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Connected

181: Headspaced Against My Will

 

00:00:00   (classical music)

00:00:02   - I think this is the beginning of the show.

00:00:11   It feels like the beginning.

00:00:12   We were talking and then we paused for a second

00:00:14   and now I'm thanking our sponsors,

00:00:16   Squarespace, Pingdom, and Ting.

00:00:18   - This is like last week where you started that poem

00:00:21   and I didn't know it was the beginning of the show

00:00:23   and I just kept saying things.

00:00:25   - I know, I had to edit a bunch of that out.

00:00:27   - Yep.

00:00:28   - I wanna keep you on your toes.

00:00:29   Connected episode 181. You've already heard the voice of one of my co-hosts, Myke Hurley.

00:00:35   Myke, how are you? Very good. Are you good? We're also joined by Federico Vittucci.

00:00:41   Hi, this is a strange introduction. I like it. My day is all topsy-turvy, so I am not in my office.

00:00:49   I am in someone else's office on a conference room table, but I brought all my recording gear,

00:00:55   So I have stuff everywhere and like I'm shocked that any of it works and it's been very,

00:01:01   it's been a very disorganized day. I really like the imagination of you sitting at a very

00:01:08   large conference table like there's you know you're like you're about to fire us or something

00:01:13   you know like. Do you need to pretend that this is much much more serious and fancier than it is?

00:01:20   I mean, I'm wearing a suit. Are you not wearing a suit?

00:01:22   Um, sure. Yes, I am.

00:01:26   Can I tell a very quick story about a conference room?

00:01:30   So, uh, last year I spent a bunch of time in New York, right?

00:01:33   And a friend of the show, Matthew Bischoff of Lickability,

00:01:38   there was a day where I needed to get some work done.

00:01:42   And he said that he would book a conference room at his co-working space for me.

00:01:46   And I could just come and hang out and just get some work done there before

00:01:49   I had to go catch my flight that evening because I was kicked out of my hotel.

00:01:54   I had nowhere to go.

00:01:55   So I arrive at the co-working space and like he shows me around

00:01:59   and like takes me to the room and he takes me to this conference room

00:02:03   where they were like, I'm not kidding, like 10 people in this room.

00:02:05   And they like had paperwork strewn all over the table.

00:02:09   Like they were having a real serious meeting.

00:02:11   And but it was like five or 10 minutes after the time that I had it booked.

00:02:15   So Matt just like pokes his head in the door and is like, we got this booked.

00:02:19   and all these people are so mad because it's just me and they all get up and leave and

00:02:24   then I spend like 90 minutes in that room with my iPad on my own and like and I just

00:02:30   imagine them like they're like trying to find somewhere in this co-working space to continue

00:02:35   their really important meeting like one of them walks by and just sees me on my own in

00:02:38   this room not even on the phone to anyone. And everyone knows you can't do real work

00:02:42   on an iPad so they figured you were just playing a game. Just playing a game. Consuming content.

00:02:47   Yeah, that's it.

00:02:48   You know, I've got a lovely little story now.

00:02:51   As I was swimming yesterday, I came to the realization that my LTE Apple Watch is like

00:02:57   a content capture device.

00:02:59   It's like a whole new different thing, right?

00:03:01   Because I can't consume anything on it.

00:03:04   But like I bark, I attempt to dictate reminders to it.

00:03:09   You know, we have a bit of a to and fro relationship, me and Siri on the Apple Watch, but I can

00:03:14   get about 50% of what I'm looking to record can be recorded into it. So yeah, I was thinking

00:03:19   oh it's like a content capture device and now I'm an analyst so.

00:03:23   Okay, do you still use the bear microphone thing to save notes and stuff?

00:03:30   Sometimes. If I'm saving ideas then I'll use like bear like you know I'll have an idea

00:03:34   for something but typically what happens is I'm like oh I should send an email to this

00:03:39   person about this thing so then I try and set a reminder but like typically that just

00:03:44   doesn't really work and I have to play a game later on where I have to try and

00:03:49   guess what the words mean. Are you doing that while you're swimming? Well not like

00:03:55   while I'm underwater but like I will stop I will stop at a length and then and

00:04:04   then do it you know like I'll stop by the side of the pool and paint my

00:04:08   reminder and then go back to work. It's the life of a powerful media executive

00:04:12   in the 21st century. Just say you're just telling your assistant to send all the invoices

00:04:21   while just swimming in your golden pool? If you want to compare me to Don Draper, like

00:04:25   that's totally fine. Because you remember he used to swim and stuff like that. So like

00:04:28   if you want to, like you don't have to. That was not our intention. You're proposing this

00:04:33   idea. I'm just saying, I'm just saying like if people want to call me to Don Draper of

00:04:37   thing and they can do that but like they don't feel like they have to but you

00:04:42   know you can is all I'm saying do you smoke and drink a lot I mean if that's

00:04:47   what I need to do you know there are people who see you talking to your watch

00:04:51   not realizing that it's an Apple watch or the series on the Apple watch like

00:04:55   what is that guy doing oh I've given up the fact that everybody at the gym

00:04:59   thinks that I'm a madman okay you gotta quit vlogging in there people don't like

00:05:03   They really don't. They really don't.

00:05:06   Alright, follow up.

00:05:08   We have a t-shirt for sale. We have one week left. It is the Tiny Head tee. It's amazing.

00:05:14   Thank you so much to everybody who has purchased a t-shirt so far. We have three amazing colors

00:05:19   available from Cotton Bureau. Shipping worldwide and Cotton Bureau have flat rate international

00:05:24   shipping now. I think it's like $8 maximum to go international, which is fantastic. This

00:05:29   is the only time this t-shirt is going to be available. So if you do want to claim a

00:05:33   high five in person from Stephen Hackett then you must be wearing this t-shirt whenever you see him.

00:05:38   I will also, just to sweeten the pot, I will also add a high five into the mix so if you see me I

00:05:44   will also high five you. You have one week left to buy one of these t-shirts. Stop, stop, stop,

00:05:48   stop, stop. We are often together at WWDC. We need some sort of protocol. We're walking down the

00:05:54   street, someone approaches us wearing the shirt. Do we, do I take one side, you take the other?

00:05:59   it's like a double high five. What do I do? You could just like, I don't know, like run

00:06:04   up in the middle and just give them a hug, you know? So like they get two high fives

00:06:08   and then as their arms are up, you can get your arms around people. Don't do that. I

00:06:11   don't think people would like that. That's a terrible idea. But I can wait in the background

00:06:16   just bracing for the hug. Or you can just be there just like smiling and nodding, you

00:06:21   know, like in approval. You're like, yeah, you did it. Like those guys in the background

00:06:27   of rap videos, they just stand there in the background and nod?

00:06:31   Sure, yeah you're like the producer of that high five or something. So if you want all

00:06:37   of that to happen to you, it doesn't have to happen to you, if you don't want that to

00:06:42   happen you can still buy a t-shirt, just don't raise your arms if you see us.

00:06:47   Just don't wear it in San Jose. Yeah, all that. But it's a great t-shirt,

00:06:51   it's a wonderful design, it's only available for six more days as we record this, so if

00:06:55   If you're hearing this and the next episode isn't out, then you should buy one, because

00:06:59   otherwise it's your last chance.

00:07:02   Go ahead and pick one up.

00:07:03   It's a great t-shirt.

00:07:04   I can't wait to get mine.

00:07:05   Last week we spoke about the Stocks app that comes with iOS so you can see how bad the

00:07:10   economy is doing at any given time on your mobile device.

00:07:13   And Myke, you had suggested that maybe this redesigned version that showed up in a government

00:07:20   article would support cryptocurrencies and turns out that it already does. I had no idea

00:07:27   of this. You hadn't, it's shocking to me that it's in there honestly.

00:07:30   Thanks to Philip for sending that in. Basically I pontificated that it might be this because

00:07:37   it was literally the only reason I could think of as to why you might want to redesign the

00:07:42   stocks app. Now I can't think of what that possible reason would be. I don't know why

00:07:49   you would need to redesign the Stocks app specifically, if it's on its own. If you're

00:07:55   doing an entirely new design thing, that's a really good way of putting the phrase "redesign",

00:08:05   then I would understand it, but if it's purely just the Stocks app, I can't work out why

00:08:09   you would do it. I guess we can all look forward to June!

00:08:13   Something else talking about Apple software and features that haven't been released yet

00:08:18   but may be out there somewhere, AirPlay 2 has been banished from the most recent iOS

00:08:24   and tvOS beta.

00:08:25   So it was there for a while, and now it's gone again.

00:08:29   Poor AirPlay 2.

00:08:30   Oh man, do you think it's going to make 11.3?

00:08:34   I don't know.

00:08:36   I don't think so.

00:08:38   It's not a good sign.

00:08:41   I mean, if you compare that to messages in the cloud, which is still in the beta, even

00:08:46   Even though Apple is still saying we are evaluating the functionality, whatever.

00:08:50   But this one is gone.

00:08:52   So it's not a good sign.

00:08:55   I actually was kind of liking the ability to stream to multiple devices and control

00:09:01   from Control Center.

00:09:03   So I wonder, I mean, do we expect 11.4 even before WWDC?

00:09:10   Because if that's not the case, I wonder if AirPlay 2 will be an iOS 12 feature at this

00:09:17   point?

00:09:18   Oh, it's gotta ship.

00:09:19   It's gotta ship in 11.

00:09:20   Because of the hump art, like, they have to ship it, surely.

00:09:24   They said later this year, so later this year could be iOS 12.

00:09:29   That would be so bad.

00:09:30   Can you tell me, is the latency better with AirPlay 2?

00:09:34   Oh yes, much, much better.

00:09:37   Like for AirPlay 1 you get like 3 to 4 second delay and the way the AirPlay 2 works, the

00:09:44   buffering has been enhanced so it keeps in basically in the audio buffer it keeps more

00:09:50   seconds.

00:09:51   So like it starts right away but then it starts kind of caching the audio so you can also

00:09:56   skip around without delays and you can do like you can cue songs, you can walk around

00:10:02   the house and it will not be a problem because it has already buffered the, you know, like

00:10:08   a song. So for example with Airplay 1, if you start playing a song and then you walk

00:10:12   outside there's a good chance that the song will stop playing.

00:10:15   Right, but something like Overcast, there's no benefit until Marco puts Airplay 2 support

00:10:22   in, right? Is that true?

00:10:23   Yes. Oh yeah, oh yeah, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work because you need to change,

00:10:27   you need to adopt an entirely new framework.

00:10:31   time I just think that something's broken. Every single time I send a podcast to the

00:10:36   airport, I just assume that something's broken because it just takes such a long time. Never

00:10:42   mind, maybe one day. Something I saw just before we went on to record today, I thought

00:10:47   it was kind of cool. Nest have added Google Assistant to their Nest Cam IQ indoor camera.

00:10:53   So if you own one of their indoor Nest Cams, the IQs, you can get via a software update

00:11:00   Google Assistant features and Nest are saying that it is the full functionality of a Google

00:11:06   Home product, so you can give commands to it and stuff like that.

00:11:11   I don't think it would be a good idea to necessarily try and play music from the camera, I mean

00:11:15   like it has a speaker in it but I feel like that might not be a great experience for you,

00:11:20   but you could, you know, you could set and unset things, turn on lights, turn off lights.

00:11:24   I like the idea of just, as I'm saying this phrase, I can understand people like, this

00:11:31   sounds like nails on a chalkboard, I like the idea of having microphones in more products.

00:11:39   Because if you are in on one of these systems, whether it's like the Echo or the Google Home,

00:11:46   you want to be able to just give the commands wherever you are, right?

00:11:49   I feel like everyone that I know that has gotten deep into this thing ends up with more

00:11:54   than one Echo, for example, right? Because you kind of just want these devices to be

00:11:59   wherever you are in the home. So yeah, I think that way, I think it's cool to have more of

00:12:06   these types of functions, like in more and more devices. I think that's good. So yeah,

00:12:10   Steven, do you have one of these? I don't. I have a couple of the, the original Nest

00:12:16   cams, you know, that were basically just a drop cam that they rebranded. I'm interested

00:12:22   checking one out though because it does a lot of stuff that's smarter than the

00:12:25   original. But what excites me about this story is, you know, there was a

00:12:31   story last week, a couple weeks ago, that Nest is being folded back into Google

00:12:35   after being sort of spun out for a while. Still with an alphabet but not within

00:12:39   Google. And I think this is like the first sign that hopefully we are now in

00:12:45   a place where Nest hardware and software is going to get regular updates. It's like,

00:12:48   I like my stuff, but for instance I have the NES security system and

00:12:53   It is like completely unaware of my cameras unless the alarm goes off

00:12:59   So if the alarm gets tripped then it turns all the cameras on but if I disarm

00:13:03   the security device

00:13:06   Then the cameras don't turn off like there's no like there's so many obvious things they could do with their ecosystem

00:13:13   system. And I'm hoping, now that Google's back in charge of it, that we see more of

00:13:18   this stuff, that these devices get smarter and more capable. So this is cool, and it's

00:13:23   clever if you have one of these cameras, but I'm really looking forward to seeing what's

00:13:26   next out of this company.

00:13:28   For the last few days, Federico's been teasing me and Steven that he has some surprise follow-up.

00:13:37   this works out to be typically bad for us, like something's gonna happen and like,

00:13:46   there's usually some kind of surprise that has like a ramification, like for example,

00:13:51   oh by the way I'm using a beta version of Mac OS, or you know, like just these things,

00:13:57   right, you just throw these things at us and it has some kind of ramification. I'm very

00:14:03   keen to know what this is but I want to take a break first to build suspense.

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00:15:47   All right, Tichi, lay it on us.

00:15:49   What have you done?

00:15:50   - All right, so you know how I have a HomePod

00:15:55   in the kitchen, right?

00:15:57   In the kitchen/living room space.

00:16:00   And you know that for many reasons I cannot record podcasts

00:16:05   in the kitchen/living room,

00:16:08   because of the dogs and because there's people, right?

00:16:11   So of course I record podcasts like right now

00:16:15   in my bedroom, correct? So I wanted to do this. Hey Siri, make the desk light red. So

00:16:25   I have a second HomePod. Oh boy. Oh god. As soon as you said, as soon as you said, "I

00:16:34   have a HomePod in the kitchen." I knew where this was going. But like, okay, come on, carry

00:16:41   on. You are probably actually, I'm not done, you're probably the only person in the world

00:16:46   that's done this, right? I'm probably the only person in Italy that has two home pods.

00:16:52   Probably in Europe. Like, it's not even available in your country. Poor John. That's who I feel

00:16:59   sorry for on all of this. That's the thing, it's not coming from John. Okay. So, so I

00:17:10   I was liking the HomePod so much. I like actually using it a lot, a lot more than I expected.

00:17:20   And I realized, you know, I do a lot of things around the house. I like listening to music

00:17:29   when I do those things. And once I realized that the HomePod sounds great at like 50 to

00:17:36   70%. I was looking at the echo on my next stand and I was like, "You know, buddy, maybe

00:17:44   it's time for you to go." And what also prompted me to sort of research this was the idea of

00:17:53   this product is getting better, in theory, in the future sometimes, with, you know, the

00:18:00   stereo pair and that kind of stuff. And also I was surprised by the fact that Syria didn't

00:18:07   mind Syria so much. And so I started looking on eBay. You know, the Italian version.

00:18:15   This is like how you got your echo.

00:18:17   Kinda. But it got worse from a certain point of view. So I started doing some research

00:18:26   trenibals, like, I wonder if there's any Italian that has got a home pod and wants to sell

00:18:32   the home pod, but I want a white one, because it goes well with my white nightstand. And

00:18:38   so I started looking and I found this person with a white home pod, in theory imported

00:18:43   from the United States. There were other Italians that were selling black home pods, or there

00:18:50   were some home pods from the United Kingdom, others from Germany, which I didn't really

00:18:54   trust, I wanted somebody in Italy so that I wouldn't incur again in custom, you know,

00:19:00   in taxis and that kind of stuff. So I found this person and he's from northern Italy.

00:19:07   And I'm, so I send him a message, I was like, is this like, is this legit? Which I realize

00:19:12   it's, if you're talking to like, if you're talking to a scammer.

00:19:16   Because the only answer is yes, isn't it?

00:19:18   Of course it's legit.

00:19:19   Oh, you got me.

00:19:20   "Oh, you got me!" You know the smuggler's code. If you're asked, then you must be

00:19:32   asked. So I'm talking to this person and I'm like,

00:19:38   so I have, where does this home park? So I tried to be clever. I was like, is the box

00:19:44   damaged because of the transportation from the United States to Italy.

00:19:51   It's like, "No, no, the box is all fine, it's all sealed, it's new, it's new coming from

00:19:57   the United States, and it can be with you in two days if you use DHL Express."

00:20:02   It's like, "Okay."

00:20:04   So I'm looking at this auction on eBay, and there's a picture of the serial code for a

00:20:10   serial number of the device.

00:20:13   But I need to zoom into the serial code and I cannot understand some of the letters and

00:20:18   the numbers.

00:20:19   So I'm looking at Apple's website and I'm trying to guess what the serial number is

00:20:22   to see if it's a real product or not.

00:20:24   But I cannot get it.

00:20:25   It feels like a flawed thing to do because you end up just plugging in a random serial

00:20:29   number.

00:20:33   But it's not working.

00:20:34   So what I do is, because I've heard on the news, you know, people, especially lately

00:20:40   in Italy, I don't know what's going on, but a lot of people are like being scammed on

00:20:44   eBay and these similar websites to buy and sell stuff from other people, individuals.

00:20:51   So I'm doing some research on the guy and like I spent an entire afternoon looking at

00:20:56   this person's life. I discovered that he's also selling his parents' apartment.

00:21:02   Did you buy that too?

00:21:05   No, I found where it lives, I found where it works, which probably the guy wants to

00:21:11   have some privacy, you know, so he should look into that.

00:21:16   But he seems like a friendly note later on, maybe put it in his eBay feedback.

00:21:22   He seemed like a real person with a real job at a tech related kind of position and also

00:21:30   an Apple fan.

00:21:31   It was on Twitter, like asking developers to update their apps for iPhone X support

00:21:36   and that type of stuff.

00:21:37   You know, he's fighting the good fight, you know?

00:21:39   Yeah, you're my kind of guy.

00:21:40   You're my kind of guy.

00:21:41   I trust you.

00:21:42   I will tell you.

00:21:44   So I get the HomePod and it arrived two days ago.

00:21:51   It was really, really hard for me to keep it a secret from you two and Jon.

00:21:56   I really wanted to take a picture and send it on iMessage.

00:22:01   But as soon as it arrived, so of course I made all my preparations, I had like a ceremony

00:22:06   for the Echo which is now gone.

00:22:09   I bought from Amazon a second US adapter and I take the HomePod out of the box and I plug

00:22:17   it in and it doesn't work.

00:22:19   So I was like oh my god what have I done here I just wasted money.

00:22:23   Was it one of those things where it was actually just a big slab of meat?

00:22:27   - I was picking up the home pod,

00:22:32   I was like rotating the home pod in my hands,

00:22:34   and I like, what did I just buy?

00:22:36   So like, just a stereo with bricks inside,

00:22:41   but after wasting like a solid 20 minutes,

00:22:45   panicking that I just sent some guy on eBay

00:22:49   money for a home pod that was broken,

00:22:51   I realized that for some reason,

00:22:54   After, I needed to touch the top surface

00:22:58   to activate the HomePod.

00:23:00   It was not responding to Siri commands.

00:23:05   It was not bringing up the prompt request

00:23:07   to do the setup on iOS.

00:23:10   I just needed to touch the surface once,

00:23:13   and then everything was fixed.

00:23:15   So anyway, it's perfectly fine.

00:23:18   It works.

00:23:19   And yesterday, in fact, I wanted to send you a screenshot

00:23:23   from the 11.3 beta 2 that had the option to create a stereo pair, which is now gone from

00:23:31   the beta 3, but I couldn't because I needed to keep my surprise.

00:23:35   How would you even have that option?

00:23:37   Exactly.

00:23:38   I have a simple question for you, and I'm not trying to judge you or anything about

00:23:45   your purchase.

00:23:46   Yes.

00:23:47   But like, why though?

00:23:51   I don't feel like I fully understand why you feel right now that a second home part is

00:23:59   what you need, like when you always have an iOS device from you.

00:24:02   And I'm not saying that you've made a bad decision.

00:24:06   I have one of these things in my house, right?

00:24:08   And I don't feel like I need another one of them.

00:24:12   So there's a couple of reasons for that.

00:24:15   The first one is listening to podcasts.

00:24:19   I do stuff around the house, especially in the morning, whether I'm like doing chores

00:24:24   around the house or playing with the dogs.

00:24:27   And are you doing multi-room there then? Is that what you like?

00:24:30   It doesn't work yet, but during the day I tend to, let's say, hang out between the hallway

00:24:37   and my bedroom and it's easier for me to, and it's better for me to listen to a podcast

00:24:42   on the HomePod on my nightstand than from the one in the kitchen. So like I don't have

00:24:48   to put the one in the kitchen a hundred percent so I can hear the voices of people. I can

00:24:53   just listen to the one in the bedroom. And also at night, like after work, before we

00:24:59   go to sleep, Sylvia and I, we like to just lie in bed and listen to music. We have a

00:25:05   playlist that we listen to, like a shared family playlist. And while we used to listen

00:25:11   on my iPhone or on the iPad, even at 20% at night when everything's quiet and external

00:25:19   noise and sounds are not a concern, it sounds really, really good on the HomePod. And I

00:25:25   wanted to have that kind of experience on my nightstand, essentially. I wanted to have

00:25:30   20% volume music coming out of the HomePod to relax at night. And I realized that it

00:25:37   totally does not justify this kind of purchase, but with those couple of reasons for the immediate,

00:25:45   if you will, curiosity of and need maybe to have a second HomePod with the prospect of

00:25:52   this thing is going to have stereo pair, it's going to do multi-room audio in the future,

00:25:56   I was like, you know, I don't want to wait for Apple to make up their mind and get a

00:26:00   second HomePod, and get a second HomePod when it launches in Italy, I want to get one right

00:26:05   now. And also there was the idea of maybe, you know, not a lot of people have a second

00:26:11   HomePod and maybe when the features for multi-room and serial pair, they become available, I

00:26:17   can be one of the few people that can write about it.

00:26:20   So you must have been really sad then when it got removed from 11.3.

00:26:25   Well, yes, yes. But it was not working anyway. You only had the option to create the serial

00:26:33   pair.

00:26:34   It getting removed completely means it's less likely that it will be there at all, right?

00:26:39   Yeah, it's not a good sign. And also I should mention that, again, the uncertainty of not knowing

00:26:46   when Italy will get the HomePod, and it could be tomorrow, it could be in two months, which

00:26:51   I mean, it's possible, but we are planning on moving soon enough in the near future, and I want

00:27:02   to move to a bigger place. So having two HomePods, ideally even if I have like a personal office

00:27:09   space, just like a room for me, that'll be all set because I will already have a second HomePod just

00:27:16   for me. You mentioned something about the HomePod that I meant to talk about last week, but it's

00:27:22   bothered me and my family more. If the HomePod is just sitting there and you just touch the top of

00:27:30   it, it will start playing the music that it was playing last, even if it was like 24 hours

00:27:36   ago. And it, at least what our HomePod is right now in the kitchen, it's actually kind

00:27:42   of easy to touch the top of it because it's like there's other stuff on the counter around

00:27:45   it and like all you gotta do is brush the thing and it starts playing. I would like

00:27:50   to see that be an option or that I could just turn that off because it's, it has surprised

00:27:55   several of us several times over the last week or so that you just touch the thing and

00:28:00   "Oh yeah, I was listening to that yesterday," and all of a sudden it's blaring again.

00:28:04   Yeah, one of my dogs, she put her nose on the home pod and really loud music started

00:28:12   playing and she ran away scared.

00:28:14   She'll have a lesson.

00:28:16   Don't touch it.

00:28:18   It's a good lesson.

00:28:20   Wouldn't it be great if everything she touched could just have music come out of it?

00:28:26   It's a personal dog DJ.

00:28:29   That's what it is, yeah.

00:28:31   So anyway, two HomePods.

00:28:34   As you can imagine, the multi-room stuff totally does not work.

00:28:39   The Control Center UI is still super weird, and the more you add to that list of output

00:28:46   devices the longer it becomes and the more awkward it seems.

00:28:51   I think it's okay, but I imagine adding another one would make it not so okay.

00:28:57   Yeah, yeah.

00:28:58   And the white HomePod is totally a dust magnet.

00:29:04   So you need to keep the thing clean every day because you can tell the differences between

00:29:12   the space grey one and the white one.

00:29:14   Especially if you have dogs, you know, they're messy.

00:29:15   So I need to clean my HomePod on a daily basis because it's white.

00:29:21   But it looks fantastic.

00:29:23   I think it looks really nice.

00:29:24   It can take great pleasure and like how people clean their soccer trophies or whatever, you

00:29:30   know?

00:29:31   That's you but with the HomePod.

00:29:33   Yeah.

00:29:34   So, I wanted to thank the guy from eBay.

00:29:37   I sent a really positive feedback comment.

00:29:43   It was really kind.

00:29:44   I could tell that it was an Apple person.

00:29:47   He was like, "Enjoy your HomePod.

00:29:49   I really like mine."

00:29:50   I was like, "Yeah."

00:29:51   Did you give him some notes about his operational security?

00:29:54   No, no, I did not.

00:29:57   I think the problem is that in his kindness

00:30:00   he sent me his phone number and then from there it just

00:30:04   snowballed because I was able to find everything about him.

00:30:07   I am changing my phone number and I will not give you the new one.

00:30:12   So yeah, that was my surprise.

00:30:16   Did I... is this concerning? Like you said that my surprises always cause some kind of damage?

00:30:22   Or preoccupation for you?

00:30:25   This doesn't necessarily affect me, personally, but I am a little concerned for you, I think.

00:30:31   Why though? Why?

00:30:33   Because two HomePods is a lot of HomePods. That's like, two more HomePods than most people need.

00:30:39   And also, I... there was a segment on, I think it was last week's ATP, that I quite liked about...

00:30:45   about not buying hardware for the promise of future software or something like that,

00:30:54   right? And you just mentioned the one thing, it's like, "Oh, well, you know, I bought these

00:30:58   now, and it's gonna get better later." But at the same time, they are continuing to delay

00:31:03   the software features that are the only ones we know about, right? So it's like, "Ah, what

00:31:08   if it just never gets there? What if AirPlay 2 just never, ever happens?" Like, we don't

00:31:13   know. So yeah, it's just but you know, if it's working for you as it is right now, then

00:31:18   great. But like, you know, that's the reason that I wouldn't buy a second one. I don't

00:31:24   think I ever I can't never say never but like, I don't imagine in the near to mid term future

00:31:32   that I would be replacing my Amazon echoes for like the home pod to me is just a smart

00:31:38   audio, like music. It's a smart music device is what I'm trying to say, right? Like, it

00:31:45   could do something that I've really struggled with for using the Echo. Like I wanted to

00:31:52   listen to the band that I love called the Wild Reeds, which Federico introduced me to,

00:31:58   and I can never remember the name of their album. So I asked the HomePod to play me the

00:32:04   most recent album and it did it and this is something that I really struggled with on

00:32:10   the Echo. Any album which is the name of one of the songs, the Echo just can't deal with.

00:32:21   The most recent Kings of Leon album would never play the album. It would only ever play

00:32:27   the song by the name and I would ask it to play the most recent. This was a while ago

00:32:31   and it just wouldn't work. So, you know, it does a good job of like smartly understanding

00:32:36   what I want from a music perspective and it can tell my lights on and off, but it doesn't

00:32:41   have IFTTT support, which is something that I use every single day with my Echo and yeah,

00:32:46   stuff like that. So anywho, but yeah, if it's working for you, man, more power to you.

00:32:50   Yeah. Yeah. I should mention that also with Homebridge, I can have IFTTT support and it's

00:32:57   super nice because I need to listen.

00:32:59   I'm assuming you spoke about all of this on Canvas, right?

00:33:02   There's an episode of Canvas.

00:33:03   No, no.

00:33:04   Yeah, because it's tricky to talk about Linux, that kind of stuff on a podcast.

00:33:10   Because at some point I want you to explain this Homebridge thing to me, but I assume

00:33:15   you're going to write about it.

00:33:16   Yes, yeah, because it's easier to show what you're actually doing.

00:33:19   But basically, I wanted to mention another thing that because this speaker is on my nightstand,

00:33:26   without having to shout, you know, comments to the living room, I can just, for example,

00:33:31   change channels on my TV with Siri or, you know, switch inputs, for example, because

00:33:37   I have a bunch of recipes on IFTTT that hook up to the Logitech Harmony account and basically

00:33:45   with Homebridge I can create buttons and switches for Siri to activate those Logitech Harmony

00:33:53   recipes, which is super, super cool.

00:33:55   I want you to write about this so I can read about it and then we can talk about it, because

00:33:59   I'm kind of fascinated by the screenshots that you keep sharing of this thing.

00:34:03   Yeah, yeah, I will.

00:34:05   You also have some DuckDuckGo-related follow-up from a few weeks ago.

00:34:08   Okay, yeah.

00:34:09   So this is quite simple.

00:34:12   I realize that I'm using...

00:34:15   I was missing the, more than I expected, the ability to look for real-time content, let's

00:34:24   say news and local search results on Google.

00:34:29   And DuckDuckGo totally fails at that.

00:34:32   I tried to use it, as I mentioned,

00:34:35   for everything on all of my devices, even my MacBook.

00:34:39   But I was finding myself constantly typing the Google

00:34:47   shortcut to redirect DuckDuckGo search to Google,

00:34:51   because I couldn't find the news that I wanted to find,

00:34:55   like results for the last 24 hours, for example,

00:34:58   or just any kind of search result in Italian.

00:35:02   Like, DuckDuckGo seems to do pretty well in the United

00:35:07   States.

00:35:07   And if I were an American person,

00:35:10   I would probably use DuckDuckGo, because the English search

00:35:15   results seem pretty comparable to Google, honestly.

00:35:19   But as much as I like to pretend that I'm an American living

00:35:23   in Italy, I actually do use Google Search a lot in Italian.

00:35:29   And also, I use Google to find news in both languages.

00:35:33   But it's another feature that DuckDuckGo does not do well at.

00:35:39   So I needed to switch back to Google,

00:35:40   because it didn't make sense to just keep

00:35:43   entering the shortcut to switch back to Google Search.

00:35:47   I'm just going to switch back to Google all the time. And it's something that I was not

00:35:52   expecting because I don't think this is totally, totally like a weird thing to say, but I don't

00:35:59   think of myself as someone who uses a computer in Italian. All of my devices are set to US

00:36:06   English. I, of course I write in English. I talk in English. I did not expect to look

00:36:12   for Italian stuff. So it's probably something that I block out in my brain and that I do

00:36:17   just instinctively. But it turns out that like I was typing stuff in DuckDuckGo in Italian

00:36:22   and it was not working. I was like, huh. So I guess I do use I do type things in Italian

00:36:28   sometimes. And yeah, that's the reason why I need to use Google again, because Google

00:36:33   is actually pretty awesome at understanding whether you want English content or Italian

00:36:38   content and also news, like filtering by the last x hours or week or days. So yeah, that's

00:36:47   the reason why I need to use Google again. I don't like it, but I have to, because otherwise

00:36:51   it's just a waste of time if I keep entering the Google bang, whatever it's called, in

00:36:56   DuckDuckGo.

00:36:57   Yeah, because then all you're doing is just Google searching. You're back to square one

00:37:00   again. It's taking you longer to do it, perform any search.

00:37:03   Yeah, exactly. So I still don't like it, it's got problems, but yeah, it's what it is.

00:37:11   So as Steven points out on my message, I need to stand, because I need to close my rings.

00:37:17   So if you want, Myke, you can thank our friends at Pingdom, and we'll move on to the next

00:37:22   topic.

00:37:23   Wow, look at this.

00:37:24   That's professional.

00:37:25   Today's show is brought to you by Pingdom. You're more familiar with Pingdom than you

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00:38:52   their support of this show and relay FM.

00:38:55   So I stood, I gained my hour, and I'm back.

00:38:59   Well, I'm very happy to hear that.

00:39:01   Federico, this is actually a very Federico heavy episode today.

00:39:07   Because we are bringing back the much applauded segment, "Teachy Teachers", because today,

00:39:15   you're going to teach us all about automation in Things 3.4, which came out today as we

00:39:21   record.

00:39:22   Alright.

00:39:23   Yes.

00:39:24   So what is this?

00:39:25   embraced a web API? Is that what I'm getting?

00:39:27   No, it's not what it is. I'm sorry. That's not. This is a plain old-fashioned URL scheme

00:39:35   for communicating with other apps and workflows and launchers and stuff like that. It's no

00:39:41   web API. And it doesn't include improvements to mail to things either. It's just a way

00:39:48   to automate locally on your device between apps. But I think it's been really done well,

00:39:58   primarily because of the documentation that is on the web. And I think even if you're

00:40:03   not really proficient in URL schemes and stuff like that, you can read through the docs.

00:40:10   And the documentation makes sense. It's written really well. And there's an idea that I really

00:40:17   like, which is called the link builder. It's this interface on the web, on the

00:40:23   CodeShortCode website, that allows you to enter text in different fields of the

00:40:31   supported commands for things, and in real time as you type you will see how

00:40:36   the URL scheme changes. So it's a way to sort of combine like a basic GUI

00:40:43   with URL schemes and see how what you enter gets encoded, for example, or the way that you're supposed to format data

00:40:54   if you want to send a task to things or if you want to create a project in things.

00:40:59   So that's really helpful for users who never played with this stuff before.

00:41:07   So my first recommendation would be go check out the documentation and play around with the link builder and see what it looks like

00:41:14   That said, of course, I've been using things. I think we talked about this in December

00:41:21   Myke was really surprised by my decision a bunch of other people were

00:41:25   I'm still using things. It feels great and with the automation

00:41:31   it's now possible to

00:41:34   Do things that were not supported at all before things used to offer

00:41:40   URL scheme for automation, but it was really basic now. It's

00:41:44   Maybe not as powerful as the one from OmniFocus

00:41:49   It doesn't have a few options that OmniFocus has namely attachments

00:41:54   You can still not include file attachments in things

00:41:58   but I think it's been presented more clearly and

00:42:04   And there's a few unique design choices in things that are also supported with automation

00:42:12   that make me prefer this to OmniFocus automation.

00:42:16   I mean, besides the whole, you know, things is a completely different app from OmniFocus.

00:42:22   So in my examples that I covered today, there's a few things that I want to call out.

00:42:27   You can now create tasks in the app, of course.

00:42:30   You can also launch any view in things from something like Launch Center Pro or Launcher

00:42:36   or Workflow, whatever.

00:42:39   You can open the today list, the upcoming list, or you can open a project, you can launch

00:42:45   a tag view, which is not as easy to get to if you're using the Things app.

00:42:50   You want to see what are my tasks that have been tagged with writing, for example.

00:42:57   It's not so easy in the app because you need to search for the tag and then open the tag

00:43:01   view.

00:43:02   If you just create a launcher, you can tap a button in your Today widget and the link

00:43:08   will take you there in things in just a second.

00:43:12   Also, what I use all the time now is the ability to open a view and also automatically filter

00:43:20   the view by one of the tags that I have.

00:43:24   So for example, if I want to see today the things I'm supposed to edit, because I'm editing

00:43:30   a bunch of articles from John and Ryan, for example, I can create a launcher that is called

00:43:37   Today Editing, and it takes me to the Today screen and automatically filters the screen

00:43:42   to show me editing tasks.

00:43:44   So that's really good.

00:43:45   And then you're using something like Launcher 5?

00:43:49   I use, I think it's called Launcher Pro.

00:43:51   Launcher Pro?

00:43:52   Launcher Pro. Yeah, that's what I use. And I use it because it lets me resize. This is

00:44:01   totally like a minor reason to use it, but it lets me resize the icons in the widget

00:44:06   and still keep a text label underneath them, even if it gets truncated within ellipses.

00:44:12   But yeah, that's why I use it. Also, as I mentioned, you can create tasks. And in my

00:44:19   In my story, there's two examples for workflow.

00:44:23   One of them is an extension that you can run from Safari

00:44:27   to turn a web page into a task in Things.

00:44:30   And this is a good example, I think,

00:44:33   because it shows you how you can attach different pieces

00:44:37   of metadata to a new item in Things,

00:44:41   besides the title and a date,

00:44:43   which you can type in natural language in workflow,

00:44:46   and then reformatting the proper,

00:44:49   what's that, ISO something, the proper format for things.

00:44:55   You can do it from workflow.

00:44:58   But you can also-- - See, that's interesting

00:44:59   to me because that was one of the things

00:45:01   that frustrated me about things,

00:45:02   is that there wasn't natural language entry

00:45:05   for dates and times,

00:45:07   but now you can kind of make it yourself.

00:45:10   - You can either make it yourself,

00:45:12   or I think they have extended the support

00:45:16   for natural language in things itself.

00:45:18   So in theory, you should also be able to type something

00:45:21   like today at 3 p.m. and it'll work from the URL scheme.

00:45:26   Like if you put together an action,

00:45:29   without having in drafts, for example,

00:45:31   without having to do any additional coding.

00:45:35   - Yeah, I mean just in the app itself, right?

00:45:37   Like in things itself, you can't like start a new to-do

00:45:40   and be like, you know, call Federico at 3 p.m.

00:45:43   It's not gonna be like that.

00:45:44   - There's a way, but you need to press a bunch of buttons,

00:45:47   which really defeats the purpose

00:45:49   because you wanna be able to just type.

00:45:51   - Yeah, 'cause natural language is, it's about speed.

00:45:55   Like if I'm gonna press a bunch of buttons

00:45:57   then I'll just set the time, right?

00:45:59   Like I'll just do it.

00:46:00   - Yeah, so you can make your own natural language

00:46:04   from workflow.

00:46:05   And also you can say, put this in this project

00:46:08   and attach this tag.

00:46:10   And what I like, which is one of the features that Things offers,

00:46:15   but to my knowledge, no other task manager

00:46:18   that I've tried as this feature, you

00:46:21   can specify the new tasks to be added

00:46:24   under a specific heading of a project.

00:46:27   So if you think of projects in things like Documents

00:46:31   with sections, which is a feature that I use all

00:46:34   the time-- so for example, my Mac Stories project

00:46:37   as different sections for research, writing, and publishing.

00:46:41   - Yeah, see that's so nice.

00:46:43   That's really nice.

00:46:44   - It's really nice because visually--

00:46:45   - Because otherwise they become five different projects

00:46:49   rather than one project, right?

00:46:51   - Yeah. - Yeah.

00:46:52   - Yeah, and that, even visually when you open the app,

00:46:56   you can break up the project by type.

00:47:00   So you can say, I wanna take a look

00:47:02   at what I'm supposed to write.

00:47:03   So anyway, you can pass that information

00:47:06   from the URL scheme. You can say, when you create this task, automatically put it under

00:47:12   the writing section.

00:47:13   Oh god, that sounds so good. Because I have Show Prep. That's one of my most used projects

00:47:21   in Todoist. But it's all just a big jumble of every show, right? Which is many for me.

00:47:28   And I would love to be able to have it all connected, have its own little heading. Because

00:47:33   sometimes it's like it's not just prepare for connected there might be

00:47:36   like watch this video or read this article and they get saved as like

00:47:41   additional things and then I have to write like in the heading like in the

00:47:47   actual task itself which show it's like it's just a mess it can get a bit messy

00:47:50   that sounds very nice as well as this feature that I just found out about

00:47:54   today that you can put a checklist in the notes of a task which is like oh my

00:47:59   Oh my god, like...

00:48:02   That's my second workflow, is a way to automate the process of creating a task that contains

00:48:08   a checklist. So this is one of the other features of things, that a task can have a title and

00:48:15   a date, it can have a note, which can be text or links, no attachments, but it can also

00:48:21   have separate from the note, but not showed by default, you need to open it, you need

00:48:27   to expand the task if you want to see it,

00:48:30   you can have a checklist of multiple items.

00:48:32   So this can be useful in a bunch of ways,

00:48:35   whether you need to pack something because you're leaving

00:48:37   or a grocery list or something else,

00:48:39   Shop Rep, for example, Myke.

00:48:42   You can create checklists.

00:48:43   And this is also available via automation.

00:48:46   You just need to pass a list of sentences, a list of text lines

00:48:51   to the URL scheme, and it'll work.

00:48:54   Finally, I showed the integration with MindNode,

00:48:59   which doesn't really work for me

00:49:00   because you need to create a mind map in MindNode

00:49:05   and make individual nodes like tasks in MindNode,

00:49:09   which I really don't do.

00:49:11   Also, I don't use MindNode

00:49:13   because it's not as customizable as I like it to be.

00:49:15   So hopefully, iThoughts, which is the MindMap app

00:49:19   that I prefer, will consider this integration going forward.

00:49:22   But the bigger topic is that the Culture Code,

00:49:26   they created this system for iOS developers

00:49:30   to send data to things in bulk, like dozens of tasks,

00:49:36   or entire projects, using this JSON format.

00:49:42   And they made it easier for them,

00:49:45   not just by supporting JSON, but through this Swift open source

00:49:50   library. It's like a Swift file that you can download and put in your app, and it simplifies

00:49:57   the process of sending data to things. This is what MindNode uses, and this is what drafts5,

00:50:04   which is the beta version that I sort of teased in the article, will use. It's a system to sort of

00:50:12   remove the complexity of, you know, whether it's the developer or the user, encoding things manually

00:50:20   with the URL scheme, you can abstract all of the complexity and use this native integration

00:50:27   that allows you to do things like turn an entire mind map into a project that contains headings

00:50:34   that contain tasks. Or in drafts 5, you can write a couple of lines of JavaScript

00:50:42   with the custom things module to do the same.

00:50:47   And so I teased in the article this custom interface

00:50:52   that I'm building in drafts.

00:50:54   It's like a custom prompt UI that's

00:50:57   got check boxes and a date picker and a toggle on and off

00:51:01   to send lines of text to things.

00:51:05   And I don't know if I'm going to use this,

00:51:07   but it's just like it's a proof of concept

00:51:09   to show both Drafts 5 and the kind of this deeper integration that Culture Code would

00:51:18   like to have with some third-party apps, which is pretty neat.

00:51:23   As you're talking, I got my Pano book here, which is a notebook that I like, and I'm sitting

00:51:27   down and I'm writing out, like, what do I need if I want to move to things?

00:51:38   I think you should play with it.

00:51:39   Well, okay, so I have, right? I have played with it. And there were things that I was unhappy with,

00:51:45   but they are now solving those problems with this automation stuff. So like, for example,

00:51:51   natural language entry, but I could just build that on my own. Like I was thinking I could set up

00:51:57   a workflow, which I linked to from the home screen, which sits next to things on my home screen,

00:52:02   as my entry workflow. And it's quicker than opening up the app. And it's also focused.

00:52:07   so I'm not going to get distracted with other tasks and stuff like that.

00:52:10   Or you could wait for drafts five, make a simple action.

00:52:19   Could you be even quicker?

00:52:21   I'll tell you even more, you can just type a line of text and press the keyboard shortcut

00:52:26   and run the action and you'll be in things.

00:52:31   I do have, I have also been playing around with drafts over the last day and it's very nice.

00:52:38   It's very nice. When is draft 5 roughly? Is that soon?

00:52:41   We don't know. We don't know. When it's ready. When it's ready is the official communication from Greg.

00:52:47   Yeah, it's pretty awesome. I don't know JavaScript well enough, but it's a simple language to understand.

00:52:55   it's readable, and the implementation of JavaScript in Drafts 5 is really intuitive and much more

00:53:01   accessible. I think that something like Omni automation, for example, which sounds and seems

00:53:07   totally powerful and crazy, you know, insanely customizable, but I think the Omni automation

00:53:13   stuff, it veers towards the Objective-C type of programming style that I don't think is as

00:53:22   intuitive as what Greg is doing with pure and simple JavaScript in drafts.

00:53:27   Which is, you know, for someone like me I'm a newcomer to this stuff. I think

00:53:31   it's more intuitive that what Omni is doing. I mean if you know, if you're a

00:53:35   programmer and you know JavaScript well enough, the Omni automation set of, you

00:53:40   know, APIs seems to be much much more versatile and flexible. But for someone

00:53:46   like me, you know, I just want to make an action from drafts to things that

00:53:50   totally works. Tell me, is the ability to add repeating tasks exposed in this URL scheme?

00:54:01   I don't think so. Of course it's not, because they don't care about it.

00:54:05   Steven, tell Steven, have you figured out why you don't like repeating tasks?

00:54:14   - Yes, I have.

00:54:15   - Okay.

00:54:16   - So in most other apps, OmniFocus, Todoist,

00:54:20   I spent like a year in To Do with the digit,

00:54:23   the one you wrote the book about.

00:54:24   Most of those apps, you set a due date

00:54:30   and the repeating, if you wanna repeat it,

00:54:33   it's just like another step in the workflow.

00:54:35   So I want it due on Tuesday,

00:54:37   but actually if I check this little box,

00:54:38   it is due every Tuesday.

00:54:40   repeating tasks are like a super set on regular tasks.

00:54:45   In Things 3, and I have it open,

00:54:47   I actually, while you were talking, imported,

00:54:49   they have an import from Todoist,

00:54:51   so I imported all 42 Todoist projects I have into--

00:54:54   - Oh my god, they have an import from Todoist?

00:54:56   - Well, here's the thing,

00:54:57   it breaks all your repeating tasks

00:54:59   because they don't care about repeating tasks.

00:55:01   - Of course.

00:55:02   - Now you see, come on,

00:55:04   you spent so much time creating this thing,

00:55:07   just repeating tasks.

00:55:08   here's my fundamental problem with things.

00:55:11   About 70% of the tasks in Todoist are repeating,

00:55:15   because when you own a business

00:55:17   and you put content out every week,

00:55:19   you have a lot of repeating tasks.

00:55:20   And the way things goes about it,

00:55:23   you can convert a regular task to a repeating task,

00:55:28   but the due date you've set has no bearing

00:55:31   on the repeating schedule.

00:55:32   So if I say, for instance,

00:55:35   edit and publish connected.

00:55:38   I have that go off every Wednesday at 2.30 p.m.

00:55:42   In things, I can set that up,

00:55:45   but I have to set the reminders up separately.

00:55:47   And if I set it due on Wednesday,

00:55:49   and then I go to tell it repeating weekly,

00:55:51   it defaults to Sunday.

00:55:53   Why would I want it to do that?

00:55:54   I already told you it's due on Wednesday.

00:55:57   I want it to repeat on Wednesday.

00:55:58   It's just a lot of extra work.

00:56:00   - But like, if you change it to Wednesday,

00:56:02   it will then repeat every Wednesday,

00:56:03   but right, you have to like specifically set it up.

00:56:05   - It doesn't inherit that from the regular task

00:56:07   you started with, where every other app basically does.

00:56:11   So the repeating tasks for me are why I can't use things,

00:56:14   because it's so clunky to do.

00:56:16   The other thing that, it more confuses me about things

00:56:20   than anything else, and I've read the support page,

00:56:22   and I actually have created a test project,

00:56:24   so I try to understand how it works,

00:56:27   but if you set a due date, and that due date

00:56:31   slips into the past, then it just is due today.

00:56:34   There's no way to see how far overdue it is unless you don't set a due date,

00:56:39   but set a deadline. I don't know the difference between those two things.

00:56:42   Their support documentation doesn't explain the difference between those two

00:56:45   things. Why are there two things like,

00:56:47   okay, so, uh, the way I think about it is, um,

00:56:52   like semantically, uh, in my brain it works like this.

00:56:56   The due date is ideally you should be getting this done by Wednesday,

00:57:02   But if you don't, it's fine.

00:57:04   You can do it later.

00:57:05   The deadline is you must get this done by Wednesday.

00:57:10   And in fact, even visually in the UI,

00:57:12   if a due date moves in the past,

00:57:14   it just rolls over to today.

00:57:17   But the deadline, the task says two days left

00:57:21   or one day left.

00:57:23   But then if you don't get it done,

00:57:26   it says one day behind, two days behind,

00:57:30   something like that, and it keeps the red badge.

00:57:32   So it tells you this was supposed to be done two days ago.

00:57:36   - I feel like if you have,

00:57:38   like that's a cool feature to have,

00:57:41   but the way that I would look at this is

00:57:44   due dates and deadlines should be set automatically

00:57:47   unless you change them.

00:57:49   So like if you say something's due Wednesday,

00:57:52   it should default the deadline date for you as Wednesday

00:57:56   unless you change it.

00:57:57   - Or have that be an option to enable the app

00:58:00   to do that. You know, for me, yeah, yeah. And again, like all this stuff is so subjective,

00:58:05   right? It's about how I work versus how you work. But for me, at least that, like, I understand

00:58:11   the words that are coming out of your mouth, but like, I can't, I can't think about work

00:58:15   that way. Like, because, because it sounds like they're treating due dates like stock

00:58:20   dates. And they actually call them in some of their support documentation, they call

00:58:24   them start dates, although that's nowhere in the UI of the app. It's like, what are

00:58:27   doing things, like pull it together.

00:58:30   Yeah, that's not right.

00:58:31   That doesn't seem right.

00:58:32   I know that it's very different, and I

00:58:36   know that it probably sounds like a bunch of VP kind of talk

00:58:40   that does not make sense for an actual product.

00:58:43   But the idea is that-- and I mean, it's subjective,

00:58:50   as you say, but the task manager shouldn't cause you stress.

00:58:55   And the idea of the due date, it just becomes today, instead of being by default colored in red,

00:59:05   or telling you this is overdue.

00:59:08   - Yeah, no, I get that. - I think that is a choice.

00:59:10   But I feel like if you're making an opinion like that, you should have an option.

00:59:14   Otherwise, because if that's your opinion, then there shouldn't be the ability to even have badges,

00:59:20   right, which they do have.

00:59:21   If it's like, "Oh, I don't want to alert you," I get that.

00:59:24   It's a nice way to think about it.

00:59:25   It should be a setting.

00:59:26   It should be a setting.

00:59:27   They haven't gone the whole way with that ideology.

00:59:30   They've only gone part of the way, and by going that part of the way, they alienate

00:59:34   some people.

00:59:35   So I think that it is a nicer idea.

00:59:37   The way that you described this when you initially moved is why I even ever considered it, because

00:59:44   it was nice to think of it as just a more chill environment.

00:59:49   In doing that, they do take away some functionality that would be nice to be able to kind of globally

00:59:57   change, especially when they actually have the underpinnings of the regular system. Like

01:00:01   it's there. They're just calling things different. Like, you know, what they're calling due dates

01:00:07   and deadlines are start dates and due dates. But they're just not calling them that. But

01:00:12   that's how they function in like in every other application and in every other system.

01:00:17   So I feel like you either change the name or change the function or give me some options.

01:00:24   And I feel like, you know, you don't want to add up.

01:00:26   I get the idea of options, but they've literally just created a URL scheme, right?

01:00:31   Culture code are clearly not averse to going into the nitty gritty, right?

01:00:36   So maybe some additional options would be a nice thing to have when you've gone and

01:00:42   done something that is very impressive, but is the most nitty of gritty that you can get.

01:00:47   to create a custom URL scheme, right? So, you know.

01:00:51   I think an idea that could be maybe explored, maybe not by culture code, but by developers

01:00:57   in general is, how, like, what kind of, I'm thinking of something like the carrot personality

01:01:07   slider but applied to, like, stress. Like, how much do you want to feel, I don't want

01:01:16   say guilty, but like when you open your task manager, what kind of level of reminding you

01:01:24   to do things do you want to see? Do you want the calm environment or do you want something

01:01:28   in between or do you want to have like the emergency mode where if you don't get things

01:01:32   done everything explodes? And that could be like a fun way to tackle this problem of depending

01:01:38   on the level of, you know, the mental state or the anxiety level or whatever it is of

01:01:43   the person, the app should adapt and should be controllable by the user to

01:01:49   say exactly how you can say in Carrot, for example, I want the AI to be

01:01:54   "cinnarchy" or I want the UI to be somewhere in between or "neutral". It could be fun

01:01:59   to have that kind of mindset but applied to productivity apps because...

01:02:03   I want it on my back or I want to just like come to it when I'm good.

01:02:08   Yeah, because there's maybe times of the year when you're like, come on, just

01:02:12   just don't bother me. It's a difficult time right now. Or I need to be in hyper-focus

01:02:19   mode. You need to tell me every single detail of every single due date.

01:02:25   This is a job for machine learning, right? Like, this is what it should be doing. Understanding

01:02:30   me and tailoring the experience to me. That's what I want. I feel like different people

01:02:39   have different feelings about what they want their machine learning to do, but I want my

01:02:43   machine learning to learn about me and then tailor my experience. So like in that idea,

01:02:47   right, like that maybe my task manager is like super chill on Fridays. Like it's like

01:02:52   we're good. We're just going to relax. Or like over the weekends if I have a due date

01:02:57   on an item, like we don't really need to worry about that too much because I've got the whole

01:03:01   day if I want to work on it, right? Or like if I have 20 items due on Tuesday and only

01:03:07   three items due on Thursday, maybe you should be a little bit more on my back on Tuesday

01:03:11   than Thursday. Stuff like that would be great, especially when a task manager or a calendar

01:03:18   is so full of data. I am entering a wealth of data into these systems. There is so much

01:03:27   to potentially learn about someone. That's what I hope would be the future of these systems.

01:03:33   And speaking of like contextual type of stuff,

01:03:36   I still don't understand how there's still not like an API

01:03:41   or something or even like a system feature

01:03:45   that if I'm driving or if I'm doing a workout,

01:03:49   don't bother me, don't send me notifications,

01:03:51   they're useless.

01:03:52   Like--

01:03:53   - Isn't that do not disturb while driving?

01:03:55   Isn't that what it is?

01:03:57   (laughing)

01:03:57   - Well, it should be maybe, you know,

01:03:59   maybe in the report, you know, Mark Gurman said

01:04:02   like more, what's that, more customizable something,

01:04:06   do not disturb, deeper do not disturb,

01:04:08   maybe that's what it is, like a way to understand

01:04:11   what the user is doing and like look at my calendar,

01:04:13   look at my, am I driving, am I running,

01:04:16   am I doing a workout, and adjust the notifications

01:04:19   and that type of stuff accordingly.

01:04:22   I'm surprised that it's still not an option

01:04:24   like at a system level.

01:04:25   - Yeah, well, just while you mention that, Guillermo,

01:04:28   I think we'll move on from this.

01:04:31   You know in that article last week it mentioned like better navigation for Animoji?

01:04:36   I think that means a standalone Animoji app.

01:04:39   I mean, I can tell you that I've been using the Animoji Studio app by Mr Rambo on my...

01:04:48   It's so fancy every time I say Mr Rambo on my iPhone.

01:04:51   And it's fantastic.

01:04:53   It's the way that it should be from Apple.

01:04:56   It's just they are using this more and more and more in their marketing that I just think

01:05:01   at this point, the only reason you would not have a standalone Animoji app is if you were

01:05:08   looking to make it an iOS 12 feature. That's the only thing that logically makes any sense

01:05:13   to me, because clearly Apple are throwing a lot of their development and marketing behind

01:05:19   this thing. Do more with it.

01:05:26   moved way past iMessage, I think. Even if it's just clips. Yeah, exactly. It would be

01:05:34   perfect for clips. Alright, so thank you so much for making me write up this list of stuff

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01:07:20   So back to Federico.

01:07:21   Last week you wrote an article called "New Apps for 2018" which is a bit of a traditional post for you.

01:07:30   You do it on a mostly yearly basis, right?

01:07:33   I do it, I think every couple of years.

01:07:36   There isn't now, I mean honestly, there isn't always like 15 brand new apps, right?

01:07:42   Every single year that would mean a lot, right?

01:07:45   lot, right? Like there's always new stuff, but there isn't necessarily like you don't

01:07:49   turn everything over on a yearly basis, right? So like you would be writing about the same

01:07:53   things I guess every year. But you picked nine applications in very different categories.

01:08:01   And I wanted to just kind of like go through them a little bit. You could give like a sentence

01:08:05   or two on them. And if we have any questions about like how and why you use those apps,

01:08:10   can we jump in? Is that good?

01:08:11   Okay. Yes. Yeah.

01:08:13   So the first is Headspace. Hi. Hi. Hi. Welcome. Welcome to Headspace.

01:08:20   Get comfortable. Feel the chair.

01:08:25   If you've ever heard Headspace, you know what we're doing right now. But what is Headspace?

01:08:30   It's a meditation app, guided meditation. So you listen to this person who someone on

01:08:35   Twitter a few days ago sent me his Twitter account and it does not look the way that

01:08:41   I pictured him. So the guy turns out he's a former...

01:08:45   He's basically a podcaster, that's what everybody says about us. Nobody ever looks the way you

01:08:49   expect them to look.

01:08:50   He used to be a monk, which does not surprise me.

01:08:53   He's a super chill.

01:08:55   So anyway, yeah. You listen to... so, every day, the Headspace Journey, the way that they

01:09:03   describe it, consists of every day you listen for 10, 15 or 20 minutes, even 5 minutes maybe,

01:09:09   this session of, I'm gonna simplify this, someone telling you to sit down, breathe,

01:09:18   and do different types of exercises. Not in the sense of like push-ups and sit-ups, but

01:09:23   like try to, it's an exercise for the mind. It's like crying. It's time to relax. Drop

01:09:31   "Stop and give me 20!"

01:09:35   Yes. So it's a way to...

01:09:39   It's super difficult to describe, and also it's organizing

01:09:43   sections and themes based on what you're looking for.

01:09:47   So there's packs, that's the way that they're called, there's packs

01:09:51   for productivity or inspiration or creativity or

01:09:55   stress, anxiety, there's all kinds of categories to train

01:09:59   yourself for. But the basic idea is that you take a few minutes every day just for you

01:10:05   and just for your mind to think and to exercise. I guess the idea is that you exercise the

01:10:11   ability to control what you think and to control not what you feel but the process of being

01:10:21   aware of what you feel. It's difficult to describe. For me, it's super tough to do.

01:10:28   One, because I have a busy life,

01:10:32   I do a lot of different things every day.

01:10:34   And so even finding 10 minutes just for myself,

01:10:37   I feel guilty or there's maybe not the time,

01:10:39   I need to take care of other things.

01:10:41   So that's an exercise in and of itself.

01:10:44   But also it was difficult for me to understand stuff

01:10:48   like the body scan.

01:10:49   So the ability to like sit down and just think

01:10:52   about what you're feeling like at a very physical level.

01:10:56   It's very intriguing. I didn't believe this stuff at all, but there's a trial and really it's not about like

01:11:04   spiritual stuff in any way. It's just learning to breathe and think that's what it is.

01:11:13   It's nice.

01:11:16   My fiance uses it too, which means that I am forced to use it sometimes because she usually plays when she's going to sleep.

01:11:23   So I'm forced into listening to it. I am head spaced against my will

01:11:27   But it is good. It's calming. I have you also used it

01:11:32   Depending on when you like so, you know

01:11:35   You can use any of them and they can help you feel sleepy if that's what you need because it's just about relaxing

01:11:41   So I guess it's just about the time of day that you want to use it

01:11:43   I guess on a because you know

01:11:46   You've got headspace to work out your mind and then you have workouts plus plus to work out your body, I guess. Yes

01:11:53   Yes. So this is an underscores app for workouts. I should clarify that this week I have to

01:12:02   use the Apple Workout app for an achievement that requires me to complete seven workouts

01:12:09   in the Apple Workout app.

01:12:11   But other ones...

01:12:12   Does that not work in third-party apps?

01:12:14   No, no. It says in the Workout app. In the Workout app.

01:12:17   That's so dumb.

01:12:18   I want my badge and this week I'm using Apple's.

01:12:23   But otherwise, David's app is superior in multiple ways.

01:12:27   I would summarize as complete personalization, so you can customize what the data points

01:12:32   that you see.

01:12:34   And also there's one feature, well just one feature that I really like.

01:12:38   And that is, actually two features.

01:12:41   You can spin the digital crown to end a workout on the watch.

01:12:45   there's a line chart for your heart rate. That's ideal for me because at a glance it shows you

01:12:55   how fast you're going on a bike, for example. The progress over 20-30 minutes.

01:13:03   It is a very good workout app which is mostly focused around the Apple Watch

01:13:11   in that it allows you to create custom layouts for what you want to see on the watch

01:13:17   when you're working out. So I use it when I am swimming because I also like the the line graph of

01:13:25   the heart rate so I can see when I'm working hard and it's good because I'm able to put in all of the

01:13:31   specific information that I want to see when I'm swimming which Apple's app doesn't do a

01:13:37   necessarily a good job of showing me. So it's a really good app for that. And of course,

01:13:42   if you do anything which is a workout which is more dry related, Workouts++ will allow

01:13:49   you to listen to podcasts on your watch whilst you work out with Bluetooth headphones attached,

01:13:54   which is really cool.

01:13:55   Yeah.

01:13:56   Streaks.

01:13:57   Is Streaks a similar thing? You've got a lot of... Is this like New Year, New You type

01:14:02   situation we've got going on here Federico?

01:14:04   It's related to what we discussed on analog when we did the Keisel-Ysa extravaganza episode.

01:14:12   Yeah, the theme would be I'm thinking of myself more.

01:14:18   And in Strix, it's a habit tracker, so there's a few habits that I would like to complete

01:14:23   every day.

01:14:24   Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, and I like Strix.

01:14:29   There's many, many habit trackers on the AppSource.

01:14:36   I like this one because it integrates with Hellkit.

01:14:43   You don't need to manually complete habits for a workout, because the moment that you

01:14:49   complete a workout, the app sees that data in Hellkit and sends you a notification that

01:14:55   the habit has been marked as done for you.

01:14:57   And also you can say you have granular controls over the frequency of completion for some

01:15:05   habits.

01:15:06   So you can say, "I don't want to complete this every day, I want to complete this X

01:15:09   times a week."

01:15:11   So that works because there's some stuff that I don't need to do on a daily basis, but also

01:15:15   I want to do at least like five times a week.

01:15:19   So I really like it.

01:15:22   I'm doing some of that this year as well, some habit tracking stuff, but I'm actually

01:15:26   using tally instead of this.

01:15:31   I only have a couple of things and it's pretty easy to just increment it by one or reset

01:15:36   it to zero.

01:15:37   That's kind of how I'm tracking a few things.

01:15:41   But yeah, Streaks is really cool and I really like the interface.

01:15:44   I think it looks really nice and it's really customizable which is really cool.

01:15:50   So up next we have One Second Every Day, which out of this list, this is the only one I hadn't

01:15:58   heard of, and I think it's maybe the most interesting to me.

01:16:05   So what does this app do?

01:16:07   So the idea is that at the end of the year, you make this video that consists of one or

01:16:15   one and a half seconds of footage from every day of the past year.

01:16:20   And it's a fun way to create like a little video for yourself or for your partner, for

01:16:24   your family to show what the past year has been like.

01:16:28   So every day you go into the app, there's like the main view is a calendar and you can

01:16:32   tap on individual days to add footage.

01:16:37   And the great thing about the app is that you're not forced to record video in the app

01:16:42   itself.

01:16:43   You can, but you can also import video from the library.

01:16:47   Or if you forget to record a video of what you're doing, you can use the video part inside

01:16:54   of a live photo.

01:16:56   That's clever.

01:16:57   That's really clever because many times I forget to take a video, but I have a photo

01:17:02   from that day.

01:17:03   So I look forward to the final product in December.

01:17:08   I did one of those face ones once.

01:17:11   I don't remember the name of the app, but I think Adam Lisagor was behind it, I think?

01:17:16   Maybe?

01:17:17   uh...

01:17:18   yeah i would love

01:17:19   to know where that video is somewhere. But yeah, I did it for an entire year, I took a

01:17:23   picture of my face every day.

01:17:25   Nice.

01:17:26   We spoke a little bit

01:17:28   about this earlier but

01:17:29   uh... you're using Homebridge and doing some funny HomeKit stuff

01:17:33   and HomeCam is part of that

01:17:35   that setup for you, right?

01:17:39   Yeah, HomeCam is this app that only shows you

01:17:45   video previews from HomeKit cameras.

01:17:49   It's much faster, especially if you have a lot of cameras, and I plan to add more HomeKit

01:17:54   cameras, whether by official certified hardware and also webcams connected to my Raspberry

01:18:01   Pi.

01:18:02   And this is basically a way to just tap on an icon and get a grid of real-time previews.

01:18:10   It works really well.

01:18:11   on the Apple TV and soon on iOS, there's the ability to,

01:18:15   this is really clever, to control accessories

01:18:19   or see data returned by sensors

01:18:23   located in the same room as the camera.

01:18:26   So I can imagine that if you have like a baby camera,

01:18:29   for example, you can control the temperature

01:18:31   or control the lights. - Oh, that's cool.

01:18:32   - And you can do this contextually

01:18:35   while you're watching the video,

01:18:37   you can see on the Apple TV, the sensor data

01:18:40   and you can long press on the Siri remote

01:18:43   to access these shortcuts from within the video.

01:18:47   It's really clever.

01:18:48   - Up next we have Airtable,

01:18:51   which this is one of those apps/services

01:18:54   I have a hard time describing to people

01:18:57   because it's kind of like--

01:18:59   - They're a tiny head culprit, Airtable.

01:19:02   - It's kind of a database,

01:19:03   but it's also kind of a spreadsheet,

01:19:05   but it's also kind of neither.

01:19:06   Like, I struggle with describing this.

01:19:09   Yeah, it's like a spreadsheet combined with a database.

01:19:15   And on the surface, it looks like a spreadsheet.

01:19:20   But then when you tap on an item, it looks like a database.

01:19:24   So each item can have fields.

01:19:28   And these fields are not limited to text or numbers or formulas.

01:19:33   They can be switches, like on and off.

01:19:37   They can be pictures.

01:19:39   They can be links.

01:19:40   They can be like links to other items,

01:19:45   like in a relational database, for example.

01:19:48   And I'm using this to track movies that I want to watch

01:19:52   and video games that I want to play.

01:19:54   And because of the way that you can create filters and saved

01:19:58   views, based on the status of some of these fields,

01:20:04   I have different views for games that I'm playing right now,

01:20:08   Games that are upcoming and games that have been released but that I still have not played

01:20:13   And also games that I finished the main story, but I need to complete the extras

01:20:18   So yeah, it's very granular the way that I'm tracking video games

01:20:23   And and a note or I mean what why why this as opposed to just like a list somewhere

01:20:30   Because it looks colorful and I can see

01:20:36   it's easier to filter, as I mentioned, the different types of conditions that I

01:20:44   want to see. So for movies, for example, I have a saved filter for 4k movies that I

01:20:50   can get on iTunes. And for video games I can see like upcoming stuff on the PS4.

01:20:56   Because you can create these filters, these rules, it's easier than a

01:21:02   plain text list that requires me either to format or to search I can just flip

01:21:08   a toggle and I can see just what I want to see. It's really hard to

01:21:13   describe but I swear it makes sense once you try for a couple of minutes.

01:21:17   Sounds a little bit like a file maker type deal. Kind of but it's more friendly.

01:21:24   Federico, I see iCab in this list. If you join the great ranks of people who use

01:21:31   third-party browsers on iOS? No, no, no, no, no, no. Not doing that, but I use iCab as

01:21:42   the browser that comes in when Safari cannot get something done, and it's like, "Hey buddy,

01:21:47   let me take care of this for you." So, like, downloads. You know this crazy thing that

01:21:52   people use the web to download files? It's a thing, apparently, you can go on the web

01:21:58   and download, you know, documents. It's this crazy concept, crazy idea. So yeah, people

01:22:05   download stuff using a web browser and iCab has an excellent built-in downloader UI, like

01:22:12   a menu that lists all your downloads and you can tap on them and you can do stuff with

01:22:18   them. Imagine that. It's a crazy, crazy idea. And also iCab, unlike Safari, has better controls

01:22:26   for websites that do not work well on mobile devices, such as Go Figure Airtable.

01:22:33   They have a website that if you try to open the web app on your iPhone, it just says go

01:22:38   to the App Store and get the app, except that the app does not have all of the features

01:22:42   from the web app.

01:22:44   So I need to use iCab in desktop mode to access these features.

01:22:49   And what makes it better than Safari's request desktop site mode is that it's a permanent

01:22:55   one.

01:22:57   So you can create a rule that says every time you see this domain, always expose the user

01:23:03   agent for Safari for Mac or Google Chrome for Mac.

01:23:08   So you can pretend that you're a desktop browser and the website thinks you are a desktop browser,

01:23:13   but in fact you're still using an iPad.

01:23:15   So this works really well in iCab.

01:23:18   Is there still touch control? Did they mock up like a pointer with a trackpad or something?

01:23:23   I think... I don't remember. I think that one you're thinking of is... not dolphin,

01:23:32   puffin web browser? Something like that?

01:23:34   What? It went in fin.

01:23:36   They have like, they have some kind of bird icon. I think I wrote about it last year in

01:23:44   in iPad Diaries, I think it's Puffin web browser that simulates like a trackpad mode in the

01:23:50   corner of the screen. Yeah, that's a thing also. So I don't use iCab as my main browser

01:23:58   just when I need to.

01:23:59   It's just in emergencies.

01:24:00   Yes.

01:24:01   So you introduced me to toggle, and it looks like you're now using a different time tracking

01:24:07   application. It's time to talk about time tracking, everyone's favorite discussion.

01:24:12   we using to something else now if you moved away from toggle?

01:24:15   Yeah, I don't like the fact that toggle, they apparently don't care about an iPhone or iPad

01:24:23   experience like a good one because they are a web service. They have an iPhone app now

01:24:28   and it's getting better but they don't have an iPad version and the iPhone app is nowhere

01:24:33   near what I like it to be. And Time, Time Blogger, it's this app that like I couldn't

01:24:40   find any review. Like, I was nobody talking about this. You know, all the time tracking

01:24:46   people, where are you? I guess there must be...

01:24:49   I'm right here.

01:24:50   Okay, so...

01:24:51   I'm the only one.

01:24:52   You should have told me about this app, Myke. I like it because it works the way that I

01:25:01   think of my timers. So you can create groups, you can create multiple timers, and you can

01:25:07   see these in-depth stats directly on iOS instead of going to the toggle web app.

01:25:13   You have these reports and the ability to break down time by project

01:25:20   or by task. You can add notes. There's an iPhone app. There's a widget, so I don't

01:25:25   have to make my own workflows. There's a widget. There's an Apple Watch version.

01:25:32   And really, mostly I just go to the global stats page and I

01:25:37   tap on the group tab and I can take a look at how much time I'm spending on

01:25:44   what part of my life. And for example, this week because of all the writing that I've been doing, Max Stories,

01:25:50   which is the red project, is at

01:25:52   87%, which is totally insane.

01:25:55   So yeah, it's a native iOS time tracker that lets me do more

01:26:02   more time tracking on iOS instead of using Safari or iCab or going to a web app.

01:26:08   So here's a question that I very rarely ask. Do they have a Mac app?

01:26:12   No, they do not.

01:26:15   Well, goodbye.

01:26:17   You know, it's that kind of app from a single developer, single person.

01:26:23   Just wait until Project Marzipan and they'll be able to write one.

01:26:26   There you go. I can at least get a menu bar app. Weirdly, this is like one of the only

01:26:31   things which is a deal breaker for me. There aren't many software categories where "is

01:26:37   there a Mac app" is necessarily a deal breaker of mine. This is one of them. Because the

01:26:42   most hours that I put in are on a Mac. Like, there's recording and editing. They are the

01:26:49   longest things that I will do and I want to have something native on the Mac that I can

01:26:54   set things with. And I get, like, toggle apps kind of are not good everywhere but they do

01:26:59   a decent job and you know what I actually just use I just leave a tab open in Chrome

01:27:04   on all my devices as well and it works fine for me and my widgets work fine and I'm kind

01:27:10   of I'm fine with toggle as it is but I'm only ever going to look at something if I can get

01:27:15   like an experience everywhere and if this doesn't have any way for me to use it on my

01:27:19   Mac then it's not going to be for me.

01:27:24   And then the last one is home dash.

01:27:27   Yes, this is my favorite surprise of all the...

01:27:31   You know, because I spend a little time over the holidays browsing the app store looking

01:27:36   for new things, and this HomeDash app, I think it used to be called a different way before,

01:27:42   Lightify something, like a couple of years ago.

01:27:46   Anyway, HomeDash is like...

01:27:48   Imagine if HomeKit received like an iOS 11 fresh coat of paint and looked like a modern

01:27:56   dashboard from the Jetsons.

01:28:00   This is what it looks like.

01:28:02   It's a way to create custom dashboards for your HomeKit controls and you have actual

01:28:08   controls that are not just bland squares like in the Home app.

01:28:14   You have sliders, you have color pickers, you have real-time camera previews, you have

01:28:19   power buttons, you have lists of items, it's very colorful and it makes more sense than

01:28:29   the Apple Home app because it adapts to different types of accessories.

01:28:34   And it looks futuristic which is a nice plus because I feel like I'm in a spaceship every

01:28:41   time I look at my home dashboard.

01:28:45   I really like it and I wish that Apple took a little more liberty to try a bunch of crazy

01:28:52   UIs with HomeKit, because right now you open the Home app and it's just a bunch of squares

01:28:56   and rectangles.

01:28:59   It looks boring.

01:29:00   And if you try HomeDash, it looks inspired and new and fresh.

01:29:05   And it still does the same things that you can do in the Home app.

01:29:08   I mean, as far as controls are concerned, you cannot add new accessories with HomeDash,

01:29:14   You can control, you can create dashboards for multiple rooms, you can add scenes, you

01:29:20   can add multiple cameras even.

01:29:24   So it looks really nice.

01:29:27   The only downside I guess is that according to the developer there's an Apple limitation

01:29:33   and so the dashboards that you create on one device, they cannot sync over iCloud to another

01:29:40   device.

01:29:41   create them from scratch, which is too bad, but you know, I can live with that.

01:29:45   This is a great list. I like that there, I think most people that would have seen

01:29:51   this list or will have heard us talk about this now, there's gonna be at least

01:29:54   one app that you've never heard of that you might want to try out, right? Like

01:29:57   there's some interesting stuff in there, especially the HomeKit

01:30:00   applications, which I think people don't necessarily seek for, because I don't

01:30:06   know if you, I mean I don't ever really think that such a thing exists, like I

01:30:09   just never even think to look for it. So it's cool to know that there are people that are

01:30:13   doing things in that arena as well.

01:30:16   Yeah, yeah. I think the HomeKit API used to be more difficult or problematic before. Now

01:30:25   it's, I don't think it's still perfect, but there's room for developers to go places where

01:30:31   Apple does not want to.

01:30:33   All right, Steven, take us home.

01:30:35   I think that about does it.

01:30:37   If you want to find links to all the stuff we talked about,

01:30:40   you can do so on our website or in the app

01:30:44   that you're listening in.

01:30:45   That URL is relay.fm/connected/181.

01:30:50   You get in touch with us there.

01:30:52   There's an email link,

01:30:53   and then there's links to all of us on Twitter.

01:30:56   Myke is I-M-Y-K-E,

01:30:59   and Myke is the host of a bunch of shows here on Relay FM.

01:31:02   You can check those out at relay.fm/shows.

01:31:05   If you like connected, there'll be something else that you like there, I promise.

01:31:08   You can find Federico, he writes maxstories.net and you can find him on Twitter @vittici.

01:31:15   You can find me as ismh and I write and host the 512pixels YouTube channel, 512pixels.net.

01:31:23   And until next week guys, say goodbye.

01:31:26   Arrivederci!

01:31:27   Bye!

01:31:28   No!

01:31:29   Oh no, I don't know where I go.

01:31:30   I don't know where I go in the order yet.

01:31:32   Where do you want to go?

01:31:34   I'll go after you, you do it again.

01:31:36   Take two.

01:31:37   Until next week, say goodbye.

01:31:39   No!

01:31:40   Oh no!

01:31:41   Adios!

01:31:44   You should leave the scene.

01:31:48   (laughs)