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Connected

81: Don't be scared, Myke. Go on.

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:05   From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode number 81.

00:00:10   Today's show is brought to you by Casper and Squarespace.

00:00:14   My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined by the Italian stallion, Mr Federico Vitti.

00:00:19   Hello Myke.

00:00:19   Hello Federico.

00:00:21   How are you?

00:00:22   I'm pretty good.

00:00:24   Pretty good.

00:00:25   I'll explain in one moment why it's just pretty good,

00:00:27   because we have an absent colleague today.

00:00:29   Yeah.

00:00:30   Um,

00:00:31   There's been a real bout of sickness and stuff in this show

00:00:35   over the last few weeks.

00:00:37   Mhm.

00:00:38   It's one of the benefits of having a three-person show

00:00:40   is that, you know,

00:00:41   if somebody is sick or indisposed in some way,

00:00:44   they can step away

00:00:46   and then let two of us carry on.

00:00:47   So Steven's away this week.

00:00:49   I thought Steven snuck onto the the honeymoon

00:00:53   with our friend Matt

00:00:55   and his wife.

00:00:56   It could be.

00:00:57   He just doesn't... he just didn't tell us. He's actually hiding in the closet, you know?

00:01:04   So he has told me that he is unwell. He's actually...

00:01:08   Told you. He's told me. He's actually told me he's

00:01:10   the doctors as we're recording this right now. But I shared a rumor, Steven, over the

00:01:16   last few days. We were in Dallas for Matt Alexander's wedding and I feel ever so slightly

00:01:21   sick again. Just a little bit. Yeah, but you're not sick. I mean...

00:01:25   No. The guy is not telling the truth.

00:01:28   Okay. Well I can go aboard with that.

00:01:31   We'll question Steven as soon as he comes back.

00:01:34   If? If he comes back.

00:01:36   You never know what will happen, right?

00:01:38   Myke, let me do the honors here and do the follow-up section of our show.

00:01:43   So people are asking, Myke, what are your plans for your home server that you want to do?

00:01:50   you know, you talked about Plex, you talked about, you know, setting up a server in your

00:01:55   house with a Mac Mini, I think. So what do you want to do?

00:02:00   So this is the thing. There's a couple of things that I would like to do with having

00:02:05   this Mac Mini home server. So primarily I want to set up Plex on it. And this is because

00:02:13   everybody, I know many people that use Plex and love Plex. And one of the things that

00:02:19   we're having an issue with is the speed, the download speed in my home means that we can't

00:02:25   necessarily get all the shows that we want to get, but we could stream them from other

00:02:30   people's Plex libraries. And when I say shows, I mean home movies, of course. We would be

00:02:36   able to stream them from family and friends, uh, their servers, right? Is my understanding

00:02:43   of how Plex works. So that would help with us trying to get all of the home movies and

00:02:47   videos that we've been trying to get because it's difficult for us to download them. So

00:02:52   that's one thing. So I'm going to set up Plex for that sort of stuff and just to maybe have

00:02:56   somewhere where I can put all of this media because like I have a bunch of movies and

00:03:01   stuff but like I just want to have them somewhere. I have a question for you. Do you use Plex?

00:03:08   Not really. Okay because I wonder if on the iOS app you can download locally from Plex.

00:03:14   That would be cool.

00:03:15   From what I remember, you should be able to download things locally like an offline cache.

00:03:20   Yeah, see that would be good.

00:03:22   I would like that, because then when I go on trips and stuff I could just download from

00:03:26   my own server to the iPad.

00:03:29   So stuff like that, right?

00:03:30   Like I want somewhere where I can put movies and TV shows, so I have it on a machine that's

00:03:36   doing whatever it's doing.

00:03:38   Dave in the chat room, thank you Dave, told me that you can do that, you can download

00:03:41   with the app.

00:03:42   So I want to do that kind of thing.

00:03:43   I maybe want to have something that's set up to do BitTorrent that we can just leave

00:03:49   on to do that stuff when we're sleeping.

00:03:51   To download the home movies.

00:03:53   To download the home movies, illegal, what is it, creative, not creative comments, what

00:03:59   is it, stuff that's out of copyright, I can't remember the term, you know?

00:04:03   You know Myke, downloading home movies from strangers sounds quite dirty.

00:04:08   Oh no, friends, friends movies.

00:04:11   Like your home movies and Steven's home movies. It's all above board here.

00:04:15   I didn't know Steven was into that stuff, but okay.

00:04:18   You know, I'm getting out of this conversation. So bits aren't for something. And then maybe

00:04:24   just just in general, public domain. Dave, you're you're really helping me out here today.

00:04:30   Public domain movies is the other thing that I'm looking for, you know, like all the out

00:04:33   of out of copyright stuff. And also maybe having some kind of network attached storage.

00:04:39   know if I just have some big files so I've got somewhere to put them so I can

00:04:43   just throw them onto the Mac Mini. So this is these are some of the things

00:04:47   that I'm thinking of this is some stuff that jumps to mind and I wonder if you

00:04:52   Federico have anything else that you think I could be missing from this setup?

00:04:56   I don't know what I'm doing with my Synology is torrents I don't use Plex

00:05:05   but I use a DS video which is basically the same thing it's called video

00:05:09   station lets you watch, you know, home movies, that kind of stuff. Maybe you should consider

00:05:15   a mic. I don't know if you have albums or music that is not available on streaming services.

00:05:23   You could also put them on Plex and listen to those. What I also do is I have basically

00:05:31   a second tier backup of my Google Drive and Dropbox. So anything I save to Dropbox also

00:05:38   goes to my Synology, you know, just because I have enough storage and it's good enough

00:05:45   to have another copy. I know people when they set up, you know, maybe this is a little more

00:05:52   advanced, but when they do usually Mac Minis with OS X server, some people like to run

00:05:59   their own calendar servers or mail servers. That's a little too much I feel like, especially

00:06:06   when you use Google apps you don't really need to do it on your own kind of thing. I

00:06:14   feel like that's basically it, Myke. Just consider maybe music and another layer of

00:06:19   backups, that's what I would say.

00:06:21   Yeah, backups is a good thing. So basically part of it for me is having some of the advantages

00:06:27   of having a Mac which is on all of the time because I don't like to leave my iMac on 24/7.

00:06:34   I know that there's not a lot wrong with doing that, they don't draw a lot of power, but

00:06:39   there's just something about it. I just don't want this machine on all the time because

00:06:42   then it means that like my USB pre, my audio stuff is always on as well and I just don't

00:06:49   like the idea of that. I want them sometimes to just be turned off, not drawing power,

00:06:54   not cycling or anything like that. What about automation with Hazel? You know, to automate

00:07:01   things that you can automate on iOS? Yeah, I could do that. I'll tell you one thing that

00:07:06   has been, that I've realized recently is I set up Hazel rules based on some stuff that

00:07:12   you had written before to organize my photos in Dropbox folders. Oh, nice. But I realized

00:07:18   a couple of days ago that that is happening, those rules exist on my MacBook, and I'd forgotten

00:07:23   So basically when you open your Macbook it organizes photos, but when you don't it doesn't.

00:07:30   Exactly. So I realized the other day that I haven't had any photos organized in like a month.

00:07:37   Because I very rarely use the Macbook.

00:07:40   Well that's a use for a Mac that's always on.

00:07:43   Exactly. So then I would move the rules to there and have it do it there.

00:07:48   because that Mac is just always on doing whatever it's doing and it can do that stuff when I'm

00:07:52   Doing other things and it's using a different Wi-Fi network. So that's the kind of stuff that I'm thinking of

00:07:58   So I'm I don't know when I'm gonna set this up but it is gonna happen mainly because

00:08:06   About every two days Adina bugs me about it because she really wants Plexa

00:08:11   So it's gonna happen is because it's not just me that wants it to be done

00:08:17   You know what you should do? You should do the mic version of Steven's crazy hobby. You should store

00:08:24   versions of iOS on the server.

00:08:28   Mmm. Yeah, I could do that.

00:08:30   You know, when an update comes out, you just download like 41

00:08:34   files for each device, you archive them on the server, then you buy like a two terabyte SSD

00:08:41   that's gonna cost you like three grand, but you can have...

00:08:45   I think they're expensive.

00:08:45   You can... Oh, I think they are.

00:08:47   Oh, did you say SSD?

00:08:49   Yes.

00:08:49   Oh yeah, no they probably are.

00:08:50   [Laughter]

00:08:51   You can have a pretty sweet archive, Myke.

00:08:54   I will look into that.

00:08:57   I'm sure you will.

00:08:58   We have a listener comment.

00:09:02   Yeah, this has been dropped into our document by our absent co-host,

00:09:07   and there's no name attached to this,

00:09:09   so I'm just going to refer to this person as "Anonymous Listener Rotten",

00:09:13   and this is about Apple's software issues being a potential QA problem.

00:09:18   I'll just read this and then we'll talk about it a little bit.

00:09:21   This person says "I get the feeling that Apple lacks the imagination to test much beyond

00:09:26   the obvious 'happy' paths.

00:09:29   iTunes freaks out for me when it's taken offline and pops up new error dialogues/scores

00:09:33   of times if left unattended overnight.

00:09:35   My bet is that Apple is not testing extensively on machines, say without an SSD, without an

00:09:40   internet connection and no iTunes music all at once. I constantly get errors when I take

00:09:53   my iMac offline and have strange UI issues that I assume happen because of my late 2013

00:09:58   iMac struggling with its spinning platter hard drive. This person is kind of outlining

00:10:05   here some things that they have, some issues that they have when they have multiple weird

00:10:09   things happening at once, or because they have a machine that's slightly out of date.

00:10:15   And my question to you, Federico, is it reasonable to think that Apple should be testing their

00:10:21   software on so many different setups with lots of different issues to see what happens?

00:10:28   I mean, isn't that what QA stands for? To test exactly those unusual scenarios? And

00:10:36   I mean, they're not so unusual, you know, the internet is down, so how does the app

00:10:40   behave? I mean, that's not too crazy to think about, and plus, 2013 is not so old. I mean,

00:10:46   we're not talking about a, you know, 2006 MacBook. We're talking just, you know, not

00:10:53   even three years ago. I think it's reasonable to expect that Apple should test these, you

00:10:59   know, unhappy paths, you know, to...

00:11:01   Like I've experienced this myself, especially with Apple Music.

00:11:05   If the internet connection is down, iTunes goes crazy because it can't authenticate

00:11:11   with Apple Music.

00:11:13   And I have to sometimes quit the app to stop it from bugging me.

00:11:18   So I feel like these things are there, and I am inclined to agree with you that with

00:11:25   a company of their size with admittedly really as few product lines as they have. This is

00:11:32   the sort of stuff that they should be testing. And I expect that they are, to an extent.

00:11:39   But if these things are genuine and they happen to a lot of people, then I mean I feel like

00:11:43   we don't stop talking about this software quality thing. But it's the current meme,

00:11:48   right? It is the thing. And this is a good example, another good example, of where these

00:11:55   things start to break down.

00:11:58   You know, I feel like, just like our preview, we had a story on the site last week.

00:12:05   Which is a great article that people should read if they haven't already. Graham did

00:12:09   an incredible job with that.

00:12:10   Oh, thank you. Yeah, he's been working on it real hard. It's been quite the research,

00:12:16   know, effort. Just like App Review, I feel like if Apple was a little more open about,

00:12:23   you know, this is actually what goes on, we have this many people working on App Review,

00:12:29   or we have this many people working on QA, and there are different teams, you know, someone

00:12:33   does iTunes, and there's like 50 people do Finder, you know, just have a little more

00:12:39   details, but maybe alleviate a lot of these questions and a lot of these concerns from,

00:12:45   know, Mac and iOS users. Because right now, App Review, Apple QA, it's this black box

00:12:50   and no one knows what's going on inside of it.

00:12:53   It's easy to assume there's three people because you don't know that there's any.

00:12:58   Exactly. I mean, the counterpoint would be, well, if Apple ever said, "Look, we have 50

00:13:04   people working on QA for iTunes," then when people come across a problem or a bug in iTunes,

00:13:11   would be like, I mean, 50 people and they don't catch this, so there's definitely a

00:13:15   counterpoint to be made. But the fact that we have little to no details about App Review

00:13:20   and QA as the result of these two parts of Apple being the ones where people speculate

00:13:29   the most about, I generally believe that these problems that anonymous listener brought in,

00:13:37   those should be definitely tested, you know. And other instances of similar problems, like

00:13:44   offline with Apple Music, or even you should try to be offline with some iOS extensions,

00:13:50   or offline with document providers, see what happens. You know, it's not pretty, most of

00:13:55   the time. So maybe, you know, maybe there's not enough people, maybe they didn't test

00:14:02   these scenarios, we don't know because we have no details, only our speculation.

00:14:07   So, again, let's hope it gets better.

00:14:11   I saw something pretty interesting on MacRumors yesterday. It's an app called Flexbrite.

00:14:16   I saw that too.

00:14:19   This application kind of came out, I think, over the weekend. And basically Flexbrite

00:14:25   is a third-party application

00:14:29   that produces some of the effects that Night Shift

00:14:33   does on 9.3

00:14:34   yeah only it's basically ugly and the effects are

00:14:40   not as pretty as Night Shift. I bought the app last night. So did I. And it is a

00:14:44   UI nightmare. It's like someone

00:14:50   you know

00:14:51   through the controls all over the screen.

00:14:53   - It looks like UIKit threw up, right?

00:14:55   - Yes.

00:14:56   - Like there's this, UIKit buttons everywhere.

00:15:00   It barely makes any sense.

00:15:01   Like the opening screens are horrific.

00:15:05   Like they've taken some screenshots

00:15:07   and they're all like distorted.

00:15:09   Like it is a real ugly app, but it works.

00:15:14   - But it does work.

00:15:16   Yes, it can set the screen.

00:15:19   So not just inside the app, but in any app on the home screen,

00:15:23   other third-party apps, it can change

00:15:26   the colors of the screen to be essentially more yellow.

00:15:29   And if you switch to warmer colors--

00:15:32   so the idea is similar to Flux and Night Shift.

00:15:36   There's a slider.

00:15:37   You can move from cool to warm colors.

00:15:40   And if you go all the way up to the warmest setting,

00:15:44   it's actually quite green, not even yellow.

00:15:48   Yeah, I don't think they really suggest that you do that so much, right?

00:15:51   That they make suggestions in the same way that Flux does, but it gives more.

00:15:55   So, for example, Flux on my Mac, the colors towards the end of the evening get warmer and warmer.

00:16:03   That doesn't happen with Night Shift.

00:16:06   No.

00:16:07   And so sometimes I'm editing late or something, and my Mac feels more comfortable to my eyes than Night Shift does.

00:16:15   So Flexbright will give you some of that.

00:16:17   Like it will go warmer and warmer and warmer, right?

00:16:19   Like as the day progresses.

00:16:21   And the way that it does it, it's quite interesting.

00:16:24   So it sends you a notification

00:16:26   to alert you to either take some eye exercises,

00:16:30   which I thought was kind of cool,

00:16:32   because it's saying, you know,

00:16:33   to try and prevent eye strain.

00:16:35   And then will suggest to you to change your brightness

00:16:38   or it will do it automatically when you open the application.

00:16:40   And then as you say, it works throughout the OS then.

00:16:44   Now, MacRumors is saying that basically the way

00:16:48   that this has been done is there's no private API.

00:16:52   The Flex Bright developers are taking advantage

00:16:56   of some of a native Objective-C library

00:17:00   that filters the blue light from the iOS screen.

00:17:03   And MacRumors also suggests quite strongly

00:17:07   that Flex Bright and Apple work together on this.

00:17:09   - Yeah, that was strange.

00:17:12   - I've been thinking about this.

00:17:14   What I think this means is they worked closely with App Review.

00:17:21   Could be.

00:17:22   I don't think that Flexbright and Apple have a business

00:17:27   partnership.

00:17:30   I don't think that.

00:17:33   It just feels odd to me to say that they're not

00:17:36   using private APIs.

00:17:38   And I say that not necessarily because of the brightness

00:17:42   and the colors, but because of the dark mode.

00:17:45   Have you seen that?

00:17:46   - Yeah, but that's just--

00:17:48   - That's the actually the inverted colors.

00:17:51   That's an accessibility setting,

00:17:53   but I don't recall all the third-party apps

00:17:55   being able to change that accessibility setting

00:17:59   at a system-wide level.

00:18:01   - Right, but that might be

00:18:01   what this native Objective-C library is.

00:18:03   That might be in there.

00:18:05   - But what's the name of,

00:18:07   I mean, it's the first time I see apps,

00:18:10   not using private APIs being able to do this.

00:18:13   - But who's ever tried?

00:18:15   - On the App Store, no one, because it's a private API.

00:18:19   Well, Lux tried, but it was a sideloading thing.

00:18:22   - Is it private though?

00:18:23   Is it like, I mean, I don't know,

00:18:24   like could it be just part of this Objective-C library?

00:18:28   - No, no, no, it's an implementation detail really.

00:18:30   The key discussion is,

00:18:32   did Apple really work with this company

00:18:34   to have a third-party brightness changing tool?

00:18:37   - So I think that this went through App Review

00:18:40   and it got bumped up and they worked with somebody

00:18:45   a little bit higher than the regular reviewer

00:18:47   to let this through.

00:18:48   That's how I look at this.

00:18:50   Because you could say quite easily,

00:18:53   oh, we worked with Apple, but it's not like you worked

00:18:56   with the marketing and engineering teams

00:18:59   to develop an application.

00:19:01   So you made this app and then Apple kind of helped massage

00:19:06   it with you, like saying, for example,

00:19:08   no, you can't do it automatically,

00:19:09   have to do it by notification. That's what I think happened here. Why do you

00:19:14   think they did that? I think that Apple has allowed this app because it will

00:19:21   allow people that can't get 9.3 to take advantage of something that Apple is

00:19:30   saying should be in all phones. It's not just 9.3, it's people who can get

00:19:35   iOS 9. Yeah that's what I mean, like so anybody who can't get 9.3 like because

00:19:39   they can't get iOS 9. Let me check this out. So what's the system requirement for

00:19:44   Flexbrite? Let's see if it supports iOS 8. So from the MacRumors article

00:19:51   suggests that it will be able to... Flexbrite is available on devices running

00:19:55   iOS 7 or iOS 8. Uh-huh. Okay, yeah, the App Store says the same thing. So that

00:20:01   would be my thinking is that they're allowing this and maybe helping

00:20:06   helping this come to the store, right, in the way they need to do this. So Apple

00:20:13   have something in the store which is available for people that can't get

00:20:18   night shift because now this is a thing that Apple is saying for health reasons

00:20:24   or whatever you know whatever whatever reasons they're kind of saying that

00:20:28   they're being kind of loose about the wording but we'll say for health reasons

00:20:31   that your device should do this but if a device can't do this because it can't

00:20:36   get iOS 9, does that mean that those people shouldn't benefit from the health aspect?

00:20:41   Yeah, that makes sense to me.

00:20:43   That's my thinking. Now, I'm frustrated in the MacRumors article, and I'm sure many

00:20:49   articles that will be written, that kind of implied criticism by saying that Flux was

00:20:56   demanded to be pulled away, was not allowed, as they said in this article. I don't think

00:21:04   that Apple necessarily had a problem with functionality.

00:21:07   I think Apple didn't like the fact

00:21:08   that they were promoting people's side loading applications

00:21:10   onto their devices.

00:21:12   - Yeah, that got on their nerves.

00:21:14   - And we have a story like just in a little bit

00:21:16   which suggests why this sort of stuff can be so messy.

00:21:19   You know, like that transmission malware, right?

00:21:23   Because bad things can happen

00:21:25   if you're just putting apps on your device

00:21:28   to go for the app store, right?

00:21:29   It can happen.

00:21:30   And I think that was the problem.

00:21:32   I would dare to say that maybe if Flux...

00:21:35   I don't know if they ever tried to submit this

00:21:37   to the App Store, but maybe they could have been

00:21:41   this person instead of Fluxbright.

00:21:43   I don't know.

00:21:45   - You know what's strange to me?

00:21:49   If this company really worked with Apple

00:21:51   to cooperate and get the app on the App Store,

00:21:55   why is the interface so ugly?

00:21:58   - So this is why I think when they say work with Apple,

00:22:02   They work with AppReview.

00:22:04   If you go to the website for Flexbrite,

00:22:07   there's a download button at the top,

00:22:10   and it says, "Download from Apple Store."

00:22:13   Yeah, this is what I'm talking about.

00:22:14   They did not work with this company in a partnership sense.

00:22:18   No, no, no.

00:22:19   That did not happen, because

00:22:21   then this wouldn't look like this.

00:22:25   I feel that they just worked with AppReview.

00:22:31   It must be, you know, like a couple of guys at App Review, they talk to a manager maybe.

00:22:36   They're like, you know, there's this company, they want to make this tool for brightness

00:22:39   and we're going to release Night Shift. Do we want to, you know, allow them to be on

00:22:45   the store so people with iOS 7 and iOS 8 can also have the same feature? And someone must

00:22:51   have been like, yeah, whatever, sounds like a good idea. You know, no big deal, just don't

00:22:55   let them automatically change the brightness because otherwise, you know, the other developers

00:23:00   will get real mad about it. So let them use notifications and whatever. You can also use

00:23:06   3D Touch, I think, as a shortcut, by the way. But still, it doesn't feel like an official,

00:23:11   you know, like Apple works with the...

00:23:13   No, I really, really do not think that that is the case here.

00:23:17   It's not the research kit type of official partnership with, you know, institutions and

00:23:21   organizations to have native iOS apps. It's like a company goes to App Review and it's

00:23:26   "Look, we want to make this tool, can we release it on the App Store?"

00:23:30   And it's like, "Yeah, sure, whatever, just don't do X and X."

00:23:34   Yep.

00:23:36   So I really think that they're like,

00:23:39   they want to use these libraries which usually we don't let people use,

00:23:44   they're going to change the colors of the screen.

00:23:46   Is this okay? And they're like, "Well, we have Night Shift now."

00:23:49   And that's how I assume it went through, right?

00:23:51   And it just went up a few levels,

00:23:54   Maybe it went to somebody who works under Phil Schiller and they were like, "Yeah, okay, we'll let us through."

00:24:00   Yeah.

00:24:01   They did not have a part.

00:24:02   I cannot believe that they would have done that because this thing is all kinds of ugly.

00:24:08   I just can't imagine that's the case.

00:24:11   I mean, because that, you know, it kind of, whether it's sure or it shouldn't, that's not really an app review rule.

00:24:16   Is your app ugly?

00:24:18   Well, no, ugly, not ugly.

00:24:22   Right? Because the thing is, this app doesn't look nice, but it's not terrible.

00:24:28   I've used absolute worse than this.

00:24:30   Oh yeah.

00:24:30   Right? Like it's just like, it's not pixel perfect design.

00:24:36   No.

00:24:37   But like, I mean, I've just had a scan over the Flux stuff.

00:24:40   And there doesn't appear to be, from what I can see,

00:24:45   any kind of hint towards the fact that they ever tried

00:24:50   to work with Apple directly?

00:24:53   Yeah I don't know either if they ever tried to submit

00:24:57   Flux to the App Store. We should look on the forums. I think there's

00:25:01   community forums for Flux.

00:25:02   Yeah if anybody knows that send it in because I'd like to address that next week if that's the case

00:25:06   but

00:25:07   my feeling is if they didn't then

00:25:10   you know, what are you going to do?

00:25:14   clarification, Flexbright tells you that there's a dark mode, but it's not really

00:25:19   a dark mode. I mean, it gets, you know, it turns the screen black. It just inverts the

00:25:24   colors. It inverts the colors, so when people like me and you, when we talk about

00:25:28   having a dark mode on iOS, what we actually want is, you know, a dark

00:25:33   interface, but not to... Like how Tweetbot works, or how OmniFocus works, where it just

00:25:38   changes the colors of the interface as opposed to inverting the colors. It

00:25:42   it doesn't invert the colors of icons and images, you know?

00:25:45   - Yeah, so it's the negatives, right?

00:25:47   - Yes. - It looks like a negative,

00:25:48   like a photo. - This is a negative effect

00:25:50   of, you know, it's the same setting of inaccessibility

00:25:53   and, oh no, I stand, I think there's the same option.

00:25:56   This is not a system dark mode the way that we envision it.

00:26:00   - No, or want. - Or want.

00:26:02   - There should be, in my opinion.

00:26:04   - We'll talk about it, Myke.

00:26:05   (laughing)

00:26:07   - All right, let's take a break.

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00:28:27   show

00:28:28   and Real AFM

00:28:30   Okay, so Mr. Federico Fatici, one of your favorite applications got a little update.

00:28:35   So it's Workflow. Can you detail what you like about this new update?

00:28:41   So yesterday version 1.4.4 of Workflow was released on the App Store, and it comes with two, at least for me, big changes.

00:28:50   The first one is a new action to overlay an image on top of another image.

00:28:55   And the reason why I've been looking forward to this is in some of my reviews and articles

00:29:02   on Mac stories I want to have iOS screenshots, so either iPhone or iPad screenshots, inside

00:29:10   those pretty device frames that Apple provides you for free from the marketing assets on

00:29:17   the web.

00:29:18   All right.

00:29:19   And the way that I used to generate these images a few months ago used to be on my Mac.

00:29:25   I would just use Acorn to put screenshots inside of these frames.

00:29:30   There are web services as well that I've used, I can't remember them.

00:29:34   Yeah, there's some of them, I don't like them just because you can tell those are super fake.

00:29:38   Or like, they're used by a ton of people.

00:29:41   So, you know, there's services with pretty backgrounds, like fancy desks,

00:29:48   or like there's a fake hand with an iPhone and a coffee on the other side.

00:29:53   I don't like those because it's, to me, it looks fake.

00:29:56   Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. Sometimes, I mean, I agree with you, just face-on, screenshot-on-device,

00:30:03   white background, like you do, that's what I like as well.

00:30:06   I like to be, you know, simple in the record.

00:30:08   Yeah, put the focus on the app.

00:30:10   Yeah, lately I've been using Pixelmator on iOS to do the same, or I've been using LongScreen,

00:30:18   which is this screenshot utility for iOS, that can put your screenshot inside of these

00:30:24   frames. The reason why I want to automate the process is I want more control, and I

00:30:29   want to mix and match iPhone and iPad screenshots, I want to control the alignment of those screenshots,

00:30:36   so with the new overlay action you can take an image to use as the background, which in

00:30:41   in my case is the iPhone 6S Plus frame or the iPad Pro frame, and you can put an image

00:30:48   on top of that image and the result is a JPG that you can save to the photo library or

00:30:55   you can share with extensions. In my case I save it to the photos app and I later upload

00:31:00   it to my CDN. So this is super convenient, you can automate anything about the process,

00:31:07   You can control the size, you can control where the file comes from.

00:31:13   In my example, I store the assets in iCloud Drive, just because it's faster than fetching

00:31:20   the file from Dropbox, because it runs natively on iOS all the time.

00:31:25   So that's super convenient.

00:31:27   It's going to be real useful when I put together longer reviews or stories for the website.

00:31:34   All right, so I have a question for you.

00:31:36   Yes.

00:31:37   How do you position them?

00:31:42   Well, Workflow has an option to paste the image at the center of the background image.

00:31:52   And the way I did this is I cut the frames precisely so that I knew the black portion of the screen would be where the image would be pasted onto.

00:32:05   It's just a simple calculation with the pixels.

00:32:07   And I had a little bit of trouble with the PSD for the iPad Pro,

00:32:12   so I asked my girlfriend Sylvia to take out of that for me.

00:32:15   And she centered the iPad frame so that the workflow image would be pasted in the right position.

00:32:23   It's just a toggle that you say, "I want to overlay in the center,"

00:32:28   and workflow takes care of everything for you.

00:32:31   So you just need to make sure that you have the assets that will allow that alignment.

00:32:36   So I guess, can you lay images next to each other as well?

00:32:40   No, there's a separate action for that.

00:32:43   Yeah, there's combined images which I use at the end of the workflow.

00:32:49   So after I paste each screenshot into the device it belongs to,

00:32:54   because I do calculation to see what's the resolution here,

00:32:57   do I need to paste inside of an iPad or inside of an iPhone, is it portrait or landscape?

00:33:02   At the end, each of these iPhones and iPads is joined with a combined image action.

00:33:08   So it does it automatically? All you do is go to the screenshot and say put it into a frame,

00:33:13   and it works it out on its own and puts it into the correct frame for you?

00:33:17   Yes.

00:33:17   Federico. Federico.

00:33:20   I know yesterday I got a lot of people that were very happy on Twitter. Someone sent me a

00:33:27   a gift of Jesus as a thank you. I mean, sure, it's a big thank you. It's about as big a

00:33:34   thank you as you can get, I think. You know? There's also another action, Myke. It lets

00:33:40   you convert – this is quite nerdy – it lets you convert HTML back to Markdown. So

00:33:46   usually you hear about people converting Markdown to HTML. Oh. What I want to do – I kind

00:33:52   I kind of glossed over this in the release notes.

00:33:55   I was like, "Oh, I have loads of apps that can do this,"

00:33:57   but I didn't realize it's the other way around.

00:33:59   - This is the other way around.

00:34:00   So you have HTML and you want to clean it up,

00:34:04   but turn it into markdown and plain text.

00:34:07   The reason why I need to do this,

00:34:09   when I'm using Safari on my iPad usually,

00:34:13   and I want to link to someone else's article on Mac stories,

00:34:17   I want to quote some texts from their website.

00:34:21   If you only use copy and paste, you know, with the iOS copy menu, you lose all of the formatting.

00:34:27   And of course, iOS doesn't have any, you know, rich text to mark down conversion tool.

00:34:32   Can I just take a break one moment and just say how ridiculous this is?

00:34:37   I know. The copy and paste menu needs a serious overhaul in general.

00:34:42   I tell you what, let's take a... carry on, we'll take a bit about that in a moment.

00:34:46   OK, so with this workflow I can select some text, run the workflow, it finds the rich text in Safari,

00:34:54   turns the rich text to HTML, that's a built-in feature of Workflow, and then the HTML is converted to Markdown.

00:35:03   So when I'm in drafts or editorial, wink wink Myke, editorial, I can go on without having to see HTML,

00:35:15   but when the link post will be published, there will be the original formatting from the source, from the website.

00:35:21   So it's a nice way to not lose any formatting when quoting other people.

00:35:25   It retains, you know, italic, bold, links, whatever.

00:35:29   I just want to make sure that when I link to someone,

00:35:31   the quote that I include on Mac stories as the original version of their text.

00:35:37   That's real smart. How do you get the HTML?

00:35:39   Basically, Workflow gets a Safari selection. That Safari selection is HTML.

00:35:47   OK.

00:35:48   So, Workflow tells you it's rich text. The action is actually called "Convert Rich Text to Markdown", not "Convert HTML to Markdown".

00:35:59   But it's basically the same thing, yeah.

00:36:01   So it goes in and grabs the HTML on its own?

00:36:05   Yeah.

00:36:06   So you just select a block of text?

00:36:07   Yeah, in Safari or any other, you know, Safari View Controller, whatever. Or you can give

00:36:13   it rich text from other apps, you know. The underlying feature that does this is based

00:36:21   upon, I don't think it's a straight adaptation, it's based upon Aaron Swart's excellent HTML

00:36:29   to text, which came out about a decade ago, I think. I used to run HTML to text all the

00:36:36   time in Pythonista. Super super handy. After last week's episode I got quite a

00:36:42   bit of criticism from a few places from people who were saying to me why do you

00:36:49   want you know why why do you want all these features for iOS like you know

00:36:54   we're saying like using three apps at once when OS X does it all right a lot

00:36:59   of people are saying that to me it's like you know you're you're you will

00:37:02   basically want to use OS X why don't you just use OS X why you why are you

00:37:06   forcing yourself to use iOS. And this is exactly it. So I know the automator exists.

00:37:14   I know the Apple script exists. I can't do these things. I can't do them. I don't

00:37:20   understand how to do them. I don't know how to code anything. I don't get it.

00:37:23   And any scripts that I've found, I'm always a little bit scared to run

00:37:28   them if I don't know where they've come from because they could do anything to

00:37:31   my Mac because it's so open for this sort of stuff, right? Like I remember once when

00:37:38   we mentioned Matt had a wedding, there was one time when Matt wrote a script for himself

00:37:44   to automate his photos and instead deleted basically everything on his hard drive. That's

00:37:50   the sort of stuff that can go horrifically wrong.

00:37:52   I remember that.

00:37:53   Yeah. With workflow, I am able to build these workflows on my own. I've done it because

00:38:00   the UI is really simple and it explains everything to you. But other than that, I can just go

00:38:05   and get your workflow and feel pretty confident in knowing what's going on, because the way

00:38:10   it displays everything to you is nice and clear, but no matter what it does, it can't

00:38:15   really do anything extremely destructive.

00:38:18   Yeah, and you have to give it permission if you want to delete stuff.

00:38:22   Exactly. And this, so basically what I'm getting at is, this application exists for iOS and

00:38:27   It's amazing.

00:38:29   There is nothing exactly like this on OS X.

00:38:32   There are things that do what it does.

00:38:34   There are things that are more powerful.

00:38:36   But to a user like me and to many other people like me,

00:38:40   this is where the innovation is happening.

00:38:42   This is where the apps are happening and it's on iOS.

00:38:45   Like the thing that I was talking about was the screenshots.

00:38:48   I could now do this really easily,

00:38:51   but I wouldn't be able to do it so easily on OS X anymore.

00:38:55   So this is what I'm talking about

00:38:57   with my desire to do more and more of my stuff on iOS.

00:39:00   Because exciting things are happening there,

00:39:02   new things are happening there,

00:39:04   and they're in a way that makes sense to me more

00:39:07   than some of the stuff that's on OS X.

00:39:08   So I just wanted to take that slight aside

00:39:11   as a kind of a follow-up on last week.

00:39:13   - Yeah, I agree with you.

00:39:15   Just because you're able to do more

00:39:23   or more powerful things on a Mac,

00:39:25   you know, a PC even, it doesn't mean that people who don't want to use those computers

00:39:32   shouldn't have access to the same features, meaning

00:39:35   if some people can do this automation in a better way on a Mac, you know, with Kibermaestro or with Python,

00:39:43   doesn't mean that people who want to use iOS are stupid or that shouldn't have access to the same automation.

00:39:50   It's just in a different package. It's more user-friendly.

00:39:53   It's different.

00:39:54   And if you can do it and you can do things more powerfully and easier on the Mac, then

00:39:59   you should.

00:40:00   Yes.

00:40:01   And you should be happy about that.

00:40:02   Yes.

00:40:03   But I can't.

00:40:04   And I don't want to take the time to learn when I'm able to do these things on iOS easier

00:40:10   for me.

00:40:11   That, that's what it is.

00:40:12   All right, let's, let's move on because now we've got a ton of other stuff.

00:40:15   So Patrick in the chat room sent us a note to a forum post on the Flux forums.

00:40:24   And this is from Lorna from the Flux team.

00:40:26   And what it says is "We'd love to offer Flux in the official App Store, but we need some

00:40:29   help from Apple.

00:40:30   If you want to send them a nice note telling them how Flux has helped you and you'd like

00:40:34   to see Flux in the official App Store, you can submit feedback."

00:40:36   This is kind of like what they wrote in their blog post.

00:40:39   Yes, this is what I remember from the forums.

00:40:42   But again, what this suggests is we need affirmative action as opposed to we submitted it and they

00:40:48   rejected it.

00:40:49   It is what I'm looking for.

00:40:51   Yeah, what this suggests is like, they pulled us, help us get in there.

00:40:58   But basically, this doesn't say to me that they ever tried to submit in the first place.

00:41:04   They maybe did.

00:41:05   But you know, if this is if this is all that there is about it, then it's kind of suggesting

00:41:09   that they want help now they got, you know, kind of the banhammer.

00:41:14   Yeah, yeah.

00:41:16   So there you go. Right, rich text on iOS.

00:41:19   What do you want to know, Myke?

00:41:20   Well, I just want to moan about it. I think this is one of the biggest failings of iOS.

00:41:26   I think it's ridiculous that rich text cannot be stored from application to application

00:41:32   on the clipboard. The fact that I can have a bulleted list in one app and I copy the

00:41:37   bulleted list and I paste it in another app and then I've got asterisks instead.

00:41:41   When again on the on the Mac that is no problem it retains the bullets. Like if

00:41:47   I'm on the Mac I'm copying from notes on OS X to a Google Doc it will keep

00:41:54   the bullets. If I do it on iOS it puts asterisks in. Another one I do is I keep

00:41:59   spreadsheets of things I need to send to people. On OS X if I copy the

00:42:05   spreadsheet, paste it into my email client, it retains the table, right? If I do that on iOS

00:42:10   it's just like, here's just a bunch of text, like you just go crazy.

00:42:13   The this is

00:42:16   copying, the copying and pasting of rich text is so fundamental,

00:42:20   I can't believe

00:42:23   that it's not

00:42:24   part of iOS. It makes no sense to me. I'm gonna tell you why that's the case Myke. So I know

00:42:29   for a fact and

00:42:32   I'm pretty sure it's still the case that Apple itself uses different frameworks

00:42:38   for rich text across mail, across notes, across pages. Most of the time the

00:42:46   problems that you see stem from the fact that Apple themselves, they don't have a

00:42:53   unified rich text framework on iOS. So I'm pretty sure that's still the case, at

00:42:59   least with the Notes app, when you copy and paste rich text from Notes and you

00:43:02   try to paste the same text into mail, you lose the formatting. One of my wishes for

00:43:09   the next version of iOS is to have a brand new rich text framework. Because I realized

00:43:16   that rich text is not pretty, you know, for a long time it caused compatibility problems

00:43:23   with word files, page files, but Apple now is contributing to this long-standing stigma

00:43:30   against rich text by not making proper rich text support on iOS a system feature.

00:43:37   It's just ridiculous that, what's it, like 8 years into iOS, maybe 9 years,

00:43:45   we still don't have a good way to copy and paste rich text.

00:43:50   Maybe iOS 10, Myke, will be the solution.

00:43:54   I really, I really hope that that is what happens. I just feel like this is something that should have been fixed so long ago.

00:44:03   Yeah, and I mean it doesn't have to be that fancy. When you copy, say you copy some text from a note.

00:44:14   and the text you copy also contains formatting, lists, and maybe one of those link previews

00:44:23   that you get with the new Notes app. And you paste into Mail. It doesn't have to be the

00:44:28   same link preview, it doesn't have to be that fancy. You can just paste it as a normal link.

00:44:35   Or we could also mention the fact, Myke, that generating plain rich text, not just copying,

00:44:43   But also making rich text.

00:44:47   When you want to send an email message and you want to insert a link to a web page, you

00:44:53   cannot do like you do in any Mac app.

00:44:57   You select some text and you say "link".

00:45:00   You have to paste it as a hyperlink separately.

00:45:04   It's just awful.

00:45:05   And, you know, on the iPhone, trying to get to bold controls and italics, you're swiping

00:45:12   through menus. This is fundamental stuff. This is something that needs to be rethought.

00:45:19   And there you go, for the people that love OS X, you now have a complaint from me about

00:45:24   iOS. So let's go back to OS X again. There was an app called Transmission, which is a

00:45:31   BitTorrent app, I believe used for downloading home movies.

00:45:34   Yeah, yeah, I've been using it for like five years for home movies of all kinds.

00:45:40   Yeah.

00:45:41   There has been an issue. Could you explain what's happened here?

00:45:46   So, I think Saturday there was a notice on the transmission website and in the transmission updater for the Mac app

00:45:57   that a build version 2.9 of transmission for OS X was compromised

00:46:05   and it was planting malware on the file system on the Mac.

00:46:11   And that malware was actually ransomware, which is a new type of infection that basically,

00:46:18   usually after a few days, encrypts the contents of your drive

00:46:24   and he puts up a dialogue on the screen asking you to pay, so, you know, like a ransom, asking

00:46:29   you to pay to unlock the files. Usually this is a scam, so you send these people money

00:46:35   and they either clone your credit card or they take the money, but of course they never

00:46:40   unlock your computer. And it's a very nasty type of malware. We have the same problem

00:46:47   in Italy, you know, my father is a journalist and he was telling me about, you know, the

00:46:55   local police office sent out a notice to the press in my hometown about this new type of

00:47:01   malware going around and he was like, "Did you know about this?" I mean, yeah, and I

00:47:05   told him, "Yeah." And he was like, "What's that about ransom?" And so I explained to

00:47:09   my father, because he's not, you know, real tech-savvy, I explained to him. So it's definitely

00:47:14   one of the new trends among, you know, bad people. Now, the transmission case is quite

00:47:21   peculiar because the transmission... of course, the app is not available on the Mac App Store

00:47:27   because Apple doesn't allow torrent clients to be releasing there, but it was using Gatekeeper,

00:47:33   which is Apple's security measure on OS X, which, you know, the user can launch a Mac

00:47:40   downloaded from outside of the Mac App Store by granting permission to use that app through

00:47:45   GateKeeper, which is a certificate-based mechanism that authenticates the usage of that app.

00:47:51   Apple, as soon as it was informed of the security breach and the malware infection with that

00:47:57   transmission build, revoked the GateKeeper certificate from that build, so people were

00:48:06   no longer able to download the app. But according to the transmission developers, over 6000 downloads

00:48:13   were made through the website to download an infected version of transmission. And it's

00:48:21   not clear if anyone came across the ransom notice yesterday, because the two or three

00:48:27   day notice was due to expire on Monday, I think. So Apple rushed immediately to revoke

00:48:37   the certificate, and the transmission folks replaced the corrupt build on their server

00:48:44   with an updated version, without the malware. What's quite scary is two things. One, Gatekeeper

00:48:54   is convenient so Apple has a kill switch for this type of bad stuff that can happen outside

00:49:01   of the Mac App Store, but of course it only works after the fact.

00:49:04   It's retroactive.

00:49:05   It's retroactive.

00:49:06   When Apple finds out...

00:49:08   It's not even really retroactive, it doesn't fix anything.

00:49:12   It's like a bandaid.

00:49:13   Yeah, it prevents from happening again.

00:49:20   only finds out after the fact, even if they keep a close eye on Twitter or social media

00:49:26   or developer websites, they only find out after X number of people have come across

00:49:32   the problem. And the second question, which is actually quite scary, is how did this happen?

00:49:40   So the transmission developers, they released this new version of transmission for Mac,

00:49:46   I believe after two years of the last update, it actually made the news when transmission

00:49:53   was updated. I saw a bunch of articles on 9to5Mac and I think MacRumors, because transmission

00:49:59   is super popular and it didn't get an update for a couple of years. So transmission was

00:50:03   back and people were talking about it. And a week later, transmission is infected. Which

00:50:08   is a weird coincidence.

00:50:10   Were there any significant features added to this update?

00:50:14   I know, it was like OS X and Capitan support, a bunch of fixes, you know, not anything groundbreaking.

00:50:21   The developers said to Reuters, I think, yesterday, that it was a hack to their server.

00:50:30   The transmission build from the transmission company was replaced with another build, with

00:50:37   another Gatekeeper certificate, and Apple revoked that Gatekeeper certificate, not the

00:50:42   one.

00:50:43   good timing right yeah the app hasn't been updated in two years a lot of

00:50:48   people rush to download transmission again they're getting ready to do

00:50:52   another update and just before that update goes out because you assume that

00:50:56   this version was feature complete so just before the update goes out it's

00:51:01   replaced with a version that has all of the features in it right is that version

00:51:07   including a new gatekeeper certificate and malware.

00:51:12   - Yes.

00:51:14   - I mean, I'm not trying to say that we have

00:51:16   a conspiracy theory on our hands here,

00:51:18   but it feels like maybe somebody new, right?

00:51:24   Like it's not the transmission or attempting to,

00:51:28   like the company or the people in charge there

00:51:31   are attempting to install this around somewhere,

00:51:33   but maybe a friend of someone who works there,

00:51:36   You know what I mean? This is too much of a coincidence for it to happen just before

00:51:43   an update goes out after two years of no updates.

00:51:47   Yeah, I mean…

00:51:49   It's weird!

00:51:51   Yes, it is. One thought for you, Myke. This wouldn't have happened on the Mac App Store.

00:52:00   No. Well, can we say that for sure? I don't know.

00:52:05   Well, with sandboxing, these apps cannot go and insert files across the file system.

00:52:12   So even if the malware got in there, let's say it happened, let's just say they didn't

00:52:17   get noticed, it couldn't do anything. It couldn't go out into the system and delete the files,

00:52:23   right?

00:52:24   It couldn't physically access portions.

00:52:26   I didn't want to just flat out say "Ah, this would be fine" because I wasn't 100% sure.

00:52:30   That's the reason why you don't have malware on the iOS app store, and when you do, it's

00:52:35   usually based on another type of hack, such as a compromised version of Xcode, you know?

00:52:42   Like it happened in China a few months ago.

00:52:46   This wouldn't have happened on the Mac App Store, but the Mac App Store prohibits developers

00:52:50   from submitting torrent clients.

00:52:54   I feel like there's a discussion here to be made about opening up the Mac App Store to

00:52:59   more types of applications, because, you know, people with Macs download apps from the web.

00:53:07   And the reason why they do is, in large part, because Apple doesn't want those apps on the

00:53:11   Mac App Store, because if the Mac App Store was, you know, the place where you go for

00:53:17   all types of software, I believe that those wouldn't be 6,000 downloads, but they would

00:53:23   be maybe, you know, like a couple of thousands. Way, way, way less.

00:53:28   And this is partly on apples, you know?

00:53:32   Just because they still force people to go to the web and to download software that can

00:53:37   do nasty things to your file system, this is the result.

00:53:42   Sometimes you can put up all the security measures you want, you can use Gatekeeper,

00:53:46   you can advise people to go to the Mac App Store, but if I want to download a Tylrion

00:53:50   client or if I want to download an Adobe app and I download it from the web, and that app

00:53:55   has access to my entire file system, well, this is what happens. When there's a problem,

00:54:00   when there's a hack, there's a, you know, something that's compromised, this is the

00:54:03   result.

00:54:04   There's also this weird kind of irony about all of this that it's a bit torrent-client.

00:54:11   That can't be overlooked here, right? There's like a weird irony of illegal activity based

00:54:17   on more illegal activity, you know?

00:54:20   I mean, we can talk about piracy.

00:54:23   Yeah, I mean, you know, whatever, like, whatever. I mean, I was talking at the top of the show

00:54:27   about a bit of tarring in. I don't have a moral stance on piracy so much.

00:54:32   Well, let me tell you this, Myke. I don't want to get into the legal or moral sides

00:54:39   of this argument. But if there was a way that, you know, studios came together and they would

00:54:47   be like, look, you give us 20 euros a month or 30 euros a month and you can stream any

00:54:56   TV show or any movie as soon as it goes out in the United States of America and no matter

00:55:03   where you live, you pay us. I would pay so hard.

00:55:06   So like I pay for Netflix, I pay for Amazon Prime.

00:55:09   But the content is all different.

00:55:12   And I'll give you an example of my piracy thinking and how I use piracy if I ever do.

00:55:20   I wanted to watch Seinfeld. I looked on all the streaming services. I looked on iTunes.

00:55:27   You cannot buy Seinfeld digitally in the United Kingdom. It is not sold. You have to watch

00:55:34   it on DVD or Blu-ray. And I don't want to do that. Because the devices I like to watch

00:55:39   stuff on don't have a DVD or Blu-ray attached to them. There's no player attached to the

00:55:45   device. So the only way for us to get it in the format that we wanted it in was to pirate

00:55:52   it. I am now watching Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's one of the creators Larry David of Seinfeld

00:55:58   who went in to make Curb. And I am paying £15 a season on iTunes. I've bought four

00:56:03   seasons because it's on iTunes I will always pay like I will always pay if I

00:56:10   can sometimes I can't and that's when I personally go to the piracy group if I

00:56:18   was to do that I mean for home movies of course yeah yeah sure yeah do you get

00:56:22   what I mean like I feel like we're in the same boat on this like yes I will

00:56:25   pay like I'm paying for Netflix right now because I'm watching House of Cards

00:56:28   because I can get it at the same time it's the same with Breaking Bad when they

00:56:31   did that, right? I will give money if you just let me get the content but there has

00:56:38   to be that two-way street and sometimes it doesn't work. Like with Seinfeld. Like Seinfeld

00:56:43   is a 90s TV show and I for some reason cannot buy it digitally in the United Kingdom. It

00:56:47   doesn't make any sense. It just makes no sense to me. So I had to find it via other means.

00:56:53   I genuinely believe if you want to cut piracy in half, worldwide release and streaming everywhere.

00:56:59   Well look what happened to Napster when the iTunes Music Store came into existence.

00:57:04   Yep.

00:57:05   Anyway.

00:57:06   But you know, you cannot say to Australian people "Well we'll give you this TV show

00:57:11   only in six months."

00:57:13   When everybody's already seen it.

00:57:15   In today's world it's just unacceptable to think that people in America get a TV

00:57:20   show in English before anyone else.

00:57:22   Like I'm a fan of the Mythbusters, right?

00:57:26   And they're currently in their final season. And in the UK, I'm only halfway through the

00:57:34   season and I'm buying it on Amazon. Why can't I watch it at the same time? Like, a couple

00:57:40   of days ago was the finale, so I had to mute a bunch of people so I didn't, you know, because

00:57:43   it's not like the show can be spoiled, right? Because it's not, you know, but I just didn't

00:57:47   want to see anything about it because I won't get to see it for like another six weeks.

00:57:52   Why can't I see it at the same time?

00:57:54   make any sense. This one is owned by Discovery and Discovery UK gets it six

00:58:00   weeks later. What is this? It's the same company. Anyway, back to this Bittorrent

00:58:07   thing. So this is really weird and it highlights a bunch of issues. One

00:58:14   of the issues is the effectiveness of Gatekeeper, right? Because there is

00:58:19   clearly a benefit here in that it doesn't allow for anybody else but

00:58:24   gatekeeper is is not it's not what the name suggests because the gate is is

00:58:33   breached before it is a gate but the people who are it should be called

00:58:39   drawbridge right because it comes up maybe a little bit too late after some

00:58:45   people have broken into the town. Yes. Right? It's not down protecting people, you know?

00:58:53   Basically the milk that has been spilled stays on the ground, stays on the floor. It just

00:59:01   prevents new milk from being spilled. That's how it works. And again, it's an after-the-fact

00:59:10   kind of solution. Now, what happens to those 6,000 downloads? We don't know. Are any Mac

00:59:19   users seeing the ransom dialogue on the screens? We don't know. Does Apple have a solution

00:59:26   if you have an affected MacBook, you know, you bring it to the Genius Bar and they fix

00:59:31   it for you? We don't know.

00:59:32   Should they even?

00:59:34   day what type of encryption do these hackers use? You know it's a lot of questions and

00:59:41   there's no solution that I know of. They acted kind of quickly, I mean two days isn't too

00:59:49   bad. Still, we don't know how many people... In a funny way though, this just further pushes

00:59:57   the problem of the problems of the Mac App Store. If you ignore this app, ignore that

01:00:06   it is a BitTorrent app, which would never get in the Mac App Store anyway, let's say

01:00:10   it was something else, like an app from Adobe. Well we had it a couple of weeks ago, right?

01:00:16   Where Adobe, like the Creative Cloud update was deleting files from people's root directory,

01:00:24   it was deleting the backblaze files. That wouldn't happen if it was in the App Store,

01:00:30   if sandboxing was in effect here. So to stop this kind of craziness, these apps should

01:00:38   all be in the App Store, but the App Store isn't good enough by the standards of these

01:00:42   traditional developers. In a funny way, it just comes back around to being like, "Well,

01:00:49   If the App Store was more inviting, maybe this stuff would happen less.

01:00:55   Let me ask you what some people may see as a crazy question, Myke.

01:01:00   Do you believe in the future people shouldn't be able to poke around and play with the file

01:01:04   system?

01:01:10   I don't know.

01:01:11   I mean, the way I see it...

01:01:13   Okay, okay.

01:01:14   I think that in future operating systems,

01:01:20   like what we have now and what may continue.

01:01:25   - Don't be scared, Myke, go on.

01:01:27   - I think that it should be locked down like iOS.

01:01:31   That's what I think.

01:01:34   - I'm thinking the same thing, actually.

01:01:36   You know, if you give someone access to the file system--

01:01:40   - You shouldn't take it away.

01:01:42   You shouldn't take it away, sure. That makes sense, people have always been able to poke around, play with things on a computer

01:01:49   and you know, one of the big reasons people like computers is that they can change anything, they can have a command line, they can customize the entire experience

01:02:00   but eventually there's gonna be problems and the moment that you give access to a user to the file system you also give access to developers

01:02:09   developers can screw up like Adobe did or developers can be compromised like transmission was

01:02:15   and that's going to be, you know, problematic.

01:02:19   I personally... this is gonna sound like heresy to some people

01:02:26   but I wouldn't mind a feature where you have to jailbreak a Mac

01:02:30   if you want to poke around and do crazy things

01:02:33   just because the net benefit of increased security for everyone

01:02:38   provided that Apple comes up with ways to...

01:02:41   Yeah, like this is the other part of this, is like

01:02:45   in the same way that I'm saying this, I feel that there also needs to be

01:02:50   better tools in these future OSes

01:02:55   to counteract the fact that a lot of this

01:02:59   tinkering is taken away.

01:03:02   Now I don't know what this stuff looks like, right, but like

01:03:05   if you're thinking about what the future of operating systems look like, it's that.

01:03:08   I mean, security is so important and iOS is more secure because it was built specifically.

01:03:17   And that's a fact.

01:03:19   It's like you just think about these things in a specific way and they're like, well,

01:03:23   third parties are the problem in a lot of instances, let's restrict them.

01:03:29   Right?

01:03:31   Yeah.

01:03:32   And so if you're thinking about what future operating systems look like,

01:03:35   Mac OS or Mac OS X will not be around in a hundred years. It will be something else, right?

01:03:44   And I think that that something else will be closer to iOS than OS X.

01:03:53   I mean, just think about it. What if the future is VR, and in the future you work in VR? Hold on.

01:03:59   And you give developers, you give a third party access to your VR system, because you know, that's the way computers have always been.

01:04:07   What if that someone plants a virus in VR and that virus is like a scary monster that creeps up on you and scares you and you have a heart attack and you die?

01:04:16   That's a real... I mean, I get where you're going, but that's a big stretch.

01:04:24   Is it crazy though? Is it crazy to think that...

01:04:27   It's a little crazy. It's a little crazy. I gotta say. I mean, I get what you're saying.

01:04:32   It's a little crazy, but I get it. I'm just saying, I'm just saying, whenever you...

01:04:40   From an ideological point of view, computers should be open. And I get that. It's just,

01:04:48   when you give people openness, some people screw up badly with that access. And

01:04:55   And I wouldn't mind a feature where you shouldn't be able to plant malware, you shouldn't be

01:05:03   able to change files in the file system that can break your computer.

01:05:09   I'm not saying that people want to use Max to plant malware or to break critical files,

01:05:17   but they have the option to, right?

01:05:20   And that shouldn't be an option.

01:05:21   I wouldn't mind a feature where everything is more secure, there's still the ability

01:05:26   to customize a lot of things, there's better communication between apps, so you can choose

01:05:30   to, I don't know, to save documents whenever you want, you know, there's better support

01:05:35   for exchanging data between apps, but it's just...

01:05:40   I look at this transmission story and I'm like, you know, this shouldn't be possible.

01:05:45   Why is it that you have to go on a website to download some software, and that software

01:05:51   puts up a ransom on your screen. I get why the political side of things is like, yes,

01:05:57   you should be able to download any type of software from the web, and then if that software

01:06:02   has a problem, well, that's your fault. But it shouldn't be this way, you know? It's like

01:06:08   selling a car without an airbag to consumers. If you crash your car and you don't have an

01:06:15   airbag while that's on you. It shouldn't be that way, you know? Maybe I'm just weird.

01:06:21   I don't know. Stephen is never gonna leave us alone. Stephen is gonna be upset. You're

01:06:25   aware of this, right? Stephen is gonna, I know, I know. There are so many things we've

01:06:29   done this week that he would just be screaming. I've said so many wrong things for a lot of

01:06:35   people. Don't die! I'm trying not to. Oh dear. Alright, let's take a break and then on the

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01:08:14   All right, so Federico, you've been using drafts recently

01:08:21   in a new way for you.

01:08:23   And we've been meaning to talk about this for a bit, so I'd be interested to know

01:08:27   what you're up to.

01:08:28   I've been using drafts as a blogging app, as

01:08:33   my text editor of choice for not just notes, but

01:08:38   for articles, you know, for stories, for reviews and, you know, newsletters, everything that I do.

01:08:45   Okay.

01:08:45   Which is odd because, you know, Drafts is not positioned as a text editor, it's more of a,

01:08:53   you know, capturing tool, you open the app to jot down a note real quickly and then you share the

01:08:58   text with other apps, usually. It's where, I mean, I believe the tagline of Drafts is, it's where

01:09:05   text starts or something like that. Yeah, where text starts, that's the headline. And

01:09:11   that's kind of what it's become and kind of where it started, right? It was like you

01:09:16   have something you want to throw in and then you put it somewhere else and it's incredible

01:09:21   for that and it's really grown more and more over the years. Yeah. And it's grown so much

01:09:29   that at this point with iOS 9, so Split View and the shortcut bar, you can do a lot of

01:09:35   things in Drafts that are not too dissimilar from what you can do in Runwriter or even

01:09:42   editorial. And actually, it can be even a lot more than those apps because of the insane

01:09:50   control that Drafts gives you over the creation of actions and keyboard commands. So what

01:09:58   I did is, I wanted to see if I could use drafts to, initially just to create linked posts,

01:10:07   but I liked the experience so much that I started using it for all types of articles

01:10:12   or microstories. So I came up with a few actions that I use all the time. Those actions I pinned

01:10:20   to the shortcut bar for easier access, and I started using drafts mostly in Split View

01:10:27   next to Safari or Tweetbot, you know, when I'm linking to something and I want to look

01:10:33   at the web page at the same time, but also when I'm writing reviews, I can use Drafts

01:10:40   next to Notes, so I can look up my first impressions of an app, or next to Photos, so I can double-check

01:10:48   screenshots or next to the app I'm writing about, so I can try the app and write on the

01:10:54   other side.

01:10:55   The big problem is it doesn't use Dropbox for sync, it uses iCloud.

01:11:00   I came up with actions to sort of replicate having Dropbox sync.

01:11:08   I basically just, every time I make a change to a draft, to a text file, I save the drafts to my Dropbox account.

01:11:17   So if I want to, I can go back to Runwriter or editorial and I can make changes in Dropbox as well.

01:11:24   It's not ideal, I wouldn't mind a feature where Jafs connects to your Dropbox account,

01:11:30   but for now it's iCloud.

01:11:33   One thing that I really liked is the ability to do all kinds of actions and to browse community

01:11:41   actions.

01:11:42   So the reason why I like Jafs is Greg Pierce, the developer, is super active with the app,

01:11:49   is constantly developing new stuff, which I like.

01:11:53   We talked about this a few shows ago. I like apps that are actively developed and I like

01:11:59   constant updates. But also there's a strong community of Drafts users making actions,

01:12:05   making scripts, making custom keys. So if you don't want to waste time coming up with

01:12:13   actions that you need, you can just go to the Drafts website, the action directory,

01:12:18   can find hundreds of examples. So that's nice. And also I've been liking the fact that it

01:12:25   is an app built for Markdown. The way that you interact with plain text, the keyboard

01:12:33   shortcuts, the actions, everything is built for Markdown users. You can choose between

01:12:42   different markdown previews, different markdown flavors, you know, there's a markdown, multi

01:12:48   markdown, there's another one, I don't remember the name. You can also do your own custom

01:12:55   previews. So I did my custom Mac stories CSS, so every time I preview an article it looks

01:13:01   like it would look on the website, which is nice.

01:13:07   Despite this appreciation mic, I still miss editorial.

01:13:14   And I feel like this is sort of like, you know, I'm coming to terms with my lost love

01:13:23   in a way.

01:13:24   Okay.

01:13:25   At first it was like, yes, I'm breaking up with you, I don't want to hear about you ever

01:13:30   again.

01:13:31   Then I like, you know, I kind of miss the app.

01:13:35   And now I'm like, I really miss the app.

01:13:38   You know?

01:13:39   I'm at the stage where drafts is great, even if it's not meant for, you know, blogging

01:13:47   or text editing.

01:13:49   And one writer is great, but I miss the more advanced stuff.

01:13:55   Like I miss in-document search.

01:14:00   I miss Dropbox versions.

01:14:02   I miss the ability to fold paragraphs and to rearrange them.

01:14:08   And as I was having these thoughts, yesterday, Ole, the developer of editorial, released

01:14:16   a new beta.

01:14:19   He also talked about it on Twitter today, so I can share it.

01:14:24   There's a new version, version 1.3 of editorial, finally adding iPad Pro and iOS 9 support,

01:14:31   And it is glorious, Myke. And I've been trying the app this morning, and it's, you know,

01:14:39   it's like finding an old love all over, and falling in love all over again. So I don't

01:14:45   know. I feel like iS9 and the lack of an editorial update caused and led me to a period of confusion.

01:14:57   I was like a text editor vagabond in many ways, I didn't know where to go.

01:15:06   So I tried a lot of different things and I managed to replicate a lot of the key workflows

01:15:12   and things that I need to automate.

01:15:16   But it's just, I come to that point, to the tipping point where I'm like, you know, for

01:15:20   this I still need a tutorial.

01:15:24   as much as I like to fight it and to say "well, I can find alternatives". There's just that

01:15:30   point where I'm like, you know, there's that software that does everything I need, now

01:15:34   it's coming back with an update, and maybe I should just move again. My concern is that

01:15:41   right now I'm saying "oh man, this is awesome, editorial is coming back, I'm falling in love

01:15:48   again. But what if iOS 10 comes out and the tutorial doesn't get an update, and it gets

01:15:57   an update six months later, and I find myself in this position all over again by September

01:16:03   or by October? What if that's the case? What am I gonna do? So, I don't know, I'm confused,

01:16:10   Myke. I feel like I need your advice.

01:16:17   I think that at this point, as great as it is, maybe editorial is a risk if you need

01:16:29   new features.

01:16:30   I mean, the app never broke, it just wasn't updated in the way that we like.

01:16:42   the same way that we have been complaining about Google and stuff like that, although admittedly

01:16:48   right, Ole is just the one guy. But still, many applications have been updated and I don't know

01:16:56   the situation for him in which it took the time that it took, but it did take that time. So I

01:17:03   think what you have here is a risk that you need to assess and in all honesty I think you've pretty

01:17:11   much assessed it and have worked now with two apps. So you wrote that big piece about one writer

01:17:18   and now you've been using drafts quite a lot and I think that what you have now is the ability

01:17:29   to move a lot of your work to other applications when you need to.

01:17:33   Yes.

01:17:37   So if editorial is currently being worked on and you're happy with it, then I would say

01:17:41   go to it. But always remember, the more and more complex things you build in,

01:17:48   the worse it will be if you have to step away.

01:17:52   Yeah, I know. I feel like I'm not building new complex things for text editing as much as I used

01:18:04   used to. It's only because I'm doing complex things in Workflow now. I don't do any Python

01:18:13   anymore really.

01:18:14   I think that's a very good thing.

01:18:18   The Workflow team, I feel like they're committed to Workflow. This is their job.

01:18:24   They've at least shown that so far. Anything can change, but right now they've really shown

01:18:30   so far that they are committed to the development of the application.

01:18:33   It's been always updated, you know, iOS 8, iOS 9, all updates in between.

01:18:39   So it's been a good track record so far.

01:18:42   So I feel like most of the automation that I do, I do in Workflow now.

01:18:47   And in fact, to move back to editorial, I just needed to replicate like four actions.

01:18:55   There's the more advanced stuff for...

01:19:00   There's a couple of workflows that I need occasionally.

01:19:02   But really, what I miss is a real text editing environment. You know, search, versions, those

01:19:11   are features that you don't get in a note-taking app. You know what I mean? Like, I want a

01:19:19   real app to write and to research.

01:19:22   Like drafts could still play a real valuable part in your workflows when you're posting

01:19:27   small things or you know you have notes for something that you can turn into something

01:19:32   else but when you want to sit down and write a really heavy article, a book, which you

01:19:40   know you do now, you write books, you maybe want to be in an app that is completely dedicated

01:19:51   to that type of thing.

01:19:52   Scrivener is on the horizon again.

01:19:55   I know.

01:19:56   You know, that might be, again, another one to think about a little bit later down the

01:20:02   road if it ever does come out.

01:20:05   There's also Ulysses.

01:20:06   Ulysses, yeah.

01:20:07   When is the situation?

01:20:08   Have they got an iPad out?

01:20:11   Almost.

01:20:12   Almost, okay.

01:20:13   So there's another one.

01:20:15   Very, very soon, Myke.

01:20:17   Man, it's so interesting to me that there's so many text editors, but, you know, it seems

01:20:23   like that is a real market. People want that stuff. People write on these devices quite

01:20:27   a lot. I've been playing around with OneWriter a little bit more and that is a great app.

01:20:34   But I did receive a editorial beta invite today. So I will be trying it out. Editorial

01:20:41   is another app which has incredible complexity, but I was able to build some actions with

01:20:46   it because it, you know, going back to earlier talking about workflow, it has the ability

01:20:50   to help you through the process with the visual kind of layout but that thing can get crazy.

01:20:58   So what do you think you're gonna do? You gonna throw caution to the wind and run back

01:21:06   into the warm embrace of editorial?

01:21:10   probably I'm wise, but you know I only live once, screw it man. I mean, okay, here's my

01:21:21   plan. There's some actions that are my key things, so I want to be able to add footnotes

01:21:29   to a document quickly, I want to add hyperlinks quickly, I want to preview with a preview

01:21:38   that looks like my website. I want to publish with the workflow. All of those things, I

01:21:47   have the same actions across editorial, across one writer, well, except the custom preview,

01:21:53   and drafts. So the basic set of what I need is taken care of. I'm like the CGP Grey of

01:22:03   text editor here. I have three different apps with the same set of actions. So, you know,

01:22:08   it's like a redundant automation. If something goes wrong, I can move to the other app. If

01:22:15   I move to Tutorial now, I can take advantage of some of the advanced features that I used

01:22:24   to miss, like search or some more complex workflows, but I only run those, you know,

01:22:30   maybe a couple of times a month. So I think I'm gonna try to see what happens if I fall

01:22:38   back in love with the editorial. But if anything goes wrong, I'm young enough to be curious

01:22:46   and move back. I'm not like an old man, I'm not like a 70-year-old man, they take away

01:22:53   their typewriter and it's all cranky and it's gonna stop working. I'm young and I can move

01:22:59   back and I can try things, whatever. Yes, Myke, I'm gonna move back. I've just decided

01:23:04   right now. Oh wow, look at that. Yeah, I mean, what's the worst that could happen to me?

01:23:13   World's case scenario, we do another show. But that's not bad news. That's more content,

01:23:19   Myke. We love the content. You like content? Yeah, I'm a big fan. But so, going back to

01:23:26   drafts a little bit. Let's give drafts a little bit more love.

01:23:30   It's amazing. It's not that I'm hating on drafts.

01:23:33   No, no, I know. But so like originally we were really just going to talk about drafts,

01:23:37   but now editorial's thrown a big Python spanner into the works, you know?

01:23:44   Yes. I really feel like Greg is one of the top developers for plain text and note-taking

01:23:52   on iOS. Drafts is seriously amazing. I mean, the amount of control that it gives you with

01:23:59   the variables, the actions that you can make, you know, you can mix and match traditional

01:24:06   steps in actions, or JavaScript, so you can write your own code and interact with the

01:24:13   drafts. And I do that for some actions, and it's super, you know, super handy.

01:24:20   iCloud sync works well enough, you know, across the iPhone and iPad. You can integrate with

01:24:27   web services. There's Safari View Controller, if you want to have a web browser inside of

01:24:33   drafts, which is great. And really, the strongest point in favor of drafts, I would say, is

01:24:40   the custom support. So there's a... if you're on the beta track on TestFlight, there's a

01:24:46   beta every other day basically and Greg is always working on drafts, it's what he does.

01:24:51   He works on drafts and other apps for iOS, it's his job.

01:24:59   I mean again let's compare it to editorial again. If there is a new feature, Greg puts

01:25:05   it in.

01:25:06   Yes.

01:25:07   Right, like it is in and it's in quick.

01:25:09   Yes.

01:25:10   That's a big difference, like this is an application that you can bank is going to get updated.

01:25:14   Yep.

01:25:15   IOS does split view, while Greg is gonna have split view.

01:25:19   You know? You can count on it.

01:25:22   And it's not just that either.

01:25:23   Like, it's like, "Okay, I wanna put a JavaScript engine inside of this thing."

01:25:26   Yep.

01:25:27   So he just does it, right?

01:25:28   Yeah.

01:25:29   This is an application that is incredible.

01:25:32   And, you know, like, look at things like Apple Watch, right?

01:25:35   Like, he finds a way to make something interesting there.

01:25:38   Yeah. Widgets.

01:25:39   Yep.

01:25:40   Or, you know, the keyboard on the iPad, you can customize the shortcut bar.

01:25:45   3D touch, I mean, it does everything. As soon as iOS changes, Greg is on it.

01:25:51   So that's a big point for Drafts.

01:25:55   And I would say that if you don't do any long-form editing,

01:25:59   if you don't need to do any project-based organization of a book,

01:26:06   or of a large essay,

01:26:09   I would strongly suggest Drafts.

01:26:13   it works really, really great. I've been keeping an eye, Myke, on IE Writer. So these guys,

01:26:27   they don't have a lot of nerd cred in the iOS community. And I think it's because of

01:26:36   a patent thing they did a couple of years ago.

01:26:40   Not only that, they had a massive update and the app was kind of weird and super expensive

01:26:46   and it was broken.

01:26:50   See, I don't remember what happened, because at one point there was both IA Writer and

01:26:55   Writer Pro.

01:26:57   But now there's no more Writer Pro.

01:27:03   I don't remember exactly what happened, but I remember there was a big to-do about something

01:27:09   they were up to.

01:27:10   Yeah, anyway, I believe they tried to trademark something or they tried to file a patent for

01:27:17   like a text, a syntax feature, I don't know.

01:27:21   Anyway, if you discard the drama here, I have writer is a really solid text editor.

01:27:29   It's got a lot of options, a lot of writing tools.

01:27:33   My only complaint for now is that it doesn't have a shortcut bar, you know, with customizable

01:27:38   keys. So I cannot use it for multitasking, because you cannot show the shortcut bar in

01:27:47   multitasking, you cannot show custom keyboard rows in multitasking. So it's solid, but not

01:27:53   yet for me.

01:27:56   So IA Writer tried to patent syntax control. There's a big, big article on the Verge forums

01:28:06   about this which I'm gonna put in the show notes. It's got lots of tweets and

01:28:13   such and such if you want to read it but yeah they were trying to... they were

01:28:17   threatening people that wrote other iOS writing apps.

01:28:22   Yeah I remember that and they lost a lot of goodwill I feel like. I feel like

01:28:29   that's a real good way to lose goodwill yeah. You know. It's just so you know as well

01:28:34   I'm patenting podcasts and I'm going after NPR.

01:28:38   Just so you know, that's my current--

01:28:39   - No, it's even worse when you threaten to go after,

01:28:43   after the small guys, the small companies, the indie folks.

01:28:47   And the iOS developer community is so,

01:28:50   every member is so close to each other,

01:28:52   you know, and many of these competitors,

01:28:55   they know each other, they get together at WWDC.

01:28:58   So when you come in and you're like,

01:28:59   yeah, I'm gonna go after you,

01:29:01   and you know, it's kind of--

01:29:02   It's a very competitive, collaborative environment.

01:29:06   Yeah.

01:29:07   Right?

01:29:08   They compete but help each other.

01:29:09   Yes.

01:29:10   Which is one of the great things.

01:29:11   I love that that extends to our world of podcasting as well.

01:29:14   Yes.

01:29:15   Yes.

01:29:16   But yeah, you don't want to start throwing your weight around.

01:29:18   No.

01:29:19   No.

01:29:20   No.

01:29:21   So yeah, they have a decent app.

01:29:23   I know quite a few people that use it and really like it, but it depends if you want

01:29:26   to look past that sort of stuff.

01:29:28   It's up to you if you want to.

01:29:30   Yeah.

01:29:31   So Myke, what's the takeaway here? There's an editorial beta, and I'm trying to move

01:29:39   back because I missed the editorial, but Drafts is also great. Still on my home screen. I

01:29:46   recommend the app.

01:29:47   I think the big takeaway is this is an environment that is prime for update innovation. It's

01:29:59   It's a real great, you know, what's the term, the design playground term, right?

01:30:04   Yes.

01:30:05   That I think, was it John Gruber coined that about Twitter?

01:30:08   Yes.

01:30:09   And it seems like that that is still the case for text editors on iOS and note-taking applications.

01:30:15   Yeah, you know, because iPhones and iPads are great for note-taking, great for long-form

01:30:21   writing, and, you know, with multitasking there's even more to consider.

01:30:26   if you're a developer, you want to make one of these types of apps. There's a lot of features

01:30:30   you can implement. It's the kind of platform that, for writing, it has serious potential.

01:30:38   And I believe that's the reason why we're seeing a lot of apps getting updates or new

01:30:42   apps. Like I said, Yolises is also coming. Look for a review of Mac Stories real soon.

01:30:51   It's a good time to love Markdown and plain text, Myke.

01:31:20   in the world right now. He's at ISMH on Twitter and he writes over at 512pixels.net. Thank

01:31:28   you so much for listening. We'll be back next week, hopefully as a full crew. Until then,

01:31:33   say goodbye Federico.

01:31:34   Adios, el churro.

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