Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Connected, episode 276.

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

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

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

00:00:19 ◼   ► I was impeached, but I'm still around.

00:00:21 ◼   ► And I am joined by my, I don't wanna say

00:00:25 ◼   ► those who persecute me, but they persecute me.

00:00:28 ◼   ► We have Federico Vittucci, hello, welcome back.

00:00:31 ◼   ► - Hello, Stephen, hi, hi.

00:00:33 ◼   ► - I'm glad you're talking to me.

00:00:35 ◼   ► It would be awkward if we weren't speaking,

00:00:36 ◼   ► 'cause that would make a bad podcast.

00:00:38 ◼   ► - Hey, everybody deserves a fair trial, so.

00:00:44 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:46 ◼   ► I can talk to you, it's fine.

00:00:47 ◼   ► - Cool, and we're joined by Myke Hurley.

00:00:49 ◼   ► - Hi!

00:00:50 ◼   ► - We're back.

00:00:52 ◼   ► - We're back, and I'm not gonna make any impeachment jokes.

00:00:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's, you know, it's fine, Stephen.

00:00:58 ◼   ► We forgive you.

00:00:59 ◼   ► - I appreciate that.

00:01:00 ◼   ► It's been a while since we've recorded

00:01:02 ◼   ► 'cause we had our two sort of special episodes

00:01:04 ◼   ► at the end of the year and then we took some time off.

00:01:07 ◼   ► It's actually been like three weeks

00:01:08 ◼   ► since we recorded an episode

00:01:09 ◼   ► and I've been looking forward to this.

00:01:11 ◼   ► And looking in this document,

00:01:12 ◼   ► it looks like everyone's been looking forward to it

00:01:14 ◼   ► 'cause this document never ends.

00:01:16 ◼   ► It goes on and on.

00:01:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, my recommendation to the list in an hour

00:01:20 ◼   ► is to look at the remaining time of the episode

00:01:22 ◼   ► and/or how many chapters there are in this episode

00:01:25 ◼   ► because we brought, everybody brought a lot today.

00:01:28 ◼   ► So this is where we are.

00:01:30 ◼   ► - But we're going to start with follow up

00:01:33 ◼   ► and that means starting with Federico's

00:01:36 ◼   ► hacked up AirPods Pro.

00:01:38 ◼   ► - They're not hacked, they're modified.

00:01:42 ◼   ► - There were a couple of casualties of the time paradox

00:01:46 ◼   ► of the recording and releasing of our episodes.

00:01:50 ◼   ► Over the end of the year, this was one of them.

00:01:52 ◼   ► Like I believe Federico had this article up

00:01:55 ◼   ► before the episode came out where he spoke about possibly doing it. So that's if you

00:02:01 ◼   ► were paying close attention, this is time paralogues number one.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Yes, I modified, or as Steven says, I hacked my AirPods Pro.

00:02:10 ◼   ► AirPods Pro hack.

00:02:12 ◼   ► Yes, by adding an extra memory foam layer. It's what I mentioned on Connected. I discovered

00:02:20 ◼   ► this technique on the MacRumors forums, and I ordered a pair of Symbio W ear tips from

00:02:29 ◼   ► Amazon Japan. I believe they are sold out at the moment after publishing the story.

00:02:34 ◼   ► You're such an influencer.

00:02:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm a...

00:02:37 ◼   ► Memory foam influencer.

00:02:39 ◼   ► Ear tip influencer. I'm all about the ears, man. Yes.

00:02:44 ◼   ► Everyone has their thing, Federico.

00:02:46 ◼   ► I found my niche, and in this case it's a pretty gross one, but still.

00:02:51 ◼   ► But it's mine.

00:02:52 ◼   ► It's all mine.

00:02:54 ◼   ► Still, I ordered them and I followed the really very easy technique, the Macrumus forums,

00:03:02 ◼   ► and I mean it's been a couple of weeks at this point, and the memory foam layer is still

00:03:07 ◼   ► in, and I love it.

00:03:09 ◼   ► It makes the... you can check out the photos for context, you really gotta take a look

00:03:16 ◼   ► at the final result to understand what is going on here.

00:03:20 ◼   ► But having that extra layer of memory foam, it really makes the silicone tips the medium

00:03:26 ◼   ► sized for me specifically, fit better my ears, they give me better isolation, better sound

00:03:33 ◼   ► as a result, and the bass is just ever so slightly warmer because everything is basically

00:03:40 ◼   ► tighter in my inner ear because the memory foam layer creates volume and because it's memory foam

00:03:48 ◼   ► it sort of adapts to the shape of my ear and it's good. The AirPods still fit perfectly in the case

00:03:56 ◼   ► and if you perform the unspeakable Apple test, the ear fit tip top test whatever in settings,

00:04:07 ◼   ► it says good seal so it's good, it's a good seal. They're all good seals Federico. Really

00:04:13 ◼   ► all seals are good because seals are essentially dog, sea dogs so like obviously they're all good,

00:04:21 ◼   ► seals are all perfect and in this case they're all good seals. I would say if you think all

00:04:27 ◼   ► seals are good you've not seen enough nature documentaries because let me tell you my friend,

00:04:31 ◼   ► seals and they are violent. This is literally the same thing you said about dogs and I don't

00:04:36 ◼   ► believe you. It is not true. And I stand by the fact that not all dogs are good dogs. I mean,

00:04:40 ◼   ► if you want, I can find some news articles for you. Like, I don't know. You know what? All dogs

00:04:47 ◼   ► are good dogs. All seals are good seals. All people are bad people. Okay. Where I draw the line.

00:04:54 ◼   ► Is this like your platform for leadership? Like these three statements? This is like your version

00:04:59 ◼   ► of peace, bread and land. Seals are good. Dogs are good. People are bad. Vote for me.

00:05:04 ◼   ► For the Rico 2020, the issues where I stand on dogs, good, seals, dogs, good, people, bad.

00:05:13 ◼   ► And that's what I'm gonna fix. I'm gonna replace all people with seals.

00:05:18 ◼   ► You need the people to vote for you. Seals don't get a vote.

00:05:22 ◼   ► You've done this backwards.

00:05:24 ◼   ► That's what you think in my system. All the seals and dogs are out to vote.

00:05:28 ◼   ► How do we get to your system?

00:05:31 ◼   ► that's what this podcast is for. This is what the next 12 months are going to be like.

00:05:40 ◼   ► All Seals are good. Even if you take a look at the Seal-shaped Pokémon, it's very good.

00:05:47 ◼   ► How do you feel about the Singer Seal?

00:05:51 ◼   ► Also very good.

00:05:51 ◼   ► So Seal, whilst also a person, by being Seal is good.

00:05:57 ◼   ► Exactly. And for the same reason, Snoop Dogg. Exactly. Also very good. Also very good. So

00:06:09 ◼   ► by symbiosis or osmosis, whatever, they're good. Equally good. Yes. The AirPods Pro,

00:06:21 ◼   ► they have a good seal. And it's funny because people have been sending me photos from all

00:06:26 ◼   ► over the world really of these mods that they're doing to the AirPods Pro and I mean the folks

00:06:33 ◼   ► at Symbio must be really happy because I don't know how successful they were before but we

00:06:38 ◼   ► got a list, I don't know, 50 people buying the Symbio W tips after my story so you're

00:06:44 ◼   ► welcome Symbio. You know, somebody emailed me, this was funny, somebody emailed me asking

00:06:53 ◼   ► like, "Hey, I saw your product on Twitter. Do you want to collaborate on filing a patent

00:07:04 ◼   ► for this?" And I was like, "Well..." And I replied, "Well, you know, I actually literally

00:07:09 ◼   ► just bought a product on Amazon made by other people."

00:07:13 ◼   ► After reading about it on a forum.

00:07:16 ◼   ► After reading about it from other people and stuffed it into silicone ear tips from another

00:07:21 ◼   ► company and they never got back to me. So it's like a strong platform for a patent.

00:07:27 ◼   ► I'm guessing that the patent is off the table. It's not going to happen. But yeah.

00:07:35 ◼   ► Federico, tell me about engraving AirPod cases.

00:07:38 ◼   ► I'll tell you that the company behind these, a bunch of cowards really, because, because

00:07:46 ◼   ► can now... these are what I'll tell you. Let me tell you about those gowers. Let me be

00:07:55 ◼   ► clear, Stephen. We will not allow... alright. I don't think we need to take a break again.

00:08:07 ◼   ► We need to just record every week so this doesn't happen. So, you can now engrave a

00:08:14 ◼   ► subset of emoji on your AirPods case. Apple rolled these out a few days ago. They apparently

00:08:23 ◼   ► have a special emoji font that is designed specifically for engraving on AirPods cases.

00:08:31 ◼   ► You can actually, there's a link in the shoutouts where you can take a look at the monocolor

00:08:34 ◼   ► emoji font for AirPods engraving. It is literally called Apple Monochrome Emoji Regular. And

00:08:42 ◼   ► There's a bunch of options and really they are sort of like a monochrome version of emoji

00:08:50 ◼   ► and like also the animoji version sort of.

00:08:54 ◼   ► They look like those but like in a simpler 2D style.

00:08:59 ◼   ► There's the poop emoji, there's the unicorn, there's the fist and the heart and the star.

00:09:05 ◼   ► There's the space invaders alien, there's the dragon, there's the bear robot, the snapshot

00:09:12 ◼   ► icon. There's a goat for some reason. Now, this is an unacceptable move because the best

00:09:24 ◼   ► emoji out there, and really when you think about it, the emoji that a lot of people identify

00:09:29 ◼   ► as, is the weird fish emoji. And the weird fish emoji is not included in the selection

00:09:36 ◼   ► of emoji that you can engrave on your AirPods, which is an unacceptable omission, and I stand

00:09:45 ◼   ► against this decision myself.

00:09:48 ◼   ► Why did they include the ram?

00:09:51 ◼   ► Oh, see, that's a good word, the ram. It's not a goat.

00:09:54 ◼   ► My only assumption is they've tried to put as many characters in here to represent the

00:09:59 ◼   ► Chinese New Year.

00:10:01 ◼   ► Or, here's a wild theory, and let me preface what I'm about to say by saying that I do

00:10:08 ◼   ► not follow sports.

00:10:11 ◼   ► But isn't there a sports team called the Los Angeles Rams?

00:10:15 ◼   ► I mean sure, but like...

00:10:17 ◼   ► Could be that!

00:10:19 ◼   ► If you're really into that, you could put a ram...

00:10:23 ◼   ► Snapchat or the Rams.

00:10:25 ◼   ► But like there's a few, right?

00:10:26 ◼   ► You've got like, the mouses here, dragons here, goat/ram.

00:10:31 ◼   ► is a very popular football team mascot as everyone knows.

00:10:35 ◼   ► That's really not... I wasn't adding to the football team mascot thing.

00:10:39 ◼   ► There's the San Francisco Monkeys.

00:10:42 ◼   ► But why are they cowards Federico? You've not explained this yet.

00:10:46 ◼   ► Because the weird fish emoji is not included in the selection of emoji that you can use.

00:10:54 ◼   ► Now can you imagine if it was? How you would have felt though? Like if that was one of

00:10:59 ◼   ► them. That would have been good, right? I would have bought more AirPods immediately.

00:11:04 ◼   ► I would have, I am not kidding, I would have bought a new pair of AirPods Pro just to engrave

00:11:09 ◼   ► the weird fish on them. I would have done that. I think they also changed the font,

00:11:14 ◼   ► right? Like the overall font for engraving changed too. Maybe. Like the actual, if you

00:11:20 ◼   ► put text on them, they changed it to like the rounded font. Do you guys have any text

00:11:26 ◼   ► on your AirPods? I've done that if I've ever... oh I engraved my Apple Pencil with "Myke was

00:11:31 ◼   ► right". Yes, I remember that. Yeah. Yeah, I've never had anything engraved from Apple. Ever.

00:11:36 ◼   ► Ever? Ever. Never ever. The main reason that I never do that is because you know it means

00:11:42 ◼   ► it's gonna be longer until the thing comes to you. If you get it engraved. Yeah. Like

00:11:46 ◼   ► you're gonna wait an extra day or two. And we always buy them, like, in a rush. To get

00:11:51 ◼   ► them quick because we're impatient. Yeah that's why. So I'm really sad that you

00:11:58 ◼   ► cannot use any emoji for this hopefully in the future that will have an update

00:12:03 ◼   ► that lets you use the you know the weird fish and the mate and the falafel

00:12:09 ◼   ► all the best emoji. The peach. The grandpa cup. This is not the first time

00:12:16 ◼   ► Apple's made a custom font for stuff you guys remember they did the 30 year of

00:12:20 ◼   ► Mac thing several years ago and they made like a Mac icon font that had a

00:12:24 ◼   ► bunch of different... What was the purpose of the font? There was a reason but I don't

00:12:28 ◼   ► remember what it was. They had like a 30 year web page up and they used this to

00:12:33 ◼   ► like have line art in with the text. It was cool. It's a great thing but like

00:12:38 ◼   ► that just seems like a very strange way to deal with your design problem.

00:12:42 ◼   ► Oh the Internet's not very good and you have to sometimes do things. I like it

00:12:47 ◼   ► because then I get to use these icons and things sometimes.

00:12:49 ◼   ► So I most definitely have a copy of this Mac icon typeface.

00:12:54 ◼   ► Can we talk about the Mac Pro?

00:12:56 ◼   ► Everyone's favorite computer.

00:12:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, how are you enjoying your Macintosh professional?

00:13:00 ◼   ► - It's very good.

00:13:01 ◼   ► - We must call it that here, that's the only.

00:13:03 ◼   ► - This is time paradox number two.

00:13:06 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:13:07 ◼   ► - It showed up on the day that we recorded an episode,

00:13:11 ◼   ► but I had, then like an episode of Mac Power

00:13:15 ◼   ► We just came out where I talked about having it and like doing things with it

00:13:18 ◼   ► And then that episode came out like it's all out of order

00:13:20 ◼   ► But it did come like I think three weeks before the initial ship date

00:13:24 ◼   ► Which is really cool, and I've been really happy with it

00:13:28 ◼   ► I have put up a page on 512 called very I thought was a very clever name

00:13:33 ◼   ► Mac Pro log where I'm like talking I want to talk about over the years of having this computer tinkering with this insides because

00:13:40 ◼   ► That's the point of the Mac Pro so you can see what I've done so far and

00:13:44 ◼   ► and you know, I'm trying to work out some storage issues

00:13:48 ◼   ► and all that is, wait out there.

00:13:49 ◼   ► - Oh, is it clever because it's like the log of a tree?

00:13:52 ◼   ► It's like you can tell over the years.

00:13:55 ◼   ► - I was gonna ask, like I'm not 100% sure why.

00:13:58 ◼   ► It's nice, it sounds good.

00:14:00 ◼   ► - It sounds good, but why is it clever?

00:14:02 ◼   ► - Like prologue.

00:14:03 ◼   ► - Oh, prologue?

00:14:04 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:14:05 ◼   ► - Okay, cool, yeah, no, I get it, it's good.

00:14:07 ◼   ► - The log of a tree and you can tell by the rings

00:14:10 ◼   ► how old it is.

00:14:11 ◼   ► - If you cut the Mac Pro in half, you can count the rings.

00:14:14 ◼   ► tell old of this. Prolog, oh that's good, you should be a journalist. It's one of

00:14:21 ◼   ► those things like you have I didn't get it by reading it you know you got to say

00:14:25 ◼   ► it out loud. The prologue. Yeah I assume everyone reads all blogs out loud. Is that not how

00:14:30 ◼   ► people read? That's true. Yes. I mean I am one of those people that when I read I

00:14:35 ◼   ► hear a voice in my head. Oh no. Yeah that's why I'm such a slow reader. What

00:14:40 ◼   ► What voice?

00:14:42 ◼   ► My own voice. Oh your own. Yeah, it's not like yours. It's Casey's. Sometimes if I know somebody's voice really well

00:14:49 ◼   ► It's maybe a little bit more towards their voice than my voice, you know

00:14:53 ◼   ► mmm

00:14:54 ◼   ► Interesting. So like if you read six colors you hear Jason's voice? Yeah. Unless Dan wrote the article. No, even if it's Dan

00:15:01 ◼   ► It's always Jason's voice in my head. So it's like you don't even need to listen to podcasts

00:15:05 ◼   ► You can just make your own. Yeah, exactly. Who needs them, right? It's useful. Mm-hmm

00:15:09 ◼   ► I mean I like having him. Let's keep him. Okay. I just wanted to point people towards

00:15:16 ◼   ► Quinn Nelson. He has a YouTube channel called Snazzy Labs. He's done a bunch of Mac Pro

00:15:21 ◼   ► videos. He took one completely apart, like as much apart as it will go. That video was

00:15:28 ◼   ► like meditation for me. Watching him take it apart. I don't know why, but I watched

00:15:34 ◼   ► it like pretty late one evening. And I was it just like relaxed me to watch him just

00:15:39 ◼   ► like were you like in the bathtub? No, I was in bed. We don't all watch YouTube videos

00:15:43 ◼   ► in the bathtub like you do. Well, I fixed the Wi Fi so I can do that now. That's good.

00:15:49 ◼   ► Thank you, Euro. So he took his Mac Pro completely apart. And I was, I mean, Quinn like knows

00:15:56 ◼   ► what he's doing. Like he's, if you've watched his channel for a long time, he's in all sorts

00:15:59 ◼   ► of things like this. But I was more than a little nervous. I was like, please don't destroy

00:16:03 ◼   ► this brand new computer but it lived he's in a couple more videos he did one

00:16:08 ◼   ► where he he had a bunch of PCI stuff I was like let's just see what works and

00:16:13 ◼   ► it turns out that Mac OS driver support as you may imagine is pretty lacking in

00:16:18 ◼   ► some of these areas of you know these cards that they should physically work

00:16:23 ◼   ► but there's no like software for them as some of them work in Windows but not in

00:16:27 ◼   ► Mac OS and then he did one where he tried gaming on it with boot camp and he

00:16:33 ◼   ► He did a lot of cool stuff with it.

00:16:34 ◼   ► I think he has some more plans.

00:16:35 ◼   ► So if you're into Mac Pro YouTube content is definitely a channel you should be paying

00:16:39 ◼   ► attention to.

00:16:40 ◼   ► Yep.

00:16:41 ◼   ► Plus, he's a real nice guy.

00:16:42 ◼   ► All right, we did our annual predictions.

00:16:46 ◼   ► As a reminder, Federico won the annual predictions for the previous year.

00:16:51 ◼   ► Congratulations again.

00:16:52 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:16:53 ◼   ► And I realized making him chairman Ricky.

00:16:56 ◼   ► Yes, he is.

00:16:57 ◼   ► He is the annual chairman.

00:17:00 ◼   ► He won the annual picks.

00:17:01 ◼   ► And so I listened back to the episode.

00:17:04 ◼   ► I mean, I think everything about the rookies is perfectly clear.

00:17:06 ◼   ► Like how could it not be any more clear how it works?

00:17:09 ◼   ► I think it's very simple, very straightforward.

00:17:11 ◼   ► There's no surprises.

00:17:14 ◼   ► But I do think we need to maybe do a better job at defining who the chairman is because

00:17:19 ◼   ► really, there are two, as we spoke about two parallel games.

00:17:26 ◼   ► There's the annual predictions and there's the special event predictions, right?

00:17:30 ◼   ► I don't remember that being a thing.

00:17:33 ◼   ► Well, that's kind of where we ended up in that episode.

00:17:35 ◼   ► It's like, well, there's actually two different things.

00:17:38 ◼   ► And so what I'm proposing, a little bookkeeping before we move on to the show, is that we

00:17:43 ◼   ► have two chairman titles.

00:17:47 ◼   ► And of course you can hold both at the same time, then you would be the mega chairman.

00:17:51 ◼   ► Oh, I see what's happening in this document now.

00:17:54 ◼   ► Right, because, okay, I got upset because it seemed like Stephen was just giving himself

00:17:58 ◼   ► a random award because he won one.

00:18:00 ◼   ► No way, I get it.

00:18:01 ◼   ► So I wanted to call myself the WWDC chairman.

00:18:04 ◼   ► But what the special event, it's just like, so I think we should have annual chairman

00:18:09 ◼   ► and ongoing chairman.

00:18:12 ◼   ► Well, see, I thought so I like the name special event chairman, because that one turns over

00:18:16 ◼   ► more quickly, right?

00:18:17 ◼   ► So if there's, say, like two years ago, there was a September event.

00:18:20 ◼   ► I don't remember who won two years ago.

00:18:21 ◼   ► But let's just say Myke, you won, you had won September, and then I won October, you're

00:18:26 ◼   ► only a chairman for like three weeks, and then it passes to me.

00:18:30 ◼   ► So I like special event chairman because it could like it.

00:18:33 ◼   ► There's no like time associated with it, right?

00:18:35 ◼   ► You could hold that for a long time or a short time.

00:18:37 ◼   ► What about keynote chairman?

00:18:40 ◼   ► Okay.

00:18:41 ◼   ► Special event just sounds weird because we never we don't call them.

00:18:43 ◼   ► We don't call Apple events special events.

00:18:45 ◼   ► Right.

00:18:46 ◼   ► Apple does.

00:18:47 ◼   ► So annual chairman and keynote chairman.

00:18:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:50 ◼   ► Okay.

00:18:51 ◼   ► So, so Federico is the annual chairman until this time next year.

00:18:56 ◼   ► and we'll see how I come out victorious in 2020

00:18:59 ◼   ► because 5G is not happening.

00:19:00 ◼   ► - We will not.

00:19:01 ◼   ► - Oh, you're really like,

00:19:03 ◼   ► you really shouldn't keep doubling down on that one.

00:19:06 ◼   ► - And in March, if there's a March event,

00:19:08 ◼   ► I may lose my keynote chairmanship or I may retain it.

00:19:12 ◼   ► We will see.

00:19:13 ◼   ► So I think that clears it up.

00:19:14 ◼   ► 'Cause I listened to it, I was like,

00:19:15 ◼   ► I know what I had in my head,

00:19:17 ◼   ► but I'm not sure I got that out of my face.

00:19:19 ◼   ► And so I feel like we've cleared this up.

00:19:21 ◼   ► We've also had quite a few tweets at an email suggesting

00:19:25 ◼   ► that we have that we have some sort of physical prize.

00:19:30 ◼   ► And then apparently we would be shipping them

00:19:35 ◼   ► to each other, like in between events. And like, I love that idea,

00:19:38 ◼   ► but that's just not practical because we don't live anywhere near each other.

00:19:41 ◼   ► And, um, that would get expensive fast,

00:19:43 ◼   ► but maybe we can come up with something like, um, some sort of digital,

00:19:48 ◼   ► well, somebody's cheap.

00:19:50 ◼   ► That's good. So what if it's just like a text file that somebody,

00:19:54 ◼   ► if we all keep on our desktop,

00:19:56 ◼   ► and we just hand it back over to each other via Dropbox.

00:19:59 ◼   ► - Or was it like-- - Just like a little image.

00:20:02 ◼   ► - Like you put an emoji in your Twitter bio,

00:20:06 ◼   ► or like some sort of token.

00:20:08 ◼   ► So I don't know what the idea is.

00:20:09 ◼   ► So I want the listeners to help us maybe pick this.

00:20:12 ◼   ► So if you have an idea for some sort of digital

00:20:15 ◼   ► representation of who the annual and keynote chairmans are

00:20:20 ◼   ► at any given time, let us know on Twitter.

00:20:23 ◼   ► 'cause I think there should be something.

00:20:25 ◼   ► And as much as I love the idea of having trophies

00:20:28 ◼   ► that we mail to each other,

00:20:29 ◼   ► honestly, it's just not practical.

00:20:30 ◼   ► So we need something digital.

00:20:32 ◼   ► - Where can people find our Twitter, Steven?

00:20:34 ◼   ► - The show is @_ConnectedFM.

00:20:38 ◼   ► So tweet at the show.

00:20:40 ◼   ► A little bit of follow out over the holidays,

00:20:43 ◼   ► Myke, you and Jason host The Upgradies,

00:20:45 ◼   ► where you hand out awards to apps and services and podcasts.

00:20:49 ◼   ► and that was episode 278 this year.

00:20:54 ◼   ► Or you can go to the upgrade.

00:20:55 ◼   ► You can go to upgrade ease.com

00:20:57 ◼   ► and see all the winners as well.

00:20:58 ◼   ► Connected was named runner up for the 2019 upgrade ease

00:21:02 ◼   ► for the favorite tech podcast.

00:21:04 ◼   ► - Which was a category that connected one last year.

00:21:07 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:21:08 ◼   ► Automators won it this year.

00:21:09 ◼   ► Well-deserved automators is an excellent show.

00:21:12 ◼   ► I'm not at all upset that we didn't win again.

00:21:14 ◼   ► - So why are you bringing it up?

00:21:15 ◼   ► - No, I'm upset.

00:21:16 ◼   ► I'm upset.

00:21:18 ◼   ► I don't care.

00:21:19 ◼   ► I like those guys, but I'm upset.

00:21:20 ◼   ► We should have won.

00:21:21 ◼   ► - I mean, so I listened to it,

00:21:22 ◼   ► and Myke, you decide not to vote in this category.

00:21:26 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:21:27 ◼   ► - And I think that you should abuse your power.

00:21:28 ◼   ► The upgrade is to help your other show.

00:21:29 ◼   ► - Yes, it's all about the abuse of power, man.

00:21:32 ◼   ► That's how things get done.

00:21:34 ◼   ► - But that's the reason that I can't do it.

00:21:35 ◼   ► I can't have a say in giving myself an award.

00:21:38 ◼   ► - You're giving me and Federico an award,

00:21:41 ◼   ► is what you're doing.

00:21:42 ◼   ► - Well then you should host your own show, I don't know.

00:21:44 ◼   ► - Wow. - Wow.

00:21:46 ◼   ► - Federico, do you wanna-- - I'm just saying.

00:21:47 ◼   ► - Federico.

00:21:48 ◼   ► We'll make our own show, Steven.

00:21:50 ◼   ► It's gonna have trophies, it's gonna have abuse of power.

00:21:55 ◼   ► That's great, I can't wait.

00:21:59 ◼   ► I mean, the anti-upgradies.

00:22:02 ◼   ► We'll think about a name.

00:22:04 ◼   ► Downgradies.

00:22:05 ◼   ► Wait, so you're hosting an entire show that's purpose is to be against one episode of my

00:22:12 ◼   ► show.

00:22:13 ◼   ► And to favor ourselves.

00:22:15 ◼   ► Yes.

00:22:16 ◼   ► And this is gonna win awards?

00:22:18 ◼   ► So for instance, one of the awards is the best two Apple blogs and Mac stories and 512

00:22:22 ◼   ► pixels would win.

00:22:23 ◼   ► Okay, so you're going to, I see, you can run a concurrent award ceremony every year.

00:22:31 ◼   ► You know, like there's like the bad movie award type things, you know, like when the

00:22:35 ◼   ► Oscars are going on.

00:22:36 ◼   ► Yeah, but they're not good, they're not bad.

00:22:38 ◼   ► Yeah, well all good and corrupt and power hungry.

00:22:44 ◼   ► just how much better the Oscars would be, for example. You know how they have those

00:22:49 ◼   ► people walk out on stage and be like, and the award goes to... Imagine how much better

00:22:54 ◼   ► the whole show would be if each of those people said, and the award goes to myself. And they

00:22:59 ◼   ► just have some trophy, like hidden beyond their back, and they just give the award to

00:23:06 ◼   ► themselves. Like that would be incredible. I will watch five hours of that show of people

00:23:11 ◼   ► - Will it not get a little predictable?

00:23:13 ◼   ► - No, because every time the reaction will be different,

00:23:16 ◼   ► every time they will make you believe that in the envelope

00:23:19 ◼   ► there's the name of somebody else,

00:23:21 ◼   ► but in reality they just like,

00:23:23 ◼   ► and the award goes to myself,

00:23:24 ◼   ► and it's like this show for three hours.

00:23:27 ◼   ► That's my pitch for an Apple TV+ program.

00:23:29 ◼   ► - I have some good news Federico.

00:23:32 ◼   ► I'm here to award the best iOS 13 review of the year.

00:23:37 ◼   ► And it's yours, congratulations.

00:23:40 ◼   ► I thought you were going to give that to yourself.

00:23:42 ◼   ► I appreciate it.

00:23:43 ◼   ► I mean, well, so I won the best link list item to Federico's review.

00:23:48 ◼   ► Oh, that's a great one.

00:23:50 ◼   ► Very coveted award, that one.

00:23:53 ◼   ► It's a gold paperclip.

00:23:54 ◼   ► I do want to mention that 13 Minutes to the Moon, which is an excellent podcast about

00:24:01 ◼   ► the lunar landing, it ran this summer.

00:24:04 ◼   ► I listened to every episode twice, like it was so good.

00:24:06 ◼   ► That was the co-runner up.

00:24:09 ◼   ► So not as good as runner-up, it's slightly lower than runner-up, it's co-runner-up, but

00:24:14 ◼   ► also very deserving, so it was a real honor to be in that, and I'll just say, Automators,

00:24:20 ◼   ► we're gonna come for you in 2020, that's all I'm saying.

00:24:23 ◼   ► Should we take a break?

00:24:25 ◼   ► Let's take a break.

00:24:26 ◼   ► We need a rest.

00:24:27 ◼   ► I think so.

00:24:28 ◼   ► Yeah, we've been in the show for like two hours.

00:24:30 ◼   ► I feel like I've given it an hour and a half's energy into these last 20 minutes, so I need

00:24:35 ◼   ► to take a few minutes.

00:24:37 ◼   ► Okay.

00:24:38 ◼   ► I'm going to give myself an award for the best pingdom ad read of the episode. That's

00:24:42 ◼   ► good. So let me give my acceptance speech real quick. This episode is brought to you

00:24:46 ◼   ► by pingdom from solar winds. Today's internet users expect a fast experience when they're

00:24:52 ◼   ► on your website. And no matter how good your content is, or how effective your marketing

00:24:56 ◼   ► may be, they're going to bounce if your website is loading too slowly. With real user monitoring

00:25:02 ◼   ► from pingdom, you can discover how website performance issues affect your visitors experience.

00:25:07 ◼   ► So you can take action before your business is impacted.

00:25:11 ◼   ► How your visitors experience your website differs depending on the browser, device,

00:25:15 ◼   ► and platform they may be using.

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00:25:20 ◼   ► informed optimizations to deliver great performance to those who matter most.

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00:25:41 ◼   ► Go to Pingdom.com/RelayFM right now for a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.

00:25:49 ◼   ► When you sign up, use the code "Connected" at checkout to get an awesome 30% off your

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00:25:56 ◼   ► Our thanks to Pingdom from SolarWinds for the support of this show and RelayFM.

00:26:00 ◼   ► Alright, tiny topic number one.

00:26:03 ◼   ► Myke, you purchased a PopSocket.

00:26:05 ◼   ► No I didn't.

00:26:06 ◼   ► I purchased a wireless charger that is for PopSocket.

00:26:11 ◼   ► You really bought this?

00:26:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:14 ◼   ► You know it's wireless, right?

00:26:16 ◼   ► You know it's gonna do all the horrible things you fear.

00:26:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I know.

00:26:20 ◼   ► Look, here's the thing.

00:26:21 ◼   ► Within about 10 minutes, I had like 50 tweets about this charger.

00:26:27 ◼   ► So I figured I had to buy it.

00:26:29 ◼   ► It's not even available in the UK, so I had to buy it from the US,

00:26:33 ◼   ► which means I'm gonna need some weird power converter thing to even use it.

00:26:37 ◼   ► So I'm not gonna use it a lot.

00:26:39 ◼   ► But this is an answer to a thing that I've been talking about for a while.

00:26:43 ◼   ► Is there a good charging solution?

00:26:46 ◼   ► And basically this is a wireless charging donut.

00:26:50 ◼   ► So the pop socket can go down into the middle of the charger

00:26:55 ◼   ► and then it will wirelessly charge.

00:26:57 ◼   ► Seems like an interesting idea.

00:26:59 ◼   ► I actually have got to like, I will hand it to Popsocket here.

00:27:03 ◼   ► Like this is clever.

00:27:05 ◼   ► It's Mimi, right?

00:27:08 ◼   ► And I just think it's clever.

00:27:09 ◼   ► Like, why not?

00:27:11 ◼   ► Right.

00:27:11 ◼   ► Like people complain about not being able to wirelessly charge.

00:27:14 ◼   ► Well, you know what?

00:27:14 ◼   ► Make your own wireless charger and put a hole in the middle.

00:27:16 ◼   ► Like I've got to hand it to him.

00:27:18 ◼   ► Like, I think this is kind of clever.

00:27:20 ◼   ► Not that it's a good product way, but like it is just I think it is just a clever

00:27:25 ◼   ► thing to do during CES to like gain some attention and make a $60 wireless charger in the process.

00:27:32 ◼   ► It's like a little doughnut of energy.

00:27:34 ◼   ► Talking about chargers that are gonna set your house on fire,

00:27:38 ◼   ► let's talk about the ZENZ airpower like charger.

00:27:42 ◼   ► Oh I don't like these. I feel uncomfortable with these products.

00:27:45 ◼   ► I want to know why you find them uncomfortable.

00:27:47 ◼   ► Because if Apple couldn't make this work, like can anybody?

00:27:53 ◼   ► Zens say they can. My favorite thing about this product is, and it honestly tempted me

00:27:59 ◼   ► to buy it, was the one with glass on the top where you can see the 16 coils that are inside

00:28:05 ◼   ► of this thing all layered over each other, because that just looks bananas.

00:28:09 ◼   ► Well it's good to know when the fire's starting. Look how thick this thing is, right? Like

00:28:15 ◼   ► it's got little holes in it, like it's definitely got like a fan in there or something.

00:28:19 ◼   ► You think there's going to be a fan? Oh no.

00:28:21 ◼   ► - Well, there's holes, right?

00:28:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, I, I...

00:28:25 ◼   ► - You gotta feed oxen to the fire so it stays going.

00:28:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's true, that's true.

00:28:30 ◼   ► - I bought this right away in the morning,

00:28:32 ◼   ► you know, half asleep. - Oh no!

00:28:34 ◼   ► - Stayed without thinking about it too much.

00:28:37 ◼   ► - Why did you buy it?

00:28:38 ◼   ► - You know, I, because I saw like the promise of air power,

00:28:41 ◼   ► I was like, yes, they, you know, I just woke up

00:28:45 ◼   ► and it's like, you know, maybe, maybe I should just try this

00:28:49 ◼   ► and yeah I bought it.

00:28:51 ◼   ► Did you buy it with the Apple Watch accessory?

00:28:55 ◼   ► Yeah I did.

00:28:56 ◼   ► Yeah I knew you did.

00:28:57 ◼   ► I also put that in the cart.

00:28:58 ◼   ► Did you get the great one or the sucky one?

00:29:02 ◼   ► No I got the...

00:29:04 ◼   ► The boring one?

00:29:05 ◼   ► The fabric one?

00:29:06 ◼   ► The fabric one yeah.

00:29:08 ◼   ► I didn't get it.

00:29:09 ◼   ► You don't want to see the fire right?

00:29:11 ◼   ► I don't want to see.

00:29:12 ◼   ► You just want to keep that hidden away.

00:29:14 ◼   ► I don't want to see that.

00:29:15 ◼   ► I think the fabric could be a good conductor for the fire that will start anyway.

00:29:19 ◼   ► So do you really trust this Federico?

00:29:23 ◼   ► Honestly, I don't.

00:29:26 ◼   ► I really don't.

00:29:28 ◼   ► I don't know what's going to happen personally.

00:29:32 ◼   ► Like, I have no idea.

00:29:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:29:34 ◼   ► You know, like, I think it's going to probably catch fire, which is why, you

00:29:39 ◼   ► know, my nightstand is it's made of metal.

00:29:42 ◼   ► So in theory, either it's going to melt or hopefully I will wake up before

00:29:48 ◼   ► anything. Like I will, I will not use it at night at first. If I ever get this product,

00:29:53 ◼   ► I should also mention, like, I don't know if I will ever get this product, honestly.

00:29:58 ◼   ► Is there any idea on when it is shipping? No, I just got an email like your order is

00:30:02 ◼   ► being, has been confirmed. Like, yes. Okay. And then no further communication. So that's

00:30:10 ◼   ► good. Yeah. I don't know what's going to happen, honestly. So I'm waiting because I like in

00:30:18 ◼   ► In theory I love the idea of having this kind of accessory.

00:30:24 ◼   ► I always love the promise of air power and the freedom of being able to place accessories

00:30:29 ◼   ► anywhere instead of having to line them up precisely as I have to do right now with my

00:30:34 ◼   ► Nomad pad.

00:30:38 ◼   ► But yeah, we'll see.

00:30:41 ◼   ► I really hope that it works.

00:30:42 ◼   ► Apparently the website says they're shipping in January so...

00:30:45 ◼   ► Yeah I saw that.

00:30:46 ◼   ► day now. I saw that, in theory, supposed to work. So, any day, really. It's gonna be a

00:30:54 ◼   ► couple of months, for sure. Mophie, which is owned by the company Zag, which I didn't,

00:30:59 ◼   ► I feel like this was news to everybody. I also didn't know this. There's a Bloomberg

00:31:03 ◼   ► report which is like, this is like the most nothing Mark Gurman Art Acquired maybe ever

00:31:09 ◼   ► An executive at Zag was heard to have said that they're working on something that's kind

00:31:17 ◼   ► of like air power and that was an article.

00:31:21 ◼   ► Good.

00:31:23 ◼   ► No information, no idea of when it will ship, just that they are working on something like

00:31:29 ◼   ► air power.

00:31:31 ◼   ► I feel like this is the thing a lot of companies are going to continue to go after, right?

00:31:35 ◼   ► this because there's like this potential hunger for this type of product but none of them are

00:31:42 ◼   ► gonna be what you want though is my feeling because what you want was Apple's product like you place

00:31:48 ◼   ► it everywhere all of your devices right you don't need some little USB thing at the back for the

00:31:52 ◼   ► Apple watch put them all down on the mat and they'll all charge and it will be tiny and you

00:31:57 ◼   ► can put it in a bag right because like this Zen's one is chunky right like that is big and it's

00:32:05 ◼   ► thick and I bet it does have a little tiny fan in it or something.

00:32:08 ◼   ► Oh no.

00:32:09 ◼   ► You know the Mophie one is like...

00:32:11 ◼   ► At some point, right? Like, alright, good luck Mophie, I'm excited for you.

00:32:16 ◼   ► Right? Like, you do your thing.

00:32:18 ◼   ► I see these, like, I see these products being advertised on like YouTube channels and stuff

00:32:24 ◼   ► all the time, right? Where it's like, here's the AirPow-

00:32:27 ◼   ► They all just look like they're terrible. And I wouldn't trust any of them.

00:32:31 ◼   ► like none of them, not one of them. So I wish you the best of luck in uh...

00:32:36 ◼   ► You really think it's got a fan or no?

00:32:38 ◼   ► Well it has, I mean I don't know if it has a fan.

00:32:41 ◼   ► Is it gonna hum while it charges things?

00:32:43 ◼   ► I reckon it will make a sound. Like because like if you look at the pictures of this thing,

00:32:48 ◼   ► you see the two little holes right at the front? They're like exhausts right? Like it's like the

00:32:52 ◼   ► holes are like either for air intake or to expel air and I don't imagine that they have engineered

00:33:00 ◼   ► an almost Mac Pro like architecture where air can just pass through the thing. So Stephen,

00:33:06 ◼   ► how do you feel about all these air power charges? I have no interest in owning them.

00:33:10 ◼   ► I'm fine with my current setup. Yep. Well Federico, good luck to you.

00:33:16 ◼   ► I come to y'all with a technical story. I texted y'all this last night, you just didn't believe it.

00:33:23 ◼   ► So I'm gonna say it on the show and see if anyone else has this issue. So I have noticed this before

00:33:29 ◼   ► But it really last time I was like, oh, this is actually what's happening.

00:33:33 ◼   ► So, uh, imagine the situation.

00:33:35 ◼   ► I'm watching something on Amazon prime video on my iPad.

00:33:38 ◼   ► And I picked up my phone and open safari to check something.

00:33:43 ◼   ► And as soon as I opened safari's new tab view, the video on my iPad stops playing and goes back

00:33:52 ◼   ► to like the episode selection screen.

00:33:55 ◼   ► And it's like, huh?

00:33:56 ◼   ► That's weird.

00:33:57 ◼   ► Hit play again.

00:33:58 ◼   ► And then I realized pretty quickly that these two events are tied together.

00:34:02 ◼   ► I tried turning Bluetooth off that didn't do it.

00:34:04 ◼   ► Something with handoff or something is making Amazon prime, not play video.

00:34:11 ◼   ► If you're opening a new tab in Safari on iOS device nearby on your iCloud account.

00:34:16 ◼   ► So a, I would like to know if anyone else sees this or for just like a weird thing

00:34:21 ◼   ► that I have a and to you know, if you have any solutions for it, because it's kind of

00:34:27 ◼   ► annoying if you're like streaming something and you know need to check something online

00:34:31 ◼   ► and can't do both at the same time. That's all. That's my story. It's very strange, right?

00:34:36 ◼   ► This is very weird. This is very weird. I didn't disbelieve you. I just felt like I

00:34:41 ◼   ► had to understand because it's complicated.

00:34:44 ◼   ► My only guess is that Amazon Prime, the Prime app is like somehow maybe somehow sees that

00:34:52 ◼   ► is like a, I don't know, like some DRM protection thing? It's like, oh no, don't send this video

00:34:58 ◼   ► anywhere else. Like, I don't know. Something is weird in that app.

00:35:01 ◼   ► No, but it's a different device. I agree with our friend John Voorhees who said, I think

00:35:07 ◼   ► it's Handoff.

00:35:08 ◼   ► I think so too.

00:35:09 ◼   ► It's something to do with Handoff. Like, maybe there's something going on in the Prime app

00:35:14 ◼   ► which is actually related to the Amazon app and they're doing some weird Handoff thing.

00:35:20 ◼   ► But it still doesn't make any sense why just opening Safari would stop the video.

00:35:25 ◼   ► It's very weird.

00:35:27 ◼   ► Very weird.

00:35:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I assume it's a bug with the Prime app, but it's interesting, so I thought maybe we

00:35:31 ◼   ► could talk about it.

00:35:32 ◼   ► Or maybe this is how they use your devices to listen to you and then give you the advertising.

00:35:38 ◼   ► It's probably that.

00:35:39 ◼   ► This is what they're doing.

00:35:40 ◼   ► It's probably that.

00:35:41 ◼   ► Every time you open Safari, the microphone turns on on the Amazon Prime app on the other

00:35:46 ◼   ► device, and then that's how it listens to you.

00:35:47 ◼   ► I think we solved it.

00:35:48 ◼   ► Stephen you got bitten by the decade bug didn't you? Wrote a bunch of articles.

00:35:52 ◼   ► Oh three articles. Three is a bunch, it's like a small bunch. It was going to be

00:35:56 ◼   ► five. I could tell you what the two that I didn't write were gonna be at the end

00:36:00 ◼   ► but um okay yeah so I decided to in a break from character I decided to give

00:36:06 ◼   ► an award to somebody else and I thought it'd be fun to name a device of the

00:36:12 ◼   ► decade for Mac, iPad, iPhone and then I was gonna do Mac OS release of the year

00:36:18 ◼   ► and accessory of the year. And those are the two that I didn't get to about tell you what

00:36:23 ◼   ► the picture made of the decade right? Yes, of the decade. You're really locked in for

00:36:28 ◼   ► Mac OS release of the year. Congratulations, Catalina. Hi, Sierra point. No one else is

00:36:34 ◼   ► here. We'll give it to you out of sympathy. So I named the late 2010 MacBook Air, the

00:36:40 ◼   ► Mac of the decade that seemed pretty universally agreed with like people were on board with

00:36:46 ◼   ► Yeah. I feel like that's one of those picks that even if you didn't own one,

00:36:51 ◼   ► you'd have heard enough people talk happily about that computer that you would kind of like

00:36:56 ◼   ► understand it, right? In the article... It's the same like in "I never owned the 12-inch

00:37:01 ◼   ► powerbook, but I know it was good because people think so fondly of it."

00:37:06 ◼   ► I love mine. Yeah. So then I chose the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus as the iPhones of the decade.

00:37:15 ◼   ► A lot of people said it was the iPhone 10.

00:37:17 ◼   ► John Gruber said that on the talk show.

00:37:20 ◼   ► But my argument was basically the 6 and 6 Plus were the first time the iPhone got bigger,

00:37:25 ◼   ► that was meaningfully bigger, that was a really big deal.

00:37:28 ◼   ► And if you look at Apple's financial side, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, which is a huge spike,

00:37:33 ◼   ► that's why they were down for a while after that.

00:37:36 ◼   ► Like it really...

00:37:37 ◼   ► This was the bananas iPhone.

00:37:38 ◼   ► Like when I originally saw the headline, I was like, nah, it's going to be the 4 or 5

00:37:42 ◼   ► of the 10, right?

00:37:43 ◼   ► And I assume that's probably what you've been hearing a lot of either four, five or ten.

00:37:47 ◼   ► Yeah. But after reading your article, I agree with you because this was a big

00:37:52 ◼   ► departure to make. It was the first time there was a second phone.

00:37:55 ◼   ► Right. And obviously I have a great love for the plus.

00:38:00 ◼   ► But it led into Apple having years and years of continued insane growth.

00:38:08 ◼   ► And it was I mean, there were other factors, but the fact that they had two models

00:38:13 ◼   ► was a big factor for that. Absolutely. And then, and then things... Before you say this

00:38:22 ◼   ► one, because say what the two that you didn't write, and then we'll talk about your iPad

00:38:27 ◼   ► at the beginning. So I was, I had decided that the Mac OS release of the decade was

00:38:34 ◼   ► going to be Snow Leopard, even though it came out in 2009 as a joke of like, it was the

00:38:39 ◼   ► best release ever. Oh, that's good. That would have been fun. That's funny though. I like

00:38:43 ◼   ► that because that's the meme of like Snow Leopard was the most perfect version of MacOS

00:38:47 ◼   ► But that one was scheduled for New Year's Day and I was gonna be offline all day and

00:38:51 ◼   ► I was like I can't defend the joke and like people are just gonna think I can't count

00:38:54 ◼   ► so I just I didn't do it.

00:38:58 ◼   ► You could have just been one of those people of like "the decade starts in..."

00:39:02 ◼   ► Right? Like that you know.

00:39:04 ◼   ► Don't you know the decade starts in 2009?

00:39:06 ◼   ► Yeah it does.

00:39:07 ◼   ► And ends in 2015.

00:39:10 ◼   ► Everybody knows.

00:39:12 ◼   ► Everybody knows. And then for accessory of the decade I was going to name AirPods

00:39:19 ◼   ► over the Apple Watch for two reasons. One, the previous decade and even the

00:39:25 ◼   ► beginning of this one there was a big focus at Apple on music like through the

00:39:30 ◼   ► iPod and we all remember those white you know iPod earbuds we saw everywhere and

00:39:35 ◼   ► the dancing silhouette ads and the AirPods feel like a continuation of that

00:39:39 ◼   ► story to me and I think it's one of those products that even though it has

00:39:44 ◼   ► rich ties of the past with the iPod it it takes everything that was good about

00:39:49 ◼   ► that and brings it into the modern world right like people are listening to

00:39:52 ◼   ► podcasts and YouTube videos and like all sorts of stuff with air pods and they

00:39:58 ◼   ► are just I mean I don't know about y'all I feel like in the last three or four

00:40:02 ◼   ► months even like before the holidays all of a sudden air pods are just like

00:40:06 ◼   ► seriously everywhere. Like I, I feel like almost every time I leave the house, I see

00:40:10 ◼   ► them in the world somewhere. And they are just extremely popular. And if I mean, if

00:40:15 ◼   ► you go right now and try to buy the AirPods Pro, they're backordered for a while because

00:40:18 ◼   ► the holidays like, it's just a huge hit. And I felt like that the echoes of the iPod are

00:40:26 ◼   ► like live on in it. And that's what edged it out over the Apple Watch for me. Now, Renee

00:40:31 ◼   ► Ritchie named the Apple Watch his Apple device of the decade. And he made a good argument

00:40:35 ◼   ► in that video and I think that it is a very close second place for this accessory of the

00:40:43 ◼   ► decade at least, but I feel like the AirPods just inch it out a little bit there at the

00:40:47 ◼   ► end.

00:40:48 ◼   ► I agree with you.

00:40:49 ◼   ► I think that like, I mean, there are like a million ways that you can slice it, but

00:40:54 ◼   ► I think that the AirPods are better at what they are supposed to do than the Apple Watch

00:41:01 ◼   ► is at what it's supposed to do.

00:41:03 ◼   ► Apple Watch is amazing and capable in so many areas, but the AirPods are just

00:41:08 ◼   ► like you don't need to do anything else. Like that's it. Yeah. They nailed it.

00:41:14 ◼   ► I mean who knows right if Apple sells more AirPods than Apple Watches. I have a

00:41:18 ◼   ► guess it's AirPods. But oh yeah. But they are you know the watch is still so

00:41:24 ◼   ► tethered to the phone. I think we all hope to see that change in the future.

00:41:27 ◼   ► But like AirPods you can use with any other Apple device including the Watch

00:41:31 ◼   ► which is actually like a really nice experience just having a watch and

00:41:34 ◼   ► AirPods with you but the AirPods just seemed like a bigger deal.

00:41:38 ◼   ► Alright so the one that we have not spoken about yet was your iPad of the

00:41:44 ◼   ► decade. Yes. Which you crowned as the original iPad Air from 2013. Yep. Now this

00:41:52 ◼   ► was the was this wasn't the iPad Air that was like super powerful for

00:41:56 ◼   ► multitasking right this was the one that came before that. iPad Air 2 was the one

00:42:00 ◼   ► everybody bought for iOS nine or whatever, right? The air two was like, seriously powerful.

00:42:07 ◼   ► And overkill. Now, I remember talking about it on the show, or maybe our previous podcast,

00:42:13 ◼   ► like the air tubes felt overpowered is like, why do they need all this? Right? But yeah,

00:42:19 ◼   ► so let me let me explain the air pod air pick for for anyone who didn't read the article.

00:42:24 ◼   ► And then I will hear your disagreements. The if you if you, you know, wind the clock back

00:42:29 ◼   ► And this month is actually 10 years from the original iPad, which is bananas.

00:42:34 ◼   ► But the iPad two was excellent.

00:42:36 ◼   ► They sold the iPad two for a really long time.

00:42:38 ◼   ► I wrote a thing on Mac stories about that a couple years ago.

00:42:41 ◼   ► The iPad three was the first one with retina and I had that iPad and it was heavy and pretty

00:42:46 ◼   ► slow and like really struggled under some circumstances.

00:42:49 ◼   ► The GPU just wasn't up to the task.

00:42:52 ◼   ► And they replaced it with the iPad four, which has had a better GPU and lightning port and

00:42:59 ◼   ► just seven months. So the iPad three was for sale less than a year like that. Anytime I

00:43:05 ◼   ► think about that it kind of kind of blows my mind. But then in the fall of 2013, we

00:43:10 ◼   ► saw the iPad Air, it was basically the iPad mini but bigger, there was you know, that

00:43:16 ◼   ► time where the iPad Air and the iPad mini were basically the same minus the screen size.

00:43:23 ◼   ► And this, you know, was that it was a lot lighter. It had the design that we're all

00:43:27 ◼   ► really familiar with now with the thinner side bezels and you know the

00:43:31 ◼   ► chamfered edges from the iPhone 5 and it was if it came with the a7 and it was

00:43:39 ◼   ► the first time the 9.7 inch iPad was like really a one-handed device because

00:43:45 ◼   ► it was lightweight it had those thin bezels and its software support lasted a

00:43:51 ◼   ► good long time. So it is in a sense, my thinking about this is, is that it was

00:43:59 ◼   ► the first modern iPad. That it put away the design from the 2, 3, and 4 and it

00:44:06 ◼   ► came with iOS 7 I believe. I think, is that right? Federico 2013 is iOS 7?

00:44:15 ◼   ► Well in September. Yeah so you know it was it was it was a lot of change it was

00:44:21 ◼   ► the first a7 so the first 64-bit iPad and it just felt like the the if I think

00:44:26 ◼   ► about the iPad eras it marked the beginning of the modern iPad era the

00:44:31 ◼   ► iPad the iPad mini the iPad air all still look like this and that's really

00:44:37 ◼   ► why I picked it in my mind actually for a lot of similar reasons to the iPhone

00:44:42 ◼   ► The iPhone 6 design is still with us today, right?

00:44:45 ◼   ► The iPhone 11, you can draw its roots back to the iPhone 6 pretty easily, and the iPad

00:44:51 ◼   ► Air serves that for most of the current iPads now.

00:44:54 ◼   ► So that was my thinking into it.

00:44:58 ◼   ► Strong disagree.

00:44:59 ◼   ► I know.

00:45:00 ◼   ► Me too, I'm afraid.

00:45:03 ◼   ► I cannot argue with the points that you're making, like they are all great points.

00:45:08 ◼   ► Yes.

00:45:09 ◼   ► But I just think there are better points in terms of like another iPad that like I

00:45:15 ◼   ► personally feel ended up being more influential in the long term for the iPad segment of Apple.

00:45:27 ◼   ► And I mean the original iPad Pro from 2015. So not the latest one from 2018, not the refresh from

00:45:35 ◼   ► 2017, the original one, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. So my case is based on the fact that the

00:45:44 ◼   ► original iPad Pro was the first biggest iPad. It introduced the Apple Pencil that eventually

00:45:52 ◼   ► trickled down to other iPads in the line. It was the first iPad, I believe, with the smart keyboard

00:45:59 ◼   ► and the smart connector that also trickled down to other iPads later, including last

00:46:04 ◼   ► year.

00:46:05 ◼   ► It was the first iPad to really take advantage and sort of take multitasking to the next

00:46:12 ◼   ► level.

00:46:13 ◼   ► You could use Split View on the iPad Air and it was fine, but it was really on the big

00:46:21 ◼   ► one where it really you could…

00:46:24 ◼   ► Well, because it had, you know, like the line that we used so much at that time, it was

00:46:28 ◼   ► two full-size apps. It was two full-size apps at the same time.

00:46:32 ◼   ► Like two full-size apps side by side, right? That was like the big thing then.

00:46:35 ◼   ► And the four speaker system, I believe, well, maybe, yeah, it was new on the original iPad

00:46:41 ◼   ► Pro in 2015, I think. It was, yeah.

00:46:44 ◼   ► And like generally speaking, like more of a high-level conceptual discussion, it was

00:46:50 ◼   ► Apple sort of drawing a line in the sand and saying "we believe the iPad can be pro, and

00:46:56 ◼   ► we're gonna name it such."

00:46:58 ◼   ► So it was like the introduction of this idea that, you know, up until that moment, folks

00:47:03 ◼   ► like me and Myke and Jason, like we were talking about, using the iPad at a professional level,

00:47:11 ◼   ► and you know, facing all the criticism that that entailed at the time, but that sort of

00:47:17 ◼   ► felt like a vindication of that niche of the iPad market, of people saying, "Yes, I have

00:47:24 ◼   ► been working on the iPad and now Apple is making an iPad Pro." And so I feel like the

00:47:28 ◼   ► 2015 iPad Pro, even more so than the 2013 iPad Air, has stronger values and features

00:47:37 ◼   ► that if you had to consider the whole decade, make it more important than the iPad Air.

00:47:46 ◼   ► I feel like for me that the iPad Air was more iterative than the other picks that you made.

00:47:56 ◼   ► The MacBook Air and the iPhone 6 felt like bigger shifts, like they were bigger jumps

00:48:03 ◼   ► that those products made.

00:48:05 ◼   ► Where the Air, whilst it got thinner, the design we'd seen before the mini came first,

00:48:09 ◼   ► right?

00:48:10 ◼   ► And the mini looked like that, with the thinner bezels and stuff.

00:48:13 ◼   ► the iPad Pro was like a big jump from what the iPad could do before. Like it

00:48:20 ◼   ► feels more to me like if you look at the MacBook Air line, right, like the second

00:48:26 ◼   ► MacBook Air from the first MacBook Air it was basically a different thing

00:48:29 ◼   ► completely. And then the iPhone 6 because it got the big phone was like a big

00:48:34 ◼   ► change from the one before and that's like why I am on board with Federico

00:48:39 ◼   ► that like the 2015 iPad Pro was like, yeah, we this is an iPad like iPads

00:48:44 ◼   ► before, but it does all these things which are way more. But so yeah, that I

00:48:50 ◼   ► think this pick is like maybe even is probably one of the harder ones because

00:48:55 ◼   ► I think that a lot of people would make a also equally strong argument about the

00:49:00 ◼   ► iPad mini, like just the iPad mini being the iPad of the decade.

00:49:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't disagree with any of your points. The reason I didn't pick it was actually what

00:49:10 ◼   ► you just mentioned is that oh, you could do all these new things with it. And besides the the,

00:49:18 ◼   ► like two full size apps and split screen, which was awesome, and something that the 12.9 iPad Pro

00:49:24 ◼   ► still exceeds in. It doesn't actually do anything differently than the other iPads, like part of my

00:49:30 ◼   ► frustration with the iPad Pro to this day is that it doesn't really

00:49:36 ◼   ► fundamentally change the experience in terms of capability it changes the

00:49:40 ◼   ► experience in terms of ease of use and like multitasking is better but it's not

00:49:46 ◼   ► I feel like the iPad Pro is still a half-empty promise and well I mean I

00:49:51 ◼   ► would argue that like especially the 2015 the keyboard and the pencil were

00:49:55 ◼   ► huge differences and like I feel like right now we are in a place where the gap is a little

00:50:01 ◼   ► smaller again. It definitely is. And that the iPad Pro has some additional features

00:50:07 ◼   ► but like then you could say like USB-C which is definitely a thing that is like for me right now

00:50:13 ◼   ► is very useful like I'm getting a lot of use out the fact that I have a standard connector on my

00:50:18 ◼   ► iPad and also then you know like ProMotion display like there's there are things where like if you

00:50:23 ◼   ► are a big user of this product line, like you really value them, but right now that

00:50:29 ◼   ► gap is smaller. But back then in 2015, the gap from the Air to the Pro was massive. I

00:50:38 ◼   ► feel. Yeah, I mean, we can just disagree. It's fine. No, this podcast will not end until

00:50:47 ◼   ► we agree. So get ready, it's another podcast-a-thon. We're doing this. Do you agree with us now,

00:50:54 ◼   ► Steven?

00:50:55 ◼   ► I mean, I think it's like the Apple Watch AirPods thing. Like, neither are wrong.

00:51:00 ◼   ► Okay, how about now?

00:51:01 ◼   ► I went on one side, you went on the other.

00:51:03 ◼   ► Do you agree? Now?

00:51:05 ◼   ► Do you? What about now?

00:51:08 ◼   ► Oh man. I do remember how, because I bought that original 12.9, and I do remember thinking,

00:51:17 ◼   ► how wild it was to have iOS on such a big device and I don't use the 12.9 now.

00:51:23 ◼   ► Has that held up for y'all? Like do you guys still think the 12.9 is like

00:51:28 ◼   ► drastically different than say the 11? Like in terms of usage? Oh yeah.

00:51:34 ◼   ► Which is why I typically do not recommend the 12.9 to people.

00:51:39 ◼   ► When people ask me I want to get an iPad Pro which one I get, like 95% of the

00:51:43 ◼   ► times they get the 11 because the 11 is a better iPad and it's an iPad Pro.

00:51:50 ◼   ► The 12.9 inch iPad Pro is like you're making a life commitment to this thing because it

00:51:59 ◼   ► is even though it's like it shouldn't be that different because there's so much closer now

00:52:05 ◼   ► like the screen size it's still the physical body size of it the weight of it it's way

00:52:11 ◼   ► more cumbersome. It's like, do you actually want to carry around a laptop? Because that's

00:52:15 ◼   ► what you're doing.

00:52:16 ◼   ► I mean, if you allow me the metaphor, all iPads are good iPads. But the 12.9 is like

00:52:23 ◼   ► getting a Bernice dog. Like, you know what you're getting into with this iPad, you know,

00:52:29 ◼   ► it doesn't necessarily fit in your bag and it's bulky and when you want to work while

00:52:35 ◼   ► on a plane, well, good luck with the tray table, you know, that kind of stuff.

00:52:39 ◼   ► So, yep, that's why I mean, I said if I'm, I actually think the, I mean, I wouldn't call

00:52:46 ◼   ► it my iPad of the decade because I feel like it needs, there needs to be like time between

00:52:52 ◼   ► the, I think the iPad pro 11 inch is the best iPad ever made.

00:52:57 ◼   ► Like I think that that is the best one.

00:53:00 ◼   ► It's like the, in every sense of the word, it's the best iPad.

00:53:03 ◼   ► Like, but, but I don't, I wouldn't want to say it's my iPad of the decade because it

00:53:09 ◼   ► only came out last like in like 2018 like it doesn't you know what I mean

00:53:13 ◼   ► like that kind of stuff it's like it's too soon and there are like there's more

00:53:17 ◼   ► like you know as we say the 2015 hyper pro was a more monumental product but

00:53:23 ◼   ► the 11 inch hyper pro like that thing is what's like someone asked like why

00:53:28 ◼   ► didn't you pick the Mac Pro I was like dude it's been out for three days for

00:53:31 ◼   ► most of the decade we had really bad Mac pros on sale so well some some people

00:53:36 ◼   ► have lived a very intense three days yes it's true some people took it apart but

00:53:42 ◼   ► it's like that idea of your favorite movie isn't always necessarily the best

00:53:47 ◼   ► righty right yeah interest like my wife's favorite movie is not a good movie

00:53:52 ◼   ► and so it's fine I don't want to say because then people okay what's the

00:53:56 ◼   ► movie okay but it's the Princess Bride oh I love that movie movie ever made I

00:54:03 ◼   ► I don't know that movie. So, surprise, I haven't watched a movie.

00:54:07 ◼   ► It's Star Wars.

00:54:08 ◼   ► What?

00:54:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:54:10 ◼   ► Yeah, like also, this new Star Wars is not that good in my opinion.

00:54:14 ◼   ► Oh gosh, dude, don't open that can of worms.

00:54:18 ◼   ► I listened to that conversation on Upgrade. Based on the tweets that I have seen, it appears

00:54:22 ◼   ► to be a common opinion.

00:54:24 ◼   ► So yeah, do you know what I've been wild about? I've been pretty negative about this movie.

00:54:29 ◼   ► one person has agreed disagreed with me like I'm sure now they will but like my

00:54:33 ◼   ► feeling is like it's just but it's like it's like positive people are less

00:54:39 ◼   ► annoying than negative people yeah and so like positive people that like get in

00:54:45 ◼   ► touch with you and be like no actually I love this they you know they don't do

00:54:48 ◼   ► that because not as much but like you know but my feeling is like it isn't a

00:54:52 ◼   ► bad it's like I'm being it's in there it's not a bad movie I just didn't

00:54:55 ◼   ► really like it. It just didn't really do much for me this Star War.

00:55:00 ◼   ► It's alright I guess. It's an alright movie. I didn't dislike it, I didn't love it, I kind

00:55:06 ◼   ► of left it and was like "okay". I sort of have this weird fetish that I know

00:55:13 ◼   ► how the inch Star Wars movie ends. So like beyond this character of being the guy who

00:55:21 ◼   ► who hasn't never watched the Star Wars movie. I do know the spoilers for some reason. It's

00:55:26 ◼   ► like me and Game of Thrones. I know all the Game of Thrones things but I've never seen

00:55:30 ◼   ► an episode of it. And I kind of like, I like to be that guy now. So I've never seen a throne.

00:55:37 ◼   ► But honestly, yeah, same with the Star Wars. And honestly, I don't know why I feel so compelled

00:55:43 ◼   ► to Google the spoilers but it's just something that I like to do. Because you get to be that

00:55:48 ◼   ► guy because you're never gonna watch him anyway so you might as well just be that

00:55:53 ◼   ► guy that's who you can be with the spoilers yeah maybe are we ready to move

00:56:00 ◼   ► on do you agree with us now this episode just we're just waiting here wait to the

00:56:08 ◼   ► ad and we'll see what happens next this episode of connected is brought to you

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00:57:53 ◼   ► us about this new app called LaunchCuts. Okay so LaunchCuts is this new

00:57:59 ◼   ► utility that came out today. It's available for $8 on the App Store for

00:58:05 ◼   ► iPhone and iPad. And so the brief summary would be it is an app that lets you

00:58:11 ◼   ► organize and launch shortcuts in the shortcuts app using folders. Those

00:58:20 ◼   ► folders, obviously you will not be able to actually have folders inside the

00:58:25 ◼   ► Apple shortcuts app. LaunchCuts is effectively like a glorified launcher

00:58:32 ◼   ► for your shortcuts.

00:58:33 ◼   ► It's like a shortcut specific launcher

00:58:38 ◼   ► that replicates the look of the shortcuts library.

00:58:42 ◼   ► It's got the grid, it's got the same colors,

00:58:44 ◼   ► it's got the same icons.

00:58:46 ◼   ► It replicates your library,

00:58:48 ◼   ► but when you tap on those shortcuts,

00:58:50 ◼   ► they actually open the shortcuts app.

00:58:52 ◼   ► The benefit there being that you have a bunch more controls

00:58:57 ◼   ► for organizing your shortcuts and launching them.

00:59:02 ◼   ► and just cleaning up your library

00:59:04 ◼   ► than what is otherwise possible in the Apple shortcuts app.

00:59:09 ◼   ► I installed the beta of LaunchCuts in December,

00:59:16 ◼   ► and I used the holiday break as an opportunity

00:59:21 ◼   ► to really play around with the app and set up a few folders

00:59:25 ◼   ► and clean up my library of shortcuts.

00:59:28 ◼   ► And for context, I went from 470 shortcuts initially.

00:59:36 ◼   ► I cut it all down to 270 shortcuts.

00:59:40 ◼   ► So I was able to remove 200 old and unused shortcuts just

00:59:46 ◼   ► by virtue of creating folders and organizing things

00:59:50 ◼   ► and using the advanced search feature of launch cuts

00:59:56 ◼   ► and changing the size of items in the grid, there's a slider in LaunchCuts,

01:00:05 ◼   ► you can actually make each shortcut smaller and smaller.

01:00:08 ◼   ► So by a combination of all these things,

01:00:11 ◼   ► I was able to remove almost 50% of my shortcuts, really.

01:00:15 ◼   ► And I just think it's the kind of utility

01:00:19 ◼   ► that if you're a Shortcuts Power User,

01:00:21 ◼   ► you feel the kind of person who has not 10,

01:00:25 ◼   ► not 20, but like 50, 70, 100 shortcuts on your device.

01:00:29 ◼   ► You probably want this kind of utility

01:00:32 ◼   ► to make sense of your library, to create folders,

01:00:35 ◼   ► to organize your shortcuts in folders and all of that.

01:00:37 ◼   ► Now, I need to stress this aspect of LaunchCuts.

01:00:42 ◼   ► It is based, it is an app that,

01:00:46 ◼   ► it is a native app that you can download from the App Store,

01:00:49 ◼   ► but it's based on a workaround.

01:00:51 ◼   ► It's based on a technique that enables launch cuts.

01:00:58 ◼   ► And really, if you know how to do it,

01:00:59 ◼   ► it also lets you do the same.

01:01:03 ◼   ► A technique that lets you extract information

01:01:06 ◼   ► about your shortcuts library from the Apple shortcuts app

01:01:10 ◼   ► and put it somewhere else.

01:01:12 ◼   ► And in this case, launch cuts requires a shortcut

01:01:16 ◼   ► that is called the Launch Cuts Helper that

01:01:19 ◼   ► needs to run inside the shortcuts app

01:01:22 ◼   ► to assemble this information for you.

01:01:24 ◼   ► So that includes how many shortcuts you have,

01:01:26 ◼   ► the names of each shortcut, the color of each shortcut,

01:01:30 ◼   ► the glyph that you're using for shortcuts,

01:01:33 ◼   ► and even the contents of actions contained within your shortcuts.

01:01:39 ◼   ► So all this data is passed back to LaunchCuts,

01:01:43 ◼   ► which assembles a database.

01:01:46 ◼   ► Once you do that the first time, you don't have to do it every day, but it's still something that

01:01:53 ◼   ► you gotta do periodically, because it is a limitation of launch cuts. It cannot access data

01:02:00 ◼   ► about your shortcuts library in the background. So every few days, you may be, you know, if you created

01:02:06 ◼   ► new shortcuts and you want to make sure that the database is in sync between shortcuts and launch

01:02:12 ◼   ► cuts you need to go through this sort of syncing process again. But otherwise, I mean,

01:02:19 ◼   ► as I wrote in the story today on the site, I shouldn't have to explain why having folders for

01:02:27 ◼   ► a collection of items is a good idea in 2020, but that's where we are with the shortcuts app right

01:02:34 ◼   ► now. It's great to have folders, it's great to have advanced searches, it's great to have smart

01:02:41 ◼   ► folders in LaunchCuts. So you can do things like have a folder that gets automatically populated,

01:02:48 ◼   ► with shortcuts that match a specific tag, for example, or shortcuts that you use in the

01:02:54 ◼   ► share sheet. Or, you know, there's all kinds of filtering criteria. It's just,

01:02:58 ◼   ► it's a power user utility based on a hack, a fancy one, a really well done one, and the developer has

01:03:06 ◼   ► done a really good job in trying to abstract as much of the complexity as possible, but it's still

01:03:13 ◼   ► very much the kind of utility that Apple might as well kill in the future with a single update to

01:03:18 ◼   ► shortcuts. So for now, it's great, I love it. It's on my home screen and I really find myself

01:03:25 ◼   ► tapping the LaunchCuts icon more often than the shortcuts one. Obviously, you still gotta use the

01:03:31 ◼   ► the shortcuts app. This is just a launcher. You still need to create and edit and run

01:03:37 ◼   ► your shortcuts in the shortcuts app. This is just a better way to organize them and

01:03:41 ◼   ► to open them.

01:03:42 ◼   ► This makes me nervous. This is like something that could go away at any moment.

01:03:47 ◼   ► Yes, especially because I'm very surprised that it got through the App Store for a couple

01:03:53 ◼   ► of reasons. First, it really looks just like shortcuts. The look of the app is exactly

01:03:58 ◼   ► the same of the grid in the Apple shortcuts app. And second, it requires a shortcut to

01:04:04 ◼   ► be installed from iCloud. It's like, I wonder how the person at App Review at Apple, did

01:04:11 ◼   ► they go through this process or not? I have no idea. It's very unusual, right? You buy

01:04:17 ◼   ► an app from the App Store and then you've got to run a shortcut to get it up and running.

01:04:22 ◼   ► So I don't know, if anything it may go away because Apple may eventually close the technique

01:04:31 ◼   ► that allows launch cuts to work, and that is, since the days of workflow, and it still

01:04:39 ◼   ► works with shortcuts, we've been able to read the entire contents of a shortcut as an XML

01:04:49 ◼   ► or plist file. You can do this today. I've done it before myself. If you want, you can

01:04:57 ◼   ► get all your shortcuts from your library and save them all as .xml files and you will be

01:05:04 ◼   ► able to look at all the variables contained inside them, all the text sections, all the

01:05:10 ◼   ► comments, everything. This is already possible and I believe it is possible for legacy purposes

01:05:17 ◼   ► because when shortcuts came out, Apple wanted to make sure that you could still install your old

01:05:23 ◼   ► workflows. If you try today, if you go to my workflow review from 2014, that's five years ago,

01:05:30 ◼   ► and you tap on a "workflow.is" link to an old workflow, it'll open shortcuts, it'll become

01:05:40 ◼   ► an iCloud.com link, and it will install just fine. And that's because the migration process is still

01:05:46 ◼   ► in place between workflow and shortcuts.

01:05:51 ◼   ► And there's a footnote in the story about this,

01:05:53 ◼   ► and I think when the time comes that Apple says,

01:05:56 ◼   ► "Okay, now we gave users a three-year grace period

01:06:01 ◼   ► for migrating from workflow to shortcuts.

01:06:05 ◼   ► Now maybe it's time that we cut that off.

01:06:09 ◼   ► And when that happens, I believe, I fear, not I believe,

01:06:13 ◼   ► I fear we will lose the ability to peek under the hood and take a look at the code behind

01:06:18 ◼   ► the shortcut.

01:06:20 ◼   ► This feels like something to me that only a select amount of people inside of Apple

01:06:25 ◼   ► know about, and they are the people that kind of don't want it to go away because it will

01:06:30 ◼   ► make their lives more difficult.

01:06:31 ◼   ► Sounds like it.

01:06:32 ◼   ► But there are times like this where it's like, "Oopsy daisies, now it's public."

01:06:39 ◼   ► So I'm intrigued to see how long this app works for.

01:06:43 ◼   ► I have been using it today and it is really nice because it adds a bunch of features that

01:06:47 ◼   ► shortcuts should have, right?

01:06:50 ◼   ► Like categorization and sorting.

01:06:52 ◼   ► Let's ignore folders, right?

01:06:54 ◼   ► Like as an idea.

01:06:55 ◼   ► Just take the ability to do like custom sorting.

01:06:57 ◼   ► And just wonderful, right?

01:06:59 ◼   ► Like being able to like, you know, and the folders isn't even really.

01:07:05 ◼   ► So when I always imagined folders, I thought of folders like on iOS, like on the home screen

01:07:09 ◼   ► That's how I always thought of folders for shortcuts.

01:07:12 ◼   ► But the way that LaunchCuts does it is much nicer,

01:07:15 ◼   ► where it's more navigation inside of an iOS app than it is folders.

01:07:21 ◼   ► You know what I mean? It's more like the notebooks in Notes.

01:07:26 ◼   ► I don't really think of those as folders.

01:07:29 ◼   ► You know what I mean? I think of them as like,

01:07:31 ◼   ► these are just places to store this information.

01:07:34 ◼   ► And then they're like buckets.

01:07:37 ◼   ► And that's like the same thing, but my mind when I think of folders now is more like the

01:07:43 ◼   ► iOS home screen folder, which is just like categories that you poke around.

01:07:49 ◼   ► And I really like that there are smart folders.

01:07:52 ◼   ► I think that's really nice.

01:07:53 ◼   ► I wish there was more they could do there.

01:07:55 ◼   ► I would really like smart folders.

01:07:58 ◼   ► Again, maybe when the shortcuts team eventually add this functionality that can be defined

01:08:04 ◼   ► by does it have actions from this app inside of it? So I don't have to create a time tracking

01:08:12 ◼   ► folder myself, I just create a time-ary folder and rename it. So stuff like that I would really like.

01:08:20 ◼   ► But I've used it already to clear up some unneeded shortcuts, like a bunch of my time

01:08:25 ◼   ► tracking shortcuts that use the toggle API, which I don't use anymore because I just use all the

01:08:30 ◼   ► time of reaction so that was good I could get rid of some of those.

01:08:33 ◼   ► But I'm wondering Federico, it was interesting to read in your review some of the ways that

01:08:40 ◼   ► you use it, but are you purely using this app to launch your shortcuts now?

01:08:46 ◼   ► Yes.

01:08:47 ◼   ► Okay, and because when I was originally playing around with the app myself right before I

01:08:51 ◼   ► read your review, I didn't really understand how that could work but then you detailed

01:08:56 ◼   ► in your review that you actually just use shortcuts in split view with launch cuts,

01:09:01 ◼   ► so you're not going from app to app all the time. And that's quite a clever way to do it.

01:09:06 ◼   ► And I think is if you're using this app on the iPad should be the way that you do it.

01:09:11 ◼   ► I think this app is less useful on the iPhone.

01:09:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I can. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

01:09:17 ◼   ► Because it's still like a lot of like you go to this one app to press a button that opens

01:09:21 ◼   ► the other app and then does the action. I was also surprised that there wasn't any next-level

01:09:30 ◼   ► widget or something. Because I'm very used to using the... The way that I interact with

01:09:38 ◼   ► shortcuts is via the widget, because my most used shortcuts are widget shortcuts that I've

01:09:44 ◼   ► built. I built my first shortcut the other day with Federico, which is purely existing

01:09:50 ◼   ► to launch other shortcuts, I figured you'd be proud of me that I've gone to that level

01:09:54 ◼   ► now.

01:09:57 ◼   ► But so like I was surprised to see that like this application only existed within the app

01:10:02 ◼   ► itself like I would have maybe liked to see, you know, because really this is a launcher,

01:10:07 ◼   ► I thought that there might be like a widget launcher component to it.

01:10:12 ◼   ► If the app continues to receive a lot of development, that is something that I would like to see.

01:10:16 ◼   ► And when I say that, it's obviously a very small market of people that would want it.

01:10:23 ◼   ► And like you two, I am concerned about its longevity.

01:10:28 ◼   ► But as a little utility, it's like, this is just great.

01:10:32 ◼   ► This is just like a fun little thing that if you use shortcuts a bunch, you can get

01:10:36 ◼   ► some use out of.

01:10:37 ◼   ► And I'm gonna try playing around of it the way that you do in SplitView.

01:10:44 ◼   ► But it is also one of those things where as much as I like this app, what I really want

01:10:48 ◼   ► is just ShortCust to have all of these features.

01:10:50 ◼   ► That's kind of all I really want.

01:10:51 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:10:52 ◼   ► But this will do for the time being, I suppose.

01:10:54 ◼   ► Yeah, and if only I think it proves a point.

01:10:58 ◼   ► Here's how people would take advantage of this feature.

01:11:02 ◼   ► And I think it's especially nice right now on iPad because it supports multiple windows.

01:11:07 ◼   ► And so you can open different folders as different windows, or you can have maybe the same folder

01:11:17 ◼   ► sorted in two different ways, opening in Split View.

01:11:21 ◼   ► And what's even nicer is that if you use LaunchCuts and ShortCuts side by side in Split View,

01:11:27 ◼   ► and you tap on the ellipses in LaunchCuts to edit a shortcut, it'll open on the other

01:11:36 ◼   ► side of the screen automatically, like instantly, because it's effectively launching a URL scheme,

01:11:43 ◼   ► but because Shortcuts is already there, the effect is immediate. It just works instantly.

01:11:50 ◼   ► And so you can tap on different shortcuts in LaunchCuts, and the editor will just open

01:11:59 ◼   ► for different shortcuts on the other side of the screen. There's no jumping back and

01:12:03 ◼   ► forth, right? It just opens the editor and then you tap on another shortcut, it opens the editor

01:12:08 ◼   ► for a different shortcut. So it's super nice, especially if you're editing multiple shortcuts

01:12:12 ◼   ► at the same time, to be able to jump between them without having to say "okay, tap done, go back to

01:12:20 ◼   ► the grid, find the other shortcut, tap the ellipsis, edit that one, then go back again".

01:12:27 ◼   ► Again, it's a power user thing, but I feel like the bigger question, and it's sort of

01:12:32 ◼   ► something that I keep coming back to, I mentioned this in my coverage of Toolbox Pro for instance,

01:12:39 ◼   ► is this question of, is shortcuts having an identity crisis at the moment? Like,

01:12:46 ◼   ► does Apple believe that shortcuts is a power user feature, or do they still believe that

01:12:54 ◼   ► it should become a consumer product. This is what I would be really curious to see

01:13:02 ◼   ► what Apple thinks about this and sort of maybe we should be waiting for signs at WWDC 2020.

01:13:09 ◼   ► What's in the future of shortcuts? Because now that it's integrated, it's an Apple app, and it's free,

01:13:15 ◼   ► and in iOS 13 it received parameters and the new editor and the new security restrictions. Okay,

01:13:23 ◼   ► but one now. Do you actually go after all these features that are missing for power users, or

01:13:30 ◼   ► are you going to simplify even more, because you want to turn shortcuts into something that is

01:13:35 ◼   ► more accessible and easier and more consumer friendly? Can it be both? I don't know, so I

01:13:42 ◼   ► guess we'll see. But yeah, I kind of want to see what Apple thinks of shortcuts identity at this

01:13:47 ◼   ► point because the list of features that are missing for power users is growing

01:13:52 ◼   ► longer and longer and longer so I don't know maybe maybe Apple thinks that it's

01:13:58 ◼   ► third parties should just come in and offer features that are missing but that

01:14:03 ◼   ► you know they're never as good as a native integrated functionality.

01:14:07 ◼   ► Well I mean but if they do think that then there should be APIs. Right yes. So

01:14:12 ◼   ► considering there are no APIs for shortcuts and I don't think there will

01:14:15 ◼   ► be they don't want that. Yeah. And, you know, building the obvious features for shortcuts

01:14:22 ◼   ► is a quick way to get yourself Sherlock in theory.

01:14:25 ◼   ► It's only Sherlocking if Apple updates shortcuts. If Apple do it.

01:14:30 ◼   ► Ready to move on? Sure. All right. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Booz Allen. Modernizing

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01:14:59 ◼   ► for government or commercial goals. Booz Allen understands that they're helping some of the

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01:15:45 ◼   ► of the show and Relay FM.

01:15:48 ◼   ► Twitter has finally updated the official iPad app to include a sidebar, which is something

01:15:53 ◼   ► we've learned for a long time. However, it permanently shows trends. That's what it shows

01:15:58 ◼   ► all the time. Trends, trends, trends. Who wants some trends? I want to lay out the problem

01:16:04 ◼   ► that I find with seeing Twitter's trends all of the time.

01:16:08 ◼   ► So I've said this in the past that like, I like a,

01:16:12 ◼   ► I can measured approach to getting news in my life.

01:16:16 ◼   ► And I don't always want to see news all of the time.

01:16:19 ◼   ► I make an effort to stay more informed these days than I have in the past,

01:16:24 ◼   ► but like on my own terms,

01:16:25 ◼   ► that's kind of the way that I like to deal with my news,

01:16:27 ◼   ► either that's through following people whose news coverage I like,

01:16:32 ◼   ► like the wider world, not just technology,

01:16:34 ◼   ► or I will visit different news outlets to get news at my own speed.

01:16:41 ◼   ► But the bigger problem is that, it's easy to wrap up and say,

01:16:46 ◼   ► "Oh, I don't want to see trends because it's just seeing the news all the time."

01:16:49 ◼   ► The bigger problem is that Twitter's trends are not news.

01:16:53 ◼   ► It is what people think is news, which sometimes...

01:16:57 ◼   ► No, no, I know when I say that it sounds one way,

01:17:01 ◼   ► but let me explain a little bit more.

01:17:05 ◼   ► A lot of the time, the trends in Twitter

01:17:07 ◼   ► are meaningless to most people, unless you really care,

01:17:12 ◼   ► celebrity gossip, right?

01:17:13 ◼   ► Like, if celebrities don't care,

01:17:15 ◼   ► my Twitter trends every day include something

01:17:18 ◼   ► about the band, the K-pop band BTS,

01:17:22 ◼   ► and I don't care about BTS.

01:17:25 ◼   ► You should if you do, but I don't.

01:17:27 ◼   ► So the idea of Twitter serving trends for me,

01:17:30 ◼   ► I have no idea why they think that I care about this.

01:17:33 ◼   ► They often frequently include the fun Twitter game for the day.

01:17:39 ◼   ► Right. Like, make a movie in seven.

01:17:42 ◼   ► What? I don't care. Right.

01:17:44 ◼   ► Like, I'm not interested in that.

01:17:45 ◼   ► Also, those are all basically glorified phishing.

01:17:48 ◼   ► And also the other part is and which is the thing that annoys me the most about

01:17:52 ◼   ► the new stuff. It is frequently incendiary reactions to news

01:17:58 ◼   ► or people posting things to try and pile on, like people using political events to spread misinformation.

01:18:06 ◼   ► And they use hashtags to do that, and then the hashtag just becomes about people arguing whether

01:18:12 ◼   ► the hashtag is real or not, right? I don't need to see any of this crap all of the time, but now I see it

01:18:20 ◼   ► all of the time, so that's what I don't want to see. So now we can get into the other argument of

01:18:26 ◼   ► like why use the official app right so people say to me and Federico especially because we both use

01:18:32 ◼   ► the official app right why why'd you use it then why'd you use the official app so Federico had a

01:18:40 ◼   ► great reply to Alex Gora just in a tweet that you sent about this issue and you gave a really good

01:18:46 ◼   ► list of features that the official app has can you list that for me please the official twitter app

01:18:53 ◼   ► is the only one that supports cards. Cards would be the... It's like rich text links, like rich links,

01:19:00 ◼   ► rich links. Yeah, rich links and videos and different types of links actually, and products.

01:19:08 ◼   ► It's like mostly links, which is nice, especially because I run a website and it's important for me

01:19:13 ◼   ► to make sure that the presentation of an article is correct. Polls. Native polls on Twitter. You

01:19:19 ◼   ► ask a question and you can vote. You can only do so in the official Twitter app. You can

01:19:24 ◼   ► put together the poll and you can vote on the poll and you can view results.

01:19:27 ◼   ► Threading is done really well and it's done the proper way. You can tweet and you can add a reply

01:19:35 ◼   ► to your own tweet and you can see there's a button right underneath the tweet detail view that says

01:19:43 ◼   ► add another tweet and you can just keep tweeting and I find that really, really useful when

01:19:49 ◼   ► I'm tweeting a story and I want to make sure that I highlight different aspects of the

01:19:52 ◼   ► story. You can, this is one of the most recent Twitter features, I'm pretty sure that maybe

01:20:00 ◼   ► third-party clients support this feature these days, but when it first came out it was only

01:20:04 ◼   ► available in Twitter, you can attach pictures and links, like you can have multiple attachments

01:20:12 ◼   ► a tweet that already quotes another tweet. The official term is the "retweet with comment"

01:20:19 ◼   ► and in Twitter you can retweet with a comment and you can also attach photos to your comment.

01:20:25 ◼   ► This is something that is only available in Twitter, the official Twitter app that I use

01:20:29 ◼   ► all the time to find old tweets and reference my own old tweets. When you search in Twitter,

01:20:37 ◼   ► You have access to the complete full Twitter archives.

01:20:43 ◼   ► You can find tweets from 2010, you can find tweets from five years ago, you can find anything

01:20:49 ◼   ► you want, and you can use the advanced search operators in Twitter for iPad and iPhone to

01:20:56 ◼   ► find those tweets.

01:20:57 ◼   ► Something that I do all the time from Colin, Vitici, and the text I'm looking for.

01:21:03 ◼   ► And that restricts the tweets to just my tweets, my username, and I can look back to 10 years

01:21:11 ◼   ► ago to find some stupid thing I tweeted in 2010.

01:21:16 ◼   ► Full history of DMs, same deal, you can take a look at any DM you ever sent, and you can

01:21:22 ◼   ► also search DMs now.

01:21:25 ◼   ► As somebody with relatively medium-sized audience, quality filter for mentions, because sometimes

01:21:33 ◼   ► people are bad, as we mentioned in my campaign speech at the beginning of this episode.

01:21:37 ◼   ► No, you said people are always bad.

01:21:40 ◼   ► People are always... well, yes, people accept dog people.

01:21:44 ◼   ► And seal.

01:21:45 ◼   ► And seal, of course, and Snoop Dogg.

01:21:48 ◼   ► The quality filter for mentions means I can hide somebody who's saying not so nice things

01:21:56 ◼   ► to me, which is, again, I appreciate as an option.

01:22:00 ◼   ► I can mute replies on a per-tweet basis, and in fact, Twitter just announced today...

01:22:07 ◼   ► We're gonna talk about that in a minute, new changes to how you tweet.

01:22:12 ◼   ► Of course, you can report abuse on tweets with proper tools, with a proper web page that is done

01:22:20 ◼   ► in line within the app, and it's very nice. You can do so, just click abuse and you can choose

01:22:27 ◼   ► whatever you want to report. The home timeline, the algorithm, which I love. In Twitter for iPhone

01:22:35 ◼   ► and iPad you can switch from a chronological feed, which, you know, this is the reply that I get all

01:22:41 ◼   ► the time from people who don't know what they're talking about. Sometimes people don't know,

01:22:44 ◼   ► because it's not their job, but if you don't know maybe don't say things that you don't know about.

01:22:49 ◼   ► Anyway, people say "oh but do you like seeing tweets with the just with the algorithm?" Fun fact,

01:22:55 ◼   ► know you don't have to, you can choose between chronological feed, which is the standard timeline

01:23:00 ◼   ► from newest to oldest, or you can optionally use the home timeline, which is the algorithmic one.

01:23:08 ◼   ► And I should say I love the algorithmic timeline, especially because these days I'm not on Twitter

01:23:13 ◼   ► all the time, and I do appreciate the computer doing the job for me of saying "here's the tweets

01:23:19 ◼   ► you should take a look at", because they're not stupid and they're actually interesting for you.

01:23:24 ◼   ► and I do appreciate that the Home Timeline does a good job at mixing and matching not just

01:23:30 ◼   ► interesting tweets based on ratio, but also things like how many people liked a certain tweet,

01:23:36 ◼   ► or how many people retweeted the same tweet and sort of coalescing them together in the same box.

01:23:42 ◼   ► That is super nice. The, like, Twitter, the Home Timeline usually has a section for, like,

01:23:49 ◼   ► your friend Myke and Steven and MKBHD,

01:23:52 ◼   ► they all, they're all talking about this link

01:23:55 ◼   ► and you can only get that in Twitter.

01:23:58 ◼   ► So, I mean, I can go on, but really,

01:24:01 ◼   ► the point being that the argument of like,

01:24:04 ◼   ► oh, you don't need the official Twitter app,

01:24:07 ◼   ► it is a wrong argument.

01:24:08 ◼   ► There's nothing bad about being wrong.

01:24:11 ◼   ► People should just recognize that though.

01:24:13 ◼   ► It's like the facts are wrong

01:24:15 ◼   ► and I'm here to correct those facts.

01:24:18 ◼   ► This is why we do the podcast.

01:24:20 ◼   ► So yeah, there's plenty of reasons

01:24:24 ◼   ► to use the official Twitter app.

01:24:26 ◼   ► And there's plenty of reasons to get upset about it.

01:24:29 ◼   ► - Those are all great.

01:24:30 ◼   ► Like my biggest ones are like the real time, right?

01:24:33 ◼   ► Like things are happening in real time.

01:24:34 ◼   ► There's no delay.

01:24:36 ◼   ► And also you mentioned it already, but the algorithm.

01:24:38 ◼   ► The algorithm reduces my feeling of like

01:24:40 ◼   ► the fear of missing out feeling.

01:24:42 ◼   ► Like I don't feel like I need to read all the tweets

01:24:44 ◼   ► because the algorithm does a pretty good job

01:24:47 ◼   ► if you just let it go for a bit of learning what you like and will surface to me the things

01:24:52 ◼   ► that I want to see.

01:24:53 ◼   ► And so I don't read Twitter as much as I used to because I don't have the feeling that I

01:24:58 ◼   ► need to catch up with everything anymore.

01:25:01 ◼   ► So now I just go to the top, scroll down a bit until I'm bored or like I feel like I've

01:25:06 ◼   ► seen stuff or I've had enough and then that's just it.

01:25:09 ◼   ► And that's that's kind of all I do now.

01:25:10 ◼   ► So that's why I use and love the official app.

01:25:14 ◼   ► obviously we now have this new problem with the iPad view which is showing me a bunch of stuff

01:25:18 ◼   ► that I don't want to see. Yeah and honestly like I feel like it's uh I don't know I feel like I'm

01:25:25 ◼   ► again this is just my opinion this obsession with constantly getting the news as you mentioned like

01:25:35 ◼   ► it's fine if you want to get the news on your own terms and if you have a favorite website perhaps

01:25:40 ◼   ► you have a subscription to the Times, I have a few Italian websites and news organizations that I go

01:25:46 ◼   ► to, but I do it on my own terms, at my own schedule, at my own pace. This idea of getting constantly

01:25:54 ◼   ► bombarded with news and sort of the transformation of the news industry almost to an entertainment

01:26:01 ◼   ► industry, like having the news on all the time. I don't think it's good for people, and it's

01:26:06 ◼   ► definitely not good for a social network. Like, the social network is the last

01:26:11 ◼   ► place where I want to get news analysis and that's not to discount. It depends

01:26:16 ◼   ► when you say it's not good for a social network. It's great for Twitter because

01:26:20 ◼   ► it keeps people talking all the time. Oh sure, sure. I'm sure it is. But like, and

01:26:27 ◼   ► I'm sure that you can find hundreds, thousands of journalists doing

01:26:31 ◼   ► fantastic reporting on Twitter. But what I'm saying is that that's not

01:26:36 ◼   ► necessarily what you get by having a sidebar with trends and hashtags in

01:26:41 ◼   ► there. If your job is to promote quality journalism, there's other tools and

01:26:46 ◼   ► systems to do that, if you actually take a look at the sidebar, it's not saying

01:26:50 ◼   ► "here's 10 amazing journalists you should follow", it's a bunch of hashtags, it's a

01:26:56 ◼   ► bunch of trends. I mean, last week, the top trend was World War III, because a bunch of

01:27:02 ◼   ► people were saying that that was going to happen, or most of them were joking about

01:27:07 ◼   ► it, that it was going to happen, sort of sarcastically, you know? And it's like, is that news? Or

01:27:13 ◼   ► is that what you think is news? And then it goes back to Myke's argument of like, I'd

01:27:17 ◼   ► rather go to a website that actually reports the news than having a sidebar from a social

01:27:22 ◼   ► network with a bunch of hashtags and quote unquote news constantly in my face all the

01:27:28 ◼   ► time. Which is typically just like people's like,

01:27:30 ◼   ► haha, funny jokes, like congratulations jokes, like you're so good.

01:27:35 ◼   ► And from a product perspective, it's just a bad iPad experience. Like, besides the conceptual

01:27:43 ◼   ► analysis, it's just a bad app. You're not really taking advantage of the screen because

01:27:49 ◼   ► those things in the sidebar, they are launchers for the left side of the screen. It's not

01:27:57 ◼   ► like, okay, you have a sidebar and you're actually showing content in the sidebar. You

01:28:02 ◼   ► tap on things in the sidebar and they change the view on the left. It's not like TweetDeck,

01:28:09 ◼   ► which is like, okay, actual multiple columns. No, it's just a way to click through and change

01:28:15 ◼   ► the timeline to something else. So like, it's also a bad app. It's like, it's a, it's a, I called it

01:28:21 ◼   ► a design catastrophe, and I'm sorry for anybody who works on Twitter's design team, but the

01:28:26 ◼   ► directions that you were given are bad. This is just, this is bad design, and it's, it's, it's a

01:28:32 ◼   ► laughable iPad app at this point, and it's just also, it is, you know, I, it's a morally precarious

01:28:43 ◼   ► design this constant bombardment of news and hashtags and you know in your face tweets

01:28:49 ◼   ► and transits it's not healthy and so yeah I don't like it that's my conclusion.

01:28:56 ◼   ► So Stephen I assume you're using Tweetbot right like this isn't so much of a problem

01:29:00 ◼   ► for you.

01:29:01 ◼   ► It just doesn't care.

01:29:03 ◼   ► I mostly use Tweetbot I mean I have Twitter the Twitter app installed on my phone and

01:29:08 ◼   ► iPad because there are times like you said like for all those reasons that it is nice

01:29:11 ◼   ► to dip into it. I understand the trending thing but I feel like those explore tabs

01:29:16 ◼   ► whatever they're called this week of like news, sports, entertainment like that

01:29:19 ◼   ► does surface stories that I want to see from time to time but... The explore tabs

01:29:23 ◼   ► are way better like I wished I could just set one of those in the sidebar if

01:29:27 ◼   ► they really want me to engage with content. Right or pin a list over there

01:29:32 ◼   ► like just do something else so... But like if the desire is like you must

01:29:36 ◼   ► to engage with stuff. Typically the Explore tab has always way better things than the

01:29:44 ◼   ► trending, right? There's interesting stuff in there a lot of the time.

01:29:49 ◼   ► I would prefer, honestly, just give me a list of articles from the For You tab rather than

01:29:59 ◼   ► the words in the trends like yeah like moments right like give me a list of moments instead

01:30:06 ◼   ► like so at least it's curated in some way rather than this just never-ending stream of nonsense

01:30:13 ◼   ► so i'm i am mostly in tweetbot but that feels like uh i mean not to be bought specifically all

01:30:19 ◼   ► third-party twitter apps feel like a sinking ship at this point when i use the twitter client i i

01:30:25 ◼   ► switch it to the latest and of course it doesn't ever remember that setting because it really once

01:30:28 ◼   ► wants you to use the algorithm like you were talking about.

01:30:31 ◼   ► So I'm going to give that a shot and see

01:30:33 ◼   ► if it could work for me.

01:30:34 ◼   ► I am traditionally a Twitter completionist.

01:30:38 ◼   ► I only follow about 400 people, which seems like a lot.

01:30:42 ◼   ► But then I look at how many people my friends follow,

01:30:44 ◼   ► and 400 is nothing.

01:30:46 ◼   ► So I--

01:30:46 ◼   ► I started following more when I started using the official app,

01:30:50 ◼   ► because now I don't read everything.

01:30:53 ◼   ► It doesn't matter how many people follow anymore.

01:30:56 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:30:56 ◼   ► And I, and yeah, and I have a private list called new Twitter of like just

01:31:01 ◼   ► friends.

01:31:03 ◼   ► And you know, I felt like I, if I felt like I was missing things, I could always

01:31:06 ◼   ► go to that.

01:31:07 ◼   ► So I'm going to, I've done this several times, like taking a run at it, but I

01:31:11 ◼   ► never had a Mac app.

01:31:12 ◼   ► And so I always felt like, well, I'm like.

01:31:14 ◼   ► And two worlds, but, um, the Mac app has, I mean, it's still weird in places

01:31:19 ◼   ► because it's Mac catalyst, but it's come a long way.

01:31:22 ◼   ► So I'm going to give all that a shot.

01:31:23 ◼   ► The my primary complaint with this app is this is the same as it was last time we spoke about this

01:31:28 ◼   ► That and under the little bell icon inside the app

01:31:33 ◼   ► It has all and then mentions and like I don't care

01:31:38 ◼   ► I don't want to see I don't wanna be notified about people liking or retweeting my stuff like

01:31:42 ◼   ► Thank you for doing it back

01:31:44 ◼   ► That's not a metric that I keep up with like I don't I don't look at how popular my tweets end up being and

01:31:50 ◼   ► But I do look at my mentions

01:31:52 ◼   ► Anyone who tweets something to me or one day counts like I read them all and I just wish there was a way for the all

01:31:57 ◼   ► Tab not to feed the little like notification dot in the app

01:32:01 ◼   ► Because I just don't accept it's fine that it's here. I would never go to that screen on my own so

01:32:07 ◼   ► That I just find a little frustrating cuz like that little dazek

01:32:10 ◼   ► Oh, I have a mention and I should check it out

01:32:13 ◼   ► And then it's like oh well 30 people liked your joke about the Mac Pro is like well like that's cool, but it's not

01:32:19 ◼   ► ultimately what I'm here for. So that's a minor nitpick, but it's something that bothers

01:32:24 ◼   ► me. The other thing that that sort of bothers me about the app is that if you have multiple

01:32:28 ◼   ► accounts, so on my phone in the Twitter client, I'm signed into seven account. So it's my

01:32:34 ◼   ► account 512 pixels relay FM and then my four podcasts connected MPU liftoff and ingenious.

01:32:40 ◼   ► Because I monitor those mentions, right? People send in feedback, show ideas. They tell me

01:32:45 ◼   ► if I left something in the edit I shouldn't have.

01:32:47 ◼   ► Yeah, timer quality.

01:32:49 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:32:50 ◼   ► I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna, yeah.

01:32:52 ◼   ► Hey, timer quality.

01:32:54 ◼   ► You know, switching between them is just not nearly

01:32:57 ◼   ► as good as it is on Tweetbot, or even Twittorific.

01:33:02 ◼   ► And I just wish that that was a better,

01:33:04 ◼   ► faster way to do that.

01:33:06 ◼   ► - Do you know that you can, do you know that you can

01:33:08 ◼   ► long press your profile picture in Twitter

01:33:12 ◼   ► and it brings up the switcher?

01:33:13 ◼   ► - And then it also then shows you

01:33:15 ◼   ► shows you the amount of notifications you have on each account.

01:33:19 ◼   ► Oh yeah, that's good. I'm now a Twitter power user.

01:33:23 ◼   ► You mentioned lists, and I just wanted to add that I really, really love

01:33:27 ◼   ► the feature in Twitter that you can now pin some of your favorite

01:33:31 ◼   ► lists to the top of the timeline

01:33:35 ◼   ► and you have buttons to switch between them. I now have

01:33:39 ◼   ► four latest tweets, which is the main timeline.

01:33:43 ◼   ► Apple, a bunch of Apple blogs, sort of like RSS basically, Friends, which is everybody

01:33:49 ◼   ► except Steven basically, no it's you and Myke and a bunch of others, and Pokemon for all

01:33:55 ◼   ► my, you know, the Pokemon content that I'm here for. So it's a really nice way to switch

01:34:02 ◼   ► between different tweeters, if you will, and again, another native feature. Yeah, I mean,

01:34:10 ◼   ► I'm gonna keep using it. I'm not switching because of all those features. I tried, so

01:34:17 ◼   ► Myke linked, or Stephen linked in the document here, the Split View trick of if you put something

01:34:25 ◼   ► next to Twitter for iPad in Split View, it hides the sidebar, and that works, and I thought,

01:34:32 ◼   ► maybe I should just put another Safari window in there next to Twitter, like permanently.

01:34:40 ◼   ► And what I realized is something that I really dislike about multi-window on iPadOS that

01:34:47 ◼   ► turns out, and I do this all the time, I actually wrote about this in my iPadOS review. There's

01:34:52 ◼   ► an entire page dedicated to this very problem of you put a window in there. So say you have

01:35:00 ◼   ► Twitter and Safari, and then elsewhere in IAPL OS, you have another Safari window. So

01:35:05 ◼   ► in total you have two Safari windows. But you consider one of them to be your main one,

01:35:12 ◼   ► right? Like the standalone Safari one, not the one next to Twitter. The one on its own

01:35:17 ◼   ► you consider to be your main Safari window. And then you keep another one next to Twitter

01:35:21 ◼   ► just because you don't want to see the sidebar. But every time you tap on the Twitter icon,

01:35:28 ◼   ► it loads the split view. Now, if you go to My Message and tap a link that Myke sent to

01:35:35 ◼   ► you, guess what? That link is going to open next to Twitter, not in your main Safari space,

01:35:43 ◼   ► because iPadOS has no concept of favorite spaces or main spaces. It just treats the

01:35:49 ◼   ► latest instance of the window that you saw as the active one. And so, with multiple Safari

01:35:58 ◼   ► windows, I find myself all the time opening links in the wrong window, the one next to

01:36:05 ◼   ► Twitter instead of my main one. And that's because iPadOS has no concept of what's a

01:36:11 ◼   ► what's a favorite, it doesn't care. And similarly, when I wanted to bring one of

01:36:19 ◼   ► my Safari windows in a split view next to Apple Notes, it displayed... so I dragged

01:36:26 ◼   ► the Safari icon and I dropped it next to Notes, and it showed me the window picker,

01:36:30 ◼   ► right? Because multiple windows already existed in the system. But I had no

01:36:37 ◼   ► way of telling which one was the window next to Twitter and which one was the other space.

01:36:42 ◼   ► I feel like we need a sacrificial app, right? Like for this purpose, like some kind of app

01:36:50 ◼   ► that just like I never will open for any other reason ever, but it lives here. Like and it's

01:36:58 ◼   ► an app that has to like, I guess has to support multi-window, but maybe not, right? Like it

01:37:03 ◼   ► can just live in split view so no I'm even just split view like voice memos on

01:37:09 ◼   ► iPad some but I want it to be something of use to like maybe it's just like an

01:37:14 ◼   ► app that like shows something sorry all the time like you know or something I

01:37:20 ◼   ► was thinking it was just black space I need us we need sacrificial apps that we

01:37:28 ◼   ► can keep yeah in split view with Twitter all the time I think I think so much to

01:37:33 ◼   ► build this and put it in test flight and just let people use it.

01:37:37 ◼   ► It's like launch cuts but for trends.

01:37:40 ◼   ► You also need better multi-window.

01:37:44 ◼   ► So anyway, yeah, that's Twitter.

01:37:47 ◼   ► Whatever.

01:37:48 ◼   ► I mean, we're all, yeah, this is not gonna, you know, Twitter is not gonna listen to anybody

01:37:54 ◼   ► so they do their own thing.

01:37:56 ◼   ► We are effectively screaming into the void but like I had to talk about this because

01:38:01 ◼   ► I'm just like so upset about it.

01:38:03 ◼   ► But it's our void, right?

01:38:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:38:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:38:07 ◼   ► So, we're ending on a sad note, but it's fine because we're still happy.

01:38:12 ◼   ► Well, no, we're not ending the show, right?

01:38:14 ◼   ► Because Steven has to agree.

01:38:15 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

01:38:16 ◼   ► Do you agree with us now?

01:38:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I do.

01:38:18 ◼   ► About the thing we said before about the iPad Pro?

01:38:21 ◼   ► All right.

01:38:22 ◼   ► If you want to find show notes to the stuff we spoke about this week, there's a whole

01:38:25 ◼   ► bunch of them there in your podcast app or on our website relay.fm/connected/276.

01:38:33 ◼   ► If you're there on the website, you can do a couple of fun things.

01:38:36 ◼   ► You can send us an email with any feedback or follow up or with test flight invitations

01:38:39 ◼   ► to apps put next to Twitter for iPad.

01:38:43 ◼   ► Sacrificial Twitter app.

01:38:44 ◼   ► Sacrificial Twitter app.

01:38:45 ◼   ► You can of course find us on Twitter with things as well.

01:38:49 ◼   ► So if you have an idea on how we show who is the annual and keynote chairman, you could

01:38:54 ◼   ► do that, uh, you can tweet at the show, which is at underscore connected FM.

01:38:59 ◼   ► You can find the three of us online as well.

01:39:02 ◼   ► Uh, Myke is the host of a bunch of shows here on relay FM and he is on

01:39:06 ◼   ► social media as I Myke I M Y K E.

01:39:10 ◼   ► Federico is the editor in chief of max stories.net and my co-host for the

01:39:15 ◼   ► anti-upgrade ease, you can find him on Twitter, Viti, V I T I C C I yes.

01:39:21 ◼   ► You can find my writing at 512 pixels and you can find 512 pixels over on YouTube as

01:39:26 ◼   ► well and you can follow me on Twitter as ISMH.

01:39:28 ◼   ► I'd like to thank our sponsors this week, Pingdom, Squarespace, and Booz Allen.

01:39:35 ◼   ► Until next time guys, say goodbye.

01:39:37 ◼   ► Cheerio.

01:39:38 ◼   ► Arrivederci.