Connected

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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00:28:28 ◼   ► 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.

01:31:35 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]