Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:00:03 ◼   ► Hello, and welcome to Connected, episode 350.

00:00:13 ◼   ► It's made possible this week by our sponsors, Pingdom, Smile,

00:00:18 ◼   ► and Bombas.

00:00:19 ◼   ► My name is Stephen Hackett, and I'm joined by Mr. Federico

00:00:22 ◼   ► Viticci.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Hello, Stephen Hackett.

00:00:24 ◼   ► How are you?

00:00:25 ◼   ► I'm good, Federico.

00:00:26 ◼   ► How are you today?

00:00:28 ◼   ► I am fantastic.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Yes, thank you.

00:00:30 ◼   ► Good.

00:00:31 ◼   ► We're also joined by Myke Hurley.

00:00:33 ◼   ► Hello.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Hello.

00:00:35 ◼   ► I went, we knew we had episode 350 coming up.

00:00:39 ◼   ► We don't have anything, a particular plan for it, except for the

00:00:42 ◼   ► fact that it's just an episode.

00:00:43 ◼   ► But there was one thing that, uh, made me think a couple of days ago,

00:00:48 ◼   ► I was thinking, Oh, this must be around the kind of time that we started

00:00:52 ◼   ► the prompt together, because I remember me and Steven had a podcast before

00:00:55 ◼   ► prompt called the 512 podcast which was very imaginatively named and I remember

00:01:01 ◼   ► we recorded our final episode at WWDC together I think our first WWDC together

00:01:08 ◼   ► 2013 and I remember that the next week after that we were recording episode one

00:01:15 ◼   ► of the prompt and so it made me think to go back and take a look and see when was

00:01:21 ◼   ► that and it turns out that we have now since, well in three days time, so on June 19th we

00:01:29 ◼   ► have been working together as a trio for eight years.

00:01:33 ◼   ► Eight years.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Eight years.

00:01:35 ◼   ► Wow.

00:01:36 ◼   ► People have been putting up with us for eight years.

00:01:38 ◼   ► Eight whole years.

00:01:39 ◼   ► Happy anniversary, gentlemen.

00:01:41 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:01:42 ◼   ► And I know that, Steven, you're the anniversary guy.

00:01:47 ◼   ► What does it mean in terms of like...

00:01:48 ◼   ► Yeah, you've had the most of them.

00:01:50 ◼   ► I looked it up. So this is what I found on the internet

00:01:54 ◼   ► traditionally bronze or pottery is

00:01:57 ◼   ► What you would get if you were celebrating your eighth wedding anniversary

00:02:02 ◼   ► But in more modern times linens and lace are also associated with the eighth anniversary

00:02:08 ◼   ► They are four incredibly different things. Yeah, it's like bronze is nice potteries like what your kid makes an art camp

00:02:14 ◼   ► Linens or something lacy. I want something lacy Oh

00:02:19 ◼   ► Nah. Nah. Stephen.

00:02:23 ◼   ► It's that kind of anniversary, is it?

00:02:26 ◼   ► Look, just because you're recording in the bedroom doesn't mean you gotta get into that kind of mood.

00:02:30 ◼   ► But I just, I want the bronze. I just want something bronze. I think bronze is cool.

00:02:36 ◼   ► I mean, bronze is bronze, isn't it?

00:02:38 ◼   ► But bronze isn't like an element. Bronze is an alloy.

00:02:41 ◼   ► It's not like you have a bronze mine. Like a gold mine, you know?

00:02:47 ◼   ► Oh.

00:02:47 ◼   ► You make bronze.

00:02:48 ◼   ► Oh, it's basically, it's like not pure.

00:02:52 ◼   ► So, Wikipedia tells me 12 to 12.5% tin

00:02:57 ◼   ► and often with the addition of other metals

00:03:00 ◼   ► such as aluminium, manganese, nickel or zinc.

00:03:03 ◼   ► Bronze.

00:03:04 ◼   ► Bronze.

00:03:05 ◼   ► It's also a very good word.

00:03:07 ◼   ► Like it's a satisfying word to say bronze.

00:03:09 ◼   ► Is there a different word in Italian?

00:03:11 ◼   ► Bronzo.

00:03:13 ◼   ► It's very similar.

00:03:14 ◼   ► Bronzo.

00:03:16 ◼   ► That's like a good nickname.

00:03:17 ◼   ► If I ever... isn't Bronze-Ung a Pokémon? Yes it is.

00:03:21 ◼   ► Probably everything is a Pokémon.

00:03:24 ◼   ► Yeah, if I were to compete, like in the Olympics, I would actually prefer the Bronze medal.

00:03:29 ◼   ► You know, the gold and silver ones, like yeah, sure.

00:03:33 ◼   ► Like you can get like a gold bracelet and a silver bracelet and it's fine, but a Bronze...

00:03:37 ◼   ► Like have you ever bought anything Bronze? No?

00:03:42 ◼   ► I don't know if I would prefer the Bronze medal to the gold medal.

00:03:45 ◼   ► I think I would prefer the gold medal, but I would prefer the bronze medal to the silver

00:03:49 ◼   ► medal because silver medal, you were so close to gold, right?

00:03:54 ◼   ► At least with the bronze medal, you can be like, all right, I'm still in this.

00:03:58 ◼   ► You're best of the rest.

00:03:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:00 ◼   ► So anyway, eight years.

00:04:01 ◼   ► Congrats.

00:04:02 ◼   ► Happy anniversary, gents.

00:04:03 ◼   ► Well done.

00:04:04 ◼   ► Yeah, we're doing good.

00:04:05 ◼   ► We did it.

00:04:07 ◼   ► We do have some other follow up we need to take care of.

00:04:12 ◼   ► I want to point people to an episode of Mac power users that we did last week episode 592

00:04:17 ◼   ► David and I were joined by someone from Apple to talk about shortcuts for Mac and

00:04:23 ◼   ► I was really encouraged by this interview, you know

00:04:26 ◼   ► We spoke some on this show about it to Apple's done a really good job at bringing shortcuts over to the Mac

00:04:32 ◼   ► but still honoring things like Apple script and shell scripting things that people are used to on the Mac and

00:04:38 ◼   ► And I mean, I just left it so excited about this

00:04:41 ◼   ► and playing with it on Mac OS Monterey has been really fun,

00:04:44 ◼   ► even though it's dev beta one, so it's a little rough.

00:04:47 ◼   ► It's really promising to me that Apple brought this over

00:04:52 ◼   ► from the iPhone and iPad, but in a way that is very Mac-like

00:04:56 ◼   ► and they didn't have to do that, right?

00:04:58 ◼   ► They didn't have to make it where AppKit apps

00:05:01 ◼   ► could interact with shortcuts.

00:05:04 ◼   ► They could have drawn the line at Catalyst, but they didn't.

00:05:07 ◼   ► And we've seen over the last couple of days,

00:05:09 ◼   ► several Mac developers talking about their plans to incorporate with shortcuts.

00:05:13 ◼   ► I think I saw a pixel made her pro the other day and there've been a few others.

00:05:17 ◼   ► So I think this is, this has a very bright future. And, um,

00:05:22 ◼   ► that interview is really interesting. So if you haven't heard in pre five 92,

00:05:26 ◼   ► go check it out.

00:05:27 ◼   ► Yeah, no people should go and listen to it. Uh,

00:05:29 ◼   ► Vivek was I thought surprisingly open and, um,

00:05:35 ◼   ► requesting feedback in a way that I feel like you don't typically hear, uh,

00:05:40 ◼   ► Apple people say this. It, there was like,

00:05:44 ◼   ► it really felt like they were aware of the community that they,

00:05:47 ◼   ► he was aware of the community he was talking to and wanting to be a part of it.

00:05:51 ◼   ► You know? And so I thought it was really great.

00:05:53 ◼   ► And it's two really different communities, right?

00:05:56 ◼   ► You have Federico's army of shortcuts nerds,

00:05:59 ◼   ► and then you have people who have done Apple scripts since 1996, right?

00:06:03 ◼   ► and you're trying to merge those into one application.

00:06:07 ◼   ► And I think they did it.

00:06:08 ◼   ► - I think what Steven's saying is,

00:06:11 ◼   ► shortcuts of children and automator is for old people.

00:06:16 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure that's what he said.

00:06:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, sure. - Right?

00:06:20 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure that's what he said.

00:06:21 ◼   ► - Pretty sure.

00:06:22 ◼   ► Federico, you discovered my side business.

00:06:24 ◼   ► - We were driving, as I was saying a few minutes ago,

00:06:29 ◼   ► on the pre-show for connected pro members.

00:06:32 ◼   ► So if you missed that, go sign up.

00:06:34 ◼   ► Myke, where can people sign up for Connected Pro?

00:06:37 ◼   ► - Getconnectedpro.co.

00:06:39 ◼   ► - Perfect.

00:06:40 ◼   ► We were driving back from the beach house

00:06:41 ◼   ► and I saw this truck in front of me

00:06:44 ◼   ► and I immediately recognized something

00:06:48 ◼   ► that I thought was just perfect.

00:06:50 ◼   ► And I told Sylvia, grab your phone, take a picture.

00:06:52 ◼   ► I'm gonna slow down.

00:06:53 ◼   ► She was like, why, what's going on?

00:06:55 ◼   ► And we were on the highway,

00:06:56 ◼   ► so I needed to slow down and pull to the right.

00:06:58 ◼   ► It was a whole thing.

00:06:59 ◼   ► I was like, "We need to take a picture of this truck."

00:07:02 ◼   ► And she asked why, and I said, "For connected."

00:07:06 ◼   ► And I saw you, Steven, driving this truck across Italy.

00:07:10 ◼   ► This is your DAC track, right?

00:07:13 ◼   ► It says DAC. There's an Apple logo with a Q inside of it.

00:07:18 ◼   ► So I assume you are the QuickTime/DAC

00:07:22 ◼   ► -Track driver person in your spare time. -It makes sense that they would go together.

00:07:26 ◼   ► -Right? -Really.

00:07:27 ◼   ► I mean, obviously, it means that you can listen to lossless music using Apple QuickTime and

00:07:35 ◼   ► a DAC.

00:07:36 ◼   ► And you're transporting these Apple DACs in Italy, right, with a truck.

00:07:42 ◼   ► That is also very dirty.

00:07:44 ◼   ► It was a very dirty truck that you were driving in Italy, and I thought that was very funny,

00:07:50 ◼   ► and I took a picture.

00:07:51 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, people may think I sound a little bit different this week.

00:07:55 ◼   ► It's not that I'm recording in my bedroom because there's construction outside, but

00:07:59 ◼   ► it's that I'm at a truck stop in northern Italy trying to get a show done.

00:08:04 ◼   ► Northern? Northern? Why northern Italy?

00:08:06 ◼   ► I don't know. I feel like, you know.

00:08:07 ◼   ► Do you think I live in northern Italy?

00:08:09 ◼   ► Well, no, but you saw the truck a few days ago and I'm still working.

00:08:12 ◼   ► Oh, you're driving. Right, right. You're now in northern Italy, I'm sure.

00:08:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:17 ◼   ► These are the details that make a story believable.

00:08:19 ◼   ► Right, right. Unlike what we said in the pre-show.

00:08:22 ◼   ► The snake person, get connected pro.co.

00:08:24 ◼   ► Yes.

00:08:25 ◼   ► What I would, there's a little detail that I appreciate.

00:08:29 ◼   ► I chose two details I appreciate in these images.

00:08:31 ◼   ► Oh, go on, go on.

00:08:32 ◼   ► Let's see if you picked out what I did.

00:08:35 ◼   ► The second one is funny to me because you can clearly see it, Sylvia, taking the photo

00:08:38 ◼   ► because you can see you're in the wing mirror.

00:08:40 ◼   ► The first one is you blanked out the license plate.

00:08:43 ◼   ► Thank you, Michael.

00:08:44 ◼   ► I appreciate that you noticed these things.

00:08:48 ◼   ► I appreciate that.

00:08:49 ◼   ► You don't want to give all of Steven's info away.

00:08:51 ◼   ► That's right.

00:08:52 ◼   ► able to track his truck. I used this excellent app for IOS called Unnotable.

00:08:56 ◼   ► Oh so good. It is really good. It's such a great app I use it all the time.

00:09:00 ◼   ► And it has an excellent photos extension which so few apps do. Yep that's what I used.

00:09:05 ◼   ► Yeah I never opened the app I just do it right in photos. Great. While we're

00:09:10 ◼   ► on Stephen related follow-up this Sunday is Hackett day. Mm-hmm.

00:09:14 ◼   ► Can you remind us what Hackett day is? It got very confusing. I've forgotten but

00:09:20 ◼   ► But it's in my calendar.

00:09:24 ◼   ► I think it's something to do with the Hackett number, right?

00:09:26 ◼   ► It is.

00:09:27 ◼   ► So I'm connected to 91, the Scrooge McDuck of computers.

00:09:33 ◼   ► We revealed the Hackett number, which is the computer per capita figure for my household.

00:09:39 ◼   ► That number is now, speaking of James Thompson in the pre-show, that is now a fixture of

00:09:46 ◼   ► Peacock it's a constant there and it's celebrated on June 20th. But why? For some reason.

00:09:57 ◼   ► What's the Hackett number? What is the Hackett number? Maybe that's it. Oh, because the Hackett

00:10:02 ◼   ► number, computers per capita, as it was set was 20.6. So that's it. 20th of June. June

00:10:09 ◼   ► 20th, yep. There you go. That's why. I was trying to open Peacock on my phone. Thank

00:10:13 ◼   ► I would like to thank Justin Hamilton in the Discord for not only providing that information,

00:10:20 ◼   ► but also the "What is my Hackett number" calculator, which I'll put in the show notes.

00:10:25 ◼   ► That's where I got it from.

00:10:27 ◼   ► Do you guys ever think what it would be like, and I don't know why my brain thinks of these things,

00:10:34 ◼   ► maybe just because you mentioned the date and the calendar,

00:10:37 ◼   ► do you ever think what it would be like to design a new calendar?

00:10:42 ◼   ► like to completely change the way the time is tracked globally.

00:10:47 ◼   ► I mean, I have some ideas if you want.

00:10:50 ◼   ► Why are we using the current... like isn't it weird that we're using this system, right?

00:10:55 ◼   ► At least in some... like I would say the majority of the Western world has adopted this system.

00:11:01 ◼   ► And it's got all kinds of weird things about it. Like leap years, for example.

00:11:08 ◼   ► Like, I don't know, it seems very inefficient and I wonder if, like, I kind of want to,

00:11:14 ◼   ► I'm kind of, I'm fascinated by this topic and I kind of wonder if, like, has anyone

00:11:19 ◼   ► ever theorized what a completely new calendar would look like?

00:11:23 ◼   ► I...

00:11:24 ◼   ► Like, why do we have months?

00:11:26 ◼   ► I know I've come across stuff like this before.

00:11:28 ◼   ► Like, I'm sure people have done it.

00:11:30 ◼   ► I can tell you one of my initial proposals, if you would like to start, it's to completely

00:11:36 ◼   ► abolish time zones.

00:11:38 ◼   ► Oh, oh, okay.

00:11:40 ◼   ► There's one time.

00:11:42 ◼   ► One time?

00:11:43 ◼   ► One true time.

00:11:44 ◼   ► There's just one time.

00:11:47 ◼   ► So when it's six o'clock in London,

00:11:49 ◼   ► it's six o'clock in Rome.

00:11:50 ◼   ► Oh, people are sharing all kinds of links in the report.

00:11:56 ◼   ► What I will say is if you wanna find this stuff,

00:11:58 ◼   ► go find it on your own.

00:11:59 ◼   ► I'm worried about some of the places

00:12:01 ◼   ► that you could end up getting to

00:12:03 ◼   ► by looking at information of people

00:12:04 ◼   ► trying to create their own calendars.

00:12:06 ◼   ► But yeah, I would like to completely abolish time zones

00:12:09 ◼   ► and everybody just lives by one time.

00:12:11 ◼   ► And you just understand what it means contextually

00:12:14 ◼   ► for where you are in the world.

00:12:16 ◼   ► But like, why does a second last a second?

00:12:20 ◼   ► Like, is it anywhere in nature that a second is a second?

00:12:25 ◼   ► I don't know, man, deep stuff.

00:12:26 ◼   ► There's reasons, I'm sure, that elude us,

00:12:28 ◼   ► but I'm glad we're talking about calendars,

00:12:30 ◼   ► because I wanna float an idea that I've had

00:12:33 ◼   ► and see what people think about it.

00:12:36 ◼   ► Okay. So I've been thinking about doing a wall calendar, but featuring like Apple products,

00:12:44 ◼   ► like my product photography. So like the month of May could be a beautiful photo of an iPod

00:12:50 ◼   ► and the month of August could be this beautiful picture of an iMac. Looking into it, it's

00:12:56 ◼   ► very intense to get these things made. So if people think that's a good idea, let me

00:13:00 ◼   ► know on Twitter.

00:13:02 ◼   ► So one, yes, is the answer.

00:13:05 ◼   ► Two, you need to mark on it important days in history for Apple.

00:13:10 ◼   ► Oh, that's good.

00:13:12 ◼   ► Like the Apple holiday calendar.

00:13:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:13:15 ◼   ► So like, this is the day the iPod was created, that kind of stuff.

00:13:20 ◼   ► That's good.

00:13:21 ◼   ► So you can now combine your two loves, your photos of your old computers and your dev

00:13:25 ◼   ► and think database into one project.

00:13:28 ◼   ► I'm putting that in my note about it.

00:13:32 ◼   ► This would legit be a very good idea for a Kickstarter campaign.

00:13:35 ◼   ► Oh man.

00:13:37 ◼   ► This is the way you would do that.

00:13:38 ◼   ► That's a good idea.

00:13:39 ◼   ► And you know, I think we know a guy who knows a thing or two about printing paper products.

00:13:44 ◼   ► So I actually could help you.

00:13:46 ◼   ► However, this is if you want to do this, people will want it in January and so you would want

00:13:51 ◼   ► to get started on it incredibly quickly.

00:13:53 ◼   ► Yes, I have, I had, I already had a task due.

00:13:56 ◼   ► Look at Apple hardware calendar for July 1st, so.

00:13:59 ◼   ► I would start that immediately.

00:14:02 ◼   ► I will make it due on Friday.

00:14:03 ◼   ► And then we can, we can talk about it offline

00:14:06 ◼   ► as the kids say.

00:14:06 ◼   ► That's good, okay.

00:14:08 ◼   ► Stay tuned for that.

00:14:09 ◼   ► It's a great idea.

00:14:10 ◼   ► Hey, no one can steal it.

00:14:12 ◼   ► Yeah, that's right, we talked about it.

00:14:14 ◼   ► You can't steal this now.

00:14:16 ◼   ► Don't do it. Copyright Steven.

00:14:17 ◼   ► That's right.

00:14:18 ◼   ► That's how that works.

00:14:19 ◼   ► Yeah, this is how it works, right?

00:14:21 ◼   ► We say it on a podcast, it's now our own thing.

00:14:24 ◼   ► And if you try to steal the day, we're going to sue you.

00:14:26 ◼   ► We're going to use one through Jon, one through Jon will come back.

00:14:29 ◼   ► And David Sparks.

00:14:30 ◼   ► And David Sparks, they will team up.

00:14:33 ◼   ► Whoa, you don't want to mess with them too.

00:14:36 ◼   ► Vicious lawyers they are.

00:14:37 ◼   ► Those two guys walking into a court?

00:14:41 ◼   ► No, no, no.

00:14:43 ◼   ► When they're together, they only walk in slow motion.

00:14:46 ◼   ► The rest of the world carries on like normal.

00:14:49 ◼   ► Just the two of them.

00:14:50 ◼   ► When they're next to each other, it's just slow motion.

00:14:53 ◼   ► You know, I, a couple of years ago, I walked around Chicago with those two.

00:14:56 ◼   ► Took ages.

00:14:57 ◼   ► It took a long time.

00:14:58 ◼   ► They were just walking very slowly.

00:15:01 ◼   ► Not because they're old.

00:15:02 ◼   ► Steven's in regular speed and they're just in half speed.

00:15:05 ◼   ► That's right. That's right.

00:15:07 ◼   ► Beats Studio Buds are real.

00:15:09 ◼   ► Do you want the deets?

00:15:12 ◼   ► I want the deets on the beats, bud.

00:15:14 ◼   ► All right. Well, that's nice. Red, white, and black options, $149.99.

00:15:19 ◼   ► They have active noise cancellation, but it's not as good as AirPods Pro, but it is there.

00:15:25 ◼   ► They charge via USB-C, they have no wireless charging.

00:15:28 ◼   ► They implement Android's Fast Pair functionality, so you know, these are really made to be good for

00:15:36 ◼   ► iOS and Android. These are the first Beats product in recent times that do not include either a H1

00:15:45 ◼   ► or W1 chip. It's just regular Bluetooth. So it lacks a lot of the software stuff that

00:15:52 ◼   ► you get from AirPods and other Beats products like automatic pairing, sharing over iCloud

00:15:59 ◼   ► and stuff like that. It does have, I don't know how to say it about triggering everyone,

00:16:04 ◼   ► I'm just going to say it, it does have Hey Siri support, so that's built in somehow.

00:16:08 ◼   ► And also they've replicated the setup UI that you get for AirPods in iOS, even though it

00:16:15 ◼   ► doesn't have a H1 or W1 chip.

00:16:18 ◼   ► I saw that.

00:16:19 ◼   ► I thought that was pretty interesting.

00:16:20 ◼   ► Which is interesting.

00:16:21 ◼   ► I mean, does it lack the chip for price or are they just trying to like...

00:16:25 ◼   ► It's not price because they have cheaper products than these with those chips in them.

00:16:31 ◼   ► I think, so from reading around, it seems like they may have done this so it can be

00:16:37 ◼   ► a better experience for Android.

00:16:42 ◼   ► But I don't know.

00:16:43 ◼   ► But that's one of the beliefs of this system is that it's good for Android as well as for

00:16:50 ◼   ► iOS.

00:16:52 ◼   ► So I don't know, but that's the product.

00:16:55 ◼   ► People seem to like them, but they're not like a huge runaway success.

00:17:03 ◼   ► Apparently they're really light and comfortable because they're just like the little buds.

00:17:07 ◼   ► that's it. So I guess if you, and they have a different sound signature as well,

00:17:13 ◼   ► so a friend of the show, Austin Evans, has a pair of these and he was telling me

00:17:17 ◼   ► that the noise cancellation isn't as good but he actually prefers the way

00:17:21 ◼   ► that these sound to AirPods because they're tuned differently. They've got a bit more

00:17:25 ◼   ► bass to them and he likes that, he just prefers that.

00:17:27 ◼   ► Okay, they got the beats sound.

00:17:29 ◼   ► Yeah, they do have the beats sound. And that's, I think that's a genuine reason to buy this product for some people, right?

00:17:35 ◼   ► If you like that sound, will they still have that?

00:17:38 ◼   ► Yeah, because I was struggling to understand why does this product exist when Apple sells

00:17:44 ◼   ► AirPods.

00:17:45 ◼   ► And I guess that's it.

00:17:46 ◼   ► Like if you want to have the Beats sound in a Beats product that is cheaper and sort of

00:17:50 ◼   ► kind of works like and looks like AirPods, then you get it.

00:17:55 ◼   ► So yeah, I mean, not for me, but now that you've explained it, I think it makes more

00:17:59 ◼   ► sense.

00:18:00 ◼   ► And also, like, there are a lot of people in the world that have Android devices.

00:18:04 ◼   ► this is kind of like AirPods for Android that's not made by Samsung.

00:18:08 ◼   ► Okay.

00:18:09 ◼   ► So, you know, the case is apparently really nice and small and, you know, it has USB-C

00:18:16 ◼   ► charging, right?

00:18:17 ◼   ► It's just so it can be in the more wider ecosystem.

00:18:20 ◼   ► So yeah, I think that's why they continue to make these products.

00:18:23 ◼   ► That infuriates me that they put they will put USB on something like this.

00:18:27 ◼   ► So it's more universal.

00:18:29 ◼   ► But if you have something with an iPhone, it gets lightning.

00:18:32 ◼   ► I mean, I get it.

00:18:33 ◼   ► don't want to charge, you know, with like a different cable, your headphones and your

00:18:37 ◼   ► phone, Apple just put USB-C on the phone.

00:18:40 ◼   ► I think this honestly might be the start of an indication that AirPods are for iPhones

00:18:46 ◼   ► and Beats are for Android.

00:18:50 ◼   ► Which isn't a bad idea, right?

00:18:53 ◼   ► No it's not.

00:18:54 ◼   ► Right, so I don't know.

00:18:55 ◼   ► But this could be what they're looking to do now.

00:18:58 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:18:59 ◼   ► Federico, are you excited for these or are you waiting for other things?

00:19:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't particularly care about the Beats, these new Beats, but I am waiting for

00:19:10 ◼   ► the new Sony wireless earbuds.

00:19:14 ◼   ► So the ones with the unspeakable name, the WF-1000XM4.

00:19:19 ◼   ► This will be the new version of the previous truly wireless Sony earbuds that we covered

00:19:26 ◼   ► on the show a few months back.

00:19:29 ◼   ► a new version out, and it was very positively reviewed on The Verge. I've seen a bunch of

00:19:35 ◼   ► other reviews on YouTube as well. I bought them, and I'm waiting for them to be delivered.

00:19:41 ◼   ► I think sometime later this week, hopefully, I really prefer... I really liked the way

00:19:46 ◼   ► that they sound, like the previous generation model. They sound a lot better than AirPods

00:19:52 ◼   ► Pro to me, and The Verge seems to confirm this as well with the new generation of these

00:19:59 ◼   ► earbuds which have a new design and they are sort of like bean shaped and they

00:20:06 ◼   ► have a new case. It doesn't support wireless charging but it comes with USB-C

00:20:10 ◼   ► and yeah I'm curious to check them out see how they sound. I still like the way

00:20:19 ◼   ► that you control AirPods Pro has grown on me a lot over the years. I really

00:20:25 ◼   ► think that the gestures for, you know, pressing on the stem, they're really

00:20:30 ◼   ► convenient and fast and like you don't have to think about it. And I'm

00:20:35 ◼   ► slightly concerned that these Sony earbuds, which involve a tapping gesture,

00:20:39 ◼   ► I'm a little concerned that going back to that is not gonna be great, but I also

00:20:45 ◼   ► want to see, like, I want to hear, I guess, how they sound and the noise cancellation,

00:20:51 ◼   ► which The Verge also says it's really impressive and much better than AirPods Pro.

00:20:55 ◼   ► So we'll see.

00:20:57 ◼   ► Should get them in a couple of days, I think.

00:20:59 ◼   ► So maybe we can talk about the this new Sony earbuds.

00:21:03 ◼   ► Again, the WF-1000XM4 next week.

00:21:07 ◼   ► This episode of Connected is brought to you by Pingdom by SolarWinds.

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00:22:35 ◼   ► It's a sad day over here.

00:22:39 ◼   ► Today I said goodbye to my yellow iMac review unit.

00:22:44 ◼   ► I was heartbroken when I received an email this morning that said,

00:22:48 ◼   ► we've arranged your collection. I was like, Oh man.

00:22:51 ◼   ► No, I'm not, you know,

00:22:54 ◼   ► to take it from my cold dead hands. No. And this computer is no,

00:23:00 ◼   ► what does that mean?

00:23:00 ◼   ► Does that mean they come to your office and like pry the door open and like,

00:23:04 ◼   ► and steal the iMac back?

00:23:06 ◼   ► I mean that's probably what they would do if I didn't box it up and give it to

00:23:09 ◼   ► them. Yeah.

00:23:10 ◼   ► Or they just charge you for it and they just like,

00:23:12 ◼   ► They have your Apple ID and you see a charge for like $1,500.

00:23:16 ◼   ► The loan agreement does say they will charge you.

00:23:19 ◼   ► I don't know how.

00:23:20 ◼   ► Maybe they just keep sending like threatening letters to you or something.

00:23:23 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:23:23 ◼   ► I'm expecting this isn't a thing that they have to deal with very often.

00:23:27 ◼   ► But no. So I boxed it all up today.

00:23:31 ◼   ► Now I'm back here with my Intel Mac Mini and my one monitor.

00:23:35 ◼   ► And I hate it. I'm so sad.

00:23:37 ◼   ► How has it been going back to an Intel Mac Mini?

00:23:41 ◼   ► actually pretty bad. So I've gotten used to the speed of the M1, so on a desktop machine.

00:23:49 ◼   ► Everything feels snappier just in general and I was doing some editing earlier and it was

00:23:54 ◼   ► rough. It was not good. Like in Logic, it's just not smooth. Like with M1 Macs, editing things in

00:24:03 ◼   ► Logic is just a very smooth experience. But with Intel Macs, all Intel Macs, even my iMac Pro,

00:24:09 ◼   ► I said this at the time when I was reviewing the M1 iMac.

00:24:15 ◼   ► Things just aren't one to one.

00:24:17 ◼   ► Like I might drag something and it catches up with me and not smoothly.

00:24:22 ◼   ► Like it would be like tick tick tick kind of thing.

00:24:25 ◼   ► And also the fan on this Mac Mini was screaming today and I have heard that the fan on my

00:24:31 ◼   ► iMac once in the month I used it.

00:24:35 ◼   ► I don't remember what I was doing, but I knew it was something silly.

00:24:39 ◼   ► Like it was not surprising that the fan was going.

00:24:42 ◼   ► I wish I could remember exactly what it was, but I don't remember what it was.

00:24:47 ◼   ► I might be able to find it actually, because I know that I sent to you guys in a text that

00:24:51 ◼   ► the fan was going, so maybe I can find it by...

00:24:54 ◼   ► No, it's too difficult.

00:24:57 ◼   ► I message search is so bad.

00:25:00 ◼   ► It's bad.

00:25:01 ◼   ► Oh wait, here we go.

00:25:02 ◼   ► I just heard the fan in my iMac for the first time.

00:25:04 ◼   ► Oh, nobody responded so I didn't follow up.

00:25:07 ◼   ► That's not good for anyone.

00:25:09 ◼   ► I mean maybe you were doing Final Cut?

00:25:12 ◼   ► Because you just had a Cortex episode go up and doing the video or something?

00:25:14 ◼   ► I don't use Final Cut for that.

00:25:16 ◼   ► I use Friendless Show, Guillermo Rambo's Fusion Cost.

00:25:20 ◼   ► Oh, that's a very good app.

00:25:21 ◼   ► For making that stuff now, which is a very good app.

00:25:25 ◼   ► You give it audio, you give it an image, and it makes a video.

00:25:29 ◼   ► So that's what I do for all that stuff now, because using Final Cut for such a simple

00:25:33 ◼   ► thing is really annoying. So yeah, I've given it back, I'm back down to one monitor and

00:25:38 ◼   ► I'm really sad about it.

00:25:40 ◼   ► I kind of want to know what's next for you here, like, are you going to buy an iMac?

00:25:46 ◼   ► Are you waiting for the more powerful M1X, as they're calling it, based Macs like the

00:25:54 ◼   ► new Mac Mini that they're doing with the more powerful chip, or are you waiting for the

00:25:57 ◼   ► Mac Pro? Like, what's going to happen to your studio next?

00:26:00 ◼   ► Well, something I've yet to divulge on to anyone is that one day after the M1 iMac arrived,

00:26:09 ◼   ► I ordered one.

00:26:10 ◼   ► Ah, okay.

00:26:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I immediately fell in love with that yellow computer.

00:26:14 ◼   ► And unfortunately for me, the time when I chose to order one, they were just horrifically backordered.

00:26:21 ◼   ► So mine, it's due to arrive on the 12th of July and I ordered it a month ago.

00:26:28 ◼   ► However, I did get charged today,

00:26:31 ◼   ► so it might be coming sooner rather than later.

00:26:34 ◼   ► - What did you get?

00:26:35 ◼   ► What spec, what color?

00:26:37 ◼   ► - So I went yellow.

00:26:38 ◼   ► I wanted to get the exact one.

00:26:40 ◼   ► Apple Store app isn't good at showing you the spec,

00:26:44 ◼   ► but I know I got a two terabyte hard drive, or SSD,

00:26:49 ◼   ► and I bumped up the RAM.

00:26:50 ◼   ► - Very cool.

00:26:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm very, very excited about it.

00:26:53 ◼   ► And I've worked out how now I think

00:26:56 ◼   ► this is going to fit into my rotation. So that will come to the studio and I will

00:27:01 ◼   ► set that back up on the desk that I'm on right now with my recording computer.

00:27:04 ◼   ► When Apple releases a professional computer of some description that I want

00:27:09 ◼   ► that will then come here replacing the iMac. That iMac will then go home to

00:27:17 ◼   ► become my home computer and then the iMac Pro that's currently at home will

00:27:22 ◼   ► be sold to help pay for the professional Macintosh that I buy that starts that loop.

00:27:28 ◼   ► So I think I've got my like future set up now but now it's kind of just waiting for

00:27:32 ◼   ► more chips to fall but having used it for a month I think a lot of people were saying

00:27:40 ◼   ► like this isn't a professional Mac it is like this thing outperforms in many ways all the

00:27:48 ◼   ► other Macs I own. It really can do the job. Like, I could stick with that computer for

00:27:53 ◼   ► a long time and I would be really happy as a professional doing professional work on

00:27:58 ◼   ► it. And I miss it already. Earlier today I was setting up my Mac Mini and I used dark

00:28:05 ◼   ► mode, right? And I have a screen that has a bunch of apps on it like Notes, F*ckcraft,

00:28:09 ◼   ► Spark, Messages, that kind of stuff. Timery. And I used dark mode in all of those apps.

00:28:15 ◼   ► And I was on that screen and I was like, "Oh man, why does everything look so dark?"

00:28:19 ◼   ► And I realized, because there isn't a yellow border around it anymore.

00:28:23 ◼   ► And it made me really sad.

00:28:25 ◼   ► It was like, "Oh."

00:28:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I miss it, man.

00:28:28 ◼   ► That computer, that M1 iMac is just fantastic.

00:28:34 ◼   ► And I already miss it having boxed it up.

00:28:37 ◼   ► It's just such a glorious and fun computer.

00:28:40 ◼   ► I miss my orange one.

00:28:41 ◼   ► Did you say ****?

00:28:43 ◼   ► As soon as I said, I wished I wouldn't have said it and I didn't want anyone to mention

00:28:47 ◼   ► it.

00:28:48 ◼   ► I'm not having this conversation today.

00:28:50 ◼   ► I mean, I can bleep it.

00:28:53 ◼   ► You know what?

00:28:54 ◼   ► That might be kind of fun.

00:28:55 ◼   ► Yes, yes.

00:28:58 ◼   ► And then maybe also this part.

00:29:00 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:29:01 ◼   ► It's up to you how you want to edit it.

00:29:03 ◼   ► All right.

00:29:04 ◼   ► We have a list of wacky iOS products to talk about.

00:29:09 ◼   ► I don't know how this came to be oh yeah, this topic is called Myke brings

00:29:16 ◼   ► products and so I feel like every now and then I collect up a selection of

00:29:21 ◼   ► things that I found on the internet and just tell you about them. You do yes,

00:29:25 ◼   ► this is one of those segments. The first one actually federal sent to me, which

00:29:29 ◼   ► is it's called night watch. It is a fifty dollar bedside glass orb. I'd

00:29:35 ◼   ► that phrase i might just leave it there no it acts as a magnifying glass for your apple watch screen

00:29:41 ◼   ► so it's a dock you put the watch behind it and then the it's like lenticular i think is the phrase

00:29:47 ◼   ► maybe yeah yeah and it basically appears to magnify the screen on your apple watch turning

00:29:54 ◼   ► it into an attractive bedside clock whilst also charging you have to provide your own charger

00:29:58 ◼   ► and it also has a built-in quote acoustic amplifier which i think they will probably just

00:30:03 ◼   ► I think we all used to have these over our iPods and phones back in the day, right?

00:30:06 ◼   ► Like, a dock that's made out of just one piece, but it's machined in such a way that it can

00:30:11 ◼   ► make things sound louder, so it can make your alarm louder.

00:30:14 ◼   ► I think this is a very cute little bedside thing.

00:30:17 ◼   ► You know what this reminds me of?

00:30:19 ◼   ► You probably had it as a kid, Myke.

00:30:22 ◼   ► One of those snap-on accessories for your Game Boy, where you were putting like this

00:30:28 ◼   ► thing on top of the screen that would magnify the screen, and some of them, they also had

00:30:33 ◼   ► had a light built in so that you could play with the Game Boy at night and see things

00:30:38 ◼   ► bigger. I had one of those for my original chunky Game Boy and I loved it and this kind

00:30:43 ◼   ► of reminds me of that. Yeah, I'm looking at a page on a website called

00:30:47 ◼   ► thevintagegamers.com right now which has lots of images of a selection of these things and

00:30:53 ◼   ► yes I definitely had one of these. That thing, yes. Oh, thevintagegamers.com

00:31:00 ◼   ► sounds legit already as a website. Yeah, I had it.

00:31:04 ◼   ► It looks how you would imagine it would. Yeah. One of them says "performance". Just

00:31:09 ◼   ► that. That's all you need to know.

00:31:13 ◼   ► Another is called the "light boy", which is a perfect name.

00:31:17 ◼   ► So as Apple Watch users, what do you think of this product?

00:31:21 ◼   ► I kinda want it, but I know that Sylvia will instantly complain about it, so I'm not gonna

00:31:29 ◼   ► purchase it. As in I can't believe you bought another thing to put your watch

00:31:34 ◼   ► on on this? Yes. Okay. How's the Duo dock doing for you? Oh I love it and in fact

00:31:40 ◼   ► we still love it. Yes we want to buy a second one because Silvia is now tired

00:31:43 ◼   ► of the Qi charging sort of a the accessory that I was using before that I

00:31:48 ◼   ► passed down to her and now she also wants a MagSafe Duo charger. It's perfect

00:31:53 ◼   ► for travel like whenever we go to the beach house we just need to fold the

00:31:57 ◼   ► thing and put it in a bag. It's perfect for that. But yeah, still using it.

00:32:01 ◼   ► I'm very happy with with my setup. I've got one of the studio neat MagSafe docks

00:32:06 ◼   ► and it has the Apple Watch charger next to it. And my wife and I have matching

00:32:10 ◼   ► ones and they're great. I mean, I like the way this looks. And I like that I

00:32:15 ◼   ► could have used the glass orb as a weapon if it came to it, but I don't

00:32:20 ◼   ► think it's for me.

00:32:20 ◼   ► It's an interesting idea. You could that thing. I bet it's got some real heft.

00:32:25 ◼   ► Oh yeah, you could clobber somebody with that thing.

00:32:31 ◼   ► Long time listeners of the show will remember ZENZ.

00:32:35 ◼   ► This was the company that made the AirPower-like device that Federico bought that had a fan

00:32:40 ◼   ► in it.

00:32:41 ◼   ► That I realized later had a fan in it.

00:32:44 ◼   ► That was...

00:32:45 ◼   ► But you heard it.

00:32:46 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:32:47 ◼   ► Imagine putting your phone on a pad and suddenly you hear a fan.

00:32:51 ◼   ► That was not a fun time.

00:32:53 ◼   ► And this is Apple didn't put a fan in the air power, which is why it caught on fire.

00:32:57 ◼   ► Also that ZENZ are back with another wild device for MagSafe.

00:33:03 ◼   ► They have four MagSafe battery packs.

00:33:06 ◼   ► Okay.

00:33:07 ◼   ► That have various features, which I will now tell you about.

00:33:11 ◼   ► They have the Zep 01M.

00:33:13 ◼   ► This is a 4,000 milliamp power battery, which is about enough to charge an iPhone 12 all

00:33:19 ◼   ► the way to the tippy top and a little bit extra.

00:33:21 ◼   ► attaches via MagSafe and you can charge right? Great. Then they have the Zep 02M.

00:33:27 ◼   ► This one can be charged via Qi charging which is also 4,000 milliamp hours. I

00:33:33 ◼   ► expect would take about six years to charge a 4,000 milliamp hour battery

00:33:38 ◼   ► via Qi charging. I feel like that because it's not gonna go at fast Qi charging.

00:33:42 ◼   ► No. It's gonna be slow. Zep 03M. This one has a Qi charger of its own so you can

00:33:49 ◼   ► recharge another device on the opposite side. This is getting confusing. Right, so you can

00:33:55 ◼   ► magsafe your phone to the to the Zepo 3M and then you could charge your AirPods on the other side.

00:34:01 ◼   ► Now it doesn't make any sense why would you do this? Well you have to think at that moment you

00:34:06 ◼   ► would have to keep your phone face down on a flat surface. But nevertheless you can do it. I guess

00:34:15 ◼   ► you don't have to charge them at the same time, right? You could charge your AirPods,

00:34:20 ◼   ► just place them on the thing.

00:34:22 ◼   ► But the, okay.

00:34:24 ◼   ► Then they have the Zep O4M, which is a 10,000 mAh battery that has no Qi charging of any

00:34:30 ◼   ► kind. So it's a very confusing lineup of products.

00:34:34 ◼   ► I mean, not a surprise coming from Zense. All of these, they attach magnetically to

00:34:39 ◼   ► the phone? So they kind of, they attach to the phone?

00:34:44 ◼   ► I think you're thinking of this the wrong way around.

00:34:46 ◼   ► I think the phone attaches to it, right?

00:34:48 ◼   ► Because it's going to be heavier than your phone.

00:34:51 ◼   ► So you will hold the battery and then the--

00:34:54 ◼   ► right?

00:34:55 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:34:55 ◼   ► Yes.

00:34:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:56 ◼   ► But they are magnetic.

00:34:57 ◼   ► But the phone attaches to it.

00:34:59 ◼   ► OK.

00:35:00 ◼   ► I mean, sure, right?

00:35:02 ◼   ► I was kind of hoping that Apple would come up with a MagSafe

00:35:05 ◼   ► battery pack--

00:35:07 ◼   ► something like, I don't know, a thicker MagSafe wallet, which

00:35:11 ◼   ► is also a battery.

00:35:12 ◼   ► like something like that we mentioned a little while back.

00:35:15 ◼   ► But man, this is a thick battery, like real chunky.

00:35:19 ◼   ► I mean, look at the photo.

00:35:21 ◼   ► I don't know, the proportions of the photo

00:35:24 ◼   ► are kind of weird because the AirPods case

00:35:26 ◼   ► looks giant compared to the phone.

00:35:28 ◼   ► - I'm not sure this is real.

00:35:30 ◼   ► But also that's not the 10,000 milliamp hour one,

00:35:33 ◼   ► that's the 4,000 milliamp hour one.

00:35:36 ◼   ► You'll see if there is a very handy graphic.

00:35:39 ◼   ► - The 10,000 looks enormous.

00:35:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not entirely sure how it would work with one of the phones that has the camera

00:35:50 ◼   ► bump.

00:35:51 ◼   ► I don't know if it would fit.

00:35:52 ◼   ► You have to sand off the camera bump.

00:35:54 ◼   ► Does it have a fan?

00:35:56 ◼   ► You probably don't need a fan for a battery pack.

00:35:59 ◼   ► You sure?

00:36:00 ◼   ► It's Zent's.

00:36:01 ◼   ► They love their fans.

00:36:02 ◼   ► That's true, maybe it snuck in there.

00:36:03 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:36:04 ◼   ► I don't see a fan, but you never know.

00:36:08 ◼   ► I have one more product for you.

00:36:11 ◼   ► It is the Satechi Aluminium Stand and Hub for iPad Pro.

00:36:15 ◼   ► Okay, yeah this is cool.

00:36:16 ◼   ► This is a $99.99, it's just under $100.

00:36:21 ◼   ► It's a stand for your desk.

00:36:23 ◼   ► It doesn't have height adjustment but it has a little, it's like a dock with a stand on

00:36:27 ◼   ► it, you can put your iPad on it and angle it, it has angle adjustment.

00:36:31 ◼   ► Seems pretty low to the desk, I wouldn't want to use this on the desk personally, it's just

00:36:35 ◼   ► like having your iPad in the smart cover or something, so it's not got a lot of height

00:36:40 ◼   ► adjustment at all. You can connect it via a flexible USB-C cable which comes out of

00:36:46 ◼   ► the little dock which is smart because that's going to get around the Kensington Studio

00:36:52 ◼   ► dock problem. It has HDMI, USB-A, USB-C, headphone jack, micro SD and SD card readers and you

00:37:00 ◼   ► can also close it up and not use the stand part and just use it as a dock if you want

00:37:04 ◼   ► to. I think this is pretty nice looking. Yeah this is a cool little product I think. It

00:37:10 ◼   ► It looks very cool. I agree with you on the... like, I'm not sure I would be able to work

00:37:14 ◼   ► with this at a desk because I would be staring down at the screen all the time and that's

00:37:19 ◼   ► not great for my neck. But I think it looks really cool and the folding part and the fact

00:37:25 ◼   ► that you can use it as a dock is really clever. Speaking of this, I've done something that

00:37:30 ◼   ► I can officially reveal on the show. I make it sound so fancy, it's really not.

00:37:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I can't wait.

00:37:36 ◼   ► It's really not an announcement. I don't know why I said that.

00:37:38 ◼   ► stop the show. Federico has an announcement. No, no, no. No, it's just a few days ago,

00:37:44 ◼   ► I was upset at the lack of external display support features in iPadOS 15, and I was looking

00:37:54 ◼   ► at my desk, and I was looking at that Thunderbolt dock that I bought a while back, and I was

00:38:01 ◼   ► really happy, and I was really convinced that, "Oh, little Thunderbolt dock, you're gonna

00:38:08 ◼   ► to be so useful this summer with iPadOS 15. But nope. And I was upset, I was annoyed,

00:38:15 ◼   ► and I realized I don't need this anymore. At least not this summer, not with iPadOS

00:38:20 ◼   ► 15. Silvia already disliked it by default. It's just, "Oh, yeah, great. Another thing

00:38:26 ◼   ► on your desk." And it was a combination of those things that made me realize, "Why

00:38:31 ◼   ► Why am I using it?

00:38:33 ◼   ► I bought it convinced that I was going to be able to create this new setup with my iPad

00:38:40 ◼   ► and the Mac Mini and Thunderbolt support and the external display, but nothing has changed

00:38:45 ◼   ► in the iPad S15, so I have removed the dock from my desk and I've gone back to the basic

00:38:51 ◼   ► setup Mac Mini with a USB-C cable that goes into the ultrafine display and I'm just going

00:38:57 ◼   ► to use my iPad with the magic keyboard, as always.

00:39:00 ◼   ► That was a setup of optimism, wasn't it?

00:39:03 ◼   ► Yes, yes it was.

00:39:05 ◼   ► Maybe next year, we'll see, but I'm tired of this, like, "Oh, maybe next year."

00:39:10 ◼   ► So I just got rid of it, I put it in a drawer somewhere in my house, and we'll see in the

00:39:16 ◼   ► future.

00:39:17 ◼   ► But it was a really sad moment, going from all that optimism a few weeks ago to this.

00:39:24 ◼   ► It was really sad.

00:39:26 ◼   ► Now I'm just hopeful that external display... external...

00:39:32 ◼   ► Supply deport.

00:39:33 ◼   ► External...

00:39:34 ◼   ► Come on buddy, you can do it.

00:39:36 ◼   ► Display support.

00:39:37 ◼   ► Display deport.

00:39:41 ◼   ► Now I'm just hopeful that'll be like the 15.4 spring update.

00:39:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, Jason was saying something along those lines on upgrade, like all the pieces

00:39:50 ◼   ► are now in place for Apple to just say "and now we're flipping the switch and here you

00:39:54 ◼   ► external display support, and if you're a developer, your app works on it by default,

00:39:58 ◼   ► but there's a few optimizations you can make with this API. Like, I can see that, because they did

00:40:02 ◼   ► that with the pointer last year, but I'm also kind of tired of, you know, setting up my desk and

00:40:10 ◼   ► changing my life in preparation for these things that may eventually happen. So things are the way

00:40:17 ◼   ► they are right now and it is what it is. And so yeah, back to Mac Mini and Ultrafine and

00:40:24 ◼   ► iPad with the Magic Keyboard we go.

00:40:27 ◼   ► You both have returned to Mac Mini life this week.

00:40:30 ◼   ► Unfortunately for both of us. It's sad. This is the sad Mac Mini episode.

00:40:34 ◼   ► It's really sad. It's like you're staring at these computers and there's nothing you

00:40:38 ◼   ► can do about them. Also you talk to them and they don't respond because they're computers,

00:40:42 ◼   ► right? It's like it's very sad. All very sad.

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00:42:07 ◼   ► Federico, you made a promise last week to the passionate ones that you would talk about

00:42:13 ◼   ► iPad multitasking this week.

00:42:15 ◼   ► And I'm a man of my word, and I'm going to talk about it.

00:42:17 ◼   ► I want to talk about it.

00:42:19 ◼   ► So I've installed the beta of iPadOS 15 right after the keynote, as soon as it became available,

00:42:25 ◼   ► and I've been using iPadOS 15 for the past 10 days or so, and I have some thoughts.

00:42:30 ◼   ► And I kind of wanted to talk about them with you guys to try and understand what we're

00:42:33 ◼   ► looking at here in terms of the multitasking changes and how you feel about them. And I

00:42:38 ◼   ► kind of broke this up in different sections to try and cover all the different changes

00:42:44 ◼   ► that Apple made this year, and I wanted to start from the very basics. So the new multitasking

00:42:49 ◼   ► indicator, the three little dots that you see at the top of a window in iPadOS 15, you

00:42:57 ◼   ► see them if you're using a fullscreen app, and you see two of those indicators if you're

00:43:01 ◼   ► using the Split View. And when you tap that indicator, you see this submenu that sort

00:43:06 ◼   ► of pops down from the icon that contains three buttons for taking the selected app in full

00:43:15 ◼   ► screen, putting it in Split View, or switching it to Slide Over. And this indicator also

00:43:22 ◼   ► serves two roles. It's both a multitasking control as well as an active app indicator.

00:43:29 ◼   ► And right there, I just want to mention something.

00:43:32 ◼   ► The fact that in previous versions of iPadOS, it was really tricky to tell which app is

00:43:38 ◼   ► the currently active one, meaning it's receiving keyboard input, for example.

00:43:44 ◼   ► It was already hard to tell before, right?

00:43:47 ◼   ► Apple made some changes, I believe last year, where they made the previous indicator, which

00:43:52 ◼   ► was like this little pulling indicator, slightly darker, but I don't think that was enough.

00:43:59 ◼   ► And it seems like they're sticking to these visuals where the active app gets slightly darker,

00:44:08 ◼   ► you know, three little dots. I was kind of hoping they would use color or some stronger indication

00:44:16 ◼   ► for, you know, also because color is not great for colorblind people, for example,

00:44:21 ◼   ► but some other stronger visual cue as to which app of the two in a split view is the active one.

00:44:29 ◼   ► Right now it just gets slightly darker, which I don't think is good enough.

00:44:32 ◼   ► Better than nothing.

00:44:34 ◼   ► Sure. Yeah.

00:44:37 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's a little better than the previous one.

00:44:40 ◼   ► But when I'm working and I want to know what app I'm in,

00:44:44 ◼   ► most of the time I'm looking at a text field,

00:44:46 ◼   ► which may be towards the bottom of the screen.

00:44:49 ◼   ► And like, I don't know, like at the top, it's kind of stashed away.

00:44:54 ◼   ► They could go further.

00:44:56 ◼   ► I feel like it's a good change, like the fact that you can tap the indicator and you see,

00:45:06 ◼   ► you see, okay, there's a button for full screen, there's another for split view, like you have

00:45:11 ◼   ► visual controls.

00:45:12 ◼   ► I think that's a positive change.

00:45:14 ◼   ► A lot of people used to complain about the sort of the secret operations of iPadOS and

00:45:20 ◼   ► how you needed to perform these hidden gestures to trigger Split View or Slide Over.

00:45:28 ◼   ► Like oh, you need to grab an icon and slide it to the edge of the screen, but not so far

00:45:33 ◼   ► that it becomes a Split View.

00:45:36 ◼   ► Like if you want to do Slide Over, you need to drop the icon in between the apps.

00:45:40 ◼   ► Like it was all very complicated to explain, and so I feel like having a menu that you

00:45:45 ◼   ► can see and you can click, definitely a positive change. I don't think, or I

00:45:52 ◼   ► should say, I don't know if this is enough in terms of does it work well to

00:46:01 ◼   ► visually communicate, you know, I'm using Notes in Safari and Notes is the one

00:46:06 ◼   ► receiving input at the moment, like, is there maybe a better way to design that

00:46:10 ◼   ► aspect, I don't know, but overall, as an interaction mechanism for triggering

00:46:17 ◼   ► SplitView and SlideOver, I think it works pretty well. Obviously, the other sort of

00:46:25 ◼   ► big change in iPadOS is that you can do all of this from the keyboard, right?

00:46:29 ◼   ► There's a new setup, system-wide keyboard shortcuts, for activating

00:46:36 ◼   ► Split View, Slide Over, taking apps full screen, showing the app library, all sorts of system features you can now trigger from the keyboard.

00:46:45 ◼   ► And they are using the globe key on the Magic keyboard as a special modifier for these keyboard shortcuts.

00:46:53 ◼   ► So for example, if you do "globe control left", you can slide an app to the left, and when you do that, you see the animation,

00:47:01 ◼   ► the animation, the app slides into the left corner

00:47:03 ◼   ► of the screen, and you see the home screen on the right.

00:47:06 ◼   ► So you can pick a different app,

00:47:08 ◼   ► and you create a split view.

00:47:09 ◼   ► So they've sort of listened to feedback

00:47:12 ◼   ► from people over the past few years saying,

00:47:15 ◼   ► there should really be an easier way to pick applications

00:47:20 ◼   ► when you wanna create a split view,

00:47:23 ◼   ► rather than just having to drag and drop stuff all the time.

00:47:26 ◼   ► Because basically in the older model,

00:47:28 ◼   ► unless you had an icon in your dock already,

00:47:32 ◼   ► it was basically impossible to create a split view

00:47:34 ◼   ► with other apps.

00:47:37 ◼   ► And now it's easier because you can just see

00:47:39 ◼   ► your home screen.

00:47:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, and people would have a folder

00:47:42 ◼   ► of all of their apps in the dock, right?

00:47:45 ◼   ► Which is like getting around the system.

00:47:48 ◼   ► - Oh, I just realized I don't need that folder anymore.

00:47:52 ◼   ► - Now I can go in. - So I have a space back.

00:47:54 ◼   ► 'Cause you should have the app library.

00:47:57 ◼   ► I guess the other thing that's just worth mentioning

00:47:58 ◼   ► for people that haven't used it is it's not just

00:48:02 ◼   ► that you see your home screen.

00:48:04 ◼   ► You effectively can open an app any way you can open an app,

00:48:07 ◼   ► and it will replace that second app.

00:48:10 ◼   ► So you can use a Spotlight search,

00:48:12 ◼   ► or you can pick something from the dock

00:48:14 ◼   ► or from App Library or anywhere.

00:48:16 ◼   ► - In theory, that was what I was getting to.

00:48:20 ◼   ► So let me ask you this simple question.

00:48:23 ◼   ► You're using Safari.

00:48:25 ◼   ► you want to create a split view with Safari on the left and notes on the right.

00:48:31 ◼   ► But you want to do it all with the keyboard. How do you do it?

00:48:35 ◼   ► You press globe, shift or whatever it is, left, then do a spotlight search and

00:48:45 ◼   ► then open the app and it will replace it on the outside.

00:48:48 ◼   ► Okay, I hope you will be right.

00:48:50 ◼   ► I am right.

00:48:52 ◼   ► Okay, it was working for me and then it stopped working.

00:48:56 ◼   ► Like...

00:48:57 ◼   ► Oh, okay. No, this works for me every time.

00:48:59 ◼   ► The problem I had was trying to think I could start it by spotlight searching.

00:49:04 ◼   ► That isn't how it works.

00:49:05 ◼   ► Exactly, exactly.

00:49:06 ◼   ► You have to start with the Go Away application and then use the spotlight search and it will bring it up.

00:49:11 ◼   ► And I think Apple got this sort of backwards,

00:49:15 ◼   ► because I was hoping that they will listen to your suggestion that you and Gray discussed years ago,

00:49:22 ◼   ► in an old episode of Cortex, where you propose this idea that I've been thinking about for a long time,

00:49:27 ◼   ► which I continue to believe is a really good idea, where if you're using an application in full screen on your iPad,

00:49:33 ◼   ► the most natural way to start to create a split view with the keyboard is to say, "Okay, Spotlight,

00:49:41 ◼   ► find the app, press a combination of keys to put the result,

00:49:45 ◼   ► you know, the app that you highlight in Spotlight, in Split View."

00:49:50 ◼   ► But Apple did this kind of backwards instead.

00:49:53 ◼   ► So the idea is, first you hide the app,

00:49:57 ◼   ► and you say, "I want to create a split view,"

00:49:59 ◼   ► and then you search, which, if it works reliably,

00:50:03 ◼   ► I don't know why it was working for me,

00:50:04 ◼   ► then it stopped working.

00:50:06 ◼   ► I basically cannot -- I told you about this,

00:50:08 ◼   ► and then it stopped working for me.

00:50:09 ◼   ► So I don't know. Beta 1.

00:50:12 ◼   ► -Beta 1. -It's fun.

00:50:13 ◼   ► -Yeah, it's been working reliably for me,

00:50:15 ◼   ► because it was the first thing I checked was,

00:50:17 ◼   ► if I spotlight search and then do that globe shift left will it I don't know if

00:50:23 ◼   ► it's shift I don't remember option it's a control control whatever it is the

00:50:29 ◼   ► that it would put it on the left or right me but didn't so you just have to

00:50:32 ◼   ► like I've gotten pretty used to it just like I just start a search differently

00:50:36 ◼   ► now but I still think that there's space to do this like you could still use the

00:50:41 ◼   ► globe key like in spotlight if you're in use the globe key and then do like globe

00:50:46 ◼   ► shift left, maybe that could open it from Spotlight and put it where you want it.

00:50:51 ◼   ► But honestly, it might not be the easiest way, but I'll take it because

00:50:56 ◼   ► they've given me a way to do something that I want and I just have to get used

00:50:59 ◼   ► to it. But I have that feature that I've wanted for years now.

00:51:03 ◼   ► So in theory this will be possible, right? To do it all with the keyboard, which is

00:51:09 ◼   ► another positive change. You can now also control Split View with shortcuts.

00:51:16 ◼   ► You can make shortcuts that combine two apps together in a Split View. And this

00:51:22 ◼   ► is great because it lets me, like I've been able to, I don't know that you Myke,

00:51:27 ◼   ► you've been doing the same thing, like you can create shortcuts that sort of

00:51:30 ◼   ► prepare your iPad for a specific task. Like I'm doing show notes and I

00:51:36 ◼   ► I want to see Safari and Notes together, for example,

00:51:39 ◼   ► or Safari and Craft, and now you can create a shortcut

00:51:42 ◼   ► that does that for you.

00:51:43 ◼   ► And so you remove a bit of manual interaction

00:51:46 ◼   ► from the process, which is nice.

00:51:48 ◼   ► My problem with this right now is that Shortcuts

00:51:51 ◼   ► has no concept of multiple windows for the same application.

00:51:56 ◼   ► So when you say create split view with Safari and Notes,

00:52:01 ◼   ► if you have multiple Safari windows open,

00:52:04 ◼   ► shortcuts cannot, you cannot specify, oh, create a Split View, but with this specific Safari window,

00:52:12 ◼   ► right? Shortcuts just default to the last active window when you want to create a Split View, which

00:52:18 ◼   ► seems to me like it's sort of counterintuitive to the work that Apple did with multi-window support

00:52:27 ◼   ► this year, and it wouldn't be nice if you could say, yes, create a Split View, but with this

00:52:32 ◼   ► specific Safari window that I already have in my system. I think it would help to have

00:52:39 ◼   ► these more fixed workspaces, if you will. Like, I'm going to have a window that contains

00:52:45 ◼   ► two tabs for connected and relay FM, and I want to have this specific note that's just

00:52:52 ◼   ► for connected show notes. And this is the kind of knowledge that iPadOS has, because

00:52:58 ◼   ► you can see these windows, right? You can see them in the app switcher, you can see

00:53:01 ◼   ► them on the shelf, which I'm going to talk about shortly, but shortcuts doesn't.

00:53:06 ◼   ► So maybe that's something that Apple could improve.

00:53:09 ◼   ► Let me ask you a question.

00:53:11 ◼   ► Would you be happy if it gave you a UI to choose?

00:53:17 ◼   ► So imagine if you opened it and it's like, "Which Safari window do you want?"

00:53:22 ◼   ► It's just like one more tap.

00:53:24 ◼   ► I would personally prefer to choose it beforehand.

00:53:27 ◼   ► Of course.

00:53:28 ◼   ► Even if the window doesn't exist anymore, then just fall back to the last active window.

00:53:34 ◼   ► Or I could see also something like, yes, do it, but create a new window, like as a parameter.

00:53:40 ◼   ► Like I would like to configure the action beforehand.

00:53:44 ◼   ► But yeah, maybe also choosing the window upon running the shortcut would be a good compromise,

00:53:50 ◼   ► maybe.

00:53:51 ◼   ► I like that you can also do slide-over and shortcuts as well.

00:53:54 ◼   ► It's not just split maps.

00:53:56 ◼   ► I also like that the shortcut for app splitting, you can choose the ratio of how much of the

00:54:05 ◼   ► screen do you want to give one app over the other.

00:54:07 ◼   ► I like that all of that stuff can be pre-programmed.

00:54:12 ◼   ► And before we talk about the shelf, I just wanted to mention how SlideOver works right

00:54:19 ◼   ► now.

00:54:20 ◼   ► Nothing has changed in terms of there's still this concept of a floating tiny window called

00:54:25 ◼   ► of the slide-over window, and you can stack multiple

00:54:28 ◼   ► slide-over windows together, and you can flip between them,

00:54:31 ◼   ► sort of like a stack of cards.

00:54:33 ◼   ► But now you can also see those windows,

00:54:36 ◼   ► and you can see that they are slide-over windows,

00:54:38 ◼   ► meaning they're tiny.

00:54:40 ◼   ► You can see them in the app switcher.

00:54:42 ◼   ► They are on the right side of the app switcher,

00:54:44 ◼   ► and you can close them from there.

00:54:46 ◼   ► You can switch back to them.

00:54:48 ◼   ► I think it's all very nice, and obviously,

00:54:50 ◼   ► when you select a slide-over window,

00:54:52 ◼   ► you still have the same controls that we mentioned before,

00:54:55 ◼   ► So you can say, take this to split view

00:54:57 ◼   ► or take this full screen and all of that.

00:55:00 ◼   ► And all these changes, they do not replace,

00:55:04 ◼   ► I feel like we should mention this,

00:55:05 ◼   ► they do not replace the previous system

00:55:08 ◼   ► based on drag and drop, right?

00:55:10 ◼   ► The old way of operating the iPad is still available.

00:55:15 ◼   ► It's all still working.

00:55:17 ◼   ► And I still find myself relying on that

00:55:20 ◼   ► out of muscle memory, but you can still--

00:55:22 ◼   ► - Sometimes it is just faster

00:55:24 ◼   ► to just grab an app out of the dock that way.

00:55:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, sometimes when if touching the screen

00:55:29 ◼   ► isn't a problem, it's easier to do it that way.

00:55:33 ◼   ► And I think this is the right approach, right?

00:55:35 ◼   ► I wrote last year in my iOS review in the iPad chapter,

00:55:40 ◼   ► I wrote how going forward, I think all iPad features

00:55:44 ◼   ► should be designed with multiple input methods in mind.

00:55:48 ◼   ► And so this is the right approach.

00:55:50 ◼   ► Don't say just, oh, and now this can be done

00:55:52 ◼   ► from the keyboard.

00:55:53 ◼   ► every major iPad feature should, as much as possible, try to support all the

00:55:59 ◼   ► different input methods that you have on iPad. That is very smart because you've

00:56:04 ◼   ► got touch, right, as you say, and you've got keyboard and then the new little

00:56:09 ◼   ► pill, which probably has a name, that's with the trackpad, right? Yeah. I said

00:56:15 ◼   ► this on App Stories and I'm gonna repeat this here, I think that Quick Note, which

00:56:19 ◼   ► which I'll talk about in a few minutes, the new system-wide sort of quick note system

00:56:26 ◼   ► for Apple Notes. That feature, I truly believe, is the first post-magic keyboard feature,

00:56:33 ◼   ► in that it's a brand new functionality that, out of the box, it works with a keyboard shortcut,

00:56:40 ◼   ► with the Apple Pencil, with touch, and... yeah, that's it, that's the three input methods

00:56:46 ◼   ► on iPad, right? Oh, and with Safari selections even, so it's even in the copy and paste menu.

00:56:51 ◼   ► That's a new feature that didn't exist before, and Apple is launching this feature with support for

00:56:57 ◼   ► all kinds of input methods out of the box. Have you worked out how to bring it up with touch?

00:57:03 ◼   ► Control center. Oh, I thought they said something about swiping from the bottom.

00:57:08 ◼   ► With the pencil. Oh. Yeah. The company that used to not let you swipe from the edges with the

00:57:14 ◼   ► the pencil now has a feature where you swipe from the edge of the pencil.

00:57:18 ◼   ► But that's like, it's kind of funny to me, the worst way to invoke Quick Note is

00:57:23 ◼   ► with your finger. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Which is hilarious for the iPad. Yeah, it kind of

00:57:29 ◼   ► is, but I think they ran out of multitouch gestures, right? Yeah.

00:57:34 ◼   ► Because the three, it's kind of, yeah, the three and four finger swipes are

00:57:39 ◼   ► reserved for multitasking. So I guess Control Center made sense as a...

00:57:45 ◼   ► you would have been better with the shelf, but I digress.

00:57:48 ◼   ► It kind of sucks to... you have to swipe, press this button, and it's not very quick

00:57:55 ◼   ► anymore. Like it genuinely at that point, isn't it like it's faster to bring up the

00:58:02 ◼   ► Notes app, right? Especially if you had it in SlideOver, but then I guess you don't get

00:58:06 ◼   ► the Quick Note features.

00:58:07 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, you don't get the contextual stuff. Yeah, I mean, I like all this. I've been playing with it on an iPad Pro as well. And once you internalize the keyboard shortcuts, it is pretty fast to zip around, partially because your hands don't have to leave the keyboard. But drag and drop just felt slow, right? Like you're holding up and you've got to hover for a second and it intuits where you want it to go and the multi control or multi app, like window control,

00:58:37 ◼   ► and the keyboard shortcuts take some of that messiness out of it.

00:58:42 ◼   ► And it feels it feels like once I've internalized these,

00:58:46 ◼   ► I'm not going to be surprised when an app accidentally goes and slide over again.

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01:00:43 ◼   ► I wanted to say on Bombus, one thing else is they have lots of really good colors and

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01:00:57 ◼   ► ones that are like blue and orange stripey ones too.

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01:01:04 ◼   ► And what a great word chevron is too.

01:01:06 ◼   ► It's a good word.

01:01:07 ◼   ► I have some real-time follow-up from the iPadOS preview page.

01:01:14 ◼   ► Start a quick note with a keyboard shortcut from control center,

01:01:18 ◼   ► or with a swipe up from the corner using your finger or Apple Pencil.

01:01:22 ◼   ► Oh, so it does work with your finger from the corner.

01:01:24 ◼   ► Well, it doesn't, but it should.

01:01:26 ◼   ► Yeah, okay.

01:01:27 ◼   ► See, that's why it wasn't working right now.

01:01:30 ◼   ► Okay. Oh, well, that's good news.

01:01:32 ◼   ► So there's going to be a quick activation with your finger, too.

01:01:34 ◼   ► So that's nice.

01:01:36 ◼   ► All right, so I want to cover the shelf.

01:01:39 ◼   ► So the shelf became sort of an in-joke here, unconnected,

01:01:44 ◼   ► because of my obsession with this feature that I dreamed up as a concept years ago.

01:01:49 ◼   ► There's going to be a link in the show notes to that concept.

01:01:52 ◼   ► This is not the kind of shelf that I imagined.

01:01:54 ◼   ► imagined. So the shelf in iPadOS 15 is not a clipboard manager, it's not a place

01:01:59 ◼   ► where you can drop stuff like text clippings or images or links, the shelf

01:02:05 ◼   ► is just a window picker. It's the window picker that you see in individual apps.

01:02:13 ◼   ► So the shelf is literally just a way to choose windows for the app that you just

01:02:19 ◼   ► opened. You can invoke the shelf with the keyboard shortcut, or, and this is, I feel

01:02:26 ◼   ► like, what I want to ask you guys about, you see the shelf by default every time you open

01:02:33 ◼   ► an app on your iPad that has multiple windows open. Whenever you open an app like Safari

01:02:41 ◼   ► and you have multiple Safari windows, you see the shelf along the bottom by default

01:02:45 ◼   ► every time. And then as soon as you interact with the app, the shelf goes away, but you

01:02:50 ◼   ► see it every time you switch to an app that has multiple windows. How do you guys feel

01:02:54 ◼   ► about that?

01:02:55 ◼   ► I don't understand what it's doing.

01:02:58 ◼   ► Okay.

01:02:59 ◼   ► I don't understand what the UI is, I don't know how to get rid of it, and I don't know

01:03:02 ◼   ► how to bring it back. I don't get it.

01:03:05 ◼   ► Okay. So I'm not defending the shelf here, I'm just explaining what it is and what it

01:03:10 ◼   ► does.

01:03:11 ◼   ► Yeah, you are.

01:03:12 ◼   ► The idea.

01:03:13 ◼   ► The idea, I think, so Apple, I think Apple is trying to go for a specific workflow here,

01:03:20 ◼   ► and there may be, they have maybe designed this feature with a lot of optimism in mind. So the

01:03:27 ◼   ► idea is, oh, you're working on your iPad, you have all these windows for the same app open on your

01:03:34 ◼   ► system, now whenever you open that application, we're gonna make it easy for you to switch between

01:03:41 ◼   ► Windows by showing you this shelf by default. Otherwise, you can always press Command+Ctrl+Down,

01:03:51 ◼   ► I think, and you will see the shelf with all your thumbnails for the windows that you want

01:04:00 ◼   ► to switch to. Which, I mean, I get it. It's like, it's an easier way, it's a more compact

01:04:07 ◼   ► way to switch between multiple windows, right? But I feel like the timing, like, showing

01:04:14 ◼   ► the shelf by default is maybe a bit aggressive. Like, I'm not sure I want to see that UI every

01:04:23 ◼   ► single time I open an app that has multiple windows. I feel like switching between windows

01:04:29 ◼   ► should be more of a sort of on-demand type thing. Like, I want to see the windows switch

01:04:34 ◼   ► UI when I know that I want to pick between multiple windows and instead Apple is showing you that by default

01:04:41 ◼   ► I'm not particularly opposed to the design of it

01:04:45 ◼   ► Like I think it's nice and and cute like the thumbnails are in real time

01:04:51 ◼   ► Like if you scroll a window you see the thumbnail update in real time if you scroll a page

01:04:56 ◼   ► It's cool and you can close windows from there and you can drag those thumbnails and you can turn them into windows

01:05:04 ◼   ► Like, you can grab a window from the shelf and you can make it a split view, for example.

01:05:11 ◼   ► But I just wonder, like, this idea of displaying the shelf by default, is it the right one?

01:05:18 ◼   ► Could maybe Apple tweak the timing of it going away a bit more?

01:05:23 ◼   ► Because I feel like it sticks around too long, and sometimes it doesn't go away at all.

01:05:29 ◼   ► Again, all of this is... this entire conversation is with the context of Beta 1, right?

01:05:36 ◼   ► We are aware that this is the first version, we shouldn't say that, but we should, because

01:05:40 ◼   ► people are gonna tweet at us.

01:05:43 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:05:44 ◼   ► I think it's kind of confusing in places also, like, the old Exposé view is still around,

01:05:51 ◼   ► like if you open the app switcher on your iPad, running iPadOS 15, and you right-click,

01:05:59 ◼   ► on Safari in your dock, and you click "Show all windows", you see the old Expose UI, right?

01:06:07 ◼   ► The idea is, with that menu, you can sort of filter the app switcher to show you all

01:06:15 ◼   ► the windows for, in this case, Safari.

01:06:18 ◼   ► But Apple basically got rid of the previous in-app Expose view.

01:06:26 ◼   ► That's not around anymore.

01:06:28 ◼   ► been replaced by the shelf. The thing that gets me about this is that it's like in addition

01:06:34 ◼   ► to the dock and I am not saying that they should just copy the way Mac OS does it but

01:06:40 ◼   ► let me explain the way Mac OS does it and let you decide for yourself. If they did it

01:06:44 ◼   ► once, maybe they should take some inspiration. So if you have five Safari windows and you

01:06:51 ◼   ► you minimize them into the dock.

01:06:53 ◼   ► And then you hide Safari, they the minimize thumbnails disappear, and you come back to

01:06:59 ◼   ► Safari and they reappear.

01:07:00 ◼   ► So you can have sets of open but not active windows in the dock and the dock is contextually

01:07:08 ◼   ► aware of what application you're in.

01:07:10 ◼   ► I understand that the dock on the iPad is different than on the Mac.

01:07:15 ◼   ► I think it's more similar now than it was before when you had to have apps in there

01:07:19 ◼   ► to get into multitasking. But I just don't see the need for this to be yet another UI

01:07:27 ◼   ► element. You know, take all the other stuff you said away, right, which it is confusing.

01:07:31 ◼   ► I don't understand why it's there sometimes and how to get it back all that stuff. But

01:07:36 ◼   ► why not combine it with the doc. So when you're in that app, all the things are at the very

01:07:42 ◼   ► bottom and the docs just one swipe away or a single keyboard shortcut away.

01:07:47 ◼   ► And also like on the Mac you can right-click an icon in the dock and all the open windows

01:07:53 ◼   ► are listed in the menu.

01:07:55 ◼   ► Whereas if you right-click an icon in iPadOS you see the Quick Actions menu and you see

01:08:00 ◼   ► "Show all windows", wouldn't it be easier to just see the windows right there?

01:08:06 ◼   ► I don't know, I guess that Apple was...

01:08:08 ◼   ► They're going for a more visual approach because the thing about the shelf is it also shows

01:08:12 ◼   ► you the different types of windows.

01:08:15 ◼   ► And this is where I think a lot... where it can get really confusing for people switching

01:08:21 ◼   ► from a desktop operating system to the iPad.

01:08:24 ◼   ► It's this idea of having different types and shapes of windows, right?

01:08:29 ◼   ► Because the shelf also shows you slide-over windows, and this new type of window that

01:08:35 ◼   ► they are introducing in iPadOS 15 called the center window, or the prominent window.

01:08:42 ◼   ► So this is a new type, a new shape of a window, that right now you can see it in Mail and

01:08:49 ◼   ► Notes. The center window is basically what it says in the name. It's a window that opens

01:08:56 ◼   ► in the center of the screen. And so when you click "Open in New Window" on an email message

01:09:01 ◼   ► or a note in iPadOS 15, that item opens in the center of the screen as like a pop-up.

01:09:10 ◼   ► And that's a center window, which is a new type of window this year. And the center window

01:09:15 ◼   ► — I know that I'm adding more and more details to this conversation, but hey, it's not my

01:09:20 ◼   ► fault — this center window comes with a fourth icon in the multitasking control tray,

01:09:30 ◼   ► the three little dots. There's a fourth icon just for center windows.

01:09:35 ◼   ► I haven't come across this yet.

01:09:37 ◼   ► That fourth button basically says "Make this a regular window" and it's totally not clear.

01:09:45 ◼   ► And it's also why I wonder, should that multitasking tray have text labels underneath the icons

01:09:53 ◼   ► to explain what the shapes are and what the shapes do?

01:09:58 ◼   ► But yeah, you can turn a center window into a split view, into a slide over, it shows

01:10:04 ◼   ► up in the shelf and it comes with its own multitasking control. Now, is this too many

01:10:10 ◼   ► types of windows? Like, my concern is that... So a lot of folks say, "Oh, Apple should do

01:10:20 ◼   ► freeform multitasking and freeform windowing on iPadOS." And I tweeted this today, as sort

01:10:27 ◼   ► of bait on Twitter. So I wanted to send this tweet showing the worst case scenario or best

01:10:35 ◼   ► case scenario. It was kind of like a Rorschach test, basically. And I didn't say anything,

01:10:40 ◼   ► like I didn't embed my opinion in the tweet. I just wanted to see how people would respond

01:10:47 ◼   ► to it. It was a screenshot of an of IPadOS 15 showing all kinds of windows open at the

01:10:54 ◼   ► the same time. Split View, the shelf, Slide Over, Picture in Picture Video, and a Quick

01:11:00 ◼   ► Note. And I asked, "Have we approached desktop territory here?" And you can see in the replies

01:11:06 ◼   ► that there's plenty of folks saying, "It's great that IPOS 15 lets me do this," and folks

01:11:12 ◼   ► who are saying, "Oh, I cannot believe that Apple brought this complexity to IPOS. They

01:11:17 ◼   ► should just do what they do on the desktop." Now, I do think it's great that we have this

01:11:22 ◼   ► kind of freedom, but my concern is when people say Apple should just do free-form windowing

01:11:28 ◼   ► and achieve true complexity in iPadOS, haven't they done that already, but in a slightly

01:11:39 ◼   ► different way? It's like controlled chaos. Yes, at this point I wonder, what's with all

01:11:48 ◼   ► different types of windows. Oh, it can be a split view window, or it can be a slide over window, like

01:11:54 ◼   ► having all these names and all these fixed places, like, is it really all that useful at this point?

01:12:02 ◼   ► Like, I understand that the, like, split view means it can be 50/50 or 70/30. Slide over means it's

01:12:11 ◼   ► floating. Picture-in-picture means it's video. QuickNote is its own thing. But like, at this point,

01:12:20 ◼   ► we do have desktop complexity, but we also have these weird limitations to deal with.

01:12:29 ◼   ► And my final thought here is, maybe the answer is lying in plain sight,

01:12:38 ◼   ► and the answer in a potential future could be that little Quick Note window that you see.

01:12:45 ◼   ► See, the Quick Note window is a little special in that, besides being exclusive to Apple Notes,

01:12:51 ◼   ► it also behaves like picture-in-picture for video. So essentially Quick Note is picture-in-picture

01:12:58 ◼   ► for multitasking, right? You can throw it around the screen, you can stack multiple Quick Notes

01:13:04 ◼   ► together and you can resize it. Like you can resize a video with picture in

01:13:10 ◼   ► picture. It's like pinch to resize. Like you don't have freeform sort of

01:13:17 ◼   ► resize controls but you have multiple sizes. And so I wonder maybe

01:13:23 ◼   ► that's a good compromise. Like maybe that's a good solution for the future

01:13:26 ◼   ► where we can get rid of all these different terms and names and fixed

01:13:33 ◼   ► places for windows and maybe you could just say look we're not gonna give you

01:13:38 ◼   ► like a resize arrow control to grab a window by its corner on like on the Mac

01:13:44 ◼   ► we're not gonna give you that on iPad but everything can be floating or it can

01:13:50 ◼   ► be taken full screen or you know you you can make it bigger I would like some

01:13:55 ◼   ► snapping of stuff too and maybe there's because I feel like right now we have

01:14:01 ◼   ► too many systems and too many boxes, right? Too many, "Oh, it can be this or it can be

01:14:08 ◼   ► that or it can be that," but not that, right? We have this too many areas. I'm not sure

01:14:14 ◼   ► how to describe them, right? Too many structures in place at the moment. And I just wonder

01:14:22 ◼   ► if maybe more freedom would actually be simpler at this point.

01:14:27 ◼   ► Let me ask you a question.

01:14:29 ◼   ► Think about this one for a minute.

01:14:32 ◼   ► Not a minute, that's a lot of time to think about something.

01:14:35 ◼   ► Do you think that you could potentially be suffering from the reviewers dilemma here?

01:14:40 ◼   ► That you have to get your head around this in a way that maybe users don't need to?

01:14:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:48 ◼   ► Like I've never...

01:14:49 ◼   ► Yes.

01:14:50 ◼   ► Okay.

01:14:51 ◼   ► Because like when I don't feel like I'm finding things as complex because the stuff that I don't care about

01:14:57 ◼   ► I'm just not gonna bother with like the shelf is pointless to me. I don't care about it, right?

01:15:01 ◼   ► I'm just gonna get rid of it every time because like that UI is dumb

01:15:05 ◼   ► I don't need to feel like I have to understand it. Do you know what I mean? Like that that

01:15:10 ◼   ► It's in needing to name it. Like I have to rationalize all these things for

01:15:18 ◼   ► my job. And that's a very good point actually, and the regular user is not going to do this,

01:15:24 ◼   ► they're just going to use the device. Because part of the problem for you is, that I can already feel, is you need to assign

01:15:31 ◼   ► names to these things, or use the names that are assigned to them and

01:15:36 ◼   ► explain them in text, and that is a really hard thing to do. Yeah, yeah.

01:15:41 ◼   ► Yeah, but I also like, so I totally agree with you,

01:15:44 ◼   ► but I also feel like

01:15:48 ◼   ► It is true that we have, at the moment, I think we have too many systems in place.

01:15:54 ◼   ► Like, the difference between Split View and Slide Over, it's starting to grow old for me,

01:16:03 ◼   ► because I feel like Apple did all these things this year, but they really haven't changed, right,

01:16:09 ◼   ► the fundamentals of the basic structure of multitasking on iPad.

01:16:14 ◼   ► It can be full-screen Split View and Slide Over.

01:16:17 ◼   ► but now they have these exceptions to the rule, right?

01:16:21 ◼   ► Oh, it can also be a center window,

01:16:24 ◼   ► and it can be, you know,

01:16:25 ◼   ► video can be picture in picture,

01:16:27 ◼   ► and notes, it can be a quick note.

01:16:30 ◼   ► Like, it's these exceptions that make me question the rule.

01:16:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I have the feeling that if this doesn't work,

01:16:43 ◼   ► they're going to be forced to go back to the drawing board.

01:16:47 ◼   ► Like this really is just scaffolding or, you know, whatever analogy you want.

01:16:51 ◼   ► It's more on top of the system we've had and it makes that system better.

01:16:56 ◼   ► But to your point, it also makes it more complex.

01:16:58 ◼   ► Like I just don't if this isn't the one

01:17:02 ◼   ► like all that's left is windowing, right? Or some sort of snapping thing.

01:17:06 ◼   ► I just I can't help but think that this is the last chance

01:17:11 ◼   ► this entire paradigm has to work.

01:17:14 ◼   ► - I mean, I do think this is the best version

01:17:16 ◼   ► of this six year old system.

01:17:18 ◼   ► - I agree.

01:17:19 ◼   ► And I just wanted to say that I agree with that.

01:17:21 ◼   ► Like this is a very tough thing to design for

01:17:25 ◼   ► like multitasking and windows.

01:17:27 ◼   ► Like it's along with file managers,

01:17:30 ◼   ► it's probably one of the most challenging things to design

01:17:32 ◼   ► in an operating system.

01:17:33 ◼   ► - Well, it is challenging if you don't want

01:17:35 ◼   ► free form windows, right?

01:17:37 ◼   ► If you're trying to move the ball forward,

01:17:40 ◼   ► which they are, they're trying to make multitasking and multi window

01:17:43 ◼   ► more accessible.

01:17:45 ◼   ► I would argue they actually haven't done that.

01:17:47 ◼   ► But yeah, yeah.

01:17:50 ◼   ► Carry on. Yeah, I think that there is a challenge

01:17:53 ◼   ► that the freeform windows on iPad is a really difficult design challenge,

01:17:57 ◼   ► especially six years ago, it was right.

01:18:00 ◼   ► They couldn't have launched multitasking and said

01:18:04 ◼   ► you can now have freeform windows on iPad.

01:18:06 ◼   ► No, no developers would have gone in for that.

01:18:08 ◼   ► the amount of work it would have needed. And now, maybe over time, as they've added other

01:18:13 ◼   ► functionalities it might become closer to being possible. I don't know.

01:18:16 ◼   ► I do think they made it more accessible this year with the multitasking manual for most

01:18:22 ◼   ► people. And I think the keyboard stuff is excellent. I mostly get confused because of

01:18:32 ◼   ► what Myke said, like in having to explain the subtle differences between what's a

01:18:38 ◼   ► slide-over window and what's a center window, like, I think that could... I don't

01:18:43 ◼   ► know, we'll see how it goes, right? Well, this is beta 1. I'm sure... well, I'm

01:18:48 ◼   ► not sure. I think it's likely there's going to be tweaks to this system and

01:18:51 ◼   ► especially the shelf, so I want to revisit this topic over the

01:18:56 ◼   ► next couple of months, but I'm fascinated by this entire idea of we're not

01:19:03 ◼   ► changing the system, this is more options for the same system, and I want to see

01:19:09 ◼   ► how it goes. Sounds like a fun summer to me. Yes, I'm not the one writing the

01:19:15 ◼   ► review. If you want to find links to stuff we spoke about, head on over to the

01:19:20 ◼   ► website at relay.fm slash connected slash 350. Before we

01:19:25 ◼   ► let you go, I want to tell you about another show here on relay

01:19:28 ◼   ► FM and that is automators. If you want your devices to work

01:19:32 ◼   ► for you, you're going to really love automators. Join David

01:19:36 ◼   ► sparks and rosemary orchard at relay.fm slash automators, or

01:19:41 ◼   ► search for it wherever you get your podcast. You can find all

01:19:45 ◼   ► of us online. You can find Federico at Viti V I T I CCI on Twitter. And you can find him

01:19:53 ◼   ► of course at max stories.net. Myke is on Twitter as I M Y K E. And he's on a whole bunch of

01:20:00 ◼   ► shows here on relay FM Myke, I'm really enjoying the newest cortex. Good job there. Thank you

01:20:06 ◼   ► learning a lot about magic gathering. I didn't know. Me too. I wasn't expecting that. But

01:20:12 ◼   ► you know, that's how these things go sometimes.

01:20:14 ◼   ► - It's true.

01:20:15 ◼   ► You can find me on Twitter as ISMH

01:20:18 ◼   ► and my writing over at 512pixels.net.

01:20:21 ◼   ► Other than that, our sponsors this week,

01:20:23 ◼   ► Pingdom, Smile and Bombas.

01:20:26 ◼   ► Until next time guys, say goodbye.

01:20:28 ◼   ► - Arudetchi.

01:20:29 ◼   ► - Cheerio.