Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:06 ◼   ► From Real AFM, this is Connected, episode 133. Today's show is brought to you by Pingdom,

00:00:12 ◼   ► Encapsula and Squarespace. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by the one and only

00:00:16 ◼   ► Mr. Stephen Hackett. Hello, Stephen Hackett. Hey Myke, how are you?

00:00:20 ◼   ► I'm very good. En federico, vatici. Ciao, Federico.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Ciao, Myke. How are you? I am very well. I am very well. But you know

00:00:27 ◼   ► who I'm not as well as, I'm not as well as the Archon Factory today.

00:00:31 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

00:00:32 ◼   ► Mmhmm.

00:00:33 ◼   ► Wow.

00:00:34 ◼   ► You don't have a spare change of $100,000 in your pocket?

00:00:37 ◼   ► No, I don't know if they really consider it a spare change either, like, you know, I'm

00:00:42 ◼   ► not sure.

00:00:43 ◼   ► Or maybe they have really big pockets, I don't know, it depends on context.

00:00:47 ◼   ► How big is a $100,000 pocket?

00:00:49 ◼   ► Who knows.

00:00:50 ◼   ► But they did it.

00:00:51 ◼   ► You guys, you guys jumped right in.

00:00:53 ◼   ► Mmhmm, why wait, man?

00:00:55 ◼   ► Idaho like preamble but...

00:00:57 ◼   ► Yeah enough with this chit chat that we do every time.

00:01:00 ◼   ► It's business time!

00:01:02 ◼   ► It's get down to business to do the show.

00:01:04 ◼   ► I don't want to hear about the weather.

00:01:06 ◼   ► It's awful anyway in London so let's just move on.

00:01:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:10 ◼   ► Do you know what?

00:01:13 ◼   ► It's not too bad today.

00:01:14 ◼   ► It sounds out.

00:01:15 ◼   ► Yeah sure sure.

00:01:16 ◼   ► Every time you say it's not too bad and you post a picture there's a grey sky.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Alright we're doing this now then.

00:01:21 ◼   ► Forget Twitterific.

00:01:22 ◼   ► Who cares?

00:01:24 ◼   ► in London 15 degrees Celsius today mostly cloudy so that is 59 degrees

00:01:31 ◼   ► Fahrenheit that's pretty good it's a high as 16 today 0% chance of rain okay

00:01:38 ◼   ► we have a very different definitions of pretty good so look it's all relative

00:01:43 ◼   ► exactly exactly yes like you'll probably experience in my summer right now oh

00:01:48 ◼   ► yeah you guys get cranky because we're not built for it like you are just about

00:01:53 ◼   ► about to complain about snow, right?

00:01:56 ◼   ► - Last year, Myke and Gray were going crazy

00:01:58 ◼   ► because it was like, I don't know, 25 degrees or something.

00:02:01 ◼   ► It was like super normal.

00:02:02 ◼   ► - Do you have air conditioning in your home, Federico?

00:02:04 ◼   ► - I do.

00:02:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, exactly.

00:02:06 ◼   ► - But I don't go crazy.

00:02:08 ◼   ► - Because you have air conditioning.

00:02:10 ◼   ► We don't have it, that's the point.

00:02:13 ◼   ► We'd have to just sit in these hot homes.

00:02:15 ◼   ► - There was something else about it

00:02:17 ◼   ► that made it funnier at the time, I don't know.

00:02:20 ◼   ► - 'Cause all of our windows were closed.

00:02:21 ◼   ► It was, oh, it was the worst.

00:02:23 ◼   ► Wow. How's your preamble now, huh?

00:02:26 ◼   ► So we did end up talking about it.

00:02:27 ◼   ► So what I came here to say in the preamble is Del Federico that Mary has started learning

00:02:32 ◼   ► some Italian and she reports that the word "spoon" is a hilarious word to her. That it's

00:02:38 ◼   ► a very strange word. And I don't know what the word is and I was curious if you could

00:02:42 ◼   ► say it and then maybe if you had any insight on why it's so weird.

00:02:45 ◼   ► I'm not sure why it's funny. It's "cucchiaio."

00:02:48 ◼   ► It does sound kind of funny.

00:02:50 ◼   ► Why?

00:02:51 ◼   ► I don't know, it has a fun rhythm to it.

00:02:53 ◼   ► Can you say it one more time?

00:02:55 ◼   ► Kukayo.

00:02:56 ◼   ► Yeah, that's good.

00:02:57 ◼   ► That seems like a really involved word for "spoon".

00:03:00 ◼   ► It is actually quite difficult to type when you think about it.

00:03:05 ◼   ► It's like, you know, I wouldn't have imagined the word "spoon" would be so difficult.

00:03:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess spoon is easier.

00:03:11 ◼   ► It kind of sounds like the name of the first album of some indie band no one wants to hear.

00:03:16 ◼   ► I don't know, something about it, it seems.

00:03:18 ◼   ► Anyways, so Twitterrific funded, what was it, last week, and now as of last night they

00:03:24 ◼   ► hit their stretch goal of $100,000, which means it'll have basic features like direct

00:03:30 ◼   ► messaging and lists.

00:03:32 ◼   ► So I'm excited for this.

00:03:34 ◼   ► I backed it as we talked about.

00:03:36 ◼   ► I'm glad they hit it.

00:03:37 ◼   ► I know there was some doubt, I think, from one of us that they would be able to do that,

00:03:41 ◼   ► but they did, and they still have 48 hours to go, so it could still go a little bit higher.

00:03:46 ◼   ► They do have, we should say, they do have some crazy $125,000 level, which they're not

00:03:52 ◼   ► going to hit.

00:03:55 ◼   ► But it includes some stuff like a built-in profile editor.

00:03:58 ◼   ► You can do that on the web.

00:03:59 ◼   ► Trends, no one cares about.

00:04:03 ◼   ► Dockless mode, which is actually interesting.

00:04:05 ◼   ► Dockless mode, so when Twitter Effect first launched like 35 years ago, it had a mode.

00:04:11 ◼   ► In fact, maybe its only mode at first was it was just a menu bar app.

00:04:15 ◼   ► So you went to your menu bar and you could send a tweet and see some of your timeline.

00:04:19 ◼   ► But yeah, I'm happy for them.

00:04:21 ◼   ► I'm excited about seeing the betas and I'm glad that it's going to be a little more full

00:04:26 ◼   ► featured.

00:04:27 ◼   ► That $75,000 level, I mean, missing direct messaging was really going to be kind of a

00:04:33 ◼   ► bummer.

00:04:35 ◼   ► So I'm glad that they've done this.

00:04:37 ◼   ► So congratulations, IconFactory.

00:04:39 ◼   ► So I will say I did back it when it looked like it was going to hit 100,000 because then

00:04:44 ◼   ► the app was useful to me. Like if it never met the hundred thousand, there was,

00:04:50 ◼   ► for me anyway, from at least what Twitteriffic was saying, it was unclear

00:04:54 ◼   ► that they would have ever added features that I would want. And then because it

00:04:59 ◼   ► looked like they were gonna, then I was happy to put my pledge in and I went

00:05:03 ◼   ► with a $30 level because I want stickers, because naturally. So I'm really happy

00:05:07 ◼   ► that they made it. I still think, I still have some like problems with the

00:05:11 ◼   ► campaign itself, the way it was set up. I don't think that things were made for

00:05:14 ◼   ► very clear to backers about what would happen.

00:05:18 ◼   ► And I don't think that throughout the process,

00:05:20 ◼   ► the icon factory did a great job of fleshing all of that out.

00:05:25 ◼   ► But I am very pleased for them because Twitterrific

00:05:27 ◼   ► is an application that should exist

00:05:29 ◼   ► because simply just for nostalgia for me.

00:05:32 ◼   ► I just want it to be there.

00:05:33 ◼   ► Right, like I just don't want it to go away.

00:05:35 ◼   ► So congratulations to the icon factory

00:05:38 ◼   ► on not only funding their campaign,

00:05:40 ◼   ► but hitting a much needed stretch goal.

00:05:42 ◼   ► Yeah, there's been a lot of conversation about, you know, how are they going to keep this

00:05:47 ◼   ► version from falling into the same problem the last version did.

00:05:51 ◼   ► And I haven't spoken to anyone at the Icon Factory, but Craig Hockenberry did a nice

00:05:55 ◼   ► two-part interview on the Release Notes podcast by our friends Joe and Charles, and basically

00:06:01 ◼   ► it seems like this is to get it built and then ongoing sales they hope will be able

00:06:05 ◼   ► to support it.

00:06:07 ◼   ► And you know, I think anytime you launch a big expensive app like this, especially on

00:06:12 ◼   ► the Mac, you know, there's questions there. Is this a sustainable thing? And

00:06:17 ◼   ► Tweetbot's pretty entrenched. I think a lot of people, especially listening in

00:06:21 ◼   ► our audience, are using Tweetbot because it has those power user options. And it'll

00:06:28 ◼   ► be, I'm curious to see how Twitterrific will fit into that landscape. You

00:06:32 ◼   ► know, the Twitter app for Mac, it's not great, but it's better than it was. And

00:06:36 ◼   ► it's perfectly usable. I know a lot of people use it. Jason Snell uses it. And I'm

00:06:42 ◼   ► I'm very curious to see how this plays out long term,

00:06:44 ◼   ► if they can find a level of success

00:06:46 ◼   ► that allows them to keep developing it,

00:06:48 ◼   ► or is this gonna be another deal where five years go by,

00:06:53 ◼   ► and it's basically the same app.

00:06:55 ◼   ► I guess it doesn't really matter

00:06:57 ◼   ► 'cause Twitter's not gonna be in business in five years,

00:06:59 ◼   ► but I kinda wonder how long term this will play out.

00:07:04 ◼   ► Shifting gears a little bit,

00:07:07 ◼   ► yesterday Apple posted a new ad,

00:07:09 ◼   ► and we talked a little bit, I think,

00:07:11 ◼   ► about the iPad ads they've been doing,

00:07:14 ◼   ► but this one is about iMessage sticker packs.

00:07:19 ◼   ► And if you haven't watched it,

00:07:20 ◼   ► there'll be a link in the show notes.

00:07:22 ◼   ► It is, I think, hysterical.

00:07:25 ◼   ► Like, I love this ad.

00:07:27 ◼   ► It has Myke Hurley written all over it.

00:07:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, what's up?

00:07:30 ◼   ► - But it's just really funny.

00:07:32 ◼   ► Like, there's a scene at the end where this guy's like,

00:07:35 ◼   ► you know, like, kind of making eyes with someone

00:07:37 ◼   ► from like across the alley, like across the street

00:07:39 ◼   ► outside this venue, and someone comes by

00:07:41 ◼   ► just like slaps a sticker on his face and kind of interrupts the little romantic moment.

00:07:44 ◼   ► The whole thing is just really well done and I think a lot of fun. So thumbs up from me.

00:07:51 ◼   ► I was curious what you guys thought about it.

00:07:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that this is a difficult thing to show in a conceptual way. I can imagine

00:07:59 ◼   ► the idea for this ad came to somebody in a flash. It's like "I know what to do!" but

00:08:05 ◼   ► I see it as being a difficult thing to come up with. How do you show what these stickers

00:08:10 ◼   ► actually mean to people that use them and I think they did a really good job.

00:08:14 ◼   ► It's like it is a way to express an emotion or a thought or you know that

00:08:19 ◼   ► you can't really do as well in text or as I said before like even an emoji like

00:08:23 ◼   ► stickers we're talking about this last week rather that they have this extra

00:08:26 ◼   ► thing to them this extra level of personality that you can add and I think

00:08:29 ◼   ► they did a really good job of portraying that with some fun stuff and also

00:08:35 ◼   ► something that I really like and I'm sure you do too Federico that they

00:08:38 ◼   ► didn't go with just the obvious stickers like there are Disney stickers and other

00:08:44 ◼   ► like movie and cartoon stickers in this but they also went with a bunch of

00:08:47 ◼   ► stickers from independent and kind of smaller artists as well. Yeah they

00:08:51 ◼   ► featured a lot of sticker packs from indie artists I mean there's one for

00:08:56 ◼   ► example called Marcy Moji there are a couple traveling the world and she's

00:09:04 ◼   ► drawing the stickers and he actually turns them into code for this custom

00:09:08 ◼   ► sticker pack. We did a feature story on Marcy Moji a couple of months ago and

00:09:13 ◼   ► it's featured in an Apple commercial now and along with other sticker packs from

00:09:18 ◼   ► indie artists and developers it's very nice to see Apple kind of trying

00:09:23 ◼   ► to put the spotlight on both you know the big names like Disney and you know

00:09:28 ◼   ► popular characters from movies and cartoons as well as these creations by

00:09:33 ◼   ► you know, just about anyone who's releasing some stickers on the App Store.

00:09:38 ◼   ► Like the aforementioned icon factory as well, they're in there.

00:09:41 ◼   ► So that's very nice and I appreciate how Apple balanced, you know, to get the,

00:09:48 ◼   ► as you said, to get the idea of, you know, engaging in a sticker fight as it

00:09:53 ◼   ► happens in a lot of conversations on iMessage. They found this sort of

00:09:59 ◼   ► metaphor of the actual sticker fight but they also managed to show the footage

00:10:03 ◼   ► of somebody interacting with the iMessage app, which I think is also meant to address the concerns of how do you use stickers.

00:10:13 ◼   ► So they show a person tapping on the iMessage app drawer to open the sticker browser.

00:10:19 ◼   ► So I think that was contextual and functional to showing also iMessage how it actually works.

00:10:26 ◼   ► So I think overall it's a very fun commercial. It's great to see this.

00:10:30 ◼   ► We have a list of every sticker pack featured. It's like 50 or 60.

00:10:36 ◼   ► It's a lot of stickers. So it's awesome.

00:10:39 ◼   ► We spoke last week about the idea of an iMac Pro and we got a bunch of email about that

00:10:44 ◼   ► and there was one from Spencer I wanted to highlight.

00:10:46 ◼   ► And I will say going into this, this strays into ATP territory a lot.

00:10:50 ◼   ► And I know the two of you are just going to sit there quietly.

00:10:52 ◼   ► Alright, I'll see you later.

00:10:53 ◼   ► So I'll get into this quickly.

00:10:54 ◼   ► See you next week everyone.

00:10:56 ◼   ► Intel does have a new Xeon series that is closer to what the iMac's chassis

00:11:06 ◼   ► would require when it comes to heat and power and the details aren't super

00:11:11 ◼   ► important but or really all that interesting but basically it actually

00:11:15 ◼   ► requires less power than what's in the iMac 5k now and you know assuming they

00:11:22 ◼   ► would not need a new ventilation system and the cooling stuff we talked about

00:11:24 ◼   ► about last week.

00:11:25 ◼   ► It also supports Thunderbolt 3,

00:11:27 ◼   ► but one problem is it doesn't really add

00:11:31 ◼   ► the PCI support that the Mac Pro would need.

00:11:35 ◼   ► So the Mac Pro right now, if you turn around to the back,

00:11:37 ◼   ► it's got a whole bunch of Thunderbolt 2 ports,

00:11:40 ◼   ► and they're grouped in kind of a funny way,

00:11:42 ◼   ► and you get certain speeds, certain combinations

00:11:44 ◼   ► like you do on the Mac Pro,

00:11:46 ◼   ► but you can have that many Thunderbolt ports

00:11:48 ◼   ► because of additional PCI lanes in the system itself.

00:11:52 ◼   ► And from my reading and talking to a few people,

00:11:55 ◼   ► the Xeon E3 doesn't really give you that.

00:11:59 ◼   ► There's also talk that there are other ways

00:12:02 ◼   ► to get more cores into an iMac.

00:12:04 ◼   ► The line that they're using now, the i5 and i7,

00:12:07 ◼   ► a future version of that on the roadmap says

00:12:09 ◼   ► that they're gonna have a six core option.

00:12:12 ◼   ► The Xeon E3 has more than four cores.

00:12:14 ◼   ► But I still don't think this is the answer

00:12:16 ◼   ► because I think a pro machine needs more

00:12:19 ◼   ► than two Thunderbolt 3 ports.

00:12:22 ◼   ► And you know, the 15 inch MacBook Pro has four of them,

00:12:27 ◼   ► but the ones on the right side of the machine

00:12:29 ◼   ► are not as capable as the ones

00:12:31 ◼   ► on the left side of the machine.

00:12:32 ◼   ► The speeds are slower on that right side

00:12:35 ◼   ► because of the limitations in these chipsets.

00:12:38 ◼   ► So I think all of that is to say,

00:12:41 ◼   ► Intel and Apple do have options

00:12:43 ◼   ► when it would come to making a Mac Pro

00:12:45 ◼   ► that is substantially faster and perhaps more capable,

00:12:49 ◼   ► But I think that what pros really want and need

00:12:52 ◼   ► is still going to be in a form factor

00:12:54 ◼   ► that doesn't look like an iMac.

00:12:56 ◼   ► And this is interesting and the Xeon chip

00:12:59 ◼   ► is cool in some ways, but I don't think

00:13:02 ◼   ► it's where Apple's gonna go.

00:13:04 ◼   ► But who knows?

00:13:05 ◼   ► We were also talking about the iMac

00:13:06 ◼   ► and I routed off a bunch of our friends

00:13:07 ◼   ► who had a 5K iMac and I forgot to mention Casey Liss

00:13:10 ◼   ► and he got upset with me.

00:13:11 ◼   ► So Casey, I'm sorry.

00:13:13 ◼   ► Casey, I'm just talking to you now.

00:13:15 ◼   ► I'm sorry I forgot about your iMac.

00:13:17 ◼   ► We still love you, but you just didn't come to mind

00:13:19 ◼   ► instantly and I'm deeply sorry.

00:13:22 ◼   ► And I've tattooed your face on my forearm now

00:13:24 ◼   ► so I never forget you.

00:13:26 ◼   ► - Who is it we're talking about?

00:13:27 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:13:28 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

00:13:29 ◼   ► Finally, it's not really follow up,

00:13:31 ◼   ► but I just wanted to say,

00:13:32 ◼   ► if you are coming to the Mac Power Users Meetup

00:13:35 ◼   ► tomorrow, March 15th in Chicago, I will be there.

00:13:38 ◼   ► So if you are in Chicago, if you're at the event,

00:13:40 ◼   ► come say hey.

00:13:41 ◼   ► I'm looking forward to seeing some Mac Power User listeners

00:13:44 ◼   ► and I think it's gonna be a lot of fun.

00:13:46 ◼   ► and uh... i'm not prepared to spend two days in the freezing snow

00:13:50 ◼   ► we'll see how that goes but uh... good luck good luck

00:13:54 ◼   ► i'm gonna be cranky like

00:13:56 ◼   ► british people when it gets hot

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00:15:51 ◼   ► So Federico, a couple of weeks ago,

00:15:55 ◼   ► you mentioned to us, and I think you tweeted about it too,

00:15:59 ◼   ► that you picked up, I think,

00:16:01 ◼   ► the first HomeKit enabled security camera.

00:16:05 ◼   ► So this is called the D-Link OMNA 180.

00:16:09 ◼   ► Now you are a Canary owner, right?

00:16:11 ◼   ► Or at least you were.

00:16:12 ◼   ► We'll find out what the situation is there.

00:16:15 ◼   ► So you had a Canary.

00:16:17 ◼   ► What made you wanna pick up this thing?

00:16:20 ◼   ► - Really, I just wanted to see how HomeKit cameras

00:16:24 ◼   ► would work in the home app on iOS.

00:16:26 ◼   ► And I think I bought it as,

00:16:28 ◼   ► I wanna say an investment for the future

00:16:30 ◼   ► because right now the support for cameras

00:16:33 ◼   ► is really bare bones in the app.

00:16:35 ◼   ► There's no, basically all of the best controls that you get in the Canary app.

00:16:40 ◼   ► And you know, the Canary experience, it's not available in HomeKit.

00:16:43 ◼   ► You cannot set up custom triggers.

00:16:45 ◼   ► You cannot set up automations like, for example, I was imagining, right?

00:16:50 ◼   ► I have a sensor, a HomeKit sensor that tells me when my door opens and when it's closed.

00:16:56 ◼   ► And I also have HomeKit lights and I have routines that turn on specific things at

00:17:02 ◼   ► certain times of the day and I have an Apple TV that I use as the HomeKit

00:17:07 ◼   ► automation hub and I thought well maybe if I get a HomeKit camera there's a way

00:17:13 ◼   ► for me to do things like start recording and send me a notification only if I'm

00:17:19 ◼   ► not at home and the door opens, you know, makes sense.

00:17:23 ◼   ► None of this can be done with the Home app right now which means you need to

00:17:29 ◼   ► install a custom app from D-Link but at that point I'm just gonna use, you know,

00:17:34 ◼   ► if I have to use custom stuff I'm just gonna use the Canary app because I have

00:17:38 ◼   ► two Canary cameras and I have an account with them and it's excellent. So I think

00:17:43 ◼   ► I'm gonna keep the camera because I wanna see what Apple does with iOS 11

00:17:47 ◼   ► because I have a feeling that Apple ship very basic, very rudimentary camera

00:17:55 ◼   ► integration with HomeKit and I expect that there should be a lot more

00:18:01 ◼   ► notification controls and the ability to set up basically options

00:18:09 ◼   ► to say I want you to start recording and I want you to send me a remote

00:18:14 ◼   ► notification only during these times of the day and maybe when some events occur

00:18:19 ◼   ► But really the core problem here is the lack of a presence API for HomeKit.

00:18:26 ◼   ► To say at this moment Silvia and Federico, which are two members of this family sharing and this HomeKit setup,

00:18:33 ◼   ► which is information that iOS already has about me, these two people are currently home or only one of them is.

00:18:41 ◼   ► And so there should be a system for accessories and for iOS to route notifications to different people

00:18:50 ◼   ► based on the concept of presence, which is whether you are currently inside the house or not.

00:18:58 ◼   ► And really if you consider the work that Apple has done with beacons in the past

00:19:02 ◼   ► and now with HomeKit accessories, this sounds obvious, right?

00:19:06 ◼   ► Because if third-party developers can do it with the geofence APIs,

00:19:10 ◼   ► which are not perfect. Imagine what Apple could do with sensors and with

00:19:14 ◼   ► this different proprietary stuff that they can do with Wi-Fi networks

00:19:18 ◼   ► for example. They can see in the background

00:19:20 ◼   ► if a device is attached to a Wi-Fi network or they can see the proximity

00:19:24 ◼   ► between the iPhone and the Apple TV for example.

00:19:26 ◼   ► So they can make more accurate guesses I think as to whether

00:19:30 ◼   ► a person is currently using a device at home or not and that is a big problem

00:19:34 ◼   ► when it comes to HomeKit cameras. They're really just at this point the

00:19:39 ◼   ► The setup experience is awesome because you set it up, you scan the code, and it's good

00:19:43 ◼   ► to go and it's added to your home.

00:19:45 ◼   ► So the setup is amazing.

00:19:47 ◼   ► But it lacks the deeper controls that you get in other third-party cameras.

00:19:52 ◼   ► So if you want to use it, you have to manually set it every time and then unset it every

00:19:57 ◼   ► time?

00:19:58 ◼   ► No, you basically don't get...

00:20:02 ◼   ► You have to open the home app and look at what's going on.

00:20:07 ◼   ► or you get notifications, but you get them all the time.

00:20:10 ◼   ► Because you cannot say, well, at this,

00:20:13 ◼   ► like with the Canary, you can say, well, I'm at home,

00:20:15 ◼   ► so don't send me notifications.

00:20:17 ◼   ► - So you're manually turning the camera on and off

00:20:19 ◼   ► every time you want it to be recording or not?

00:20:21 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:20:22 ◼   ► - Unless I'm missing something.

00:20:24 ◼   ► There's no, none of the Canary features

00:20:28 ◼   ► are available in HomeKit right now.

00:20:31 ◼   ► And, you know, coming from that kind of experience,

00:20:34 ◼   ► it really sticks out and you say,

00:20:35 ◼   ► okay, well, this is a basic camera.

00:20:37 ◼   ► It's awesome because it lives in the Home app and you get these notifications with rich

00:20:43 ◼   ► media in them, there's a live feed view.

00:20:47 ◼   ► The camera itself, the video quality is great and also the refresh times, they're much faster

00:20:54 ◼   ► than the Canary app.

00:20:55 ◼   ► Once you open the Home app and you look at the video, it's actually real time.

00:20:59 ◼   ► There's not even a one second delay between what's going on in the Home app and in the

00:21:05 ◼   ► physical space.

00:21:06 ◼   ► So it's from a technical perspective, the video quality and the setup is great, but

00:21:11 ◼   ► it lacks deeper controls.

00:21:14 ◼   ► I mean I would consider some of that to be like basic features of a connected security

00:21:18 ◼   ► camera, that it turns itself on and off.

00:21:21 ◼   ► It is a basic feature but really I don't want to be notified if motion is going on and the

00:21:25 ◼   ► motion is me.

00:21:27 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:21:28 ◼   ► That's like the basic stuff for a camera.

00:21:30 ◼   ► One of the reasons I went with the Canary is it seemed to have really good settings

00:21:35 ◼   ► for that sort of stuff and exactly I've bought it they've gotten way better like when they

00:21:40 ◼   ► added the like the nighttime mode which was like the one thing that they needed to make

00:21:43 ◼   ► it perfect you know where it would like turn itself on and off based on a schedule that

00:21:48 ◼   ► you set. Yeah I just continue to be so happy with my Canary it can I still like I would

00:21:58 ◼   ► recommend it to anyone and you know you're talking about automation and it doesn't have

00:22:03 ◼   ► a lot of, well it doesn't have any kind of like baked in hooks to services like IFTTT,

00:22:09 ◼   ► but it is possible to connect it to services that would allow it to do that. Which isn't

00:22:13 ◼   ► ideal, but you know you can still control it in a bunch of different ways and you can

00:22:17 ◼   ► still do a bunch of things with Canary themselves to get it all set up. They were, they said,

00:22:22 ◼   ► I remember a long time ago, they said they were going to have a HomeKit enabled camera

00:22:27 ◼   ► and I'm wondering if maybe they just couldn't get the experience that they wanted, you know,

00:22:33 ◼   ► and it sounds like they definitely couldn't, right?

00:22:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I mean, I was just taking a look right now,

00:22:41 ◼   ► again, just to make sure.

00:22:42 ◼   ► When you open the automation screen in HomeKit,

00:22:46 ◼   ► there's support for triggers like when it's 5 p.m. every day

00:22:50 ◼   ► or when my door opens,

00:22:52 ◼   ► but then there's no action for cameras.

00:22:55 ◼   ► So it's all very basic.

00:22:56 ◼   ► You cannot do this automa-

00:22:58 ◼   ► I have automations for HomeKit that do stuff like,

00:23:00 ◼   ► every day at 10 p.m. turn on my bedroom light

00:23:03 ◼   ► or every day at 4 a.m. turn off all of my lights.

00:23:07 ◼   ► So you can do those.

00:23:09 ◼   ► But when it comes to cameras, you cannot do things like

00:23:12 ◼   ► when it's the weekend and I'm not at home,

00:23:17 ◼   ► start recording and send me notification every time

00:23:20 ◼   ► motion occurs.

00:23:21 ◼   ► That's the very basic stuff I believe for a camera.

00:23:25 ◼   ► And the Canary does this very, very well.

00:23:28 ◼   ► But it's not a home kit.

00:23:31 ◼   ► I am a bit disappointed, of course, but I'm gonna keep it because one of the benefits of HomeKit

00:23:39 ◼   ► is that once Apple releases an accessory or once a device maker releases an accessory that uses HomeKit,

00:23:48 ◼   ► it gets upgrades throughout the years. So, for example, the controls that I have now from EULights

00:23:54 ◼   ► with HomeKit were not available two years ago. So whenever Apple just makes an API change in iOS 11,

00:24:02 ◼   ► the camera that I have, the D-Link that I have, will be able to take advantage of those with the

00:24:09 ◼   ► software upgrade. So that's nice and I'm gonna keep it because as I said it's an investment for me.

00:24:14 ◼   ► But my main cameras right now are the two Canaries that I have. Just because I don't have to think

00:24:20 ◼   ► about them and the moment you have to think about a security camera it's when the whole purpose is

00:24:26 ◼   ► defeated because you're gonna forget and you're not gonna be alerted off motion. So I'm gonna keep

00:24:31 ◼   ► it waiting for software changes but I believe in general the big problem here is that HomeKit needs

00:24:39 ◼   ► a presence API to allow people and device makers to ship these features like do this only when I'm

00:24:47 ◼   ► at home or I'm not or a family member is. That's I believe the path forward.

00:24:53 ◼   ► It's weird that it doesn't have that because that feels like such a basic

00:24:57 ◼   ► thing at the home of the future, right? Like you walk in and everything turns on.

00:25:00 ◼   ► They should really have something like that.

00:25:03 ◼   ► Yeah. You know I've got a canary and a Nest Cam and Nest, while it doesn't

00:25:10 ◼   ► play with HomeKit and probably never will and the company seems to be

00:25:15 ◼   ► struggling to put out products. They do have some nice stuff in

00:25:19 ◼   ► contrast with Canary. Nest, the app, will use your phone's location to set the

00:25:24 ◼   ► camera away and present just like the Canary will, but the Nest Cam will do it

00:25:29 ◼   ► with the geofencing as opposed to having the GPS on all the time. And I have never,

00:25:34 ◼   ► maybe I'm just misunderstanding, but I have not gone to Canary to ever use the

00:25:41 ◼   ► geo fence stuff. It always has the full GPS on and I don't really appreciate

00:25:48 ◼   ► that battery hit. Nest also is a much faster notifications than Canary is so I

00:25:52 ◼   ► have a Canary in my office and because I don't want to leave GPS on all the time

00:25:56 ◼   ► I have it set to a schedule that basically matches my basically matches

00:26:02 ◼   ► my work schedule but occasionally I come out here and it doesn't right so I

00:26:07 ◼   ► forget to turn the camera off before I enter and so I'll get a notification but

00:26:10 ◼   ► Sometimes it's like 90 seconds or two or three minutes late.

00:26:14 ◼   ► And if someone were to break into this place,

00:26:17 ◼   ► they would have like six iMacs in their truck

00:26:19 ◼   ► by the time the Canary alerted me to it.

00:26:21 ◼   ► So I don't love that speed difference.

00:26:24 ◼   ► I like that the Canary has the built-in alarm sound,

00:26:27 ◼   ► which of course the Nest doesn't.

00:26:28 ◼   ► So you can arm the Canary,

00:26:30 ◼   ► and if you get push notification, hit the button,

00:26:32 ◼   ► and it sounds a super loud alarm and people would run away.

00:26:34 ◼   ► - Have you ever heard the alarm?

00:26:35 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Really?

00:26:36 ◼   ► - I didn't wanna do it.

00:26:37 ◼   ► It was scary. - I'm too scared.

00:26:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, me too.

00:26:39 ◼   ► - It's loud.

00:26:40 ◼   ► - What, you're just playing around a bit?

00:26:42 ◼   ► - No, when I set it up, well, I wanted to do,

00:26:45 ◼   ► see if I could hear it inside the house,

00:26:46 ◼   ► and I can't do that, but if you were in here

00:26:50 ◼   ► and it goes off, it is loud.

00:26:52 ◼   ► You should try it sometime.

00:26:53 ◼   ► - 'Cause it's meant to spook you, right?

00:26:55 ◼   ► Like, that's the idea.

00:26:56 ◼   ► Like, the alarm is meant to make people run away.

00:26:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, it sounds like a house alarm.

00:27:01 ◼   ► The other nice thing that Nest does,

00:27:04 ◼   ► I agree that the HomeKit stuff should have,

00:27:08 ◼   ► is that you can use, it has the concept of family members.

00:27:11 ◼   ► So in HomeKit, you can share your setup with somebody else.

00:27:14 ◼   ► So I set up all of our lights in the Home app

00:27:17 ◼   ► and then shared it with Mary and she has access to all of it.

00:27:19 ◼   ► And if I make a change, she gets the change.

00:27:21 ◼   ► And Nest can do that too, and it can use both of our phones

00:27:26 ◼   ► to understand when someone's home or not.

00:27:28 ◼   ► So if she leaves and I'm still at home,

00:27:30 ◼   ► the camera doesn't come on because one phone is still here.

00:27:34 ◼   ► And it's that multi-device awareness

00:27:38 ◼   ► that really means you don't have to think about it.

00:27:40 ◼   ► So if we both leave, I know the camera's gonna come on.

00:27:43 ◼   ► And if one of us leaves or the other is at home,

00:27:45 ◼   ► we're not getting notifications

00:27:46 ◼   ► that our spouse is walking around the house all day.

00:27:48 ◼   ► So Nest has done a better job there than anyone, I think.

00:27:53 ◼   ► And I agree with you, like the Home app

00:27:55 ◼   ► and HomeKit should have this stuff.

00:27:57 ◼   ► And you know, this is the first camera,

00:27:59 ◼   ► maybe this camera came out

00:28:01 ◼   ► and they hadn't gotten around to doing all this stuff.

00:28:03 ◼   ► And I hope that they will add it in iOS 11

00:28:06 ◼   ► because it is definitely, there's definitely advantages

00:28:10 ◼   ► to having all your stuff in one system

00:28:12 ◼   ► like we've talked about over the last couple weeks.

00:28:13 ◼   ► And I would love to have a HomeKit

00:28:16 ◼   ► and Echo equipped camera, right?

00:28:19 ◼   ► Like the Canary's nice, but it's an island.

00:28:21 ◼   ► And the Nest is nice, but it's an island.

00:28:23 ◼   ► And it'd be nice to have stuff better integrated.

00:28:25 ◼   ► And Apple and Amazon are the two companies that can do that.

00:28:29 ◼   ► - I just wanna check something.

00:28:30 ◼   ► Canary does have the multi-person setting stuff.

00:28:34 ◼   ► Yeah, you can, like, I have the app installed,

00:28:37 ◼   ► Adina has the app installed,

00:28:38 ◼   ► she doesn't get triggered of me moving around

00:28:42 ◼   ► because I'm at home all the time.

00:28:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I haven't even tried that on the Canary

00:28:45 ◼   ► because it's just out here in the office,

00:28:46 ◼   ► but my bigger point is that HomeKit

00:28:49 ◼   ► doesn't have any concept of that,

00:28:52 ◼   ► which blows my mind.

00:28:54 ◼   ► But this does lead to the rumor,

00:28:55 ◼   ► and this rumor has been around for a while,

00:28:57 ◼   ► like, it was like a year ago it first popped up,

00:29:00 ◼   ► but this rumor that Amazon is working

00:29:04 ◼   ► on a home security camera with,

00:29:06 ◼   ► assuming they would have some sort of Amazon lady

00:29:09 ◼   ► in the tube integration.

00:29:10 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:29:12 ◼   ► - Someone's got a photo of it at AFTV News.

00:29:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, they found this picture

00:29:17 ◼   ► on the Amazon website somehow.

00:29:19 ◼   ► Like probably digging through some stuff.

00:29:21 ◼   ► Like these are those websites, right?

00:29:22 ◼   ► Like you gotta like tip your cap to these type of websites.

00:29:27 ◼   ► Like Apple Fire, Amazon Fire TV News, right?

00:29:29 ◼   ► That's what this website is. So what they do is they like scour the Amazon website,

00:29:35 ◼   ► right? Like digging up stuff like, you know, you got to appreciate the resource that these

00:29:39 ◼   ► companies, these websites are given.

00:29:41 ◼   ► So, yeah, they found this this picture of what looks like a security camera and it has

00:29:45 ◼   ► a blue light on it. Right.

00:29:46 ◼   ► So like the expectation is if you compare what the blue light usually means for Amazon,

00:29:51 ◼   ► that it that it has the the Amazon assistant baked right into it.

00:29:56 ◼   ► So you would be able to use that to set stuff.

00:29:59 ◼   ► and you could maybe use it for more things, right?

00:30:01 ◼   ► Like it might be an Echo inside a security camera,

00:30:05 ◼   ► which would be really frickin' cool.

00:30:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it looks nice, it's a nice piece of hardware.

00:30:10 ◼   ► Like all these devices are pretty inoffensive.

00:30:14 ◼   ► Like the Canary looks basically like an Echo,

00:30:16 ◼   ► kind of this black tube.

00:30:18 ◼   ► The Nest Cam definitely looks most like a camera.

00:30:20 ◼   ► Like ours is really visible where it is in our living room,

00:30:23 ◼   ► and occasionally someone asks,

00:30:25 ◼   ► like someone comes in like, "Is that a camera?"

00:30:26 ◼   ► I'm like, "Yeah."

00:30:27 ◼   ► but you know if you see an echo it just looks like a speaker.

00:30:30 ◼   ► I really don't like the look of that D-Link camera though.

00:30:33 ◼   ► Like it looks a little evil.

00:30:35 ◼   ► It's kind of small.

00:30:36 ◼   ► Okay, okay. I mean just like the big like it's because

00:30:39 ◼   ► because it's silver and the camera area is black like it really draws attention to the camera.

00:30:45 ◼   ► It does, it does yeah.

00:30:46 ◼   ► It's like a robot eye coming out of a cylinder.

00:30:48 ◼   ► Yeah it's like oh hey there like it peak is peeking out at you like.

00:30:52 ◼   ► It's like I'm looking at you looking at you right now.

00:30:54 ◼   ► You know, it kind of looks like a Mac Pro. Maybe that's what that team has been doing.

00:30:58 ◼   ► What is a Mac Pro?

00:30:59 ◼   ► It has a micro SD card slot in the base. Why does this camera have a micro SD card slot in the base?

00:31:04 ◼   ► Why does this camera have a micro SD card slot in the base? Why does this camera have a micro SD card slot in the base?

00:31:07 ◼   ► Because you can save footage without paying for a cloud subscription.

00:31:11 ◼   ► Oh, I miss that.

00:31:13 ◼   ► That's nice, but also the counter argument is if people break into your house, then they also steal your SD card.

00:31:21 ◼   ► Yeah, but I mean you have no footage I

00:31:23 ◼   ► Mean, I don't think that's a thing that you should ever worry about. But anyways

00:31:28 ◼   ► That is nice because all these all these features requiring it access like I'm using

00:31:33 ◼   ► I got a little freelance project

00:31:36 ◼   ► I'm doing a time-lapse like a like a nine month time-lapse video of this construction project and I'm using four nest cams and

00:31:43 ◼   ► They all stream 1080 video off this cut off this person's local network

00:31:50 ◼   ► to the Nest, you know, Nest Aware cloud service

00:31:53 ◼   ► and I download the files once a week.

00:31:54 ◼   ► Like, it'd be nice to have more locally stored options.

00:31:59 ◼   ► And there are like high-end cameras that do that.

00:32:01 ◼   ► Like you get into like real stuff,

00:32:02 ◼   ► not this like home automation, you know, $200 deals

00:32:06 ◼   ► that can store stuff locally.

00:32:07 ◼   ► But that's another area in which I think that these,

00:32:10 ◼   ► these companies can compete against each other.

00:32:13 ◼   ► Like with this Amazon thing, like I would hope that

00:32:17 ◼   ► if I bought this and I pay for Amazon Prime,

00:32:20 ◼   ► then I get so many days of video storage for free because I--

00:32:23 ◼   ► - Oh, 100%, that's the plan.

00:32:26 ◼   ► - Be part of that world, you know?

00:32:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, like that's gotta be it, right?

00:32:30 ◼   ► Like, you know, let Amazon do this, right?

00:32:32 ◼   ► Anything they can do to make the Prime stuff more appealing,

00:32:35 ◼   ► they will do it.

00:32:36 ◼   ► And they, so I would totally see that, right?

00:32:40 ◼   ► That if you are a Prime subscriber,

00:32:41 ◼   ► you get like seven days roll in footage or something,

00:32:45 ◼   ► like for free. - Yeah.

00:32:45 ◼   ► And then you can pay to upgrade to get like 30 days or something like that.

00:32:49 ◼   ► Yeah, and Amazon can leverage that sort of thing, right?

00:32:52 ◼   ► And Apple could too if it cared about iCloud customers.

00:32:56 ◼   ► But that's where these companies can compete.

00:32:59 ◼   ► I mean the cameras are all kind of basically the same.

00:33:02 ◼   ► They do the same kind of things.

00:33:04 ◼   ► It's all about these other features that dictate which one you choose.

00:33:08 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:33:09 ◼   ► Talking about Amazon Prime, Federico, it's funny to think this, but you just got Prime

00:33:15 ◼   ► video right? Like you just got Amazon's video streamer service.

00:33:18 ◼   ► But I think the just relates more to me remembering that this is available linearly

00:33:24 ◼   ► because I think it launched a few months ago.

00:33:26 ◼   ► Yeah I think Amazon pushed a lot to try and launch in other countries when their grand tour,

00:33:34 ◼   ► the Xtop Gear show went out. Because they didn't have great worldwide availability

00:33:41 ◼   ► and apparently they pushed really hard to get it out because that show was coming out.

00:33:45 ◼   ► Alright, yeah. So we have Prime Video which is this video service that's included with the Prime subscription

00:33:55 ◼   ► and I totally came across this a few weeks ago, like I didn't mean to. Basically this is before Zelda, I should specify

00:34:05 ◼   ► I was, it was late night and I wanted to watch something. I didn't want to watch YouTube and I didn't want to start like a new drama type TV show

00:34:14 ◼   ► I wanted something relaxing that could make me laugh. And again, this is before my nights became all about Zelda

00:34:19 ◼   ► But anyway, I remembered you know

00:34:22 ◼   ► Myke talking about watching Seinfeld and the fact that I always thought the show was funny and that Jerry Seinfeld was funny

00:34:29 ◼   ► But I never actually watched the whole series. So I wanted to watch Seinfeld and of course, I didn't want to watch it in Italian

00:34:36 ◼   ► I'm not even sure there's an Italian adaptation. I have no idea. I wanted to watch the original

00:34:41 ◼   ► so, of course I

00:34:43 ◼   ► I googled, you know, what's a legal way to watch Seinfeld online.

00:34:49 ◼   ► And I think there was Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.

00:34:54 ◼   ► There was no Netflix, at least not with my Italian Netflix.

00:34:57 ◼   ► So anyway, long story short, I ended up discovering that there's Prime Video in Italy and it lets

00:35:02 ◼   ► me watch Seinfeld and it lets me choose the original English audio with no subtitles.

00:35:10 ◼   ► Which I was super surprised because here you go, you have free movies and TV shows and

00:35:16 ◼   ► you don't have to pay anything to us anymore because you already do.

00:35:20 ◼   ► And that was very nice, it was like unexpected Santa basically but for TV shows.

00:35:25 ◼   ► It's like there you go, free stuff, but don't worry about it.

00:35:29 ◼   ► I'm like okay, sure.

00:35:30 ◼   ► So I started watching Seinfeld in the Amazon Prime Video app on my iPad and I was surprised.

00:35:37 ◼   ► And I think this is a common reaction every time I try one of these Amazon apps, because

00:35:42 ◼   ► I went through the same process when I tried the Kindle app again.

00:35:47 ◼   ► It's not terrible, it's pretty good actually, and they have the X-ray feature that is super

00:35:53 ◼   ► convenient.

00:35:54 ◼   ► When you're watching a TV show, you can take a look at cast information for example, and

00:35:59 ◼   ► you can take a look at the name of the actor, and then I wanted to Google the name of someone,

00:36:04 ◼   ► Because I have this thing, it's super weird, but I have this thing about when I watch TV

00:36:07 ◼   ► shows that are quite old, I want to know which actors are dead, because it makes me feel

00:36:11 ◼   ► kind of sad.

00:36:13 ◼   ► You're like my mum, my mum does this.

00:36:15 ◼   ► There's something about it that I don't know, I need to know if that person's dead, because

00:36:19 ◼   ► maybe if I don't like the actor in that TV show, then I feel bad if I complain because

00:36:23 ◼   ► I know the person's dead, so I don't complain about those actors.

00:36:26 ◼   ► Wow.

00:36:27 ◼   ► It's like, come on, the guy's dead, what do you want to complain?

00:36:30 ◼   ► You know?

00:36:31 ◼   ► Oh my god.

00:36:32 ◼   ► I feel bad if I know you're no longer with us.

00:36:38 ◼   ► The X-Ray feature is super convenient.

00:36:42 ◼   ► I was just surprised. There's picture in picture,

00:36:46 ◼   ► you can download stuff for offline viewing.

00:36:50 ◼   ► It is probably, like of all the streaming services, I think it is the best application

00:36:54 ◼   ► that observes iOS features, which is so funny

00:36:58 ◼   ► funny considering like Stephen's already put this in all caps in the document

00:37:03 ◼   ► that there is no Apple TV app for Amazon. But on the iPad they are more

00:37:10 ◼   ► iOS focused than Netflix is. Again my whole reaction to this discovery is

00:37:15 ◼   ► there's this service that a lot of people use I had no idea I just walked

00:37:19 ◼   ► into it and I feel kind of stupid because I'm realizing it now but

00:37:25 ◼   ► But it is very nice.

00:37:27 ◼   ► I also wonder where the Apple TV app is, but then again, I'm watching on my iPad.

00:37:33 ◼   ► I know that Myke, at least you used to be like me and just watching TV shows with my

00:37:38 ◼   ► iPad on my lap in bed rather than watching on the TV.

00:37:42 ◼   ► We do watch stuff on the TV, but it's just to be able to curl up with an iPad and hold

00:37:46 ◼   ► it and watch a movie, that's very nice.

00:37:48 ◼   ► So I don't particularly care about the lack of an Apple TV app.

00:37:52 ◼   ► And as a quick aside, I should say, we've been using the Apple TV app a bit lately to watch movies with friends,

00:38:01 ◼   ► because it's just more convenient. You know, where three or four people, it's just easier to put on a big screen.

00:38:05 ◼   ► I got so confused. You mean Apple's app that is called TV, right?

00:38:09 ◼   ► No, I mean the Apple TV device.

00:38:12 ◼   ► Oh, OK. OK.

00:38:13 ◼   ► Oh, my gosh.

00:38:14 ◼   ► The TV app I do use myself for personal use, because I've been buying TV shows from iTunes lately.

00:38:22 ◼   ► I realize this is super old person behavior, but it's just easier.

00:38:29 ◼   ► Sometimes I don't want to think about downloading stuff from places in ways, and it's just better

00:38:38 ◼   ► to buy with iTunes.

00:38:39 ◼   ► It is, it's more convenient.

00:38:41 ◼   ► We've been using the Apple TV device for movies, for social watching with more people, and

00:38:47 ◼   ► iPad for 4, it's not going to cut it.

00:38:51 ◼   ► We use a lot Beamer, which is this app for the Mac that can stream movies to an Apple

00:38:58 ◼   ► TV or to a Chromecast.

00:39:00 ◼   ► So when I have a file format, it doesn't work with the Apple TV, it usually works with the

00:39:04 ◼   ► Chromecast and vice versa.

00:39:06 ◼   ► And Beamer is very nice.

00:39:08 ◼   ► So we've been using that.

00:39:09 ◼   ► Oh, I didn't know about this.

00:39:10 ◼   ► That's a good idea.

00:39:11 ◼   ► Oh yeah, it creates like a server on your Mac and it streams the video, like it buffers

00:39:17 ◼   ► the video to an Apple TV or to a Chromecast device, which is very nice.

00:39:20 ◼   ► Anyway, prime video surprising Seinfeld super funny. So I'm I'm happy. Yeah as an update to the way that we watch television

00:39:27 ◼   ► We don't do the iPad in bed anymore

00:39:30 ◼   ► since we got the the new house, we we have a nice TV and a great sofa and we watch everything on there and

00:39:37 ◼   ► We I have an Amazon fire TV stick now. I had to I got that which is fine

00:39:45 ◼   ► uh... but honestly the the built-in applications on my t_v_

00:39:49 ◼   ► do a pretty good job right like that the prime

00:39:52 ◼   ► uh... i didn't know it was gonna have them but like the prime video app is on

00:39:55 ◼   ► there is good the netflix app is on there and it's good that they're fine

00:39:59 ◼   ► uh... we use the apple tv as well uh... what kind of use the apple tv and the

00:40:04 ◼   ► the smart tv apps the most

00:40:06 ◼   ► and one television the app

00:40:08 ◼   ► sorry frederico i i've left the uh... the i've had in bed

00:40:13 ◼   ► Because now we actually have control of our own home, you know, I

00:40:16 ◼   ► Mean, it's okay. We're no longer friends, but it's okay

00:40:20 ◼   ► But you know, I see the complete value in that but we just really enjoy our sofa because it's awesome

00:40:28 ◼   ► We have a huge sofa Federico. So it works for us

00:40:31 ◼   ► What's what I pretty like about the prime video app and Netflix has added it for some content is that you can download for offline

00:40:39 ◼   ► Use so I'm and I just started watching

00:40:41 ◼   ► show on Prime Video and I'm getting ready to fly for two days and

00:40:45 ◼   ► Having that's a long flight man. I know yeah

00:40:49 ◼   ► Are you are you the one who bought the Elon Musk?

00:40:55 ◼   ► Yeah, moon travel. Okay. Well really is paying off Wow

00:40:59 ◼   ► Yeah, we're really really doing well

00:41:02 ◼   ► But you never got flights coming up and I want to be able to keep watching that TV show

00:41:08 ◼   ► But I didn't want to like it's not a show

00:41:10 ◼   ► I'm gonna keep around and find a stream and I don't want to

00:41:13 ◼   ► You know Biden iTunes have it locally and I can just go into the prime video app tonight and just download the next four or

00:41:19 ◼   ► five episodes and be set and that is that's a nice thing and I think that I

00:41:23 ◼   ► think that Apple nerds maybe

00:41:26 ◼   ► Tend to forget about prime video because it's not on the Apple TV like I get that

00:41:31 ◼   ► It's not that's not a huge factor

00:41:33 ◼   ► Maybe for the two of y'all but it is for me and because the Apple TV is

00:41:37 ◼   ► television in our house and if I want to watch something on Prime Video by myself

00:41:41 ◼   ► it's fine I can I can join my confederico in bed and watch on the iPad

00:41:45 ◼   ► or I can airplay it which actually works pretty well so when we watch the grand

00:41:50 ◼   ► tour you know we air played it from my iPad to the Apple TV and it was fine but

00:41:54 ◼   ► it would be nice to be there because at least in our household and I think a lot

00:41:57 ◼   ► of others like that is the primary interface for a lot of watching and it

00:42:03 ◼   ► The irony that you brought up might kill kills me that it is such a good iPad app

00:42:07 ◼   ► But there's now the Apple TV just it makes me sad

00:42:10 ◼   ► But all in all it's a great service and a bunch of people already pay for prime for a bunch of different reasons

00:42:16 ◼   ► So you probably already have it right?

00:42:17 ◼   ► It's not like it's not I don't know if I'd pay for it

00:42:20 ◼   ► If it was another nine bucks a month on top of everything else I would nine bucks a month for

00:42:24 ◼   ► But because I already have it because I pay for prime like it just it all just works together really nicely that already have access

00:42:31 ◼   ► to it, it's nice on the iPad, and there's a lot of good content there. They have a lot

00:42:35 ◼   ► of stuff, especially on the TV side of things, that Netflix doesn't anymore. And so usually

00:42:40 ◼   ► you can find something one place or the other.

00:42:42 ◼   ► - Seinfeld is a good example. Like, I had to fight to try and find Seinfeld, and I had

00:42:47 ◼   ► to, like, it was just not available outside of the US in any streamable form, but then

00:42:52 ◼   ► Amazon bought the rights for what I can only imagine was a kabillion dollars.

00:42:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm sure.

00:42:57 ◼   ► - And got the streaming rights outside of the US, which is awesome.

00:43:00 ◼   ► And I need to check that out, my sign fell off a truck so it would be nice to have.

00:43:04 ◼   ► I don't know if it's in the US, I feel like it's probably still Hulu in the US.

00:43:08 ◼   ► I think you did a big deal with them.

00:43:10 ◼   ► I know it is, I know it is on Hulu.

00:43:12 ◼   ► But yeah, so lots of good options.

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00:44:50 ◼   ► So a couple of weeks ago, well I'd say maybe over the last couple of months, the workflow

00:44:56 ◼   ► app, the guys and gals over at workflow have been up to some interesting stuff.

00:45:02 ◼   ► And I am becoming more and more interested in this application as a thing, so I wanted

00:45:07 ◼   ► to kind of like briefly wrap up some of the announcements that they've had and talk about

00:45:12 ◼   ► that, and then maybe also share some of our favorite workflows that we're using at the

00:45:17 ◼   ► moment.

00:45:18 ◼   ► All of this is just a mere companion, a mere chip against the iceberg of what is being

00:45:25 ◼   ► covered on Canvas right now, which is one of Federico's other shows at Relay FM.

00:45:31 ◼   ► Fraser and Federico started a series of episodes on Workflow starting at episode 22.

00:45:40 ◼   ► So if you listen to this and you're interested in learning more or expanding your knowledge

00:45:45 ◼   ► about workflow. Canvas is the place to do that, but I figured that maybe we could talk

00:45:50 ◼   ► about it here because I would quite like to. So Workflow recently added something called

00:45:54 ◼   ► Magic Variables to their app, which I know you were very excited about Federico. Can

00:45:59 ◼   ► you give a very brief overview of what Magic Variables are and what they allow you to do?

00:46:05 ◼   ► Sure. Magic Variables are a way to save steps when creating a workflow, because now the

00:46:13 ◼   ► the app is taking care of saving the output of each action for you automatically in the

00:46:20 ◼   ► background without having to use the manual set variable process anymore.

00:46:26 ◼   ► Now every time you use an action that creates text or fetches an image from the library,

00:46:35 ◼   ► now you don't have to save that data to a variable manually anymore because workflow

00:46:40 ◼   ► is creating in the background a magic variable for you. And so rather than

00:46:44 ◼   ► having to go through these manual steps of, you know, actually I want to save this,

00:46:49 ◼   ► now there's a toolbar now above the keyboard where you can tap on the magic

00:46:55 ◼   ► wand icon and it opens the magic variable screen where you can scroll

00:46:59 ◼   ► your entire workflow and take a look at the magic variables that are available

00:47:03 ◼   ► to you. So at any point during a workflow, let's say that you have a workflow of 20

00:47:08 ◼   ► actions. So you're at action 15 and you want to use a variable from action 3, you

00:47:14 ◼   ► can just scroll back, tap the magic variable and use it again. So this allows

00:47:19 ◼   ► you to save a lot of steps and a lot of time when creating a workflow but also

00:47:23 ◼   ► besides the time savings and the fact that workflows are a lot more

00:47:27 ◼   ► readable now because they're more compact and these magic variables have

00:47:31 ◼   ► colors and icons, now you can also do type conversion. So with the magic

00:47:37 ◼   ► variable without having to convert, let's say, some text to a PDF with a dedicated

00:47:42 ◼   ► action or a link to a text message. Now you can do these conversions directly

00:47:49 ◼   ► from the Magic Variable interface. You can change between formats, you can

00:47:53 ◼   ► change between types and you can even extract details without having to use

00:47:59 ◼   ► actions. So any workflow user who's been looking at the app before kind of maybe

00:48:05 ◼   ► came away confused or maybe thought that putting together advanced

00:48:10 ◼   ► workflows was too difficult. I seriously, I highly recommend taking a look again

00:48:15 ◼   ► because magic variables change the entire game in workflow. So do I because

00:48:19 ◼   ► the same with your article on it. I don't understand what you're saying when you

00:48:24 ◼   ► explain it and this is nothing to do with your ability to explain something.

00:48:29 ◼   ► There's just so many terms in there that I don't get, right? I just

00:48:34 ◼   ► don't know what it is, but what I did was I looked at what you were doing, I looked

00:48:40 ◼   ► at your article that you wrote, I was looking at the screenshots, and then I went to some

00:48:44 ◼   ► of the workflows that I have, workflows that I've built, workflows that I've borrowed from

00:48:49 ◼   ► people, and I kind of would just go into it and press the magic variable button, and it

00:48:55 ◼   ► would highlight the sort of things that were available, and then I was like, "Oh, I get

00:49:00 ◼   ► So because I've been working on one of my own like some you know, some workflows of my own and I was doing things like

00:49:06 ◼   ► formatting a date

00:49:09 ◼   ► grabbing a date right like saying it's this day and then would go into where you had to enter the date into the like into

00:49:15 ◼   ► One of the fields and I'd have to type some stuff and I work it out on my own

00:49:18 ◼   ► But now it's basically you just drag a little thing that says date and it's done and I was like, oh, okay now I get it

00:49:25 ◼   ► So I really recommend if you have workflows and maybe you don't really understand the programming section of it

00:49:31 ◼   ► Like it's not really something that clicks for you very well like me

00:49:33 ◼   ► I recommend that you go in and just poke around with the magic work the the magic variables button because it gives a

00:49:42 ◼   ► lot more

00:49:44 ◼   ► Clarity and like visually because that was one of the things that annoyed me about workflow

00:49:49 ◼   ► Was that it was such it's such a visual way of building this stuff

00:49:53 ◼   ► But then when it came to variables it was like basically falling back on previous programming ideas

00:49:58 ◼   ► that I think for a lot of workflow users and not necessarily something that they're that familiar with

00:50:04 ◼   ► because kind of the application is built to be more simple and to be able to give you a more visual way of doing these

00:50:09 ◼   ► things and

00:50:11 ◼   ► Magic variables does that so it's a it's a very very interesting feature that I think makes workflow more

00:50:18 ◼   ► powerful to people that are either aspiring programmers or have some kind of automation that they're looking to do

00:50:24 ◼   ► but haven't previously known how to do it like me. Yeah, I mean that's exactly, you know,

00:50:30 ◼   ► I think quiet magic variables are a big deal because they allow more people

00:50:34 ◼   ► to create powerful workflows without the complexity of the first versions. So that's great.

00:50:40 ◼   ► And then I guess a lot less

00:50:44 ◼   ► groundbreaking, but needed nonetheless. They added some new icon glyphs recently. I was very happy about that

00:50:50 ◼   ► So there are new icons, more icons to choose from. But also in this update, which is 1.7.1

00:50:55 ◼   ► They added the ability to run a workflow inside of a workflow

00:50:58 ◼   ► Yes, which is

00:51:01 ◼   ► Really insane? Yeah. Yeah, that's the best way to put it, but kind of awesome at the same time

00:51:08 ◼   ► Yeah, because it allows you to use workflows as functions, really. As I explained in my article, you can now...

00:51:16 ◼   ► If you have workflows that deal with a specific function every time, like reformatting some text for something else,

00:51:24 ◼   ► and if you have these workflows, if you repeat them over and over inside of other workflows,

00:51:30 ◼   ► so like a series of actions that you always use, like 10 actions that you use all the time,

00:51:35 ◼   ► the time. Now you can just make those actions a single one by creating a

00:51:39 ◼   ► separate function workflow and running the workflow inside of another one. So

00:51:44 ◼   ► it's kind of like, you know, it's sort of an objective programming model that

00:51:50 ◼   ► you're basically splitting up your tasks in multiple routines and using those

00:51:55 ◼   ► functions just when you need them. But it's a way to again save space in

00:52:00 ◼   ► workflows because now you can make them shorter. If you have a workflow that just

00:52:04 ◼   ► renames a document for example, you just make it a separate external one and then

00:52:08 ◼   ► you call it and you let it do its thing and you have instead of 10 actions you

00:52:12 ◼   ► just have one. So that's great and I created a bunch of, you know, all of my

00:52:18 ◼   ► toggle workflows which we talked about. Now I can access them with

00:52:24 ◼   ► this method because I have a widget that says what kind of timer do you want to

00:52:29 ◼   ► start. So is it a Mac stories timer? Is it a podcast timer? And so I have this

00:52:34 ◼   ► menu and when I tap the menu it runs a workflow using the new run workflow

00:52:39 ◼   ► action. So it's a way to collect multiple workflows together, create launchers, use

00:52:45 ◼   ► workflows as functions, lots of possibilities here. So again that's

00:52:48 ◼   ► awesome. Just one other thing I wanted to mention, so there's no documentation for

00:52:54 ◼   ► workflow, like lots and lots of documentation, which I think is a good

00:52:57 ◼   ► thing to have for people to check against and I'm pleased that that exists

00:53:01 ◼   ► as well so people can get answers to questions because again I've done this

00:53:04 ◼   ► right like and I asked Federico but not everybody can you know like if I have a

00:53:10 ◼   ► question I'm like hey T.G. can you just like how does this work? Well in theory

00:53:14 ◼   ► everybody can if they sign up for Club Maxories they can ask us questions

00:53:18 ◼   ► there you go. Look at that! Sweet plug. And that's how you get it in the show notes.

00:53:24 ◼   ► You get Club Max stories and new channels. And I will say I get a lot of my workflows from Club Max stories.

00:53:28 ◼   ► So I recommend it as a great resource for workflow news and stuff like that.

00:53:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I just feel bad whenever someone asks me an impossible question.

00:53:38 ◼   ► Because for all the freedom that you have in workflow, there's just some stuff you cannot do on iOS.

00:53:45 ◼   ► And so some people have some crazy awesome ideas, they're actually very good ideas.

00:53:50 ◼   ► But I'm so sad because I cannot do them, at least right now.

00:53:53 ◼   ► Maybe, you know, I'm sure whenever iOS 11 will come out,

00:53:57 ◼   ► the workflow guys will go insane.

00:53:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I remember when we first ever saw the video

00:54:03 ◼   ► that became workflow, we were like, it's not possible.

00:54:05 ◼   ► And it ended up being possible.

00:54:07 ◼   ► So, you know, never here we are.

00:54:09 ◼   ► Yeah. So should we share some of our favorite workflows?

00:54:12 ◼   ► Go for it. Yeah.

00:54:14 ◼   ► So I'm going to be sharing a mix of ones that I have made

00:54:17 ◼   ► and ones that Federico's made.

00:54:19 ◼   ► It tends to be the way that these things go.

00:54:21 ◼   ► Federico's toggle workflows.

00:54:22 ◼   ► If you are a toggle user, a toggle time tracker,

00:54:27 ◼   ► Federico's workflows for that are awesome.

00:54:29 ◼   ► These will all be in the show notes

00:54:32 ◼   ► where there are links available.

00:54:33 ◼   ► We'll talk about that.

00:54:35 ◼   ► Federico also created a Todoist workflow that I really like.

00:54:41 ◼   ► Workflow has some built-in Todoist actions,

00:54:43 ◼   ► but using the API, Federico was able to kind of dig in

00:54:47 ◼   ► and enable more so you can add more to it,

00:54:51 ◼   ► and it's a very nice workflow, you can kind of trigger from anywhere

00:54:54 ◼   ► and if you're on a website it grabs the URL, that kind of stuff, I like that a lot.

00:54:57 ◼   ► One that I made myself, which I'm very proud of,

00:55:00 ◼   ► is, again, this probably isn't very useful to you, but I'm going to include it anyway,

00:55:05 ◼   ► it is a workflow to allow me to tweet from any of the accounts that I manage,

00:55:11 ◼   ► the most recent episode of a Relay FM show.

00:55:14 ◼   ► So I can trigger it, I can select the account that I want to tweet from,

00:55:19 ◼   ► I can select the show and then I use magic variables to help me format that.

00:55:22 ◼   ► Um, so it formats it with the episode number, the show name, uh,

00:55:26 ◼   ► the title and a link. Um, so that's in there as well. I like that one a lot.

00:55:29 ◼   ► I'm very proud of it. Uh,

00:55:31 ◼   ► there was also an inspect RSS feed workflow that Federico built for me because

00:55:36 ◼   ► it is impossible to look at an RSS feed on iOS.

00:55:39 ◼   ► None of the browsers will let you do it. Uh,

00:55:41 ◼   ► it used to drive me crazy until Federico fixed it for me with workflow and also

00:55:46 ◼   ► an oldie but a goodie. I do not remember where this came from, but I love this one, which

00:55:51 ◼   ► is to send repeated text in a message. So you can have workflow, for example, send 10,000

00:55:58 ◼   ► love heart emojis to somebody. I have crashed many of my friends' message apps by using

00:56:05 ◼   ► this workflow. You can go to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and as Kyle is mentioning,

00:56:13 ◼   ► balloons. This came from me, I think, this originally came from me sending I

00:56:18 ◼   ► think 10,000 red balloons to Casey when he first hit 10,000 followers. That was a

00:56:25 ◼   ► lot of fun. So they are some of my favorite workflows and some that I use

00:56:29 ◼   ► frequently. Yeah we have a lot of overlap in ours. I too like the tweet podcast

00:56:37 ◼   ► workflow. I don't use toggle. I'm trying the enhanced Todoist workflow but

00:56:43 ◼   ► honestly it gives me... it's nice and it's powerful and but I also have one that

00:56:50 ◼   ► basically just sends any input to the Todoist inbox. So if I see a URL in

00:56:57 ◼   ► Tweetbot or something's in Safari and I want to just say hey I need to deal with

00:57:01 ◼   ► this later just put a link to it in my inbox it's just super fast I can do it

00:57:06 ◼   ► the share sheet. I don't necessarily for those tasks want to spend the time

00:57:11 ◼   ► categorizing it and putting all the details in just like just save this over

00:57:14 ◼   ► here for later. I'm also using Federico's published to WordPress workflow so I on

00:57:20 ◼   ► if I am writing for my blog on iOS I do it in one writer and I can fire that from

00:57:26 ◼   ► within one writer and basically give the title select a couple options for my

00:57:31 ◼   ► WordPress site and then publish it which is really nice.

00:57:34 ◼   ► WordPress, their back end has gotten a lot better on mobile but it still leaves a

00:57:40 ◼   ► little bit to be desired and the WordPress mobile app is nice but it

00:57:43 ◼   ► doesn't support custom fields which I need when I publish to 512 pixels so

00:57:49 ◼   ► using that WordPress. And then lastly using Federico's iCloud Drive copy and

00:57:55 ◼   ► paste deal so you have a text file it sits in iCloud Drive and you can basically

00:57:58 ◼   ► send and receive text to it. I use it to get text from the Mac to my iPhone like

00:58:05 ◼   ► pretty often because iCloud the iCloud keychain syncing thing like barely works

00:58:13 ◼   ► for me and I would in fact I wish there was a way to turn it off because

00:58:16 ◼   ► sometimes it just makes pasting super slow for no reason on one of my devices

00:58:20 ◼   ► and it's infuriating but it's a nice workaround for that. So I'm not using as

00:58:25 ◼   ► many as you guys are I mean I'm on the Mac all day I don't really work on my

00:58:28 ◼   ► iPad very much but especially like those fast things like getting to do as

00:58:33 ◼   ► publishing to WordPress ways that I can speed things up that I that I do do on

00:58:36 ◼   ► iOS is always a plus but just use Mac. So most of the the workflows that I

00:58:46 ◼   ► that I can share I've been I've already put on Mac stories on and on Club Mac

00:58:52 ◼   ► stories. I have a you know I do a lot of workflow and a lot of that is specific

00:58:57 ◼   ► to Mac Stories. I showed this to Myke last year when we were traveling to WWDC.

00:59:02 ◼   ► I'm going to show the updated version this time. But we have a lot of in-house,

00:59:08 ◼   ► let's say, workflows that are just custom made for us. Whether it's about, you know,

00:59:15 ◼   ► like seeing what articles, you know, team members are working on or assigning

00:59:20 ◼   ► stories to other writers or, for example, we have this workflow that is the

00:59:27 ◼   ► one that I showed Myke which is you know every time there's a you know somebody

00:59:32 ◼   ► asks us a question for Club Max Stories it goes to a Google forum and from the

00:59:39 ◼   ► Google forum this is quite complex and it may sound like a house of cards but

00:59:43 ◼   ► it's actually been working well for like two years so it's rock-solid from Google

00:59:49 ◼   ► forum it goes to Trello where we can view this sort of this dashboard of

00:59:53 ◼   ► Here's every question that people are asking you. And from Trello I can pick which questions I want to answer.

01:00:00 ◼   ► There's a button in the Trello card that says "Run the workflow" and when I run the workflow it opens the workflow app and

01:00:06 ◼   ► it reformats this question. It puts the person's name at the end, it takes the main text and it converts to markdown.

01:00:14 ◼   ► So it does a bunch of reformatting for me and then finally goes straight to Ulysses, which is my text editor.

01:00:20 ◼   ► So we have a lot of these max-story specific workflows that are saving us so much time.

01:00:25 ◼   ► And in fact I've been putting together this sort of very rudimentary wiki,

01:00:30 ◼   ► which is a shared note in the Apple Notes app, with an explanation of all of these workflows for the team members,

01:00:37 ◼   ► and all of the links, and the details for what they can do.

01:00:41 ◼   ► can do. But lately we've also been, I spent the past month really, rebuilding this automation

01:00:49 ◼   ► for Club Max stories, which is working very well. We've been testing it for like five

01:00:54 ◼   ► weeks at this point, so I'm very happy with it. And basically it's a way for us to save

01:01:00 ◼   ► apps and stickers from the App Store into specific Trello lists and Trello cards. And

01:01:08 ◼   ► The trick here is that Workflow talks to Dropbox and to Zapier to always get the latest information

01:01:17 ◼   ► about what's the latest MacStories Weekly issue that you sent, what's the latest Dropbox

01:01:22 ◼   ► shared folder where I should put the images in.

01:01:25 ◼   ► I've been using Workflow to integrate with MailChimp even, so now I can take screenshots

01:01:33 ◼   ► from my Ulysses articles and put them in the MailChimp file manager with the MailChimp API.

01:01:39 ◼   ► So when we're putting together the newsletter we already have the images there. So I do a lot of

01:01:45 ◼   ► backstory specific stuff in Workflow but I also do a lot more, I want to say, shareable, maybe basic,

01:01:52 ◼   ► maybe simple but still useful, so useful automations that I brought about like my Clipboard

01:01:57 ◼   ► manager which I use all the time now and my toggle workflows which are like now I

01:02:02 ◼   ► cannot imagine working on my iPad without running the workflow widget for

01:02:07 ◼   ► the timer first. So I have I think about 60 workflows and I want to say maybe 30

01:02:12 ◼   ► I use on a regular basis every day. So this is kind of all of the good stuff.

01:02:19 ◼   ► What is missing from workflow right now that you want to see them add? I mean

01:02:24 ◼   ► I mean it's clearly fine to ask them because they keep adding stuff at a blistering pace.

01:02:30 ◼   ► So for you Federico, what are you looking for?

01:02:34 ◼   ► There should be a better way to organize workflows.

01:02:37 ◼   ► There should be support for folders or some other tagging system to organize workflows

01:02:43 ◼   ► in groups and to easily access those groups.

01:02:46 ◼   ► Because I delete some workflows every now and then so I don't have too many in the app

01:02:51 ◼   ► and I don't think that's the best thing to do because there are some that I just use every now and then

01:02:56 ◼   ► so what I end up doing is I'm like "Oh, I've got a workflow for that" and I go to the apps like

01:02:59 ◼   ► "Oh no, it was one of the ones I deleted six months ago" so now I have to either try and rebuild it or find it again

01:03:04 ◼   ► because I don't like when I open the application to have to be scrolling through pages and pages of stuff.

01:03:10 ◼   ► Exactly, and this is a tricky problem, right, to do folders especially when you consider the widget.

01:03:16 ◼   ► So do folders also end up in the widget and you can browse folders in the widget or do you just have this single,

01:03:24 ◼   ► you know, this route view of all your workflows in the widget? This is tricky.

01:03:27 ◼   ► But I think, you know, other apps like Magic Launcher, for example, have shown how you can do folders of shortcuts in a today widget.

01:03:35 ◼   ► So I think it's totally doable for the workflow team as well.

01:03:38 ◼   ► And I think there should be super for folders. And the other big one for me is

01:03:42 ◼   ► there should be more ways

01:03:46 ◼   ► to filter inputs and

01:03:49 ◼   ► specifically to when it comes to the action extension. So for example, I would like to see more

01:03:57 ◼   ► conditions, more criteria to be matched

01:04:00 ◼   ► when a workflow should become available or should run. So for example right now you can choose different input types

01:04:07 ◼   ► like you can say I want to have this workflow in the action extension only if it's a Safari web page or only if I'm

01:04:15 ◼   ► sharing an image. But you cannot do more than that. You cannot say, for example, I

01:04:19 ◼   ► want to show this workflow only in Safari and only if the website is

01:04:23 ◼   ► maxstories.net. Or you cannot do, I want to share this workflow only if it's an

01:04:27 ◼   ► image but only if it's also a screenshot. You can do that with actions, you can do

01:04:31 ◼   ► that manually, but again, like magic variables, you need to do it manually. So

01:04:35 ◼   ► it means more steps and it means more time. There should be an easier UI to

01:04:39 ◼   ► filter inputs. And also, not just about the extension, more filters, more criteria

01:04:44 ◼   ► for conditional blocks. So when you want to do stuff like if this equals contains, there should

01:04:50 ◼   ► be more controls for that and there should be more ways to kind of compare objects, compare items,

01:04:57 ◼   ► and to take different paths depending on what is matched and whatnot. But I think

01:05:03 ◼   ► folders and filters for the extension, those are the big ones for me. So I'm going to try and

01:05:09 ◼   ► explain something that I want and you may have to correct me on some terms. So with

01:05:15 ◼   ► some workflows that I have and some workflows that I've built, you create like a dictionary,

01:05:20 ◼   ► and the dictionary is like a bunch of things which you can then select from. So you can

01:05:25 ◼   ► have it so it can pop up, for example, to choose which timer you want to run in toggle.

01:05:30 ◼   ► And currently, the dictionary has no fixed sorting ability.

01:05:34 ◼   ► Well, I'm sorry Michael, that is by design because in the Apple SDK the dictionary is

01:05:40 ◼   ► an unsorted list. That's not even, that's out of Workflows Control.

01:05:44 ◼   ► In that case, I would like them to add something that was specifically for the use that I want.

01:05:50 ◼   ► Which is allow me to add a list of things that can then be pulled, that I can then select

01:05:56 ◼   ► from and it runs different items, right? That's what I want to be able to do and then that

01:06:00 ◼   ► list is sorted by my design.

01:06:03 ◼   ► editorial had that and it was excellent. You could create this custom list that

01:06:08 ◼   ► showed you buttons but the output was something else and the order was the

01:06:14 ◼   ► order you specified. So I also agree there should be this.

01:06:18 ◼   ► That's kind of the thing that I want because I find myself wanting to and/or

01:06:22 ◼   ► making workflows like this and it frustrates me when the list is just like

01:06:27 ◼   ► haphazard. It doesn't seem to sort in any way, right? It's just like I

01:06:32 ◼   ► I don't even know how they do this.

01:06:34 ◼   ► Yeah, because when Workflow, so really taking a look under the hood, but when Workflow creates

01:06:39 ◼   ► a dictionary, so the order that you see, then when it's, I don't want to say compiled, but

01:06:44 ◼   ► when it's executed, the iOS API treats the dictionary as an unsorted object.

01:06:52 ◼   ► So iOS chooses the way that the dictionary items are displayed to you.

01:06:59 ◼   ► The keys and values are always kept together, but the order is chosen by iOS.

01:07:05 ◼   ► However it decides it wants to at that point.

01:07:08 ◼   ► Yeah, basically.

01:07:09 ◼   ► Steven, there's an item in the document that says "Steven has a big question", which I'm

01:07:14 ◼   ► kind of uncomfortable about, but...

01:07:17 ◼   ► I can see where this is going, but I want Steven to say it.

01:07:22 ◼   ► So I want to play Devil's Advocate for just a second.

01:07:25 ◼   ► I'm not going to go all John Sirkusa floating windows on you.

01:07:29 ◼   ► I will.

01:07:30 ◼   ► I will hurt you.

01:07:35 ◼   ► Their workflow is amazing.

01:07:38 ◼   ► Even though I'm not an iOS first user, it's on the home screen of both my devices.

01:07:42 ◼   ► I do rely on it.

01:07:43 ◼   ► It is incredible what the team has done.

01:07:48 ◼   ► I get the sense, though, and it makes me a little uncomfortable, that so much of what

01:07:53 ◼   ► the two of you do and so much of what other people do

01:07:55 ◼   ► is dependent on this single app.

01:07:57 ◼   ► That without workflow, the iPad, in my estimation,

01:08:02 ◼   ► let me get through this before you jump on me,

01:08:05 ◼   ► would be less efficient in its usability.

01:08:09 ◼   ► I'll say it that way.

01:08:10 ◼   ► There are things you can do in workflow

01:08:13 ◼   ► that you can do lots of other ways,

01:08:14 ◼   ► but workflow makes them efficient and fast and tidy, right?

01:08:17 ◼   ► Like no doubt, that is workflow's strength in my mind

01:08:22 ◼   ► Is that stuff that would take me a bunch of different steps on iOS I can do all in one place?

01:08:26 ◼   ► Yeah

01:08:29 ◼   ► What would happen to to y'all's

01:08:32 ◼   ► Complete working life if this app were to go away. Well, that's a fair question

01:08:36 ◼   ► It is it is a fair concern and I and I think we we talked about this between ourselves

01:08:43 ◼   ► It's a it's gonna be a problem and there's no no no question about that

01:08:49 ◼   ► Because yes, there are alternatives. For years I've done this stuff with editorial with Pythonista,

01:08:55 ◼   ► but then again, it's not the same. It's not as easy, not as efficient, and not as powerful.

01:09:00 ◼   ► And if workflow went away, it would be a problem. There's no way to sugarcoat it.

01:09:07 ◼   ► Yep. It would be a big disruption. But the way that I think about this is,

01:09:13 ◼   ► this isn't an iOS only problem, right?

01:09:17 ◼   ► - No, and I'm not saying that,

01:09:18 ◼   ► but that's a different conversation.

01:09:20 ◼   ► - Sure. - My question is,

01:09:21 ◼   ► what would happen, yeah, like, yes,

01:09:23 ◼   ► like if logic went away, you'd be screwed on the Mac too.

01:09:25 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Right, like,

01:09:27 ◼   ► but on the Mac-- - But I agree,

01:09:28 ◼   ► it is an issue, 'cause it is like this one company, right,

01:09:31 ◼   ► who are doing really amazing things.

01:09:33 ◼   ► They have some incredible engineers there, like--

01:09:35 ◼   ► - Totally. - I'm sure that there are

01:09:37 ◼   ► many companies that would like to just come along

01:09:39 ◼   ► and scoop them up and kill the app, right?

01:09:42 ◼   ► Like, it is a big, it is a concern,

01:09:44 ◼   ► it is a concern enough that me and Federico

01:09:46 ◼   ► have this conversation on a fairly regular basis

01:09:50 ◼   ► where I joke to Federico that he needs to start

01:09:52 ◼   ► saving money to buy them,

01:09:53 ◼   ► just to make sure that he can protect himself.

01:09:58 ◼   ► But yeah, I agree, it's a problem, right?

01:10:00 ◼   ► Like it is a problem.

01:10:01 ◼   ► And if it did go away, like if it just went away,

01:10:05 ◼   ► which I really hope that it will never go away,

01:10:09 ◼   ► but if it did-- - Me too.

01:10:11 ◼   ► - I would struggle with some of the stuff.

01:10:13 ◼   ► Like I could, I could still do, I think everything that I use workflow for, but

01:10:20 ◼   ► it would be very inconvenient, very inconvenient for me.

01:10:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:26 ◼   ► I mean, you can, totally valid concern.

01:10:29 ◼   ► You can make the same argument about anything really.

01:10:32 ◼   ► What if X went away?

01:10:34 ◼   ► Sure.

01:10:34 ◼   ► But I do think workflow is a little unique, uh, to Myke's point.

01:10:38 ◼   ► Yes.

01:10:39 ◼   ► If Logic goes away on the Mac, you can use Audition.

01:10:41 ◼   ► or if Tweetbot goes away on the iPad, you can use Twitterrific.

01:10:46 ◼   ► But workflow, to a degree, isn't a category unto itself.

01:10:50 ◼   ► Yeah, there's no backup plan.

01:10:52 ◼   ► That's the scary thing about it.

01:10:55 ◼   ► If it goes away, you need to downgrade to a less effective solution.

01:11:01 ◼   ► That's the reality here.

01:11:04 ◼   ► And there are a bunch of web automation services that could take some of it on,

01:11:09 ◼   ► But there's a lot of on-device stuff that only an app like Workflow or a Workflow competitor could do.

01:11:16 ◼   ► And I don't see the possibility of a Workflow competitor.

01:11:22 ◼   ► Like, I cannot envision someone trying to come along and do what they do.

01:11:28 ◼   ► Well, it's a very big challenge right now.

01:11:30 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:11:31 ◼   ► Because, you know, compared to the first version, which was kind of...

01:11:36 ◼   ► I mean you could copy it maybe but now they have a huge advantage over you know

01:11:41 ◼   ► anyone else. So it is a very good question, it is a very good question but I think we

01:11:48 ◼   ► all feel better if we just don't think about it. Right, exactly. I don't mean them any

01:11:54 ◼   ► well, like it's just something I think about, I think about that in my own workflow right,

01:11:57 ◼   ► like what are the choke points? Like if my USB pre 2 that I'm talking to you through,

01:12:05 ◼   ► If it explodes, then I have another interface

01:12:08 ◼   ► that I can drop in.

01:12:09 ◼   ► If my microphone quits working, I have another interface.

01:12:11 ◼   ► If my iMac melts down, I have a laptop.

01:12:14 ◼   ► I think about redundancy and workflows,

01:12:16 ◼   ► and workflow.app seems like a choke point.

01:12:19 ◼   ► And I think that, to your point,

01:12:22 ◼   ► that is a huge advantage for them in the market.

01:12:25 ◼   ► They are doing some truly amazing work

01:12:28 ◼   ► that no one can catch.

01:12:30 ◼   ► No one's gonna catch up with them,

01:12:31 ◼   ► but at the same time, that does leave

01:12:34 ◼   ► the rest of us sort of in a vulnerable position. So just something that's been on my mind, that's all.

01:12:38 ◼   ► Yeah, my main concern really does come from what I would expect their desirability is to outside

01:12:44 ◼   ► companies. That's what concerns me. I'm not concerned the app is going to go away,

01:12:51 ◼   ► right? I'm not concerned that they're going to go bust. That's just not a thing that I'll worry

01:12:56 ◼   ► about. For all I can see, the app seems to be pretty successful in its market. My concern is

01:13:02 ◼   ► is that there's just an incredible pool of talent there.

01:13:05 ◼   ► - Well, you know, the basic reality is that

01:13:09 ◼   ► very few people despise money.

01:13:11 ◼   ► And, you know, when you have talent,

01:13:14 ◼   ► and when people notice you,

01:13:17 ◼   ► and the people come with the bags of money,

01:13:21 ◼   ► it's very hard to say no in most cases.

01:13:24 ◼   ► - Yep. - So, you know.

01:13:26 ◼   ► Anyway. (laughs)

01:13:29 ◼   ► - Talking about money. - That's just,

01:13:30 ◼   ► I think about it.

01:13:31 ◼   ► Maybe the wonderful guys don't like money, maybe they don't.

01:13:34 ◼   ► Who likes money anyway?

01:13:36 ◼   ► Ah, nobody.

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01:14:45 ◼   ► for their support of this show and Relay FM. Now Federico.

01:14:49 ◼   ► There's something else that you're up to right now which is very desirable to me,

01:14:57 ◼   ► with the things that you have been teasing me and Steven with recently, and I'm wondering

01:15:03 ◼   ► if you're willing to share with the close audience of connected listeners what it is

01:15:10 ◼   ► that you're up to.

01:15:11 ◼   ► You know, it's just between us.

01:15:13 ◼   ► Sure.

01:15:14 ◼   ► I mean, I can't share what we've done so far.

01:15:16 ◼   ► I'm still not sure about the details of what's next, but we're building this custom Slack bot,

01:15:23 ◼   ► which is just for us, and it's called the StoryBot.

01:15:28 ◼   ► Yeah, and it is my idea to sort of try to automate not the things we do, but the things we say

01:15:39 ◼   ► on Slack. So it's this different kind of automation and it's based on the idea of letting

01:15:46 ◼   ► every team member be able to access this bot's feature and talk to the bot and let the bot

01:15:54 ◼   ► sort of be a butler if you will, sort of like an assistant for...

01:15:58 ◼   ► A butler?

01:16:00 ◼   ► I love you so much right now, like I cannot even describe, like I was formulating that pun

01:16:07 ◼   ► and you said it, I'm so proud.

01:16:10 ◼   ► That is perfect. To be able to have this butler do stuff and remember things.

01:16:18 ◼   ► So I'm gonna give you some concrete examples.

01:16:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:21 ◼   ► So right now we're splitting up the story bot in multiple features.

01:16:28 ◼   ► Each of them activated in two ways, either with a Slack/command or with an API, of course,

01:16:35 ◼   ► which you can use for workflow.

01:16:38 ◼   ► Of course.

01:16:40 ◼   ► The first feature was a way to assign articles to people, to Maxories team members.

01:16:50 ◼   ► I wanted a way to not necessarily have it be me going into the Slack and be like "John, you need to write this up" or "Ryan, you need to link this news".

01:17:02 ◼   ► want a way so that anyone, me or John or anyone else, could take a webpage

01:17:10 ◼   ► or an article, a link, whatever, and post it in a channel and say this is up for

01:17:16 ◼   ► grabs. Who wants to take it, who wants to write it up, can claim the article and

01:17:22 ◼   ► assign it to himself so he can start working on it. And so we created this

01:17:28 ◼   ► Slack interface, this bot, takes you through a bunch of steps that says "Okay, well, you

01:17:35 ◼   ► want to create this article assignment, can you give me a link? Do you have an expected

01:17:40 ◼   ► due date for this article?" So I can say "Guys, I need you to cover this news ASAP, or later

01:17:48 ◼   ► today or tomorrow, or sometime this week, or maybe there's no due date, so whatever."

01:17:54 ◼   ► And Alex is an awesome engineer, besides writing the annual watchOS reviews and macOS reviews.

01:18:04 ◼   ► He's an engineer by trade, and he created this custom Slack UI, where there's buttons

01:18:11 ◼   ► we can choose, there's menus, it's very awesome.

01:18:14 ◼   ► So when you go through this article assignment process, at the end the storybot gets this

01:18:20 ◼   ► complete card, it's an interactive card with details. There's a preview

01:18:26 ◼   ► of the link that you need to write up, there's a description,

01:18:31 ◼   ► and it posts this information into the Slack channel and there's a Claim button.

01:18:36 ◼   ► People can go there and be like "I'm gonna take care of this". When you

01:18:39 ◼   ► claim the article, a few things happen. The person who created the

01:18:47 ◼   ► assignment, gets a notification on Slack from the story bot that says, "Well, look at that.

01:18:52 ◼   ► Ryan just claimed the article you posted."

01:18:55 ◼   ► So I know when someone is committing to taking care of something.

01:18:59 ◼   ► And on the other hand, there's also the fact that the person who claims a story gets a

01:19:06 ◼   ► message from story bot that says, "Okay, you just claimed the story.

01:19:10 ◼   ► I'm just going to stay here and remind you that you need to complete this."

01:19:14 ◼   ► And...

01:19:15 ◼   ► Hey, what you doing?

01:19:16 ◼   ► Yes.

01:19:17 ◼   ► Watching you work.

01:19:18 ◼   ► There's a few things here that the story about does.

01:19:22 ◼   ► If you don't complete the story, relatively to the due date, it's going to send you a

01:19:27 ◼   ► couple of reminders.

01:19:29 ◼   ► We didn't want to go overboard with that, so it only sends you, I think, two, three

01:19:34 ◼   ► reminders a week, depending on when the article is due.

01:19:38 ◼   ► But also there's a...

01:19:39 ◼   ► He's outside your house, waiting for you.

01:19:42 ◼   ► basically me just be like, "Hey buddy, what's up with this story?" And there's also, we added,

01:19:48 ◼   ► so this is the big one that we did, we added Todoist integration for every team member.

01:19:53 ◼   ► So we all use Todoist at Mac Stories, so everyone can sign in with their Todoist account directly

01:19:59 ◼   ► from Slack, and they can do, "Okay, this Storybot assignment, also let me track it in Todoist."

01:20:06 ◼   ► Because, you know, maybe people don't use Slack for reminders, maybe they just want to see their

01:20:12 ◼   ► complete task list. So we added this add to Todoist button and the beautiful

01:20:17 ◼   ► thing here is that when you complete the Storybot assignment it also checks it

01:20:24 ◼   ► off for you in Todoist, so it talks both ways. And there's a few

01:20:31 ◼   ► extras like I can create article assignments from workflow so I don't

01:20:35 ◼   ► have to go through the slash command process and it's all automated with

01:20:38 ◼   ► workflow. And there's also the other side of this, which is I want to view all active

01:20:44 ◼   ► articles. So all the stories that my team members are working on. And there's a separate

01:20:49 ◼   ► API endpoint or Slack interface that shows me a list of, OK, John is working on this and

01:21:00 ◼   ► this, Brian is working on this other link. And so I get a complete list so I can view,

01:21:05 ◼   ► "Okay, all of my writers are working on these stories."

01:21:09 ◼   ► And that's the first feature that we did.

01:21:11 ◼   ► Now we're just completing the second one,

01:21:13 ◼   ► which is a way to use Slack reactions

01:21:17 ◼   ► as a shortcut to create Todoist tasks

01:21:21 ◼   ► for any Slack message.

01:21:24 ◼   ► And this is quite, in theory, this is quite simple, right?

01:21:27 ◼   ► It says, "I wanna use a Slack reaction

01:21:29 ◼   ► and I want to mark this as a to-do."

01:21:31 ◼   ► But of course I want a little,

01:21:34 ◼   ► we kind of went the extra mile here.

01:21:36 ◼   ► - Oh, really?

01:21:37 ◼   ► Why?

01:21:38 ◼   ► You've come up. - You can associate

01:21:40 ◼   ► an individual emoji with a specific Todoist project

01:21:44 ◼   ► and a specific Todoist template.

01:21:47 ◼   ► Actually, Todoist due date, sorry.

01:21:50 ◼   ► So what I can do is I can use the sun emoji

01:21:54 ◼   ► for something that is due today in the afternoon,

01:21:57 ◼   ► or I can use the moon emoji

01:21:59 ◼   ► for something that is due today in the evening.

01:22:01 ◼   ► And each of these emoji can go into specific Todoist project.

01:22:06 ◼   ► So for example, if I use, I don't know, the dollar bill emoji,

01:22:10 ◼   ► it's a Club Maxoris project.

01:22:12 ◼   ► Yeah, boy. Yeah, it is.

01:22:14 ◼   ► If I use the green checkmark emoji, it's a personal reminder.

01:22:19 ◼   ► So every one of us can create their own emoji reactions

01:22:25 ◼   ► associated with a Todoist due date and project.

01:22:31 ◼   ► This is incredible. Flat out, that's incredible.

01:22:34 ◼   ► I really want the ability to do the emoji reaction thing. That is awesome.

01:22:40 ◼   ► It's basically a way to be like, if you know you get work done

01:22:47 ◼   ► in specific times of the week or specific times of the day,

01:22:52 ◼   ► you can quickly assign things to yourself using emoji.

01:22:57 ◼   ► which are, you know, first they bring a lot of color into our conversations,

01:23:02 ◼   ► and also they're easier to see and easier to identify than text.

01:23:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:23:08 ◼   ► And this is a great way to also remember what the context is,

01:23:13 ◼   ► because whenever you say, you know, I save a Slack message in Todoist, it creates a task for me,

01:23:19 ◼   ► but the task itself is a link back to the Slack message.

01:23:23 ◼   ► So I can tap the task and it goes back into Slack and it tells me, well, this is what you're supposed to complete.

01:23:29 ◼   ► This is what you need to get done.

01:23:32 ◼   ► So it can be an email message, it can be a conversation with someone, it can be a direct message with someone else.

01:23:39 ◼   ► It can be anything as long as it's on Slack.

01:23:42 ◼   ► And we're just wrapping up work on this and I think it's gonna be pretty awesome as a way to sort of forget less and do more.

01:23:52 ◼   ► but also without having to go through...

01:23:55 ◼   ► Most software really is slow

01:23:57 ◼   ► and I want to speed up stuff with automation.

01:24:00 ◼   ► So this is a different kind of automation.

01:24:02 ◼   ► It's basically a custom program just for us.

01:24:05 ◼   ► - It's beautiful.

01:24:06 ◼   ► It's beautiful. - I think it's nice, yeah.

01:24:08 ◼   ► I think I have big plans for the story bot.

01:24:12 ◼   ► And you know, some of them, those plans I discussed with you

01:24:18 ◼   ► it's all very unclear at this point, but I want to...

01:24:21 ◼   ► The basic goal is I want to create this sort of intelligence that allows me to ask it stuff.

01:24:31 ◼   ► I feel like most of the work that we do as humans is boring.

01:24:37 ◼   ► And because we have to deal with stuff that computers are not yet capable of doing.

01:24:42 ◼   ► And when it comes to my little corner of the internet and my website,

01:24:48 ◼   ► I want to have a bot that remembers things for me, whether it's, you know, how many articles have I written about workflow?

01:24:57 ◼   ► Or what is a common trend in the reviews that you've done about, I don't know, iPad apps?

01:25:03 ◼   ► You know, stuff like that, understanding the English language and sort of remembering stuff in a database, make it searchable, make it linkable.

01:25:11 ◼   ► I have a lot of plans for this, and it's going to take several months.

01:25:14 ◼   ► But I think this approach of splitting up the Storybot in multiple instances, in multiple features,

01:25:19 ◼   ► each with a different command, each with a different API endpoint, it makes it a lot more easier to understand.

01:25:27 ◼   ► Because if someone says, "I want to make a workflow just for the article assignment stuff,"

01:25:32 ◼   ► well, there you go. We have documentation, we have an API, use that.

01:25:35 ◼   ► If you want to go deeper with the Todoist stuff, you can also do that.

01:25:40 ◼   ► I want to make a lot of features for the StoryBot.

01:25:44 ◼   ► And I think it's going to be useful.

01:25:48 ◼   ► I cannot imagine the things I'll do for my iOS 11 review, so we'll see.

01:25:53 ◼   ► I'm looking forward to seeing the byline at MacStories,

01:25:56 ◼   ► to be like, "MacStories from StoryBot in France."

01:26:00 ◼   ► But that's the thing, right?

01:26:03 ◼   ► I don't want to replace the creative aspect with bots, because it makes no sense.

01:26:13 ◼   ► But it's the management stuff.

01:26:15 ◼   ► It's the boring stuff, like searching and linking and assigning that can be automated.

01:26:19 ◼   ► Of course it can.

01:26:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:26:23 ◼   ► Myke, you spoke a couple weeks ago about using Zapier, and we have now attached some stuff

01:26:28 ◼   ► into some Slack channels for us at Relay.

01:26:31 ◼   ► I'm really intrigued by this idea of making Slack sort of a like a dashboard.

01:26:37 ◼   ► Like you have all your chat and all your gifs sending and all that stuff, but to have a

01:26:40 ◼   ► place in there where I can just see status of things because I'm already there all day,

01:26:45 ◼   ► right?

01:26:46 ◼   ► Like Slack is open all the time on my computer.

01:26:47 ◼   ► It's on the home screen of my phone and bringing information into it as opposed to having to

01:26:53 ◼   ► go out and find a bunch of stuff is really compelling.

01:26:56 ◼   ► Now doing it in a way that isn't overwhelming is kind of the problem.

01:27:01 ◼   ► Like you can hook all this stuff into Slackbot,

01:27:04 ◼   ► but as just a stream of text,

01:27:06 ◼   ► it can be easy to fall behind

01:27:09 ◼   ► and easy to kind of lose your place.

01:27:10 ◼   ► And so that's kind of where I struggle

01:27:12 ◼   ► with this a little bit, but all in all,

01:27:15 ◼   ► it's nice to have some options, I guess,

01:27:19 ◼   ► to not to necessarily automate it,

01:27:22 ◼   ► but just to have everything at your fingertips

01:27:24 ◼   ► is pretty cool.

01:27:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, to make, 'cause Slack is,

01:27:28 ◼   ► for many businesses and for many teams,

01:27:30 ◼   ► Slack is such a hub anyway, being able to pull more information into that hub is useful

01:27:38 ◼   ► to save you from going elsewhere when you're already always in Slack.

01:27:43 ◼   ► If you want to find our show notes for this week's episode head on over to relay.fm/connected/133

01:27:48 ◼   ► If you want to find us online, there's a few places you can do that, you can head on over

01:27:54 ◼   ► to maxstories.net to find the work that is produced via the nagging of storybot. You

01:28:01 ◼   ► can also follow Federico online, he is @vittici V I T I C C I. Steven is @5tillpixels.net and

01:28:08 ◼   ► @ismh. I am @imike, I M Y K E. Thanks again to our sponsors for this week's episode, Pingdom,

01:28:14 ◼   ► Encapsular and Squarespace for helping make the show happen. But most of all, as always,

01:28:20 ◼   ► Thank you to you for listening and we'll be back next week.

01:28:23 ◼   ► Until then, say goodbye, guys.

01:28:25 ◼   ► - Adios, durchi.