Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:05 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode number 80.

00:00:10 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Braintree and Peacock.

00:00:14 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Mr Federico Vittucci.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Good morning Federico.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Good morning Mr Myke Hurley.

00:00:21 ◼   ► And good evening Mr Steven Hackett.

00:00:24 ◼   ► I think you have that backwards.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Ah, damn it.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Yeah, kinda.

00:00:27 ◼   ► I think it's morning for Steven and evening for me, Myke,

00:00:29 ◼   ► but, you know, time zones what you're gonna do.

00:00:32 ◼   ► Well, you know, I'm just treating you...

00:00:33 ◼   ► People could be listening at any time, you know?

00:00:36 ◼   ► You're right, yeah.

00:00:37 ◼   ► So I was trying to give the illusion of there being no fixed time.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Yeah, wanna give me a good night, Myke?

00:00:43 ◼   ► I mean, if you're paying.

00:00:47 ◼   ► What?

00:00:47 ◼   ► Okay, let's move to follow up.

00:00:53 ◼   ► Steven, what is an 80th anniversary?

00:00:55 ◼   ► What do we give for an 80th?

00:00:58 ◼   ► Oh, we have to look it up.

00:00:59 ◼   ► Guess we never do this in advance. 80th anniversary. My bet is on some type of, I don't know.

00:01:11 ◼   ► I'm gonna say Ruby or something. Ruby, no I'm gonna say Sapphire. Okay. Okay. Because of Pokemon.

00:01:17 ◼   ► I'm trying to find the site we always use for this. There's a site we always go to?

00:01:23 ◼   ► It's usually pretty high in the results, but this is on ask.com so it's probably right.

00:01:28 ◼   ► Traditionally, oak, the wood, is used in place of gems or precious metals because the oak

00:01:35 ◼   ► tree takes a long period of time and commitment to reach full maturity.

00:01:42 ◼   ► Like Professor Oak.

00:01:43 ◼   ► I was thinking that.

00:01:45 ◼   ► Yes, but in no way is that the same thing.

00:01:49 ◼   ► So congratulations guys, I got you this oak tree.

00:01:52 ◼   ► Thank you. Thank you guys. Anyways, we should talk about our follow-up.

00:02:02 ◼   ► We've been speaking now for several weeks about iOS app release notes and the follow-up

00:02:09 ◼   ► last week brought up this idea that big companies, some reasons big companies may use what we

00:02:17 ◼   ► will call vague release notes. And several people wrote in, I'm going to give Matthew

00:02:22 ◼   ► the credit because I think he put it the most clearly in his email saying that

00:02:26 ◼   ► companies like Twitter and Facebook use feature flags to enable new functionality

00:02:30 ◼   ► in a rollout. So we see this in the Twitter client pretty often where

00:02:33 ◼   ► they'll enable like video upload or something to a small subset of users and

00:02:38 ◼   ► they're not doing it through a new app release but what they do is they have

00:02:41 ◼   ► that functionality built in, they release it over to the app and then through

00:02:46 ◼   ► feature flags they basically turn it on as they wish. And they also use

00:02:51 ◼   ► Twitter especially uses a lot of A/B testing in their app which I think is a

00:02:55 ◼   ► little I think they're turning it back now a little bit I think it was pretty

00:02:59 ◼   ► out of control for a while there. So in this particular instance it would be

00:03:06 ◼   ► misleading right to say oh this update includes video uploads well if you're

00:03:12 ◼   ► only rolling that out to a subset of users at a time you can't put it in your

00:03:15 ◼   ► release notes right are people going to be leaving you bad reviews are we

00:03:17 ◼   ► be conducting on support saying, "Hey, I don't have this thing that you promised me in the

00:03:21 ◼   ► release notes."

00:03:23 ◼   ► So I can see this.

00:03:24 ◼   ► I can see this being a reason to be a little vague in your release notes.

00:03:28 ◼   ► Now I, like I said, particularly think Twitter, especially, has been guilty of overdoing this

00:03:34 ◼   ► sort of thing in the past, but I think it's a relatively reasonable reason to have vague

00:03:40 ◼   ► release notes.

00:03:41 ◼   ► Federico, I was particularly interested in what you thought about this.

00:03:46 ◼   ► I'm always annoyed when I see this company saying that they do staged rollouts of new

00:03:51 ◼   ► features. I understand why. Like, when you're a company like Facebook and you have, I don't

00:03:57 ◼   ► know how many billions of users, probably one billion. I mean, I can understand the

00:04:02 ◼   ► problems with rolling out a feature to, you know, a billion people at once. It's just

00:04:07 ◼   ► very poorly communicated on the App Store. Like, there's a contrast between going to

00:04:14 ◼   ► the App Store and seeing every week "we make the app better for everyone" you know?

00:04:19 ◼   ► And then you go on the Verge and you see Facebook is launching reactions.

00:04:24 ◼   ► You're like "okay, so it must be on the update that I just downloaded but it's not".

00:04:28 ◼   ► So it's a little confusing and I mean I understand why they do this, I just wish you know, just

00:04:34 ◼   ► write your release notes better.

00:04:36 ◼   ► At least inform people, you know, in a couple of weeks you're going to see this.

00:04:40 ◼   ► I mean I don't have to go on the verge to read about this stuff early, I don't know.

00:04:45 ◼   ► Maybe people don't care.

00:04:46 ◼   ► Maybe people don't care at all.

00:04:47 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:04:49 ◼   ► I mean that's the flip side of this, right?

00:04:53 ◼   ► This sort of misleading of, you know, A/B testing and everything that maybe it wouldn't

00:04:59 ◼   ► be a big deal because people don't read release notes.

00:05:02 ◼   ► And especially now, when did it start?

00:05:04 ◼   ► Did it start with iOS 8, the automatic app update?

00:05:07 ◼   ► I think there's a lot of times where people don't even know their app got updated, right?

00:05:12 ◼   ► So the whole conversation can be sort of underpinned with the idea that maybe fewer and fewer people

00:05:18 ◼   ► actually see these things.

00:05:19 ◼   ► But it's still, I thought it was an interesting point brought up by Matthew.

00:05:25 ◼   ► Up next in the follow-up, Thomas asked me if I had tried the Pebble Time Round.

00:05:34 ◼   ► Thomas's argument is that it looks like a normal watch at a glance, which is something

00:05:38 ◼   ► that I like about the Wything's watch that I'm wearing, and that it's fast and focused,

00:05:43 ◼   ► which is a subtle, sick Apple watch burn.

00:05:46 ◼   ► And I have not looked at the Pebble Time Round.

00:05:51 ◼   ► I backed Pebble, their original Kickstarter back in, what was it, 2012 or something, and

00:05:56 ◼   ► it was fine.

00:05:58 ◼   ► The original Pebble I think was ahead of its time.

00:06:00 ◼   ► I particularly don't like the look of the Pebble Time Round.

00:06:06 ◼   ► And the Pebble has the same core problem I had with the Apple watches, that glanceable

00:06:11 ◼   ► information just isn't that important to me in my life anymore.

00:06:17 ◼   ► And really what I like is something that looks nice in my estimation, and I like the step

00:06:21 ◼   ► counting.

00:06:22 ◼   ► So I think the Pebble Time Round is an interesting product.

00:06:25 ◼   ► I think Pebble probably long term has some issues but you know I think it is worth mentioning

00:06:31 ◼   ► as an alternative if the Apple Watch specifically isn't for you but you do want you know say

00:06:35 ◼   ► some notifications or a couple other things coming to your wrist.

00:06:40 ◼   ► Don't like look at that one. The bezel's huge like it's huge and it's really obvious in

00:06:47 ◼   ► its hugeness. Yeah. I'm not a big fan of that one in all honesty.

00:06:54 ◼   ► It doesn't look good.

00:06:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's not their best looking product.

00:06:59 ◼   ► No.

00:07:00 ◼   ► So we're gonna talk a little bit about Siri

00:07:03 ◼   ► later on in the show, but I did wanna touch base

00:07:07 ◼   ► on the Amazon Echo.

00:07:10 ◼   ► Last time we've added one to our household

00:07:13 ◼   ► and it's really taken off.

00:07:14 ◼   ► I gauge how my family members use things

00:07:18 ◼   ► as sort of like a, most nerds do this, right?

00:07:20 ◼   ► We experiment on our loved ones who are normals

00:07:22 ◼   ► and so far the Echo has made a pretty good dent.

00:07:27 ◼   ► I will say that our kids have heard us talking to it

00:07:30 ◼   ► and now tried to make it do funny things

00:07:32 ◼   ► or like try to like talk to it

00:07:34 ◼   ► and of course most of the time they're just talking

00:07:37 ◼   ► silliness so it just kinda blinks at them

00:07:38 ◼   ► but I find it sort of adorable that my kids

00:07:42 ◼   ► tried to make Alexa do things.

00:07:44 ◼   ► And Federico, you've put Alexa to work with time zones,

00:07:48 ◼   ► right?

00:07:49 ◼   ► Yeah, and a lot of people corrected me on Twitter, because people love to correct you.

00:07:55 ◼   ► So I was just working, and I needed to do a quick time zone conversion. And I'm sorry

00:08:00 ◼   ► guy who said on Twitter that I should have done the calculation in my head, but apparently

00:08:04 ◼   ► I'm stupid. I just, you know, I wanted a computer to help me. So I was like, you know, I should

00:08:12 ◼   ► just ask Alexa?" And I was like, "Alexa, what's, like, I think 5pm Pacific time in

00:08:20 ◼   ► Rome, Italy?" And in one second, Alexa replied, "It's like 2am in Rome or something."

00:08:29 ◼   ► And that was great, because I didn't think about formatting my question in any specific

00:08:34 ◼   ► way, and just out of curiosity, I asked Siri the same question, and initially I didn't

00:08:40 ◼   ► Then later it did understand the question

00:08:42 ◼   ► I still don't know whether it's been fixed in those couple of hours or maybe if it's just the way that it

00:08:49 ◼   ► Interprets the verb. I don't know. Anyway, I

00:08:53 ◼   ► Think if you say what's it's you get an error if you say what is it works?

00:09:00 ◼   ► But apparently it always works if you say convert, okay, let's try it shall we okay try it

00:09:09 ◼   ► What is 7 p.m. Pacific time in Rome? Okay, so it's taken that in.

00:09:18 ◼   ► Checking my sources.

00:09:19 ◼   ► There we go.

00:09:20 ◼   ► Checking my sources.

00:09:21 ◼   ► I found this.

00:09:22 ◼   ► Alright, so the result is 4 a.m. CET.

00:09:28 ◼   ► See the amount of time that it takes to check your sources and to show you the response

00:09:34 ◼   ► on screen, Alexei in one second spoke the answer back to me.

00:09:38 ◼   ► Here's the thing, here's my issue with this, is it's using Wolfram Alpha. This is a relatively

00:09:43 ◼   ► simple question. Siri should be giving me that answer in voice. That's, in my opinion,

00:09:51 ◼   ► what it should be doing, rather than showing me it on screen. Let's try it the other way.

00:09:58 ◼   ► What's 7pm Pacific time in Rome?

00:10:02 ◼   ► It's Tuesday, the 1st of March 2016 in Rome.

00:10:07 ◼   ► Yeah it's Tuesday.

00:10:08 ◼   ► I don't understand how you... because you know what it heard that time?

00:10:11 ◼   ► The same question, what is 7 p.m.?

00:10:14 ◼   ► Which is what I asked the first time, but because I said "what's" it tells me the date.

00:10:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:19 ◼   ► I don't even understand how that question could give the answer of the date.

00:10:25 ◼   ► I have no idea.

00:10:27 ◼   ► I've had this issue with Siri in regards to time zone conversion a bunch of times,

00:10:34 ◼   ► I do it quite a lot and I really just fail to understand how that isn't an

00:10:40 ◼   ► answer like an answer that Apple were coding in, you know, and making part of

00:10:43 ◼   ► the UI like they do some other things rather than making it beatbox for me.

00:10:47 ◼   ► That's fantastic but why don't you actually give me the functionality that

00:10:51 ◼   ► I'm looking for. And it's not like they've got to go build it, right? I mean

00:10:54 ◼   ► they have... this is one of the things that's really frustrating to me about all of this

00:10:58 ◼   ► that the phone iOS does this in the clock app like it's it's not like they

00:11:04 ◼   ► have to go build some system to like calculate time they already have it like

00:11:07 ◼   ► why not tap into what's already part of iOS they have a world clock yeah yes

00:11:12 ◼   ► they even stole the design for somebody like just go use it it's not hard

00:11:17 ◼   ► anyways Myke you bought a phone yeah see what was all you guys are going out and

00:11:22 ◼   ► buying echoes. I march to the beat of my own drum and I buy what I want to buy because

00:11:29 ◼   ► I don't join the Amazon cult. No one is forcing you, why are you making these at the

00:11:35 ◼   ► base? You guys, I would ask people to go and listen to last week's episode. I'm sure

00:11:40 ◼   ► at some point you both were trying to convince me to get an echo. So you don't want this

00:11:45 ◼   ► one I bought you as a gift? Wow Myke you have a dear friend buying you Amazon

00:11:54 ◼   ► speakers and you refuse to accept a gift wow well done anyway you bought an

00:11:58 ◼   ► Android phone. Did you really buy me one or are you just trying to make me feel bad? I'm just trolling you.

00:12:02 ◼   ► Yeah I have been wanting to get a new Android device for a while the previous

00:12:11 ◼   ► Nexus device that I had got lost somewhere in Australia, not by me, and I've decided

00:12:19 ◼   ► that I wanted to go ahead and get one of the better phones.

00:12:25 ◼   ► I could have gone for a 5x, but I've heard complaints about the 5x from a performance

00:12:31 ◼   ► perspective and I basically wanted this for a couple of reasons.

00:12:34 ◼   ► I wanted to have a good understanding of what Android is like now.

00:12:37 ◼   ► I like to try and keep up with what's happening.

00:12:40 ◼   ► And also I wanted to have a device that was ready

00:12:43 ◼   ► to try and test some of Google's podcast store thing

00:12:46 ◼   ► that they have launching at some point.

00:12:48 ◼   ► Because I have Apple devices to test

00:12:50 ◼   ► what our shows look like there.

00:12:51 ◼   ► And if we go into the Google store,

00:12:53 ◼   ► I wanna see what that's like there as well.

00:12:56 ◼   ► So I decided that the time was right

00:12:59 ◼   ► and I went ahead and purchased a Nexus 6P.

00:13:02 ◼   ► I have not really had enough time

00:13:04 ◼   ► to play around with the device yet.

00:13:08 ◼   ► I'm very impressed with everything that I have tried.

00:13:11 ◼   ► One of, kind of two observations that I have,

00:13:15 ◼   ► the Nexus 6P's hardware is great,

00:13:18 ◼   ► including the fingerprint sensor on the back.

00:13:20 ◼   ► I actually think that that is an ingenious design

00:13:23 ◼   ► and it's a real interesting place

00:13:25 ◼   ► to put a fingerprint sensor.

00:13:28 ◼   ► It feels like a very natural place to have it.

00:13:31 ◼   ► My other observation is that material design on Android features a lot of the whimsy that I think is lost in iOS now.

00:13:43 ◼   ► Come at me haters!

00:13:46 ◼   ► Like a lot of the animations and shadows, that kind of stuff?

00:13:49 ◼   ► Animations, shadows, and just general design things that feel superfluous but go to making a nice experience.

00:14:00 ◼   ► I don't think we have a lot of that anymore in iOS.

00:14:03 ◼   ► It's there in places, but overall I think that material design is doing a better job

00:14:09 ◼   ► of animations and things like that than iOS is right now.

00:14:14 ◼   ► Yeah, it's really nice and I like what you said about the fingerprint reader.

00:14:18 ◼   ► I have the little sibling of this, the Nexus 5X.

00:14:22 ◼   ► Because I like you, it's helpful for me at work to have an Android device around.

00:14:29 ◼   ► people like us who aren't going to

00:14:30 ◼   ► necessarily switch to it but kind of need to

00:14:32 ◼   ► keep up with the Nexus phones or the

00:14:33 ◼   ► the obvious choice. And I really like the

00:14:36 ◼   ► fingerprint reader on the back. I don't

00:14:38 ◼   ► know about the 6P but on the 5X it's

00:14:40 ◼   ► basically exactly where my finger would

00:14:42 ◼   ► be anyways and it's just really nice and

00:14:45 ◼   ► you know the 6P is definitely nicer

00:14:47 ◼   ► built than the 5X but if you're looking

00:14:50 ◼   ► for a stock Android experience it's

00:14:53 ◼   ► really the I think that the probably the

00:14:55 ◼   ► 6P is the best phone on the market for it.

00:14:57 ◼   ► And it does, the fingerprint reader does something that I wish the iPhone did.

00:15:02 ◼   ► It unlocks the phone without you needing to turn the screen on.

00:15:07 ◼   ► So you press your finger on the reader and the phone unlocks.

00:15:10 ◼   ► Which feels, as soon as it happened, I was like, this is what it should be like.

00:15:16 ◼   ► That feels like, it feels better.

00:15:17 ◼   ► It's amazing how much faster it feels.

00:15:19 ◼   ► It's like, even the 5x, which is, you know, it's not a super high-end phone.

00:15:24 ◼   ► It feels like it unlocks so much faster than my 6S Plus because you're just skipping that

00:15:28 ◼   ► little step.

00:15:29 ◼   ► Yeah, the fingerprint reader itself I don't think is faster, but the fact that you don't

00:15:34 ◼   ► need to do that step makes it feel that way.

00:15:37 ◼   ► Sometimes that's all it takes.

00:15:39 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:15:40 ◼   ► So I want to spend more time with it and I'll have some more thoughts about this device

00:15:45 ◼   ► that I'll share somewhere a little later on.

00:15:49 ◼   ► Right now it's here and it's doing stuff.

00:15:54 ◼   ► What happens, Myke, if you end up liking Android, or at least the modern Android a lot better

00:15:59 ◼   ► than iOS?

00:16:00 ◼   ► There was a time where that was the case for me.

00:16:03 ◼   ► I switched to Android a couple of years ago for like six months or something like that.

00:16:06 ◼   ► I think I remember that, yeah.

00:16:10 ◼   ► I know I'm in a problem right now, because I thought about it.

00:16:13 ◼   ► I thought about like, what would it be like to maybe switch to Android again for a few

00:16:18 ◼   ► months to really kind of understand it.

00:16:22 ◼   ► But the problem is the tablet situation.

00:16:26 ◼   ► There are no really good Android tablets.

00:16:30 ◼   ► Even Google's new one is suffering from a lack of tablet innovation in the software

00:16:35 ◼   ► side.

00:16:36 ◼   ► Like, you know, now I'm so used to split screen, like you can't do split screen apps in the

00:16:40 ◼   ► current version of Android.

00:16:42 ◼   ► So it would be difficult, let alone expensive, for me to make that switch now.

00:16:48 ◼   ► But I won't rule anything out.

00:16:50 ◼   ► I want to spend more time with it.

00:16:52 ◼   ► At some point maybe after I've finished with this little bit of traveling I'm about to

00:16:56 ◼   ► start doing, I might throw my sim in the 6p for a bit and just see how it rolls.

00:17:01 ◼   ► Maybe if you use online services instead of local apps with no sync, the transition between

00:17:08 ◼   ► an iPad Pro and a 6p would be actually possible.

00:17:12 ◼   ► You know, Slack, Twitter, email, those are on both platforms.

00:17:15 ◼   ► It is getting easier and easier to make those moves.

00:17:19 ◼   ► It really is.

00:17:20 ◼   ► It's gonna be a problem with Apple Notes, you know, if you don't use Safari so you don't

00:17:25 ◼   ► have the Safari problem.

00:17:26 ◼   ► I think it's more possible today than ever, with the exception for a few Apple apps.

00:17:31 ◼   ► But you can replace them.

00:17:33 ◼   ► You can replace them, I mean, instead of Apple Notes you could use, uh, oh, wow, what can

00:17:37 ◼   ► you use, Evernote?

00:17:38 ◼   ► I guess I could use Evernote.

00:17:40 ◼   ► There will be Android note-taking apps that we don't know.

00:17:44 ◼   ► But they will exist.

00:17:45 ◼   ► For sure.

00:17:46 ◼   ► thinking about having the same notes on your iPad Pro and the 6P.

00:17:51 ◼   ► Yeah, if I wanted the same, then I would move to something like E

00:18:03 ◼   ► There might even be a weird app that will let me sync my notes.

00:18:09 ◼   ► There are weird Android apps that I've used that let you sync contacts and calendars with

00:18:13 ◼   ► iCloud.

00:18:15 ◼   ► I don't want to know how it's doing it, but I've used them.

00:18:20 ◼   ► So I'll dig around.

00:18:21 ◼   ► But yeah, this will be a discussion for a later show, I think.

00:18:25 ◼   ► Before we move out of follow-up, we have some...

00:18:28 ◼   ► We need a new word for this.

00:18:29 ◼   ► We have follow-up, we have follow-out, we have follow-in.

00:18:33 ◼   ► This is follow-up to a sponsor read, so I don't know what this is.

00:18:38 ◼   ► This can be...

00:18:40 ◼   ► Sponsor up.

00:18:41 ◼   ► Sponsor up.

00:18:42 ◼   ► Follow money.

00:18:43 ◼   ► Money followers.

00:18:44 ◼   ► the PDF/PEN ads that we do for our friend at This Mile,

00:18:48 ◼   ► and we have asked each other numerous times

00:18:51 ◼   ► without looking it up what Bates numbering is.

00:18:54 ◼   ► And so we asked David Sparks, co-host of Mac Power Users

00:18:58 ◼   ► and attorney at law.

00:19:00 ◼   ► And David basically explained that Bates numbering

00:19:04 ◼   ► is basically like a UUID for paper,

00:19:06 ◼   ► to kind of use a term that we'll be familiar with.

00:19:09 ◼   ► And so basically it's page numbering.

00:19:11 ◼   ► So you start with a prefix.

00:19:12 ◼   ► this example the prefix would be relay and it basically everything you produce

00:19:17 ◼   ► gets a unique number and so it basically generates an audit trail so when someone

00:19:23 ◼   ► else says oh you didn't give me that document you could reply yes look go

00:19:26 ◼   ► look at relay - 0 3 4 6 2 and these numbers are generated automatically when

00:19:32 ◼   ► you create files within this project and there seems like a bunch of different

00:19:37 ◼   ► software can do it PDF pen does it that's what Bates numbering means that

00:19:41 ◼   ► it's fancy, it is for business paperwork, and David Sparks set it straight. So there

00:19:47 ◼   ► you go, case solved. I don't know this, and it would be funny if this was the case. Like

00:19:52 ◼   ► I feel like this may have been put into PDF pen for David. Maybe. That is, maybe that's

00:20:00 ◼   ► the story we'll never find out the answer to. Alright, let's see if this sponsor read

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00:21:53 ◼   ► So for topic zero this week I wanted to talk about the Mac Mini real quick. This sort of

00:22:00 ◼   ► spurred on from an article by Brian over at Mac Mini Colo. It's basically saying

00:22:05 ◼   ► that if you have a certain generation of Mac Mini like mid 2010, 2011, 2012 that

00:22:10 ◼   ► sort of era of machine that is actually really affordable to to upgrade those

00:22:15 ◼   ► computers now. So the current Mac Mini you can go by today it does not have a

00:22:21 ◼   ► quad-core model at the top these these older ones did and the lack of upgrade

00:22:25 ◼   ► abilities and you can't upgrade the RAM and the new ones you can kind of do the

00:22:28 ◼   ► drives but only sort of which is really frustrating to me but I you know we

00:22:35 ◼   ► talked about the Mac Mini a long time ago in context of you know Federico

00:22:39 ◼   ► maybe needing to replace this MacBook Air at some point as we talked about a

00:22:43 ◼   ► lot you can't. Podcast currently on iOS and so you're using a MacBook Air for

00:22:47 ◼   ► that that is seeing better days we'll leave it at that. Have you thought any

00:22:53 ◼   ► more about replacing with a Mac Mini do you still think that's a good fit or

00:22:56 ◼   ► you're just holding on as long as you can.

00:22:58 ◼   ► - You know the Death Cab for Cutie song?

00:23:02 ◼   ► The line when it says, "Love is watching someone die?"

00:23:05 ◼   ► That's my relationship with my MacBook Air.

00:23:08 ◼   ► So.

00:23:10 ◼   ► - Oh, that's a super sad song, so thanks for that.

00:23:13 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:23:15 ◼   ► So, I use,

00:23:18 ◼   ► I've got several Mac mandates,

00:23:22 ◼   ► I have this outlined in my article.

00:23:23 ◼   ► We have one that if you're listening live

00:23:25 ◼   ► right now you're listening through a Mac Mini that's hosted a Mac Mini colo. We have

00:23:30 ◼   ► one I've got a personal one there as well for some backups and some server

00:23:34 ◼   ► stuff that I play with and then we have one at home that serves up iTunes

00:23:39 ◼   ► library and a big file volume and then it's hooked up to our television as well

00:23:43 ◼   ► for occasional stuff we can't do through the Apple TV. The Mac Mini is just on HDMI

00:23:47 ◼   ► number two and they're great machines and all mine are older that I don't have

00:23:53 ◼   ► any of the current ones. I've got like 2011's and I think one 2012 machine in my

00:23:57 ◼   ► little Mac Mini army and they really are great. The one at home I've got SSD in

00:24:02 ◼   ► and you can't tell the machines five years old. It really is pretty

00:24:09 ◼   ► spectacular and for me you know it's it's an interesting commentary on like

00:24:16 ◼   ► how good computers are now like that you can have a Mac Mini from 2011 which you

00:24:21 ◼   ► know maybe you spent $800 on you know

00:24:23 ◼   ► it's not a Mac Pro it's not iMac it's a

00:24:25 ◼   ► Mac Mini and if you bought it well

00:24:28 ◼   ► specced or if you upgrade it it's still

00:24:30 ◼   ► perfectly fine for what most people need

00:24:32 ◼   ► out of their computer most of the time

00:24:34 ◼   ► and I wonder if this migration to you

00:24:40 ◼   ► know RAM that's soldered on like that

00:24:42 ◼   ► take the retina MacBook Pro you can't do

00:24:44 ◼   ► anything in that machine you can't do

00:24:45 ◼   ► anything in a MacBook Air it's all part

00:24:46 ◼   ► of the logic board and even though the

00:24:51 ◼   ► air I think the air does have an SSD you can swap out it's a custom part it's

00:24:54 ◼   ► hard to get it's expensive and I just wonder that if you know this means that

00:24:58 ◼   ► max will last shorter amounts of time in the future because you can't upgrade or

00:25:03 ◼   ► if if the computers we can buy today are so good that as long as you buy it while

00:25:07 ◼   ► spec'd you know it'll last just as long and you know I know that I can go a lot

00:25:13 ◼   ► longer between upgrading computers and I have family members who are using

00:25:16 ◼   ► computers that are older and older and they're fine and they just keep on

00:25:20 ◼   ► running and I think that's an interesting parallel conversation to what we're talking

00:25:25 ◼   ► about with the iPad. The iPad has been so good for so long that people just don't

00:25:30 ◼   ► see the need to upgrade to new hardware. There's an interesting article that Brian wrote up

00:25:36 ◼   ► about grand prices and stuff and I kind of kicked off this whole train of thought in

00:25:40 ◼   ► my head.

00:25:41 ◼   ► So I don't follow Max, you know, the OS 10 in particular anymore, but I just wonder,

00:25:48 ◼   ► and this is maybe going to sound controversial to a lot of people, but is the era of, you

00:25:55 ◼   ► know, taking a peek under the hood of a computer and upgrading components over? And I mean

00:26:02 ◼   ► this in the sense that, at least I and other friends and people that I know, I see people,

00:26:12 ◼   ► they buy computers, and most of them don't care, you know, about "Is this a computer

00:26:17 ◼   ► that I'm going to be able to upgrade RAM or change the SSD for something better?" And

00:26:24 ◼   ► in the same sense, you know, that used to be a must, if you will, to know how a car

00:26:31 ◼   ► worked to know what an engine was like, to know what you were supposed to do if a car broke down.

00:26:37 ◼   ► And I would argue that most young people who drive or buy cars today, when the car breaks down,

00:26:44 ◼   ► they just call a number and they don't know how to fix it. I mean, personally, I don't even know how to change a tire.

00:26:51 ◼   ► Like, if a tire breaks, I'm gonna call, you know, the emergency number.

00:26:56 ◼   ► And you could argue that I'm stupid and that, you know, I shouldn't know better,

00:26:59 ◼   ► But it's just I don't want to know how this stuff works, I don't need to know how this mechanical stuff works with my car.

00:27:07 ◼   ► I could make the same argument with a computer. So for people like Steven, it's going to be problematic when a Mac Mini can no longer be upgraded.

00:27:16 ◼   ► But for most people, as long as you're like "I need a computer, I go to the store, I need a box that I need to connect to a monitor or I need to buy a laptop."

00:27:26 ◼   ► I don't care about, you know, am I going to be able to change the RAM in the future?

00:27:30 ◼   ► Just give me a computer.

00:27:31 ◼   ► I don't care.

00:27:32 ◼   ► And in this sense computers are becoming more and more like smartphones and tablets.

00:27:35 ◼   ► You just pick your configuration up front and you're good to go for the next few years.

00:27:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that is exactly what's happening.

00:27:44 ◼   ► And I think while it bugs people like me that overall for the general computing public that

00:27:51 ◼   ► it's good that computers have become not

00:27:54 ◼   ► only simpler but also much more reliable.

00:27:58 ◼   ► You know things like SSDs are much more

00:28:01 ◼   ► reliable than the spinning hard drives.

00:28:02 ◼   ► We've gotten rid of the optical drive. As

00:28:04 ◼   ► Apple has stripped away moving parts and

00:28:07 ◼   ► as processors have gotten better

00:28:08 ◼   ► computers are more reliable and more

00:28:13 ◼   ► current longer than ever. I think that's

00:28:15 ◼   ► good. I think that is that computers like

00:28:17 ◼   ► cars should be something that we can

00:28:20 ◼   ► depend on no matter what and that you know back in the day if you wanted to

00:28:25 ◼   ► own a car you had to know how to fiddle with it right that because in all

00:28:32 ◼   ► likelihood you at some point you were going to be broken down or at some point

00:28:35 ◼   ► you have to do something and as cars have gotten more reliable that's gone

00:28:38 ◼   ► away and while that does bother me I think overall it's great I really do so

00:28:47 ◼   ► So just quickly on the Mac Mini, I have one of these in a closet.

00:28:51 ◼   ► Right. One of the 2011 ones, I think it is a 2011 one, isn't it?

00:28:56 ◼   ► Like literally in a closet?

00:28:58 ◼   ► Yeah, it was what I was using before I moved to a Mac Pro.

00:29:01 ◼   ► OK. And then onto the iMac.

00:29:05 ◼   ► I have been thinking and we will talk about this later

00:29:08 ◼   ► about turning that into a home server.

00:29:11 ◼   ► You should do this.

00:29:12 ◼   ► I've been considering it.

00:29:15 ◼   ► Plex being one of the things that I'm looking for.

00:29:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:29:19 ◼   ► You could make your own Synology without actually having a Synology in a way.

00:29:23 ◼   ► You know?

00:29:24 ◼   ► Yep.

00:29:24 ◼   ► JSON does this, and I think it's an excellent choice, especially because, you know,

00:29:28 ◼   ► of course, OS X gives you more freedom,

00:29:31 ◼   ► there are some excellent apps to connect from iOS,

00:29:34 ◼   ► you know, like screens, file managers...

00:29:36 ◼   ► You should do it, Myke.

00:29:37 ◼   ► You should do it and go crazy. It's super fun.

00:29:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm planning on it.

00:29:41 ◼   ► it's just again it's like another big task that I don't want to do right now

00:29:45 ◼   ► but I'm gonna do it. I think it'll be fun.

00:29:49 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you should. I mean there are TV Mac Mini like I said doubles as a

00:29:56 ◼   ► file server and I've got you know some scripting running on it all the time and

00:30:00 ◼   ► it's just it's nice to have something that's always available especially if

00:30:05 ◼   ► you have a lot of stuff that relies on things like Dropbox you know you

00:30:08 ◼   ► You know that's always synced one central place.

00:30:10 ◼   ► You can set your photos.

00:30:11 ◼   ► I mean, the possibilities are endless.

00:30:13 ◼   ► So it is nice.

00:30:14 ◼   ► The Mac Mini is definitely, that's a role that it fits for a lot of people.

00:30:19 ◼   ► And Apple's even done that for several years now.

00:30:22 ◼   ► They've offered a server configuration.

00:30:24 ◼   ► Sometimes it just means they put OS X server on it.

00:30:26 ◼   ► Sometimes it means it has a second hard drive or more RAM.

00:30:28 ◼   ► But whatever it is, they have pitched the Mac Mini to small businesses as a server product.

00:30:37 ◼   ► And there's a bunch of people who use them that way because they're silent and there's

00:30:42 ◼   ► no impact on your electrical bill to have it on 24/7 and it's, like I said, it's become

00:30:48 ◼   ► a machine that can last longer and longer as they've gotten more powerful.

00:30:51 ◼   ► So I think you should do it.

00:30:54 ◼   ► I'll let you know how it goes along and/or ask you to tell me what to do.

00:30:58 ◼   ► I could just come over and do it.

00:31:00 ◼   ► Yeah, you should do that.

00:31:01 ◼   ► Business trip.

00:31:04 ◼   ► So we're going to talk a little bit about Siri this week and this is sort of jumping

00:31:08 ◼   ► off a rumor that's been floating around that Mac OS X 10.12, which god, that naming's out

00:31:16 ◼   ► of control.

00:31:18 ◼   ► When me and Jason started talking about this on upgrade, I did that exact same thing.

00:31:24 ◼   ► I read 10.12 and was like, "Ugh, really?"

00:31:29 ◼   ► They gotta change it.

00:31:31 ◼   ► So I do like, just as a quick off topic, I do like a theory that I've seen from Graham,

00:31:38 ◼   ► you know, my friend at MacSorix.

00:31:40 ◼   ► He says, so this year they're gonna do OS 10, 10.12 and now OS 10, and next year they

00:31:49 ◼   ► could do iOS 11 and OS, Mac OS 11.

00:31:55 ◼   ► You know?

00:31:56 ◼   ► Yeah, tie them together.

00:31:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:58 ◼   ► There are many things that they could do, right?

00:32:01 ◼   ► Like this could be the time when they change it to Mac OS because they have

00:32:06 ◼   ► watch OS and TV OS.

00:32:08 ◼   ► But that one also makes sense, right? There are a bunch of little things now

00:32:12 ◼   ► which make sense and I think it's just based upon us all wanting that to change.

00:32:16 ◼   ► Yeah, and I couldn't imagine the marketing campaign next year, both iOS and Mac OS

00:32:20 ◼   ► go up to 11, you know?

00:32:22 ◼   ► Turn it to 11.

00:32:23 ◼   ► Turn it up to 11, that could be nice.

00:32:26 ◼   ► We'll see. Anyway.

00:32:27 ◼   ► Craig Federicki is not gonna let that joke go by unmade.

00:32:31 ◼   ► He just can't do it.

00:32:32 ◼   ► It's the most dad joke of all.

00:32:34 ◼   ► - He'll probably make it this year about next year

00:32:36 ◼   ► and then make it two times next year.

00:32:38 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:32:41 ◼   ► - So, I don't even know where we were.

00:32:42 ◼   ► So anyway, so Siri coming to the Mac.

00:32:44 ◼   ► Rumored to be maybe even a tent pole feature

00:32:49 ◼   ► and another in the long list of things that start on iOS

00:32:53 ◼   ► and the Mac just sort of gets later,

00:32:56 ◼   ► which is interesting topic in and of to itself but I kind of wanted to bypass that a little

00:33:02 ◼   ► bit and talk about Siri itself and Ed Cormany is a guy I follow on Twitter he does a couple

00:33:09 ◼   ► podcasts and he wrote this thing that I thought was really interesting about Siri fragmentation

00:33:14 ◼   ► I thought was an interesting way to start the conversation. So in this post he's talking

00:33:19 ◼   ► about using the Apple TV to watch.

00:33:24 ◼   ► I believe it was a tennis match

00:33:25 ◼   ► and he's asking Siri questions as he's watching

00:33:27 ◼   ► so he wants to know like the weather of where this match is

00:33:30 ◼   ► and then he wants to see the serve speeds.

00:33:35 ◼   ► They're reported in kilometers per hour on the broadcast

00:33:39 ◼   ► but he's American and wants to know

00:33:42 ◼   ► what it is in miles per hour

00:33:43 ◼   ► and he asks Siri on the Apple TV

00:33:47 ◼   ► Siri can't do the unit conversion. Now of course Siri can do that unit conversion

00:33:51 ◼   ► on iOS and it seems like Apple decided that oh well unit conversion is not something

00:33:56 ◼   ► we want people to do on the Apple TV or it'll never be an issue and it's never

00:34:02 ◼   ► going to come up so let's just remove it. And I just found that it's interesting

00:34:07 ◼   ► jumping off point that you know what could Siri do on the Mac and what I'm

00:34:15 ◼   ► afraid Apple would do is basically just port iOS Siri right that it does

00:34:18 ◼   ► everything that iOS Siri does and nothing nothing else. Well in reality I

00:34:23 ◼   ► think that Siri on OS X is the opportunity to expand what Siri can do

00:34:27 ◼   ► and and let Siri do things new and specifically for the Mac that don't make

00:34:33 ◼   ► sense on iOS and I think that would be I think that would be great I mean I do

00:34:38 ◼   ► think there should be some sort of base layer you know I think Siri should be

00:34:41 ◼   ► able to unit conversion wherever Siri is like that's just silly that it can't

00:34:45 ◼   ► do that on the TV but I think it would be nice to see Siri if it comes to the

00:34:51 ◼   ► Mac have some additional features. I think there should kind of be two layers

00:34:55 ◼   ► of Siri from a functionality perspective so there should be asking Siri a

00:35:03 ◼   ► question so asking Siri for information that layer should be the same everywhere

00:35:08 ◼   ► and then on top of that you have asking Siri to perform actions and then that

00:35:14 ◼   ► should be platform specific. Yeah that's a good point. It doesn't make sense to ask Siri

00:35:19 ◼   ► to find the most recent episode of Community on your iPhone, well it does make a lot more

00:35:24 ◼   ► sense on the Apple TV. Exactly. So I think what it seems like at the moment Apple are

00:35:29 ◼   ► doing is building a new instance of Siri on each device. Because Siri on the Apple TV

00:35:39 ◼   ► cannot currently even perform functions that it should be able to that an iPhone can do,

00:35:45 ◼   ► like playing a song from anywhere on the device. Now, if they're using the same Siri layer,

00:35:54 ◼   ► why should it not be able to do that? So it would appear to me that it seems like they're

00:35:58 ◼   ► kind of building it over and over again, for whatever reason you need to do something like

00:36:03 ◼   ► that. So I think it'd be really nice if they could just be like, "Right, this is what Siri

00:36:07 ◼   ► can do everywhere. We've got that locked down. This is asking questions, asking information,

00:36:12 ◼   ► asking news, and they need to build the appropriate UIs on each platform to deal with that. And

00:36:17 ◼   ► then they have the specific things. So like asking on iOS for it to launch a specific

00:36:23 ◼   ► application, asking it on the Mac to turn on brightness or something, you know, like

00:36:29 ◼   ► there should be these then functions that exist on each specific platform that are relatable

00:36:33 ◼   ► to the platforms that they're on.

00:36:35 ◼   ► I think the main point right now is that it's really time for Apple to open up third-party

00:36:41 ◼   ► integrations with Siri.

00:36:43 ◼   ► We're seeing this in other competing products.

00:36:47 ◼   ► The Amazon Echo, as probably the best or the richest assistant with third-party service

00:36:54 ◼   ► and app integrations.

00:36:56 ◼   ► Because today, SoundHound, you know, the Shazam-like service, opened up to the public the latest

00:37:03 ◼   ► Hound assistant, which has been in beta for Android, I think, for almost seven, eight

00:37:09 ◼   ► months, maybe. Now it's available on iOS, and they do some really impressive natural

00:37:15 ◼   ► language processing, so it supports a lot more conjunctions, you know, between sentences.

00:37:21 ◼   ► You can be a lot more specific when you ask hounds some questions.

00:37:25 ◼   ► And they do some integration with third party companies.

00:37:28 ◼   ► There's Uber integration, I believe there's something else also for maybe music?

00:37:34 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:37:35 ◼   ► It's probably richer on Android.

00:37:37 ◼   ► You may remember Hound from that video where people were asking what is a 1% interest rate

00:37:45 ◼   ► on a mortgage from a house bought in Toronto.

00:37:47 ◼   ► Would you remember that?

00:37:48 ◼   ► Yeah, it was a super complex query.

00:37:50 ◼   ► complex questions and it was just giving the answers. That was Hound.

00:37:54 ◼   ► Yeah, and I'm playing around with it. The more I use the Amazon Echo, the more I look

00:38:00 ◼   ► at Google Now, it's not an assistant, it just presents you with visual cards, but the idea

00:38:06 ◼   ► is the same. To integrate with third party apps and services, to show you information

00:38:11 ◼   ► from those apps in a more intelligent way, in a dashboard, that kind of presentation,

00:38:16 ◼   ► and to allow you to speak commands for third-party apps.

00:38:20 ◼   ► So I think it's really time for Apple to open up the Siri API.

00:38:23 ◼   ► It's been five years since we first had Siri on the iPhone 4S, and I guess it's starting

00:38:31 ◼   ► to feel a little old.

00:38:33 ◼   ► It's nice, you can ask Siri questions, and it's excellent for Apple Music, Messages,

00:38:39 ◼   ► Timers, that kind of native iOS stuff.

00:38:42 ◼   ► But it's more and more feeling like one of those things that Apple does just for themselves,

00:38:48 ◼   ► and other companies are doing much, much more.

00:38:52 ◼   ► And there's a huge undertaking here, to come up with an API to structure those integrations

00:39:00 ◼   ► in a way that makes sense for developers and for users.

00:39:04 ◼   ► Just think about it.

00:39:05 ◼   ► How are you going to ask Siri to create a new task?

00:39:07 ◼   ► You cannot say "create a new task" because it can get confusing with reminders and say

00:39:12 ◼   ► "omnifocus" on the same device. So you have to use "omnifocus" as a keyword to say "ok,

00:39:17 ◼   ► Siri, create a new task in omnifocus". That makes sense, but then you have to allow developers

00:39:22 ◼   ► to come up with a dictionary of keywords and commands, and you have to let developers localize

00:39:28 ◼   ► those commands in multiple languages. It's a huge challenge, but I believe that in order

00:39:33 ◼   ► to take Siri to the next level, it has to happen. And it's not just about launching

00:39:38 ◼   ► apps, right? Because a lot of people, when they think about the Siri API on iOS, they

00:39:43 ◼   ► imagine this kind of glorified URL scheme launcher, where you just ask Siri to do stuff,

00:39:50 ◼   ► and Siri takes you to the app to perform that activity. But it's not like that. When you're

00:39:54 ◼   ► thinking about the Siri API, what you really want is visual feedback in Siri also. When

00:40:00 ◼   ► When you create a reminder in Siri, it doesn't take you to the Reminders app, it shows you

00:40:04 ◼   ► a mini-Reminders interface in the Siri UI, and you want the same to be true for third-party

00:40:10 ◼   ► integrations. So you want, for example, to have a to-do or OmniFocus UI right inside

00:40:16 ◼   ► Siri, and you want the task that you create via Siri in OmniFocus to be shown to you in

00:40:22 ◼   ► the Siri interface, so you also have to enable developers to perform all kinds of updates

00:40:26 ◼   ► in the background when they receive new information from Siri. So at a technical level it's a very,

00:40:32 ◼   ► very huge change for developers. But it's one of those things that it's super tricky

00:40:37 ◼   ► to do, but it feels right. And maybe iOS 10 finally will be that kind of update to bring

00:40:47 ◼   ► better Siri intelligence. And I can make other two arguments to conclude. It would be fantastic

00:40:55 ◼   ► pro-accessibility, you know, to be able to speak to apps and to, you know, create content

00:41:01 ◼   ► or to access content from apps from an accessibility perspective, and it would be just a boom for

00:41:09 ◼   ► productivity and efficiency on the Apple Watch. To be able to interact with any apps via voice

00:41:15 ◼   ► on the Apple Watch would be just, you know, that's what needs to happen.

00:41:19 ◼   ► Yeah, whether they're on the Watch or not.

00:41:22 ◼   ► Yep.

00:41:23 ◼   ► I'm reminded of, I think it was iOS 4 with multitasking, right? Is that correct?

00:41:30 ◼   ► Yes, yes.

00:41:31 ◼   ► When they introduced multitasking originally, they were like, "There are five things you can do."

00:41:37 ◼   ► Right?

00:41:38 ◼   ► Yes.

00:41:39 ◼   ► Whatever those things were, I don't remember, like audio playback,

00:41:42 ◼   ► "There's five things you can do in the background."

00:41:44 ◼   ► I think it would be interesting to see something like that, or Apple,

00:41:47 ◼   ► or like there are these X amount of things that as a developer you can plug into with Siri,

00:41:52 ◼   ► and they are to do these things. Maybe it's like create a new entry of some description.

00:41:57 ◼   ► Like I'm thinking of like say it was a task management thing, you could say you can create a

00:42:03 ◼   ► task with this API blah blah blah. And then what I would really love to see then, which I don't

00:42:08 ◼   ► think Apple would ever do, would be for there to be a Siri menu and I choose the app that does each

00:42:14 ◼   ► thing, so for example I would say if I just say create a task, remember to get the milk out of the

00:42:22 ◼   ► fridge or whatever, that it would automatically go in OmniFocus because that's the application

00:42:27 ◼   ► that I have assigned the Siri Action Creator task. That's what I would love it to do but I don't see

00:42:34 ◼   ► that. You want the ability to set default apps for specific tasks and that's also another of those

00:42:40 ◼   ► long-standing feature requests. But I could also argue that if you look back at iOS 9

00:42:47 ◼   ► last year, and even iOS 8 with Handoff, the way that Apple likes to play the long game

00:42:54 ◼   ► in some cases, they come up with a feature that eventually is going to be used for a

00:42:58 ◼   ► whole other engine or functionality of iOS. And I could say that the NSUserActivity API,

00:43:04 ◼   ► the API that lets developers specify points of interest in their apps. It was used for

00:43:10 ◼   ► a handoff in iOS 8, so you could take, for example, a view in Reminders and open it from

00:43:18 ◼   ► an iPhone to the iPad. Or, in iOS 9, the same API was used to index points of interest in

00:43:23 ◼   ► an app, so you could search for, like, steps in the Spotlight page, and it takes you to

00:43:29 ◼   ► the Steps view of the Health app, or you can search for an article, and it takes you to

00:43:32 ◼   ► that article in your read later application of choice. The same API could be used to communicate

00:43:38 ◼   ► with Siri, you know, this year with iOS 10. Because Siri and because iOS knows those points

00:43:44 ◼   ► of interest from apps that supports the API, you could access information from those points

00:43:51 ◼   ► of interest. So you could say, "What's my latest article in Instapaper?" And it gives

00:43:55 ◼   ► you the article, do you want to read it or do you want to share it, you know. It's fun

00:44:02 ◼   ► to consider the existing APIs and the way that they could be updated to take advantage

00:44:08 ◼   ► of Siri. And for me this realization of it's really time to have a more intelligent Siri,

00:44:15 ◼   ► it was solidified by the Amazon Echo. Because it's really, you know, you can, of course

00:44:21 ◼   ► you can integrate with third-party services, but you can also install skills. So skills

00:44:26 ◼   ► on the Echo are special features from other services. There's a skill to match lyrics

00:44:35 ◼   ► from songs to the title of the song. And there's hundreds of skills that you can install, and

00:44:42 ◼   ► they make the Echo a lot smarter than other assistants. And it really feels like Apple

00:44:49 ◼   ► is falling behind in this regard.

00:44:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean you look at these other systems that are much more integrated, right?

00:44:56 ◼   ► Like even on Android with the Google Now stuff, it's come such a long way and they're iterating

00:45:02 ◼   ► so quickly on it, Siri feels so much slower.

00:45:05 ◼   ► And it's one of those things that, you know, it feels like they lock it into these iOS

00:45:10 ◼   ► releases and aren't introducing new things throughout the year.

00:45:16 ◼   ► And so much with what Google does, it's just little tweaks over time.

00:45:19 ◼   ► it's a very different approach to these

00:45:23 ◼   ► releases but I think something like

00:45:25 ◼   ► Sirius could, I don't think it is, I think it

00:45:27 ◼   ► could be so central to how iOS works and

00:45:31 ◼   ► operates and right now it just feels still so

00:45:34 ◼   ► many years on, it just feels like it's bolted on

00:45:37 ◼   ► and yeah it's nice when it works but

00:45:40 ◼   ► it's sort of strange a lot of the time

00:45:42 ◼   ► and you can do so much without it that

00:45:45 ◼   ► it really just feels like this layer

00:45:47 ◼   ► on top of iOS as opposed to this like

00:45:48 ◼   ► integrated thing that runs throughout it.

00:45:50 ◼   ► Yeah. Now just imagine if they do a Siri Beats speaker that is like an Amazon Echo, but for

00:45:58 ◼   ► Apple Music, Siri, and it listens to you around the house. Now would Apple ever do that, or

00:46:04 ◼   ► is that too creepy for Apple to do?

00:46:06 ◼   ► I don't think they're gonna make an Echo competitor.

00:46:09 ◼   ► Yeah. But it would be great. Just imagine that.

00:46:13 ◼   ► Because you know what they want, I know it doesn't work, but they want people just talking

00:46:17 ◼   ► talking into their watches?

00:46:19 ◼   ► Mmm, probably.

00:46:21 ◼   ► Because the watch is on you!

00:46:23 ◼   ► But music is not, you know, when you want to listen to music on a speaker.

00:46:28 ◼   ► I don't think they're gonna make it for that, but I mean, you know, I think it's worth remembering that the Echo's ability to play music is just like an afterthought of the fact that it's a speaker.

00:46:40 ◼   ► I don't think it was ever built to play music, it was built for you to talk to it.

00:46:44 ◼   ► Probably. Yeah, I guess. It was built to listen to you, really.

00:46:50 ◼   ► Yeah, and it plays music because it's a speaker.

00:46:53 ◼   ► It's like they're trying to sweeten the deal and make it less creepy by giving you music.

00:47:01 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the way I look at it. Amazon has a music thing, but they don't really do a lot with their music thing.

00:47:08 ◼   ► Probably, yeah. I mean, I guess it's just fun to imagine. I mean, because I want Apple

00:47:14 ◼   ► to be as convenient. Sometimes I want Apple to be as creepy as Google and Amazon. Allow

00:47:22 ◼   ► me the use of the word "creepy" in the sense that they know a lot about me and they can

00:47:27 ◼   ► be more intelligent about, you know, these smart features. But I know that it's not in

00:47:32 ◼   ► Apple's DNA or whatever to do that kind of stuff. I just wish sometimes it was like,

00:47:38 ◼   ► "It's okay, Apple, I want you to know this stuff about me, you know?"

00:47:42 ◼   ► "Let me provide this information, please."

00:47:45 ◼   ► "I'm willingly giving up my information, please do something with it and be useful."

00:47:50 ◼   ► "Here is a great example, and you've mentioned this before Federico, I was in Google Now

00:47:57 ◼   ► while setting up the Nexus 6P and it recognised that for me to get home it would take X amount

00:48:09 ◼   ► of time by public transport because I was always searching Google Maps via public transport.

00:48:18 ◼   ► The next day I had a time to leave notification because of traffic. I don't even have a car.

00:48:27 ◼   ► And Apple's system doesn't know I use public transport because it doesn't let me tell it.

00:48:38 ◼   ► And because it's not watching, it just tells me how to get to places by car.

00:48:45 ◼   ► I think this shows a massive difference in the systems.

00:48:49 ◼   ► I don't have a car, I'm never in a car, Google knows that, Apple doesn't.

00:48:52 ◼   ► Google knows that because they peek at me.

00:48:56 ◼   ► But that's useful to me, because then I'm not getting frustrated and looking around

00:49:00 ◼   ► different views to get that information.

00:49:02 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:49:03 ◼   ► I agree.

00:49:04 ◼   ► So get this.

00:49:05 ◼   ► Google figured out, because I keep the Google app installed on my iPhone, Google figured

00:49:09 ◼   ► out that I usually go to the mall, which is the mall like five minutes away where the

00:49:15 ◼   ► Apple Store also is.

00:49:17 ◼   ► And the other day, it popped up a card on Google Now, and it was like, "Do you want

00:49:21 ◼   ► me to show you this card always because you frequently go to this place?" I'm like,

00:49:27 ◼   ► "Yes, please. Show me traffic, because I want to know." Like, I know that some people

00:49:32 ◼   ► are like, "Oh my God, Google knows my address." And I used to be one of those people. And

00:49:37 ◼   ► I think I made very public amends to, you know, what I used to believe. But I feel like

00:49:43 ◼   ► there's a, it's a positive aspect to grow up and, you know, change your opinion. Because

00:49:49 ◼   ► Because I now understand that the convenience of giving up my habits, yes, of course, big

00:49:54 ◼   ► deal, Google knows that I go to the mall.

00:49:57 ◼   ► Well, okay, let's play out the apocalyptic scenario, the government acts into Google

00:50:05 ◼   ► server and they find out that I go to the mall.

00:50:08 ◼   ► Personally, I don't care, because the sheer utility that I get from that traffic card

00:50:14 ◼   ► in the Google app that it tells me, "Well, maybe it's not the best time to go to the

00:50:19 ◼   ► mall at 6pm, maybe you should go at 7.30 because there's less traffic." That's far better for

00:50:25 ◼   ► me than the peace of mind of knowing, "Yes, I'm totally secure, the government doesn't

00:50:30 ◼   ► know that I got to the mall." I mean, at one point you just start feeling paranoid about

00:50:34 ◼   ► the government or hackers knowing that you got to the mall, that you go someplace. I

00:50:39 ◼   ► I do understand why people are turned off by that.

00:50:43 ◼   ► I used to be one of those people, again, I just want to stress this very clearly, I used

00:50:47 ◼   ► to be of the belief that no company should ever know my habits or what I do or my taste,

00:50:53 ◼   ► but at some point I just want to save time, and Google Now, Amazon Echo, they do that

00:50:59 ◼   ► kind of stuff, they're either Siri or, we could talk about the Proactive page on iOS

00:51:05 ◼   ► they do stuff that those features don't offer me. So I understand people's position that

00:51:12 ◼   ► my privacy is important and I don't want to use Google and Amazon, and I don't understand

00:51:18 ◼   ► people who take it to the extreme like "I'm switching to DuckDuckGo because the results

00:51:23 ◼   ► aren't as good as Google, but man, they do care about privacy." And I don't understand

00:51:28 ◼   ► people who are like "I'm never gonna shop on Amazon again because they're creepy and

00:51:31 ◼   ► they do these features. But also I feel like those people should also understand the opposite

00:51:38 ◼   ► position of folks like us saying, "Well, you know, I get it. I'm giving up a little of

00:51:43 ◼   ► my information, but at the end of the day, this stuff is useful."

00:51:48 ◼   ► I'm sure long-time listeners will remember the many shouting matches that me and you

00:51:53 ◼   ► had about this exact thing, right?

00:51:56 ◼   ► Isn't it much better that I change my opinion?

00:51:58 ◼   ► Yes! That's what I'm trying to tell you at a time!

00:52:00 ◼   ► I strongly believe that changing an opinion is much, much better than holding that opinion

00:52:06 ◼   ► as true even if it's not.

00:52:09 ◼   ► You know?

00:52:11 ◼   ► Saying that you're not wrong, but just growing up.

00:52:14 ◼   ► I don't think I was wrong.

00:52:16 ◼   ► I'm changing.

00:52:18 ◼   ► That's better.

00:52:19 ◼   ► I'm like a butterfly.

00:52:20 ◼   ► You are.

00:52:21 ◼   ► You are just like a butterfly.

00:52:23 ◼   ► Alright, is that it on Siri?

00:52:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

00:52:27 ◼   ► Okay.

00:52:28 ◼   ► Let me take a break.

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00:52:54 ◼   ► be doing your calculations alongside other apps. And on the Apple TV, PCALC even features

00:53:09 ◼   ► gamepad support. One of PCALC's best features on iOS is that you can create your own completely

00:53:19 ◼   ► custom calculator layouts and assign functions and specific unit conversions to dedicated

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00:53:31 ◼   ► you don't need and I made the buttons that I do need bigger so it's easier for me to

00:53:35 ◼   ► use and see. Then I added two custom functions into my pcalc layout. I have one that will

00:53:41 ◼   ► take the current answer and convert it from dollars to pounds. So if I'm working out something

00:53:46 ◼   ► like how much I'm paying myself, I can work out what it is, and then I have one that subtracts

00:53:51 ◼   ► 30% from the current total to help me put money aside for my taxes. I think you're starting

00:53:56 ◼   ► to get a picture of what I do with PCALC. I use it to work out my finances. It really

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00:54:17 ◼   ► Peacock has a place on my home screen. It is the best calculator that I've ever used

00:54:23 ◼   ► and I mean that. I really do love it. There is a calculator available in Control Center

00:54:28 ◼   ► but it's not the one that I use. I use Peacock.

00:54:30 ◼   ► Can I just real quick, I love Peacock like I really do. I love James Thompson, he's

00:54:37 ◼   ► genius, but I want to say, on the iPad, I mean, I generally love the guy, but on the

00:54:43 ◼   ► iPad, the app is excellent. There's no calculator on the iPad, which is a joke, but thankfully

00:54:49 ◼   ► there's Peacock, and it supports SplitView and SlideOver, so when I was doing my taxes

00:54:54 ◼   ► on my iPad a couple of months ago, I was so much faster than the previous years when I

00:55:01 ◼   ► used to keep a calculator on my phone next to my computer or next to my iPad to do calculations

00:55:07 ◼   ► when I was doing taxes. Now I was able to work in Excel on one side and Peacock on the

00:55:13 ◼   ► other and then I could switch between Excel and Safari. Peacock was always there on the

00:55:18 ◼   ► right side of the screen. It was glorious. I saved so much time with multitasking and

00:55:23 ◼   ► Peacock on the iPad. And this is really not from the sponsor read, it's just my true experience

00:55:29 ◼   ► from a couple of months ago. I really, really love Peacock. Yeah, there you go.

00:55:35 ◼   ► It's true. It's an absolutely fantastic app. You can find out more about PCALC by going

00:55:41 ◼   ► to PCALC.com/relay. That's PCALC.com/relay. Thank you so much to PCALC and the great developer

00:55:49 ◼   ► Mr James Thompson for supporting Connected and Relay FM. I've shared meals and drinks

00:55:56 ◼   ► with James. He is one of my very favorite people.

00:55:59 ◼   ► All right, so I wanted to bring up a blog post from the wonderful developer and iOS

00:56:10 ◼   ► miner, like he dug into iOS and finds things, Mr. Steve Trout and Smith. I can't even think

00:56:16 ◼   ► of a way to like introduce him correctly because he's a madman.

00:56:21 ◼   ► He's probably iOS own Leonardo da Vinci.

00:56:27 ◼   ► He's like the Willy Wonka of iOS.

00:56:29 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:56:30 ◼   ► Just keep going.

00:56:31 ◼   ► He wrote a great post called the WWDC Wishlist,

00:56:34 ◼   ► where he digs into some real specific things

00:56:38 ◼   ► that he would like to be changed in Apple's many platforms.

00:56:41 ◼   ► And also some big picture stuff,

00:56:43 ◼   ► like for example, a unified app platform for iOS and OS X,

00:56:47 ◼   ► which is a really interesting thing.

00:56:49 ◼   ► I urge you to go and read the post.

00:56:50 ◼   ► We'll put a link in our show notes.

00:56:52 ◼   ► But we each picked a few of the specific things

00:56:55 ◼   ► that interest us and we want to talk about them.

00:56:57 ◼   ► Steven, I believe you wanted to start.

00:56:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, so leading up to W2C,

00:57:03 ◼   ► we're gonna see a lot of this stuff,

00:57:04 ◼   ► but what I like about this particular list

00:57:07 ◼   ► is that it's very nerdy.

00:57:08 ◼   ► And the one that jumped out at me

00:57:11 ◼   ► is the command key on the software iPad keyboard.

00:57:16 ◼   ► So if you have the smart keyboard,

00:57:17 ◼   ► or of course, you know, regular Bluetooth keyboard,

00:57:19 ◼   ► you have a command key and keyboard shortcuts support

00:57:24 ◼   ► iOS is really better than ever. A lot of developers are adding it. But it seems silly to me that

00:57:31 ◼   ► that's locked away for people who just have a hardware keyboard. And I understand that

00:57:36 ◼   ► it may be confusing to people. Maybe it's a toggle somewhere to turn it on or off on

00:57:41 ◼   ► a software keyboard. But I think that keyboard shortcuts are, while they are a remnant from

00:57:48 ◼   ► a time past of personal computing, I think they still have a place in our touchscreen

00:57:55 ◼   ► iOS world. But I believe that one of us disagrees with me.

00:58:00 ◼   ► I strongly disagree with the idea of having shortcuts come to the software keyboard, because

00:58:06 ◼   ► it kind of defeats the whole point of the separation between physical input with the

00:58:11 ◼   ► external keyboard and the touch input with the software one. I feel like when I'm using

00:58:18 ◼   ► the software keyboard, the commands that are exposed to shortcuts for hardware keyboards,

00:58:25 ◼   ► they're built into an apps interface when I'm using the software keyboard. I don't need

00:58:32 ◼   ► to have a shortcut to create a new document, because there's a plus button right there

00:58:37 ◼   ► that I can just touch. I feel like adding a command key to the software keyboard to

00:58:43 ◼   ► replicate shortcuts that are otherwise available directly on screen would just add complexity

00:58:49 ◼   ► to the keyboard that is not necessary.

00:58:52 ◼   ► I would make the argument that this should be an iPad Pro feature.

00:58:58 ◼   ► And not the others.

00:58:59 ◼   ► And not the others.

00:59:00 ◼   ► I mean, they already have another keyboard.

00:59:01 ◼   ► Keyboard's bigger, right?

00:59:03 ◼   ► Yes.

00:59:04 ◼   ► And also the smart keyboard is, what I have noticed, clearly encouraging developers to

00:59:10 ◼   ► put more keyboard shortcuts in their apps.

00:59:13 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:59:14 ◼   ► And Federico, I disagree with your,

00:59:17 ◼   ► basically your whole thing because--

00:59:19 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:59:19 ◼   ► I disagree with everything you are.

00:59:21 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:59:23 ◼   ► Disagree with all your life decisions.

00:59:25 ◼   ► No, no, I get what you're saying,

00:59:28 ◼   ► that keyboard shortcuts can add some sort of

00:59:31 ◼   ► level of complexity that you may not want.

00:59:34 ◼   ► But I think that is true if you tie things

00:59:37 ◼   ► only to keyboard shortcuts, right?

00:59:39 ◼   ► Like there are some apps that I use on the Mac that the menu system is so ridiculous

00:59:43 ◼   ► that it's just easier to know the keyboard shortcuts that I need to use.

00:59:47 ◼   ► Or something like Logic that's very keyboard driven.

00:59:50 ◼   ► That's one thing.

00:59:51 ◼   ► But I think that there is room for developers to use keyboard shortcuts to mimic or to have

01:00:00 ◼   ► things that the on-screen buttons and UI expose, but to have them available for people who

01:00:07 ◼   ► who want to use them on the keyboard.

01:00:08 ◼   ► Not forcing a decision, but saying,

01:00:11 ◼   ► hey, you know what, you can reach up and tap that button,

01:00:13 ◼   ► or if you're already on the software keyboard

01:00:15 ◼   ► and it's faster, and you prefer it that way,

01:00:18 ◼   ► go hit the Command key.

01:00:18 ◼   ► And that's the way it works on the Mac, right?

01:00:20 ◼   ► It's the way it works on desktop computers.

01:00:22 ◼   ► And I think that it can make sense on iOS.

01:00:25 ◼   ► I agree with you, I don't want developers

01:00:27 ◼   ► to be stashing things behind keyboard shortcuts

01:00:29 ◼   ► and not having them in the UI

01:00:31 ◼   ► and adding complexity that way.

01:00:33 ◼   ► But I don't think that just having them

01:00:34 ◼   ► as a parallel option necessarily adds complexity to an app.

01:00:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I disagree. What did they say? "Agree to disagree."

01:00:45 ◼   ► Okay. Myke, take us to the next point.

01:00:49 ◼   ► No, no, I'm not done. Because

01:00:53 ◼   ► I really feel that it shouldn't be

01:00:56 ◼   ► on all iPads, but I do think it should be

01:01:00 ◼   ► on the iPad Pro. It feels like a Pro feature, it would fit on the keyboard and if you're

01:01:06 ◼   ► using the physical keyboard so much as I am, when you use the software keyboard, I would

01:01:13 ◼   ► like them to be there. I understand why you're coming from where you're coming from Federico

01:01:19 ◼   ► and I do get it because it's not like with a keyboard. The reason keyboard shortcuts

01:01:24 ◼   ► exist is because your hands are on the keyboard. On the software keyboard, your hands are on

01:01:30 ◼   ► the screen that already has the button, right? So I get that, but I'm starting to see now

01:01:36 ◼   ► more and more keyboard shortcuts that activate things that would take multiple taps or that

01:01:41 ◼   ► are not immediately on screen because people are baking in more and more complex things.

01:01:46 ◼   ► So I think it might be nice in some areas, but I see where you're both coming from with

01:01:50 ◼   ► your ideas.

01:01:51 ◼   ► Okay, so let me counter with this.

01:01:55 ◼   ► We lose an hour to this.

01:01:58 ◼   ► this discussion on shortcuts for the software keyboard feels to me like Mac people coming

01:02:08 ◼   ► to iOS and be like "well, you know, we want the command key on the software keyboard".

01:02:13 ◼   ► The same argument could be made for iOS people going to the Mac and saying "well, you know,

01:02:18 ◼   ► I want to touch the screen". And whenever you bring that up, Mac folks tell you "well,

01:02:23 ◼   ► you know, Mac is not made for touching the screen because the interface is not made for

01:02:27 ◼   ► that's iOS. And to me it feels like a clear line in the sand. On the Mac you have shortcuts,

01:02:34 ◼   ► well on physical keyboards, but for the iPad you have shortcuts because it makes sense

01:02:39 ◼   ► there, but when you're touching the screen, you're on iOS, you interact with the interface,

01:02:44 ◼   ► you don't touch the screen on the Mac. It's really a similar argument, the way that I

01:02:47 ◼   ► look at it. I see why it would be nice, right? I understand why it would be nice. I just

01:02:54 ◼   ► feel like it would do more bad than good to the iPad. But we'll see, right? I mean, there's

01:03:03 ◼   ► genius coming up.

01:03:05 ◼   ► Alright, this one is probably gonna confuse many people. One of the things on Steve's

01:03:11 ◼   ► list that I like is system level drawing and markup.

01:03:14 ◼   ► Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

01:03:17 ◼   ► The whole thing I was campaigning against with the Apple Pencil. So I think that this

01:03:22 ◼   ► is a fantastic idea for a feature for me to be able to at any point to be able to draw

01:03:27 ◼   ► on the screen and leave lines and show things. But my argument, which me and Grey were talking

01:03:33 ◼   ► about this on an episode of Cortex, this should definitely be there, but it should be invoked

01:03:39 ◼   ► by some kind of button or shortcut of some description. Not a keyboard shortcut, of course,

01:03:45 ◼   ► because we shouldn't have those, right Federico? But there could be a button or Grey came up

01:03:51 ◼   ► with the idea which I like is a button you hit in Control Center which turns the UI to

01:03:56 ◼   ► only react to drawing with a pencil, like you can't move the UI at that point.

01:04:01 ◼   ► I just feel like it would be... maybe it could be even simpler than that. Apple could just

01:04:06 ◼   ► make an API to implement a generic drawing view, just like there's a UI text field.

01:04:14 ◼   ► That's what I mean, like you hit a button in an app which lets you draw on the app.

01:04:17 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. There's no need for a control center shortcut to enable that.

01:04:22 ◼   ► Like any app could just have a little box where it's like, "You wanna draw here?

01:04:27 ◼   ► Okay, bring this up and you can only draw."

01:04:29 ◼   ► Yeah, but then you've got a Google app.

01:04:31 ◼   ► Right? And then they won't put it in for a year.

01:04:34 ◼   ► Which might be nice. Yeah, that's the reason I would suggest putting it in the OS.

01:04:39 ◼   ► Oh, to force it. To force it.

01:04:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:42 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

01:04:43 ◼   ► To force it upon developers that might not necessarily put it in on their own.

01:04:47 ◼   ► That... that... that... I don't know. I mean, Apple could... you could even say that Apple could force apps to support multitasking right now,

01:04:56 ◼   ► if they add, you know, if they support the iPad Pro full resolution but not multitasking, there's a... I believe there's a toggle.

01:05:04 ◼   ► I mean, Steven Trotton Smith knows this stuff. You can force apps to adopt Split View, even if they don't officially support Split View.

01:05:13 ◼   ► I guess you could also force to support this stuff. I don't know. I struggle to imagine

01:05:19 ◼   ► Apple making a toggle in Control Center and be like, well, screw you, now you support

01:05:24 ◼   ► the Apple Pencil the way that we envisioned.

01:05:29 ◼   ► I think they should be like that sometimes.

01:05:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I know. It makes a lot of sense to save developers the time to recreate the drawing

01:05:40 ◼   ► engine and feature of the Notes app. The whole OpenGL engine, it's super smooth. The basic

01:05:50 ◼   ► tools, they could benefit a lot of apps. Just imagine if, for example, it was a keyboard

01:05:56 ◼   ► feature, like on the iPad Pro, or you could have... I'm serious here.

01:06:03 ◼   ► No, I know, it's just... Would you make that a shortcut key, or...?

01:06:07 ◼   ► No, no, no, like, imagine if you would make drawings like a default way of communicating with people,

01:06:16 ◼   ► the same way that you can choose between text and emoji.

01:06:19 ◼   ► Imagine if you could have a drawing mode to send a sketch to anyone all the time, right?

01:06:25 ◼   ► It's really similar to the way that you can send sketches on the Apple Watch.

01:06:29 ◼   ► Only that's terrible, and with the pencil it would actually be nice, you know?

01:06:32 ◼   ► Yeah. Alright Federico, why don't you move on with our next point?

01:06:36 ◼   ► So this is also something that I've been thinking about for my iOS 10 wishlist

01:06:43 ◼   ► Drag and drop between apps. I assume in multitasking it's what we're looking for.

01:06:49 ◼   ► I believe it would be super tricky to get it right, but it also, again, like Siri,

01:06:56 ◼   ► it feels like the right thing to do, to enable users to drag and drop content between apps.

01:07:02 ◼   ► So I've been thinking about this really deeply, because I'm in the process of, again, putting

01:07:08 ◼   ► together my annual wishes.

01:07:11 ◼   ► The problem that I see is coming up with a solution that doesn't cause conflicts with

01:07:16 ◼   ► the copy and paste menu, which is now copy, paste, define, and share menu.

01:07:21 ◼   ► It's the full name, I guess.

01:07:24 ◼   ► Having that menu and having drag and drop can be tricky, because the moment that you're

01:07:30 ◼   ► selecting text, so let's just say you want to select some text and drop it into a document.

01:07:37 ◼   ► Easy enough, on the Mac you just select text and you drop it into the document next to

01:07:42 ◼   ► it. On iOS you would have the text selection controls, the copy and paste menu above that,

01:07:49 ◼   ► and then you would be able to drag it and drop it into another app. It could cause some

01:07:57 ◼   ► confusion to have all those things going on at once, you know? Copy and Paste menu, selection,

01:08:02 ◼   ► and drag and drop. So my idea is the Copy and Paste menu stay mostly the same in terms

01:08:10 ◼   ► of functionality. The Copy and Paste menu always appears in a way that doesn't obstruct

01:08:17 ◼   ► the content that you're selecting. So that would stay the same, but I imagine you could

01:08:22 ◼   ► keep pressing on a selection, whether it's document or whether it's text or an image,

01:08:28 ◼   ► and you would enter a special Dragging Mode. So this would take like half a second maybe,

01:08:34 ◼   ► and then with that special mode you would be able to drop it into another app. It's

01:08:40 ◼   ► also a question of why would you want to drag and drop? So I'm going to the very basic level

01:08:46 ◼   ► Why do we want to be able to drag and drop?

01:08:49 ◼   ► So I believe what I would want to see is a way to save time and to use the clipboard

01:08:58 ◼   ► less.

01:08:59 ◼   ► So the only way right now, if you have two applications up front on screen, the only

01:09:05 ◼   ► way to exchange data between them is to either use the copy and paste menu or to use extensions

01:09:12 ◼   ► from those apps while those apps are in the foreground, which is a super hacky way to

01:09:20 ◼   ► exchange information. Often when you use an extension for an app that is already in the

01:09:25 ◼   ► foreground, you need to close and reopen the app for the extension to show you the new

01:09:31 ◼   ► data. And I would love to have a way to move information from one app to the other, so

01:09:36 ◼   ► So that's the basic requirement.

01:09:40 ◼   ► Actual examples would be, I'm sending a new tweet and I want to attach a link or an image

01:09:47 ◼   ► from Safari, well I should just be able to drag and drop it from Safari to the tweet

01:09:52 ◼   ► box, whatever it's called, or I'm working on a document, so I have pages on one side

01:10:00 ◼   ► and a collection of images on the other side.

01:10:02 ◼   ► I shouldn't have to copy one image after the other and paste it.

01:10:07 ◼   ► I shouldn't have to go through the document provider to pick one image at a time.

01:10:13 ◼   ► I should just be able to select those five images, use my finger and drop them into the

01:10:19 ◼   ► document.

01:10:20 ◼   ► It's one of those features that on the surface it feels like, well, it's Apple taking features

01:10:27 ◼   ► from OS X and bringing them to the iPad.

01:10:29 ◼   ► But if you think about it, drag and drop makes perfect sense for multi-touch.

01:10:35 ◼   ► For a big screen, use your fingers, you directly touch an object and you place it from... you

01:10:40 ◼   ► put it from one place into another.

01:10:44 ◼   ► And so I've heard from a very secondhand rumor type of thing that a system framework like

01:10:53 ◼   ► this is in the works.

01:10:56 ◼   ► I mean, it has to be, right?

01:10:57 ◼   ► so obvious. And I heard this when maybe last month I covered on Mac Stories this third

01:11:08 ◼   ► party framework to bring Dragon Drop to Split View on iOS 9, I think it was called "Dragon

01:11:14 ◼   ► Drop", it was a clever joke, and I've heard that Apple is considering a system framework

01:11:23 ◼   ► to let developers do this stuff natively.

01:11:25 ◼   ► And I mean, it makes total sense to me,

01:11:29 ◼   ► just like a Siri API does.

01:11:31 ◼   ► The implementation could be tricky,

01:11:33 ◼   ► but I feel like it's time to stop using the clipboard,

01:11:38 ◼   ► extensions, or document pickers to move information

01:11:42 ◼   ► and files slowly from one place to another.

01:11:46 ◼   ► - Core Dragon.

01:11:47 ◼   ► - Core Dragon, yeah.

01:11:48 ◼   ► - Dragon Drop is an application.

01:11:50 ◼   ► - Is an app for the Mac, right?

01:11:51 ◼   ► Dragon, yeah, code dragon, yeah.

01:11:54 ◼   ► - I tell you what, one of the things I would really like

01:11:56 ◼   ► from this is when I'm copying text from one window,

01:12:01 ◼   ► like one app to another, which I do quite a lot,

01:12:04 ◼   ► I would like to, I think drag and drop would be nicer

01:12:07 ◼   ► than selecting it, tapping, tapping copy,

01:12:12 ◼   ► going over here, tapping and holding, and pressing paste.

01:12:15 ◼   ► Right, I think it'd just be like selecting it

01:12:19 ◼   ► and holding it and then just dragging it over. I would like that, that would be nice.

01:12:23 ◼   ► I would say, whilst I don't think that this is going to happen for a while,

01:12:28 ◼   ► a 3D touch action would really help with drag and drop.

01:12:32 ◼   ► You think so?

01:12:36 ◼   ► Well, it's like if you force press on something and hold, you get the ability to just move it

01:12:41 ◼   ► without ever needing to invoke any kind of buttons.

01:12:46 ◼   ► It might be tricky to do, but I think it might be nice.

01:12:50 ◼   ► It would be a thing you could do with it.

01:12:52 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe.

01:12:53 ◼   ► The main problem is I don't know if 3D Touch is coming to the iPad Pro.

01:12:58 ◼   ► That's what I mean.

01:12:59 ◼   ► I don't think...

01:13:00 ◼   ► I think it will one day.

01:13:01 ◼   ► I think we're a long way away from it happening.

01:13:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree.

01:13:05 ◼   ► I mean, it makes total sense.

01:13:07 ◼   ► Just, you know, we'll see.

01:13:08 ◼   ► What do we have next?

01:13:11 ◼   ► Up next there's a section about UI kit apps coming to the watch.

01:13:16 ◼   ► So, um, you know, WatchKit even in watchOS 2.0 is still pretty weak sauce compared to

01:13:25 ◼   ► full UIKit, which is used, of course, to build apps for iPhone and the iPad.

01:13:32 ◼   ► And I agree with him that he thinks that if the watch is going to succeed as an app platform

01:13:39 ◼   ► that they need to bring UIKit to it.

01:13:42 ◼   ► I'm not convinced the watch needs to be a successful app platform but that's my

01:13:46 ◼   ► hang up. But he does go on to say that he's not convinced that the first generation

01:13:50 ◼   ► hardware could drive this sort of thing and you know Dan Morin had a piece in

01:13:55 ◼   ► Six Colors about the speed of the of the Apple Watch being like the big killer in

01:14:01 ◼   ► his mind of you know something that promises to be faster but it's not

01:14:05 ◼   ► actually faster and that would obviously I think would be worse you know if you're

01:14:10 ◼   ► running UI kit but if they can rev the hardware and make that system on chip

01:14:15 ◼   ► faster then maybe it opens up some more interesting opportunities for apps

01:14:21 ◼   ► to be more responsive and I don't know if I don't think this would fix the data

01:14:26 ◼   ► transfer rate issue that seems to be a problem as well but if it helps you know

01:14:30 ◼   ► with things like launch time and just overall responsiveness and I think that

01:14:35 ◼   ► would that would be a good thing. Like when you hit a button and it recognizes

01:14:39 ◼   ► the button's been pressed. Oh my gosh. Don't do anything. Yes. That's confirmed, okay?

01:14:47 ◼   ► The button's been pressed. Last week I was using a watch app and I pressed the button

01:14:53 ◼   ► like three times and it shows you the visual feedback right when the button is depressed.

01:14:58 ◼   ► It shows you and it did nothing. I was like, you know, screw it, whatever. I'm just gonna

01:15:03 ◼   ► pick up my iPhone.

01:15:05 ◼   ► Ah Apple watch, you make me so sad.

01:15:08 ◼   ► Alright, last one.

01:15:10 ◼   ► All system iOS apps should support split screen.

01:15:13 ◼   ► Like, I can't even believe this is a thing.

01:15:15 ◼   ► Yes.

01:15:16 ◼   ► It's like we're complaining about Google, right?

01:15:20 ◼   ► But there are Apple apps that aren't split screen.

01:15:23 ◼   ► Like the apps, like any store, anything that has a store is not.

01:15:26 ◼   ► Why is that?

01:15:27 ◼   ► I have no idea.

01:15:28 ◼   ► Web objects probably.

01:15:30 ◼   ► I've seen people put up their excuse.

01:15:33 ◼   ► Why is WebObjects has to do with it?

01:15:35 ◼   ► - I have no idea.

01:15:36 ◼   ► I'm just running the meme.

01:15:38 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:15:39 ◼   ► - So you're just repeating what you heard.

01:15:41 ◼   ► - I do that a lot actually.

01:15:44 ◼   ► That's my job I think.

01:15:46 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:15:48 ◼   ► I mean, there's an iPhone version of the App Store,

01:15:52 ◼   ► the iTunes store.

01:15:53 ◼   ► So there's a way to have a smaller layouts of those stores.

01:15:57 ◼   ► I've seen the security argument come up.

01:16:01 ◼   ► - What?

01:16:02 ◼   ► I have no idea! Why wouldn't you be able to use a store in multitasking?

01:16:07 ◼   ► It's the 3/4 view, man. That 3/4 view is super unsafe. I don't know. FBI, probably.

01:16:13 ◼   ► That doesn't make any sense. I don't... Maybe it's, you know, just resource constrained.

01:16:19 ◼   ► For some reason those teams couldn't come up with a way to show you the apps are in

01:16:24 ◼   ► multitasking. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense.

01:16:27 ◼   ► And it is weird, like the settings app as well. Again, an iOS version exists. It's very peculiar.

01:16:35 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, this comes up a lot with Apple Music for me, when I'm listening to music

01:16:43 ◼   ► and I just wanna be able to control playback next to what I'm doing, you know? Maybe I'm

01:16:50 ◼   ► listening to a new album or, you know, I'm browsing the new releases and I don't understand

01:16:56 ◼   ► why it doesn't super multitasking. You know? Have you guys, while we're on the topic,

01:17:02 ◼   ► one last question. Have you guys thought about using three apps at the same time on an iPad

01:17:09 ◼   ► Pro? Yeah, quite a lot, yeah. I admit I haven't wanted to say it because I feel greedy, but

01:17:17 ◼   ► yeah, I have very frequently wanted to have the ability to have three apps. Well, because

01:17:21 ◼   ► we've only just got two, right? So you feel like you're always asking for more? Yeah,

01:17:26 ◼   ► And then when they put three, I want four. Give me a quarter of each screen. So I haven't

01:17:32 ◼   ► said it, but yes, I very frequently want three apps. But then again, I know when I get three,

01:17:37 ◼   ► I will want four. There will be a reason, but I want four apps now.

01:17:42 ◼   ► It's weird, I can do that on my Mac.

01:17:44 ◼   ► It's too bad all the apps suck and nobody's bothering to develop the other many more.

01:17:50 ◼   ► That's not untrue. Moving on.

01:17:52 ◼   ► It's like you can put all the apps you want side by side, but there's no new ones.

01:17:57 ◼   ► Just Chrome windows all the way down.

01:17:59 ◼   ► Yep.

01:18:00 ◼   ► So what's next?

01:18:03 ◼   ► That's it, that's it, that's what I picked out.

01:18:05 ◼   ► That's our list.

01:18:06 ◼   ► I guess we're saving iOS 10 and OS 10 10.12 wishes for a proper episode.

01:18:15 ◼   ► But it was too fun to look at this article by Steven because it raised really some excellent

01:18:23 ◼   ► points.

01:18:24 ◼   ► I mean I'm still thinking about the shortcut key on the iPad keyboard.

01:18:29 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe you guys have a point, maybe I'm just…

01:18:32 ◼   ► You remember how you changed your opinion about Google?

01:18:35 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe this is one of those things…

01:18:37 ◼   ► Did I get the shortcut key?

01:18:38 ◼   ► It's too soon Myke, it's too soon.

01:18:41 ◼   ► I'm like, what did it say?

01:18:44 ◼   ► Thomas I need to I need to touch it before I believe it you know that's like

01:18:48 ◼   ► a Christian thing I believe why do I have no idea what you're talking about

01:18:53 ◼   ► oh Stephen come on you're you're you're a kind of person you know this stuff

01:18:58 ◼   ► fine line here buddy yeah he didn't believe that she was alive so see see

01:19:07 ◼   ► it's the same Thomas and it and he has some fish in front of him and you won't

01:19:11 ◼   ► believe what happened next. It touched him. So I need to try this iPad keyboard. I'm not

01:19:18 ◼   ► saying that I'm a saint, but I'm, you know, just a way of life. Try before you buy, if

01:19:25 ◼   ► you will. Please end this, Myke. If you'd like to find our show notes, head on over

01:19:28 ◼   ► to relay.fm/connected/80. If you want to find Federico online, he is @Vittici, V-I-T-I-C-C-I,

01:19:36 ◼   ► Twitter and he writes over at MaxStories.net. Stephen is @ismh and he writes at 512pixels.net

01:19:44 ◼   ► and I am @imike. Thanks again to our sponsors this week, Peacalk and Braintree. Thank you

01:19:51 ◼   ► for listening and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye guys.

01:19:55 ◼   ► Arrivederci. Adios.