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Connected

150: The Turtle Anniversary

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:06   From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode 150.

00:00:10   Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, FreshBooks, and Pingdom.

00:00:14   My name is Myke Hurley.

00:00:16   I am always, as always, joined by my co-hosts, Stephen Hackett and Federico Ficci.

00:00:20   Gentlemen, I would like to wish you our happy nature anniversary.

00:00:25   Is that what it's called?

00:00:27   That's what it is. I looked it up.

00:00:29   150th anniversary is nature.

00:00:32   Yeah, I think that's kind of sad because it implies that only nature

00:00:37   can live up to 150 years together with other nature.

00:00:41   Well, I just think what else is there?

00:00:44   Right. Like looking on the Wikipedia page, there isn't any like

00:00:48   there isn't any other terms.

00:00:50   It ends 150 like nature.

00:00:52   The nature anniversary is the last one, because like

00:00:54   how many things get to have a 150th anniversary, right?

00:00:59   And maybe sea turtles or some other big animals that live for a long time.

00:01:05   They're part of nature, really.

00:01:07   Yeah, but it could be called the turtle anniversary instead of the nature anniversary, you know.

00:01:12   But then I assume as well though, right, like how many people are alive to keep track of it, you know?

00:01:17   Like, it starts to really break down past 70, which is why at 70 is the Platinum Jubilee,

00:01:24   then there's nothing until 150, which is nature.

00:01:27   It implies that more turtles are keeping track of the other turtles that are together.

00:01:33   It creates a whole ecosystem of turtles keeping track of this very specific anniversary.

00:01:38   I'm just gonna say, I don't think it implies that.

00:01:41   I think that is something you have come to appreciate.

00:01:47   I don't think that there is any implication about turtles anywhere in this anniversary page of Wikipedia.

00:01:54   like a whole society of turtles keeping track of this anniversary?

00:01:57   No, that isn't it.

00:02:00   You are mistaken. It's totally a thing.

00:02:03   I've looked it up. Yes, you're right. You're right.

00:02:06   Yeah, I would just say two-thirds of us are on a podcast about Wikipedia.

00:02:10   Federico, you are not on that podcast. I think Myke and I-

00:02:12   I have a deeper imagination than you both.

00:02:15   That's true.

00:02:16   Tchipedia.

00:02:17   Someone in the chat room is suggesting that to really keep up with how long

00:02:22   turtle marriages stay together that you have to have a multi-generation family

00:02:26   do it so I will find some turtles and I will go to my children say son keep an

00:02:31   eye on these turtles and if they are still married when you are dying your

00:02:35   son has to carry on the torch. How would you qualify the successful marriage

00:02:39   between two turtles? You know they're they're happy with each other they enjoy each

00:02:43   other's company you know maybe they have kids maybe they don't you know some

00:02:47   people do different things maybe they have some property somewhere you know

00:02:50   It's just about enjoying life on the beach and in the sea. We are really off.

00:02:57   Really off topic here. So episode 150 it will start like every other episode and

00:03:03   that is with... can you guess? Can you guess what's first?

00:03:06   - Sponsor break? - Yeah, do we like thank everyone? Like what is it?

00:03:12   - No, we don't sell... - Oh no wait, it's a tiki tip, right?

00:03:17   - We tell people where to find the show notes. - Yeah.

00:03:20   Where do you find the show notes Federico?

00:03:22   Well you can open an internet navigator and go to...

00:03:28   Basically you need to use your fingers to press the buttons on the computer.

00:03:35   Is this teletext?

00:03:37   It's kind of like teletext but you don't have a remote.

00:03:41   You have like a rectangular puzzle with letters on them.

00:03:46   and basically you press them up and down and you have to write. In the computer screen

00:03:53   you will see the text "Relay.fm" and then you do a slash which is kind of like a line

00:04:00   that is drunk because it's kind of oblique. And you do that and then you do "Connected"

00:04:07   which is the name of this program, and another line with the problem, and 150.

00:04:17   That's how you find the documentation for this week's episode.

00:04:24   I would like to welcome all of our new listeners to the show.

00:04:27   They're all gone now. I'll have to say, just in the spirit of transparency,

00:04:34   and the two of you already know this, but Federico making fun of the slash, it felt

00:04:38   like it was aimed at me a little bit. I feel like that line today just sort of

00:04:42   slowly meandering off-center, maybe falling over later. I learned, children, if

00:04:48   you wake up tired, like really out of it, and you're looking for cold medication,

00:04:53   make sure you don't take the PM at seven o'clock in the morning, or by the time

00:04:58   it's 915 and you're on a podcast, things get a little weird. So at some point

00:05:04   point if I just start talking about Apple script just hang up on me. Which I think is

00:05:07   probably the common rule anyways. Yeah this is this is the agreement that me and Federico

00:05:11   made a long time ago. Oh we're having Skype trouble today. Bye Steven. Oh no. Bye. Alright

00:05:18   follow up. The first two are about me which is awkward so Myke do you want to take the

00:05:22   first two? Whilst we were in San Jose together Steven put on a talk as part of OrkConf and

00:05:31   He was talking about the realities of indie life.

00:05:34   I recommend people go and watch this.

00:05:36   We've got a video now.

00:05:37   This is why we're talking about this.

00:05:39   It was a very entertaining speech talk.

00:05:42   Steven is a very good public speaker.

00:05:45   Oh, come on.

00:05:46   Which you know, you are.

00:05:47   I said it to you at the time.

00:05:50   And in a way that I not necessarily find surprising, but it does always surprise me just how good

00:05:57   Steven is at public speaking.

00:05:59   So I recommend that you go and watch this because it's very entertaining.

00:06:04   In a way that, you know, just because we do this for a living, weirdly podcasting doesn't

00:06:08   translate to public speaking.

00:06:11   Sorry to say Federico, in case you were hoping to just fly by your engagements this year.

00:06:16   They are not transferable skills.

00:06:18   It is like an extra thing that you need to be able to do and Steven's very good at that.

00:06:22   So you should go and watch his talk.

00:06:23   Also as well, he says lots of nice things about me in it.

00:06:26   So that's worth looking at.

00:06:29   And if you haven't gotten us Steven in your life, he went and did this thing. For a reason

00:06:33   I'm not completely sure. Have you ever met me?

00:06:37   Well yeah okay. Because I know Steven, I know why he did this, I worked with our designer

00:06:43   at Relay FM, Mr Frank Towers, to recreate in a lot of instances the war papers from

00:06:51   old versions of OS X into 5K resolution. Now I was already using and have been using the

00:06:58   Tiger wallpaper because Frank put that together on Twitter a couple of weeks

00:07:02   ago which I'm probably I assume what inspired you to ask him to work with you to do

00:07:08   the rest of them and now they're all there in 5k and I have snow leopard I

00:07:15   think no leopard on my other iPad so it's funny to see tiger on one iPad

00:07:19   leopard on another you can go and download them all. Yeah they're fun yeah

00:07:23   Everyone, Lion and before, we had to make bigger.

00:07:28   But Mountain Lion, Ford, they were available in 5K.

00:07:33   - Is that the official term, the design term, make bigger?

00:07:38   Is that what you do in Photoshop?

00:07:40   - Yeah, it's a workflow.

00:07:43   Basically, you open Photoshop and you tell Siri

00:07:48   to ask Alexa to improve things, and it just happens.

00:07:51   It's really, it's complicated.

00:07:53   I don't want to blow your mind.

00:07:55   But no, Frank did it, it's awesome.

00:07:57   These have showed up everywhere on the internet,

00:07:59   which is not what I expected, but it's a lot of fun.

00:08:02   - Yeah, 'cause you do these weird niche things, right?

00:08:04   Like the things that the people that go to your website

00:08:06   will appreciate, but then every now and then,

00:08:09   funnily enough, more people will appreciate it,

00:08:11   and this is one of them.

00:08:12   And it is a weird one that this is one that catches on,

00:08:14   but I get it because they are really beautiful,

00:08:17   and they're not possible to get anymore.

00:08:19   and if you have any kind of nostalgia, which you probably do for Mac OS or OS X, one of

00:08:27   these is going to jump out at you. Hence why I'm now rocking them on basically all of my

00:08:31   devices. I'm going to download one to put on my iMac right now as well. Because I have

00:08:36   a, you know, there is just a nostalgia to them all. And the two of you, mostly Frank,

00:08:41   did a really great job. I'm not assuming that you opened Photoshop for this one.

00:08:44   I did not. I just hosted them. It is fun to set them as iOS wallpaper so like

00:08:50   dozens and dozens of people are sending me screenshots which is awesome. It's

00:08:53   fun to see how people use their devices and it's especially with iOS 11 with the

00:08:57   dock. It's kind of fun to see like an old OS 10 wallpaper on iOS device. I'm using

00:09:04   the leopard one on my MacBook Pro which I don't use every day and the first

00:09:07   couple times I opened it I was like whoa what year is it? 2007 in here but um

00:09:13   Anyway, so they're there. You can go check them out along with everybody else on the

00:09:17   internet. Last week we spoke about the Echo Show and I mentioned in a side that

00:09:23   during the boot sequence it has a little Intel inside logo which caught me by

00:09:28   surprise in this world of ARM processors. Matt pointed us to an iFixit article

00:09:33   where they take the thing apart and they list it as a 1.92 gigahertz Intel Atom

00:09:39   processor so the Adam line may seem familiar to you it probably should

00:09:44   that's what a lot of netbooks used back in the day it's a very low power

00:09:47   processor very often these days it can be cool without a fan and there's a 1.92

00:09:53   gig little Intel chipset in there doing echo show things. I should also say you

00:09:58   guys spoke about the echo show on upgrade this week and Jason wrote

00:10:01   something on six colors last week. I totally agree with his assessment that

00:10:05   it's like putting a billboard in your kitchen I think is how he phrased it

00:10:08   which is a great turn of phrase.

00:10:10   It is very much like that.

00:10:12   He is willing to put up with it to see how it evolves.

00:10:14   I was not.

00:10:15   That's where we kind of diverge.

00:10:16   But I think we agree on a lot of the problems

00:10:19   in the early days of the Echo Show.

00:10:21   And it seems like already Amazon has made some tweaks

00:10:24   to make it less annoying, and I think that they will

00:10:26   continue to do so.

00:10:27   So if you're still interested in the Echo Show

00:10:30   or still have more questions about it,

00:10:32   Jason goes much deeper in detail than I did on the show

00:10:34   in that blog post.

00:10:35   So we'll have a link to that in the show notes.

00:10:36   Yeah, Jason really, I think, just fundamentally liked the device more than you do, right?

00:10:41   Yes.

00:10:41   And I think that's perfectly fine, right? You know, like, we all have our personal tastes,

00:10:46   and it's just not a device for you. So that colors all of your opinions about it, right? And

00:10:52   it's going to be working similarly for him. Like, his initial opinion is stronger than yours. He

00:10:58   likes it more. But that means that everything else that he's going to say is of a lens which

00:11:03   is different to yours.

00:11:05   Sure, that's the beauty of reviewing products. We don't all have to agree. So,

00:11:09   before we get into sort of the meat of the follow-up, I did put this link in here this

00:11:14   morning. I don't remember if we talked about this on the show, we were going to at some point and we

00:11:19   didn't, but I know we've gotten a couple emails about it from listeners about the, especially the

00:11:24   first gen Apple Watch, the charging like glass on the back, I don't know what you would call that,

00:11:29   like the surface on the back with the heart rate sensors. Sometimes those just come off

00:11:35   and there's adhesive in there that holds it together.

00:11:37   And it seems like Apple is putting together

00:11:41   a official repair program for this.

00:11:43   So what we have heard from listeners

00:11:46   and people on Twitter is that if this happens,

00:11:48   pictures in the show notes, you ought to look at them

00:11:51   even if you don't own an Apple Watch.

00:11:52   It's kind of crazy to see the back of this thing

00:11:53   just fall out.

00:11:54   That if you have this problem,

00:11:56   Genius bars have been replacing the watches,

00:11:59   at least for most people sort of just on the spot.

00:12:03   But it seems like Apple is making this more of an official program now, which is good.

00:12:08   That they will cover this repair for three years from the date of purchase.

00:12:13   Which is what Apple does if there's some sort of manufacturing defect.

00:12:16   And it seems like that's what it is.

00:12:17   Not every watch is doing this.

00:12:18   If you have a first-generation Apple Watch, you don't have to live in fear that this happens.

00:12:22   But if it does, it seems like Apple's going to take care of you.

00:12:25   So that popped up this morning and I thought it was worth a mention.

00:12:28   Yeah, I mean there is a Series 1 Apple Watch in use in our home every single day.

00:12:33   no problems like this, like nothing even nearly happening. So of course it could

00:12:37   happen but it doesn't mean that it will happen. It's like any of these things,

00:12:40   right, like that might have been made somewhere and the adhesive that they were

00:12:43   using over that two-week span wasn't as strong, like whatever. Or like

00:12:47   dependent on the type of person you are, the amount of working out that you do, it

00:12:51   might loosen it, right, like stuff like that I guess. There's no telling. So I

00:12:55   think it's definitely like a limited problem. I think we would hear

00:12:59   about it much more if every single you know first an Apple watch is just

00:13:04   falling apart it seems to be just a small batch.

00:13:08   All right we're not done with follow-up yet but looking at how much we have left

00:13:12   I think it might be time to take a break. Today's show is brought to you by

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00:15:04   So the next section follow-up I've named touch ID versus face ID versus connected.

00:15:12   So this topic we spoke about last week generated more follow-up than anything

00:15:18   we've done in a while and I've kind of picked through it and chosen some themes.

00:15:24   A lot of people wrote very similar things and so I'm sorry if you don't get

00:15:29   credit but we did read everything. First a lot of people were asking about or

00:15:34   talking about the idea of this is more than just like taking a picture of your

00:15:39   face and people thought that maybe face ID, still funny to say, is that some

00:15:47   combination of Core ML and ARKit? Like could these new frameworks do something

00:15:53   clever together? And Federico, since you are the teacher, I was curious if this

00:15:58   rings true to you or do you, what do you think? Well, the entire face recognition

00:16:04   engine would be based heavily on Core ML for sure. So that's a given, like

00:16:09   the way that the system would learn to recognize faces. I mean it already does

00:16:14   in the API. So we can only assume that Apple itself, for their own features, they're already

00:16:20   using this quite heavily. So that's for sure. ARKit I'm not sure about because it's primarily

00:16:26   meant to interact with the environment. So basically pointing the camera at stuff rather

00:16:33   than people. But you can combine the two, maybe face recognition and maybe ARKit, to sort of do

00:16:40   detection of surfaces. So in the API, right now developers cannot use ARKit to detect

00:16:48   vertical panes or vertical surfaces. You cannot recognize walls basically, but it appears that

00:16:54   the feature is available for Apple as a private API. The system can actually recognize a vertical

00:17:02   surface. So in theory it could be combined, I guess, to sort of, you know, using CoreML, using

00:17:09   ARKit and maybe using the depth information of a dual facing front camera, you can maybe use that

00:17:17   to isolate your face against some kind of background. But I think in general I don't see

00:17:23   ARKit becoming a fundamental piece of face recognition because it's primarily based on,

00:17:29   you know, that kind of demo that Apple did, basically understanding the environment and

00:17:35   doing stuff with the environment but not necessarily for face recognition because

00:17:39   those are separate APIs. But Core ML and Vision and depth information if the

00:17:45   iPhone 8 or the iPhone Pro gets a dual facing front camera, those for sure are

00:17:50   going to be used for this system. I think that makes sense. You know, I think the

00:17:54   the waters are muddied a little bit by the scanning in the Notes app. You know,

00:18:00   you can take a picture of a document, you don't have to be squared up with it and

00:18:03   it can straighten it out and people I think even Apple said that's using AR

00:18:07   Kit and maybe there was some confusion there. It's kinda using AR Kit like in the sense of

00:18:13   it's recognizing when the document is sitting on a surface and then like it

00:18:19   can use another API to like the rectangular detection and that type of

00:18:24   stuff that's what it can do it's not really AR Kit in the sense of you know

00:18:29   the same demo that Apple showed at WWDC and Notes is using the same engine.

00:18:35   It's like part of the same API is shared in the document scanner but it's not all

00:18:41   of it. It's very confusing and it's one of the things that I would like

00:18:46   Apple to clarify going forward because I need to know from my review so I will

00:18:51   keep you posted about that. Okay. George Rodin, I kind of disagree with

00:18:56   Federico's assumption that the authentication has to be like a selfie.

00:19:00   So we talked about, you know, hey you got to hold the the camera up to your face

00:19:04   so it can see you. He says that assumption is made based on the angle

00:19:08   view of the FaceTime camera of the phone. And I think we were clear in that we see

00:19:13   this being camera plus IR sensor and something else, but the camera still has

00:19:18   to see you. Like it's it you may not have to raise it all the way up to be a

00:19:22   a selfie, but I do think there has to be some line of sight, right?

00:19:25   Yeah, right. I mean, it's, I struggle to imagine how you wouldn't point the phone at your face

00:19:33   to authenticate properly with the degree of security that Apple imagines. And I mean, sure,

00:19:38   it's fun to imagine this kind of super wide lens, you know, camera that even if you're holding the

00:19:45   phone at waist level, it can somehow recognize your face by looking at your chin from below,

00:19:51   but that's unrealistic at best. So you're gonna have to at least make an attempt at taking a

00:19:58   selfie, even if it's not like... I'm not saying that you should be striking a pose to authenticate

00:20:04   with your face, but you know there has to be some kind of "let me grab my phone and let me look at

00:20:10   my face to authenticate" even if it takes a second. That's the entire point. Otherwise, you know,

00:20:15   let's call it chin authentication or neck authentication, you know, if you're supposed

00:20:20   to be looking at your face, not a very tiny portion of it from a very weird angle. So I struggle to see that.

00:20:28   Yeah, I think we maybe just weren't quite clear enough, but I think you're right.

00:20:33   There's definitely limitations here, and that's definitely one of them. Jason asks, and it was a

00:20:41   serious question and we did not think of it, but it is interesting to think about. In the case of

00:20:47   of identical twins. Identical twins, their fingerprints are still different but, you

00:20:52   know, I could go unlock my brother's phone, I guess. So yeah, so identical twins, good

00:20:57   luck with face ID, I guess. So here's my question about identical twins. Yes. How identical

00:21:03   are two people? Like, oh, they can be identical. No, no, I mean like we may see them that way,

00:21:09   right? But like, oh, you see the computer may see the differences. That's what I'm wondering.

00:21:13   How identical can two people be?

00:21:16   That's the question, right?

00:21:18   How accurate can this system be?

00:21:21   Like, sub-millimeter differences. Can it detect those?

00:21:25   Because, you know, the identical twin question

00:21:28   I think is the same as the 3D model question.

00:21:31   Like, what are these things actually looking for?

00:21:36   What does it map?

00:21:39   Is the distance between the eyes exactly the same?

00:21:42   the same right like is the curvature of the mouth exactly the same right like

00:21:47   how do these things change and what are these cameras looking for I think that

00:21:52   is the honestly I look forward to when BuzzFeed does a thing putting the two

00:21:58   identical twins in a room and seeing if they can unlock each

00:22:02   other's phones. Genuinely I look forward to seeing the results of a fun

00:22:07   test like that on YouTube. There's two things that I forgot to bring up last

00:22:10   time. The first one is how do you say no to face authentication? You just say no

00:22:16   in facial face you just go no. Just shake your head and say no. So that's my

00:22:21   first question. The other one is how does it relate to expressions like

00:22:29   with Touch ID my fingerprint doesn't change even if I move my finger if

00:22:36   If I'm happy, if I'm sad, if I'm in a hurry or if I have time, it doesn't matter.

00:22:41   The fingerprint mostly doesn't change.

00:22:45   But if I'm using face recognition and now all these mathematical calculations like the

00:22:49   curvature of my eyebrows and the distance between my eyes, all those data points, they

00:22:54   change because my face moves and because I have expressions.

00:22:58   And so I'm wondering how much can the algorithm be thrown off while still authenticating you?

00:23:05   - Well my thought on that would be,

00:23:07   like yes your fingerprint is a static thing,

00:23:10   but the part of your finger that touches the sensor is not.

00:23:14   So it can and does detect different variations

00:23:18   of your finger, like different movements,

00:23:20   different orientations.

00:23:22   My hope would be that it's a similar kind of ideal.

00:23:25   It will scan your face, you'll scan your face

00:23:28   making different faces, and over time it learns

00:23:30   and adapts, right?

00:23:31   Your face is, in a similar way to your fingerprint,

00:23:35   is the one thing that it is, but what this phone sees can be different every single time.

00:23:40   And I would hope that the data is mapped in and then is adapted as time continues.

00:23:44   Yeah, I think you're right.

00:23:47   It's interesting though.

00:23:48   It's interesting to think the change that could become within all the ramifications.

00:23:51   Yeah, I'm really excited about this, honestly.

00:23:54   I think that this is a really interesting thing to think about.

00:23:58   And it could and would be a potentially really, really big change, and that is intriguing

00:24:04   to me. There's a report out today saying it's such a big change that the new

00:24:09   iPhone may launch without Apple Pay which is just like come on there's no way.

00:24:13   I don't believe it for one second. No I can't see that I just I just that's

00:24:19   iOS 11 literally has new features based around Apple Pay like a headlining

00:24:27   feature for the iPhone will be this peer-to-peer Apple Pay stuff that's one

00:24:33   of the big things that they're talking about. Like Apple Pay will be with, I mean I would

00:24:39   put money on it. I will put Apple Pay money on it, right? Like they are not launching

00:24:43   this phone about Apple Pay. Apple Pay is one of the most important things for the company

00:24:47   right now, right? Like it's one of the services revenue streams. Like it is hugely important

00:24:53   to them. Like this whole, like Apple, like I think people are underestimating the fact

00:24:57   that Apple are creating a bank now, right?

00:25:00   Like that is what they are doing with this virtual touch Apple pay stuff

00:25:04   that is going to be in their flagship phone.

00:25:07   Like there's no way.

00:25:08   Yeah.

00:25:09   These analysts that issue these research notes or whatever these reports,

00:25:13   it feels like sometimes they live in a bubble and they don't pay

00:25:17   any minimal attention to whatever Apple is doing in software.

00:25:20   Well, stuff that's real easy to say when you want to make some money.

00:25:23   Apple has placed X orders with the supply chain.

00:25:26   but have you looked at what they are actually doing with iOS software?

00:25:29   How can you say that Apple Pay is not going to be part of the iPhone?

00:25:31   Have you ever looked at iOS in the past two years?

00:25:35   Like, it doesn't make any sense to me.

00:25:37   - Agreed. I think I just wanted to bring it up to make fun of it, so...

00:25:40   - Yeah. Good job.

00:25:42   - Federica, you drive a Cadillac now.

00:25:44   - Yes, I do.

00:25:46   In fact, I'm recording from my Cadillac today

00:25:50   because it also has a podcast room inside.

00:25:52   - Podcasts in cars recording podcasts?

00:25:56   - Podcasts in Cadillacs getting coffee, yeah.

00:26:00   That's what I do.

00:26:01   No, basically what happened is I got an email

00:26:04   from a reader and he attached two screenshots

00:26:09   and he was like, "I saw this on the Cadillac website

00:26:12   "and I'm not sure you're aware of this."

00:26:15   And basically what they're doing is

00:26:17   they have a section on the Cadillac website

00:26:21   where they're talking about the software features of the modern Cadillac cars.

00:26:27   And there's a section on this page about CarPlay.

00:26:31   And in the CarPlay graphics, there's an animated GIF.

00:26:36   And they want to show off the CarPlay home screen with the notification coming in from iMessage.

00:26:43   And the name of the person that they're using for iMessage is my name.

00:26:47   So you're on the Cadillac website, you're scrolling, it's all in English of course,

00:26:51   then you reach the you reach the CarPlay section and you see this notification

00:26:55   coming in from Federico Vittucci on the Cadillac website.

00:26:59   It's so weird! It's so weird!

00:27:01   You could have used any other like default like placeholder American name like Johnny Appleseed.

00:27:07   Johnny Appleseed, right?

00:27:09   Stuff like that. And as it turned out I think there's someone on the web development team

00:27:16   for Cadillac that is a fan of Mac stories and I'm pretty sure that this

00:27:20   person reached out on Twitter as well after I shared the screenshot so you

00:27:25   know it's a funny little Easter egg it's a I thought it was really cool also kind

00:27:30   of weird but cool mostly. Just if you can get them in touch for sponsorship I

00:27:35   really appreciate that it's a lifelong dream of mine to have a car

00:27:39   sponsor. I have absolutely no idea why. What would you say on the show about

00:27:46   Cadillac? You know what I would say? I would say that every Cadillac is

00:27:50   dedicated to innovation, performance, and craftsmanship for a better driving

00:27:54   experience. You're so good at this. You know you should sell advertisements for

00:27:58   a living. I'm working on it. Oh boy. Federico, you also, in addition to driving

00:28:08   Cadillac you have rewritten cover sheet by hand in beta 3. Have I said that I

00:28:14   don't like this name yet? Have I said this yet? Yes I agree with you it's a

00:28:18   weird name. I don't feel like you you have tell us more about it. I have I have

00:28:23   very particular thoughts on names of lots of things cover sheet is one of

00:28:27   them I just don't I know I get it I get the name but it doesn't sound anything

00:28:32   at all like what it is like it doesn't sound like that cover sheet does not

00:28:37   sound like if you say "oh go to the cover sheet" I wouldn't think "oh that's the

00:28:41   amalgamation notification center on the lock screen" 100% I get that no it doesn't

00:28:46   it's for you know for an OS that is surprisingly descriptive in terms of

00:28:52   the names of the features and the apps cover sheet is so nondescript like it

00:28:58   doesn't describe anything like what is a cover sheet it's like am I lying in bed

00:29:03   and am I cold? All of the things the cover sheet contains are not at all represented

00:29:10   by the name. It's not a sheet. It's not covers and it's not sheets. It's not covering anything.

00:29:17   Anyway, to your question Steven, yes I went into Cupertino with my scalpel and I redid

00:29:27   cover sheet. Basically in beta 3 Apple got rid of the, you know the weird seesaw

00:29:35   kind of gesture that I complained about for the past two weeks. Now when you swipe

00:29:42   down it's just one single list of notifications which is better because

00:29:46   you don't have to swipe down then swipe up and hold to release to load the past

00:29:52   notifications. Now you swipe down and it's like before. It's a whole list of

00:29:58   unseen and previous notifications. Group by day. I'm sorry Myke but group by app

00:30:04   is never coming back. Yeah I don't even like you know I don't even get upset

00:30:07   about this anymore because it's fine it's like this is my thing it's not

00:30:10   everyone's thing and it's never gonna happen again so whatever. So this is

00:30:14   better at least you don't have to do the whole to release gesture anymore. I still

00:30:20   think it's, aside from the fact that swiping down to view a fake lock screen that is not

00:30:26   locked, it's still weird to, at least to my personal taste. But it's still, I still think

00:30:35   it's still kind of slow to process and triage individual notifications. Yes, you can press

00:30:43   on them either with a long press or 3D touch and then either tap on a little X button or

00:30:51   swipe down while holding with 3D touch to remove it.

00:30:56   But it feels so slow for a couple of reasons.

00:30:59   First, I think there's just a psychological element of it feels faster to swipe and tap,

00:31:05   swipe and tap.

00:31:06   You know, we've been conditioned to do that everywhere on iOS, to delete messages, to

00:31:11   delete emails, to delete anything and we have developed, I think seriously as a

00:31:16   human race, we have developed a very good skill set as swiping and tapping.

00:31:21   It is akin to pull to refresh at this point. Yeah, yeah and there's also the

00:31:26   problem that the gesture itself to 3D touch and then swipe down as some odd

00:31:33   timing right now that sometimes fails like you swipe down and it doesn't

00:31:38   highlight the dismiss text, like it doesn't trigger that. And so I'm, especially on the

00:31:44   iPad, like I'm swiping down and it doesn't do anything.

00:31:47   It's so bad on the iPad because like it is a fixed animation and you feel that.

00:31:54   Where like on the iPhone it doesn't feel that way because it feels like there's

00:31:57   more direct manipulation by you pushing into the screen. But on the iPad you know

00:32:00   that's not the case so you're just waiting and it really frustrates me.

00:32:04   me. Have you tried pulling down on the lock screen? Have you seen what happens when you

00:32:09   do that?

00:32:10   You pull down on the lock screen?

00:32:13   If you're on the lock screen and you pull down as if you were going to pull down the

00:32:16   notification center, it kind of fades your notifications in but doesn't let you do it.

00:32:21   Because it's trying to show you, "No, no, they're down there!" That tells you everything

00:32:25   you need to know about how bad this design is because they know that people are going

00:32:30   to do that so they fade them in but no no it's not there yeah it that out of

00:32:36   everything that shows me the the internal fighting that I reckon is going

00:32:39   on over this feature right now you know a lot of people seem to be convinced this

00:32:46   is a great idea so either we're all stupid and one yeah I guess I just don't

00:32:55   see it. Like I continue to not see the like this greater good of switching from a notification

00:33:04   center that does what the name implies to "well here's your lock screen because you're used to it

00:33:10   and we want to basically babysit you because hey you pick up the phone and right it's on the lock

00:33:17   screen and you view notifications so you're not able to process to distinct locations at once

00:33:22   You want to have your own notifications in one place.

00:33:24   This is the same argument I really don't.

00:33:28   Yeah, honestly, at this point, I am past the point of believing

00:33:32   Apple is in a position to deal with notifications properly.

00:33:36   Time and time again, they have done a bad job of it.

00:33:38   So I'm just happy that they make the Apple Watch, which is a device

00:33:41   that gives me notifications in a manner that I like.

00:33:44   Yeah, and even in that case, it doesn't have all the settings

00:33:47   that we would like to have.

00:33:49   But I get the most important stuff notified to me in a way that makes sense and I can

00:33:54   triage nicely.

00:33:55   Yeah.

00:33:56   Because on the big iOS devices, at this point, whether it is a desire to not do it or a desire

00:34:03   to try and make a mass market version of whatever they think the notification should be, they

00:34:09   just can't do it right.

00:34:10   It's just not working.

00:34:12   So I've accepted this and moved on personally.

00:34:15   Yeah.

00:34:16   So, you know, the only part of the review that I've skipped so far, along with the stuff that doesn't work, like sharing iCloud storage, the only section of a feature that I could write about because it's done, it's there.

00:34:30   But I don't want to do its cover sheet and notifications because I cannot do it right now.

00:34:37   I'm struggling to process that.

00:34:39   I still don't understand.

00:34:40   And I'm hoping that someday I will wake up and be like, yes, I totally get it now.

00:34:45   So I'm waiting, but I don't know if it'll ever happen.

00:34:48   - We're at beta three.

00:34:49   It's not impossible, but it's becoming less and less likely.

00:34:54   - Yeah, you know, that's an interesting comment, Myke,

00:34:56   'cause things do change in later betas,

00:34:59   but each one that we get where the feature's the same,

00:35:02   it is more and more likely that the feature

00:35:05   is going to stay that way.

00:35:06   Like very rarely does something major change

00:35:08   in a late beta.

00:35:09   - Especially when they're making refinements

00:35:10   to the situation. - Right.

00:35:12   Like if they're polishing something you don't like,

00:35:15   you should get used to that thing.

00:35:16   - Yeah, right, like they are not changing this system,

00:35:20   they are making changes to the system that currently is,

00:35:22   but it's not, it's actually making it still, I think,

00:35:25   less like the old one, right?

00:35:28   But yeah, it's not good.

00:35:30   Federico, there has been a new addition to your household.

00:35:33   - Yeah, we finally bought a new MacBook Pro,

00:35:37   so my birthday-- - Surprise,

00:35:38   teach you switch him back.

00:35:39   He, you wore him down, you ground him down,

00:35:42   and he's going back to the Mac.

00:35:44   that is not accurate, it's not what is happening in mic at all.

00:35:49   Basically what I did was I bought a 2017, so the latest generation MacBook Pro with the touch bar 13" top of the line specs

00:36:00   as a birthday gift for Sylvia and now that she has a new MacBook Pro I can use her old 2015 MacBook Pro

00:36:11   So my old Air is finally retiring in a farm up north of Rome, which is actually my closet.

00:36:22   And now I'm recording and will be recording from now on from this more recent MacBook Pro that doesn't have a keyboard that is dying and that actually works and that can open two apps at once.

00:36:35   you know, all the features that you would expect from a modern computer, this 2015 MacBook Pro can do.

00:36:41   It feels nice, but what I want to talk about briefly is my very brief experience with the 2017 MacBook Pro.

00:36:50   So it's the first time that we own the computer with the Touch Bar or with the Space Gray design.

00:36:56   It looks fantastic and what I immediately loved was the touch bar. It clicked right away and the way that it puts shortcuts for stuff that you can do with the keyboard or you can do with the mouse, but it's right there.

00:37:15   I find that very convenient and Silvia agrees with me and it could be that we're not like I'm not a huge

00:37:22   user of keyboard shortcuts at least not to the extent that most Mac users are and I never was so

00:37:30   having a visual

00:37:33   shortcut right there in the keyboard

00:37:35   It reminds me of the shortcuts bar on iOS, which I also use all the time

00:37:39   You know the the buttons on the sides of the quick type suggestions I use those all the time

00:37:44   So the touch bar, it immediately made sense.

00:37:47   And I think it looks great.

00:37:50   Touch ID is amazing of course, being able to log into a Mac just by placing your fingerprint is what it should be and also why.

00:37:57   I'm a bit sad if it goes away but we'll see if it's a better system.

00:38:02   And the keyboard. I love the keyboard. I love the sound that it makes.

00:38:06   I love the depth of the keys when you press them. It's fantastic and I wish my Magic Keyboard was like that.

00:38:13   which I realize is an unpopular opinion.

00:38:15   I haven't really been paying much attention

00:38:17   to what the consensus among Mac users is.

00:38:20   I guess most people hate the Touch Bar

00:38:22   and hate the keyboard, and I love both of them, so yay.

00:38:26   - Let me ask you a couple of questions about the Touch Bar,

00:38:28   'cause I felt that way about the Touch Bar

00:38:32   the first time I ever used the Touch Bar

00:38:33   when I was paying attention to the Touch Bar.

00:38:36   My problem, like I think that having

00:38:38   the keyboard shortcuts and stuff there is really good.

00:38:41   I also think that that is a really great thing about it.

00:38:44   The thing that I didn't like about it was when I wasn't paying attention to it and was

00:38:48   switching from app to app and stuff like that, I personally didn't like the way that it would

00:38:53   catch in my peripheral vision.

00:38:56   So have you spent time just using the MacBook Pro?

00:38:59   Yeah, yeah, I set it up for Sylvia.

00:39:02   And you didn't find that to be distracting?

00:39:04   No, because the screen is also distracting, stuff changes on the screen and the touch

00:39:09   bar is another screen.

00:39:10   It's like having two screens, only one of them is tiny.

00:39:13   Yeah, I think for me it was just distracting because it was unexpected.

00:39:17   So maybe after some time I would get used to it, but it was just like, you know, things

00:39:22   were happening in a place that my brain wasn't expecting them to happen.

00:39:27   Which I think it's just a thing you'd have to get used to.

00:39:29   Yeah, I think it's because you use a Mac more, and so you're more used to the idea of having

00:39:34   a fixed place in that specific point of your field of vision that never changes.

00:39:41   But as someone who uses the iPad every day and I grab this new computer and

00:39:45   there's something moving down there like it doesn't bother me because I'm used to

00:39:51   stuff moving on the screen so it doesn't catch my attention but I know what you

00:39:54   mean and I think that's why. So that's an interesting difference. I think

00:40:01   you're right about the background like where you come from when you're

00:40:04   approach the touch bar definitely influences what you think about it. Like

00:40:08   Mac users who have been primarily Mac users for a long time find it

00:40:13   distracting, find it to be a bit gimmicky. I think that's where I come down on it

00:40:17   after months of using it now. Like it's nice but it doesn't add that much

00:40:23   and it takes away some things. But yeah I can see though like from the

00:40:30   iPad user perspective coming to the touch bar it it feels more at home and

00:40:35   in some ways it brings what's good about iOS and its input to the Mac. I find

00:40:42   that that difference very interesting because when you were talking about you

00:40:45   really like it both of you really like it like whoa like that really doesn't

00:40:48   jive with what most people have said but as I sit through and think about who

00:40:52   said those things the the background where you come from your primary

00:40:57   computing platform obviously is an influence in how you think about it.

00:41:00   Yeah, like, it's something that I would want on my keyboard. I would just, I know I'd need

00:41:04   to get used to it. Like, I didn't like when I was using your MacBook in San Jose that,

00:41:10   like, things were happening that I wasn't expecting, right? Like, it just kept catching

00:41:14   my eye. But I feel like over time I would get used to that, and I would go back to my

00:41:21   original feeling which is that I like the ability to have shortcuts at just arms reach

00:41:30   in the way that I set up my Wacom tablet where it has shortcut buttons and they do things

00:41:34   when I'm in Logic I would like to have access to that sort of stuff on the keyboard. I think

00:41:39   that Federico, again if you're not paying too much attention, I think the prevailing

00:41:45   thing right now about the keyboard is that there have been, it has been faulty in a lot of instances

00:41:52   for some people where like keys have been getting physically stuck. I think that has been the

00:41:56   problem with the keyboard right. So if you've been seeing people that are like "ah the keyboard sucks"

00:42:01   less people I think at least what I see Stephen you can correct me if I'm wrong

00:42:05   are complaining about like the travel it seems like Apple have made the travel and

00:42:10   all that sort of stuff a lot better but when this product was initially released there seemed to be

00:42:14   some some actual problems like technical problems with the keyboard. Yeah the the

00:42:20   keys are getting stuck to having failures with them. I have the 2016

00:42:24   MacBook Pro it seems to be slightly different on the 17 maybe hopefully

00:42:28   better. I haven't had any problems with mine but again I don't use that machine

00:42:30   daily but it seems like they're having some some problems with it and they've had

00:42:35   problems with the MacBook keyboards as well which are very similar. In fact my

00:42:39   wife has had one keyboard replacement on her MacBook and is due for a second

00:42:43   which is ridiculous on a machine that's two years old. But yeah, you know the

00:42:48   whole touch bar debate is sort of muddied by the fact that yeah the

00:42:52   keyboard has problems, some people just don't like the MacBook Pro, they get

00:42:55   Apple made the wrong decision surrounding it, and it's all very muddy.

00:42:59   But it's just fascinating to hear you guys talk about it with your different

00:43:03   backgrounds to me and how you feel about it. And I think Federico what

00:43:07   you're saying is like what Apple wants people to feel about the touch bar. Like

00:43:10   "Oh, it brings all this great stuff from iOS to the Mac."

00:43:13   And it just seems like some Mac people

00:43:15   are hesitant about that.

00:43:17   - Yeah.

00:43:19   Are the complaints of faulty keyboards

00:43:22   about this year's model as well or last year's?

00:43:26   - They seem to be primarily about the 2016.

00:43:28   I think it's too early to say

00:43:29   if the 2017s have the same problem.

00:43:31   - Yeah, I've seen people sharing pictures online

00:43:34   of keys that have been ripped out

00:43:37   and it shows that there is a difference,

00:43:38   like that there's this new little piece of rubber or something in the key which

00:43:42   is apparently making it better. I've seen stuff like that but you know I

00:43:46   haven't seen anything concrete. Yeah but Federico, so you went from a MacBook Air

00:43:51   well yeah two-thirds of a MacBook Air to a 2015 MacBook Pro. Is that a 13 or a 15

00:43:57   inch? 13. Okay so the size difference isn't huge. How do you how do you find

00:44:04   the Pro so far? I know you had obviously you had experience with it already but

00:44:08   Yeah, it's fine. It's faster. It's the same Mac, but it's got a retina display, which is nice.

00:44:15   But I'm used to it.

00:44:16   Yeah, yeah. Because I was thinking, like, what difference is it you're even going to see, right?

00:44:21   It's like, you know, you're not doing anything on it that you would feel the power, but the retina display would make a big difference.

00:44:28   Yeah, it's got a retina display. I don't know. The keyboard is newer. It's not broken.

00:44:36   the keys. It has all the keys. Doesn't have the touch bar and touch ID, which I really

00:44:44   want now that I've seen them. I don't know, I don't even listen to music on it. I have

00:44:49   no idea. All I do is Skype and Google Docs and Slack. It's fine. It's just a dumb terminal

00:44:56   for me. Later this year I'm gonna be in the US for like a whole month, like four or five

00:45:03   weeks. I'm starting to get nervous about my MacBook. Mm-hmm you should be. Because

00:45:09   that's the computer that needs to produce everything for a month. I'm starting to get

00:45:16   a little bit nervous about it. I'm just gonna say. I don't know. Like it's

00:45:20   it's really been fine in a pinch for everything I've needed it to do. I mean I

00:45:25   just remember at WWDC you were doing something on it and were bemoaning at

00:45:30   speed and then we ended up using my MacBook Pro.

00:45:34   Yeah because it is super slow, it is very slow.

00:45:38   But it works when it's in a pinch but I'm worrying about what a month's worth.

00:45:42   I gotta say man, the 13" Pro weighs what the 13" Air did.

00:45:47   It's still pretty small and light.

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00:47:22   So this week in #TGTeaches we're talking about iOS 11 location and privacy changes.

00:47:29   Federico, what is Apple doing here?

00:47:31   What does it mean?

00:47:32   So there's a few interesting changes here and the bigger ones are about location and

00:47:38   the way that location tracking is represented on iOS.

00:47:43   So some context.

00:47:44   There's two primary types of location authorization that you can grant to third-party apps on

00:47:50   The when in use location tracking, so while you're using the app, the app can ask for location services or the always authorization, which means even in the background, so if an app is not in the foreground, it can ask for location services and in some cases get launched in the background to perform some location-based features.

00:48:16   According to Apple at a session at WWDC, 21% of third-party apps on iOS use the "Always" type of authorization.

00:48:31   And Apple thinks, maybe they have the data about this, or I assume they're checking the APIs that developers actually use,

00:48:40   use that most of these apps, they don't actually need the always authorization.

00:48:47   And so maybe they're asking for that type of access out of laziness because it's easier or

00:48:55   because they want to be clever about it, because they think, well, maybe, you know, just ask

00:48:59   for always because we always want to attract users that maybe in the future we'll figure out

00:49:04   why we want to attract them and to use that data.

00:49:07   And there have been some high profile cases of apps that were using the always authorization that

00:49:12   couldn't work unless you granted that type of location access such as Uber, for example, they

00:49:17   were doing some shady things with location.

00:49:19   So Apple basically wants to make sure that whenever possible, developers use the when in use

00:49:25   location authorization in their apps.

00:49:28   And they're going to do this in a they're going to tackle this problem in a bunch of ways.

00:49:33   The first one is they're reworking entirely the way that these permissions are granted.

00:49:39   So, you know, the alert that comes up when you, you know, when an app asks for location

00:49:45   access in iOS 10, the app can bring up an alert that says, I want to ask for location

00:49:54   while in use, or if the app says, no, I don't want to have the when in use authorization.

00:49:59   I always want to track location all the time.

00:50:03   And so in iOS 10, an app can display an alert that says,

00:50:06   this app wants to always access your location.

00:50:09   And you can say continue or deny the authorization.

00:50:12   That's gonna change.

00:50:13   So by default, the option that says,

00:50:18   while using the app is always gonna be in there.

00:50:21   And this change is being retroactively applied

00:50:25   to iOS 10 apps running on iOS 11.

00:50:28   So an iOS 10 app that uses the always type

00:50:33   of authorization only.

00:50:35   So if the developer has hard coded the always option

00:50:38   into their app, the alert will automatically change

00:50:41   in iOS 11 and include the when in use option.

00:50:45   And for iOS 11 apps, Apple is recommending a new type

00:50:50   of authorization flow.

00:50:51   So they're suggesting the developers do this.

00:50:54   You start off during the onboarding process for your app,

00:50:58   You start off by asking for when in news.

00:51:01   So, the app wants to use your location for X and Y reasons.

00:51:05   They're telling developers,

00:51:08   go with the when in news authorization first,

00:51:11   because it scares off fewer people.

00:51:14   It's more, it can help you earn your users trust,

00:51:19   and it doesn't consume extra power.

00:51:21   It doesn't ask for background privileges.

00:51:23   It's the right option to use when you,

00:51:26   it's a new app and you wanna understand the app.

00:51:28   Later, there's a new API in iOS 11 that allows you to ask for an upgrade.

00:51:33   So if you're an app that uses a location at some point, whether it's after X number of

00:51:39   days or after a user has completed a specific feature.

00:51:44   So once a user trusts your app, you can go with the upgrade prompt and you can say the

00:51:50   123 location app also wants to track your location always because it can perform these

00:51:56   and that features. And here's where it gets interesting. If you don't start with the when in use option, if you go with

00:52:08   "Yeah, I just don't care. I want to ask for always access." And if the user deny, you're never going to be able to ask

00:52:16   for that upgrade prompt. So Apple has sort of indicated an optimal path for asking for location services, which is

00:52:25   make sure that you support both Always and When in News.

00:52:29   When in News is the default option.

00:52:32   It's the first one in the menu.

00:52:33   It's the one we recommend.

00:52:35   And if you use that type of location authorization,

00:52:38   later you're gonna be able to ask for a prompt

00:52:41   that this sort of upgrade can be performed in app.

00:52:44   You don't have to go tell users,

00:52:46   go into settings and make sure that you switch from

00:52:49   While Using to Always.

00:52:51   you can let this alert ask users to press a button

00:52:56   and do the upgrade.

00:52:57   And there's also gonna be the redesigned alert

00:53:01   that explains, Apple calls them the purpose strings,

00:53:05   it's two textual comments that explains what an app do,

00:53:09   what apps can do with different types of location access.

00:53:13   And this is in terms of what is changing

00:53:17   in the API for authorization.

00:53:18   So once again, one in use and always Apple prefers that you start off with one in use

00:53:25   and later you ask users to upgrade to a higher level of location access with background

00:53:31   privileges because they think it's the right thing to do.

00:53:33   So let me just go over some of this again so I can make sure I'm fully understanding this.

00:53:38   So if an application wants to track me at all times, right, like that is all that they

00:53:44   want. The point of the application is they need to always know where I am.

00:53:48   the first time I open it what will they show me what can I see like what is the

00:53:54   alert did I just say like we always want to track you so with iOS 11 with the new

00:53:59   system the alert looks like you have three options when in use always and

00:54:05   never when in use is when in use is the first option in this list and you have

00:54:11   this explanation at the top that says with when in use you will be able to

00:54:15   access these features and if you choose always you're gonna be able to use these

00:54:20   features. It's like there's a whole explanation in the alert and you have

00:54:24   three options and while using the app is the first one.

00:54:29   Okay so you get to then make the decision right and so you can say, someone can say

00:54:36   like always right? So that's how they would see it but there is also

00:54:41   So this secondary one where they don't present always as an option?

00:54:45   Yes. Yeah.

00:54:46   And if you do that, which is recommended, later on, you can throw up another prompt which says,

00:54:54   "Oh, hey, this has been fine so far. Are you okay with us looking at this all the time?"

00:54:59   That kind of thing.

00:54:59   Exactly. Yes. Exactly. Yeah.

00:55:01   So what happens if somebody...

00:55:04   So there's the blue bar thing. What's the blue bar thing all about?

00:55:07   Okay, so before we get to talk about the blue bar, a quick mention.

00:55:11   You know, there's also the icons, the location icons, like the arrows.

00:55:15   What the arrows mean is changing also.

00:55:20   So in iOS 10, you had like a solid arrow for most of the location services in the status bar.

00:55:27   And region monitoring, which is one of the location services, had a hollow arrow.

00:55:33   And the continuous monitoring, so like turn-by-turn directions, had the blue status bar.

00:55:40   With iOS 11, the blue status bar we're going to talk about separately, but the location, the arrow icons,

00:55:47   it's empty, so it's a hollow icon when a location is being requested by an app.

00:55:54   It's a solid error for a few seconds when an app is actively receiving your location.

00:56:00   So request, empty error, solid error, it's actually reading and receiving your

00:56:07   location. But the most important part is the blue status bar. So when an app is

00:56:15   using the always type of access in the background and it's monitoring, like it's

00:56:22   kicking off to ask for a location service in the background, you will get

00:56:26   the double height status bar that says something like "Google Maps is actively using your location".

00:56:35   And Apple is doing this, their argument, which I find very amusing, their argument is that

00:56:40   apps, they're actually making developers a favor because this bar, and I'm quoting, "matches

00:56:49   expectations and developers were missing out on a feature by not having the blue bar appear

00:56:58   on iOS.

00:57:00   So Apple's public argument is, "Look, you should be happy that we're doing this because

00:57:06   your app was using location in the background, but users didn't know about them.

00:57:11   So now they have a way that they can see that your app is using their location always in

00:57:16   the background and they can tap on it to launch your app.

00:57:19   But in practice, it's really a shame bar and they're actually location shaming apps that ask for location access because the bar is super distracting.

00:57:29   It gets in the way.

00:57:30   It squeezes your content underneath.

00:57:33   And yeah, sure.

00:57:34   I'm happy as a developer that people are aware of my features.

00:57:40   But do we really want to talk about this in the way that Apple is selling this idea to

00:57:46   sessions like we we all know that some developers, some companies were using the

00:57:53   always authorization to do some shady things in the background, whether it's tracking you

00:57:58   for, you know, to sort of build a profile of your habits or to sell you against

00:58:04   advertisements of some kind and to have an easier way to say, "Hey, why is

00:58:10   Uber launching in the background and using my location? Now I'm not using

00:58:14   Uber. I'm not requesting Uber. What's it doing?" It's a way to tell people and

00:58:19   especially people who are gonna update in September, not people like us who put

00:58:24   the betas now on our devices or who do fresh installs of the iOS 11 beta,

00:58:29   but people like my mom or my girlfriends, they update to iOS 11 in

00:58:33   September and suddenly all of these location apps that are using the always

00:58:37   type of authorization in the background and I understand they have an arrow in

00:58:42   the status bar most people don't notice the arrow now they're gonna see the blue

00:58:46   status bar they're gonna be like what is going on here let me check on this app

00:58:49   let me go into my privacy settings because I don't like this why is he

00:58:52   using my location in the background so yeah it's a it's a blue chain bar and I

00:58:57   totally get it like it's I totally understand why Apple wants to do it I

00:59:01   I know that there's some companies and high profile companies also using this technique

00:59:07   to, you know, these companies, anything they're going to be able to do to build out a profile

00:59:13   of their users or to intrude your privacy in some sort of manner, they're going to do

00:59:19   it.

00:59:20   I mean, just yesterday we saw that Apple added a new API for Safari View Controller because

00:59:25   some companies have been using the Safari View Controller

00:59:30   on iOS 10 to track users for advertisements reasons.

00:59:34   And now Apple has sort of built a new API

00:59:36   that is more secure and private.

00:59:39   Like these companies are always gonna find all these APIs

00:59:43   in iOS to do something that Apple doesn't like.

00:59:46   And it makes sense to me that now we have this blue bar

00:59:50   that gets in the, you really cannot miss it.

00:59:52   It gets in the way, it's there.

00:59:55   - I wanna clarify on the blue bar,

00:59:57   'cause I need to understand it.

00:59:59   If I have said an application is allowed to track me

01:00:02   all the time, am I gonna see this blue bar all the time now?

01:00:07   - So that's my question.

01:00:08   Right now, the only way that I can test this

01:00:11   is with an iOS 10 app, actually two iOS 10 apps,

01:00:15   moves and Google Maps, that had basically being grandfathered

01:00:22   into location, always location access from the old iOS 10 installation.

01:00:27   Now I see the blue bar on iOS 11. Even back on iOS 10, I manually said,

01:00:33   yes, I want you to track me because I want to use your features.

01:00:37   I don't know in iOS 11, with an iOS 11 compiled app

01:00:42   built for the iOS 11 SDK, if I manually press always.

01:00:46   I mean, even in iOS 10, you had to manually press always.

01:00:50   It's not like there was some shady way for apps to enable it without your

01:00:54   consent. So I assume you're also going to see the blue bar with iOS 11 apps,

01:01:00   even if you manually say, yes, I want you to always track me.

01:01:04   And that's one of my concerns.

01:01:07   There are a subset of users, again, people like Myke and I, we want Google Maps

01:01:13   to track us in the background because we want to use the timeline feature.

01:01:17   You know, I think it's convenient and I want Google to track me and to build a map of my movements.

01:01:21   Some people may find that creepy.

01:01:23   I find that useful.

01:01:25   Look, it's it's an open decision.

01:01:28   And now I'm going to be basically punished as a user by seeing the blue bar

01:01:32   getting the way every few minutes for a decision that I consciously made.

01:01:36   You know, so. Yeah.

01:01:39   So what I think this one doing is I'll just be way, way, way, way, way

01:01:42   more picky about the apps that I will let do it, and I'll probably end up turning it off.

01:01:46   for a bunch of apps if it keeps popping up, right?

01:01:49   Like, I feel like that, I mean,

01:01:51   I think this is probably what Apple are looking to do,

01:01:54   but I don't know if necessarily introducing frustrations

01:01:58   is one of the best things to do for your users.

01:02:01   Like, I get why they're doing it,

01:02:03   but like people are gonna find it frustrating,

01:02:05   and I mean, I don't know who people blame in that scenario.

01:02:09   Like, do they blame iOS or do they blame the app?

01:02:12   I don't know.

01:02:12   But that does feel like something that will be,

01:02:16   will be frustrating but what it will result in, at least for me, is rethinking the applications

01:02:21   that I allow to have my location data.

01:02:25   Yeah, to be fair, in my usage so far, this chainbar also exposed how developers actually

01:02:34   use location in the background.

01:02:36   So Google Maps seems to be extremely judicious about accessing location.

01:02:41   It pings my location services every few minutes and it only lasts like a couple of seconds.

01:02:48   Because it checks on your location and it says "okay this pin goes on your timeline" or "nope

01:02:55   you're still in the same place I don't need to monitor you anymore for the next few minutes".

01:03:00   So Google Maps is okay because I only see for like two seconds.

01:03:05   moves, which is owned by Facebook now, I had to uninstall because they were so bad that like

01:03:12   it almost, the blue bar was almost stuck, like for several minutes moves was pinging my location in

01:03:20   the background and I think it's because moves is very old app built for old APIs for location

01:03:27   services. I'm pretty sure they don't even use the old, like the new significant location change API.

01:03:34   they basically, whenever they see like a GPS change,

01:03:39   they're like, "Well, let's just stay in the background now

01:03:41   and see whatever happens."

01:03:43   And then we use the Facebook database of points of interest

01:03:46   to determine what this is.

01:03:48   So I think, you know, you're gonna see the apps

01:03:51   that actually make good use of the location services APIs

01:03:54   in the background and the bad players.

01:03:56   And I think, you know, like you said,

01:04:01   we will end up uninstalling some of these apps for now and keeping Google Maps installed because

01:04:06   it's not too bad. But you know when the blue bar appears I kind of wish there was a setting for me

01:04:11   to say "I know and it's okay, don't show me the blue bar" or I don't know some kind of threshold

01:04:18   to be met like after two weeks or after a hundred appearances of the blue bar stop showing the blue

01:04:25   Bluebar because I'm aware of this but right now it's all or nothing type of setting.

01:04:31   Yeah I think that's gonna frustrate me like I feel like I'm gonna

01:04:35   have Nanny iOS right like looking after me like if I tell an application under

01:04:41   this new system like we're good I don't want to keep seeing that Bluebar

01:04:48   that would annoy me. Yeah it feels heavy-handed it feels like they could do

01:04:52   some more to explain to users what's going on but not do it in a way that's

01:04:58   gonna annoy them for years on end. There's got to be a middle ground here.

01:05:02   Like you said, every few minutes you feel like you see Google Maps for a few

01:05:06   seconds. I do not want to do that. If I'm using my iPhone and every

01:05:10   couple of minutes the status bar goes blue and pushes all the content down,

01:05:14   that's gonna get really annoying real quick.

01:05:17   Yeah, but you see why Apple is doing this, right? From their perspective,

01:05:21   They were like, Tim Cook is like, "So these Uber folks, they've been doing location in the background,

01:05:27   is that even an API that we have?" Because you have to assume that these executives, they don't know the nitty-gritty details of

01:05:32   what is a location service API? What does it constitute? It's like, "So these Uber folks, I'm really upset.

01:05:37   What can we do? Can we tell people about this background stuff that I don't like?

01:05:42   Do we really have to keep the API?" And Craig Federick is like, "Well, actually, Tim,

01:05:46   you know, we cannot kill off the location services API because, you know, a bunch of apps depend on it."

01:05:51   And Tim is like, "So can we shame them in some way?

01:05:55   Can we tell people, look, this app is using your location in the background?"

01:05:58   And it's like, you know, I have an idea.

01:06:00   Let's just rejigger the double height status bar that we use, you know, in a bunch of places

01:06:05   and tell people this app is using your location in the background.

01:06:08   And there we go.

01:06:09   And that's probably honestly what happened.

01:06:11   Like I see why Apple wants to do it.

01:06:14   It's not the most elegant solution, especially for, is there even a thing called location

01:06:18   power users?

01:06:19   I don't know.

01:06:20   But for people like us it's going to be annoying and for honestly everybody else it's going

01:06:25   to be, I don't want to say a life saver, but a lot of people are going to be thankful that

01:06:29   they're going to save battery and they're going to be more, you know, they're going

01:06:33   to have the peace of mind that some apps are no more tracking them in the background.

01:06:39   Yeah, I just think if they hate it so much, just stop doing it.

01:06:43   Like if you hate that people are doing this tracking so much that you're trying to shame

01:06:47   people, then just take the API out.

01:06:50   Like I understand what you're saying about like, oh, it would really harm applications,

01:06:54   but like the lengths that they're going, that's the next step.

01:06:57   So why not just go there?

01:07:01   If you want to shame applications to the point that every time they're pinging a location

01:07:05   server it's making a physical change on somebody's iPhone, you may as well just remove the ability.

01:07:13   I don't know.

01:07:14   Yeah, but they cannot really remove the ability, right?

01:07:16   It's going to be a problem for thousands of apps and they're going to have to reverse

01:07:21   the decision almost immediately.

01:07:24   Because so many apps depend on this.

01:07:28   And there are also considerable benefits to keeping the always access.

01:07:33   I want to know when my Uber is about to arrive or I want to know when my food ordering app

01:07:39   is about to deliver my meal.

01:07:42   There are benefits to this.

01:07:44   just Apple seems to think that the benefits are like you can count them on one hand for a couple

01:07:51   of apps and all these other guys that don't need them. They don't need that type of access. So it's

01:07:57   a way of saying it's okay we can keep the API but as a user you should be extremely careful with what

01:08:05   you do with that and as you as developers you should really go with this different flow. Like

01:08:12   they're keeping it, but you can tell if they could remove it, they could, they would.

01:08:19   Like they would just go ahead and rip apart the API.

01:08:22   They're keeping the functionality, but they are hobbling it, right?

01:08:25   Yes.

01:08:25   Like, you know, it's like it's still here, but you really don't want to do this.

01:08:30   And that's why I find it just to be like, I see the decision-making process,

01:08:34   but it is a strange one, right? Because it's so close to the point of making it unusable,

01:08:38   it sounds like.

01:08:40   And I wonder if maybe, and once again I haven't tested iOS 11 location enabled apps.

01:08:50   So I'm basing this off of tests with iOS 10 apps, but I'm wondering if maybe a solution would be to show the Blue Status Bar only for some, like a subset of the location services background APIs,

01:09:07   or only if it goes on for more than, I don't know, five seconds.

01:09:11   Like, for prolonged use or for some APIs, like, you can not show it for significant location change,

01:09:21   but you should show the blue bar for region monitoring. Like, the more intensive APIs

01:09:26   for longer than x seconds, then show the blue bar. I wonder if that would be an acceptable compromise.

01:09:33   All right, should I take a break?

01:09:34   Yeah.

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01:11:03   So Federico, I think people listening to this show,

01:11:07   especially over these Teachy Teachers segments,

01:11:11   will know that right now that you've completed your research

01:11:14   and you're diving in to writing the iOS 11 review,

01:11:17   which is gonna become, as I think every year on this show,

01:11:20   is gonna become something that we keep dipping in and out of

01:11:22   as you're going further and further through the process.

01:11:25   So I wanted to kind of understand from you

01:11:27   at the point that you are right now,

01:11:28   a little bit about the tools, the apps,

01:11:30   and the services that you're using to make this happen.

01:11:33   And I've broken this down into kind of what I assume

01:11:35   are the three biggest subjects matters here.

01:11:38   So research, writing, and editing,

01:11:40   'cause that's kind of where you are

01:11:41   in the process right now.

01:11:43   And so I'm wondering, I'm assuming the WWDC app

01:11:46   is playing a big part of your research.

01:11:49   And I wonder kind of how have you been using that?

01:11:51   What has that been like and what apps are you combining it with to complete the research

01:11:56   for your iOS 11 review?

01:11:59   So I use the WWDC app primarily in the research and note-taking phase.

01:12:07   So if you split up my review writing process in three big stages, there's the note-taking

01:12:14   and research, writing and editing.

01:12:16   The first phase is when I go to WWDC, like physically my person goes to WWDC and takes

01:12:23   notes and talks to people and saves pots.

01:12:26   And there's the remote WWDC attending, which is when I come back and I start watching the

01:12:32   session videos with the WWDC app.

01:12:35   What I do is this.

01:12:37   I go into the All view of the app.

01:12:41   You can view all the videos.

01:12:43   And then I tap on the filter icon and I say I want to see iOS.

01:12:49   I usually exclude developer tools videos because I don't talk about those in my reviews.

01:12:55   And then from the grid of videos change, so I go through the grid of every single video

01:13:02   and I mark the ones that I think are going to be interesting for my review as favorites.

01:13:07   I download them and I go back into the filter mode and I say show me iOS videos

01:13:13   that I have downloaded, that I have not watched and that I've also marked as

01:13:18   favorites. So like I have this subset of videos and I start watching them in

01:13:24   split view with WWDC on one side and notes, the Apple Notes app on the other. A

01:13:30   difference from last year that I think I mentioned is rather than having an

01:13:35   an individual note for each video, I clustered more videos together into a single note.

01:13:44   So instead of having five or six videos, five or six notes for each drag and drop video,

01:13:51   I have a single drag and drop note with notes from six sessions inside.

01:13:57   And that kind of helped me already in the research phase establish an order and a sense

01:14:03   of what are the chapters and the sections that I'm gonna use in my review.

01:14:09   Also a note on Split View, it's much better if you use an external keyboard when watching

01:14:15   video and taking notes on the other side because you don't have the software keyboard covering

01:14:22   the screen but there's something that really annoys me is how with the external keyboard

01:14:28   connected and typing into a text field, the shortcut bar covers the playback controls of,

01:14:35   I think at least in iOS 10 it used, I'm not sure in iOS 11, I think it still does. Anyway,

01:14:40   I constantly had to, I either had to use the hardware pause button on my keyboard or

01:14:46   disable the shortcut bar, tap pause and then tap play again. Anyway, watched 50 videos,

01:14:54   I took notes and then when I had all my notes together, I started...

01:15:01   First I removed the filter from the WWC app just to double check that yes, I watched all the videos

01:15:09   that I wanted to watch and I caught a couple of videos that I missed and I was like what was I

01:15:14   thinking I should be watching this video. So I finished all the sessions I guess there were 50 or 51

01:15:21   And then for a couple of days I cleaned up my notes.

01:15:25   There were a lot of duplicate content or duplicate sentences,

01:15:29   stuff that I saved, that I think about, but that actually I already put into the app.

01:15:35   So I did a cleanup and sort of a basic organization of my notes.

01:15:39   Then I installed a beta of iThoughts, my mind mapping app of choice,

01:15:47   which is the app that I use every year for outlining my iOS 10 review, iOS review.

01:15:53   And this year I took my iOS 10 review template from last year.

01:15:58   I have a template because I have a style that I like, like certain colors, I like certain shapes.

01:16:04   You don't want to be setting that up every year.

01:16:06   Like, no, so I have a template.

01:16:08   Yeah.

01:16:08   And the change that I made this year is I installed the new San Francisco typeface

01:16:16   on iOS. Side note, San Francisco used to be a zip file on the Apple developer website and I got a

01:16:24   lot of "well actually you don't have to go through this process" type of tweets on Twitter because a

01:16:30   lot of people assume that San Francisco is still a zip file that contains a few TTF and OTF whatever

01:16:36   fonts. Apple has since switched to an installer package so what I did is I had to get my macbook

01:16:45   and download the San Francisco package, use an app called Pacifist that lets you inspect the contents of a package,

01:16:51   find the directory with the fonts, sync that

01:16:54   folder back to iOS and then I use an app called

01:16:59   FonFonT, FonFonT, something like that, to install the fonts on iOS 11.

01:17:04   Parenthesis closed. So what I did is I

01:17:09   used the different San Francisco text styles in descending order of

01:17:14   of size and weight to give a style to my mind map.

01:17:19   So the central nodes are heavy and big, and then as you drill down into chapters and sections and subsections and notes,

01:17:29   the font gets smaller and the family changes. It's very nice actually. I like it.

01:17:36   Anyway, I started bringing over the notes from the Notes App into iThoughts.

01:17:40   I used drag and drop, which was amazing.

01:17:44   And actually, the process was very, very easy and much faster than in previous years because of drag and drop.

01:17:51   No more clipboard, no more Command C, Command V. It's all tactile, you can touch, you can swipe and move and drop, it's awesome.

01:18:00   And again, in another couple of days, basically during this process of bringing over the notes into the mind map,

01:18:08   It may appear to be an extra step and to be clunky, but in practice it serves as a second

01:18:14   layer of cleaning up and thinking about it.

01:18:18   Like, now that I'm also moving this information back and forth, do I have any other thoughts

01:18:23   right now?

01:18:24   Do I really want to talk about this?

01:18:26   So it may seem like I'm complicating my life, but in practice it's a mechanical way of forcing

01:18:34   my brain to look at what I wrote and to think about it and to give it some structure. So after

01:18:41   two days I had a mind map and I organized it in chapters. Right now I have 23 chapters, 23 is my

01:18:50   lucky number. If you're a Mac Stories reader you should maybe go back into the archive of my

01:18:56   reviews and stories and see if you can spot all the references to the number 23 you can find.

01:19:04   So there's gonna be 23 chapters and what I'm doing is now I'm into the writing process

01:19:10   which I'm using Ulysses this year instead of Scrivener.

01:19:16   Myke, feel free to ask questions or Steven, otherwise I'm just gonna go on.

01:19:20   I'll let you get through and then I'll mop up at the end.

01:19:23   Okay, I'm using Ulysses because of the proper markdown support.

01:19:30   I got my custom theme with my custom font going on. I got the integration with DevOnThink, I got my workflows and

01:19:37   I have a separate project called iOS 11 Reviewing Ulysses. Each project contains sheets and each sheets

01:19:46   represent a chapter and each chapter has sections. In terms of markdown, this means a chapter

01:19:54   is a sheet and

01:19:56   sections inside of a sheet are

01:19:58   H2 and H3, H4, H5 addings. I'm gonna be using the same overall structure of last year, so there's going to be

01:20:09   sides, boxes on the website, there's gonna be footnotes, there's gonna be galleries. We're doing some new things

01:20:15   but that doesn't matter right now. And for every chapter that I complete, that I write in Ulysses, I put in a

01:20:25   green checkmark emoji into the relevant branch of the mind map. If there's a

01:20:31   chapter, yeah it is pretty, if there's a chapter that I don't want to write right

01:20:35   now like the cover sheet I put in a stop sign which means don't do this now. I

01:20:41   should probably put in the death, the skull emoji for the cover sheet actually.

01:20:46   And one of the benefits of Ulysses is there's an easier way to do

01:20:52   what I used to do in Scrivener with the text highlights. I used to

01:20:57   highlight different portions of text to mean different things like this

01:21:03   is a section that you need to double check, maybe it's a feature or a design

01:21:07   detail that is gonna change in a future beta. So I'm using the built-in Ulysses

01:21:11   features for this, like there's comments, comment blocks, one of them is the source

01:21:17   code which is in my theme it's a blue highlight I'm using that to highlight

01:21:22   where I'm gonna be dropping images and videos. I'm using all of the features of

01:21:26   Ulysses and the plan is eventually to compile all this project into a single

01:21:32   draft and to export it back into editorial which is where I will be doing

01:21:37   my final editing as I do every year. This is the core, it's a process right now.

01:21:47   So I want to jump back on a couple of little things.

01:21:49   So with your iThoughts mind map,

01:21:52   do you use the mind map for the entire process,

01:21:56   or is there a part of the review where the mind map kind of goes by the wayside?

01:22:00   When the writing is done and every branch is collapsed,

01:22:07   every chapter has a green checkmark, when there's no more stuff to write,

01:22:12   the mind map goes away and actually uninstalls iThoughts,

01:22:15   because I don't use it anymore. Yeah, I'm done.

01:22:19   You delete the app. We're all good.

01:22:22   But this isn't, and that isn't that the review is finished,

01:22:25   but you were at that point into editing.

01:22:28   Everything has been written, you don't need the MIME map anymore

01:22:31   because all the chapters have been written, all the subheadings

01:22:34   and all the subchapters have been written.

01:22:36   And once everything's closed off, it's good, and then you can just go into

01:22:39   I guess refining and editing mode, right?

01:22:41   Yes, and I like to use editorial for that because, well, first I need to be able to look at the complete draft in its entirety, not as a separate sheet as in Ulysses.

01:22:55   But also I need some of the editorial features like the markdown automation that I have my workflows in editorial for editing plain text.

01:23:04   plain text and I can do folding for chapters, so I can collapse an H2 chapter in Markdown

01:23:12   and I can jump around between chapters using the title bar in editorial, there's like a special pop-up

01:23:19   that allows me to jump back and forth between different spots of the review, which when you have

01:23:24   like 40,000 something words, it is convenient to be able to fold and jump around.

01:23:29   So, okay, there is a point in the process then when iThoughts goes away and then Ulysses

01:23:37   goes away for a little bit because it all moves over into editorial.

01:23:40   Yes.

01:23:41   And that's where the editing is occurring then, editorial.

01:23:44   And the editing includes, I mean, of course, adding links and adding images and all the

01:23:51   special formatting is important because Ulysses has a very peculiar way of dealing with raw

01:23:57   source code or forward slashes, square brackets, those type of special characters that I use for

01:24:05   my special, like the WordPress short codes. It's like special syntax that we use at Max Stories to

01:24:11   generate custom layouts. And Ulysses really doesn't like it when you enter those characters, so

01:24:18   there's even more reason to switch to a tutorial which is pure plain text, pure markdown

01:24:23   to edit everything together.

01:24:25   Okay. What about...

01:24:29   Is there anything else editing-wise this year?

01:24:32   I know you've been speaking a lot recently about

01:24:35   the Apple Pencil and stuff like that, and I know that's something that I do.

01:24:38   If I'm writing something that is picky,

01:24:41   or if I'm reading something of somebody else's and editing it,

01:24:44   I'll turn it into a PDF and use my Apple Pencil in Notability or something.

01:24:48   So I think there's going to be

01:24:52   some pencil usage going on down the road, especially once Apple updates their documentation

01:25:00   on the website.

01:25:01   And I think I'm going to be downloading a bunch of PDFs and take some notes alongside

01:25:06   the PDFs to see if I can spot something or some specific detail that I haven't seen.

01:25:13   And I also plan on editing the draft, not just by typing with the keyboard.

01:25:23   I'm also going to be doing that of course, but also I plan on generating an entire PDF

01:25:27   and reading it the old school way, like a teacher would grade the paper, like with a

01:25:32   pencil and to visually hold the pencil and go through the text, through the pages and

01:25:37   mark things with a special color.

01:25:40   I think there's a benefit in being able to visualize text and to interact with text in

01:25:46   that way.

01:25:47   Like it forces me to think in a more visual manner and also the fact that it lets me see

01:25:54   the weight of the paragraphs.

01:25:57   Like am I going on for too long here?

01:25:59   Should I maybe take a break in this paragraph?

01:26:01   Should I structure it differently?

01:26:04   So I'm gonna be using the pencil for that I think.

01:26:06   a nice way to like give a like a shift you know because if you spot something

01:26:10   that's wrong you don't you can't immediately fix it because it's a PDF

01:26:14   right so like it helps you I think take a step back and be in a different mode

01:26:19   rather than getting completely bogged down with having to like go in and fix

01:26:23   all of that sort of stuff which is which is nice yeah right I think it's nice

01:26:27   yeah do you are you doing all of this on your iPad Pro I mean I figure at some

01:26:34   point you're gonna load it into Mac stories, into WordPress and work with it

01:26:40   on the web. When does that start to take place?

01:26:43   Usually that happens towards the end of August but I want this year to be

01:26:49   different because we really we almost missed the deadline last year so I have

01:26:54   instructed the people who are working with me that the deadline is gonna be at

01:26:59   at least a couple of weeks before publishing the review.

01:27:02   So testing the review on Mac source

01:27:05   is already happening now in some elements.

01:27:09   We're already trying some new layout things at the moment,

01:27:14   like mid-July, we're already in that process.

01:27:17   - It's not like you don't have enough test text, right?

01:27:20   Like you could just load it last year.

01:27:22   - Yeah, yeah, that's what we're doing now.

01:27:26   But yes, I'm writing, I'm doing everything on my iPad Pro.

01:27:30   I'm using the iPhone mostly when,

01:27:32   and I know I shouldn't be doing this,

01:27:33   but if I'm out, I don't know, I'm shopping,

01:27:36   I'm with friends, and you know,

01:27:38   even if I don't think about this stuff right,

01:27:43   it's always happening in the background.

01:27:46   - Oh yeah, inspiration can strike at any moment.

01:27:49   - Yes, and it's like a background process

01:27:53   going on constantly in my brain.

01:27:55   And if I think of something like, I don't know,

01:27:57   I'm about to, I don't know,

01:28:00   I'm grocery shopping, I'm buying pasta,

01:28:02   and suddenly I think about drag and drop, you know?

01:28:05   And I need to be able to take a note

01:28:07   and to say, "You know, that's actually a good idea."

01:28:10   So I'm using the Notes app and especially 3D Touch

01:28:13   to say, "New notes, save something."

01:28:15   Then when I'm back home later, I'll take care of it.

01:28:18   And I'll bring it into the mind map

01:28:20   or I'll put it into the Drafting Ulysses.

01:28:24   And there's also the other, the opposite approach of,

01:28:28   I'm writing something and as I am typing,

01:28:32   I think of something that I wanna write next

01:28:35   that is not already in the mind map.

01:28:38   So I just, I type enter, like return multiple times,

01:28:42   create a new line, and I save the idea

01:28:45   at the bottom of my current document.

01:28:47   So later when I'm done with all my sections,

01:28:49   I say, oh yeah, I had an idea down there.

01:28:51   So I should probably take care of that.

01:28:52   - What is your backup strategy?

01:28:54   I only ask this question because I know it excites Steven.

01:28:56   So it's a multi-layer strategy, so let's go over all of them.

01:29:02   So Ulysses, of course, uses iCloud.

01:29:06   Then what I'm doing is I'm compiling the master draft,

01:29:11   which basically it's the entire document and saving it as an MD.

01:29:16   I think it's plain text to iCloud Drive.

01:29:20   So that's the first external backup.

01:29:24   Then I'm doing the same for Dropbox, so that's two, and I'm also

01:29:30   archiving each individual chapter as a text file

01:29:34   in Working Copy, which is my GitHub client, where I have a private repo that I

01:29:40   share with John and Ryan, and they can look at my

01:29:44   drafts and they're also backed up on GitHub. So I have three different online

01:29:48   services plus the Ulysses own storage in iCloud. So it's three plus kind of one.

01:29:56   Is that enough, Steven? I mean you're not burning it to CD and keeping it in an

01:30:02   underground vault so you're probably doomed. Yeah I should probably have like

01:30:06   a physical backup also but I mean it's on every single

01:30:12   device that I own so unless like a catastrophe happens. And other people's

01:30:17   devices right like if you're syncing it to the github thing I mean if all if if

01:30:22   all my devices are distracted and everybody else's devices are also gone I

01:30:28   think we we would have bigger things to worry about than my review I don't think

01:30:33   publish at that point I think you're okay yeah yeah one last question for you

01:30:39   Federico. Is iOS 11 itself making this review easier to write?

01:30:46   To an extent, yes. Especially with the mind map, because I'm testing the

01:30:52   beta whiteouts with some of these features. I would love to have iOS 11

01:30:59   features in Ulysses. They would be perfect right now to be able to drop

01:31:03   images into a sheet, like as local attachments. That would be amazing. Or to

01:31:08   have proper iOS 11 support in dev and think that would be awesome. So for the review itself, and

01:31:17   this happens every year, iOS 11 is helping I would say 30% because I cannot use the apps that are

01:31:28   being used for the review, I don't have their iOS 11 versions yet. So what I do is I try to

01:31:36   understand iOS 11 by doing other things such as you know managing my business or you know

01:31:43   taking notes for the podcasts and you know taxes and email that kind of stuff and then

01:31:49   I took that I take that knowledge and I use it for the review but the review process itself

01:31:54   is kind of boring it's basically looking at a mind map in split view and writing on the

01:32:00   other side. It's not that fancy. I guess what is interesting is the

01:32:05   the the multi-step process but the act of typing itself it's kind of boring.

01:32:12   Alright so that wraps up this week's episode of Connected. Federico

01:32:17   explained very succinctly earlier where you can find our show notes but I'll

01:32:21   take another stab at it. Go to relay.fm/connected/150

01:32:25   I want to take a moment again to send a thanks to our sponsors for this

01:32:29   week Squarespace, Freshbooks and Pingdom for supporting the show. You can find Federico's

01:32:36   work over at MaxLories.net and he is @Vittici on twitter. Steven is @ismh and he writes

01:32:43   over at 512pixels.net. You can find me online, I'm @imike. If you enjoy this show then maybe

01:32:50   other relay FM shows for you, go to relay.fm/shows and have a look through, I'm sure you'll find

01:32:55   something else that will tickle your fancy. We'll be back next week. Until then, say

01:33:01   goodbye guys.

01:33:02   Arrivederci.

01:33:03   Adios.

01:33:03   Adios!