Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:06 ◼   ► From Real AFM, this is Connected episode number 70. Today's show is brought to you

00:00:11 ◼   ► by lynda.com and Squarespace. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by

00:00:15 ◼   ► Steven Hackett. Hey, caught me off guard there Myke. Yeah

00:00:20 ◼   ► I usually, see I know that, I usually go for Federico first, I don't know why so I

00:00:23 ◼   ► decided I would change it up today but Federico is here too. Hi Federico.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Oh hey, how are you?

00:00:27 ◼   ► I'm very well, I'm very well indeed. This is our last episode before the holidays.

00:00:33 ◼   ► Are you in a festive mood, Myke?

00:00:35 ◼   ► Oh, very festive. If I had bells to jingle, I would be jingling them right now.

00:00:39 ◼   ► Okay, I'm very happy to hear that, Myke.

00:00:42 ◼   ► But I have no bells to jingle.

00:00:44 ◼   ► No?

00:00:45 ◼   ► Not today.

00:00:46 ◼   ► That's too bad, Myke.

00:00:48 ◼   ► It's a real shame, it is a real shame. But yeah, we are in the festive mood. We're not

00:00:52 ◼   ► not going to be here next week so you're going to have to listen to this show super slowly

00:00:56 ◼   ► so it will fill you across two weeks.

00:00:58 ◼   ► You can put the show at 0.1x, it'll last you until Christmas day.

00:01:04 ◼   ► Exactly, just listen to it in parts, you know, ration it out.

00:01:08 ◼   ► But I'm very excited for our episode in two weeks time though, we're going to bring back

00:01:12 ◼   ► what we did last year I think, which was a round up of the year's tech stories.

00:01:17 ◼   ► I like looking back and seeing how ridiculous it is,

00:01:21 ◼   ► of how concerned we were about certain things.

00:01:23 ◼   ► It's always fun to realize just how crazy you can be.

00:01:29 ◼   ► So we're gonna be doing that in a couple of weeks.

00:01:31 ◼   ► That is a show that takes a ton of work.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Go over everything in the last year.

00:01:38 ◼   ► - As you were talking, I was putting it into OmniFocus

00:01:40 ◼   ► to start preparation for that next week.

00:01:42 ◼   ► - Yep, I have my task already and you should add it to To Do.

00:01:45 ◼   ► We haven't spoken about To Do yet.

00:01:47 ◼   ► We should talk about that at some point.

00:01:49 ◼   ► I still haven't read your magnum opus to it.

00:01:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was finished with the to-do review

00:01:57 ◼   ► and I got started on my end of the year stuff,

00:02:00 ◼   ► which always takes so much time.

00:02:03 ◼   ► But I'm almost done, you know?

00:02:06 ◼   ► I don't wanna spoil it.

00:02:07 ◼   ► I got a little change this year,

00:02:10 ◼   ► wanted to kind of change things up a little.

00:02:13 ◼   ► It's almost done.

00:02:14 ◼   ► I would love to send what I prepared before Christmas, but I don't know if I have the time, so we'll see.

00:02:21 ◼   ► I want to surprise my people. So the end of the year stuff is always so, you know, complex.

00:02:29 ◼   ► Is this surprise because it's your favorite Mac apps? Is that the surprise?

00:02:34 ◼   ► Yes.

00:02:35 ◼   ► Federico Vittucci returns to the Mac to get real work done.

00:02:38 ◼   ► No, the real surprise is that I've watched Star Wars.

00:02:43 ◼   ► We're not talking about Star Wars on this show.

00:02:45 ◼   ► Well, there's not much to talk about.

00:02:47 ◼   ► It might be the only show that we don't talk about, that anybody doesn't talk about Star Wars on in the next couple of weeks.

00:02:52 ◼   ► But we're not doing it, so don't worry everyone. No spoilers, no even discussion of how we feel about the movie.

00:02:58 ◼   ► Is it fair to say we're anti-Star Wars?

00:03:02 ◼   ► No, that is not fair to say.

00:03:04 ◼   ► Okay, well I tried.

00:03:06 ◼   ► I'm just going to start follow up right now.

00:03:08 ◼   ► Turns out Myke was half right or half of Myke was right, it's hard to say.

00:03:15 ◼   ► But according to a survey, half of Apple Watch users admit to having nose tapped, which means

00:03:21 ◼   ► they probably more have and they just feel weird about it and didn't say anything to

00:03:25 ◼   ► their friends.

00:03:26 ◼   ► But it's a thing apparently.

00:03:28 ◼   ► My claim was never that everyone in the world would do it.

00:03:32 ◼   ► My claim was just that people do it.

00:03:35 ◼   ► And I am once again proven right in this scenario. Everybody said that I was wrong or said that

00:03:43 ◼   ► I was crazy, but now look at what's happened. I mean, maybe they asked two people and I

00:03:47 ◼   ► was one of those people, but I think it may have been a few more than that.

00:03:51 ◼   ► Were you on a survey, Myke?

00:03:53 ◼   ► I was not on a survey, no. Neither did I know that this survey existed and I had no hand

00:03:58 ◼   ► in it.

00:03:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, so this was done by a company named Wristley,

00:04:03 ◼   ► which apparently what they do is insight into wearables,

00:04:07 ◼   ► so that's an interesting business,

00:04:08 ◼   ► but actually no, just Apple Watch.

00:04:11 ◼   ► The independent voice of Apple Watch

00:04:13 ◼   ► is what their website says.

00:04:14 ◼   ► So take that with a grain of salt

00:04:16 ◼   ► that they're just looking at this,

00:04:17 ◼   ► but it seems that people do it,

00:04:19 ◼   ► and I mean it's cool that Myke was right,

00:04:22 ◼   ► had one little burst of activity

00:04:23 ◼   ► right here at the end of the year.

00:04:25 ◼   ► - Yep, as we transition to the year of Frederica.

00:04:28 ◼   ► which has been going on quite strongly on Twitter

00:04:31 ◼   ► under the hashtag #YearOfTeachey.

00:04:34 ◼   ► You can find already a few pictures of people,

00:04:37 ◼   ► listeners and Mac service readers

00:04:40 ◼   ► trying to use their iPads as a work setup.

00:04:44 ◼   ► And there's a few articles in there.

00:04:46 ◼   ► So if you're planning on switching to the iPad

00:04:49 ◼   ► for the next year as part of your New Year's resolutions,

00:04:53 ◼   ► make sure to tweet at us with the hashtag #YearOfTeachee.

00:04:58 ◼   ► And we'll make sure to have a little roundup maybe

00:05:02 ◼   ► in the future, we'll have special mentions.

00:05:04 ◼   ► And in general, you'll just be an awesome person if you do.

00:05:07 ◼   ► So let's prove the next year we can properly succeed,

00:05:12 ◼   ► Michael, in a very awesome fashion.

00:05:17 ◼   ► - Moving on. (laughs)

00:05:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, so moving on is an example, perhaps,

00:05:22 ◼   ► of "T.G. was right."

00:05:24 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:05:26 ◼   ► So I ended up finally getting my iPad Pro thoughts together.

00:05:31 ◼   ► Published this earlier this week.

00:05:33 ◼   ► And I guess the TLDR of my review is that it is,

00:05:38 ◼   ► like for me, the iPad Pro is the first,

00:05:41 ◼   ► marks the first time that I can feel like I can actually do

00:05:46 ◼   ► part of my work on a tablet.

00:05:49 ◼   ► And you know, we've talked a lot about that over the years

00:05:51 ◼   ► it's there's still problems with it I go into some of those actual things that I

00:05:56 ◼   ► can only do on the Mac and and and all this is colored by the fact that I

00:06:00 ◼   ► prefer the Mac but it is interesting and I think the iPad Pro is sort of this like

00:06:07 ◼   ► fork in the road or like line of the sand is the phrase I used that it is

00:06:13 ◼   ► sort of a tipping point into the tablets being more approachable for different

00:06:19 ◼   ► types of work and I find that really interesting and I really feel the more and more I think

00:06:24 ◼   ► about it that this is one of those points that we're going to look back at and say hey

00:06:28 ◼   ► you know this was this was a real inflection point at least for some people and so as you

00:06:34 ◼   ► can get rid of it it's up on 512. Yeah there you go. Every day I edge closer and closer

00:06:42 ◼   ► to just doing more and more stuff on my iPad. Like I'm even getting that call of like things

00:06:48 ◼   ► that I would do on the Mac or that I think are easier on the Mac and I think to myself

00:06:53 ◼   ► "how could I make it easier on the iPad?" and every day I feel like I'm getting just

00:06:59 ◼   ► closer and closer to doing more and more and more stuff on it. I really do a lot of work

00:07:03 ◼   ► on it now that I wouldn't have done before. I'm sitting down at my iMac less and less

00:07:08 ◼   ► in a day.

00:07:11 ◼   ► Look at you two, I'm so happy.

00:07:12 ◼   ► I know, you're rubbing off on us.

00:07:14 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I mean for me

00:07:16 ◼   ► Well as I say real quick for me that that's definitely true and the they're like the writing part of my job

00:07:23 ◼   ► Still a lot of what I do even for a relay on the business side

00:07:28 ◼   ► I am still a bunch faster and prefer the Mac

00:07:31 ◼   ► But it's what it what the difference for me is right now

00:07:34 ◼   ► Is that I feel like I have options for the first time that I don't have to be on my Mac for a lot

00:07:38 ◼   ► Of stuff and I feel like I had to in the past and that's been really freeing

00:07:41 ◼   ► Like I wrote this review an article that I just wrote for I'm or just went up this morning

00:07:46 ◼   ► I wrote on the iPad like being able to break away and move away from my desk and go work somewhere else

00:07:51 ◼   ► Without taking my heavy MacBook Pro is nice

00:07:54 ◼   ► So going on from this people will remember from last week's episode that Tony was bringing a smart keyboard to me

00:08:03 ◼   ► Tony actually arrived during the episode when I picked up my smart keyboard

00:08:08 ◼   ► board so I've had it for a week now and it's been attached to my iPad constantly

00:08:13 ◼   ► like I use it as my stand now as well because it does a good job of standing

00:08:17 ◼   ► the iPad up in like the vertical position that I like you know when the

00:08:20 ◼   ► the iPad is in landscape mode but it's like up in the air right I don't even

00:08:24 ◼   ► know what you'd call that the way that you watch TV on it right so you stand it

00:08:28 ◼   ► up so it does that which is great I'm happy that it does that and I I like it

00:08:33 ◼   ► I like it quite a lot. The keys are fine for me. I can see why people that write thousands of words

00:08:40 ◼   ► a week wouldn't want to use this keyboard. I can see why that would be the case. I don't think

00:08:46 ◼   ► that's definitely the case but I can see why people wouldn't want to do that because it feels

00:08:50 ◼   ► different. But I like it feels so different. It's kind of weird. It for me has the pleasure of

00:08:56 ◼   ► typing on the iPad but more so. If I've ever typed on the iPad there's something that's

00:09:03 ◼   ► different that I quite like about just like hitting the glass like it just has a different

00:09:06 ◼   ► kind of feeling to it. It's like "ah look at me go" like "ah" that's the sound that

00:09:10 ◼   ► I make when I type on the iPad. And the smart keyboard is nice I don't know it's like this

00:09:16 ◼   ► kind of like snapping sound I don't know I quite like it. I can live with the US layout

00:09:23 ◼   ► because I'm getting used to using the iPad Pro with the key sizes all being like that

00:09:28 ◼   ► so what am I going to do? Like I can get used to it. I'm not saying anything that nobody

00:09:34 ◼   ► else has said really. I mean I think it is a shame that there are no specific iOS keys

00:09:38 ◼   ► for anything. That it's effectively a Mac keyboard attached to an iPad. And I think

00:09:45 ◼   ► that some of the shortcuts are a bit ham-fisted. Like command shift H to go home. It's like

00:09:50 ◼   ► like

00:10:12 ◼   ► on the Mac is you have to hold it right to activate it but that's not the case

00:10:16 ◼   ► with the smart keyboard so very frequently I'm typing things in all caps

00:10:20 ◼   ► now when I don't need to and I have had some issues that are widely reported

00:10:26 ◼   ► that sometimes sometimes the keyboard doesn't work but more strangely the

00:10:30 ◼   ► keyboard works but the shortcuts don't work so like command shift H stops

00:10:34 ◼   ► working command space or spotlight stops working the command tab stops working

00:10:38 ◼   ► but I can still type with it. Have you seen that Federico?

00:10:41 ◼   ► Yeah, same, especially with the home screen shortcut.

00:10:45 ◼   ► Yeah, why just that? That doesn't make any sense to me.

00:10:49 ◼   ► The rest of the keyboard works, but the shortcut's done.

00:10:52 ◼   ► Half of the time it doesn't work. For some reason I have no idea.

00:10:55 ◼   ► Sometimes if I disconnect the keyboard and reconnect it, it works,

00:10:58 ◼   ► but sometimes I have to reboot my iPad.

00:11:00 ◼   ► The worst part is when the software keyboard somehow gets stuck,

00:11:07 ◼   ► So you can still see the software keyboard even when the hardware keyboard is connected

00:11:11 ◼   ► So you gotta unplug from the smart connector and you gotta replug again. It's

00:11:15 ◼   ► weird bugs. Something else I also don't like, it enables the US software keyboard in my keyboard switcher

00:11:22 ◼   ► Even if I turn it off, so I turn it off

00:11:24 ◼   ► I just have UK and emoji, but then when I connect the smart keyboard it brings the US one back again

00:11:30 ◼   ► There's nothing I could do to get rid of it. So I have now three keyboards that I switch between on software

00:11:36 ◼   ► Lot of complaining but I like it. I do really like it it works for me

00:11:40 ◼   ► It's a nice thing to just have a keyboard there all the time

00:11:44 ◼   ► And is that does that add a lot of bulk to it?

00:11:47 ◼   ► When you're carrying it around like in sort of like case configuration not so much that bothers me

00:11:51 ◼   ► I mean the iPad Pro is already so big and ungainly and wildly adding like just it's basically like one and a half

00:11:59 ◼   ► Smart covers it's not an issue because it's already so huge

00:12:04 ◼   ► And it's already heavy, so it's not like super heavy, but like you know it's already heavier than another iPad

00:12:10 ◼   ► It's already heavier and bigger than you would maybe like it to be right, but so adding the smart keyboard for me

00:12:16 ◼   ► Doesn't really add too much of a bother. Even the regular smart cover is heavier

00:12:22 ◼   ► Yeah, than I expected it to be. Because it's big right? It's just big. Big and get big chunks of metal in it and it's

00:12:30 ◼   ► I used to always, on my Air 2, when I had a Mini,

00:12:34 ◼   ► I'd always keep the smart cover on,

00:12:36 ◼   ► even just using it around the house.

00:12:38 ◼   ► And I've really gotten to a point

00:12:40 ◼   ► where if I'm gonna use the iPad,

00:12:41 ◼   ► I'll just take the smart cover off

00:12:43 ◼   ► and just carry the iPad around the house

00:12:44 ◼   ► and then kind of only use the smart cover

00:12:47 ◼   ► if I'm putting it in my bag or taking it somewhere.

00:12:49 ◼   ► Which is probably gonna end poorly at some point for me,

00:12:51 ◼   ► but it really is heavier and bulkier than I like, honestly.

00:12:58 ◼   ► For me an iPad isn't an iPad without a smart cover.

00:13:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, there is that aspect to it for sure.

00:13:03 ◼   ► I mean, they've been around since about the iPad 2.

00:13:05 ◼   ► I remember that video they had,

00:13:07 ◼   ► and they had this cool animation on their website.

00:13:09 ◼   ► You could drag the cursor and unfold.

00:13:11 ◼   ► It was awesome.

00:13:14 ◼   ► - It would fold and unfold, wouldn't it?

00:13:15 ◼   ► - It was super cool.

00:13:17 ◼   ► - But the idea of the case,

00:13:19 ◼   ► closing and opening the case,

00:13:20 ◼   ► locking and unlocking the iPad,

00:13:22 ◼   ► is like, that's what an iPad is to me.

00:13:25 ◼   ► that is it. It's all that thing together. Remember that time Evernote made an app based

00:13:29 ◼   ► around that? Yeah, what was that? It was like some sort of educational app? Yeah, it was

00:13:35 ◼   ► like you could make flip cards or like help you study or something. I don't know, I'm

00:13:38 ◼   ► sure they've sunsetted it. Yeah, I'm sure they have sunset everything. But yeah, I do

00:13:43 ◼   ► like it though. I like that your keyboard's always there. I like that it's part of the

00:13:47 ◼   ► Smart Cover. You know, like it's all integrated and it's just there whenever I need it. I

00:13:51 ◼   ► just flip it out, type out an email, put it back again. It's nice, I like it, you know,

00:13:55 ◼   ► because I don't have to think about it, I don't have to take the stand and the keyboard

00:13:58 ◼   ► with me somewhere, it's just all integrated. Federico, are you still using the smart keyboard?

00:14:03 ◼   ► Yeah. And do you like it as much as I do? I mean, I have problems with it, but overall

00:14:08 ◼   ► I do really like it. I like it, and if I had to use a physical keyboard regularly, I would

00:14:15 ◼   ► probably go with the smart keyboard. My opinion hasn't changed since my review. It's just

00:14:20 ◼   ► that I just prefer to write with a software keyboard.

00:14:24 ◼   ► You know?

00:14:25 ◼   ► OK.

00:14:26 ◼   ► My to-do review was all done with the software one.

00:14:29 ◼   ► This new article that I'm preparing for the end of the year,

00:14:32 ◼   ► all done with the software keyboard.

00:14:33 ◼   ► I'm just too used to typing on Glass at this point.

00:14:37 ◼   ► That does not surprise me, because you did it for so long.

00:14:40 ◼   ► I still haven't gotten used to the layout of the iPad Pro's

00:14:45 ◼   ► keyboard.

00:14:46 ◼   ► I'm still switching--

00:14:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:48 ◼   ► When I say I've gotten used to it,

00:14:49 ◼   ► I still have issues, but I'm more used to it now than I was when I started, but it still does drive me a little crazy.

00:14:57 ◼   ► Especially because I do use a regular keyboard frequently as well.

00:15:01 ◼   ► So I am probably more than you even, switching between layouts.

00:15:07 ◼   ► Yeah, for some reason I'm still accidentally switching between the Italian and the American keyboard.

00:15:15 ◼   ► I'm still mistyping, you know, special characters like quotes and apostrophes, that kind of stuff.

00:15:22 ◼   ► I'm still not perfect with the software keyboard.

00:15:26 ◼   ► But I think I'm doing better than last month when the Pro came out, so I'll probably be

00:15:31 ◼   ► fine in a few months.

00:15:33 ◼   ► I just wish that Apple, you know, kinda had better integration with the hardware keyboard

00:15:41 ◼   ► throughout iOS.

00:15:42 ◼   ► I feel like with deeper integration I would probably use the smart keyboard more, especially

00:15:47 ◼   ► because I spend most of my time at home.

00:15:50 ◼   ► When I'm at my desk or in the kitchen I can use a physical keyboard.

00:15:54 ◼   ► When I'm around I want to use the software one of course.

00:15:59 ◼   ► So we'll see.

00:16:00 ◼   ► We'll see how it changes.

00:16:04 ◼   ► Last thing I wanted to mention in follow up today, Apple TV style.

00:16:08 ◼   ► The BBC iPlayer is now on the Apple TV, but the interesting thing about it is that it

00:16:15 ◼   ► just appeared.

00:16:17 ◼   ► I didn't install it, but it's on my Apple TV, which feels more old Apple TV, right?

00:16:22 ◼   ► That was what they did with the old one.

00:16:25 ◼   ► But it's interesting that that is like a third party app that somehow was chosen to go on

00:16:31 ◼   ► and others haven't.

00:16:34 ◼   ► Why is BBC so important that they just get pushed onto the Apple TV?

00:16:39 ◼   ► But it is a great app and you know, everyone in the UK wants it because it's good television

00:16:45 ◼   ► that's free for us.

00:16:48 ◼   ► But it's just interesting that it found its way kind of on its own.

00:16:55 ◼   ► I'm not using my Apple TV at all.

00:16:58 ◼   ► I'm using it more because I actually hooked it up to my TV, like my real TV downstairs

00:17:03 ◼   ► in the living room and I'm finding myself using it more. I'm watching more on it. So

00:17:08 ◼   ► that is an interesting thing that has occurred to me. I really wish there was an Amazon app

00:17:13 ◼   ► because we're watching The Man in the High Castle and there's no way for me to watch

00:17:19 ◼   ► it on the TV. So we're just bringing the iPad back downstairs again. You know you can airplay

00:17:24 ◼   ► from the Amazon Prime app on the iPad. I can't find how you do that. I'm sure that you can

00:17:29 ◼   ► but I'm not sure how to do it. Am I being dumb? You just do it through Control Center.

00:17:34 ◼   ► That's where I've been missing it. I was looking in the UI of the application for an AirPlay button.

00:17:39 ◼   ► Nope. No, they use the Control Center one and it works pretty well. That's how we've been watching

00:17:44 ◼   ► it and I just set the iPad like on the we have a table within the couch and just set it there and

00:17:49 ◼   ► watch it and I will say the our Apple TV the old one was like I said before definitely the center

00:17:56 ◼   ► of our like entertainment center and it has definitely only become more so more

00:18:02 ◼   ► so now. A lot of what we use it for during the day is just to play music and

00:18:06 ◼   ► we used to generally switch over there's a Mac Mini hooked up to the television as

00:18:11 ◼   ► well and we switch that and use iTunes on the Mac and the the new Apple TV is

00:18:16 ◼   ► so much faster than the doing that you know used to be with through home

00:18:19 ◼   ► sharing that was really like janky on the old one and sometimes it just drop

00:18:23 ◼   ► its connection to your other home sharing device or account sharing

00:18:27 ◼   ► devices for like no reason and that's much better now and so it really is like

00:18:31 ◼   ► it's the default input on the TV and we rarely move away from it these days.

00:18:35 ◼   ► Yeah I'm warming to it more and more and it's good to know about the AirPlay thing

00:18:39 ◼   ► I've never used AirPlay which is why I didn't even know it was in the control

00:18:43 ◼   ► center it just doesn't pay I don't pay any attention to it so I've never

00:18:46 ◼   ► once used it so now I know that's there then we can at least watch the show that

00:18:51 ◼   ► were watching on it as well.

00:18:52 ◼   ► That's a top tip from connected to you.

00:18:55 ◼   ► There you go. Thank you so much for that hot Hackett tip.

00:18:59 ◼   ► This week's episode is brought to you by lynda.com, the online learning platform of over 3,000

00:19:04 ◼   ► on demand video courses that are there to help you strengthen your business technology

00:19:08 ◼   ► and creative skills. You can get yourself a free 10 day trial by visiting lynda.com/connected.

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00:21:32 ◼   ► - All right, so this is kind of like extended follow up,

00:21:35 ◼   ► I guess.

00:21:36 ◼   ► Steven, do you wanna take this away?

00:21:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, so we spoke last week about Dropbox

00:21:42 ◼   ► and the sunsetting of Mailbox and Carousel,

00:21:46 ◼   ► their previous email and photo management

00:21:50 ◼   ► solution type products.

00:21:52 ◼   ► And we got some feedback on that from someone who--

00:21:57 ◼   ► - Is it safe to say that we have our own tipster now?

00:22:00 ◼   ► Yeah, very specific. Very specific tipster. A friend of the show. And there's a couple

00:22:06 ◼   ► things to say that I thought were interesting that I wanted to talk about with the two of

00:22:09 ◼   ► you guys. First, about carousel. And it seems, kind of, two things about carousel that I

00:22:16 ◼   ► think are worth talking about. One is that photos were or slash are the most often stored

00:22:24 ◼   ► data type in Dropbox. That more people are storing more photos than anything else in

00:22:30 ◼   ► in Dropbox, which I think makes a lot of sense.

00:22:32 ◼   ► You know, we have all used it, some of us still do,

00:22:35 ◼   ► for our photo storage, and I think it makes

00:22:37 ◼   ► a lot of sense, right?

00:22:38 ◼   ► You get a backup in the cloud, you can sync it

00:22:39 ◼   ► to another computer, and I think Carousel was sort of

00:22:43 ◼   ► a response to that, of like, hey, people are already

00:22:45 ◼   ► storing photos on Dropbox, let's surface them

00:22:48 ◼   ► and make them more interesting and better and easier to use.

00:22:51 ◼   ► And second, that Carousel actually had

00:22:53 ◼   ► a big server-side component.

00:22:55 ◼   ► If you guys remember, you would,

00:22:58 ◼   ► once you uploaded your photos to Dropbox Carousel,

00:23:03 ◼   ► would see them, you could scroll through them really quickly

00:23:05 ◼   ► and did really fast thumbnailing.

00:23:07 ◼   ► It did this really nice date scrubber thing,

00:23:09 ◼   ► like a lot of kind of stuff that sat on top

00:23:12 ◼   ► of what the normal Dropbox app would do.

00:23:14 ◼   ► It turned your photos from like a bunch of directories

00:23:16 ◼   ► into something sort of more living and breathing.

00:23:19 ◼   ► And that apparently required a lot of infrastructure,

00:23:21 ◼   ► which really makes our idea, our comments about like,

00:23:24 ◼   ► well why not spin it off, why not sell it?

00:23:26 ◼   ► Much more difficult, because apparently

00:23:29 ◼   ► that was really integrated into

00:23:30 ◼   ► the rest of what Dropbox does.

00:23:32 ◼   ► I thought that was interesting.

00:23:34 ◼   ► If this is true that Carousel was a sort of response

00:23:40 ◼   ► to people really storing a bunch of photos on Dropbox,

00:23:42 ◼   ► and Dropbox realizing that and wanting to make that better,

00:23:45 ◼   ► then I like that thought process on the part of Dropbox

00:23:48 ◼   ► that they saw what people were doing with their service

00:23:50 ◼   ► and tried to make it better.

00:23:51 ◼   ► Well what do you guys think?

00:23:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean I can understand that like if I was the person in charge and I had that data point

00:23:58 ◼   ► like the most often stored file in our system is photos.

00:24:03 ◼   ► It like makes you a de facto photo management service so giving people tools to look after that stuff better

00:24:12 ◼   ► is probably a smart thing to do.

00:24:15 ◼   ► But that does kind of beg the question of if that is the case, then why is carousel still not around?

00:24:23 ◼   ► Because I assume it's still the same, right? And I guess it was just because for whatever reason,

00:24:28 ◼   ► I assumed that carousel just wasn't compelling to people. Like I know it wasn't really compelling to

00:24:34 ◼   ► us because it didn't really have the features and maybe they just struggled to get it off the ground.

00:24:39 ◼   ► But like you can see why it began that way, but obviously that changed.

00:24:44 ◼   ► Yeah, and I'd imagine too that that sort of infrastructure thing had a real staffing cost

00:24:52 ◼   ► and Carousel was free to use if you had a Dropbox account as far as I remember. So I

00:24:57 ◼   ► think that that is part of it as well. It's great for a value add, but if you don't ever

00:25:03 ◼   ► recoup those costs then maybe it didn't make sense from that perspective. And as we've

00:25:09 ◼   ► talked about Dropbox is growing they're a big company and they are making this

00:25:12 ◼   ► shift towards supporting businesses and enterprises which I think is the right decision

00:25:16 ◼   ► for their business and maybe this just got kind of caught in the crossfire

00:25:19 ◼   ► there those in that decision-making.

00:25:21 ◼   ► Yeah I suppose so. The other the other bit is sort of more about about mailbox

00:25:27 ◼   ► and sort of the overall picture you talking that talking about Dropbox

00:25:31 ◼   ► moving towards business, moving towards enterprise, moving towards collaboration

00:25:34 ◼   ► which is really the message there and that Dropbox for business especially

00:25:38 ◼   ► especially I don't know if you guys,

00:25:39 ◼   ► I have used it in the past with a client,

00:25:42 ◼   ► they animated their team or whatever.

00:25:45 ◼   ► Dropbox for Business is really nice

00:25:46 ◼   ► and it gives you a lot of powerful tools

00:25:48 ◼   ► for collaborating files.

00:25:49 ◼   ► Like what we do at Relay,

00:25:51 ◼   ► we have a bunch of shared Dropbox folders running around

00:25:53 ◼   ► to sync MP3s around.

00:25:55 ◼   ► And it's fine and it works,

00:25:56 ◼   ► but it's sort of scattered and fragmented.

00:26:00 ◼   ► Dropbox for Business gives you a central place for that,

00:26:02 ◼   ► simple way to manage it all.

00:26:06 ◼   ► And that and paper, which is Dropbox,

00:26:09 ◼   ► if you haven't used it before,

00:26:11 ◼   ► it's sort of like Google Docs,

00:26:12 ◼   ► like it's trying to get there,

00:26:13 ◼   ► where collaborative document editing

00:26:16 ◼   ► and you can leave comments on documents

00:26:18 ◼   ► and that sort of thing,

00:26:19 ◼   ► about collaboration and people working together as a team.

00:26:23 ◼   ► And mailbox and carousel didn't really fit into that.

00:26:27 ◼   ► I would argue that mailbox could have,

00:26:30 ◼   ► but they didn't get it there.

00:26:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, it would have meant a different change.

00:26:34 ◼   ► would have meant a vision change for what Mailbox was, but email is still an important

00:26:39 ◼   ► part of collaboration. I mean, we're going to talk about Slack a little bit later on,

00:26:43 ◼   ► it's a different story, but I think that you could make the argument that if you wanted

00:26:49 ◼   ► it to be, Mailbox could have fit in this vision. It would have meant changing Mailbox, which

00:26:56 ◼   ► I suppose they didn't want to do.

00:26:58 ◼   ► Right, because I think we touched on this in the show, that there was this idea for

00:27:03 ◼   ► permanent that Dropbox was going to become a solution like Exchange or Google Apps or

00:27:09 ◼   ► even iCloud where it's like, okay, they have this email client, they can have a service,

00:27:14 ◼   ► all your documents are here, and this is not the decision that they've made.

00:27:18 ◼   ► And again, I don't disagree with that decision, but it meant that certain things had to apparently

00:27:22 ◼   ► go by the wayside.

00:27:23 ◼   ► It is sad.

00:27:26 ◼   ► Mailbox had 15 or 20 employees, Carousel was bigger.

00:27:31 ◼   ► got caught up in this and that's always hard to see.

00:27:36 ◼   ► And I hope that a lot of these people are still within Dropbox or have landed on their

00:27:38 ◼   ► feet elsewhere.

00:27:41 ◼   ► But it's, I think kind of the bottom line here is as good as these services were, and

00:27:47 ◼   ► I did like Carousel, I did use it, but it didn't radically change my workflow when it

00:27:52 ◼   ► went away.

00:27:53 ◼   ► I think Mailbox has had a bigger workflow impact than Carousel did.

00:27:58 ◼   ► If, like I, and I said this last time,

00:28:01 ◼   ► if this means that Dropbox can be better

00:28:03 ◼   ► at their core business of like syncing files

00:28:07 ◼   ► and making it easier to work with people I work with,

00:28:09 ◼   ► then like that's, like I'm okay with that, I think.

00:28:14 ◼   ► And that seems to be what we've been told

00:28:18 ◼   ► is like the driving thing here,

00:28:21 ◼   ► is that we wanna be better at these core things

00:28:23 ◼   ► and mailbox and carousel were sort of side things

00:28:27 ◼   ► that we're taking too much attention

00:28:28 ◼   ► or too much money or whatever.

00:28:30 ◼   ► I think that's interesting to think about in any business

00:28:35 ◼   ► that if you, like this tension,

00:28:38 ◼   ► and I feel it, even in what I do,

00:28:41 ◼   ► I could go and do more writing,

00:28:44 ◼   ► I could do these other things,

00:28:45 ◼   ► but the core of what I do is relay

00:28:48 ◼   ► and a little bit of writing.

00:28:49 ◼   ► So I can focus on that stuff and I can get better at it

00:28:53 ◼   ► and I can be more successful at it

00:28:55 ◼   ► and we can grow our business.

00:28:58 ◼   ► And you always have to weigh that against,

00:29:01 ◼   ► well, is this a side thing that's distracting,

00:29:04 ◼   ► or is this thing going to become a big, powerful component

00:29:08 ◼   ► of our business and help stabilize the business

00:29:10 ◼   ► and help diversify it?

00:29:12 ◼   ► And there's always that tension.

00:29:13 ◼   ► And carousel and mailbox did that

00:29:16 ◼   ► from the product perspective.

00:29:17 ◼   ► OK, Dropbox is now just not a really smart folder

00:29:21 ◼   ► on my computer that syncs stuff that

00:29:23 ◼   ► is where I deal with my photos,

00:29:25 ◼   ► or where I deal with my email.

00:29:26 ◼   ► And it seems that the answer for them was,

00:29:29 ◼   ► well, those are distractions, those are side projects

00:29:32 ◼   ► that aren't diversifying the business,

00:29:34 ◼   ► they're not bringing in extra income,

00:29:36 ◼   ► they're not bringing new people to our platform,

00:29:39 ◼   ► and so they need to be cut.

00:29:40 ◼   ► And I think any business has to make that decision of,

00:29:43 ◼   ► is this a side project that is,

00:29:46 ◼   ► like, it's cool and it's neat and people like it,

00:29:49 ◼   ► versus, like, all that stuff,

00:29:51 ◼   ► and it is making our business itself better and stronger.

00:29:56 ◼   ► And I think Carousel and mailbox

00:29:59 ◼   ► has fell on the wrong side of that.

00:30:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean I understand it and I appreciate it.

00:30:04 ◼   ► But I guess the reason that mailbox and Carousel existed

00:30:10 ◼   ► was because Dropbox had a vision

00:30:12 ◼   ► for what their company was gonna be

00:30:14 ◼   ► and now the vision's changed.

00:30:16 ◼   ► The vision could change again.

00:30:17 ◼   ► This is the problem with any big company though, right?

00:30:20 ◼   ► Look at Google. Google do this all the time.

00:30:24 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:30:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, and there's always that tension of like,

00:30:28 ◼   ► all of our stuff is on these servers

00:30:30 ◼   ► from all these companies, they could change.

00:30:33 ◼   ► I mean, forget changing the product

00:30:34 ◼   ► from moving the product, they could just change a policy

00:30:35 ◼   ► you don't agree with, and then you're moving your stuff around.

00:30:38 ◼   ► - The mailbox thing has really,

00:30:40 ◼   ► it's really changed my view on services and how I use them,

00:30:46 ◼   ► because mailbox going away has made a significant impact

00:30:50 ◼   ► on the way that I work.

00:30:51 ◼   ► So it's making me think more about the services that I use

00:30:55 ◼   ► and what I put into them, because I end up in a scenario

00:30:58 ◼   ► where I'm out in the weeds.

00:31:00 ◼   ► It's basically the feeling that you went through

00:31:01 ◼   ► of editorial for Darika.

00:31:04 ◼   ► It's like, well, I'm so dependent on this,

00:31:07 ◼   ► if it breaks or goes away, I'm kind of screwed,

00:31:10 ◼   ► which is why I'm very carefully trying to pick

00:31:13 ◼   ► what I go to next.

00:31:17 ◼   ► Currently I'm using Outlook on iOS because it's universal.

00:31:22 ◼   ► I've already burned Mail.app to the ground

00:31:25 ◼   ► because I hate it so much.

00:31:28 ◼   ► I tried using it and I had this problem

00:31:30 ◼   ► where I would be using the swipe gestures to archive mail

00:31:35 ◼   ► and mail would get stuck halfway through the gesture

00:31:38 ◼   ► and would become completely unresponsive

00:31:40 ◼   ► until I force quitted it.

00:31:42 ◼   ► - It's fine.

00:31:43 ◼   ► - It's like, it's all right.

00:31:44 ◼   ► I use a third party Magic Trackpad,

00:31:46 ◼   ► So I understand why it wouldn't work.

00:31:48 ◼   ► Nope.

00:31:49 ◼   ► So mail.app is gone, and I'm using airmail,

00:31:52 ◼   ► but I don't like airmail.

00:31:53 ◼   ► I actually don't really like any Mac mail app right now.

00:31:59 ◼   ► But yeah, so that's kind of where I am.

00:32:01 ◼   ► I'm using Outlook.

00:32:01 ◼   ► I did want to mention, because a ton of people brought it up,

00:32:05 ◼   ► SaneBox.

00:32:07 ◼   ► That's probably the one that I've heard from the most,

00:32:10 ◼   ► because SaneBox has a snoozing functionality,

00:32:14 ◼   ► and obviously it sits on the server side.

00:32:16 ◼   ► so it will work with any app.

00:32:18 ◼   ► I haven't really looked into this yet

00:32:20 ◼   ► because I know that SaneBox does a lot of other stuff

00:32:23 ◼   ► that I don't know if I want,

00:32:26 ◼   ► like where it tries to determine important email.

00:32:28 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:32:29 ◼   ► - And I know it has the snoozing stuff

00:32:31 ◼   ► and I'll check it out but I just haven't yet

00:32:32 ◼   ► 'cause right now I'm trying to just fundamentally understand

00:32:36 ◼   ► what email looks like for me now again

00:32:38 ◼   ► and then I might start adding some other stuff on later.

00:32:40 ◼   ► But you know, like right now I'm trying to understand

00:32:44 ◼   ► how I can use labels and stuff like that more effectively in folders.

00:32:47 ◼   ► Because I need to go back to basics and understand what my email system is because

00:32:51 ◼   ► I can't trust anybody.

00:32:52 ◼   ► About Dropbox, and

00:32:56 ◼   ► you mentioned Myke that, you know, the situation with Mailbox and

00:33:00 ◼   ► it reminded you of my problem with editorial.

00:33:03 ◼   ► I was actually thinking about

00:33:06 ◼   ► what if, you know,

00:33:09 ◼   ► Dropbox goes badly, you know, stops working or goes away or drops the API.

00:33:17 ◼   ► I know they're making changes already to an API they introduced two years ago,

00:33:21 ◼   ► and now some developers are kind of upset.

00:33:23 ◼   ► So what if, you know, developers stop supporting Dropbox?

00:33:27 ◼   ► And here I'm just trying to imagine the worst case scenario.

00:33:31 ◼   ► But, you know, the apps that I use the most, they all use Dropbox syncing.

00:33:36 ◼   ► One password, one writer, editorial, you know, all these apps with Dropbox sync, which is so...

00:33:43 ◼   ► I mean, I wouldn't be able to live without it. I don't want to use iCloud sync, because, you know,

00:33:48 ◼   ► I don't want to use a service that doesn't let me restore versions on an iPhone or iPad.

00:33:53 ◼   ► Yeah, Dropbox is just flat out better for that.

00:33:55 ◼   ► Exactly, and I don't want to use a service that doesn't let me easily share links, you know,

00:34:00 ◼   ► all these other basic features that Dropbox nails.

00:34:03 ◼   ► So why, I mean, if I were a developer,

00:34:07 ◼   ► I would probably start looking into alternatives,

00:34:10 ◼   ► such as Google Drive syncing, OneDrive syncing.

00:34:14 ◼   ► I know they have APIs.

00:34:15 ◼   ► They're probably not as popular right now as Dropbox is

00:34:19 ◼   ► with the third-party developer community.

00:34:21 ◼   ► And I don't wanna alert people for any reason,

00:34:25 ◼   ► but I would just start considering other options

00:34:28 ◼   ► because it's always good to have a backup plan.

00:34:30 ◼   ► And the other part, I'm looking at paper.

00:34:34 ◼   ► So I was trying Dropbox paper again,

00:34:37 ◼   ► and it's really nice, all right?

00:34:39 ◼   ► It's nice, it's polished.

00:34:42 ◼   ► I just struggle to understand

00:34:45 ◼   ► how it's not a fence, your Google Docs.

00:34:48 ◼   ► And I know it does a bunch of things

00:34:49 ◼   ► that Google Docs can't do.

00:34:51 ◼   ► The embeds are nicer, the code highlights are nicer.

00:34:55 ◼   ► - It does one thing that I really like.

00:34:56 ◼   ► can integrate with your Google Calendar and when you open a new paper document it looks

00:35:02 ◼   ► at the Google Calendar and names it by the meeting. That's awesome.

00:35:07 ◼   ► That's nice. But it just feels to me like it's one of the... Forgive me if this is

00:35:13 ◼   ► going to sound not nice. It sounds like one of those San Francisco Startapp-y products.

00:35:23 ◼   ► You know what I mean? Like one of those things that you find in a circle of entrepreneurs

00:35:29 ◼   ► in the valley.

00:35:30 ◼   ► Why? I want to understand what it is that makes you feel that way.

00:35:34 ◼   ► I don't know what it is, but there's something about it. Like something about the features.

00:35:39 ◼   ► Like who… what kind of normal person wants to have syntax code highlighting in a shared

00:35:47 ◼   ► document if you're not a web developer or a developer?

00:35:50 ◼   ► Well, I mean, but maybe they're building it for developers, like, you know, as well as everybody else.

00:35:55 ◼   ► So it's one of those start-upy products for developers.

00:35:58 ◼   ► Sure is. Well, I mean, they are a startup in San Francisco, so...

00:36:01 ◼   ► You know, I just... And I have, you know, lots of respect for Dropbox. I love Dropbox, don't get me wrong.

00:36:07 ◼   ► It's just... It feels like one of those other attempts.

00:36:12 ◼   ► Well, basically, I think this just goes back to what I was saying last week about the sun setting thing.

00:36:17 ◼   ► They are a big company and I think that, I know I did, I had a different impression of

00:36:22 ◼   ► them than what they are and I was thinking about them still as this scrappy little start

00:36:27 ◼   ► up that they were a few years ago but they're huge now and they do these things and it just

00:36:34 ◼   ► means that we now have to think about Dropbox the same way that we think about Google and

00:36:38 ◼   ► Apple.

00:36:40 ◼   ► How much do you want to give them?

00:36:42 ◼   ► You can give them whatever you want depending on the trade-offs that you want to give but

00:36:45 ◼   ► also need to understand that at any moment they could stop supporting the thing that

00:36:48 ◼   ► you love because they're a company that has its own decisions that it wants to make because

00:36:53 ◼   ► of the way the business runs not just because it makes you happy.

00:36:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:57 ◼   ► That's just what I've taken away from this and I'm going to continue using Dropbox for

00:37:01 ◼   ► everything I use Dropbox for.

00:37:03 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:37:04 ◼   ► They said to me now that mailbox is coming back tomorrow I'd probably go back to it again.

00:37:08 ◼   ► Right?

00:37:09 ◼   ► Because you know, it's still too soon man.

00:37:12 ◼   ► Like you bring it back and going back.

00:37:14 ◼   ► I still need a little bit more time to understand the life away from mailbox.

00:37:18 ◼   ► But that, you know, I don't know man, you just got to think about them differently.

00:37:23 ◼   ► Anyway, in talking about big companies disappoint us, Google Docs, has it been updated for iOS

00:37:28 ◼   ► 9?

00:37:29 ◼   ► No.

00:37:30 ◼   ► No.

00:37:31 ◼   ► But they have done an update which is, you know, so every time Google has an update for

00:37:34 ◼   ► Google Docs now, it's really frustrating because they're updating things, they're adding different

00:37:39 ◼   ► functionality, they're fixing different bugs.

00:37:41 ◼   ► But this time it was doubly frustrating because they've added something which is really annoying.

00:37:46 ◼   ► So now onto Google Docs for iOS. What used to happen is you'd open your document, you'd

00:37:52 ◼   ► tap where you wanted to type, it would put the insertion point and you'd start typing.

00:37:57 ◼   ► But now that doesn't work anymore. It opens it in a preview mode always and you have to

00:38:03 ◼   ► tap this button on the bottom right corner to open it into editing mode to start editing.

00:38:08 ◼   ► So every single time I'm opening it, I'm typing the document and nothing happens.

00:38:13 ◼   ► And it's driving me mad.

00:38:15 ◼   ► I don't know why I've done this.

00:38:17 ◼   ► Yeah well, every week we keep on checking on Google's progress, if we want to call that,

00:38:26 ◼   ► on iOS 9 support.

00:38:28 ◼   ► And so, you know, we are as sad as any previous week.

00:38:34 ◼   ► Still no multitasking for...

00:38:37 ◼   ► keep on being said. It's like they don't even understand how happy they would make me.

00:38:43 ◼   ► My understanding is they have such a massive code base that they need to update everything

00:38:51 ◼   ► to take advantage of iOS 9. And you know, Code Legacy support for old workarounds that

00:39:00 ◼   ► they did in their code to work on multiple platforms. And now they've got to switch to

00:39:04 ◼   ► to a new OS and it's taking them so long, probably because they're so behind, and I

00:39:10 ◼   ► just don't understand, Myke.

00:39:15 ◼   ► Probably because I don't work on one of these.

00:39:17 ◼   ► I'm not imbued in this San Francisco culture.

00:39:21 ◼   ► I don't understand how developers there prioritize projects like this.

00:39:27 ◼   ► Eventually, we will probably get iS9 support.

00:39:30 ◼   ► I would say at this point, you know, with the iTunes Connect shutdown, maybe next year

00:39:35 ◼   ► at this point, so let's hope that, you know, 2016 brings us multitasking for Google Docs.

00:39:41 ◼   ► Yep.

00:39:42 ◼   ► That's my only wish.

00:39:43 ◼   ► Well, actually not the only wish, but one of the first wishes.

00:39:47 ◼   ► We'll see.

00:39:50 ◼   ► Please Google.

00:39:53 ◼   ► Apple had an executive shakeup yesterday.

00:39:55 ◼   ► Stephen, do you want to talk us through some of the changes?

00:39:58 ◼   ► Yeah, so the changes sort of break down into two tiers.

00:40:03 ◼   ► Sort of at the higher end, Jeff Williams has been named Chief Operating Officer.

00:40:09 ◼   ► Williams was more or less Cook's kind of right-hand man when Cook held the title, and my understanding

00:40:15 ◼   ► is Jeff Williams has basically been COO for a while now.

00:40:18 ◼   ► Yeah, they've operated without a COO since Cook took over, right?

00:40:23 ◼   ► Right.

00:40:24 ◼   ► It's been a vacant position.

00:40:26 ◼   ► Yeah, but Williams has kind of been filling those shoes.

00:40:28 ◼   ► Williams also overseeing the Apple Watch project and he's now COO, which I think

00:40:34 ◼   ► is well-earned. I like that guy. I like Jeff Williams too. I think he's done a good

00:40:39 ◼   ► job. He did a lot of press stuff with the watch and of course did some of the

00:40:42 ◼   ► keynotes. He's a good presence on stage and a good face for Apple.

00:40:47 ◼   ► Phil Schiller, who is remaining vice-NCP of worldwide marketing, is now

00:40:55 ◼   ► in charge of the App Store across all platforms. So iOS, OS X, TV OS.

00:41:03 ◼   ► Previously those were like sort of under Q underneath the iTunes store but also

00:41:10 ◼   ► sort of under Schiller. They're all under Schiller now completely which I think is good.

00:41:13 ◼   ► I think that's the most important move here. I think that's what we're going to talk about.

00:41:18 ◼   ► about but a couple others there's a new vice president of marketing

00:41:26 ◼   ► communications Tor Myron who is from the outside but joining Apple and then

00:41:36 ◼   ► there's also a new vice president of hardware technology Johnny Serahi

00:41:42 ◼   ► and so yeah, moves all over the place.

00:41:46 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm just gonna blast right through those names.

00:41:50 ◼   ► - Good work.

00:41:51 ◼   ► - I would say, before we get into the Schiller stuff,

00:41:56 ◼   ► we're talking about this sort of privately last night,

00:41:58 ◼   ► there's still a big diversity problem

00:42:01 ◼   ► if you go to Apple's leadership page.

00:42:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's bad.

00:42:04 ◼   ► - They need, like they just, they have to address this.

00:42:07 ◼   ► You know, for a long time it was just like white dudes,

00:42:12 ◼   ► as far as you can see, and there are a few changes there.

00:42:17 ◼   ► - There's two ladies.

00:42:18 ◼   ► Three, sorry, there's three ladies.

00:42:22 ◼   ► And there's maybe, I think there's like two people of color.

00:42:28 ◼   ► - Yep, that's it.

00:42:29 ◼   ► And that's something that Tim Cook talks about.

00:42:35 ◼   ► He talks about diversity a lot, which I'm glad for,

00:42:38 ◼   ► and I would like to see them do more in that regard.

00:42:41 ◼   ► right now that PR bios page is pretty similar all the way down. But anyways, so there's

00:42:52 ◼   ► that and that's something that I want us to keep an eye on in 2016. But I think for today

00:42:57 ◼   ► what we want to talk about is Phil Schiller. And Gruber had this really interesting little

00:43:04 ◼   ► tidbit about Schiller and basically

00:43:09 ◼   ► Gruber says that it was Schiller's idea.

00:43:12 ◼   ► He like personally advocated for the

00:43:14 ◼   ► creation of the Mac App Store and that

00:43:16 ◼   ► Steve Jobs had to be kind of talked into

00:43:18 ◼   ► it. Jobs apparently thought that the

00:43:20 ◼   ► system beforehand, which is like go out

00:43:22 ◼   ► on the internet or go buy a CD and go

00:43:24 ◼   ► install stuff, was fine. And so Gruber,

00:43:28 ◼   ► and I agree that Schiller has a personal

00:43:30 ◼   ► interest in seeing the Mac App Store

00:43:31 ◼   ► or succeed.

00:43:32 ◼   ► And if you look at Apple executives and what they talk about, Schiller very often is painted

00:43:38 ◼   ► as like the guy who is sort of the spokesperson for the Mac.

00:43:44 ◼   ► Like that's what he did.

00:43:45 ◼   ► You know, he did that big interview with Mashable a while back about the MacBook and if they're

00:43:50 ◼   ► ever announcing a new Mac hardware, he's the one to do it.

00:43:53 ◼   ► And he seems like that's sort of his project that he likes to talk about.

00:44:02 ◼   ► And I think that's true.

00:44:04 ◼   ► I don't think that's just something they do on stage.

00:44:07 ◼   ► And I think, you know, I think Schiller's done a good job for the most part across the

00:44:11 ◼   ► various parts of the company that he's responsible for.

00:44:14 ◼   ► And so if him being in charge of the App Store, I think is a good thing.

00:44:19 ◼   ► I think maybe it's just no matter who it is, I guess it's good that they're bringing it

00:44:24 ◼   ► under one person.

00:44:25 ◼   ► I mean, because the App Store seemed to have gone against a lot of what Apple did a couple

00:44:30 ◼   ► of years ago about the consolidation of teams.

00:44:32 ◼   ► It was still a division that was split across two different leads.

00:44:36 ◼   ► So you had the editorial and then the technical part of it.

00:44:40 ◼   ► And it seemed like that was kind of broken up in a way that hasn't helped them.

00:44:44 ◼   ► Because we've seen so many things in the past of like technical teams and like love apps

00:44:50 ◼   ► and editorial teams get them rejected or vice versa.

00:44:54 ◼   ► And I guess it's good to see that no matter what it was, even if those teams were working

00:44:59 ◼   ► together, if you have a leadership decision that needs to be made, ending up having to

00:45:03 ◼   ► decide who of the two leaders is going to make that decision will add time and friction

00:45:09 ◼   ► to something like that.

00:45:10 ◼   ► So having one person who makes all the decisions now will either... what it will do is solidify

00:45:17 ◼   ► it. Whether it will help or hinder whatever we want is a completely different story. But

00:45:22 ◼   ► what I do expect is a clearer vision for the way that all of the app stores will work together,

00:45:28 ◼   ► but that doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to get trials, right? It doesn't mean

00:45:32 ◼   ► that. It doesn't mean we're going to get what we want specifically or what developers want

00:45:36 ◼   ► or anybody wants, but what I would expect to see is a more consistent approach across

00:45:41 ◼   ► all the app stores.

00:45:42 ◼   ► I agree, and I think too, before we move on from your point, I think there probably have

00:45:48 ◼   ► been things like who makes a decision, but when you're divided, things just fall through

00:45:52 ◼   ► the cracks. And like you have to think, I mean it's hard not to think that this is a

00:45:56 ◼   ► response to the recent stuff with the Mac App Store and...

00:46:01 ◼   ► I don't know, I feel like these decisions weren't made like two weeks ago.

00:46:06 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think they were made two weeks ago,

00:46:08 ◼   ► but I think that maybe this,

00:46:11 ◼   ► I think maybe this would not have been announced

00:46:15 ◼   ► publicly otherwise.

00:46:16 ◼   ► Why throw this into a press release

00:46:18 ◼   ► about a new hire and two promotions?

00:46:21 ◼   ► It seems like the oddball out in the announcement,

00:46:25 ◼   ► and I think they're making it public

00:46:27 ◼   ► because people like Schiller

00:46:28 ◼   ► and there's some frustration in the community about it.

00:46:31 ◼   ► But either way, I mean,

00:46:34 ◼   ► Either way, I think it's a good choice.

00:46:37 ◼   ► And I agree with you, this is not a,

00:46:42 ◼   ► we're not gonna come back after the break

00:46:45 ◼   ► and everything be better, but I think that Schiller

00:46:49 ◼   ► is more in tune with what developers and customers want

00:46:53 ◼   ► than somebody like EdiQ.

00:46:54 ◼   ► And that's not a knock against EdiQ, this is not his thing.

00:46:57 ◼   ► And so if anyone, if there's any chance of Apple hearing

00:47:02 ◼   ► what developers and consumers want,

00:47:05 ◼   ► it's through Schiller's organization.

00:47:07 ◼   ► And that may be enough to get the ball rolling.

00:47:10 ◼   ► - Do you have any thoughts on this, Federico?

00:47:14 ◼   ► - I just, I feel like it's a smart move

00:47:19 ◼   ► to have Schiller as the public face of the app stores.

00:47:22 ◼   ► Because it's the kind of figure

00:47:27 ◼   ► that a lot of people can relate to.

00:47:29 ◼   ► - I think he has a lot of love in the development community.

00:47:31 ◼   ► He has a lot of love, but I've seen people say that in many ways Schiller also represents the old Apple

00:47:39 ◼   ► in the sense of App Store review, rejections, those kinds of stories.

00:47:43 ◼   ► Like he was part of, you know, he was already in charge of the developer relationships.

00:47:48 ◼   ► Many of the decisions to exclude some types of apps in the past were done under Schiller's guidance.

00:47:57 ◼   ► So, he's loved by the community, but he's also already been responsible for some arguable decisions with the app review of the App Store.

00:48:08 ◼   ► So, in a way, this is nice, because he's a public face of Apple, he's loved by Apple fans, because he goes on to John Gruber, for example, he's been very active on Twitter.

00:48:23 ◼   ► It's the kind of figure that you want, you know, you feel a connection as a developer.

00:48:29 ◼   ► But also, you know, as the developer guy already at the company, he has made, or his team has made decisions that a lot of developers didn't like.

00:48:42 ◼   ► So maybe it is time for a change, or maybe things will stay the same, but you know, it'll just be a public phase so now people can have someone to blame officially.

00:48:52 ◼   ► I don't know. I guess time will tell. By next WWDC, I think if we don't see any major change for the Mac App Store, absolutely, and for the iOS App Store in terms of what developers can do to better monetize their apps and the iPad platform especially, I think we'll have to be concerned if we don't get any major change by next June.

00:49:16 ◼   ► June. If we do get changes, then we'll know why this promotion was announced. To get

00:49:22 ◼   ► ball rolling, to get Schiller, who's the developer guy, to apply all the changes and

00:49:27 ◼   ► to kind of change the culture inside Apple. If we don't see any changes, then it's

00:49:31 ◼   ► just marketing, basically.

00:49:35 ◼   ► I am personally expecting a lot of developer changes in 10.

00:49:37 ◼   ► Me too.

00:49:38 ◼   ► Like there were in 8. I think we're going to have a similar kind of WWDC. That's what

00:49:42 ◼   ► I'm leaning on right now. To me it just feels like that they held some features

00:49:46 ◼   ► off because the next one is 10 and for 10 it feels like you have to have some

00:49:52 ◼   ► big stuff. And 9 didn't have an awful lot in it, looking back really.

00:49:58 ◼   ► So I'm excited to see WWDC and I'm looking forward to maybe in about two or

00:50:06 ◼   ► three months when we start really talking about it seriously. Let's take a

00:50:11 ◼   ► break and then we have probably the best app release this year.

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00:52:40 ◼   ► All right, so a couple of days ago, Federico sends me a message on Slack and he's like,

00:52:48 ◼   ► somebody's made a coloring app.

00:52:51 ◼   ► And he's like, and I have a code for you.

00:52:54 ◼   ► And I spent about three hours that day using a new app called Pigment.

00:53:01 ◼   ► Pigment is made by what's the developers name?

00:53:04 ◼   ► - Picsite.

00:53:05 ◼   ► - Picsite, yeah they make a bunch of apps.

00:53:07 ◼   ► Like I'm familiar with them,

00:53:08 ◼   ► but it's not stuff that I've used personally.

00:53:11 ◼   ► It tends to be like artisty and designy

00:53:13 ◼   ► and that kind of stuff, right?

00:53:15 ◼   ► That's the kind of world that they fit into.

00:53:17 ◼   ► - And speaking of Dropbox and Carousel,

00:53:19 ◼   ► they also make an app called Unbound

00:53:21 ◼   ► to manage photos from your Dropbox.

00:53:23 ◼   ► - We spoke about that a bunch of times.

00:53:25 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:53:26 ◼   ► - It's a nice app.

00:53:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, so they're a great little development house

00:53:29 ◼   ► and they have created the app that was needed on the iPad Pro which is a truly good colouring

00:53:37 ◼   ► app.

00:53:38 ◼   ► So Federico wrote a great review which I did a lot of fact checking for him just to make

00:53:45 ◼   ► sure that we got everything right about what I call grown up colouring because I don't

00:53:49 ◼   ► like the connotations of adult colouring and I'm not kidding I think I've probably spent

00:53:57 ◼   ► about 10 hours in this app over the last 3 or 4 days.

00:54:02 ◼   ► I am in love with it.

00:54:05 ◼   ► It has some improvements that are needed, but it is everything that I wanted from a

00:54:12 ◼   ► colouring app on the iPad.

00:54:15 ◼   ► It's as good as an experience as you would want.

00:54:17 ◼   ► So a quick rundown of what the app has.

00:54:20 ◼   ► It's a subscription model, which I really like.

00:54:22 ◼   ► You pay monthly or yearly.

00:54:23 ◼   ► I paid like £18 for the year and you get access to a ton of books and inside, so they're

00:54:29 ◼   ► like themes and inside there is an amount of pages that you can color in.

00:54:34 ◼   ► And you can color them multiple times, right?

00:54:36 ◼   ► So you can just keep starting them fresh over and over again if you like.

00:54:40 ◼   ► But the subscription model kind of says that you're going to get new books and new artwork

00:54:45 ◼   ► to color in over the time.

00:54:47 ◼   ► And I think that's kind of cool.

00:54:48 ◼   ► I like that as a subscription model.

00:54:50 ◼   ► Like £18 is not a lot of money.

00:54:53 ◼   ► especially when you look at what these coloring books actually cost, the physical ones. I

00:54:57 ◼   ► think it's great and what you can't do with the coloring books that you buy is do the

00:55:02 ◼   ► colors again, right? Because you colored them in and they're done. But with this you can

00:55:06 ◼   ► do the same patterns over and over again. There's a ton of color choices, there are

00:55:13 ◼   ► a ton of tool choices, there's different types of tools and the way that they are produced.

00:55:17 ◼   ► You can have pencil looking, you can have pen looking, you can create gradients and

00:55:21 ◼   ► and stuff like that, which is really cool.

00:55:23 ◼   ► The one issue that I have with this app

00:55:26 ◼   ► is say you've chosen a color,

00:55:30 ◼   ► you have like a shade slider

00:55:34 ◼   ► so you can make it darker or lighter.

00:55:36 ◼   ► So I did this, I had a blue,

00:55:37 ◼   ► I wanted to make the blue lighter and I dragged it on.

00:55:39 ◼   ► And then I left the app to do something,

00:55:42 ◼   ► came back and that color choice was not saved.

00:55:45 ◼   ► So I couldn't recreate that color again

00:55:48 ◼   ► and I wasn't finished.

00:55:50 ◼   ► and that is a big thing that I don't like about this application.

00:55:54 ◼   ► There are a couple of ways you could fix it.

00:55:56 ◼   ► For example, they could have a color picker,

00:55:58 ◼   ► so you could very easily just say, "I want that color again."

00:56:00 ◼   ► But the main one, the easiest way is

00:56:02 ◼   ► when I leave the app, don't reset the color.

00:56:06 ◼   ► You just need to save it, just save the color.

00:56:09 ◼   ► Because most likely, the way that I color anyway,

00:56:12 ◼   ► and I assume a lot of people will like this,

00:56:14 ◼   ► is I color each element in a specific color

00:56:16 ◼   ► that I want to color at that time.

00:56:18 ◼   ► I've chosen a blue and then changed the blue and I want to color in these four

00:56:22 ◼   ► different things. I don't color in one then change my color do something else

00:56:25 ◼   ► and go back to it but some people do so I think that to really round this off

00:56:30 ◼   ► they need to one observe my color choice if I leave the app and come back and to

00:56:34 ◼   ► add a color picker because when you're coloring with pens you have all of the

00:56:39 ◼   ► you have all of the colors they are physically there so you won't you know

00:56:43 ◼   ► you can just say this is the color and I'll just put it to the side and I'll

00:56:46 ◼   ► pick it up again in a minute when I need it. But if you can change the colours, which you

00:56:50 ◼   ► can, then you need to have the ability for people to easily recall. Another thing they

00:56:56 ◼   ► could do is have a way to save those tones to a personal palette of colours, but they

00:57:03 ◼   ► need to think about that because that is a disruptive thing that I didn't like about

00:57:09 ◼   ► the application. So what it did was it stopped me from changing the colours very often. I

00:57:13 ◼   ► now just they have lots and lots of colors and shades but now I just stick

00:57:17 ◼   ► to the ones that are there I don't change them but then sometimes still

00:57:21 ◼   ► like I use a brown and I have to like try four different ones to find the

00:57:25 ◼   ► exact shade to bring it back again so they have some some work they can do

00:57:29 ◼   ► there to kind of tighten that up I also found like palm rejection isn't 100%

00:57:35 ◼   ► accurate all of the time and they don't have an eraser so if you accidentally

00:57:40 ◼   ► the app

00:57:47 ◼   ► over it. They have an undo which is really good, I love that there's an undo there, but

00:57:52 ◼   ► sometimes I've made a mark on a page somewhere and don't realise it until later on so then

00:57:56 ◼   ► I have to go back and get rid of it. Just having an eraser tool right in the top toolbar

00:58:01 ◼   ► would be really good for that so I could just get rid of those parts. There's a few things

00:58:06 ◼   ► that the app does which is really interesting. You can tap inside of a white area and it

00:58:12 ◼   ► puts a dotted line around the area so you can colour freely and it doesn't go over the

00:58:16 ◼   ► the black lines. I don't work like that, right?

00:58:19 ◼   ► I'm a realist. Uh, I color and just do it the way

00:58:23 ◼   ► that I want to do it and just go up to the lines

00:58:25 ◼   ► and treat it like it's a book. Um, I mean, the

00:58:28 ◼   ► good thing though, is if I do go over the lines,

00:58:29 ◼   ► I can easily undo, I'll get rid of it, which

00:58:31 ◼   ► actually can't be the book, but it is good that

00:58:33 ◼   ► you can do that. So it's good for kids, I guess.

00:58:36 ◼   ► So you can say, just tap that and then just go

00:58:38 ◼   ► crazy and it won't go over the lines. Um, I just,

00:58:43 ◼   ► you know, I love this app. I love that I can sit with my iPad, I can have Twitter in split

00:58:50 ◼   ► view or slack and I can sit and color. I've been using it when I've been editing. I was

00:58:56 ◼   ► just chilling out yesterday evening, I was watching like some TV and I was coloring at

00:59:01 ◼   ► the same time like it was just on in the background. This app is fantastic. Being able to like

00:59:05 ◼   ► freely pan and zoom around and rotate the images is excellent. This is to say it's not

00:59:12 ◼   ► perfect but I didn't expect anybody would be able to make a perfect app like this and

00:59:17 ◼   ► it doesn't because there's always little things that you're gonna have to think about that

00:59:20 ◼   ► unless you're like really deep in this you maybe wouldn't notice and you know it doesn't

00:59:25 ◼   ► recreate the feeling of pens on paper like nothing ever will like we went over this when

00:59:30 ◼   ► the pencil came out originally but what whilst it doesn't give you the exact feeling you

00:59:37 ◼   ► get things with this that you can't get with paper and pen.

00:59:41 ◼   ► The ability to zoom, the ability to undo, the ability to have infinite colour choices

00:59:48 ◼   ► and infinite amounts of drawings to colour all in this one device.

00:59:55 ◼   ► I absolutely love this app and I'm going to put in the show notes, I tweeted a few different

01:00:00 ◼   ► things that I coloured with it and I'll put those in the show notes so people can get

01:00:05 ◼   ► an example of what they look like. You can get really creative with it, you can do blending

01:00:10 ◼   ► and shading and you can change the opacity of stuff. I'm so happy that this app exists,

01:00:18 ◼   ► I'm so happy that it's as quick. I was thinking this was going to take ages before somebody

01:00:23 ◼   ► came out with something really good for this. For me, this is the perfect example of an

01:00:30 ◼   ► app that only really works on the iPad Pro with the pencil.

01:00:35 ◼   ► You could use this on other apps, but this is on other devices and you could use your

01:00:38 ◼   ► finger and stuff like that, especially with the tapping in an area and then you could

01:00:42 ◼   ► use your finger to color, but it's just not going to be as good an experience.

01:00:45 ◼   ► This is a true iPad Pro application.

01:00:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it…

01:00:52 ◼   ► I was joking about having a "grown-up coloring" app for the iPad Pro a few weeks ago and now

01:01:00 ◼   ► now that it's available, it just totally makes sense.

01:01:04 ◼   ► But this is the thing, you were joking about it, but me and you, I was talking seriously

01:01:09 ◼   ► to you about it at the same time.

01:01:10 ◼   ► No, no, I was half joking about it. I think it makes total sense. And since you, as I

01:01:18 ◼   ► wrote in the article, you got me interested in this colouring book trend. And I got a

01:01:25 ◼   ► few people on Twitter saying "well it's been around forever, you know, I used to

01:01:31 ◼   ► color 20 years ago" I guess what's happening here is...

01:01:36 ◼   ► Saying that you used to do coloring in when you're a kid is not an argument.

01:01:41 ◼   ► No, no, no, I got people saying I've had adult coloring books for like a decade.

01:01:46 ◼   ► They have existed for a very long time but it is a trend right now.

01:01:49 ◼   ► Exactly, exactly.

01:01:50 ◼   ► If you go into any bookstore, I did it in the UK and in the US now, they have these massive stands of coloring books.

01:01:57 ◼   ► I have a Star Wars coloring book that I picked up in New York.

01:02:01 ◼   ► Of course you do. Of course you do.

01:02:03 ◼   ► I think it's really clever of these guys to do a subscription, to give you access to new books.

01:02:09 ◼   ► And I feel like we're gonna see a lot of these apps in the near future.

01:02:16 ◼   ► So this is the first one, and by doing a subscription, you ensure that people start paying you and

01:02:22 ◼   ► they stick with your app, which is a clever strategy, I would say.

01:02:27 ◼   ► I'm very pleased that you're happy, Myke, and I think you've done a really good critique

01:02:32 ◼   ► of what's missing and what needs to be improved.

01:02:35 ◼   ► Every now and then, there is an app that comes along that is tailor-made for one of the three

01:02:38 ◼   ► of us, and this one is my one.

01:02:42 ◼   ► You should be an app reviewer more often, Myke.

01:02:45 ◼   ► There's very rarely things that push my buttons like this though.

01:02:51 ◼   ► Do you have another secret wish for an app next year?

01:02:54 ◼   ► Which is not mailbox, Myke?

01:02:57 ◼   ► I'm gonna have to think on that.

01:02:58 ◼   ► What's the app of your dreams, Michael?

01:03:02 ◼   ► Let me get back to you on that one.

01:03:04 ◼   ► I don't know what it is.

01:03:05 ◼   ► No, do you know what it is?

01:03:07 ◼   ► Logic. Really good logic.

01:03:10 ◼   ► I know that there are apps that exist, but I want logic.

01:03:13 ◼   ► Because that's the one that I want.

01:03:14 ◼   ► the one that I want. You want logic on the Apple Pro. That is my next dream app. That

01:03:20 ◼   ► makes sense. Maybe not immediately, but I would be more inclined to trust that it would

01:03:24 ◼   ► be able to do what I wanted it to do. Because I know it and it hopefully would be made by

01:03:29 ◼   ► the same people that make the app that I use every single day. So that's what I would really

01:03:34 ◼   ► like to see. Alright, makes sense, yeah. So the last thing that I wanted to talk about

01:03:40 ◼   ► today was Slack. So they had an event a couple of days ago where they announced that they

01:03:48 ◼   ► are creating like an app store for their integrations and they're partnering with some venture capital

01:03:54 ◼   ► firms to create an $80 million fund to invest in companies that want to create new Slack

01:04:02 ◼   ► integrations. Reminded me very much of the iFund. Do you remember the iFund?

01:04:05 ◼   ► Oh yeah. I do remember the iFund. Yeah.

01:04:09 ◼   ► So this was a…

01:04:10 ◼   ► It's a long time ago.

01:04:11 ◼   ► Who was it that was part of that?

01:04:15 ◼   ► Some game company.

01:04:16 ◼   ► No, no, no.

01:04:17 ◼   ► Like the company that actually put the money together.

01:04:21 ◼   ► It was, I'm looking it up right now.

01:04:22 ◼   ► Oh yeah, it was Kleiner Perkins.

01:04:24 ◼   ► Kleiner Perkins created a fund of $100 million which was then increased later on.

01:04:30 ◼   ► It's $200 million now.

01:04:33 ◼   ► And Gmoco was part of the iFund.

01:04:34 ◼   ► That's what I remember.

01:04:35 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a good call.

01:04:36 ◼   ► They were the biggest.

01:04:37 ◼   ► the portfolio companies of the iFund are Path, Shopkick, N.G. Moko, Booyah and Criticism.

01:04:44 ◼   ► So all top drawer applications there that came through as part of the iFund.

01:04:50 ◼   ► Wow, look at Michael, all sarcastic and stuff. Do you use any apps created by these companies?

01:04:56 ◼   ► No. Oh, don't you use Booyah? What is Booyah? Or Path? I have no idea. Let's look it up.

01:05:03 ◼   ► Booyah was a social web and mobile entertainment company.

01:05:11 ◼   ► They created Mytown, IAP, probably a similar thing.

01:05:21 ◼   ► Is mobile application performance management.

01:05:24 ◼   ► What does it even mean?

01:05:25 ◼   ► Oh, it performs your management of mobile.

01:05:30 ◼   ► application performance management APM solution.

01:05:34 ◼   ► Perfect. That's what I was looking for.

01:05:35 ◼   ► What's an APM?

01:05:37 ◼   ► Well, yeah, it's an advanced performance metric.

01:05:39 ◼   ► Don't you want to advance your performance, Myke?

01:05:43 ◼   ► Always, every single day.

01:05:45 ◼   ► So Slack has created their own one of these.

01:05:48 ◼   ► And basically what they're looking to do now is to encourage more

01:05:52 ◼   ► and more companies to plug into Slack, which is very smart.

01:05:58 ◼   ► I was reading a thing on The Verge about this and it's something that I didn't know that the majority of slack

01:06:03 ◼   ► Integrations that exist or have existed were written by the slack team

01:06:08 ◼   ► Not by the company really yeah, because they knew how important it would be and they were just creating the applications

01:06:14 ◼   ► So they were creating the integrations that they wanted

01:06:17 ◼   ► When they were using slack, so they were like this would be really good if this worked like Twitter or Dropbox

01:06:22 ◼   ► So they built them themselves, but now they're trying to encourage companies and web services to create

01:06:27 ◼   ► their own integrations so that they can, I don't know, like so that they can

01:06:34 ◼   ► further the platform, they can increase the platform, they can strengthen it, they

01:06:38 ◼   ► can basically continue to make it a place where all of your information

01:06:42 ◼   ► flows into. So this was interesting to me because I saw a tweet from you Federico

01:06:48 ◼   ► a couple of days ago where you said that you now have the max stories tips inbox

01:06:52 ◼   ► which I assume is like, you know, what people send you stuff to, goes

01:06:56 ◼   ► directly into Slack and that you're trying to move more and more stuff into it. So what

01:07:01 ◼   ► does that look like for you right now?

01:07:03 ◼   ► It's basically, I wanted a way to have, so we have a few channels in Slack where we just

01:07:11 ◼   ► keep notifications and like external feeds. So we have a channel where we aggregate news

01:07:18 ◼   ► like Techmeme, highlights from RSS, so anyone can go in there and see what's going on at

01:07:25 ◼   ► a glance, you know, because we're already spending a lot of time in Slack. It makes

01:07:30 ◼   ► sense to have a few dedicated areas where people can go and check out other things.

01:07:34 ◼   ► And I thought it'd be nice instead of having to manually redirect every single email that

01:07:40 ◼   ► I get to just set up a rule to fit everything into Slack so anyone can go in there. It's

01:07:49 ◼   ► It's like a shared inbox/stream, but with the benefits of Slack, so notifications, people

01:07:57 ◼   ► can comment on emails, and because we pay for Slack, we have the native email forwarding

01:08:03 ◼   ► system.

01:08:04 ◼   ► So we get nice previews for messages, we can click on them, and it shows you an HTML preview

01:08:11 ◼   ► of the messages if you look on the web.

01:08:15 ◼   ► can comment on individual messages, so you can use Zach Search, you can mention other

01:08:21 ◼   ► people, so it's really trying to replace email for us. And of course I still do use email

01:08:28 ◼   ► a lot, you know, people get in touch with me personally, ClubMEX service members get

01:08:32 ◼   ► in touch with me personally for, you know, club related issues. But we're using Slack

01:08:41 ◼   ► the time and I would say increasingly more because of these integrations.

01:08:46 ◼   ► So to give you an example, I have switched, or at least I'm trying to use, this new system

01:08:54 ◼   ► to put together all the individual sections that make up our MaxAures Weekly newsletter.

01:09:00 ◼   ► And the service is called Airtable, and it's like a modern take on the spreadsheet and

01:09:07 ◼   ► database combined.

01:09:10 ◼   ► And so I've set up this base, it's called, and me and Graham, we collaborate on these

01:09:17 ◼   ► different records.

01:09:19 ◼   ► So there's a record for MacStory's favorite, there's another for interesting links, and

01:09:23 ◼   ► another one for the home screen.

01:09:25 ◼   ► And every time I comment on a record, which is the one that says "Is the issue finalized?

01:09:32 ◼   ► Are you done?" and I say "Yeah, I'm done" and it sends a notification to the Slack channel

01:09:37 ◼   ► so Graham knows that it's all done and he can start working on the MailChimp campaign.

01:09:44 ◼   ► Did you say MailChimp?

01:09:47 ◼   ► Yes, MailChimp. So it's all these integrations that I have. I'm using Slackbot every once in a while

01:09:55 ◼   ► to just like pin some items or a link because I don't know where else to put it.

01:10:01 ◼   ► It's really more than a chat room for us. I mean, it's a glorified chat room with lots of integrations.

01:10:11 ◼   ► And I think the key aspect is, because of these integrations, we can move away from the old model of every one of us as its own silo of information,

01:10:26 ◼   ► whether it's email or a database.

01:10:28 ◼   ► Instead, it's all collaborative, and it's all in the cloud,

01:10:31 ◼   ► and it's all based on notifications and alerts.

01:10:34 ◼   ► And it's all coming together in a chat stream, you know,

01:10:39 ◼   ► with a model that we're used to, but we see more.

01:10:43 ◼   ► So it's not just that we're chatting together,

01:10:46 ◼   ► but we also see this information from files,

01:10:50 ◼   ► from Twitter, from RSS, but it looks like a chat room.

01:10:54 ◼   ► - So it's a hub. - It's a hub with a chronological sense of the traditional chat rooms, if it makes sense.

01:11:04 ◼   ► And it's working out pretty well so far for us. And it's still... this is the problem.

01:11:10 ◼   ► It's still changing a lot. So Slack is still a young product.

01:11:14 ◼   ► And they're still changing quite a few things, and every week there's a new feature.

01:11:18 ◼   ► So it can be a little overwhelming if you don't follow Slack updates.

01:11:23 ◼   ► Just last night, for example, they launched the "Do Not Disturb" mode, which is pretty awesome, and it's the kind of feature that you don't get with email.

01:11:30 ◼   ► You can only set your device to "Do Not Disturb", not your email client.

01:11:35 ◼   ► So it's like I would say, if I were an investor, it's one of the companies I would put money in, personally.

01:11:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I would put all of my money in Slack right now.

01:11:47 ◼   ► right now?

01:11:48 ◼   ► I think they're doing a lot of clever things.

01:11:51 ◼   ► And the new app directory, there's a lot of crazy things.

01:11:54 ◼   ► I'm trying this birdly office management app, which is basically a bot that you...

01:12:01 ◼   ► For all the offices you have to manage.

01:12:03 ◼   ► No, no, I got one office.

01:12:05 ◼   ► The category is office management.

01:12:08 ◼   ► But it's basically this bot that you have a direct message with on Slack.

01:12:13 ◼   ► You take a picture of a receipt or a PDF and you send it to the bot, it's called the Bill

01:12:21 ◼   ► bot.

01:12:22 ◼   ► So you send the picture to Bill and Bill does OCR for you and it turns the photo or the

01:12:28 ◼   ► PDF into a spreadsheet in Google Sheets, which is crazy.

01:12:34 ◼   ► I almost didn't believe it.

01:12:35 ◼   ► I don't know if there's any human involved.

01:12:38 ◼   ► I think there must be some human port involved, like Facebook DM messenger, it's a hybrid

01:12:44 ◼   ► of AI and humans.

01:12:47 ◼   ► But anyway, I sent a couple of receipts to Bill on Slack, and I do have a spreadsheet

01:12:52 ◼   ► already filled out with all my, you know, the title of the expense, and it even did

01:12:59 ◼   ► conversion from USD to Euros.

01:13:02 ◼   ► So this is just an example of these crazy integrations.

01:13:07 ◼   ► Already we have made a custom bot, just for me.

01:13:12 ◼   ► It's called TitchiDoo.

01:13:13 ◼   ► So basically what TitchiDoo does is, Ale, which is our web developer, he set up a system that

01:13:25 ◼   ► I can, whenever I say "teachydoo" in Slack, it sends the text of the message. So if I

01:13:33 ◼   ► say "teachydoo call Myke", it sends an email message with the subject "call Myke" to my

01:13:41 ◼   ► todo inbox, therefore the title "teachydoo". It sends an email message to my todo email

01:13:47 ◼   ► inbox, you know, the one configured with it. So a few seconds later I have a task in my

01:13:53 ◼   ► to-do inbox called...

01:13:56 ◼   ► No, no, no, no. There is no world in which I want people adding things to my to-do list.

01:14:03 ◼   ► Like I just...

01:14:04 ◼   ► Hold on, it makes sense. If everyone is on the same page, don't think about the relay

01:14:11 ◼   ► is like 50 people. So we're 7 people here and they're all extremely religious and disciplined

01:14:19 ◼   ► about sending me things.

01:14:22 ◼   ► There is just a thing that, look, I know I could set it up, right, that it would be only

01:14:26 ◼   ► just when people ask me to do things, which they would ask me to do and I would add it

01:14:30 ◼   ► myself, there is just a thing in my brain where I am horrified at the thought of things

01:14:35 ◼   ► going into OmniFocus that I haven't put there. There's just something about that to me where

01:14:40 ◼   ► it's like I can't I can't deal with that.

01:14:42 ◼   ► Buy Steven presents.

01:14:44 ◼   ► What's worse, the idea of people sending you stuff to do or forgetting to do the stuff that people ask you to do?

01:14:52 ◼   ► And for me, because I'm the type of person...

01:14:55 ◼   ► Oh look, don't get me wrong buddy, like I understand it, like it is very clever for that reason, right?

01:15:01 ◼   ► You're never gonna forget something. But I can't just imagine that happening to me.

01:15:06 ◼   ► I forget a lot of things, and this is just another example of using Slack.

01:15:12 ◼   ► I'm talking to someone and I realize, "Yeah, I gotta do this." I can just append "teachydoo" to my message and it gets saved.

01:15:20 ◼   ► And plus, I love the way that it's called, "teachydoo." It looks fun when you type it.

01:15:26 ◼   ► So yeah, we're using Slack a lot. I'm really a fan of Slack. And I feel safe to say I'm considering the idea of Clapmak story Slack.

01:15:40 ◼   ► You know, I've been reading on this open Slack communities, where there's like a thousand people, two thousand people signed up.

01:15:49 ◼   ► And I'm considering the idea. And initially I thought that was crazy, but last week I was reading this article by Rens, you know, the blog Rens and Repots.

01:16:06 ◼   ► And he was talking about using Slack as a community with a lot of users and like hundreds

01:16:14 ◼   ► of channels.

01:16:16 ◼   ► And I think that's what I want to do, but we'll see.

01:16:20 ◼   ► I'm a big fan of Slack.

01:16:21 ◼   ► Again, if I were a VC, I would put all my money in this.

01:16:25 ◼   ► Well, probably not all my money, but good money in Slack.

01:16:31 ◼   ► I think what's so powerful about it, and there is all the stuff you're talking about where

01:16:36 ◼   ► can automate things and have things going in and out to all these various

01:16:40 ◼   ► services and that's really powerful but I got I know for for me basically

01:16:45 ◼   ► working remotely with a bunch of other people it's like it it has replaced

01:16:49 ◼   ► email in a way that I did not anticipate and especially if you pay for psych and

01:16:54 ◼   ► you get the history and the search like we do for relay you you have all that

01:16:58 ◼   ► stuff you know that it's safe and sound in there and so for me email has become

01:17:02 ◼   ► a tool for external work and not really internal work. I only email Myke if

01:17:09 ◼   ► it's something like I really want to make sure that he sees or it's you know

01:17:13 ◼   ► time zone differences and I'm already in my inbox I'm going to send him something

01:17:16 ◼   ► but for the most part like our business takes place within the tool and utility

01:17:23 ◼   ► of Slack and as that becomes more and more true for more companies they're

01:17:27 ◼   ► going to continue to be successful. I mean I think there's the argument that

01:17:30 ◼   ► that their pay tier is too expensive,

01:17:32 ◼   ► that it's sort of a really big jump from free to the pay tier

01:17:36 ◼   ► and I'd like to see them maybe figure that out.

01:17:38 ◼   ► But even that said, their growth has just been unbelievable.

01:17:43 ◼   ► I think this new fund, this new push for integration

01:17:46 ◼   ► is only going to continue to let them just take off.

01:17:50 ◼   ► I think you said, Stephen, did you say this a couple of years ago?

01:17:56 ◼   ► It's like they're becoming so important now.

01:17:58 ◼   ► I'm now scared of what they might do.

01:18:00 ◼   ► - I mean, it goes back to the conversation we had earlier.

01:18:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't want them to blow it.

01:18:05 ◼   ► And I don't think they will.

01:18:07 ◼   ► I think so far, if anything, they have a tendency

01:18:12 ◼   ► to push things out and it's sort of hard to keep up.

01:18:15 ◼   ► But I think that other than that,

01:18:19 ◼   ► I think they have a proven track record so far, so.

01:18:25 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:18:28 ◼   ► We love you Slack.

01:18:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, we do.

01:18:30 ◼   ► - If you wanna find our show notes

01:18:32 ◼   ► for this week's episode, head on over

01:18:34 ◼   ► to relay.fm/connected/70.

01:18:37 ◼   ► You've got all our lovely show notes there,

01:18:39 ◼   ► some contact information if you wanna become

01:18:41 ◼   ► a Relay FM member and support this show.

01:18:42 ◼   ► There's also some buttons on the page there

01:18:44 ◼   ► where you can click that.

01:18:45 ◼   ► Thank you so much to everybody that has done that

01:18:48 ◼   ► over the last couple of weeks.

01:18:49 ◼   ► We really, really appreciate it.

01:18:50 ◼   ► If you wanna find all of us online,

01:18:52 ◼   ► you can go to maxstories.net to find Federico's work.

01:18:55 ◼   ► you can go to 512pixels.net to find Stevens and we are all on Twitter. Steven is @ismh

01:19:01 ◼   ► on Twitter, Federico is @vitiici, V I T I C C I and I am @imike, I M Y K E. We all hope

01:19:09 ◼   ► that you have a lovely Christmas if that's what you celebrate or a lovely holiday season

01:19:13 ◼   ► if you celebrate something else because I'm not sure about the dates of when things are

01:19:18 ◼   ► because I am a terrible human being. But I would like to wish you all a very happy holidays

01:19:23 ◼   ► no matter what it is that you celebrate, even if it's just you celebrate that we don't have

01:19:27 ◼   ► an episode next week. Until then, thank you so much for listening. Say goodbye everybody.

01:19:34 ◼   ► Arrivederci and buon effeste. Oh you fancy. Adios. Do you have the... and it's Feliz Navidad.

01:19:42 ◼   ► Feliz Navidad! But Navidad is Christmas. Ah it's only one of them. Feliz... Feliz...

01:19:48 ◼   ► Don't make this more complicated than it already has to be. Sorry.