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Connected

14: The Old Mac Paladin

 

00:00:00   (upbeat music)

00:00:02   - Welcome to episode 14 of the connected podcast on Relay FM.

00:00:12   Today is Wednesday, November 19th.

00:00:15   My name is Steven and I am joined by my Italian co-host,

00:00:19   Mr. Federico Vittucci.

00:00:21   - Hey Steven.

00:00:22   - Hello friend.

00:00:23   - Just you and me, how are you doing, man?

00:00:25   - I'm good.

00:00:26   Myke is at a concert tonight.

00:00:29   I think someplace.

00:00:31   - Yeah, the guy's having a good time.

00:00:34   Probably not thinking about follow up

00:00:35   or any of that stuff, you know.

00:00:37   - I'm always thinking about follow up,

00:00:39   if I were to be honest. - Yeah, I know.

00:00:40   I know, like when you wake up in the morning,

00:00:42   you're like, oh my God, I need to follow up.

00:00:45   - I need to follow up on the things.

00:00:47   - Spend your life following up.

00:00:50   - Yeah, you gotta circle back, you gotta follow up,

00:00:52   you gotta revisit.

00:00:54   - Yeah, go to the parking lot.

00:00:56   - Paying somebody for an update.

00:00:57   - Yeah, for sure.

00:00:58   Actually, "ping" is a verb in my OmniFocus more than I wish it was, but I'm a project

00:01:02   manager.

00:01:03   You ping people much?

00:01:04   I ping them all the time.

00:01:05   I'm like, "Hey, I downloaded this song on iTunes."

00:01:08   See, I made a joke about "ping" because it used to be a...

00:01:13   So anyway, Myke is not here.

00:01:15   Myke's not here.

00:01:16   So I guess we need to save...

00:01:21   I don't know, we need to say probably a few words about Myke in general.

00:01:25   Yeah, like awake.

00:01:27   I always make the joke that he's dead.

00:01:33   Yeah, I was trying to avoid that this time.

00:01:36   Yeah.

00:01:37   But yeah, we miss you, Myke, but you will be back.

00:01:41   But he's gone to a better place.

00:01:43   A Jack White concert.

00:01:49   So follow up.

00:01:50   Yes, follow up.

00:01:51   So last week we talked to, or yes, you guys talked about, because I was out last week.

00:01:56   What was I doing last week?

00:01:58   I have no idea.

00:01:59   I don't remember why I was out.

00:02:01   Oh yeah, you had a family thing.

00:02:04   Or something.

00:02:05   I don't remember what happened.

00:02:06   Anyways, you sure you had a family thing?

00:02:09   I honestly don't remember why I wasn't here last week.

00:02:11   Did you lie to us?

00:02:13   I don't remember.

00:02:18   the follow up about old browsers and the Relay FM website keeps coming in.

00:02:26   So there's a new link in the show notes.

00:02:30   A listener named Simon wrote in and has supplied four screenshots of Classilla on Mac OS 9,

00:02:41   Explorer on Mac OS 10.0, iCab on 10.1, and Camino on 10.2.

00:02:49   And so I put these images on 512 pixels today.

00:02:53   And then Dr. Drang replied, running it

00:02:57   in Lynx, which is a command line browser.

00:02:59   Look at all these pinstripes.

00:03:02   Oh, yeah.

00:03:03   Old Mac OS before your time was really weird.

00:03:05   Wow.

00:03:07   This is fascinating.

00:03:09   So yeah, so Dr. Drang took this to--

00:03:11   This used to be an interface?

00:03:13   It was the interface, man.

00:03:15   That's how it looked.

00:03:16   Look at the iCab icon.

00:03:19   Yeah, it's like a car, but like one that was drawn on a napkin.

00:03:23   Check out the old iTunes logo, though.

00:03:26   It's pretty cool.

00:03:27   Sherlock is in there.

00:03:28   Where's the iTunes?

00:03:29   Oh, Sherlock, hey.

00:03:30   It's right next to BB Edit, which looks the same as it does today.

00:03:33   Wow.

00:03:34   Actually, out of all of these, male looks exactly the same, basically.

00:03:38   And the doctor?

00:03:40   What is this?

00:03:41   Like, did he write the relay website in the terminal?

00:03:46   Oh, Dr. Drang.

00:03:48   No, Lynx is a command line browser.

00:03:51   Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:03:52   I know you don't have the command line on iOS because it's not a real computer.

00:03:59   Funny.

00:04:01   You call this a real computer?

00:04:03   Tech stuff.

00:04:04   Yeah, actually, by this definition, OS 9 wasn't a real computer.

00:04:09   Macs weren't real computers. Anyways, so Dr. Drang has ended this forever.

00:04:15   Are you sure? Don't say forever. I'll say this, and actually I could do this,

00:04:21   because I have Nextstep running at home, I could do it in the Next browser, but that

00:04:27   sounds like a lot of work. So this is really nice. I didn't think that,

00:04:32   you know, a joke about Netscape and the show notes could push people to send us these screenshots,

00:04:38   which is awesome.

00:04:41   Pretty cool.

00:04:46   So that's in the show notes.

00:04:49   Where could the show notes be found, Federico?

00:04:52   Should I give instructions again?

00:04:54   No, just be neutral.

00:04:55   Okay, so just point your web browser of choice to relay.fm/connected/14 as one

00:05:08   for because it's the fourteenth episode of Connected. That's where you want to go. Each

00:05:16   episode has a dedicated web page. Really nice idea to have the show not seen this way. I'm

00:05:27   looking at the screenshot by Dr. Drang again. It is really nice that you got purple text

00:05:34   in the sponsors. Yeah, this is nice. Can you actually download episodes from the links

00:05:46   terminal stuff?

00:05:47   I think so.

00:05:49   Crazy. Steven, let's move to another piece of follow up that I saved just for you.

00:05:57   Okay.

00:05:58   Okay, so we have a Twitter account for the show which is underscore not David Smith but

00:06:05   connected the fam and Patrick Walker, I think the name, he sent us a link to basically an

00:06:16   article about a guy who used an old Mac Pro, I think correct me Steven if I'm wrong it's

00:06:24   a Mac Pro G5.

00:06:26   Power Mac G5.

00:06:29   Power Mac G5 used basically as a barbecue.

00:06:39   The guy took this old Mac, he removed all the internals, of course.

00:06:47   You don't want to grill your meat on top of a motherboard.

00:06:51   So he removed all the internals and he applied a few renovations to the basic structure and

00:07:04   used the Power Mac as a grill and it worked.

00:07:11   There's an image gallery from this person that you can view your photos of the end result.

00:07:20   I'm pretty sure the Mac wasn't usable after the said barbecue.

00:07:25   I'm not sure, I'm not sure.

00:07:27   But still, Steven, maybe if your family pushes you to get rid of all your old Macs, maybe

00:07:34   you could like have some fun with the barbecue or maybe you could go fishing with the Mac

00:07:40   Mini.

00:07:41   I have no idea.

00:07:42   You could do a, you know, like repurpose all these old Macs into a fun activity.

00:07:49   I do like the idea and I do have a powermak g5 tower.

00:07:53   Take photos and we'll... like the guy who's using the old Mac Pros as furniture.

00:07:59   Exactly.

00:08:00   Yeah?

00:08:01   Exactly.

00:08:02   I don't know, you could...

00:08:03   It could be a thing.

00:08:04   Yeah, you could use like your old iMac as a, I don't know, as a fish tank.

00:08:11   Yeah, that's a thing people do.

00:08:13   That's a thing, yeah, I know.

00:08:15   I'm just trying to imagine your house as old Mac's repurposed as furniture.

00:08:21   I'm sure my family would love that.

00:08:25   Like, "Oh, where'd you set my cup?

00:08:26   Oh, it's over on the Mac SC30."

00:08:29   Anyways, speaking about my home life, which is apparently this section of the follow-up.

00:08:36   I tweeted last night, I got in a little bit of trouble at home about photo management.

00:08:43   So-

00:08:44   seriously? yeah no you're taking your phone management anger to your house? no photo

00:08:51   management anger was directed at me oh here's what happened so I ordered a

00:08:57   topic from the day but I ordered a Synology network attached storage device

00:09:01   for the house I was telling my wife about it I was like hey you know like so

00:09:05   right now her photos are on iPhoto and my photos are all in my

00:09:12   aforementioned crazy Dropbox system at home. Right so I sort by subject and then

00:09:21   they're organized by date and Mary is using like iPhoto craziness which is

00:09:26   really unfortunate. Anyway so I'm telling her like hey you

00:09:31   know maybe we can like it would take a lot of work maybe we can combine our

00:09:36   photo libraries right because she has like a set of pictures of our kids and I

00:09:39   have like a different probably somewhat overlapping set of pictures like why not

00:09:43   have them all in one place right seems to make sense so I suggest this and she's

00:09:49   like yeah but like I kind of have him organized in iPhoto by date and I was

00:09:53   like oh I have a I have a script and I use Hazel to like rename the photos

00:09:58   based on date and she was like what like you have what like she I think she said

00:10:05   that she's like living in like iPhoto like slums while I'm off like organizing photos like a

00:10:10   gentleman. So I apologized to her and I think that we'll be merging photo libraries at some

00:10:21   point onto the Synology. So that'll be an ongoing topic I'm sure. But it's not great.

00:10:27   So let me give you Stephen a suggestion because I care about you. Have you

00:10:35   ever heard of this service called Everpix?

00:10:39   too soon

00:10:42   you don't you don't you don't want to try this new photo management service

00:10:47   steven it's really cool you know they got like

00:10:51   his iphone app and you can like look at old photos it's really nice

00:10:57   i think you're thinking of picture life no no no

00:11:00   you think of no it's evernote context you can just do an evernote

00:11:03   Now, that's only if you take pictures of like Wall Street journalists.

00:11:09   Oh.

00:11:10   Yeah.

00:11:11   So, let me continue with my follow-up.

00:11:14   Do you have like this power of making me talk about phone management?

00:11:18   Yes.

00:11:19   Even if I don't want to, necessarily.

00:11:23   So, let me talk about some follow-up to last week's episode.

00:11:27   When I talked about software preservation on the App Store,

00:11:32   We got a lot of great feedback about that segment. This is a good sign because I thought that

00:11:39   it was just me instead I got a lot of people telling me that it's a real problem and

00:11:44   thanking me for covering the topic so thank you I'm really glad that we started the discussion.

00:11:53   I received today from listener... I cannot remember the name... is I think...

00:12:04   yeah I cannot remember his name so there's this website called CyberOne which is a project to

00:12:14   basically lets you play the first computer-based video games from the 70s.

00:12:23   And it's a really cool initiative because you got these basically games that came out

00:12:30   over 40 years ago and you can play them in a web browser today. So I don't know if the same will

00:12:38   be possible with apps in 40 years.

00:12:41   That's pretty cool.

00:12:42   I like that their backup is a Mac G5 running Panther, so if they need to cook out later,

00:12:47   they can use their backup server.

00:12:51   As you can see, last week I talked about the Internet Archive, various projects that they

00:13:00   have to play or use software in a web browser, and this is another one.

00:13:06   So hopefully the Software Preservation Society will get in touch with these guys.

00:13:14   And speaking of software preservation, listener Eric Lehman, he has a nice strategy for backing

00:13:27   up apps from the App Store on his computer, which is to tell him I want to back up some

00:13:35   of my favorite IPA files for historical purposes and definitely that's the best way to backup

00:13:43   old apps and actually the only way because I get a lot of people telling me you can re-download

00:13:48   apps from the App Store if you go to the purchase tab and you look for an old app and you can

00:13:54   install it again, which works, you can get for instance the original Tweety back on your

00:14:00   phone. But the problem is that, actually two problems with that is that Apple could easily stop

00:14:07   allowing you to re-download old apps at some point, we don't know. So that's not a real

00:14:16   alternative to having an actual file on your computer. And the second problem is that

00:14:24   the original Twitter does not work right now because of an API change at Twitter.

00:14:30   So by backing up the IPA file on your computer, you don't fix the second problem,

00:14:36   because apps that depend on APIs are still broken, but at least you keep an actual file around.

00:14:41   So my pitch tip, I guess, for this would be to use Hazel to always, if you have the space,

00:14:51   If you have a couple of hard drives that you don't know how to use, you can back up each

00:15:00   AppUpdate.ipa file using Hazel every time the media folder of iTunes changes in your

00:15:07   Finder because there's an AppUpdate.

00:15:11   Back up your applications to your hard drive, I guess.

00:15:17   Maybe at some point you'll be able to restore 22.1.3 for some reason and you will be happy.

00:15:25   I will say that that entire conversation means that you guys can no longer make fun of me

00:15:30   for having like a bunch of old Macs at home.

00:15:34   We see we are the modern day...

00:15:41   I guess.

00:15:42   What's your, like I'm trying to think of a, of a, of a, like, like a class for you.

00:15:50   Like you are like an old Mac.

00:15:55   I wouldn't say like, like a Paladin.

00:15:59   Yeah, I need to come up with a, with a, with a better name for what we're trying to do.

00:16:09   I do like old Mac Paladins, it suits you very well.

00:16:14   Thank you.

00:16:15   Yeah, no that's a real thing man, I really want apps to be around.

00:16:29   And this is the point of maybe I struggled to stress last week.

00:16:34   I don't think that we need to keep around every app ever made.

00:16:41   I'm not sure what's the value of keeping around all the flappy bird clones from the App Store

00:16:47   or all the ripoffs and the scammy apps that you get on the App Store and on the Google

00:16:54   Play Store.

00:16:56   But I'm trying to say that at least for many, many apps there should be a system to make

00:17:00   sure that in the future these don't get lost.

00:17:03   Yeah, I mean it's the same thing with Mac hardware collection, right?

00:17:06   There's a bunch of really forgettable non-important Macs in the 90s, but there are some that are

00:17:12   significant for one reason or another.

00:17:14   Yeah, that's a...

00:17:18   I can live with that.

00:17:20   Okay.

00:17:21   Yeah.

00:17:22   So Steven, why don't you tell me now before I talk about another kind of old stuff being

00:17:31   available again. Why don't you tell me about awesome stuff that helps Relay FM.

00:17:38   Let me tell you about our friends at Lynda.com. Lynda.com is an easy and affordable way to

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00:17:58   Lynda.com is all about helping you turn an idea into a hobby or a hobby into a business.

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00:18:15   The courses are broken down into really nicely sized, like bite-sized chunks so you can jump

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00:18:35   devices so you're not stuck at your computer to watch these. You can go out

00:18:39   and about and learn in different environments which is really helpful.

00:18:43   I know Myke's been doing some stuff and he's setting up his iPad with the Linda

00:18:48   video playing and then like next to his computer he can have the app that he's

00:18:52   working on on his machine to kind of have it in different places. It's a

00:18:55   really great way to take use of their video tutorials. And these things, they're not like

00:19:00   YouTube videos. These are high quality professional videos done by experts in the field that are

00:19:05   put together in just a really, really nice professional way. They have classes in web

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00:19:22   photography apps like Lightroom, Aputure, Photoshop, but then again there's

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00:19:56   So Steven, I want to talk about tweets.

00:20:00   Yes.

00:20:01   Is that okay with you? All tweets especially. I was really dumb a few years ago.

00:20:07   Yeah I looked at mine and I'm...

00:20:09   I'm pretty sure I'm still dumb in many ways, but at least I got better at tweeting, I think.

00:20:17   My old tweets are really spectacularly awful.

00:20:23   So what's going on?

00:20:24   What's the search thing?

00:20:25   So yesterday Twitter announced that every public tweet since 2006, so since the very

00:20:32   first tweet is now indexed and it's searchable in the Twitter apps for the

00:20:38   web and for iOS and Android. So it means that you can, using the same search

00:20:44   feature that until a few days ago only gave you tweets for the past couple of

00:20:49   weeks, now the same search feature gives you every ever sent and it's really fast.

00:20:58   Twitter has the technical details of this, I guess, massive engineering

00:21:04   challenge. I don't know how many billions of tweets have been sent to date but it

00:21:10   must be a lot. The search feature is really fast. Knowing the text of

00:21:17   my old tweets, I was able to find them just like any other tweet, only they are

00:21:23   from 2009 and it's really fast, it's integrated with the Twitter app for iOS quite well, you

00:21:32   can switch between the top tweets or all tweets.

00:21:37   Right now if you want to find every single old tweet you need to switch to the All tab.

00:21:45   The best part of all this is that you can use advanced search operators to refine your

00:21:52   searches and find very specific tweets. So you can for instance use parameters to filter

00:21:58   usernames, you can filter links, you can filter pictures, you can use quotes, you can use

00:22:05   any text string, you can do date filters if you want to look for tweets sent on a specific

00:22:12   day. It's really crazy. Basically you have the entire Twitter history at your fingertips

00:22:21   the Twitter app for iPhone and iPad and the fact that you can find tweets from 8 years

00:22:29   ago is amazing to me.

00:22:34   And of course we need to mention that while this is awesome because it lets you find old

00:22:42   thoughts that you were having or maybe you want to make fun of yourself for being wrong

00:22:47   about something, it also means that your dumb stuff is now more easily accessible, and I

00:22:54   need to stress the fact that anyone can look for your old tweets if you are a public user.

00:23:04   So last night I had fun looking for the first John Gruber tweet about Tweety, which I think

00:23:11   is the first.

00:23:12   I've been testing this for a few weeks and I really like it.

00:23:16   But still, that was fun, but I can look for dumb stuff set by anyone, basically.

00:23:26   Think about that.

00:23:29   The other side of this topic is that it's also easier for you to find an old tweet and

00:23:35   delete it, because you can just search for it and use the delete feature.

00:23:40   But yeah, it's really awesome.

00:23:44   I was looking back through mine this morning and I will say it's finally a reason to have

00:23:49   the official app on my device.

00:23:55   I installed the Twitter app and put it in a folder just for this.

00:24:00   What's interesting about it is I had kind of forgotten that on Twitter's homepage they

00:24:05   used to ask "What are you doing?"

00:24:09   And the idea with Twitter was to answer that question.

00:24:14   And so my early, early tweets, like a lot of people's, are...

00:24:19   I can answer that question.

00:24:20   I think my first tweet ever was like laying out the newspaper in college.

00:24:23   I designed the student newspaper four nights a week, and so that was like my first...

00:24:27   At least the first tweet that's still available.

00:24:30   And so it's sort of interesting how the way we've used Twitter has changed.

00:24:37   back through my early tweets, it feels much more like status update, like, "Hey, I'm doing this.

00:24:42   Hey, I'm doing this later. I just did that." And now it's much more conversational. I think part

00:24:48   of that is, right, there's a community within Twitter that wasn't there eight years ago. It

00:24:56   surely has a lot to do with it. But at the same time, I think just the way that we approach Twitter

00:25:01   is very different. It's much more like stream of consciousness. Like, I don't feel like I have to

00:25:04   answer that question. And I think getting rid of that question on their web app was huge.

00:25:09   It was in 2009, according to Mashable. They changed it from "What are you doing?" to "What's

00:25:15   happening?" in 2009. But it's very cool. And from an engineering perspective, it seems crazy that

00:25:23   they have... I can't even imagine how many tweets... Yeah, I think I read that the entire

00:25:30   index is stored in RAM. That's crazy. That seems...

00:25:37   Yeah, they have all the details in the blog post. It's crazy stuff going on. But it's a...

00:25:46   I mean, we do... at least you guys do make fun of Twitter, especially the Twitter apps a lot.

00:25:53   But you have to admit, Steven, this is quite a technical achievement.

00:25:59   Oh yeah, yeah definitely. I mean I think that the fact that Twitter works like at the scale that it does is amazing.

00:26:06   But I mean so just like the question is like so it's it's cool right like it's funny to go see

00:26:12   like the first mention of Tweety or like people making fun of the Mac Pro name but

00:26:17   why is this like important to Twitter as a company? So yeah I've been thinking about this.

00:26:26   I don't know. I mean it feels like the right thing to do because of course you gotta give your entire

00:26:31   archive to people and let people search. That's like

00:26:35   we need to do this. It's the right thing for the users, right?

00:26:40   But I was also thinking about Twitter as a

00:26:44   strategic, you know, entity. Like what's the benefit for us to do this kind of

00:26:51   feature and I was looking for some old tweets like a few minutes ago and

00:26:56   I noticed that

00:26:59   every time you if you find a lot of search results and

00:27:04   Every time you scroll to load more tweets

00:27:08   You get an ad

00:27:10   So that may be a reason it's another place to inject advertisement. I

00:27:19   I mean, it feels like the right thing to do once it's built, just let people use it.

00:27:25   And if people use it, we can display more ads.

00:27:28   There must be also some kind of a brand slash engagement component.

00:27:34   Like you can look for old commercials or you can look for old, I don't know, the elections

00:27:40   or something.

00:27:41   The first Pepsi tweet.

00:27:42   Yeah.

00:27:43   The first.

00:27:44   What's the spice guy?

00:27:45   Old spice?

00:27:46   Old spice.

00:27:47   Yes.

00:27:48   Old Spice.

00:27:48   Yeah, World Spice.

00:27:50   World Spice.

00:27:51   World Spice?

00:27:52   No, they're a hosting company.

00:27:53   I don't know what's happening.

00:27:55   I think it's Old Spice.

00:27:57   It definitely builds like I think Twitter needed to do something,

00:28:01   at least for the nerd community, that was like a sign of goodwill.

00:28:04   And I think this like falls into that category because they were talking about it.

00:28:08   And it is really cool.

00:28:11   Like I had I really enjoyed like looking through my early tweets this morning.

00:28:16   I mean it was like horrifying sometimes but um the other thing that I really realized

00:28:22   is like how quickly links die so like talking about the app person stuff over the last couple

00:28:29   weeks the um you know my site used to be called fork bomber and like all of the short links

00:28:36   that I tweeted to that site are dead like same yep just dead and um and so it's it's

00:28:43   sort of interesting like how quickly things die off online. I thought it was a

00:28:48   timely thought you know based on our conversation over the last couple weeks

00:28:52   but I think it's a great like goodwill gesture to the community. You know for a

00:28:57   long time like people weren't sure what Twitter actually stored and then I guess

00:29:02   maybe a year ago or so you could start downloading your Twitter archive.

00:29:06   which is still only a one-time thing.

00:29:11   Like you can't, there used to be a script, you could do it where you would like clone

00:29:15   your Twitter archive, everybody could Google Drive.

00:29:17   But I think that's working.

00:29:18   Yeah, you gotta request the archive in your settings and you get an email with the download

00:29:22   link.

00:29:23   Right.

00:29:24   And you click the link and you get a zip file.

00:29:25   Yeah.

00:29:26   And it's like JSON and stuff in it.

00:29:28   It's not super...

00:29:29   Yeah, there's a couple of apps that take advantage of the archive file to basically build a searchable

00:29:36   archive. There's a tweet library by Manton Rees and there's a tweet seeker by the same

00:29:44   guy who makes Pushping in the Timbre Client, which is Lionheart software. But still, this

00:29:53   is more impressive because it's real-time search, you know? Like you don't need to download

00:29:57   anything, you can just go to the app and search. But definitely about the links, it's been

00:30:04   a problem for me as well because all my old custom short URLs are dead, which is I guess

00:30:11   the best argument in favor of using plain, straight up normal URLs when you tweet about

00:30:17   stuff.

00:30:19   I still have a short URL for Max Stories, but the domain is expiring, so I guess I'm

00:30:26   going to renew the domain for the short links, but I think I'm switching to regular maxstories.net.

00:30:34   links for Twitter. I think when they introduced t.co which they automatically wrapped links in

00:30:40   and then they automatically expanded a lot of clients. I think the need for short URLs,

00:30:44   unless you're like going to track the click numbers like mine was a bitly pro account so

00:30:50   it ran bitly like through bitly so I could see like okay this has been clicked by 500 people

00:30:54   or by six people like that was useful but I think the need like oh I need to make this URL as short

00:31:02   it as possible so if it's in my tweet like those days are more or less gone

00:31:04   because Twitter does it anyways and so I think the need for like shortened like

00:31:10   vanity URLs is less than it used to be. Plus now you can go to the Twitter

00:31:15   analytics and see the engagement rates right for your tweets yeah I actually do

00:31:21   that quite a bit. It's a useful tool. I do check my engagement even. That's good are

00:31:26   Are you still engaged?

00:31:28   Yeah, with my audience a lot.

00:31:32   The engagement rates are off the charts for you. Just like the customer said.

00:31:36   A lot of rings.

00:31:38   Yeah, all over the place.

00:31:40   So yeah, this is a cool feature.

00:31:42   I also want to mention it is not available to third-party Twitter clients.

00:31:47   At least for now. It's just for the Twitter website and the Twitter apps for iOS and Android.

00:31:52   So poor Windows Phone and BlackBerry.

00:31:55   Do they still make a Twitter app for the Blackberry?

00:31:58   It's an Android app, I think, that runs Java.

00:32:01   I have no idea.

00:32:02   Yeah, so it's cool, and it's definitely fun to play with.

00:32:05   I had a good time.

00:32:06   The search is surprisingly powerful, so you can search, like you said, based on user,

00:32:10   but I can search things that I have tweeted directed to you with a keyword in it.

00:32:14   So I could find every tweet that I've ever tweeted at you with the word "podcast" in

00:32:18   it.

00:32:19   And it's really, if you know what you're looking for, very fine-grained.

00:32:23   like you said like you found the first like public tweet about the Tweety app

00:32:27   that's pretty impressive if you know what you're looking for and you have

00:32:31   some time to kind of work at it you can really like drill down to what you want

00:32:34   I think this is going to be huge like if you do brand management or you know PR

00:32:40   somewhere like really see what people think about your brand long term like I

00:32:46   think it's gonna be a really helpful tool if that's part of your job

00:32:49   What do people think about your brand even? They love it. They love it. They're engaged, right?

00:32:54   They're managed. They're engaged and they're collecting old Macs and it's just really great.

00:32:59   Is that your brand? I don't know. I don't know. Cool.

00:33:04   So I had a bit of a... When Relay launched, this is a little real talk time.

00:33:09   FedRelay coverage between you and I. Are we talking about feelings?

00:33:12   We're talking about feelings. Okay.

00:33:14   So I changed my URL on my Twitter profile to relay.fm instead of 512pixels.net,

00:33:20   which I really struggled over because 512 was my main identity online for a long time,

00:33:28   and now it's Relay. And it was a very moment. I was like, "I have to decide. People who come

00:33:35   across my Twitter, where do I want to send them?" And Relay is a much bigger deal than 512 is,

00:33:42   and so I changed it but it was kind of like a

00:33:44   It was a little hard decision to make there for a second just to be honest

00:33:49   It was hard

00:33:52   But Myke was actually surprised I did it what happened after I changed it to relay FM

00:33:58   And now my site is just fine. It's no one. It hasn't been a big difference. So I

00:34:03   remember

00:34:06   Fork bomber that was really nice. I think I don't remember how I first got to know you but it was through

00:34:12   Bumber is the brochure. That's

00:34:15   It was you think to me? No, no, I know I know you had a guide

00:34:22   Or Gmail as a right. Yeah, I did. Yeah. Yeah

00:34:29   Well, you were making you were making guides. You need to make guides against you have so much work

00:34:34   I still get email about that thing. So it was back when

00:34:37   Gmail first kind of broke away from the I'm at thing in a big way and it was like how to

00:34:41   Make Gmail work more like an I'm at thing in mail

00:34:45   So I wrote it up made a PDF put on my site and it went it went I mean and to for several years

00:34:51   It was like the biggest single post on the site. It's been eclipsed by several things now

00:34:56   But it was huge for a while and I for a long time. It's really trailed off

00:35:01   I just get emails about like hey, can you update this or hey like people are like asking me Gmail technical support questions

00:35:07   That's like I can't like troubleshoot your settings for you. Like I don't know what you want for me

00:35:12   But uh, that's funny Google brought us together Federico

00:35:16   Myke isn't that creepy?

00:35:19   Myke would be happy with that irony. Yeah. Oh, man

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00:37:01   is like so key in the technology space and the cover really stands alone in

00:37:05   that. However if you do prefer robots they have great support documents and

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00:37:58   follow up follow follow follow follow up

00:38:06   Someone emailed us and said they missed the sound effects.

00:38:10   I should put them in because I'm editing this week.

00:38:13   Myke can't stop me.

00:38:14   Oh.

00:38:15   Follow up.

00:38:16   Do you want to talk about the Apple Watch?

00:38:19   I do.

00:38:20   Specifically, do you want to talk about WatchKit?

00:38:22   I do.

00:38:23   It's almost like we're looking at the same document.

00:38:25   Right?

00:38:26   I mean, we have this weird connection between us.

00:38:30   I think it's because Myke is not in the middle this week.

00:38:34   It's finally just us.

00:38:35   Yeah, I mean that guy, right? Poor Myke. So, Steven Hackett of 512 fame.

00:38:48   Are you familiar with watches? I'm wearing one. Like smart watches. You can see the time on your

00:38:57   wrist and Apple is making a watch and like you can make apps for the watch

00:39:03   sort of, you can sort of make, you can sort of make apps, there's an asterisk after that, there's a new developer tool

00:39:12   called WatchKit that's been released developers this week yesterday and it

00:39:17   comes with a new beta of iOS called iOS 8.2, WatchKit is a set of

00:39:24   developer tools, APIs, frameworks, to make software for the Apple Watch.

00:39:31   And it's actually three kinds of software. You can make a WatchKit app, which is not the same as a Watch app.

00:39:39   Pay attention. It's a WatchKit app. You can make glances, which is basically widgets for the Apple Watch,

00:39:45   and you can make actionable notifications.

00:39:49   So I guess I need to add some context to this discussion is that when Apple announced the Apple Watch

00:39:55   They showcased all these features

00:39:58   But they also showed I think native apps for the Apple Watch, but those aren't coming

00:40:04   until later next year

00:40:07   So Apple yesterday published a press release they announced all this watch kit stuff

00:40:12   But they they added like a note like an asterisk at the bottom and they said

00:40:17   fully native apps for the Apple Watch will be available later next year. So speculation is that a

00:40:23   real native SDK for the Apple Watch will be released at the WWDC next year.

00:40:30   So today we need to talk about WatchKit, which is basically a way to let the iPhone run

00:40:37   applications on the Apple Watch.

00:40:40   The entire system is based on extensions, on handoff and all these

00:40:46   Sensibility features that Apple announced at WWDC for iOS 8 and now they are using all these

00:40:51   these features as

00:40:54   basically the system that will run the initial wave of

00:40:58   Apple watch apps a

00:41:00   Glance is a widget on your Apple watch. Is it called the home screen on the Apple watch?

00:41:07   The home green I don't know the home screen on the Apple watch

00:41:12   You can

00:41:15   Why are you tweeting at me?

00:41:18   - You were tweeting during the show.

00:41:19   - No, okay.

00:41:21   So on the home screen of the Apple Watch,

00:41:23   you can swipe up to access this.

00:41:26   It's like widgets really on iOS 8,

00:41:30   only it's widgets for watch stuff.

00:41:34   And you can tap the widget to open the watch app.

00:41:38   Then there's actionable notifications.

00:41:40   So your phone is in your pocket.

00:41:43   you get a notification on your Apple Watch and you can tap a button to like, I don't

00:41:50   know, to like a photo or to perhaps mark a task as complete.

00:41:56   And then there's the WatchKit app, which is a full app.

00:42:00   It's got an interface, it's got an icon on your home screen, you can use the app.

00:42:05   Only it's not a native app, it's an extension that's on your phone.

00:42:12   Right. The phone is sort of like a projection from the phone to the watch. It can't live

00:42:19   independently just on the watch, which is what is, you know, assumedly coming later.

00:42:24   Like that's kind of the difference, right? Sort of.

00:42:27   Yeah. It's confusing.

00:42:29   Kind of. Yeah. So basically, right now, watch kit apps depend on iPhone apps. So they are

00:42:37   an extension like a shared extension or a widget or a keyboard or an action extension,

00:42:44   they are pieces of an app stored inside the app that you buy from the app store.

00:42:52   Let's say that I make an app and it's called "Bitticheist" and it lets you do stuff with

00:43:03   Italian words.

00:43:04   just imagine this app, it's called Viti Chist, and it lets you do stuff with Italian dictionary.

00:43:10   You buy this app from the App Store and it's got a bunch of extensions. You can add Italian

00:43:14   words from Safari and you can check the word of the day as a widget. And then there's a

00:43:19   WatchKit extension. So when you open the app for the first time, if it sees that you got

00:43:25   an Apple Watch paired with your phone, it asks you, "Hey, do you want to enable the

00:43:30   the WatchKit extension for Viteaches.

00:43:34   And you enable the WatchKit extension.

00:43:36   And what happens is that basically the WatchKit extension

00:43:40   handles all the CPU, handles all the actual parts

00:43:45   of the software that make the app work.

00:43:48   And assets like images and graphical resources,

00:43:53   they are cached on the, they can be cached.

00:43:57   They can be stored on the Apple Watch.

00:43:59   I think that Apple said that static assets can--

00:44:03   - Pre-rendered, right?

00:44:05   - Pre-rendered actual static images.

00:44:07   They can be cached up to 20 megabytes on the Apple Watch

00:44:13   for each WatchKit app.

00:44:15   And basically what happens next is that every time

00:44:19   you want to use a WatchKit app,

00:44:21   what you see on your Apple Watch is powered by your phone,

00:44:28   by your iPhone. You use the app, but there's actually a transmission going on between what

00:44:35   you do on the Apple Watch and the engine that's powering the app, which is on your phone.

00:44:40   So there's a lot of wireless communication going on. Apple designed the system to hopefully

00:44:47   be really conscious when it comes to preserving battery life. But still, the conclusion to

00:44:55   all this is that Apple didn't want to enable fully native apps for the first release of

00:45:02   the Apple Watch, pretty much like they didn't want to enable fully native apps for the iPhone

00:45:06   in 2007.

00:45:09   We can discuss this in a few minutes, but the idea is that you can have apps for the

00:45:15   Apple Watch when it comes out in a few months, but you will probably see the first real apps

00:45:22   for the Apple Watch next year.

00:45:24   So right now you get like a taste. You get all these WatchKit apps, they are like extensions,

00:45:29   you need your iPhone, there's no App Store for the Apple Watch. Developers cannot monetize

00:45:36   these WatchKit extensions, they cannot monetize widgets or extensions for a regular iOS app.

00:45:45   They are a feature essentially. It's not a separate store, it's not a separate developer

00:45:52   opportunity it's just an extension with all the consequences that there entails.

00:45:59   It's kind of like what the Pebble does, right?

00:46:05   You have like your phone is sort of like home base for the Pebble and especially to have

00:46:10   Android Wear.

00:46:11   Like Android Wear watches barely work without the presence of an Android phone.

00:46:17   I get it, like I would like full blown apps on day one, but I also want my watch to last

00:46:22   all day.

00:46:23   So like, it would be nice to, you know, I see the balance they're trying to strike with

00:46:28   this, right?

00:46:30   Yeah, I mean, it's about battery life.

00:46:33   It's gotta be.

00:46:35   Or it's, I mean, it's gotta be about battery life, but it also gotta be about unfinished

00:46:41   APIs and developer frameworks.

00:46:45   It seems that the software that the Apple Watch runs on is based on iOS.

00:46:54   I saw a few folks on Twitter, they are digging into the iOS 8.2 beta and it seems that Apple

00:47:05   is using this framework called Pepper UICore, that's the internal name for this software

00:47:12   that powers the Apple Watch.

00:47:15   And this seems to be based on UIKit and UIView,

00:47:19   all the stuff that iOS developers are familiar with.

00:47:23   So it seems that the Apple Watch will run

00:47:25   some version of iOS, just like the Apple TV runs

00:47:28   a version of iOS.

00:47:30   - Right, sort of like a weird stepchild of it.

00:47:32   Like it's not exactly the same,

00:47:35   but it's a subset of what's available

00:47:37   to an iPhone or an iPad.

00:47:39   - Yeah, and it could be that Apple is using

00:47:41   Of course they are using private frameworks and APIs for their own native apps, just like

00:47:49   they were using the private frameworks and APIs for the original iPhone for the native

00:47:55   apps on the phone.

00:47:57   Next year developers will get access to a real SDK which will allow them to build real

00:48:02   apps with much much more features.

00:48:05   To give you an example, Steven, right now, if you want to animate a spinner, like something

00:48:14   that rotates on your Apple Watch, there's an example that I saw linked on Twitter.

00:48:21   Apple is using basically 360 images of a circle.

00:48:29   And they animate those images in sequence.

00:48:34   And actually if you watch the video from Apple about the watch kit, they do recommend using

00:48:40   images sequentially to do animations, which is fun, because I get it, you want to save

00:48:47   resources and you want to be extremely lightweight, it feels like a regression from "I make iPhone

00:48:55   apps and they do all these crazy features and now I want to do watch apps and I need

00:48:59   to bundle all these images to fake an animation.

00:49:03   I mean, it's really fine.

00:49:06   It's better to wait until next year than to get unfinished software today that eats battery

00:49:12   life and gives the impression that the Apple Watch is basically a really bad idea.

00:49:19   It's interesting to me that with the original iPhone, Apple had first-party apps and then

00:49:27   told developers that they had a sweet solution, as Steve Jobs said, that you can make web

00:49:32   apps and these web apps sucked.

00:49:34   And now, I mean, it is an upgrade from seven years ago, because they are not native apps.

00:49:42   You need to do this stuff with static images and you have all sorts of limitations.

00:49:47   But still it's better than what it used to be.

00:49:50   I mean, it's an extension and you will be able to have more features next year, but

00:49:56   still it's a pretty nice system for the first version of the Apple Watch.

00:50:01   So the Apple Press series, for example, there's Instagram already confirmed that they're working

00:50:08   on actionable notifications, like you can like photos from your friends from the Apple

00:50:13   Watch, you can send emoji as reactions, I guess, animated emoji.

00:50:20   What's the name of the... Apple showed this like emoji that move.

00:50:26   Oh yeah, it's weird.

00:50:28   It's their weird looking.

00:50:29   Yeah, their weird looking, but I guess they will be pretty huge because people like these

00:50:33   features like this.

00:50:35   I guess.

00:50:37   We gotta ask Casey about moving emoji.

00:50:41   It's interesting too, I'm kind of talking about that.

00:50:45   They also released a human interface guideline for the Apple Watch.

00:50:49   Did you read it?

00:50:50   I've looked through it pretty heavily and it's um

00:50:52   They are limiting

00:50:55   Like apps are gonna look a lot alike like their first rule of in color and topography is use a black for your apps background

00:51:02   color

00:51:04   Use your apps key color for brand or status and like it's it's really

00:51:07   Not really clear on how much they're going to

00:51:15   Allow developers to like do crazy things in their designs

00:51:18   So I'll put a link to the the human interface guidelines in the show notes

00:51:22   You don't have to be a developer to see them sadly. They don't have a PDF download of it, which is lame, but um

00:51:27   There's like whole things in here about like animation

00:51:30   And like branding and icon design

00:51:36   And in here I don't you see this like the 38 millimeter and the 42 millimeter have like

00:51:43   I mean obviously like different

00:51:45   Size like displays

00:51:49   so people were talking to Twitter about that how

00:51:51   The the displays are I guess I guess the difference is bigger than people thought it was going to be yeah

00:51:58   Which is like I don't know why I don't know why it's a surprise but um

00:52:02   Anyways, it's gonna be an intro very interesting like

00:52:07   experience

00:52:09   to like see these early apps and I think I think Apple was kind of up against it a little bit because

00:52:15   Like you and I are talking about like hey, this is like it was in 2007 2008 and those early days of the iPhone

00:52:22   But like there was nothing really before the iPhone to compare it against right like you had like really crappy games on your iPod

00:52:29   Nano and that was really it

00:52:31   but now it's like hey, the iPhone has been around when this thing comes for eight years and

00:52:37   The app store has been around for seven and like people expect a certain level of experience on their mobile devices

00:52:43   And if the watch delivers some sort of like lower-end

00:52:46   Experience like is that gonna be a problem for Apple like understand why they're doing it. I think it's the right thing to do

00:52:55   But like it does come with that that risk of people are gonna look at and be like well

00:52:59   This doesn't do very much like I don't know just gonna be interesting to see how people react to this out in the real world

00:53:05   Yeah, I don't know I think that Apple wants to give the idea that the Apple watch

00:53:10   has apps at least in some form, but I think that next year

00:53:16   People will go like okay. These are the real Apple watch apps because for instance at least from what I

00:53:23   read in the documentation

00:53:26   So far the watch kit apps they cannot access

00:53:30   Stuff like the heart rate sensor the Apple watch so there's all these features that the the watch kit

00:53:37   extensions don't get access to and

00:53:39   For that reason the real possibilities, you know integration with the with the Apple watch hardware and back to the iPhone

00:53:49   There will be possible only next year. So right now Apple wants to say we do have apps

00:53:56   but the subtext is

00:53:59   Yeah, but you want to wait until next year to get the real apps and

00:54:03   wwc

00:54:06   2015 will be really interesting not only because I plan to come Steven. Yes

00:54:12   for real this time

00:54:15   But because there's all these like

00:54:20   the Apple watch

00:54:23   SDK and maybe there's a there's a apple will have the time to really

00:54:29   polish iOS not just in terms of bugs and

00:54:33   features but also in terms of design because when I look at the documentation for the

00:54:39   human interface guidelines for the Apple watch the design language seems so much mature and

00:54:47   It takes the best stuff from iOS 7 and iOS 8, but it also has elements from the iOS that

00:54:55   came before.

00:54:58   Maybe the reason is that the Apple Watch screen is a completely different...

00:55:03   It comes with completely different interactions.

00:55:07   It's a smaller screen and you need to make out stuff clearly on the display.

00:55:12   But I do believe that there's at least a fragment of Apple saying, "Yeah, we need to reverse

00:55:19   some decisions when it comes to our mobile software design language."

00:55:23   Did you see the thing on The Verge about the... like, there's a bunch of different ways to

00:55:29   interact with the Apple Watch and how with...

00:55:32   Neil, I think it might be confusing, which I tend to agree with.

00:55:36   Let me ask you this.

00:55:37   Having not used it, right?

00:55:39   First, second, how many ways are there to interact with your iPhone?

00:55:43   Not, I mean...

00:55:46   I mean you can tap, you can scroll, you can long tap, you can swipe from the edge,

00:55:50   you can swipe from the top and bottom.

00:55:51   But it's all touch, right? Like there's not true long touch.

00:55:55   There's the power button, there's the volume button you can use to take pictures.

00:56:00   I don't know, like okay, I see what you're saying, like a lot of this list on the verge,

00:56:04   it's like the same thing, right? Like vertical swipes, horizontal swipes, edge swipes,

00:56:08   all the same thing. Force Touch and Digital Crown are the two worst names Apple has ever given

00:56:14   anything. I don't know, I just, I worry that it's going to be, until you like get into the habit of

00:56:22   it, like learning it, how to do it quickly is going to be a little bit harder than the iPhone was.

00:56:26   So remember too, the iPhone didn't do all this stuff on day one. It was tap,

00:56:29   long tap, and scroll. Like they added the gesture stuff as time went on, but the watch is launching

00:56:34   launching with all of it on a much smaller device. I'm just curious what the learning

00:56:40   curve is going to be the first time you put one on.

00:56:42   I think all these jobs right now, basically the problem is that it's new and we don't

00:56:50   know much and we haven't tried one. So of course it's easy to say "oh my god there's

00:56:57   so much stuff here" and but also I think that the Verge article has all this, like they

00:57:03   want to find all these different ways? Because, I mean, swipes, I get it. I don't know, we'll

00:57:12   see. I wonder, because now of course I haven't got an Apple Watch yet but I'm already thinking

00:57:20   about the real Apple Watch apps with the native SDK I call the possible features. Because

00:57:26   Because right now, I told you guys, you and Myke, a while ago about my idea for integration

00:57:34   with a heart rate sensor.

00:57:38   Imagine if you had a maps application and you ask for walking directions someplace,

00:57:48   and if you have a wearable device, you could look at your heart rate and kind of understand

00:57:54   your fatigue and maybe suggest a different direction.

00:57:57   I don't know, it's just all these possibilities that you get by putting sensors on your body

00:58:03   and without the kind of access as the first WatchKit apps will be, it kind of loses all

00:58:13   this meaning, this purpose.

00:58:15   And I guess we'll have to wait until next year.

00:58:19   Are you getting an Apple Watch, Steven?

00:58:21   I don't know.

00:58:22   I floated this idea a couple of months ago on the show of like buying a pebble

00:58:27   to like integrate like

00:58:29   Notifications on my wrist into my life and see what I thought about that and I haven't done it and they I think they just dropped

00:58:36   The price a few weeks ago, so I might end up doing that to like I know it's not really super comparable

00:58:41   But the idea of like hey my wrist is telling me something like

00:58:45   What that is like?

00:58:47   Because I used the pebble when it first came out and it was terrible, but I think it's come a long way

00:58:51   way so I don't I really don't know I really don't know at this point like

00:58:55   it's really interesting it it's expensive I mean it could very well be

00:59:02   expensive so I just don't I just don't know it's hard to it's hard to decide I

00:59:08   really want to see one I think it's gonna be a big thing like I don't know

00:59:13   it'll be follow-up in early 2015 should you should get them should get an Apple

00:59:20   watch it is a business expense now for your wife or Valentine's Day there you

00:59:25   go I sent her a link there's a monster truck rally in Memphis on Valentine's

00:59:29   Day I was like hey we should go to that and she didn't respond to that email

00:59:33   yeah what let me tell you about text expander touch okay there we go

00:59:38   except a shirt of this episode of connected is brought to you by a text

00:59:42   expander touch from our friends at smile you guys all know what text expander is

00:59:48   you can have snippets you type the snippet and then auto expands to

00:59:52   something longer. It's great to use for things you type often I have them for

00:59:55   addresses, email addresses, forms I have to use a lot, all sorts of good stuff and

01:00:01   it can really save you significant time as as you use it more and more. I've used

01:00:07   it for years and I've got tons of time back. You can sync all these snippets

01:00:11   across various devices via Dropbox so you add a snippet on your Mac your iPad

01:00:16   knows about it and there's like 60 plus apps and the apps are that have

01:00:21   integrated snippets like Day One, OmniFocus, Fantastical, Launch Center Pro,

01:00:25   Editorial and many more. Many of the apps that Federico guys like you and I

01:00:28   really love. But it's really cool with Iowa Sate and TextExpander Touch 3 they

01:00:34   have a custom keyboard so you can flip over to their keyboard and type a

01:00:37   snippet and expand anywhere. This means that you can send an iMessage or an

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01:00:48   URL you visited and it automatically expand in the URL bar in Safari you can

01:00:53   use anywhere you can use a keyboard on iOS 8. This is really great it's

01:00:57   available in 14 different languages and it's just it's just really really cool

01:01:02   and and what's great about is TechExpander Touch respects your privacy.

01:01:05   You know I would say it has this thing where they request full access for the

01:01:08   keyboard. It's doing this so the keyboard can talk to the main app smile

01:01:13   Respects your privacy and they've updated their privacy policy which you can read on their site and telling you these guys are trustworthy

01:01:18   It's really a great tool and and that checkbox is no reason to ignore it

01:01:23   I really do love this keyboard. It's made a real improvement to my work on iOS

01:01:28   I've said before that if I sit down on a Mac without text expander it feels broken

01:01:31   iOS is coming that way very quickly for me as well because of this keyboard

01:01:36   They've got uppercase and lowercase lettering on the keyboard

01:01:39   so you can you don't have to deal with a crazy shift key problem that's easy to

01:01:43   make fun of. So you can go right now to the App Store and grab TextExpander

01:01:48   Touch 3 and start saving time on iOS today. You can learn more at

01:01:55   Smilesoftware.com/connected and thank you very much to Smilesoftware and

01:02:01   TextExpander Touch for their support of connected and Relay FM.

01:02:11   So we're an hour in and we're going to talk about productivity.

01:02:18   You sure you don't want to talk about feelings?

01:02:19   We can talk about feelings some more.

01:02:23   That's another show.

01:02:24   Or we can talk about how the App Store instead of free now says get which is weird.

01:02:29   Did you see that by the way?

01:02:31   we'll just hijack this topic. Did you see this? What's going on in the App Store?

01:02:35   Yeah, basically, Apple changed the name of the button to download free apps from the

01:02:44   App Store. It used to be called Free, and now it is called Get.

01:02:50   Did you see why? Jason Snell had a piece. Apparently there was an EU ruling about it.

01:02:56   Europe man way to go. We do have the right laws

01:03:01   basically, I think Google or some other company got like fined for

01:03:06   Advertising free apps as free where whereas people were actually spending a lot of money or in-app purchases

01:03:14   you know stuff like that. Right because like

01:03:16   Can't eat free but you can spend nine thousand dollars a month in in-app purchases. Yeah

01:03:22   Yeah, so I get why they're doing it. It's more transparent. I think get is a hilariously wrong word

01:03:28   I should I would have got with all or download

01:03:32   Yeah, I think I think someone on Twitter said that the Android Play Store says download which makes a lot more sense to me. But um

01:03:40   Anyway, it's just sort of a sidebar. So you reviewed

01:03:44   Todoist today. Yeah to do it to doest to do it. It's a mouthful

01:03:50   So, what's up with Todoist?

01:03:56   So basically I stopped using iCloud reminders and I started using Todoist because I got

01:04:05   a whole lot busier this year between new stuff for Mac stories and you know the real AFM

01:04:14   And you know, the side business that I run with my girlfriend at Icons and Coffee and

01:04:20   we started looking for a new apartment in Rome.

01:04:24   So new projects, new people, new stuff that I need to care about.

01:04:29   And I couldn't keep track of stuff in Reminders anymore.

01:04:33   I wanted cross-platform support.

01:04:36   I wanted collaboration features.

01:04:38   I wanted to be able to collaborate with people, to assign tasks, to attach notes, to do more

01:04:47   project management I guess than just lists of things in my Reminders account.

01:04:54   So I started looking for new apps, I looked at basically I think the most popular ones,

01:05:01   How many focus things, wonder lists, there's the other one called AppiGo To Do, like it's

01:05:10   the original to do app on the App Store, there's another one called To Do with the number,

01:05:18   which is also popular.

01:05:21   I try all these different apps and I went with To Do because it is for me the best,

01:05:30   met all of my requirements and it's a great service with great features that people in

01:05:39   our Apple/IOS/OS 10 circle, they don't usually mention it.

01:05:46   I just know that Myke Bardy likes it a lot.

01:05:52   He's the only one that I know that likes to do it.

01:05:56   So it intrigued me, you know, and so I started using it in late July and it's basically perfect

01:06:06   for me. It's got apps for any major platform, it was updated on iOS today with iOS 8 stuff

01:06:16   like an extension, it's got a widget, it's got iPhone 6 support, it's sync is crazy fast,

01:06:24   It happens in real time.

01:06:26   It's got all these collaboration features, so I can share projects with my girlfriend

01:06:30   and with the Mac Stories team.

01:06:33   It's got integration with IFTTT, email apps, it has an open API.

01:06:41   It's got all these integrations that I really like because it means that I can take my to-do

01:06:45   list anywhere.

01:06:47   But the best feature for me has been the filter stuff.

01:06:52   can build filters to create specific views just for you. And I talked about this in my

01:07:00   review which I really wanted to focus on how I remember two months ago, Steven, when I

01:07:07   posted all my USA to Apple reviews. Like in one day, yeah, it was like 20 articles. And

01:07:15   for me that was quite a struggle and a challenge because I spent basically two months writing

01:07:21   all the summer testing apps, submitting feedback, talking to developers, working with my team.

01:07:30   And then in the last few weeks it was quite the final stretch.

01:07:36   It was really difficult for me.

01:07:40   I spent entire days just not leaving the house to finish all these reviews and trying to

01:07:46   get it, to get them right, because I really care about the kind of review that I put up

01:07:52   on the site, because people trust me at this point for software recommendations and I feel

01:07:59   like I have a responsibility.

01:08:02   So I really invest a lot of time in that, and with Reminders I wasn't able to keep track

01:08:06   of anything anymore, especially when it comes to managing a team and assigning articles

01:08:12   and saying "hey, what's the status on this piece? Do I need to proofread the piece? Do

01:08:17   you need screenshots or do you need anything else?" There's a lot of steps involved, and

01:08:23   with filters in Todoist I can create all these custom views that let me see stuff based on

01:08:30   what I want to do. So for instance, I had a project with all my reviews, and each review

01:08:37   had labels or stuff, "Hey, this article needs to be edited" or "This article needs

01:08:46   screenshots" or "Maybe you need to just go ahead and publish this review". So I

01:08:52   could create all these filters that, like when I wanted to proofread an article, I had

01:08:58   a filter to look at articles that needed to be checked. So it lets me create these views

01:09:05   that when you have a lot of tasks and stuff going on it helps to break down your to-do

01:09:13   list in specific areas.

01:09:15   Right, you're kind of using those tags as a status, where in something like OmniFocus,

01:09:22   which is what I use, it would be like "write article" and that would be done, you have

01:09:26   a new task, edit article, that's done, send a copy editor, you're kind of changing the

01:09:33   status of the task as it works its way through the process and the filters let you kind of

01:09:39   see that on a macro level.

01:09:41   It seems pretty cool.

01:09:43   And I think that filters also are more intuitive than perspectives in OmniFocus to put together

01:09:49   because I never really quite understood all the settings and the perspective window in

01:09:57   how many focus, like it has menus that I don't fully understand, whereas filters

01:10:03   are just, you know, it's a syntax, you put together a bunch of

01:10:08   specific commands and it gives you a view and I guess it just works

01:10:14   better for me. I'm really a fan of the company, they have a

01:10:20   freemium model, you can pay an annual subscription to unlock more features,

01:10:25   which is what I do. They have integration with Dropbox so you can attach files

01:10:31   from Dropbox to a task as a note which is awesome when you're working

01:10:36   with another person. Basically this is to do is I need to say that I'm

01:10:45   usually extremely reluctant to switch to do apps because I really don't want to

01:10:53   talk about productivity. I feel like the best way to be productive is to actually be productive.

01:10:59   I don't want to, you know, it feels like a self-fulfilling, like, yeah, I want to talk

01:11:07   about productivity. Let's be productive. You know, it's useless in a way, but sure. Sometimes,

01:11:14   like I want to tell people about to do it. So I want to, I needed to switch and I needed

01:11:20   a system that helped me better, so I wanted to write this review, but I'm glad that it's

01:11:25   done, because all this meta talk about productivity is tiring.

01:11:34   No, for sure, and I enjoyed the review, I've played with Todoist in the past, for me the

01:11:41   filtering and the label stuff doesn't quite click with the way that I work, so, but if

01:11:47   did like it's a great solution I recommend it when people ask me hey I'm

01:11:52   looking for like a task management thing it's definitely on the list. I mean my

01:11:57   solution is not really all that exciting like OmniFocus is a wonderful app it's

01:12:01   sort of the default for a lot of people with a lot of projects which I have a

01:12:06   lot I mean you're busy I'm crazy busy like day job Relay FM 512 you know I'm

01:12:15   editor-in-chief of the suite set up now like I have a house with full of children like lots of things going on and

01:12:22   What I really like about OmniFocus is that I can drill down

01:12:25   But I struggle with it like I recently kind of burned OmniFocus to the ground

01:12:31   I actually took all my tasks out and put them like in another app for a while as I like rebuilt OmniFocus

01:12:37   and

01:12:38   for me kind of what I'm what I'm really working on is like

01:12:42   Being much more liberal with what becomes a project basically before projects were like in lists and omni focus and now I'm trying to be

01:12:49   like, you know, like if it's like two tasks or later like make it a project like

01:12:52   Giving things like a more fine-grained home and hopefully that it helps me scale a little bit better

01:12:58   So we'll see how that goes

01:13:02   But the the problem with omni focus

01:13:05   Right for me and Myke for instance is that?

01:13:08   We can't share tasks with each other with an omniFocus. OmniFocus is a one-person app. There's no sharing. There's no social stuff

01:13:16   And it and even if it did like to do this might work fine for Mac stories

01:13:21   That's you know, four three four five people but like my day job or a company of 20 people and like

01:13:27   We may use a professional like project management called teamwork to handle all of our projects

01:13:32   At rocket fuel because there's a bunch of us and like you have to move to a totally different world of task management at that point

01:13:39   so so like

01:13:42   For you, Federico

01:13:43   Like do you have your like personal stuff and like you're assigning things to your riders all within to do it

01:13:49   So is there like a separate app that you use for Mac story stuff and you can know any line?

01:13:53   No, no, I don't have the energy to keep multiple to do apps. Yeah

01:13:57   No, it's just to do it

01:14:00   Because it's nice because you can just assign a project you don't need to assign the entire like your entire Todoist account to

01:14:07   Collaboration stuff. It's just on a project basis, which is what I do. I have a Max Harris weekly project. That's the shared one

01:14:15   So yeah

01:14:17   Yeah, because they are like the regular

01:14:19   articles I don't always need to keep track, you know with with a task because the Max Harris weekly is a

01:14:27   repetitive project like each week is the same tasks, so I need to know the status. But with freelance writers

01:14:34   especially, I just assign them an article and I don't need to keep track each day, you know, just when they're done

01:14:41   I publish the article.

01:14:43   But yeah, I do keep my all my personal stuff in to do so I would have gone crazy without

01:14:49   personal stuff in there. And also stuff like

01:14:53   Exercise, you know like you need to get up and move because I need to be reminded because otherwise I forget about it

01:15:01   About it, you know

01:15:03   Yeah, it's a it's a great little not so little actually thing got three million users. So it's a great service. Yeah

01:15:11   Yeah, I'm sort of envious that you have like one place for all of it like that's kind of the

01:15:18   like

01:15:20   Because I have to do something to manage, you know, 20 people at work like I

01:15:25   Have to draw that line sometimes like what's in like the company task management like project management

01:15:31   System and I have to do the sign to me in there like all day across all sorts of different things, right?

01:15:37   And then I also have like what I put an omni focus for everything I do

01:15:40   Like at work that because what a lot of I do isn't in that team system because I'm on the project side

01:15:47   so like a lot of my taskers like dealing with clients and like

01:15:50   working with deadlines and it's not like design homepage you know like build

01:15:55   responsive site like it's not production work it's sort of like soft skill and so

01:15:59   it's my attention is always in between like what's an omni focus for me and

01:16:05   what's in teamwork where other people can see it and comment on it and I wish

01:16:10   it could be an all-in-one system but like the same is true even with relay

01:16:13   am I gonna use Wunderlist for like relay stuff because it is shareable like we

01:16:20   have shared lists in there and and there's not for us at least there

01:16:24   unfortunately there's not a single solution that we can all use like you

01:16:30   can so a little envious but um what can you do?

01:16:36   you can come work for me if you want. I don't think that would... but I will

01:16:41   make you write about iOS? No, no, I could be like the Mac guy. No, no, no, no, that's

01:16:47   not fun at all. It's in your URL. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, to your point about

01:16:54   talking about like productivity, like when I, so like when I spent like the couple of

01:17:03   weeks, I kind of like really rethinking how my OmniFocus is organized. Like it's very

01:17:07   easy in all of these systems to like tinker right like well like what if I set

01:17:12   my list up this way or what if I set up my context that way and you can spend

01:17:18   time like cleaning house in your task management system without ever actually

01:17:23   doing any work which is the point of the system itself and so it's definitely I

01:17:28   got I liked in your review talking about like to do this doesn't really let you

01:17:32   tinker all that much like they have some pretty like hard and fast rules about

01:17:35   how things work. I think that's really good. You know, OmniFocus is very powerful, but

01:17:39   with that comes some complexity. Now, an OmniFocus, the secret is you can just ignore it. Like

01:17:45   I do not use context. It makes no sense to me to like look at my tasks by what's available

01:17:50   at a certain location or what I can do if I'm on a certain device. So I do not use context

01:17:56   whatsoever. And that really used to frustrate me in dealing with OmniFocus. I was like,

01:18:02   well I just don't look at it, just ignore it, take it out of the sidebar, it doesn't

01:18:05   exist and that's helped but that tinkering that always like plugging away the system

01:18:11   and the way it works is definitely a pain point I think for a lot of people.

01:18:16   Yeah in Todoist you cannot actually modify stuff like oh I want to change icons, I want

01:18:25   to change themes, I want to write Apple scripts, you cannot do this stuff.

01:18:33   And for me, I can access the API, I actually wrote a Python isa script a while ago, but

01:18:40   since I got the IS8 beta, I stopped using the URLs key in the API, I just don't care,

01:18:46   I want to use the app and I want to get stuff done.

01:18:50   Because this year that I got my own place, I'm finding that there's a certain satisfaction

01:18:59   to always clean your house, even when you don't need to, because it makes you feel good

01:19:04   when you see everything shining and polished.

01:19:08   Even when you just maybe you cleaned a few hours ago, you just want to clean again because

01:19:14   it feels good, it feels nice.

01:19:15   Feel free to come hang out at my house anytime.

01:19:17   In To-Do-It you don't need to clean anything, you know?

01:19:22   And that's really helpful, especially if you're the kind of guy who wants to find pleasure

01:19:27   in always be optimizing your productivity.

01:19:31   You know?

01:19:32   It's just do this and don't mess with us because we don't care kind of mentality in To-Do-It

01:19:37   and I really like it.

01:19:39   So yeah, gets my seal of approval, which I haven't given out in a long time.

01:19:46   But this time that's it, you know, I still have some of those I should put thanks. Thanks. I

01:19:52   Know that there's a there's my name attached to objects around the globe, which is nice. Yeah

01:20:00   Yeah, yeah, we gave a good bit out

01:20:03   WWDC that they won't ever be for sale. You have to be given one. I don't know if I should be creeped out or

01:20:09   Excited about it. I'm more excited. Honestly

01:20:14   It is kind of weird when you think about it. There's a sticker with "mitichi" which doesn't mean anything

01:20:20   You know, you don't want to know where I've put them

01:20:23   Yeah, I used to have one on my laptop. I don't have one on my laptop anymore

01:20:28   You know who's really good with stickers?

01:20:31   Matt Alexander. No, our deceased friend

01:20:40   I meant to say absent, absent friend.

01:20:43   Absent, absent from life.

01:20:45   Sorry, sorry for the long adjective, Myke.

01:20:48   It's not my fault.

01:20:51   Cool.

01:20:52   Yeah, productivity, I think it's an ongoing issue for those of us who have multiple areas

01:21:03   of responsibility.

01:21:04   Like that's one thing that you read a lot about with GTD and like, and not even like,

01:21:10   like neither of us really hardcore followed GTD.

01:21:14   Like context is a big part of that.

01:21:16   But like the thought of like, what areas of responsibility do I have?

01:21:20   And things actually calls them areas of responsibility.

01:21:24   But you know, for me, it's, you know, I've got home, I've got my day job, I have relay,

01:21:29   my business.

01:21:30   512 and like these are like areas like sort of big pools of tasks and to-dos and responsibilities

01:21:39   and like most of my life falls into those categories and it it seems like for those

01:21:48   of us with a too many of those that you you can't stay with something like iCloud iCloud

01:21:54   reminders like things like getting clear are great but like it's not powerful enough if you

01:21:59   you really get into dealing with a lot of things that could be in a lot of different

01:22:03   states and interlink and they just fall down.

01:22:07   Absolutely, yeah.

01:22:09   I mean it's called reminders, you know, it's not called project or...

01:22:13   Right, yeah, yeah.

01:22:15   But, yeah.

01:22:16   It's a simple app.

01:22:17   And you can't blame Apple for that, like, all, like, they have a notes app that's fine,

01:22:21   but Evernote does a lot more.

01:22:23   Like it's, they, they aim for the lowest common denominator with their built-in software.

01:22:29   I think that's fine because it leaves a lot of room in the market for apps like Todoist

01:22:35   or OmniFocus or things or whatever to take, you know, like if you just need reminders,

01:22:42   hey that's great, we have it built in, but if you need more there's a bunch of options

01:22:45   for you.

01:22:46   And that's like sort of the beauty of the app store, right?

01:22:48   That there are so many options for these things.

01:22:51   Like Todoist isn't for me, but it is for you.

01:22:53   And I like OmniFocus, but you don't.

01:22:56   You don't use it daily.

01:22:57   it's that flexibility and the options the apps will give us or what make iOS so powerful.

01:23:04   I think it's great.

01:23:05   It's good stuff.

01:23:06   I agree, Stephen.

01:23:07   Did you get choked up there when I said iOS was powerful?

01:23:10   I kind of felt you.

01:23:11   Kind of, yeah.

01:23:12   Kind of get caught in the back of your throat?

01:23:15   Yeah, it's like, "Oh my God, I can't believe it."

01:23:19   We should wrap up with that, I think.

01:23:22   Can I give people instructions?

01:23:25   Like for life?

01:23:26   No, or like do the thing the end of the show. Yeah take do it. Okay, so

01:23:32   This is new to me

01:23:35   so if you if you want to follow us and find us at

01:23:38   underscore connected FM on Twitter

01:23:41   You can find the show notes at relay dot FM slash connected slash 14 and the people in this episode are

01:23:48   Steven is is mhm on Twitter and

01:23:53   Myself I am vitti chivi it it I see I am Twitter

01:23:57   Yeah

01:23:59   Yeah, there's the the other guy who's out drinking and listening to Jack White is

01:24:05   Myke is at I Myke with why?

01:24:09   on Twitter

01:24:11   Is a nice guy I guess he's from the is from a British island and

01:24:16   yeah, he's he's a gentleman and

01:24:20   And we want to thank our sponsors for the show.

01:24:23   Linda, Hover and Smile.

01:24:25   Am I right, Stephen?

01:24:27   Yes.

01:24:28   Those are awesome sponsors.

01:24:29   So go check them out and please say that we brought you to the sponsors because they like

01:24:37   it and because we like it.

01:24:40   We like to recommend products to people.

01:24:43   What else should I tell people, Stephen?

01:24:45   I don't know.

01:24:46   Our websites.

01:24:47   Our websites.

01:24:48   We do have a website, you know?

01:24:50   For instance, I write for a living at MykeStories.net.

01:24:55   I write about stuff, I guess.

01:24:57   Like Apple stuff.

01:24:59   And you also write about Apple stuff, but more also about web stuff at 512pixels.net.

01:25:05   And Myke doesn't have a website quite yet.

01:25:08   He has MykeHurley.net.

01:25:10   I think it's just his face.

01:25:12   Oh!

01:25:13   I didn't even follow up.

01:25:14   Last week we were talking about how easy it is to do a personal landing page on

01:25:19   Squarespace and I did that so I have one of those now

01:25:24   the end

01:25:26   Nice. So yeah, please go check out our show notes

01:25:31   You can read the show notes in your podcast client of choice if you want you can see our website

01:25:36   You can go to the sponsors. You can follow it. Basically you can like start us online

01:25:41   Please don't do so, but just be a nice person

01:25:44   on the internet. So thanks everybody for listening to this week's episode. Say goodbye, Steven!

01:25:53   Adios! Arrivederci!

01:25:55   [BLANK_AUDIO]