#201: On Expedition.
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Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective. Developing Perspective is a
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podcast discussing news of note, and iOS development, Apple, and the like. I'm your
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host, David Smith. I'm an independent iOS developer based in Herndon, Virginia. This
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is show number 201. Today is Friday, October 31st. Developing Perspective is
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never longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started. All right, so today what I'm
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going to be doing is talking through some of the little exploratory
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expeditions I've been on recently.
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And the role in which these types of things
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are probably important are things
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that we need to be thinking about as developers.
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And specifically, what I've been doing
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is spending the last-- I guess it's about the last month
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or so-- trying very hard to make sure
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that I am ready for when the Apple Watch SDK appears
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sometime next month, and moreover,
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be ready for when the actual Apple Watch appears
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sometime next year.
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And first, it's probably fair to say, just a quick note
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about my background.
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So when I came to iPhone development,
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I was coming from a place that I was fairly confident
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about that type of development.
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My first development effort was on the Palm,
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and then I did work on Windows Mobile.
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And so when I came to iOS, there was a certain experience
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that I'd had with that type of development,
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with that size of development, with that type of development.
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And so when I dove into it, I kind of knew what I was doing.
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When I look at something like the Apple Watch,
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it is very different, both in terms of interface,
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as well as in capability and attachment to the user.
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And so it is something that I'm a little bit-- apprehensive
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is probably the wrong word.
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But it's in that vein where I don't necessarily
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feel like I have a great idea about what a user would want
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to be able to do and how in which the manner I
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by which they would want to be able to then do that.
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And so I've been trying to think about ways
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that I could get a head start on this,
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because I want to have this as nailed down as I possibly
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can before I dive in, rather than trying
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to start from ground zero when Apple comes out with WatchKit
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or when I get my hands first on a device next year.
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And so what I've been doing is playing around
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with other devices.
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And so this is this process that I've been going through.
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And I think it's some interesting things
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I've learned, and also just to kind of share that experience more generally.
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So the first thing I did was I got a Jawbone Up24.
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So this is focusing, this is a little device, it's a little bracelet, there's probably a
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fancy term for the type of it is, but it's a thing I wear on my wrist, and it was basically
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an activity tracker.
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So I've written one of these called Pedometer++ that uses the M7 chip and now M8 chip on your
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your iPhone, taking a number of steps you've taken,
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number of floors you've climbed and descended,
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that kind of thing.
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And so I'm familiar with this type of data collection
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and kind of vaguely what I could do with it.
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But what was interesting is when you start to have a device that
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is always on you, some kind of wearable,
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it allows a different level of insight
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into your actual activity.
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Because when you wear a device essentially 24 hours a day,
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seven days a week, you get a much clearer and more complete picture of what you're doing.
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And it's been kind of interesting to have something like that on my wrist. And I started
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to see some of the things that I think are a bit lacking in that device, like not having
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an actual interface to really show you and interact with you, and having to rely on an
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app running on the phone is actually kind of awkward. So I'm sure they do it for battery
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life reasons and simplicity and durability reasons, but the F24 band doesn't even really
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doesn't show you anything on it.
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It just is a data collector.
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And so that was interesting.
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And it's an experience that I thought was really cool.
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And especially when I started to get into something
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that I'm not actually sure if Apple Watch is going
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to be able to do based on what they've been talking about.
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But it gave me a start to get into sleep tracking.
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Now, sleep tracking was something that I didn't really
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have much of a sense of how useful it would actually
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be ahead of time.
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But when I started using it-- so this
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is the kind of a thing where you sit down at night,
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You push a button on the band, and it goes into sleep mode.
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And in sleep mode, it kind of tracks how you sleep.
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And it's really actually interesting and compelling
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to have a sense of how well did I actually sleep objectively
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I have a couple of young kids, so sleep isn't always
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necessarily something that I have a lot of.
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But it's nice to actually be able to have
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an objective measure where I'm like, man, I'm tired today.
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Why am I tired?
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And I can look and say, was it because I
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didn't sleep well last night?
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And if it is, great.
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And if it isn't, then, hmm, is there something else going on,
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some other choice I've made with nutrition or activity
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or something that is causing this lack of energy?
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And so it's been actually kind of really interesting to have.
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And so that's something I hope, actually,
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that Apple can work into the Apple Watch.
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I'm sure of everything I hear, like the difficulty
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is going to be in battery life.
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And if it has to charge overnight,
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it gets hard to measure sleep.
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But if there's any way they can do that,
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Or if I can work out a way to, you know, it's great to charge a device, for example, when
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I'm sitting at my desk at work because I'm not doing anything, so an activity tracker
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isn't missing any data.
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But that was something that I found that was really interesting, and I'm kind of glad that
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I've had that experience.
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So then yesterday, for me anyway, it kind of came out of nowhere.
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But yesterday, Microsoft announced their Microsoft Band, they call it, which is kind of awful
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as a name, band. What are you wearing there? A band. But anyway, they came up with this
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band. And the band is actually really kind of cool. So I've had it for about a day now.
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And so this is kind of an interesting device because it is much, much closer to an Apple
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Watch than it is to just like a Fitbit or Jawbone Up or one of these fitness trackers.
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It's kind of in that middle ground where it interacts with your iPhone to do a bunch of
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stuff like notifications, so when I get a text message, my wrist buzzes, and I can take
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a look at that notification, as well as also doing all the other tracking things.
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So it tracks your sleep, it tracks your activity level, it has a heart rate monitor built in
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and a GPS receiver built into it, so it can track a lot of what you're doing physically
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during the day.
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And that has been kind of cool.
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So like I said, I only had it for about a day, but having just a day with this device
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has made me 10 times, 20 times more excited about Apple Watch.
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And what a device like this that is actually deeply integrated
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into iOS would be capable of.
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Because the interaction that the Microsoft band can do and run
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at Pebble or any of these other devices,
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they are severely limited in terms
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of the degree to which you can actually do things.
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It can tell you stuff, but it can't really act upon it.
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So I get a text message and it pops up,
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But it's just you piggybacking on top
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of the normal, of the general Bluetooth notification
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APIs and things that I don't really know anything about.
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But as best I understand, there's
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a bunch of standard Bluetooth operations
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that a phone can make available to devices it's connected to.
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And so that's kind of cool, but it's also not really useful.
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I get a text message.
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I can't just do the thing where I respond back and send
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Or I get a notification.
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I can't necessarily interact with that,
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which is an alternative, is the kind of thing
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that I believe Apple Watch is going to allow in spades.
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Because the OS and the wearable devices attached to it
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are going to be so tightly connected
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that all these things now will now finally be possible.
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So that's really exciting.
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Having a sense of this is kind of cool.
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And it's interesting in really odd ways.
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So one of the things that I found that was perhaps
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one of the most unexpected benefits that has kind of really
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got me excited is-- so this actually
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started with when I first got the Jawbone up tracker,
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and now even more so with this Microsoft Band,
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is the degree to which I can untether myself from my phone.
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So ever since I got a pedometer plus plus,
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I've had this sense that in order for it to track my day,
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I need to have my phone on me all the time, which in all
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honesty, I probably did anyway.
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But a lot of times, I've been finding recently anyway
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that it would be good for me to disconnect a bit from my internet life, whatever you
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want to call it.
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Being less connected is probably a good thing.
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It's probably something that would be a good thing for me.
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And so it becomes kind of odd and awkward when, in order for me to get that benefit,
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in order for me to track my steps, in order for me to see how active I was in a day, I
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have to then have my phone with me and always have that readily available.
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And so what I noticed was happening
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is when I first got my up end is that I was finally
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able to kind of leave my phone sitting somewhere.
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I could leave it on the counter and not have this feeling
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like, oh no, I'm missing these steps.
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Because when you get into this kind of a thing,
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it's kind of fun.
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And in some ways, it's a little insidious.
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Because you're suddenly motivated to make sure
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that you hit your goal every day.
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There's so many-- there's a really nice positive feedback
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loop that can be created.
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And so it's really cool when you do hit your goals.
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So you want to have your phone with you all the time
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to measure it.
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But if you have one of these devices, you don't need that.
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Your steps are always being counted
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and they loop back into your device, which
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is really kind of cool.
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And then even moreover, as I got this band, which
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is something that sends you notifications when things
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are happening on your phone, one thing that I wasn't expecting
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is that it completely eliminates, or at least
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strongly reduces, that kind of latent urge
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that if you're anything like me, you'll
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feel about your phone, where if I haven't looked
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at my phone in, I don't know, half an hour, I'll start to get this kind of itch that it's
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like, "Hmm, have I missed something? Did something happen? And I don't know. Do I need to check
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it? Do I need to check it?" Which is probably a sign of some kind of a little bit of a problematic
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mindset situation. But I don't think I'm alone in this. I know from a lot of people that
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you kind of have this feeling that you always need to know if there's something on your
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lock screen. You make sure you're always aware of what's going on. And the funny thing is,
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when you have a device on your wrist that will tell you when something happened that's
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important, you don't worry about it quite as much. Like, I can now essentially leave
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my phone on silent, away in a drawer, as long as it's within Bluetooth range, and I know
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that I won't miss anything because I'm not going to miss my wrist going bzz, bzz. You
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Like if one of my servers has an issue
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and I get an outage notice or something,
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I'm going to know about it.
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I don't have to worry about missing it.
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In the same way, if someone sends me a text message,
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I don't have that feeling of like, oh, am I going to hear it?
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If I put my phone over there, is it going to be loud enough?
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All those things go away.
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And it's really cool.
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So this is just kind of-- I don't
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know how useful this is necessarily for someone else,
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because a lot of these things you just need to experience.
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But I would say that it is something
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found to be more compelling and more useful than I necessarily would have initially guessed
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when I started out in this process in terms of getting ready for the Apple Watch.
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I think this, I'm much more excited. I used to hear Mike Hurley talking about how much
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he loved his Pebble, which I will say is a device that I thought about getting, but seemed
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a little one step too far back in terms of where this technology is advancing to. And
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so I never quite pulled the trigger. And then now that this device has come out, the band,
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And more so, I feel like it has even more capability
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with all kinds of other little sensors and things
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that are much more compelling.
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But I remember him saying how it changed how
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he interacted with his phone.
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And I can now start to see the glimmers of this.
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And so now I'm feeling pretty excited to next month
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be diving into working on the QuatchKit apps.
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And I don't really know what that's going to look like.
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There's some speculation about exactly how much
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is going to be open to us initially,
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whether we're going to actually be able to build full scale
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native apps, if it's just going to be kind of an extension
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And then maybe at WWDC next year, they open it up more.
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We'll have to see.
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But at this point, when I look at it,
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I'm very excited about what this could do.
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And I really-- and especially even-- like,
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I know some of the-- just from the things
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that I've seen about Apple Watch and the people who have seen it
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who I've talked to, I think Apple is really kind of hitting
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There's a few things they're going
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to have to get right in terms of battery life
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and actual usability and so on.
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I think they're heading very much in the right direction
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there, as well as other companies, too.
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It's a really fun, competitive environment
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that is pretty exciting to be a part of.
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And so now I've got my list.
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I've got a list, an omni-focus of app ideas,
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whether that's extensions to my existing apps, some of which
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are kind of obvious, as well as a whole bunch of other apps
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that I think would be kind of cool,
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things that I've started to think about,
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where if I have a device on my wrist that
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has a connection to my phone, what would I want it to do?
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And the list is getting long.
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And in some ways, it's probably a good thing
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that I'm kind of known for being prolific,
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because I may actually be able to address a lot of those
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and to be able to really be diving in to it.
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And I'm kind of clearing my decks to do that.
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Some of the projects that I've been working on otherwise
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are kind of probably getting a little bit wound down.
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So I can focus on this next month
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or whenever when Watch Kid comes out,
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because it's interesting as the way I make my living.
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And we actually had an interesting example this week
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where James Thompson, the maker of Peacock,
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had a weird thing where Apple came in, pulled his app,
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or told him he had to fundamentally change it
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and how much of a beat down that was.
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And then thankfully, Apple relented and great.
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But as somebody who makes my living essentially
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riding the coattails of a large corporation, in this case,
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Apple, that's how I make my living.
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I need to be very careful and understanding that I
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am riding their coattails.
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And so if they're heading in a direction,
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I need to make sure I'm heading in that direction too.
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And whether or not Apple Watch is the best tracker out there,
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the best wearable, or whatever, it only sort of matters to me.
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What matters is that do I think that I
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can continue to make a good living working
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on this platform?
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And so far I have been.
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Apple Watch, I think, will be the next step in that.
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And so I'm doing everything I can
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to make sure that I'm ready and on board with that.
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And I'd encourage you, if that's something
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that you're interested in, is to be doing the same,
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to making sure that you're kind of immersing yourself
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into this because Apple is clearly spending a lot of time and energy and effort and marketing
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capital on making this project a success.
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And so I think there will be a lot of coattails to ride.
00:14:53
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All right, that's it for today's show.
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If you have any questions, comments, concerns, complaints, I'm @ DavidSmith on Twitter.
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Have a great weekend.