slot, that event is going to

01:26:10 ◼   ► be created in your calendar and invitees will get an actual calendar invitation over email.

01:26:16 ◼   ► My favorite thing about this feature is that all of the potential dates that are proposed

01:26:22 ◼   ► are all blocked out in your calendar, so you can't double book after the fact.

01:26:28 ◼   ► It is worth noting that this feature requires that not only that you have a Flexibits account

01:26:34 ◼   ► which is that actually is a requirement of a bunch of new features,

01:26:39 ◼   ► but that you need to provide your calendar,

01:26:42 ◼   ► you need to provide like Flexibits, the integration with your calendar, right?

01:26:48 ◼   ► So, if you sign in with a username and password in iCloud,

01:26:51 ◼   ► or you do like the whole Google dance of authorizing,

01:26:54 ◼   ► you didn't, you never did, this wasn't even an option to do this in Fantastic

01:26:58 ◼   ► Cal 1 or 2, it always read from the accounts that

01:27:02 ◼   ► that you assigned into in your Apple settings, right, for your Apple calendar.

01:27:06 ◼   ► But, and you can still run Fantastic L like this perfectly, but you don't get to

01:27:13 ◼   ► take advantage of some of the new features if you do, if you don't. Not all

01:27:16 ◼   ► of the features of Fantastic L3 need this, but a selection of them do

01:27:21 ◼   ► require you to give them your account information. So it's just worth noting. I

01:27:27 ◼   ► did it. I don't have a problem with it, but I think that it is worth pointing out.

01:27:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I also wanted to mention in terms of one last feature

01:27:35 ◼   ► Support for multiple time zones everywhere in the app

01:27:39 ◼   ► You can see multiple time zones in the event inspector for calendar events. You can actually create multiple favorite time zones

01:27:47 ◼   ► In in settings and then if you have an event that is due at 10 a.m

01:27:52 ◼   ► Rome time and you open the inspector

01:27:54 ◼   ► You will see what that time translates to in London, New York, Chicago

01:27:58 ◼   ► or whatever. And also in week view and day view, you have the option to show a dual timeline,

01:28:06 ◼   ► so to show an additional time zone on the right side of the screen in addition to your

01:28:11 ◼   ► local time zone, which is a very clever implementation. So I really like it.

01:28:17 ◼   ► I want to point out too that the Flexibits account you can use sign in with Apple, which

01:28:22 ◼   ► is pretty sweet. I haven't seen that in a lot of apps yet. So that's cool.

01:28:27 ◼   ► There is a reason you haven't seen this, by the way.

01:28:29 ◼   ► We had this as an Ask Up A Big question a couple of weeks ago.

01:28:31 ◼   ► Apple changed the deadline date.

01:28:33 ◼   ► Right.

01:28:33 ◼   ► It's not required yet.

01:28:34 ◼   ► Flexibits had no choice because they're a new app.

01:28:38 ◼   ► All new apps now you have to include sign in with Apple

01:28:42 ◼   ► if you allow sign in with other services.

01:28:45 ◼   ► But the update date got moved.

01:28:49 ◼   ► So if you're an existing app, you didn't have to do it.

01:28:52 ◼   ► Apple understood that maybe they set too aggressive

01:28:56 ◼   ► timeline for that. In my use of it, it has been a little bit better to sign in

01:29:03 ◼   ► into like directly into iCloud or Google or whatever than using the built-in

01:29:07 ◼   ► calendars store. Seems like it's faster to sync. I don't know if that's actually

01:29:12 ◼   ► a thing but just in sort of my looking at it it seemed at least that that was

01:29:17 ◼   ► the case. But one of my favorite things about this is that Fantastical is now

01:29:22 ◼   ► like a full-blown Todoist client.

01:29:25 ◼   ► So you can have, you've been able to have in the past

01:29:27 ◼   ► your Apple reminders show up in the calendar

01:29:31 ◼   ► and if you use the day view and they have due times,

01:29:33 ◼   ► they sort of filter in in between events,

01:29:36 ◼   ► but now you can do that with Todoist

01:29:38 ◼   ► and I don't know how I feel about mixing my tasks

01:29:42 ◼   ► and my events, but if you're the sort of person

01:29:45 ◼   ► who wants that, it's really nice.

01:29:48 ◼   ► Their Todoist integration seems really solid.

01:29:50 ◼   ► - The cool thing now though is you can have it

01:29:52 ◼   ► as a set so you don't have to see it all the time.

01:29:56 ◼   ► - Right, yeah. - Right?

01:29:57 ◼   ► See, I have a to-doist set where it has all

01:30:01 ◼   ► of my regular calendars plus my tasks.

01:30:03 ◼   ► So if I ever do want to see them at the same time,

01:30:06 ◼   ► I can choose to do that, you know what I mean?

01:30:09 ◼   ► Like if I wanna just compare,

01:30:11 ◼   ► honestly, I don't know why I would ever do this,

01:30:14 ◼   ► but if I wanted to compare how many tasks I have

01:30:16 ◼   ► and how many events I had, I could do that.

01:30:19 ◼   ► I like that it isn't just a global on/off like it has been in the past, right?

01:30:26 ◼   ► So you now, I guess, have that as a thing.

01:30:28 ◼   ► The thing that I thought might be more interesting for me, which is why I did sign in, is if

01:30:31 ◼   ► I ever wanted to convert a task to an event or vice versa.

01:30:37 ◼   ► So I kind of just left it in for that way, so then I could see it all in one user interface

01:30:41 ◼   ► and it would probably be easier for me to do that.

01:30:44 ◼   ► I do use Fantastical with both events and reminders at the same time, but I also still

01:30:49 ◼   ► use the Reminders app.

01:30:51 ◼   ► There's a screenshot in my review that shows you basically what I do.

01:30:55 ◼   ► Because basically what I like about Fantastical is that it's like a complete overview of

01:31:00 ◼   ► everything that I have going on, but then I use Reminders because of the exclusive features

01:31:06 ◼   ► that it has in iOS 13, like rich links and checklists and all that kind of stuff.

01:31:13 ◼   ► Fantastical is the complete summary for me. And sometimes I check off a reminder in Fantastical

01:31:19 ◼   ► and maybe I create a new reminder in Fantastical, but I mostly just reschedule stuff and the

01:31:25 ◼   ► actual creation I do with reminders. And maybe for a reminder as a rich link, I can only

01:31:31 ◼   ► see that rich link in reminders. But it's a nice system where everything mostly works

01:31:36 ◼   ► together and really the big deal for me is the calendar sets, just being able to have

01:31:43 ◼   ► multiple different views for the app, like my podcast set as my podcast reminders and

01:31:52 ◼   ► events. But then I also have a writing set where I see no events, but just tasks. So

01:31:58 ◼   ► being able to mix and match these different sources of content, I think it's what really

01:32:02 ◼   ► sells the app for me, like being able to have this modular setup, essentially.

01:32:09 ◼   ► Obviously, another elephant in the room here, it's moving to a subscription model.

01:32:16 ◼   ► Before we get to the subscription thing, is there anything else we want to talk about

01:32:20 ◼   ► about the app itself? Because we're just going to then have a big conversation about the

01:32:26 ◼   ► business model and all of that kind of stuff. I just want to say I love this app. The two

01:32:32 ◼   ► features that I wanted were the iPad, a new iPad app which they've given me, they're gonna be the

01:32:36 ◼   ► Mac app basically which is what I wanted and calendar sets. I love it. I love the new design.

01:32:41 ◼   ► I like having weather because like why not there's weather in your tasks now. Yeah. Like it's just

01:32:46 ◼   ► like it is like when you see it it's like that's a logical thing to add right like it just makes

01:32:50 ◼   ► sense to me. I'm yeah I really like it. I like the overall UI changes. I think the app is um looks

01:32:58 ◼   ► very modern without changing significantly, which I think is a really masterful way that

01:33:03 ◼   ► they've handled that. I like the options for dark mode, I like the new icon options.

01:33:09 ◼   ► Yeah, that's pretty good. I've not used the Apple Watch app.

01:33:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, the iPad app is where I want to see some improvements, but otherwise it's

01:33:20 ◼   ► very solid and I like the consistency between different versions. You can go from one version

01:33:26 ◼   ► to another and it's mostly going to work the same way.

01:33:29 ◼   ► So we've all been using the beta for a bit, right?

01:33:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:33:33 ◼   ► So we got to enjoy all of these things without paying the subscription model and we'll all

01:33:39 ◼   ► make our decisions later on if we're going to do that.

01:33:41 ◼   ► So Federico, do you want to talk about what the business model for Fantastical looks like

01:33:45 ◼   ► right now?

01:33:46 ◼   ► Yeah, so it's quite complex and I'll try to make it easy.

01:33:50 ◼   ► used to be, before, in version 2, three separate apps, iPhone, iPad and Mac, with different

01:33:58 ◼   ► price points.

01:34:00 ◼   ► The new Fantastical or Fantastical 3, however you want to call it, is a single Fantastical

01:34:07 ◼   ► that can be downloaded for free, and a single subscription called Premium unlocks the Premium

01:34:14 ◼   ► features across all platforms, and you can subscribe at $5 a month or $40 a year.

01:34:22 ◼   ► Now, what Flexibits is doing here is, if you owned Fantastical 2 before, features that

01:34:29 ◼   ► you paid for in the past, you will be able to continue using for free, even if they are

01:34:36 ◼   ► behind the premium paywall.

01:34:38 ◼   ► Now, this transition, this upgrade flow, is applied on a platform-by-platform basis. So,

01:34:49 ◼   ► if you owned the Mac app which offered calendar sets before, and you upgrade your Mac version

01:34:57 ◼   ► of Fantastical from 2 to 3, you will keep using calendar sets for free, even if they're

01:35:03 ◼   ► are now, in theory, part of a premium subscription. However, if you didn't own the iPhone version

01:35:11 ◼   ► and you download Fantastical 3 for free today, you will not have calendar sets. Because basically

01:35:18 ◼   ► the app detects on each platform whether you used to have the old version installed, and

01:35:24 ◼   ► it will unlock features for you based on the version that you had. The main strategy here

01:35:31 ◼   ► from Flexibits is to give existing users of Fantastical 2 full access to all the features

01:35:37 ◼   ► they're paying for. It gets a bit complicated and confusing, maybe, once you have to account

01:35:46 ◼   ► for the fact that you need to create a Flexibits account to access the premium stuff that is

01:35:55 ◼   ► required, and also based on the mentions that I got on Twitter today, the Apple Watch app

01:36:03 ◼   ► is now a premium only feature. Obviously, if you purchased Fantastical 2 for iPhone

01:36:09 ◼   ► before, the Apple Watch app was part of that, and you can keep using it with a new version,

01:36:18 ◼   ► even if you do not upgrade to premium, but you have to create a Flexibits account for

01:36:23 ◼   ► the Apple Watch app to log you in and keep working. So the account requirement is, I

01:36:32 ◼   ► think, what's confusing for some of the upgraders today?

01:36:36 ◼   ► This whole thing is confusing. OK, so this whole thing is very confusing, but it is the

01:36:41 ◼   ► most fair I have seen of any developer moving to a subscription model. They have features

01:36:50 ◼   ► that they are preserving and enabling that in theory new people will put. I think they've

01:36:55 ◼   ► done a good job basically, right, of trying to do the best thing they can, but in doing

01:37:01 ◼   ► that have created a complicated situation. It's hard to follow exactly what you get or

01:37:06 ◼   ► what you don't get, but I think that I do, I imagine it was also very complicated for

01:37:12 ◼   ► them to make this work. So like I applaud them in that regard, right, that they have done,

01:37:18 ◼   ► clearly tried to do the best they can, but there are tons of asterisks around what works and what

01:37:26 ◼   ► doesn't. But by and large, if you had a feature on a platform, that feature will still work.

01:37:33 ◼   ► But there might be a hoop or two that you have to jump through to get it to work.

01:37:36 ◼   ► Yeah, basically, yes, that's it.

01:37:38 ◼   ► But they're charging $5 a month for $40 a year.

01:37:42 ◼   ► If you pay for the $40 a year, you get like 30% off or something, right?

01:37:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:37:47 ◼   ► Yeah. So you get a bunch of extra months thrown in.

01:37:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:37:51 ◼   ► So let's just say, right, $5 a month for a calendar is a lot of money.

01:37:54 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah.

01:37:55 ◼   ► Right?

01:37:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:37:56 ◼   ► Like on the App Store economy, it's a lot of money.

01:37:58 ◼   ► But like it's not even just the App Store economy.

01:38:01 ◼   ► That's the price of Disney Plus.

01:38:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:38:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:38:04 ◼   ► Right? $5 a month for a calendar is a lot of money

01:38:07 ◼   ► when there's a calendar that is built in for free. Now I am a heavy calendar user

01:38:12 ◼   ► happily will pay this because I love Fantastical, right? So like for me I

01:38:17 ◼   ► don't have a problem with this, right? Like I will do the $40 a year thing, easy

01:38:21 ◼   ► to do. I think it's possible that you can buy this subscription on their website

01:38:26 ◼   ► and I don't know how they're getting away with that because you're buying... yeah that's

01:38:34 ◼   ► like a whole separate thing right if you guys seen this yeah like you can go on

01:38:37 ◼   ► their website and buy the subscription yeah you can yeah that's interesting I

01:38:42 ◼   ► guess they just not pushing people to it and they're hoping people will do it

01:38:45 ◼   ► because I've but like it's not the price isn't any different than the App Store

01:38:49 ◼   ► version so they make more money on it there which is cool for them but I like

01:38:53 ◼   ► it because I can buy it with because I would consider this a business expense

01:38:57 ◼   ► and my my App Store account is tied to my personal bank account but I can go

01:39:04 ◼   ► to their website and buy it with my business credit card instead. So like,

01:39:08 ◼   ► thank you, Flexibits for making that a feature because now I can go and do that.

01:39:12 ◼   ► Right. But right, like for a lot of FantasticOw users, $5 a month is too much.

01:39:17 ◼   ► Like I know that Edina is not going to want to pay $5 a month for a calendar.

01:39:22 ◼   ► She loves FantasticOw, but like, but the great thing for her is she paid however

01:39:27 ◼   ► many pounds it was, and she's just going to keep using the app exactly the same

01:39:32 ◼   ► because it's not going to change for her.

01:39:33 ◼   ► It is an expensive subscription

01:39:36 ◼   ► based on App Store models.

01:39:39 ◼   ► Now, do I think that the work

01:39:41 ◼   ► that they've done is worth it?

01:39:42 ◼   ► Yeah, because like this type of stuff

01:39:44 ◼   ► is hard, but they are also going to

01:39:46 ◼   ► have a very hard time convincing a

01:39:48 ◼   ► lot of people to do this.

01:39:49 ◼   ► And I called it in my

01:39:51 ◼   ► review a prosumer type of

01:39:53 ◼   ► product, because I think that's what

01:39:55 ◼   ► it is.

01:39:56 ◼   ► I think that's what it is right now.

01:39:57 ◼   ► Most people will not

01:39:59 ◼   ► pay $40 a year

01:40:01 ◼   ► for a calendar app. And if there was some folks who spent $5 years ago and they were

01:40:09 ◼   ► still using Fantastical for free, I think it's a hard sell. It's a big ask to say,

01:40:13 ◼   ► "Look, you've got to give us $40 a year or $5 a month now to keep using the app."

01:40:18 ◼   ► But I think there's a niche of professionals and people who use iOS and Apple devices and

01:40:28 ◼   ► want to spend money on apps. Folks who really operate in a calendar every single day, like

01:40:35 ◼   ► people who manage their schedules in a calendar app for like multiple hours a day, $40 a year,

01:40:42 ◼   ► it's not a big deal for a product that you rely on.

01:40:45 ◼   ► I tried moving to other calendar apps over the last couple of years because it felt like

01:40:50 ◼   ► Fantastical wasn't going anywhere for a while, and my life was falling apart.

01:40:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:40:57 ◼   ► Right, like I have gotten very used to the feature set that Fantastic Owl has and if

01:41:03 ◼   ► I if that is taken away from me or I can't use it like I just am not as effective anymore

01:41:11 ◼   ► right like it's become an incredibly important part of my workflow but I do feel like unless

01:41:17 ◼   ► you feel that way you probably don't want this.

01:41:23 ◼   ► Right, yeah.

01:41:25 ◼   ► That's my feeling.

01:41:26 ◼   ► Yeah. And I feel like obviously they're going to leave some people behind and there's going

01:41:32 ◼   ► to be people who are going to say, no, this doesn't work for me. I'm going to look elsewhere.

01:41:36 ◼   ► And that's fine. I think that's definitely part of the calculation that Flexibits did.

01:41:40 ◼   ► It was either, you know, we need to let this app basically wither and die on the app store

01:41:49 ◼   ► we're going to give up some of our customer base and go for a different type of professional

01:41:56 ◼   ► product. And I mean, we've seen these stories before many times, Ulysses, Kert Weather,

01:42:04 ◼   ► all these types of more advanced and refined and sort of, again, prosumer is a good word

01:42:10 ◼   ► because they're not professional tools like Logic Pro X or Adobe Photoshop, but they are

01:42:15 ◼   ► also not the simple apps that you get from the App Store. It's somewhere in the middle.

01:42:21 ◼   ► And I think there's an audience for that type of product. They will lose, customers, I'm

01:42:26 ◼   ► sure, it's just what it is. It's not like even there will be backlash. There is backlash

01:42:34 ◼   ► going on right now. Take a look at what people are saying on Twitter, in my mentions, in

01:42:39 ◼   ► Jason Snell's mentions, in Steven's mentions, I think you will see on Reddit, it's a mess

01:42:45 ◼   ► because a lot of people do not like subscriptions and that is fine, but also, Flexibits made

01:42:51 ◼   ► this decision and I think if you're the type of person, like me, like Myke, like others,

01:42:57 ◼   ► that depends on a calendar, on a professional tool to manage your schedule, you know that,

01:43:03 ◼   ► and I guess, $40 a year, you know that it's probably worth it for you if you don't want

01:43:08 ◼   ► to go insane, I know that I will go insane with a proper calendar. So I think now the

01:43:14 ◼   ► big question, my remaining question here, would be now that you have a subscription,

01:43:19 ◼   ► I want to see how you keep up with your promise of the subscription lets us iterate more quickly,

01:43:27 ◼   ► lets us keep up with the updates at a more regular pace. Because now that you've done

01:43:33 ◼   ► the transition, it's time to go back to work and show us why we need to pay on a month

01:43:40 ◼   ► by month or year by year basis. So it'll be interesting to see how things change. Fantastical

01:43:46 ◼   ► has, when it used to be a paid-up front app, the big updates were sparse and slow. It's

01:43:55 ◼   ► always been that type of product. Very few releases, a lot of bug fixes and updates,

01:44:02 ◼   ► but in terms of feature additions.

01:44:04 ◼   ► It was an app born in a different era

01:44:06 ◼   ► when you made a new version

01:44:08 ◼   ► and then you had a bunch of updates

01:44:10 ◼   ► and then you had to make a new version

01:44:11 ◼   ► and charge people again.

01:44:13 ◼   ► Now it's a different world with subscriptions.

01:44:16 ◼   ► We need to see what that's like.

01:44:18 ◼   ► Some developers have done a reasonably good job

01:44:21 ◼   ► at moving to this new business model.

01:44:23 ◼   ► Again, look at Ulysses, look at current weather,

01:44:25 ◼   ► constantly adding new features

01:44:27 ◼   ► and improving how other apps work.

01:44:32 ◼   ► Timery, another excellent example with the Timery Club.

01:44:36 ◼   ► Now we got to see how Fantastical deals

01:44:38 ◼   ► with this type of different schedule,

01:44:40 ◼   ► because we've never seen Flexibits do this before.

01:44:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, it requires lots, right?

01:44:46 ◼   ► Like, Timery is a great example.

01:44:49 ◼   ► Joe, the developer of Timery,

01:44:52 ◼   ► is adding new features to that app all the time.

01:44:56 ◼   ► like big new features and like lots of refinements.

01:45:01 ◼   ► Like he's got some stuff in the current beta around shortcuts that has allowed

01:45:05 ◼   ► me to completely re-architect all of my shortcuts and they're all way better and

01:45:09 ◼   ► smaller.

01:45:09 ◼   ► Oh yeah. I got to check that out.

01:45:10 ◼   ► Oh, that's so good Federico. He's added some really,

01:45:13 ◼   ► we'll talk about it after the show. So they are, they've,

01:45:17 ◼   ► it's really great. And that is an app where like, yes,

01:45:21 ◼   ► like that is why I want subscriptions to exist. This was the point, right?

01:45:25 ◼   ► was that it's not that I'm just getting this feeling of like,

01:45:29 ◼   ► oh, look at me, I'm supporting my favorite developers.

01:45:32 ◼   ► They're just like, no, this is a business

01:45:36 ◼   ► to business transaction here.

01:45:38 ◼   ► I am paying you a monthly fee for support

01:45:42 ◼   ► and for new features and that they,

01:45:45 ◼   ► now you don't have to wait a year to build them all up.

01:45:48 ◼   ► You just give them to me as you have them.

01:45:50 ◼   ► That's kind of what should be happening.

01:45:54 ◼   ► So I want to see that because, as we said,

01:45:57 ◼   ► there was a long drought between

01:45:59 ◼   ► Fantastical 2 and Fantastical 3.

01:46:02 ◼   ► And there was a lot of features

01:46:04 ◼   ► that seemed to be obvious ones to implement

01:46:06 ◼   ► that they didn't, like features that were on the Mac

01:46:09 ◼   ► but were not on the iPhone, and they didn't do them.

01:46:13 ◼   ► Now, my understanding from conversations that I've had

01:46:17 ◼   ► is that they have a roadmap that they want to implement.

01:46:21 ◼   ► So let's hope that that happens,

01:46:24 ◼   ► and the subscription's worth it, right?

01:46:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, and maybe that roadmap could be public, maybe not,

01:46:29 ◼   ► but at least I think communicating to customers

01:46:33 ◼   ► that yes, we have a roadmap.

01:46:35 ◼   ► Maybe that's something that they could have done better

01:46:37 ◼   ► instead of just saying the promise of a subscription.

01:46:41 ◼   ► I would like to see more developers have a public

01:46:44 ◼   ► and more open roadmap, sharing things on Twitter,

01:46:47 ◼   ► of things that are coming in the future,

01:46:49 ◼   ► because that's what the subscription is for, right?

01:46:51 ◼   ► You keep paying with the promise of an actual feature

01:46:53 ◼   ► or improvements coming down the road.

01:46:55 ◼   ► So maybe--

01:46:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, I am also in the belief that subscription pricing,

01:47:01 ◼   ► subscription business models should inherently bring

01:47:04 ◼   ► more transparency between developers and their customers,

01:47:07 ◼   ► because we're in a different relationship at this point.

01:47:09 ◼   ► You don't have to surprise and delight me,

01:47:11 ◼   ► you already have my money,

01:47:12 ◼   ► so show me what you're gonna do with it.

01:47:14 ◼   ► I would like to see that.

01:47:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:47:17 ◼   ► It's also something that I learned with the club,

01:47:19 ◼   ► like telling people, we're working on this stuff

01:47:22 ◼   ► and you will be getting this stuff.

01:47:24 ◼   ► This is what we're doing now.

01:47:26 ◼   ► More transparency always helps

01:47:27 ◼   ► when you have a scheduled transaction going on.

01:47:31 ◼   ► So we'll see how this goes for them.

01:47:34 ◼   ► - Is that it?

01:47:34 ◼   ► - I think so.

01:47:35 ◼   ► - I think that's it.

01:47:36 ◼   ► - All right, if you want to find links

01:47:37 ◼   ► to all the stuff we spoke about,

01:47:39 ◼   ► head on over to relay.fm/connected/279.

01:47:44 ◼   ► While you're there, you can get in touch via email

01:47:47 ◼   ► or you can send feedback or follow up via Twitter.

01:47:50 ◼   ► You can find Myke there as I M Y K E. Myke is the host of a bunch of shows here on Relay

01:47:55 ◼   ► FM. Let's go check those out. You can find Federico on Twitter at Vitici V I T I C C

01:48:00 ◼   ► I and he is the editor in chief of max stories.net. You can follow me on Twitter as I S M H and

01:48:07 ◼   ► find my work at five 12 pixels.net. I think our sponsors this week, Pingdom smile and

01:48:14 ◼   ► Booz Allen. Until next time gentlemen, say goodbye. Adios.