181: Headspaced Against My Will
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(classical music)
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- I think this is the beginning of the show.
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It feels like the beginning.
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We were talking and then we paused for a second
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and now I'm thanking our sponsors,
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Squarespace, Pingdom, and Ting.
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- This is like last week where you started that poem
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and I didn't know it was the beginning of the show
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and I just kept saying things.
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- I know, I had to edit a bunch of that out.
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- I wanna keep you on your toes.
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Connected episode 181. You've already heard the voice of one of my co-hosts, Myke Hurley.
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Myke, how are you? Very good. Are you good? We're also joined by Federico Vittucci.
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Hi, this is a strange introduction. I like it. My day is all topsy-turvy, so I am not in my office.
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I am in someone else's office on a conference room table, but I brought all my recording gear,
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So I have stuff everywhere and like I'm shocked that any of it works and it's been very,
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it's been a very disorganized day. I really like the imagination of you sitting at a very
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large conference table like there's you know you're like you're about to fire us or something
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you know like. Do you need to pretend that this is much much more serious and fancier than it is?
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I mean, I'm wearing a suit. Are you not wearing a suit?
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Um, sure. Yes, I am.
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Can I tell a very quick story about a conference room?
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So, uh, last year I spent a bunch of time in New York, right?
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And a friend of the show, Matthew Bischoff of Lickability,
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there was a day where I needed to get some work done.
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And he said that he would book a conference room at his co-working space for me.
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And I could just come and hang out and just get some work done there before
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I had to go catch my flight that evening because I was kicked out of my hotel.
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I had nowhere to go.
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So I arrive at the co-working space and like he shows me around
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and like takes me to the room and he takes me to this conference room
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where they were like, I'm not kidding, like 10 people in this room.
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And they like had paperwork strewn all over the table.
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Like they were having a real serious meeting.
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And but it was like five or 10 minutes after the time that I had it booked.
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So Matt just like pokes his head in the door and is like, we got this booked.
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and all these people are so mad because it's just me and they all get up and leave and
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then I spend like 90 minutes in that room with my iPad on my own and like and I just
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imagine them like they're like trying to find somewhere in this co-working space to continue
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their really important meeting like one of them walks by and just sees me on my own in
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this room not even on the phone to anyone. And everyone knows you can't do real work
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on an iPad so they figured you were just playing a game. Just playing a game. Consuming content.
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Yeah, that's it.
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You know, I've got a lovely little story now.
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As I was swimming yesterday, I came to the realization that my LTE Apple Watch is like
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a content capture device.
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It's like a whole new different thing, right?
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Because I can't consume anything on it.
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But like I bark, I attempt to dictate reminders to it.
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You know, we have a bit of a to and fro relationship, me and Siri on the Apple Watch, but I can
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get about 50% of what I'm looking to record can be recorded into it. So yeah, I was thinking
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oh it's like a content capture device and now I'm an analyst so.
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Okay, do you still use the bear microphone thing to save notes and stuff?
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Sometimes. If I'm saving ideas then I'll use like bear like you know I'll have an idea
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for something but typically what happens is I'm like oh I should send an email to this
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person about this thing so then I try and set a reminder but like typically that just
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doesn't really work and I have to play a game later on where I have to try and
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guess what the words mean. Are you doing that while you're swimming? Well not like
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while I'm underwater but like I will stop I will stop at a length and then and
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then do it you know like I'll stop by the side of the pool and paint my
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reminder and then go back to work. It's the life of a powerful media executive
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in the 21st century. Just say you're just telling your assistant to send all the invoices
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while just swimming in your golden pool? If you want to compare me to Don Draper, like
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that's totally fine. Because you remember he used to swim and stuff like that. So like
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if you want to, like you don't have to. That was not our intention. You're proposing this
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idea. I'm just saying, I'm just saying like if people want to call me to Don Draper of
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thing and they can do that but like they don't feel like they have to but you
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know you can is all I'm saying do you smoke and drink a lot I mean if that's
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what I need to do you know there are people who see you talking to your watch
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not realizing that it's an Apple watch or the series on the Apple watch like
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what is that guy doing oh I've given up the fact that everybody at the gym
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thinks that I'm a madman okay you gotta quit vlogging in there people don't like
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They really don't. They really don't.
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Alright, follow up.
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We have a t-shirt for sale. We have one week left. It is the Tiny Head tee. It's amazing.
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Thank you so much to everybody who has purchased a t-shirt so far. We have three amazing colors
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available from Cotton Bureau. Shipping worldwide and Cotton Bureau have flat rate international
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shipping now. I think it's like $8 maximum to go international, which is fantastic. This
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is the only time this t-shirt is going to be available. So if you do want to claim a
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high five in person from Stephen Hackett then you must be wearing this t-shirt whenever you see him.
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I will also, just to sweeten the pot, I will also add a high five into the mix so if you see me I
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will also high five you. You have one week left to buy one of these t-shirts. Stop, stop, stop,
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stop, stop. We are often together at WWDC. We need some sort of protocol. We're walking down the
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street, someone approaches us wearing the shirt. Do we, do I take one side, you take the other?
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it's like a double high five. What do I do? You could just like, I don't know, like run
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up in the middle and just give them a hug, you know? So like they get two high fives
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and then as their arms are up, you can get your arms around people. Don't do that. I
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don't think people would like that. That's a terrible idea. But I can wait in the background
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just bracing for the hug. Or you can just be there just like smiling and nodding, you
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know, like in approval. You're like, yeah, you did it. Like those guys in the background
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of rap videos, they just stand there in the background and nod?
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Sure, yeah you're like the producer of that high five or something. So if you want all
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of that to happen to you, it doesn't have to happen to you, if you don't want that to
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happen you can still buy a t-shirt, just don't raise your arms if you see us.
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Just don't wear it in San Jose. Yeah, all that. But it's a great t-shirt,
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it's a wonderful design, it's only available for six more days as we record this, so if
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If you're hearing this and the next episode isn't out, then you should buy one, because
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otherwise it's your last chance.
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Go ahead and pick one up.
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It's a great t-shirt.
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I can't wait to get mine.
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Last week we spoke about the Stocks app that comes with iOS so you can see how bad the
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economy is doing at any given time on your mobile device.
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And Myke, you had suggested that maybe this redesigned version that showed up in a government
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article would support cryptocurrencies and turns out that it already does. I had no idea
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of this. You hadn't, it's shocking to me that it's in there honestly.
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Thanks to Philip for sending that in. Basically I pontificated that it might be this because
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it was literally the only reason I could think of as to why you might want to redesign the
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stocks app. Now I can't think of what that possible reason would be. I don't know why
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you would need to redesign the Stocks app specifically, if it's on its own. If you're
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doing an entirely new design thing, that's a really good way of putting the phrase "redesign",
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then I would understand it, but if it's purely just the Stocks app, I can't work out why
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you would do it. I guess we can all look forward to June!
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Something else talking about Apple software and features that haven't been released yet
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but may be out there somewhere, AirPlay 2 has been banished from the most recent iOS
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and tvOS beta.
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So it was there for a while, and now it's gone again.
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Poor AirPlay 2.
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Oh man, do you think it's going to make 11.3?
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I don't know.
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I don't think so.
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It's not a good sign.
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I mean, if you compare that to messages in the cloud, which is still in the beta, even
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Even though Apple is still saying we are evaluating the functionality, whatever.
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But this one is gone.
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So it's not a good sign.
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I actually was kind of liking the ability to stream to multiple devices and control
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from Control Center.
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So I wonder, I mean, do we expect 11.4 even before WWDC?
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Because if that's not the case, I wonder if AirPlay 2 will be an iOS 12 feature at this
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Oh, it's gotta ship.
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It's gotta ship in 11.
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Because of the hump art, like, they have to ship it, surely.
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They said later this year, so later this year could be iOS 12.
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That would be so bad.
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Can you tell me, is the latency better with AirPlay 2?
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Oh yes, much, much better.
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Like for AirPlay 1 you get like 3 to 4 second delay and the way the AirPlay 2 works, the
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buffering has been enhanced so it keeps in basically in the audio buffer it keeps more
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So like it starts right away but then it starts kind of caching the audio so you can also
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skip around without delays and you can do like you can cue songs, you can walk around
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the house and it will not be a problem because it has already buffered the, you know, like
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a song. So for example with Airplay 1, if you start playing a song and then you walk
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outside there's a good chance that the song will stop playing.
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Right, but something like Overcast, there's no benefit until Marco puts Airplay 2 support
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in, right? Is that true?
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Yes. Oh yeah, oh yeah, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work because you need to change,
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you need to adopt an entirely new framework.
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time I just think that something's broken. Every single time I send a podcast to the
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airport, I just assume that something's broken because it just takes such a long time. Never
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mind, maybe one day. Something I saw just before we went on to record today, I thought
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it was kind of cool. Nest have added Google Assistant to their Nest Cam IQ indoor camera.
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So if you own one of their indoor Nest Cams, the IQs, you can get via a software update
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Google Assistant features and Nest are saying that it is the full functionality of a Google
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Home product, so you can give commands to it and stuff like that.
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I don't think it would be a good idea to necessarily try and play music from the camera, I mean
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like it has a speaker in it but I feel like that might not be a great experience for you,
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but you could, you know, you could set and unset things, turn on lights, turn off lights.
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I like the idea of just, as I'm saying this phrase, I can understand people like, this
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sounds like nails on a chalkboard, I like the idea of having microphones in more products.
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Because if you are in on one of these systems, whether it's like the Echo or the Google Home,
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you want to be able to just give the commands wherever you are, right?
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I feel like everyone that I know that has gotten deep into this thing ends up with more
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than one Echo, for example, right? Because you kind of just want these devices to be
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wherever you are in the home. So yeah, I think that way, I think it's cool to have more of
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these types of functions, like in more and more devices. I think that's good. So yeah,
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Steven, do you have one of these? I don't. I have a couple of the, the original Nest
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cams, you know, that were basically just a drop cam that they rebranded. I'm interested
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checking one out though because it does a lot of stuff that's smarter than the
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original. But what excites me about this story is, you know, there was a
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story last week, a couple weeks ago, that Nest is being folded back into Google
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after being sort of spun out for a while. Still with an alphabet but not within
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Google. And I think this is like the first sign that hopefully we are now in
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a place where Nest hardware and software is going to get regular updates. It's like,
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I like my stuff, but for instance I have the NES security system and
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It is like completely unaware of my cameras unless the alarm goes off
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So if the alarm gets tripped then it turns all the cameras on but if I disarm
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the security device
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Then the cameras don't turn off like there's no like there's so many obvious things they could do with their ecosystem
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system. And I'm hoping, now that Google's back in charge of it, that we see more of
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this stuff, that these devices get smarter and more capable. So this is cool, and it's
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clever if you have one of these cameras, but I'm really looking forward to seeing what's
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next out of this company.
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For the last few days, Federico's been teasing me and Steven that he has some surprise follow-up.
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this works out to be typically bad for us, like something's gonna happen and like,
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there's usually some kind of surprise that has like a ramification, like for example,
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oh by the way I'm using a beta version of Mac OS, or you know, like just these things,
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right, you just throw these things at us and it has some kind of ramification. I'm very
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keen to know what this is but I want to take a break first to build suspense.
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All right, Tichi, lay it on us.
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What have you done?
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- All right, so you know how I have a HomePod
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in the kitchen, right?
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In the kitchen/living room space.
00:16:00
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And you know that for many reasons I cannot record podcasts
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in the kitchen/living room,
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because of the dogs and because there's people, right?
00:16:11
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So of course I record podcasts like right now
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in my bedroom, correct? So I wanted to do this. Hey Siri, make the desk light red. So
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I have a second HomePod. Oh boy. Oh god. As soon as you said, as soon as you said, "I
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have a HomePod in the kitchen." I knew where this was going. But like, okay, come on, carry
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on. You are probably actually, I'm not done, you're probably the only person in the world
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that's done this, right? I'm probably the only person in Italy that has two home pods.
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Probably in Europe. Like, it's not even available in your country. Poor John. That's who I feel
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sorry for on all of this. That's the thing, it's not coming from John. Okay. So, so I
00:17:10
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I was liking the HomePod so much. I like actually using it a lot, a lot more than I expected.
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And I realized, you know, I do a lot of things around the house. I like listening to music
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when I do those things. And once I realized that the HomePod sounds great at like 50 to
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70%. I was looking at the echo on my next stand and I was like, "You know, buddy, maybe
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it's time for you to go." And what also prompted me to sort of research this was the idea of
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this product is getting better, in theory, in the future sometimes, with, you know, the
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stereo pair and that kind of stuff. And also I was surprised by the fact that Syria didn't
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mind Syria so much. And so I started looking on eBay. You know, the Italian version.
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This is like how you got your echo.
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Kinda. But it got worse from a certain point of view. So I started doing some research
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trenibals, like, I wonder if there's any Italian that has got a home pod and wants to sell
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the home pod, but I want a white one, because it goes well with my white nightstand. And
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so I started looking and I found this person with a white home pod, in theory imported
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from the United States. There were other Italians that were selling black home pods, or there
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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
00:20:33
◼
►
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.
00:23:19
◼
►
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?
00:23:38
◼
►
I have a simple question for you, and I'm not trying to judge you or anything about
00:23:45
◼
►
your purchase.
00:23:47
◼
►
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
00:26:34
◼
►
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.
00:28:58
◼
►
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
00:29:31
◼
►
That's you but with the HomePod.
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.
00:33:04
◼
►
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.
00:34:09
◼
►
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
◼
►
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
00:36:57
◼
►
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
00:37:23
◼
►
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
00:37:30
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might think because they are helping to keep your favourite sites online. Squarespace,
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let you know if something's not working.
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You just give Pingdom the URL that you want to monitor and they'll take care of the rest.
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They make sure that your website is up and if something's wrong, they'll let you know.
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We have it set.
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We have loads of great options with Pingdom.
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you can see if like you can have email and push notification and text message if something
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goes wrong you'll be told you don't want to find out that your website is down because
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somebody sends you a tweet you want to just know so go to pingdom.com/relayfm right now
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for a 14 day free trial with no credit card required then when you sign up use the code
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connected at checkout to get a massive 30% of your first invoice thanks to pingdom for
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their support of this show and relay FM.
00:38:55
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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
00:39:24
◼
►
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
00:43:02
◼
►
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.
00:54:16
◼
►
- 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
◼
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so I try to understand how it works,
00:56:27
◼
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but if you set a due date, and that due date
00:56:31
◼
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slips into the past, then it just is due today.
00:56:34
◼
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There's no way to see how far overdue it is unless you don't set a due date,
00:56:39
◼
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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
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►
okay, so, uh, the way I think about it is, um,
00:56:52
◼
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like semantically, uh, in my brain it works like this.
00:56:56
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The due date is ideally you should be getting this done by Wednesday,
00:57:02
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But if you don't, it's fine.
00:57:04
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You can do it later.
00:57:05
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The deadline is you must get this done by Wednesday.
00:57:10
◼
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And in fact, even visually in the UI,
00:57:12
◼
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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
◼
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or one day left.
00:57:23
◼
►
But then if you don't get it done,
00:57:26
◼
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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.
01:03:53
◼
►
- Isn't that do not disturb while driving?
01:03:55
◼
►
Isn't that what it is?
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
01:05:41
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that might make me try out things again. Oh gosh. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace.
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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.
01:11:16
◼
►
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.
01:13:57
◼
►
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
01:14:24
◼
►
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
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And also you can say you have granular controls over the frequency of completion for some
01:15:06
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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
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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
01:15:37
◼
►
That's kind of how I'm tracking a few things.
01:15:41
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►
But yeah, Streaks is really cool and I really like the interface.
01:15:44
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►
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
01:16:43
◼
►
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
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►
from that day.
01:17:03
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►
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?
01:17:18
◼
►
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
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►
picture of my face every day.
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
01:18:02
◼
►
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
01:22:57
◼
►
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.
01:24:01
◼
►
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.
01:24:51
◼
►
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
01:29:41
◼
►
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!
01:31:29
◼
►
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.
01:31:37
◼
►
Until next week, say goodbye.
01:31:44
◼
►
You should leave the scene.