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Connected

313: Trojan Horse in My Phone

 

00:00:00   (upbeat music)

00:00:02   - Hello and welcome to Connected, episode 313.

00:00:12   It's made possible this week by our sponsors,

00:00:14   Ahrefs, StoryWorth, and Reidel.

00:00:17   My name is Steven Hackett,

00:00:18   and I am joined by Mr. Myke Hurley.

00:00:20   - Hello.

00:00:21   - Howdy, how are you?

00:00:23   - Good.

00:00:24   - We're also joined by Mr. Federico Vittucci.

00:00:26   - Hi.

00:00:27   - Hello.

00:00:28   - Hello, hello, how are you guys?

00:00:29   Good tired, but good. I

00:00:32   Can imagine very tired was a big week for you guys last week. Yeah. Hey, you were a big part of it, man

00:00:39   So we're recording this just a handful of days after our podcast

00:00:44   a thon podcast of on to as it was as it was named a

00:00:47   Well ended up being an almost seven hour live show

00:00:51   Myke and I hosted with a bunch of awesome relay people including Federico and a whole bunch of other hosts again

00:00:57   and thank you to everyone on the network who came,

00:01:01   came on the show, it was a lot of fun.

00:01:03   We raised just a ton of money.

00:01:05   We raised basically twice what we did

00:01:08   during the Podcast-a-thon last year.

00:01:10   And as I record this, we are at $345,000 for the month,

00:01:14   which like, y'all, that's amazing.

00:01:17   There were several times during the Podcast-a-thon

00:01:20   where on my laptop, I had like the backend

00:01:23   of the donation platform.

00:01:24   I was like that, like it is moving so fast.

00:01:26   every time I glance over all the names are new because people were just

00:01:29   donating and donating so thank you so much. If you haven't seen the Podcastathon

00:01:34   or you had to duck out for a little while which is totally understandable

00:01:37   because it's six and a half hours long it is on the Relay FM YouTube channel so

00:01:42   we got that uploaded there and you know I think it's definitely worth watching.

00:01:47   Myke you said on upgrade that the last 90 minutes is kind of the if you're

00:01:50   gonna watch any of it do that and I agree I think it was I think it was all

00:01:54   really good. I was really proud of how it came out, but you know by the end of it

00:01:58   we're a little loopy. It's really late for Myke so it was fun to sort of

00:02:03   unwind a little bit as the time went on. And if you are a monster you can listen

00:02:08   to 418 minutes of the audio version as well, which I'll put in the show notes, but I

00:02:14   think if you do that you really are an incredible monster of a person to want

00:02:19   to listen to what was a live video stream just in audio form.

00:02:24   Yeah, we put it there just to do it.

00:02:26   We don't expect many people to listen to that.

00:02:29   It's merely there of record, but that's about it.

00:02:33   Yeah, I think also Departures has one of my favorite

00:02:36   show art designs on the whole network.

00:02:38   Didn't you do that one?

00:02:40   I feel like that.

00:02:41   I think maybe Frank and I shared it.

00:02:45   I was definitely involved, but I just,

00:02:47   I love the way it came out

00:02:48   and we don't get to use it very much.

00:02:50   But, especially this year, because we've had--

00:02:52   - Well, we would, I know, it would have been used more,

00:02:55   but it's the live show feed, which, you know,

00:02:58   there aren't a lot of those at the moment.

00:03:00   - I'll point people to this coming Sunday's Mac Power Users

00:03:04   in the member section at the end of the show.

00:03:07   David and I talked about the technical aspects

00:03:09   of how the show and stream went together,

00:03:12   but I'll say here publicly again,

00:03:14   thank you to everyone at St. Jude and Allsac

00:03:16   who helped pull it together.

00:03:18   We jumped through a lot of hoops

00:03:20   for me to be on campus safely,

00:03:22   everyone to be there following all the city and county rules

00:03:26   in addition to St. Jude's regulations.

00:03:29   And that was all totally worth it.

00:03:31   It was so great to be in that studio to host the show.

00:03:36   I was sad.

00:03:37   I was, I didn't say this on Friday, Myke,

00:03:40   'cause I didn't wanna bum you out,

00:03:41   but like, I was genuinely sad.

00:03:42   Like, I was like in the green room, like by myself.

00:03:45   Last year it was both of us.

00:03:46   and Mary and Nadina were there.

00:03:48   It was like, I'm just here by myself.

00:03:50   Like there's, I mean, Mary couldn't even come with me.

00:03:52   It was just me and a handful of people,

00:03:55   way smaller production crew than last year

00:03:58   because of the pandemic.

00:03:59   But it was really special to be there.

00:04:01   And if you haven't given yet, there's still time.

00:04:04   We're fundraising throughout the end of the month.

00:04:07   Stjoe.org/relay is where you wanna go.

00:04:10   Now we do have a couple of upcoming events.

00:04:12   So on Friday at noon Eastern,

00:04:17   Myke and I will be in a little competition

00:04:20   drawing Relay FM show artwork from memory.

00:04:23   So we're gonna have a show picked randomly

00:04:27   and then we have to draw or sketch the show art

00:04:30   and then we will grade how we did.

00:04:32   So that should be a lot of fun.

00:04:34   - Yeah, Stephen didn't mention it during the show.

00:04:38   Well, 'cause I said beforehand,

00:04:40   I really didn't wanna focus on the fact

00:04:42   that we weren't going to be together, right?

00:04:44   Like I feel like it was something that was worth

00:04:47   just celebrating for what it was

00:04:49   and not commiserating for what it would have been.

00:04:52   - Yeah.

00:04:53   - And I think that we did a good job.

00:04:54   - Me too.

00:04:55   - I definitely wouldn't have had a gazebo at St. Jude.

00:04:59   (laughing)

00:05:00   - Well, I say you wouldn't own a gazebo.

00:05:01   We could have had one, but you wouldn't own a gazebo.

00:05:04   - I now own one, yeah.

00:05:06   And also I will say the cleanup of the six to 700 balloons

00:05:09   was incredibly fun.

00:05:12   I just got a poster tube, you know what you put a poster on?

00:05:15   And I stuck some needles on the end of it,

00:05:18   like sewing needles, just went to town, it's fantastic.

00:05:22   I had a great time.

00:05:22   I actually put that on my Instagram,

00:05:24   I'll put that in the show notes too,

00:05:25   if people wanna see what it looks like

00:05:26   for 600 balloons to be popped.

00:05:29   - That's awesome. - But Steven,

00:05:30   tell people why they should be still continuing

00:05:31   to donate during September.

00:05:33   - Oh, there's so many good reasons.

00:05:35   I wanna talk a little bit about the impact St. Jude has had

00:05:38   over its 50 plus year history.

00:05:41   So when St. Jude got started here in Memphis,

00:05:43   I'm like, you should go read the history of it,

00:05:44   it's actually really fascinating.

00:05:46   But when they started, very little attention,

00:05:50   very few resources were given

00:05:54   to dealing with childhood cancer, pediatric cancer.

00:05:59   During its history, St. Jude has really moved the needle

00:06:02   in a meaningful way.

00:06:03   So when they started, the survival rate for childhood cancer

00:06:08   was about 20%.

00:06:11   And today, 50 something years later, it is over 80%.

00:06:16   That's within a lifetime, right?

00:06:19   Like that's what the, I mean, that is amazing progress

00:06:22   and it is really impressive to think about

00:06:26   in what is relatively a short period of time

00:06:28   how far it has come.

00:06:30   And St. Jude is not stopping.

00:06:32   You know, there's this saying from the founder, Danny Thomas,

00:06:35   it's all over the hospital.

00:06:37   It says, "No child should die in the dawn of life."

00:06:39   And that is what St. Jude is,

00:06:43   like all of their effort, all of this,

00:06:45   all of these resources, all the research,

00:06:47   it's all bent towards that goal.

00:06:48   And it's only possible by people donating.

00:06:51   So not only are they bringing that number

00:06:54   closer and closer to zero,

00:06:55   but they're doing so by caring for families and patients

00:06:59   and taking care of all the bills for them.

00:07:01   No family is charged a dime for St. Jude treatment

00:07:04   or costs associated with it, travel,

00:07:08   meals, housing, all of that stuff. So again, that's only possible thanks to you all. So

00:07:13   stangil.org/relay. Definitely go give and we would really appreciate it.

00:07:18   So I got a iPad mini for the podcast of thumb.

00:07:21   Yes.

00:07:21   Because I wanted to have an iPad to, like a screen to watch the stream as it was live.

00:07:29   It worked perfectly for the job that I bought it for. I was very happy with the purchase. I

00:07:34   I got a little smart cover for it and stood it up on my little video table and it was

00:07:39   perfect.

00:07:40   It gave me a dedicated screen to just see what the stream was doing so I could make

00:07:44   sure that everything looked fine from my end.

00:07:48   And I just wanted to follow up with some little thoughts, my impressions of using an iPad

00:07:51   mini again.

00:07:53   I think that it is super nice to have something that can do what an iPad can do but in a form

00:08:00   factor that you can hold in one hand.

00:08:03   couldn't have your entire hand around it. It was kind of funny because when there

00:08:10   was an episode of Adapt that you did Federico where you were telling Brian

00:08:13   about your experiences of using an iPad mini again, you were talking about how

00:08:18   like it was very it was like oh it's super thin super light that kind of

00:08:24   stuff and I was thinking to myself but like it's the iPad Pro is thinner like

00:08:29   it is that weirdly enough it's a thing that a lot of people forget it's easier

00:08:33   to forget, but the iPad Pro is thinner than the iPad mini.

00:08:36   But you don't, it doesn't feel like that when you're holding it.

00:08:40   And it's the weight, that's the thing that I've come down on.

00:08:43   The thing that makes the biggest difference, it's not the physical size, it's not the thinness

00:08:47   for me, it's the weight in that you can hold any iPad in one hand, but it's not comfortable

00:08:54   for long periods of time.

00:08:56   But the iPad mini is very very easy and comfortable to hold in one hand because you can grip it

00:09:01   very well because you can get most of your hand around the device to support it and then

00:09:06   it's also super light. And also you know one of the great things about the smart cover

00:09:10   is that folded smart cover grip you know like when you kind of fold it on itself so it gets

00:09:14   like thickness on one side and you hold it kind of like what the Kindles do. So it was

00:09:19   not I found the form factor really nice but 64 gigabytes which is the iPad that I got

00:09:26   completely untenable. I barely installed a few apps on it and then it was completely full.

00:09:31   I don't know how it happened. I don't save photos or whatever, like I'm doing everything that Apple

00:09:38   is suggesting that I do in the storage management page, but just the kinds of apps that I use like

00:09:43   Dropbox, Google Docs, the iWork Suite, stuff like that, like completely filled up the entire

00:09:48   64 gigabytes. So yeah, I continue to recommend people do not get 64 gigabyte products where they

00:09:57   can. I think that is what the new iPad Air starts at and I think that that on the last episode I

00:10:06   said that I thought that that was ridiculous and now having used an iPad for just a week with 64

00:10:12   gigabytes of storage, I stand by what I said. Like, that is an almost in the

00:10:19   modern day an almost unusable storage size because seven gigabytes was taken

00:10:23   up by the system. Like, it says it on the bottom. I'm barely left of anything at

00:10:28   that point. Like, I wasn't downloading any music to it. I wasn't downloading any

00:10:33   content to it. Just purely installing the apps that I needed filled it up.

00:10:38   Do you have iCloud photo on it all, like the thumbnails on the device?

00:10:42   I am whatever the system sets me to be by default.

00:10:45   Because I looked at mine when I saw this in the show notes.

00:10:48   Mine is also 64 gigs and it's almost out of space, but Photos is taking up a lot of that

00:10:53   and Apple should manage that automatically.

00:10:56   But I agree with you on the whole though.

00:10:59   64 gigs, especially when you're selling devices that shoot 4K video and these amazing photos

00:11:05   and all these rich apps, like it just doesn't go very far.

00:11:09   And it feels like yesterday,

00:11:10   but of course it was years ago,

00:11:11   we were arguing this about 16 gigabytes,

00:11:13   but the technology has really come along that much

00:11:17   in just a few years where I really think 128

00:11:21   is the minimum that most people can get by on,

00:11:24   because most people probably don't use iCloud photo.

00:11:27   So they can't offload their photos.

00:11:29   They just have the pictures they've taken.

00:11:30   They may not subscribe to Apple Music or Spotify.

00:11:34   Maybe that, you know, it's like we as nerds have like tools to manage this and even if we can't manage it

00:11:41   It's like then it's not tenable at all

00:11:43   Let me go get my iPad real quick. Okay. I'll give you a breakdown of what's on it

00:11:47   Hey Federico

00:11:50   Do you have an iPad mini? I do. Yeah, it's really good right like it's really small and portable

00:11:56   Yeah, I feel like it's made some sort of comeback

00:11:58   Maybe it's just the three of us and John but it really seems like the you know

00:12:03   the minis found a home again in people's lives?

00:12:06   - I think so, because it's such a unique form factor

00:12:10   at this point where we have, like even a large iPhone,

00:12:14   I know that people point out the difference

00:12:16   that seems to be very small in terms of like

00:12:18   the display size, but it's the form factor

00:12:20   that is still so different between an iPad mini

00:12:22   and even a big iPhone.

00:12:24   And just also the OS, of course,

00:12:25   like the fact that it runs iPad OS

00:12:27   and you can still do things like Split View,

00:12:29   which is kind of ridiculous on a small display,

00:12:31   but you can do it, right?

00:12:33   And like, I absolutely cannot wait for the iPad mini

00:12:38   to get the iPad Pro design treatment.

00:12:41   I think it was rumored, it was your risky pick, Steven.

00:12:44   - Yeah, yeah, it was.

00:12:45   - I think you picked the wrong year.

00:12:47   - Probably.

00:12:48   - It should happen next year, I think.

00:12:49   - I did it with Arm Max too, I was off.

00:12:52   I did that last year.

00:12:53   - That took a little longer than I was expecting,

00:12:55   but I have it now.

00:12:56   - That's cool.

00:12:57   So I'm currently at 61 and a half out of 64 gigabytes used.

00:13:02   Um, one of the things that's,

00:13:04   seems to be taking up a lot of my space is, uh, messages, right?

00:13:10   I believe because it's telling me I can save up to 22.8 gigabytes

00:13:16   by reviewing my large attachments. But I don't know what that means.

00:13:21   Like I have messages in the cloud on,

00:13:25   And then when I go to review the attachments,

00:13:27   it's like I have to manually delete videos, like one by one,

00:13:31   which seems very strange to me.

00:13:34   So I don't really know what's going on here,

00:13:37   but it's not a good scene.

00:13:41   I've got multiple gigabytes taken up in apps.

00:13:45   And then at the moment, 47 gigabytes

00:13:48   is quote, "other system data," whatever that means.

00:13:53   So there you go.

00:13:55   It adds up quick.

00:13:56   It sure does.

00:13:57   Maybe you should have gotten a bigger iPad Mini.

00:13:59   Well, I mean, honestly, for what I was installing,

00:14:03   which is basically what I put on it

00:14:04   was a bunch of applications that don't download a bunch of data.

00:14:08   I just figured that that would be fine.

00:14:11   Like I wasn't planning on putting anything on it.

00:14:14   Everything's changing at the moment.

00:14:16   And now other, what's quoted as other,

00:14:18   is now 39 gigabytes of information.

00:14:21   and I have eight gigabytes, which is messages,

00:14:23   but that eight gigabytes of messages

00:14:25   is just what the system is choosing to store

00:14:27   because I have messages in the cloud turned on.

00:14:30   So yeah, basically all of this is a long way

00:14:34   of saying again, like 64 gigabytes is the new 16 gigabytes.

00:14:38   It doesn't work in today's world.

00:14:40   We deal with way more data just in our typical lives, so.

00:14:46   - iOS 14.2 beta is out.

00:14:51   Nine to Five has an article with the changes.

00:14:56   There's some, the media controls are revamped.

00:14:59   I think they're worse.

00:15:00   You have the, what is it that Apple bought

00:15:03   that listens to songs and tells you what it is?

00:15:05   - Shazam. - Shazam.

00:15:07   It is in Control Center now.

00:15:09   So it's been demoted to just a button in Control Center,

00:15:11   which is kind of cool.

00:15:12   And you can tap it and then it will tell you what's playing

00:15:16   and it will give you an option to listen to it on Apple Music.

00:15:22   It's not just that it's going to listen

00:15:24   to what's playing around you using the microphone, right?

00:15:28   I think the most important change here

00:15:30   is that Apple is calling this music recognition, not just

00:15:34   Shazam.

00:15:34   And I mean, it's obviously Shazam

00:15:35   because it's got the logo.

00:15:37   But what they're doing is they can listen via the microphone,

00:15:39   of course.

00:15:40   But now that feature can also recognize audio

00:15:43   playing inside any app.

00:15:45   So even if you're listening to your headphones

00:15:48   or your AirPods,

00:15:50   the music recognition feature can just take a look

00:15:53   at the audio track essentially and find the music play,

00:15:57   what music is playing inside that audio track for you,

00:16:02   even if nothing is coming out of the iPhone speakers.

00:16:06   And I think that's pretty incredible, right?

00:16:08   It's the kind of integration that Apple can now do

00:16:10   because they own Shazam,

00:16:12   which obviously Shazam couldn't have done before

00:16:14   because it's not like as a third party app,

00:16:16   you can take a look at what's playing inside other apps,

00:16:19   but now they can do that.

00:16:20   So imagine, like I think that the bigger topic here is,

00:16:25   I think it's pretty clear that 14.2

00:16:29   is gearing up to be the headphones update for iOS,

00:16:33   because you take a look at all these features.

00:16:36   - So everything's audio related.

00:16:38   - Everything is audio related.

00:16:39   So you have the new suggestions

00:16:42   in the now playing tile in Control Center

00:16:46   and on the lock screen when nothing is playing.

00:16:49   You have the new media controls.

00:16:52   You have the new AirPlay Picker,

00:16:53   which is no longer a full screen thing.

00:16:55   I mean, that's not a surprise given Compact UI this year.

00:16:58   And then you have music recognition in Control Center.

00:17:00   So all these things are audio related

00:17:02   and perhaps the most intriguing of all,

00:17:05   music recognition also works with AirPods and headphones.

00:17:09   And I think that if Apple is indeed about to announce this new AirPods Studio or HeadPods,

00:17:15   whatever, I think this is going to be a big selling point, right? You can have this feature

00:17:21   work for you and you have the direct Apple Music integration. I think it's a very cool

00:17:25   addition to Control Center. I would have liked to see, I'm just nitpicking here,

00:17:32   it would be nice if you could associate a playlist for music recognition to save songs into. Instead,

00:17:38   right now is just saying, "Here's a song, do you want to listen to Apple music?" But

00:17:42   one of the cool things about Shazam, the app, is that when I recognize songs, they get automatically

00:17:48   saved into a playlist. This feature doesn't do that yet. So that would be nice. But overall,

00:17:54   I think 14.2 is going to be the headphones, the audio update. I think in a way, it's kind

00:18:00   of cool because Apple used to have music events in the fall, now they're going to have the

00:18:04   music update. So I think that's kind of nice.

00:18:07   But then also the other thing which we haven't mentioned but it's like 14.1 is lost somewhere.

00:18:13   Like it fell down the back of a couch at Apple Park and they can't find it.

00:18:18   It's like the iPhone 9.

00:18:19   It's like the iPhone 9 never existed.

00:18:23   It's uh, you know, I think is where they stashed all the secret iPhone features.

00:18:27   14.1 is for the iPhone 9 only.

00:18:31   That's the only device with 14.1.

00:18:33   Now I don't know, maybe it doesn't even exist 14.1.

00:18:35   maybe it's on the iPhones, I think. Yeah, makes more sense. Yeah, I mean, they've done

00:18:39   this before they did it like 10 years ago, where they had the iPad on iOS three still

00:18:44   that I was for came out for the phone and then like 4.2 I think is where they merged

00:18:50   them. And so maybe that's how this goes is the phones come with 14.1. And maybe even

00:18:55   that day or a couple days later, 14.2 comes to unify the new phones and the iPad all at

00:19:03   want. So I think that makes a lot of sense. I guess the only part of it though is that

00:19:07   14.2 clearly doesn't reference the iPhone 12 in any way because otherwise it would have

00:19:13   been mined by now. So I just find that interesting, right? Because our assumption is like a similar

00:19:20   assumption for why one of the reasons they may have released the GM basically immediately

00:19:26   after announcing products is so that they could keep some of the stuff in it secret.

00:19:30   it's just this weird thing of like iOS 14.2 doesn't, clearly doesn't reference any new

00:19:35   products so will it end up being 14.2 that goes on the new iPhone? It's very weird, it's

00:19:41   all very weird right? Everything's very weird right now and this is part of it so I thought

00:19:45   14.1 is lost somewhere probably in a Foxconn factory in China.

00:19:51   Like where'd it go? Where'd that USB key go?

00:19:56   We dropped it.

00:19:57   It's gone.

00:19:58   IOS 14 adoption is very good.

00:20:01   Current estimates suggest that it is outpacing IOS 13,

00:20:06   which is 25% adoption versus 20% adoption

00:20:08   after five days of release.

00:20:11   Obviously you can't do like, remember 13 was weird,

00:20:15   but like this is the kind of a thing that there

00:20:17   is being assumed from when it was actually released.

00:20:20   And this isn't surprising for two reasons.

00:20:23   One, 13 was known to be not good, right?

00:20:26   and that was the message that was circulating, I think,

00:20:30   as soon as iOS 13 was released.

00:20:32   But iOS 14 has widgets,

00:20:34   and as it's impossible to ignore right now,

00:20:37   widgets are the talk of the town,

00:20:39   and we're gonna touch on that a little bit later on.

00:20:42   But it's like how, I mean, again,

00:20:44   I'm not saying anything original here,

00:20:46   but I think it's just worth noting,

00:20:47   it's kind of like how emoji has always pushed forward

00:20:51   the adoption of new versions of iOS.

00:20:54   I think it's pretty clear that widgets are doing it for iOS 14 because widgets have gone

00:21:00   viral in a way that iOS releases do not go viral. This isn't a thing that happens, right?

00:21:06   That like it becomes this thing where it's not just that your phone is updating and whatever.

00:21:11   It's like, no, I want to do this so I can do what my favorite influencers are doing

00:21:15   to make their home screens a static AF.

00:21:19   Yeah, I'm not surprised that these numbers are up, especially in the context of widgets.

00:21:26   And in fact, I'm trying... we're gonna talk about that later, but I needed to convince

00:21:32   a friend today not to update her iPhone to iOS 14 for reasons that we're gonna talk about

00:21:40   shortly. And it was a struggle because she really wanted to try the widgets. So I'm not

00:21:48   sure if I managed to convince her. We'll see. But yeah, people want widgets man, what

00:21:54   you got to do about it? Honestly I was not expecting this, so it's quite the surprise.

00:22:01   This episode of Connected is brought to you by Ahrefs. Do you work for a big brand or

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00:23:45   and Relay FM. So Federico, you have jumped on the iOS 14

00:23:52   customization train in the best way you know how by creating a shortcut to do it. Can you

00:23:58   talk about Wall Creator? Yes, so Wall Creator, this shortcut that I

00:24:03   I shared yesterday. It lets you create wallpapers for your iPhone and iPad either using solid

00:24:09   colors, so like if I have a red or purple or black wallpaper, or using gradients. You

00:24:16   can have a gradient that is top to bottom or diagonal from the top left to the bottom

00:24:21   right. And so this shortcut, it started off two years ago. I originally shared the first

00:24:28   version of this shortcut in MacStories Weekly, I believe in November or December 2018. And

00:24:34   now that I saw, like, obviously widgets going viral and people customizing their home screens,

00:24:40   and I thought, "How can I help and how can I sort of put out something useful that people

00:24:46   can use?" Especially because, like, so many people are discovering shortcuts now. And

00:24:51   I'm not kidding, the traffic to the MacStories Shortcuts Archive this week is, like, up 350

00:24:58   percent or something. Like it's kind of ridiculous. Do you know what they use? Like what people

00:25:02   are? Yes, I do. So most of them are obviously coming from Google, right? They just search

00:25:10   for shortcuts and the Mac Stories or Shortcuts Archive is popular enough that it's actually

00:25:13   really well positioned and people go there. And it also was linked by TechCrunch and a

00:25:20   bunch of other blogs this week. And I guess the people sort of discovering shortcuts arrive

00:25:24   on that page. A lot of them also discover one shortcut in particular that is in the

00:25:30   archive called "homescreen icon creator," which is something that I did a couple of

00:25:36   years ago that lets you create custom launchers using colors or custom photos and files. If

00:25:44   you want to have like a custom icon, the launch is something.

00:25:47   So like...

00:25:48   Oh hey, look, it's me.

00:25:49   Yeah, there's you in there.

00:25:50   There's me in there.

00:25:51   Yeah, so thousands of people this week have discovered the archive. Like, I'm not kidding,

00:25:57   in a week the archivist had the same traffic that he would get in like six months. It is

00:26:03   ridiculous, in the best way possible. And so I thought, well, if they are discovering

00:26:09   shortcuts and, you know, maybe a small percentage of those people also convert to being like

00:26:16   Max Stories readers and maybe my followers, so maybe I can give them something useful

00:26:20   And I thought, like I went looking through my archives and I noticed, well, I actually made a wallpaper shortcut a while back and I can probably update it.

00:26:29   So I took the basic structure of that shortcut and I came up with a technique because I figured, you know, if I put this out, the shortcut right now requires you to input manual color codes.

00:26:45   right? Whether you use the English name of an HTML color or the hex color code. And I thought,

00:26:51   "But if I put this out now, most people are going to have no idea what a hex color code is."

00:26:57   So I thought, "Is there any way that I can have a random color generation thing

00:27:02   happen inside Shortcuts without using third-party apps?" Right? Shortcuts doesn't have a native like

00:27:08   make image or create color action. So what I ended up doing is I implemented this very stupid and

00:27:18   silly and ugly workaround for running, for executing local JavaScript inside Shortcuts.

00:27:26   So by default, Shortcuts doesn't have like a run code action. The only JavaScript thing

00:27:35   that Safari has, that Shortcuts has, is a Safari action that lets you run JavaScript inside a web

00:27:42   page. However, that only works if you run a shortcut from the share sheet in Safari. There's

00:27:48   no other way to run JavaScript unless you implement my stupid technique, which is, and I know you guys

00:27:55   are gonna make fun of me for obvious reasons, but trust me, this works. I mean, you've tried

00:28:00   World Creator yourself, so you know that it works. Don't you tell me what I think you're about to say.

00:28:05   You assemble a local web page in Shortcuts. Inside the web page, which is literally like

00:28:11   you open an HTML tag and you close the HTML tag, in there you put a script object and

00:28:19   inside the script you put the JavaScript code.

00:28:22   Oh, I thought you were going to tell me it was base64.

00:28:24   Oh no, wait, just you wait, it's coming. So what you do is you base64 encode this web

00:28:31   page.

00:28:32   You've put a Trojan horse in my phone again.

00:28:35   Now my iCloud is going to get messed up.

00:28:37   - You base 64 encode the webpage.

00:28:43   Then you use the get contents of webpage action.

00:28:46   So what happens basically?

00:28:48   Well, it's different from the previous times, right?

00:28:51   It's different because the shortcuts that you remember,

00:28:54   they actually had a base 64 text action already contained

00:29:01   inside them. Those shortcuts were problematic because they were actually large in size,

00:29:07   like Apple frames, for example, right? The assets for those frames, they are embedded

00:29:12   within the shortcut. That's what causes problems. This is different in that the basic C4 is

00:29:19   generated on the fly by the shortcut every single time. It's not stored inside the shortcut,

00:29:25   which is why it runs super quickly. So what you do basically is you tell... This is a

00:29:30   stupid technique, but it works. You tell Shortcut basically to, like, run JavaScript every single

00:29:36   time the shortcut runs, and every time the shortcut runs, the script that I created,

00:29:42   which is adapted from another person that I found on Stack Overflow, which I modified to my needs,

00:29:48   it basically creates a random hex color code every single time. So every time, if you choose the

00:29:54   random option, you can create a random wallpaper that uses either a random solid color or a random

00:30:02   gradient. And it's fun! I really like it. It's fun. I've been doing it while we've been talking,

00:30:07   to just keep cycling new ones, new ones, new ones. And you get really cool looking colors.

00:30:13   Yeah, you do. And it's very fun, especially if you use it as a widget on the home screen. Thanks

00:30:20   Thanks to Compact UI, you can just confirm and start creating wallpapers from the home

00:30:27   screen.

00:30:28   And you get the quick look preview, of course.

00:30:30   And another cool thing about this shortcut is that you don't have to say, "Oh, I'm using

00:30:34   an iPhone," or "I'm using an iPad."

00:30:37   The shortcut figures it out on its own, because shortcuts have actions to tell the display

00:30:44   size of the current device.

00:30:47   And so by using those numbers and a bunch of calculations inside the shortcut that you

00:30:51   don't need to know, it understands, "Am I on an iPhone, on an iPad?"

00:30:59   And also if it's an iPhone, "Is this a 2x display or a 3x display?"

00:31:05   So that's kind of cool.

00:31:06   And yeah, you can just create wallpapers and then you can save them to the photos library,

00:31:10   or you can just keep creating new ones.

00:31:13   So I thought maybe people will like this, and it seems like people are liking it, because

00:31:19   many of them are downloading it.

00:31:20   So just a fun distraction to do, to write in the middle of my iOS review.

00:31:28   It took me like an hour to put it together a few nights ago.

00:31:31   So yeah.

00:31:32   I love it, man.

00:31:33   And it is one of those things where like, on the surface, this seems like a really simple

00:31:37   shortcut, but hearing you talk about it, I'm realizing that there's way more going on,

00:31:41   And I always like that about shortcuts because it has a full range of things it can do.

00:31:47   Yeah, that's a very important point, I think, over the years. What I've understood about

00:31:53   the people who come to Mac Stories and also the way that I like to publish these things

00:31:58   is all the shortcuts that I've published, especially over the past two years, I want

00:32:04   to make sure that they seem really simple, even if they do really complex things. So

00:32:09   The real challenging part for me lately has become, how do I make this very complex task,

00:32:16   and how do I present it in shortcuts in a way that you don't need to know anything about

00:32:20   the way that it works, and there's as little as possible that you need to configure manually.

00:32:26   So that's always a challenge, right?

00:32:28   Because there's these crazy shortcuts that people put together, like on Reddit for example,

00:32:33   and they require you to do this heavy configuration up front, or to confirm all of this dial-up

00:32:39   logs, right? And while a lot of them are impressive, technically speaking, I want to produce stuff

00:32:46   that even a random person who doesn't even know what Mac Stories is can download a shortcut

00:32:53   and run it and it does what it needs to do and it hides the complexity from you as much

00:32:57   as possible.

00:32:58   Yeah, I get frustrated sometimes when I get a shortcut of some kind and it asks me a bunch

00:33:04   of setup questions. The setup questions feature is really good that it exists, but I'm not

00:33:10   always expecting to have to do it, you know? And it's kind of like, you know, they start

00:33:15   asking a bunch of questions and I'm like, I don't know.

00:33:17   What do you want from me?

00:33:18   I'm just here to have some fun. Like, what are you getting all up on my case for?

00:33:23   Yeah. Yeah. That was also like the same approach to MusicBot, right? It was just how do I take

00:33:29   all these features and just present them in a list. And you as the user don't need to

00:33:36   know anything about this. The shortcut takes care of different scenarios, different conditions,

00:33:41   and adapts to them for you. So yeah, it's a challenge, but this one was a fun one to

00:33:46   put together, because especially with the understanding of the different devices that

00:33:50   it's running on, it may not seem like a lot of complexity, but every time you stop the

00:33:57   shortcut and put up a dialogue that says "Is it an iPhone or an iPad?" Like you're slowing

00:34:02   the user down, and that's not fun.

00:34:05   Federico, I want to know, but I also don't want to have to put you under any pressure,

00:34:11   but I will ask anyway, because I know people are interested as you review coming along.

00:34:17   Okay, so my goal is to be... Well, obviously I'm late, right? So with that out of the...

00:34:24   obvious, like I'm late, iOS came out, there's nothing I can do about it, whatever. My goal

00:34:30   is to finish... Well, I should be finished writing by Saturday or Sunday, like all the

00:34:36   remaining sections, all the... This week? This week. This upcoming... Oh, that's fantastic.

00:34:42   Yes. So all the sections that I left, like as temporary placeholders in the review and

00:34:48   the conclusion, all those things, I should be finished by Sunday with the writing. We

00:34:53   We already started editing the review, so we're on two separate tracks at the moment.

00:34:59   I'm still writing some things, and I'm also editing with Ryan other chapters.

00:35:06   My goal is to be finished with the actual writing for every single section, including

00:35:10   the new stuff in 14.2 this Sunday.

00:35:15   So next week...

00:35:16   Oh, you're adding in 14.2.

00:35:18   That's clever.

00:35:19   I have to, right?

00:35:20   Well, you don't have to, but I understand why you have.

00:35:23   Yeah, so all the new stuff will be covered in the review as well.

00:35:26   And so next week, it's gonna be like just editing and preparing all the extras and finishing

00:35:32   the graphics and the animations, all that stuff.

00:35:35   So I think realistically we're looking at my original goal, right?

00:35:40   This is coming up, I'm guessing in the first ten days of October at this point, which is

00:35:44   is like, I've realized these past few days that as much as I wanted to be ready earlier,

00:35:53   there's nothing I can do about the fact that it takes me a certain amount of time to do

00:35:57   this review. And I said it in June after WWDC, I think I'm going to be ready in early October.

00:36:04   And in fact, it turns out that I'm going to be ready in early October. There's nothing

00:36:09   I can do about it.

00:36:10   It turns out, funnily enough, it takes as long to get your app ready for a new version

00:36:15   of iOS as it does for Federico to write a review about it. Because that's what you've

00:36:20   found, right? It's the two to three weeks that were lost for WWDC being late is the

00:36:26   exact amount of time that you will be late after iOS coming out.

00:36:30   Yeah, yeah. And also like...

00:36:31   So it takes just that amount of time.

00:36:34   It's not like I'm developing an app, right? And I only need to think about the app. Like

00:36:41   I'm reviewing both iOS and iPadOS and I need to care about every single feature of those

00:36:48   operating systems. Like there's not a single thing that I can ignore. And it takes me this

00:36:56   amount of time. And honestly, like, you guys have been a huge help in sort of keeping me

00:37:03   in Czech in terms of like feeling good about it and not feeling stressed or depressed or

00:37:09   sad. But like I'm pretty happy at this point that I've been able to reach this point even

00:37:14   if I'm late, like despite all the things that have happened in my life over the summer,

00:37:18   which are still happening and I'm dealing with them, like the fact that I still have

00:37:22   this thing coming along, I'm pretty happy that I was able to put it together. Like I

00:37:26   think given the issues that I've had to deal with over the past few months, I think a lot

00:37:32   of people would have just given up. And I'm feeling pretty good about myself from that

00:37:36   perspective that I'm thankful to have like a support network with Sylvia and with you

00:37:42   guys and with Jon that, you know, and obviously with the people that I'm working with. So

00:37:47   Brian and Ryan, people who are helping, you know, sort of saying to me like, don't worry,

00:37:54   you work on the review, we're going to take care of all these other things. So that's

00:37:58   been a huge help. And yes, it's going to be late. A lot of people will have already watched

00:38:04   YouTube videos, and that's fine. I don't think I've seen any other in-depth review of iOS

00:38:11   and iPadOS. I haven't seen any written reviews. The market for those articles has already

00:38:15   shrunk over the past couple of years, so I'm not surprised. And I've sent segments and

00:38:24   chapters of the review to you guys, and of course to Ryan as well. And I'm pretty confident

00:38:28   about the fact that, as usual, there's going to be a lot of detail in the review and things

00:38:33   that people, even after having watched all those YouTube videos, like little details

00:38:38   that they're not familiar with. And obviously, it's more about understanding why certain

00:38:47   things are done in a certain way. There's always been the goal of my reviews to explain,

00:38:51   Yes, there's a new icon, there's a new menu and it looks like this, but why does this

00:38:57   feature work a certain way? So yeah, I'm going to be late, but I think I'm fine with it now.

00:39:03   Obviously I'm super excited about all the extras that I'm preparing and the graphics

00:39:08   that we're putting together this year. We're doing some really wild things in that department.

00:39:16   I have, unfortunately, run into a problem, big problem, just today.

00:39:23   Oh, yes, yes, yes.

00:39:26   And it's totally my fault. So you know I had a backup phone to take screenshots on iOS

00:39:34   13.

00:39:35   Your night phone.

00:39:36   My night phone, my XS Max, to do comparisons between iOS 13 and 14. Now, because I'm a

00:39:44   stupid person, I forgot that that phone had the automatic software update feature on.

00:39:52   And now I normally, like, I didn't worry about it because I never left that phone charging

00:40:00   overnight, and during the day the dialogue would come up saying "Do you want to update

00:40:06   your software and I would just say no. But then last night, stupidly, as with the past

00:40:16   few nights, I was up at 5am writing, and I was sleepy, I was very tired, and I didn't

00:40:24   think about it. I put the phone on the charger, and without thinking about it, I clicked OK

00:40:30   on the software update dialogue, thinking "Oh, this is just going to update to 13.7",

00:40:36   it was on 13.6. And much to my surprise, I woke up today and noticed that the phone was

00:40:42   running 14. Which is a big problem for me, because now I don't have a device to take

00:40:47   screenshots for iOS 13 anymore. Well, at least I don't have another max phone, which is the

00:40:54   same size of my 11 Pro Max, to do the proper comparisons between two iPhones of the same

00:41:00   size, between 13 and 14. I've tried to use the simulator, but the simulator sucks. It's

00:41:07   terrible. Like, the performance is horrible and it doesn't have all the apps that I need.

00:41:12   Like Home, for example. You cannot use Home with your account and your accessories on

00:41:17   a simulator. So, the aforementioned friend whom I tried to convince not to update her

00:41:25   phone, she has a XS Max that I could probably use for screenshots. But I mean, realistically,

00:41:33   right? She has a life. She has friends. She communicates with people a lot over WhatsApp.

00:41:40   I don't want to intrude and say, "Hey, can you lend me your phone for like six hours

00:41:45   today?" She's never going to be up for that, right? So realistically speaking, I think

00:41:52   I'm looking at having, tonight, in a few hours, a conversation with Silvia to explain how

00:41:59   I'm going to need to buy an iPhone 11 Pro Max from the Apple Store and return it in

00:42:07   two weeks. Well, the part in the middle is "hope that it still has 13 on it", which

00:42:13   would be the assumption, but we don't know, but you would assume. Assuming that that phone

00:42:18   still has 13 instead of 14. So, yeah, this is a mess because I saved the screenshot taking

00:42:31   step as the very last thing that I do for my iOS reviews during the final stages of

00:42:38   the editing process. And usually that's never a problem.

00:42:42   Never is. Because the iOS version is not usually out

00:42:46   is in usually out. And the backup phone doesn't have the beta profile installed.

00:42:50   You're finding new wonderful things that can get in your way that you've never had to experience

00:42:57   before.

00:42:58   Yeah, yeah. So the hope is that, well, there's multiple levels of hoping, right? First, I

00:43:08   gotta hope that Silvia will understand the problem, that she will understand that this

00:43:14   is the only reasonable measure that needs to be taken at this point. And I also need

00:43:20   to hope that the phone that I buy from the Apple store will have iOS 13 on it instead

00:43:27   of 14. So imagine if I buy it, right? And I get it and it's got 14 and it's useless

00:43:35   and I got to return it. Well, the other thing I was thinking about

00:43:38   is like you start it up and it forces you to update.

00:43:42   - Oh no, can it do that?

00:43:44   No, I think it can.

00:43:45   I think it forces you if you wanna restore from a backup

00:43:49   that was done on the next version.

00:43:52   - I think that's true, okay.

00:43:53   - Otherwise, the solution is just to convince my friend

00:43:56   and promise her a lot of money or a nice present

00:44:01   or something like, please let me use your phone

00:44:04   for like six hours today or just the whole day.

00:44:07   You cannot use your phone.

00:44:08   You need to give me, you need to get me your phone.

00:44:11   And I can take the screenshots.

00:44:13   I don't know.

00:44:14   I honestly, I'm at a loss.

00:44:15   I don't know.

00:44:16   If the phone that I buy from Apple,

00:44:18   if I can convince Sylvia and I get it

00:44:21   and it doesn't have 13, then it's gonna be a big problem.

00:44:24   - Federico, I have the solution.

00:44:26   This is the Galaxy Brain solution

00:44:28   to your problem here, right?

00:44:29   - Okay.

00:44:30   - Convince your friend to not update.

00:44:32   Buy the new phone.

00:44:34   If the new phone has 14, you give it to her.

00:44:37   No, that's quite a gift.

00:44:40   I mean, we're close, but not that close.

00:44:42   What are you going to do, right?

00:44:44   Whatever option do you have at that point?

00:44:47   Well, I guess she can use the phone for a couple of days.

00:44:51   You think that's going to be enough?

00:44:53   That's your Galaxy Brain solution.

00:44:55   You just burn a bit of money.

00:44:59   I think that, yeah.

00:45:02   I have another Galaxy Brain solution for you, something completely different.

00:45:06   Okay.

00:45:07   Your iPhone review, your iOS review is not late if you say it's the iOS 14.2 review.

00:45:13   Sure.

00:45:14   I don't want to put the .2 thing in the title.

00:45:19   Just make it really small.

00:45:21   Like a footnote, like a little tube?

00:45:23   Yeah, like, yeah.

00:45:25   Super small.

00:45:26   That is also a Galaxy Brain idea.

00:45:28   It's not late.

00:45:30   in the Discord recommending solutions like crowdsourced screenshots. Now, what you need

00:45:36   to know about me as a person is that I am very particular when it comes to screenshots.

00:45:44   I have tried this before, right? To crowdsource screenshots from other people. It never works

00:45:50   out. The data won't match. The things won't match and the data will be different and people

00:45:57   will take screenshots with like small details that I cannot accept.

00:46:00   Oh you know what? Actually as a person who has provided screenshots for Federico in the

00:46:05   past, it's a nightmare. Because he's like "oh your battery's too low, you gotta charge

00:46:10   your phone first". You know what? The worst...

00:46:13   You kept the line in the bottom, can you just move the screen down to hide that little...

00:46:19   Like, working with Federico for this, it's nightmarish. So no, there's no other person

00:46:25   in the world that can do this for him?

00:46:26   The worst is when people send me screenshots and there's the scroll bar showing on the

00:46:32   right side of the screen.

00:46:33   Oh, then what are these people?

00:46:35   Don't you know how to take a proper screenshot?

00:46:38   You're supposed to wait a few seconds, let all the interactions stop, this includes the

00:46:43   pointer on iPad, let the scroll bar disappear and then you can take the screenshot.

00:46:49   I mean, I don't need to teach anybody this and yet people get it wrong all the time.

00:46:52   So yeah, I need to do this myself, I realize. Crowdsourcing screenshots is not a solution.

00:46:59   Oh, and it's why you're going to have to give an acquaintance a really expensive present.

00:47:07   That's an idea. Yeah.

00:47:12   Worse comes to worst, and the situation is pretty bad at that point, but worse comes

00:47:16   to worst, that is the way around it, I suppose.

00:47:19   And you're going to explain this to my girlfriend?

00:47:21   No, that's up to you.

00:47:22   That's up to Jon. Let Jon do it.

00:47:23   I mean, you can play Sylvia this part of the show,

00:47:27   and then you can then provide all of the additional context

00:47:30   that Sylvia will require from you.

00:47:33   I mean, you can tell her, if you want, that it was my idea.

00:47:36   I have no problem with that.

00:47:38   But I don't have to, like, take it across the finish line.

00:47:42   That's up to you.

00:47:43   I will have a conversation with Sylvia tonight,

00:47:45   explain -- because, like, we can --

00:47:48   I can buy a phone and I can return it in two weeks. I checked the Italian support pages,

00:47:54   it can be done. The delivery guy will come to pick it up at home for you, you just need to

00:48:00   print out the shipping label. So that can be done. But yeah, it's a conversation that we need to have,

00:48:04   I guess. I am incredibly confident that if you buy that phone, it will have 13 on it. I'm incredibly

00:48:12   confident. It may not even be 13.7. Yeah, it will be whatever it was when that thing shipped. Right,

00:48:17   Your issue will be if there's any kind of software update in the process.

00:48:22   I mean, and then your other problem is like, what if it's 13 point something?

00:48:27   That's fine.

00:48:29   But it's not the right...

00:48:32   I don't know.

00:48:32   No, it's fine.

00:48:33   There are no meaningful changes, design-wise or feature-wise.

00:48:38   For example, reminders in 13.6 and 13.7, it's the same.

00:48:45   And also, I'm going to have a disclaimer in the review, just like I did last year,

00:48:51   to explain on which devices where this screenshot is taken. So that's going to be fine.

00:48:57   But yeah, the primary issue here is getting the phone. And I think my only solution here

00:49:04   is to actually buy one from Apple and give it back in two weeks. Which means I will have to be done

00:49:10   not in two weeks. Or at least the screenshots will have to be done.

00:49:14   At least the screenshots. I mean, that's like a thing. That's a thing you could do, right?

00:49:18   Like, you know. Finish writing by Sunday and then think about editing and doing the screenshots

00:49:23   and returning the phone. That's the plan. Yeah. This has been an adventure this summer.

00:49:31   It's been the most difficult thing I've done to date, I think. But despite that, I don't

00:49:39   feel destroyed yet I may be asked me again in a couple of weeks.

00:49:44   Well I mean I think the benefit is in the sense that you knew you were gonna

00:49:51   be late and so late you've not increased the pace of work based on where you

00:49:56   would normally be this time every year. I have over the past week but yeah I mean

00:50:02   I'm staying up late yeah. But there's always a crunch period no matter what

00:50:06   Yeah, right. So, you know, I

00:50:08   Don't I get the impression that you are on like a similar trajectory that you would be every year

00:50:15   Because it's like that thing we were talking about last week if they had said the iOS 14 came out on the 25th of September

00:50:22   You would have busted your butt to get it done because you would have had like a semi achievable goal

00:50:29   But them saying like it was the best thing could have happened to you them saying tomorrow

00:50:34   There's just no way it could have been done. So now you're just kind of working to a somewhat regular timeline

00:50:40   Which is very true

00:50:41   Noted about three weeks after where you would have been which kind of makes sense because you lost three weeks at the start

00:50:46   I think it's a confusing feature someone clicks later and they think they're gonna be

00:50:50   Reminded later not that it's gonna download and install at night

00:50:55   I guess there's so much in there that I think could be clearer for people

00:50:58   Yeah, but I shouldn't have

00:51:00   clicked

00:51:01   Buttons at 5 a.m. Right? I was so tired. I was like, yeah, whatever. I'm just gonna click

00:51:06   Okay that that I will I will say that that was that was short-sighted

00:51:10   Yes

00:51:13   Yes, but again now you've learned a valuable lesson about to testifies

00:51:19   Mmm. Yeah

00:51:22   And especially when iOS releases are early or I'm late. Yeah

00:51:26   Yeah, you'll have a whole system in place and then never have to do this again

00:51:29   That's how it's going to go.

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00:53:43   So watchOS 7 is out as well as iOS 14 and I wanted to talk about a few things that I

00:53:51   have noticed and liked about watchOS 7.

00:53:54   So I've been wearing my watch for the last few days or whatever since it came out because

00:53:59   I wanted to kind of get a sense of what was going on and also I was intrigued by some

00:54:03   of the new watch faces.

00:54:05   I really like the typograph face.

00:54:08   I think it is very attractive.

00:54:10   It is not very good as a watch face itself in the way that I have it set up.

00:54:16   This is the one that's basically just the big numbers and you have a few different options

00:54:20   for the font that you want to use and stuff like that.

00:54:23   But I use the version where it's just the four very large numbers and I think it's in,

00:54:30   I'm not sure what font it is but it might be some version of the New York font that

00:54:35   Apple is using.

00:54:36   basically I'm using it in the configuration that Apple ships it in

00:54:39   right but I'm just using with white numbers on a black background. The problem

00:54:45   is it's with the numbers being as large as they are it's actually a little bit

00:54:48   more tricky than usual to sometimes work out exactly what hour the watch is

00:54:52   pointing to but the reason that I'm using this face is because I find it

00:54:57   aesthetically pleasing. I like it so it looks very nice and I'm happy with it.

00:55:02   I realise that my typical tastes for Apple Watch faces are the ones that are actually

00:55:14   the least useful, so I like California and typograph the most.

00:55:20   I don't like the California version where it turns it into a circle and you put the

00:55:23   infograph things around the outside.

00:55:27   What this kind of continues to show to me is that I would really appreciate Apple continuing

00:55:35   to open up and really think about this because I could very easily put at least one or two

00:55:41   small complications on the typograph face because there is like the corners, like I

00:55:46   could just have one of the circle ones, not like the corner ones but like the little circle

00:55:49   ones to allow me to do something.

00:55:52   I still think that there is a way that they can go with a lot of these watch faces to

00:55:58   still make them more useful without completely compromising their design.

00:56:02   And there seems to be, it's very weird to me where it's like you can either have this

00:56:08   thing that looks nice or you can take away everything that looks good about it so you

00:56:11   can put complications on it.

00:56:13   And there's no middle ground.

00:56:15   Like in the California face is the one that really does it for me.

00:56:18   So this is the one that they introduced last year that in its standard configuration, which

00:56:23   is how I have it, you have Roman numerals on the top half and numbers on the bottom

00:56:26   half.

00:56:27   And the only way that you can add complications to this face, there's one you can put on the

00:56:32   middle but if you don't want one of the circle ones you have to completely destroy it in

00:56:36   my opinion by turning it from going all the way around the outside to being just in the

00:56:41   middle and then it just, I think it ruins what I like about it aesthetically.

00:56:45   I just feel like they have yet to find for a lot of their watch faces a middle ground

00:56:51   between functionality and form.

00:56:54   Nevertheless I do really like this one.

00:56:57   The GMT face I also do really like but I have realized that the typical design of the corner

00:57:04   complications I don't like.

00:57:06   I find them too busy.

00:57:07   So these are the ones that have some icon and then a bar that goes around the outside.

00:57:13   it's a little too busy for me.

00:57:15   So I'm still tweaking it and I want to see if there's some kind of view

00:57:19   that I can get that I enjoy, but there's just too much, right?

00:57:23   So like, for example, I have Carrot Weather on the top left

00:57:27   on the GMT face and my activities on the top right.

00:57:31   And they both have an icon that sits in the corner

00:57:33   and then some kind of text or visual representation of like a bar

00:57:36   that goes around the watch face.

00:57:38   You guys are following me, right? You know what I'm talking about?

00:57:40   But the bars, so like carrot weather has a temperature one, right?

00:57:45   So it shows you from like the lowest to the highest temperature and where you are

00:57:49   on that level right now, right?

00:57:51   That goes around, kind of follows around the outside of the circular face.

00:57:54   And then the activity complication has your numbers, right?

00:57:59   So your move numbers, your exercise numbers, that kind of thing.

00:58:01   But they're completely different physical sizes.

00:58:04   So it looks off to me.

00:58:08   And so like it just visually it's mismatched, it tastes symmetrical.

00:58:13   And I really don't like the way that that looks.

00:58:16   So basically I continue and I think I'm going to continue for all of time

00:58:22   to beat the drum of the form and function of Apple Watch faces doesn't match up.

00:58:28   It's either you can have it look beautiful.

00:58:30   This is all my opinion, right?

00:58:32   For me, for my tastes, I can either have it look really nice

00:58:35   or I can have it look like bleep bloop.

00:58:37   I'm a computer and there's nothing in the middle that I find works.

00:58:43   And again, if I wore my Apple Watch every day, I would go with I want a data led face

00:58:50   because then I'm wearing my watch for information.

00:58:54   But that's not how I typically want my watch to be.

00:58:58   Anyway, a feature that I do really love, surprisingly, is the hand washing feature.

00:59:05   I like it.

00:59:06   I think it's really nice. It turns on sometimes when I expect it not to, or when I'm not washing

00:59:12   my hands, like if I was washing something in the sink or something, where I don't need

00:59:17   to be in hand washing mode. But I think it's really good to know, I am doing, boys, I'm

00:59:23   doing a good job washing my hands.

00:59:25   Do you even need those reminders anymore? Like has it not become second nature?

00:59:30   I don't need the reminders, so I don't have the reminders on, but when I am washing my

00:59:36   hands I like to know that I'm doing a better job than what I should be.

00:59:43   Because my typical average hand washing time is 27 seconds, which is longer than most people

00:59:49   will tell you is necessary.

00:59:51   It's like I think the typical time is 20 seconds, right?

00:59:54   I really like to get in there, scrub these hands.

00:59:57   I have a process, like I have like a whole process that I do.

01:00:02   But there have been times recently where I'm kind of, I'm like not paying attention and

01:00:07   I wash my hands and I'm like, oh did I, I don't know if I did a good enough job there.

01:00:11   That's happened to me.

01:00:12   But now the Apple Watch is reminding me, plus it gives me the little thumbs up and it's

01:00:15   like ah I feel good about myself, right?

01:00:17   Like I did it everyone, stayin' healthy.

01:00:20   So it's nice, right, but it is not a vital feature, it is not a perfectly reliable feature,

01:00:27   But it's at least something where it's like I'm enjoying the moment, the little thumbs

01:00:30   up.

01:00:31   It's like, you're doing a good job boy, keeping yourself clean.

01:00:35   I think I'm washing my hands way more than the average person because when I'm at my

01:00:40   studio I am moving in between safe and unsafe areas more than a normal person would do.

01:00:51   when I'm in the studio, we're like, okay,

01:00:53   everything is under our control.

01:00:55   But if I ever go outside of it,

01:00:58   so if I'm going out to get water or whatever,

01:01:01   I wanna make sure I'm doing the good hand washing process.

01:01:03   So it's like a whole thing.

01:01:05   So yeah, I do have a feeling,

01:01:08   and I want you to kind of get your opinion

01:01:10   on this, the two of you.

01:01:12   I have the feeling of thinking of maybe trying

01:01:15   to actually use my Apple Watch more like an Apple Watch

01:01:18   at the moment to actually try and get back into sense

01:01:22   of what it is like to use an Apple Watch.

01:01:24   So what I wanted from the two of you was for me to,

01:01:29   over the next week, bring back some of the more typical

01:01:33   Apple Watch features and I want you two to give me

01:01:36   suggestions of the things that I should be doing.

01:01:39   - Okay.

01:01:43   - So bear in mind, so bear in mind,

01:01:44   I wanna just give you guys just the lay of the land, right?

01:01:48   My Apple Watch is on Do Not Disturb constantly,

01:01:52   and I could not even tell you what apps

01:01:54   I have installed on it.

01:01:55   - Okay, okay.

01:01:55   - So like, just to give you the lay of the land here.

01:01:57   - But what's your stance on workouts?

01:02:02   - I mean, all right.

01:02:02   - Besides, but like, can you, like, do you,

01:02:07   knowing you, I don't think you like to go running,

01:02:09   for example.

01:02:11   - No, I'm actually, the 30 minute workout thing

01:02:15   is a bit of a sore spot for me right now,

01:02:17   because I'm dealing with an injury.

01:02:20   You can customize it now. I think you can bring it out ten minutes in virtual seven.

01:02:24   So that can be changed.

01:02:26   I haven't tried that.

01:02:27   Okay. But like something like yoga, for example, I think is that all right as an option?

01:02:33   Yeah.

01:02:34   Okay. Okay. So do we need to give you ideas now or next week?

01:02:40   Well, we can do it next week if you two want to think about it, and then I can do it from

01:02:44   next week for a week.

01:02:45   I have a couple that you should already consider.

01:02:49   One of them is putting a complication on your watch face for Home Run, which is the Home

01:02:53   Kit utility that lets you super quickly activate specific scenes from your watch.

01:02:59   Yeah, but you see, I don't really have any scenes.

01:03:02   I have one scene.

01:03:03   Like, I only have a lot of Home Kit devices.

01:03:08   You have lights?

01:03:09   You have a HomePod?

01:03:11   You can do things?

01:03:12   Yeah, but like...

01:03:13   What?

01:03:14   I mean, okay.

01:03:15   scenes for changing the colors for playing music but I don't do any not

01:03:19   even playing music I don't like oh my god it's gonna be challenging I don't

01:03:24   play a lot of music at home and I'm also not at home in the daytime anymore what

01:03:30   about the studio do you don't have home pods here we're an echo we're an echo

01:03:33   unit come on you're not making it easy for myself though well I never said that

01:03:38   this was gonna be a simple challenge how am I supposed to win at this challenge

01:03:42   if you don't give me the tools to win.

01:03:44   Oh, there wasn't a case for you to win.

01:03:47   You said it was a challenge for us and I took it literally.

01:03:50   Oh, sure. I said it was a challenge for you.

01:03:53   I need to give you better ideas than Steven. That's the point.

01:03:56   Ah, I see now. Alright.

01:03:59   So do you two want to go away and think about it?

01:04:03   Yes.

01:04:04   Okay. So next week...

01:04:06   There's an obvious one. I cannot believe I didn't mention this. Shortcuts. You can put

01:04:10   shortcuts on your watch.

01:04:11   Yeah, I have one to add tasks to OmniFocus and I put it on the watch face.

01:04:16   But you see, the thing is, I want to kind of take all of the suggestions in from you

01:04:21   because if we're going to start doing complications, then I need to choose a new watch face.

01:04:25   Because the watch face that I'm using doesn't allow for complications.

01:04:28   I think complications are critical to using it like an Apple Watch.

01:04:32   Because then...

01:04:33   Yes, forget about the dock, just use complications.

01:04:36   I want to think on it too, but I think step one will be take that thing off of Do Not

01:04:40   disturb and manage your notifications, decide what you really want there. Just

01:04:45   like everyone else, you know, everyone wades through the garbage fire

01:04:50   of their notifications and you should too. Alright so here's where we'll start

01:04:53   with this, right? We'll make this like a couple of week process. The first thing

01:04:57   I'll do is what I have just done, my watch is now off do not disturb. Okay. So

01:05:02   over the next week I'll be trying to use notifications more like a regular Apple

01:05:06   watch user again and then on next week's show the two of you can each give me two

01:05:12   things that you so if you two both pay attention to how you use your Apple

01:05:16   watches over the next couple of weeks and outside of the next week and

01:05:19   outside of notifications give me two things that you really love to do that

01:05:24   your Apple watch does that makes a material difference in your day to day

01:05:28   life and then I will I will enable those things and run that for another week

01:05:33   Does that sound good?

01:05:34   In the meantime, can you buy an AirPlay speaker for the studio?

01:05:37   Yeah, but...

01:05:38   [Laughter]

01:05:40   But like...

01:05:41   Look, I gotta buy a phone! The least you can do is buy a speaker.

01:05:44   What do I need it for?

01:05:46   For me to win the challenge of ideas.

01:05:49   Okay. So like, what is an AirPlay speaker? Like, what?

01:05:52   An AirPlay 2 speaker.

01:05:54   Yeah, but like, what though? Like, what products are AirPlay 2 speakers outside of HomePod?

01:05:59   Maybe, I don't know, Bose maybe or something with Airplay support, B&O, they probably have

01:06:05   one.

01:06:06   I'm not sure.

01:06:07   Sonos, I mean Sonos has a bunch.

01:06:08   But like I have like two Echos and a Sonos.

01:06:11   Yeah, like it's...

01:06:12   Alright, alright, it's fine.

01:06:14   Okay, we will not do Airplay automations.

01:06:17   But I will think about it.

01:06:21   Before we move on, one of my favorite watchOS 7 features is the screen where you add complications

01:06:28   now gives you a preview of what those complications look like. So I'm on the utility face and

01:06:36   the large one, I'm tapped and scrolling through and I can see heart rate and news and Nike

01:06:40   Run Club and all these other things. And I get a feel for what they will look like and

01:06:45   what they can do. I think that's a really nice addition, much better than just like

01:06:49   scrolling through a bunch of app names trying to guess what you want. It's nice. It's a

01:06:53   nice touch.

01:06:54   But I will say Federico, I have no intention of buying a new Apple Watch.

01:06:58   You see, I don't believe you. I don't believe you. Like I respect you, but I don't believe

01:07:03   you. I think it's going to happen.

01:07:05   I have a question in the respect that you have.

01:07:07   No, I just need to say it upfront, because maybe you may think that also with the lack

01:07:11   of an Apple Watch comes the loss of respect. That's not the case. However, I do not believe

01:07:17   you.

01:07:18   Okay. All right. That's fine.

01:07:19   I think you will get it. And also soon. I think I will say before the end of the year.

01:07:23   Yeah, we had a, we have a date in the document of December 16th has Myke bought a series

01:07:28   six Apple watch. Okay. I really want to buy one on December 17th now just to like, Oh

01:07:33   no. Oh, I just got my first notification. It was from John Voorhees. He sent, he sent

01:07:40   me a text message. So there we go. I just wanted to say the reason I've mentioned this

01:07:45   is because that was a physically weird experience for me to film my watch tap me because that

01:07:50   has not happened in a very, very long time.

01:07:52   So I'm gonna have to get used to that.

01:07:55   - I have one listener request before we move on.

01:08:00   I have tried out a bunch of the new watch faces.

01:08:02   I think the GMT watch face is really cool.

01:08:05   It's kind of like throws back to the time travel feature.

01:08:07   Like you rock the crown and something happens,

01:08:10   which is neat.

01:08:11   How in the world do you set which time zone show up

01:08:16   in that scroll-y bit?

01:08:18   If you can, I cannot find it.

01:08:20   My guess is that Apple just did this halfway

01:08:22   and didn't bother to adjust it, but I cannot find it.

01:08:27   - Oh no, it's doable.

01:08:29   It's in, oh man, see I've done it,

01:08:32   and now I don't remember how I did it.

01:08:35   - It's not the world clock app

01:08:36   because that has just the cities I want

01:08:38   and that's not reflected on the GMT watch face.

01:08:42   It's not on the edit watch face screen, best I can tell.

01:08:44   I can change the color and the complications,

01:08:47   but I can't seem to change the cities.

01:08:50   And under settings, I'm scrolling through settings now,

01:08:54   don't really see a place where it could be.

01:08:58   - Now I know I've done it, and now I can't find it.

01:09:01   - So if you go to GMT, it shows you a custom list.

01:09:04   - A custom list of what?

01:09:05   - So if you go to the GMT watch face,

01:09:07   and you tap or you scroll with the digital crown

01:09:10   to see the different time zones,

01:09:12   have you customized that list?

01:09:16   Or does it have like two dozen cities in it you don't care about?

01:09:18   I honestly, I can't, I don't know what you're talking about right now.

01:09:22   Do you, are you wearing your Apple watch right now? You're wearing it right now.

01:09:24   Go to the GMT watch face. Yeah. And scroll the digital crown.

01:09:29   Oh yeah. Sorry. Okay. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

01:09:32   You tapped the middle of the watch face.

01:09:34   Yes. Or scroll the crown. Both get you into this mode. Yeah.

01:09:37   I cannot work out like it's, uh,

01:09:40   all these cities in here that I don't care about. Sorry.

01:09:44   It doesn't matter. The cities don't matter though. You've just got to pick the time zone.

01:09:50   You're picking a time zone. So this is the way...

01:09:52   But every world clock that Apple sips lets you customize it by city in their own world

01:09:58   clock app in their watchOS. It's right there.

01:10:01   I can help you. Let me help you.

01:10:03   I don't want to hear about your fancy GMT watches in the real world. This is a computer

01:10:07   watch. Let me customize it.

01:10:08   What's happening?

01:10:09   This is one of the things that they're doing.

01:10:11   I see you're upset.

01:10:12   One typical watch design. Now you can argue as to like for some reason Apple picks and

01:10:17   chooses whenever it wants to do this. But in typical watch design when you have world

01:10:21   timers which is a SIS or a GMT you just you are setting to the time zone and the biggest

01:10:29   city in that time zone. So what time zone are you looking for?

01:10:33   I want to look and see where what time is it where people I work with live. Just the

01:10:39   way the world clock works just the way their other complications work.

01:10:42   Yeah, well you've, alright, so you just need to remember, like, I have London, Paris, Rome,

01:10:47   here, Athens.

01:10:49   Yeah, and then a bunch of places you don't know where anyone lives.

01:10:52   Like this is what I'm, this is my, like, core frustration with the Apple Watch is they,

01:10:57   they pick certain things that they're saying, "Oh my gosh, we cannot cross this line because

01:11:02   watches have been this way for a thousand years."

01:11:03   Yes.

01:11:04   And they have other ways, other things they just burn things down and do things new.

01:11:08   It's like, this is one of those things that...

01:11:09   That's exactly what I was saying. It's the form function thing, right? Sometimes you

01:11:13   want to be a watch and sometimes you want to be a computer, but you for some reason

01:11:17   can never mix those two things together. And this is one of those where they have decided

01:11:21   they want to be a watch.

01:11:23   I find it a stupid limitation. It's a computer, like let me customize it.

01:11:29   I do think that as well as the standard list, if you add something in in the world clock

01:11:34   on the phone, it also adds, which is why I have Rome, because I wouldn't have Rome. I

01:11:39   would just have Paris in this list. But you and I also have Memphis and I

01:11:45   wouldn't have Memphis. Right, yeah, yeah, it adds them but I want to remove the

01:11:49   others and I think that's like a silly limitation. Then it's just giving you the

01:11:54   list of the world's time zones. It's like so close to what I want. The story of the

01:11:59   Apple Watch. Yeah, but to see the thing is though like I know what you're saying

01:12:03   but if you're thinking of it as a world timer which this is it's actually more

01:12:07   of a world time in a GMT but nevertheless. But only fancy watch people care about that stuff.

01:12:12   No but there's genuine utility to having a second time zone and it's also super useful.

01:12:17   Okay this watch would be more useful for you now with all of these options if you were traveling

01:12:22   right because you will go to a place you're like oh I'm in a different time zone oh but it's not

01:12:27   one that I track and then you can just add it in. I only go to the west coast like it's the only

01:12:31   place I travel to. I mean, this watch face to me just it is the epitome of why

01:12:39   watchOS is frustrating because Apple is not consistent in its own decision

01:12:42   making. Like and I get that like I totally get and actually respect that

01:12:47   this is like a watch category and I think like the mechanical watches the

01:12:50   way they work like in this type is fascinating like that's awesome but give

01:12:57   me the option because I've got a computer on my wrist to say I don't necessarily want

01:13:01   all all the time zones I just want the time zones that I've selected or I just want the

01:13:06   cities that I've selected because most people even though the art and history and like all

01:13:11   that all that is cool like I'm not discounting that but on the Apple watch I should be able

01:13:16   to say I don't want that I want this other thing that is actually more useful to me.

01:13:22   I have a secondary annoyance about the GMT face.

01:13:26   You can have multiple colors but only the ones Apple allows.

01:13:30   Yes, frustrating.

01:13:31   Why can't I say I want this color and this color?

01:13:34   Why do I have to choose from a billion color list but they're only colors that they've

01:13:39   pre-chosen for me?

01:13:41   I totally agree with you.

01:13:42   Turns out people like customization.

01:13:45   You know, my closing thoughts on watchOS 7 is it's very rare that a new version of watchOS

01:13:50   changes the way that I use the Apple Watch

01:13:54   or the way I interact with it.

01:13:55   And I feel like watchOS 7 falls in that category.

01:13:57   Like, yeah, like there's some niceties,

01:13:59   but none of it has really like radically changed

01:14:03   how I feel or think about my watch.

01:14:05   This episode of Connected is also brought to you by Reedle.

01:14:09   Reedle is a maker of essential productivity apps

01:14:12   and they're always updating and improving their products.

01:14:16   150 million people have downloaded their apps.

01:14:19   And what's cool is they're a self funded company with about 200 people.

01:14:23   They were there on day one of the App Store 12 years ago.

01:14:28   And their apps are adding amazing widgets and other features for iOS 14.

01:14:33   Documents is an app super app for file actions, widgets or files and actions picture and picture

01:14:39   support on the iPhone scribble support.

01:14:41   And their spark which is an email client for professionals like Myke where a person and

01:14:46   their team can work around an email message. Again, there's widgets for emails and calendar.

01:14:53   You can see the most important emails or upcoming events right on your home screen with spark

01:14:57   and you have an option soon to set it as the default email app on iOS 14, which is a great

01:15:03   feature. I think you can do that now. I think that that I think that went through I've actually

01:15:07   done it. So you can you can I now have spark as my default application for email. They

01:15:13   They also make calendars, which is a beautiful and intuitive calendar app, again with widgets

01:15:17   for events and tasks, Siri shortcut support, the option to create events with your voice,

01:15:23   and really fast search.

01:15:25   So you said you set Spark as your default email.

01:15:30   Give me something that you love about Spark over Apple's built-in email app.

01:15:34   So I, like many people, have to file receipts for my taxes, right?

01:15:41   And the way that I do that is I have an application that my accountant makes me use where I upload

01:15:47   the receipts to.

01:15:50   And I can do this with a shortcut.

01:15:51   So I have a PDF and then I can just buy a shortcut, put it in a Dropbox folder which

01:15:55   this application pulls stuff from.

01:15:58   But the way I need to do that is to create a PDF from an email.

01:16:02   Now if you use many email applications you will have to go maybe go into a menu and select

01:16:09   PDF or go into a menu and select print and then do the pinch to expand type thing. But

01:16:14   Spark has two features to make this easy. One is a native action to turn an email into

01:16:19   a PDF which is a tap of a button. So you're looking at an email, you can just tap a button

01:16:24   and it's right there. And also the every email has like a bar along the bottom with little

01:16:28   actions like reply and archive and that stuff. But you can customize that. And I have added

01:16:33   the PDF button to that bar. So I'm in an email and there's a button that says PDF, I tap

01:16:38   it and then the share sheet just pops up like what do you want to do with it and just run

01:16:42   my shortcut super easy. I love it for that. I do this multiple times a day and it is so

01:16:47   much nicer than any of the other ways that I've ever tried to do my receipt stuff. So

01:16:53   go check out read all's impressive collection of essential productivity apps at read all

01:16:57   dot com that's r e a d d l e dot com and you can check out sparks website at spark mail

01:17:05   app.com. Our thanks to Riedel for the support of the show and all of Relay FM.

01:17:11   So let's talk about widgets and home screens and all that fun stuff because that's clearly

01:17:16   for multiple reasons it's the big thing especially for iPhone iOS right like iOS 14 on the iPhone

01:17:23   is the big thing and also has been the talk of the town because of the many applications

01:17:28   that are allowing for widgets to be added in.

01:17:31   Obviously, we would be talking about Widgetsmith

01:17:36   because we love _DavidSmith on this show,

01:17:38   and it's an app that we've all been using.

01:17:40   So we have been meaning to talk about widgets for a while

01:17:43   and just hadn't gotten to it.

01:17:45   We were going to talk about it before iOS.

01:17:47   And Widgetsmith was a thing that we were all going to talk about.

01:17:51   But then the entire world started

01:17:52   talking about Widgetsmith anyway, as it has gone just--

01:17:55   We're so lucky that we knew Underscore before he was famous.

01:18:01   Hopefully, he can still talk to us.

01:18:03   I wonder if our questions will have to go through his assistant now.

01:18:06   He's the world's most famous developer.

01:18:10   Right now, he might be?

01:18:14   Honestly, I think he is.

01:18:15   Like, I'm not kidding.

01:18:16   Right now, Dave might be one of the most famous developers in the world.

01:18:22   his app is charting higher than TikTok on the App Store.

01:18:26   So it's still number one, you know, it's been number one free app since Friday.

01:18:31   It's just unbelievable. But anyway, so there's been lots of widget stuff.

01:18:36   So I kind of wanted to talk a little bit about widgets in general, how I'm feeling about them,

01:18:43   and then maybe also talk about some of the ones that I've been using.

01:18:48   My kind of widget strategy right now is still in flux a little bit because there are applications

01:18:54   that I'm confident will have widgets or I hope will have widgets and they don't yet.

01:19:01   So I don't want to remove their icons from my home screen nor do I really want to tinker around with

01:19:08   my home screen too much until I kind of feel like everything's in place. So what I mean by this is

01:19:13   I'm using the fantastical widget, right? But I still have fantastical on my home screen

01:19:17   because I don't want to remove just that one application because that's not enough to add in,

01:19:23   say, like a small widget. I need to remove like another three applications, which may be possible

01:19:28   for me in the future, but not right now. You following? Right? Like I don't want to start

01:19:32   removing stuff until I feel like I've got all of the widgets in place that I want to be able to use

01:19:39   and then I will like completely blow away my home screen again.

01:19:42   So as it stands right now I have a four by four grid of applications on my main

01:19:49   home screen with one medium widget at the top which I'm

01:19:53   cycling between Fantastical and Carrotweather as my widgets that

01:19:57   live at the top there in a stack. Then I have a second page

01:20:00   where I have the Widgetsmith world timer

01:20:05   like thing that the the time zones thing so i can see multiple time zones

01:20:09   i have the widgetsmith pedometer a widgetsmith photo and album

01:20:13   and then two time re-widgets the time re-widgets are still in beta by the way

01:20:18   so that's kind of where i am right now but like

01:20:21   i will want to use uh i want there to be a widget for

01:20:26   omni focus which i'm currently using as my task manager of choice

01:20:29   there isn't one right now so i figure that will become a thing

01:20:33   Maybe. I don't know. Maybe. And then maybe some other applications. I'm in flux.

01:20:38   You guys following me? Because I feel like we haven't yet seen all of the widgets that we

01:20:43   could currently see. And so I don't want to completely obliterate my home screen until I

01:20:49   kind of know I want those widgets. Right? Because like for example, a good thing of this is like,

01:20:54   oh, Dew. I use Dew all the time. I use it every single day. They have widgets, but I don't want

01:21:00   to use the DUE widget because the DUE widget shows me what's in my list of stuff to do,

01:21:08   but it turns out I don't need to see that information. I don't need it. I will just

01:21:13   deal with DUE when it pops up to give me the notification. I don't need to see the list.

01:21:17   So this is the thing that I'm realizing is just because you use an app multiple times a day

01:21:24   doesn't mean you need to see its widget. And I might feel that way about OmniFocus,

01:21:29   that I don't need to see any information from inside of OmniFocus, so therefore I

01:21:34   may as well just keep the app icon and not replace it with a widget. So I feel

01:21:37   like I'm still in a bit of limbo as to what I'm gonna do with my home screen

01:21:42   but I'm pretty happy where I've got it right now with like basically one

01:21:47   complete home screen, but my second screen is just widgets and they're ones

01:21:52   that I'm using a lot and then I have like just that one kind of medium bar at

01:21:56   the top.

01:21:58   One thing that I have noticed is, and I started to feel this before, now I especially feel

01:22:03   it because of all of the trends right now of really kind of customizing your widgets

01:22:07   is I want developers to remember to leave some customization options available.

01:22:14   Even if you do light and dark mode for a widget, let me choose, don't make the decision for

01:22:19   me.

01:22:20   That's a pretty important thing because I've seen this with some apps that I use that they

01:22:24   They just automatically assume that I want the dark widget because I use dark mode.

01:22:29   I don't want apps to make that assumption for me.

01:22:32   Let me choose.

01:22:33   Does that make sense?

01:22:35   Yeah.

01:22:36   So, that's kind of where I am with it right now.

01:22:39   Yeah, my home screen is in flux as well.

01:22:42   Mostly, there's a bunch of different reasons.

01:22:45   One is I needed to try a lot of different widgets for my review.

01:22:50   You may have seen Todoist in my screenshots, and the reason why I started using Todoist

01:22:56   wasn't to make this big proclamation about the task manager that I'm using now.

01:23:00   It's just that they had really, really, really good widgets, and they provided me with all

01:23:05   the examples that I needed for my review, so I just started using it.

01:23:10   And also, like, I need to balance the fact that I'm supposed to be taking screenshots

01:23:15   for my review. And I don't want to revolutionize the whole thing right now, because I'm not

01:23:21   yet done with the screenshots. But I'm thinking of a bunch of different ideas. So for now,

01:23:27   the setup that I have is, I'm using the Today page, still, for things that are related to

01:23:33   today, or the time. So, at the very top, there's one of the excellent Fantastical widgets.

01:23:40   They have this two month calendar widget that shows you the current month and the next month

01:23:46   in the same medium widget.

01:23:48   It's really, really well done.

01:23:49   So I have that at the very top.

01:23:51   Then I have another fantastical widget that shows me just a simple list of all my upcoming

01:23:57   events.

01:23:58   It's not up next, it's just a list of events that are coming up, even if the next one is

01:24:05   in three days.

01:24:07   I have two small widgets next to each other. I have Carrot Weather for the basic daily forecast,

01:24:15   and next to it I have a list of time zones from the World Clock app. It's called World Clock

01:24:22   Widget, I think. I like it because it's colorful and it's a very simple list of cities,

01:24:29   and the small widget fits four different cities. So I can take a look at San Francisco, Chicago,

01:24:35   New York and Tokyo. It's very easy, very compact. And at the very bottom, I have the large widget

01:24:42   for Timery, for all my saved timers, which is really convenient. On the home screen right

01:24:47   now, this is where I'm like, right now I'm using this approach of...

01:24:52   So was that what you were talking about? Was that a second screen?

01:24:55   That was my Today page.

01:24:56   Oh, it's in your Today page? Okay. I always forget what that's called.

01:25:00   Yeah, that I'm still using for things related to today or events, time zones, that kind

01:25:06   of stuff.

01:25:07   Yeah, I have in there, I think it might be kind of similar to some widgets that I'm using,

01:25:11   like the fantastic home one, but the large one.

01:25:13   Yeah.

01:25:14   Right, so I don't have the large one on my home screen, but I've just put the large one

01:25:17   in there because why not?

01:25:19   My approach to home screen pages right now is to do these categories of pages.

01:25:26   So like the first one is like my dashboard in a way and it's got like my absolute must

01:25:32   haves.

01:25:33   So at the very top, music stuff, I have the excellent Soar widgets.

01:25:39   So Soar is an Apple Music client.

01:25:42   They have a Now Playing widget which is really beautiful and well done.

01:25:46   And they have a widget that is called the Magic Mixes and it basically starts Soar into

01:25:52   a Magic Mix.

01:25:53   So Magic Mix is like smart playlists, which Apple hasn't done, but this indie developer

01:25:58   did.

01:25:59   And so it's a very easy way for me to instantly start shuffling either Oasis or Death Cab for

01:26:04   Cutie or My Chemical Romance with just a single tap.

01:26:07   And the best part is because it's an Apple Music client and it uses the system audio

01:26:11   player.

01:26:12   Even if I start playing something in SOAR, I can then later control it from the music

01:26:17   app.

01:26:18   So it's not like a custom player that uses its own thing.

01:26:21   uses the default player by Apple. So you can start playing music in Soar, but then you

01:26:26   can manage music in Apple Music, which is really convenient.

01:26:30   I assume it does open the Soar app when you tap it though, right?

01:26:33   It does. It does open the Soar app, yes. Which, you know, no big deal because it's a beautiful

01:26:37   app. And then on the home screen I have Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messages, Photos and

01:26:42   Fantastical. So like the absolute must-haves. And in the dock I have the Task Manager, Notes,

01:26:48   Safari shortcuts. So pretty usual stuff. And then I'm playing around with stacks on the home screen.

01:26:54   So I stacked three different Apple Notes with a small widget, and in the bottom right corner I stacked

01:27:02   the "Today" widget for Todoist,

01:27:06   the current timer from Timery, and

01:27:13   and the shortcut that opens a copied link in Safari View Controller,

01:27:17   which is very nice because it opens a Safari View on the home screen.

01:27:22   It doesn't actually open Safari.

01:27:23   So anytime I have a copied link, I can just preview the link from the home screen,

01:27:27   which is super awesome.

01:27:29   And then all the other pages I'm not sure about, basically.

01:27:33   Like, I have three pages before the App Library, and I'm not sure about any of them.

01:27:38   Right now the second page is like more work-related stuff. So like there's Apollo,

01:27:47   Lear, which is my RSS client, IE Writer, Files, Slack...

01:27:52   Are they just like lost though? Like are you ever going to those pages?

01:27:56   This is my question. This is what I'm wondering right now. Like on the second page work stuff,

01:28:01   and then on the third page like entertainment stuff with Twitch and YouTube, but I'm not sure

01:28:06   like, is this the best approach for me? Like, am I... I'm still not in the habit of

01:28:13   going to those pages, you know what I mean? Like, because I don't see the icons,

01:28:18   like, I'm fighting against 12, 13 years of muscle memory in that the

01:28:24   stuff that I use the most has an icon on my first home screen.

01:28:29   But on the other hand, I also want to use widgets.

01:28:34   So I still need to find that balance of how do I keep the convenience of icons, but also take

01:28:44   advantage of widgets. And I've seen all these custom creations, these amazing home screens

01:28:50   that people are putting together. And I think personally, I think it's a beautiful thing

01:28:54   that people are customizing their devices and they are using these clever workarounds with

01:29:00   shortcuts and custom icons and widgets that blend into like wallpapers of the same color.

01:29:07   I think that's a beautiful thing. People taking control of their computers, I'm all in favor for

01:29:11   that. But I thought, "Can I be one of those people? Do I want to put together this extremely custom

01:29:18   layout?" Like I was looking at the stuff that Michael Flerup is doing with this custom home

01:29:24   screen. He shared a YouTube video a couple of days ago on his Twitter account, and he put together

01:29:29   these custom pages, right? With like the title of the page in the middle.

01:29:35   Yeah.

01:29:36   And I think it's really cool and I think it's really awesome. But then I started thinking

01:29:39   like knowing myself, am I the type of person who can accept the fact that I'm wasting a

01:29:48   small widget slot for a tax label? Like, can I, Federico Vittucci, be one of those people

01:29:56   who's allotting a widget slot just to a string of text?

01:30:02   Or do I want to have, like, more functional things in there?

01:30:05   So on a theoretical level, on a conceptual level, I appreciate these very custom home

01:30:12   screens.

01:30:13   On a practical level, because I know myself, I don't think I would be able to live with

01:30:17   the idea that I'm "wasting" a widget space just to make it pretty.

01:30:24   You know what I mean?

01:30:25   I think it's awesome that people are doing it,

01:30:28   but I'm too much of a nerd to do it myself.

01:30:30   - I think where I land on this is,

01:30:33   was not what I expected,

01:30:35   is that the app library has given me some sort of freedom

01:30:39   just to try a whole bunch of apps all of a sudden,

01:30:41   because I can just download them,

01:30:42   like, Sore, you mentioned earlier, check that out.

01:30:45   It is awesome, it's very nice,

01:30:48   but I'm not committed to like putting it on my home screen,

01:30:50   or before I was a folder person,

01:30:52   I was like, oh, I gotta think what folder it goes in.

01:30:55   The App Library has sort of just let me deal with things, or should I say not deal with

01:31:00   things.

01:31:01   Yeah, see this is funny, because I feel like I'm losing apps now.

01:31:06   I download something and then just forget about it.

01:31:08   I mean, there's some freedom in that too, I guess.

01:31:10   Oh, that has become a habit for me, going to the library and checking the recently added

01:31:15   category.

01:31:16   That I do all the time now.

01:31:18   Okay, I need to get used to doing that then.

01:31:20   That I've gotten used to.

01:31:21   It's the swiping to the other pages that I...

01:31:25   Get rid of them, man.

01:31:26   Liberate yourself.

01:31:27   I only have application icons on one screen now.

01:31:31   That's it.

01:31:32   Otherwise I'm searching for them anyway.

01:31:34   Steven, do you have icons still on multiple pages?

01:31:37   Yes, I'm down to two pages.

01:31:40   Before I had two pages of apps, like primary apps, secondary apps, and the third page was

01:31:44   folders.

01:31:46   That third page just got turned into the app library.

01:31:49   And so I've got two home screens with a four by four grid of applications and a medium

01:31:55   widget at the top fantastic L. Which is new as of today I was using calendar and the main

01:32:01   task.

01:32:02   So came out that in time zones in a stack time zones within widgetsmith and then the

01:32:06   photos one on the second page and then it's the app library.

01:32:09   I like the simplicity I like the today view being what I feel like is a much nicer place

01:32:14   to be now because the widgets look nicer and so I've got a bunch of stuff stacked up.

01:32:19   in the today view, including all of three carat weather

01:32:22   widgets in a stack, shortcuts, Todoist activity,

01:32:26   a whole bunch of stuff.

01:32:28   But what has struck me about all of this,

01:32:30   and I didn't expect this was,

01:32:33   it's like it's fun to fiddle with this stuff.

01:32:35   Like I feel like for the first time in years,

01:32:38   like everything on my phone is up for grabs,

01:32:41   and that's kind of a fun feeling.

01:32:43   - It is fun, it is fun.

01:32:44   I spent, should say wasted, like an hour last night,

01:32:49   what I was supposed to be editing,

01:32:52   just playing around with different layouts.

01:32:54   Like I installed a black wallpaper

01:32:56   and I started designing.

01:32:58   There's this application that the developer

01:33:00   has been very active on Reddit and they have a test flight.

01:33:03   It's called Wigy.

01:33:05   And it's like, imagine Photoshop for widgets.

01:33:10   Like they let you design your own custom widgets manually

01:33:15   as if it was like a graphics editor.

01:33:17   Like you can actually do multiple layers

01:33:20   and control all the different blocks.

01:33:22   And it's amazing.

01:33:24   And it's surprisingly easy to use on a phone.

01:33:28   Like they did a really excellent job

01:33:30   with like placing text and changing the font and the color

01:33:34   and like creating images.

01:33:36   Like it's super well done.

01:33:38   But I realized a couple of things.

01:33:40   One, this is a huge,

01:33:42   it can become a huge waste of time.

01:33:45   And also, again, conceptually, I'm all in favor of designing my own things.

01:33:51   But then I realized I'm a very bad designer.

01:33:54   Like, I have no idea how to align text properly and how to make something pretty.

01:34:01   Which brings me back to the idea of, am I the type of person who can design their own

01:34:07   widgets? Am I bad enough of a designer that I'm better off just using widgets made by

01:34:13   other people who actually know what they're doing. I have a feeling that all my widgets

01:34:18   are going to end up being ugly, self-made creations. And it's like, I wish there was,

01:34:25   like I would hire a person to design custom widgets for me. But I don't think I have the

01:34:32   skills to make them pretty myself.

01:34:35   Alright, I'm going to send you both a picture. Steven, you can put this in the show notes

01:34:38   if you want to, which is my second screen.

01:34:42   Because I was thinking this.

01:34:43   I was like, I was using Widgetsmith,

01:34:45   and all of my Widgetsmith widgets were just black,

01:34:48   because whatever.

01:34:49   Like I was like, I didn't even think about it.

01:34:51   And then I was seeing all these people

01:34:53   do these incredibly nice things.

01:34:55   And then when Dave added the custom color chooser,

01:34:58   I was like, you know what?

01:34:59   I'm gonna make my Widgetsmith widgets

01:35:02   thematically fit with my wallpaper.

01:35:05   And I changed the fonts,

01:35:07   so they would be prettier looking. And like this is the thing that I think that we can all do,

01:35:13   right? Like you can customize the widgets that you have with the options that they have to make them

01:35:18   more visually attractive, but you don't have to feel like you need to, I think, change up your

01:35:24   entire thing. So you see what I mean? Like these, I think that the widgets that I have here, I think

01:35:30   I think they look really nice.

01:35:32   - Yeah, yeah, they do.

01:35:33   And I think part of the feeling

01:35:37   that everything's up for grabs is like your second screen,

01:35:39   you have no apps on, right?

01:35:41   It's just an ode to dashboard, right?

01:35:45   It's just widgets and that's cool.

01:35:47   And that's something that we as iPhone users

01:35:50   have maybe wanted for a long time,

01:35:51   looking at Android people, but now we have it.

01:35:53   And yeah, I think this looks nice.

01:35:56   And because it makes your phone

01:35:58   or this part of your phone, its own little world, right?

01:36:03   Like if you need these things, this is where they live.

01:36:05   They don't live with other things, they're just right here.

01:36:07   And that's pretty sweet.

01:36:09   - Oh, by the way, you may remember

01:36:12   that I mentioned a while ago

01:36:13   that I have an album of photos on my phone

01:36:15   that are just super close-up pictures of Adina.

01:36:17   That is that album.

01:36:19   So if you're wondering why it's just a picture

01:36:21   of somebody's forehead, it's because the album that I chose

01:36:24   from the picture in album thing is just that album

01:36:27   because it makes me laugh every single time I go to the second screen and see one of my

01:36:31   ridiculously zoomed in photos.

01:36:34   I sent you a picture of Wigy.

01:36:36   So you get the idea of what I was doing, right?

01:36:39   I wanted to have like this large black widget that would blend in with the black wallpaper

01:36:47   and that would have a bunch of like dynamic text and data.

01:36:51   So like there was a "now playing" section and there was the date and there was an SF

01:36:56   for the calendar, right? And to have like this custom presentation. But like, I realized

01:37:03   I have no idea what I'm doing here with different like font sizes and sizes and weights and

01:37:09   alignment. I think people can, with these kinds of like advanced utilities, like I'm

01:37:14   referring to, there's a bunch of apps like this. Another one I think is called Widgeridoo.

01:37:19   Yeah, like didgeridoo. That's a good name.

01:37:25   I played around with it and then I realized I have no idea what I'm doing, like moving

01:37:29   these different blocks around.

01:37:31   Yeah I looked at that one, I think it was in your story.

01:37:35   Yeah it was.

01:37:36   I saw it.

01:37:37   And all of them were like, I see what you're going for but this is not what I want.

01:37:42   And so it's like what I've been happy about with what Dave has done is that the widgets

01:37:46   themselves are relatively simple and then I can customize them.

01:37:51   But it's not with me feeling like I'm doing web design on my iPhone.

01:37:54   Exactly. But yeah, because David took care of the design for you.

01:37:58   And then you just customise the data and the presentation, which is like,

01:38:02   it's very smart because you have these building blocks and you can just mix and

01:38:06   match however you want, which I think is the right approach right now.

01:38:09   And I would say, I mean, this is exactly why Widgetsmith has gone viral,

01:38:12   because he did just the right amount.

01:38:14   Yeah. I do think that in the future, though, there will,

01:38:18   especially once widgets come to iPad, which I really don't understand why,

01:38:23   I'm guessing they just didn't have the time to make it happen on iPadOS easier.

01:38:26   But I think in the future for power users, so for people like us, for nerds,

01:38:31   there is real potential for something like a what you see is what you get editor

01:38:35   for widgets, for designing your widgets.

01:38:37   Well, because all of those design tools make more sense on the iPad anyway,

01:38:40   just because there's a larger screen.

01:38:41   Yes. Trying to like design something on my iPhone,

01:38:45   the screen's just not big enough.

01:38:46   And also the large screen, like the large widget size is perfect for the iPad.

01:38:51   Like, I'm barely going to use, I'll probably use one large widget on my iPhone, which is

01:38:56   what I have in the Today View.

01:38:57   I have one of the Fantastic L ones.

01:38:59   But outside of that, I just don't imagine myself using the large one, because the large

01:39:02   one is just too big.

01:39:03   But it won't be too big on my 13-inch iPad screen.

01:39:07   So like, I could imagine doing that, like having like a bunch of widgets that are pulling

01:39:10   in a bunch of data, but for the iPhone, it's just not right.

01:39:14   One last thing. If you're a developer and you have shortcuts actions for your apps,

01:39:25   I think it's more important than ever right now to provide actions that allow you to take

01:39:33   the data out of the app. I'm going to give you some examples. Something like Things and

01:39:39   And even Todoist, I think they only have shortcuts actions for creating tasks, right?

01:39:45   They don't offer any actions to get the tasks out of the app.

01:39:52   So like, there's no action in things to say, in shortcuts, show me the tasks that are due

01:39:58   today for example.

01:40:00   You can do this with reminders, but you cannot do it with Todoist, you cannot do it with

01:40:04   things, you can do it with OmniFocus.

01:40:06   And I think this is going to be important because we are going to see these utilities

01:40:14   that allow you to create widgets, like custom widgets, based on data extracted with shortcuts.

01:40:22   Again, this is a power user thing, but I think it'll become popular over time.

01:40:27   This utility launched yesterday on the App Store, and I think there's more coming.

01:40:31   It's called WidgetPack, and it lets you design your own widgets.

01:40:35   Again, same idea. However, the twist is that you fill the widgets with data assembled via shortcuts.

01:40:43   So if you're a developer and you don't offer actions to take the data out of your app and make

01:40:51   it available to shortcuts natively, that's going to be a problem if this is a category of utilities

01:40:56   that takes off over time, especially for power users, right? Because my idea was, "Oh, it's going to be

01:41:01   awesome, I can use WidgetPack to make my own Todoist widget, right? And I can take data

01:41:08   out of Todoist and assemble my own widget, and the best part is I can design the widget

01:41:13   with shortcuts, which is incredible. Like, they actually have actions in WidgetPack to do things

01:41:19   like create a stack and, like, lay out these things horizontally, like, it's awesome. And then

01:41:25   you can update the widget, and you can imagine, again, a power user thing, but because of

01:41:30   automations now, you can update those widgets automatically, because those widgets are actually

01:41:37   made with shortcuts, right? But those apps, if they don't offer actions to extract data, then it's kind

01:41:44   of useless. So if you're a developer and you have shortcuts integration, think about your integration

01:41:51   the other way around as well. Not just how do I let the user input data into my app using shortcuts,

01:41:58   but how do I let the user take data out of my app

01:42:03   and present it in shortcuts?

01:42:05   And I think especially with custom widgets

01:42:07   and with compact UI, right,

01:42:09   in that you can use shortcuts on the home screen,

01:42:12   I think it's super important

01:42:13   that the other way around is also true here.

01:42:16   It's not just about using shortcuts to enter data.

01:42:19   It can be useful to take data out and present it as well.

01:42:23   - So let's talk about the aesthetics of all this.

01:42:28   Widget Smith and other apps have unlocked this great potential to customize your home screen.

01:42:34   Shortcuts is added to that being able to swap out all of your app icons and I think Apple

01:42:39   should make that easier and better.

01:42:41   Maybe we can talk about what we think Apple should do here.

01:42:45   But there are a couple things that are interesting about this to me.

01:42:49   One that a lot of us sort of in the nerdy community are surprised at how far some people

01:42:54   have pushed this system and honestly how amazing some of these setups are that people have

01:42:59   done.

01:43:00   I think all of us, you know, looked at Widgetsmith and these other things as utility and other

01:43:05   people see them as creative tools and I think that's not only fascinating but very cool.

01:43:11   I think it shows that people have wanted to do this for a really long time and now Apple

01:43:16   has done it and the dam is broken and like people are just doing it in a big way.

01:43:21   It really makes me want Apple to just let us do watch faces

01:43:25   on the Apple Watch.

01:43:26   Like, that feels so frustrating that it's still so locked down.

01:43:30   But I said it before, I think this is a beautiful thing,

01:43:33   letting people take control of their devices.

01:43:36   And also, I feel like the backlash from some people

01:43:40   that I've seen on Twitter, saying, oh, Apple lost its mind.

01:43:44   This is bad for their brand.

01:43:46   Why are people doing these ugly things?

01:43:50   I think it's pretty silly, because all of this is optional, right?

01:43:55   You don't have to do this.

01:43:57   Like, you can't just take an iPhone and use whatever default design Apple chose for you

01:44:03   and just use native Apple widgets, and that's fine.

01:44:07   But now you have the option, if you want to tinker and if you want to play around with

01:44:12   it, to customize your own thing.

01:44:13   I think customization as an idea in general, it's a beautiful thing to do, to personalize

01:44:22   a computer, an object, for example, look at Myke and his iPad with stickers, right?

01:44:30   To accessorize in real life, because you really care about the way that you're dressed.

01:44:34   I think it's a beautiful thing to take control of the appearance of yourself or the things

01:44:39   that you use, and to make them your own.

01:44:43   And I feel like, honestly, life is too short to get upset about people customizing computers

01:44:49   in fun and colorful and different ways. And calling them out because they do so, it's

01:44:56   just, why? What's the point? You're not Dieter Rams. You cannot criticize, you know, this

01:45:04   high-level design ideas. Like, you're a nobody. You're just making fun of people for no reason,

01:45:11   to be controversial on Twitter. So I think it's beautiful. I want to see more of this.

01:45:17   I think we're going to feature this wild, Myke, you will not be disappointed by the

01:45:22   home screen that we're going to feature in Mac Stories Weekly this Friday. It's going

01:45:26   to it's video game themed. And if we can make it happen, it's going to be amazing. John

01:45:31   found it. I really hope that we can make it happen. But I think this is beautiful. I think

01:45:36   should pay attention, I don't think they are compromising on the purity, if you will, of

01:45:42   their vision, because all of this is optional. You're just giving people the tools to use

01:45:48   a computer like a computer, and it's a beautiful thing. And if anything, the shortcuts team

01:45:53   should be paying attention, and they should go to Craig and say, "Look, you really got

01:45:58   us. You really need to let us install custom icons for real." Because right now, if you

01:46:04   install a custom icon, it still launches shortcuts as sort of like the middleman, right, between

01:46:11   the home screen and the app that you want to launch. What's also, and this is the last

01:46:18   thing I'll say, what's kind of funny and sad at the same time is that all these people

01:46:23   making fun of others in a useless way, they seem to have a short memory because the Mac,

01:46:30   the platform that they so very much are in love with,

01:46:33   has a rich and long history of visual and UI customization.

01:46:38   You look at things like Candy Bar, right?

01:46:42   The work that the icon factory used to do in the '90s

01:46:45   and the early 2000s.

01:46:47   The Mac has a long history and tradition

01:46:49   of custom app icons, custom themes.

01:46:53   You may be surprised to hear this,

01:46:55   but I'm from the generation who grew up on Mac themes,

01:46:59   looking at custom UI themes for Mac OS X.

01:47:04   And I got to know so many people on those forums.

01:47:06   It was incredible.

01:47:07   So to have some of that tradition come back

01:47:12   in a modern and different way on iOS, I think it's amazing.

01:47:16   And I think exposing more people to shortcuts

01:47:19   and to widgets and to indie developers like Dave,

01:47:22   what's not to love about all of this happening right now?

01:47:24   I don't get it.

01:47:25   - Not only is the Mac have that UI history,

01:47:29   both in classic Mac OS and Mac OS X.

01:47:34   But if you go back even further than that,

01:47:36   like the brand of home computer you bought

01:47:40   in the 80s and 90s, like that itself was a statement

01:47:43   about who you were, right?

01:47:45   Like there's a reason that Mac users in that time

01:47:49   banded together, right?

01:47:50   And they thought that they were in like this weird,

01:47:52   cool club and I agree, like I think that was great.

01:47:56   And that's like, that's one side of it.

01:47:59   The other side of it, which as much as I disagree with what we just spoke about,

01:48:03   like it's wild to like be upset that someone else did something with their

01:48:08   own device, is the idea that it's bad for Apple. Like if A) Apple's brand is boring

01:48:14   and I think it could use a lot of this color and personality that we're seeing,

01:48:18   but 2) if people take the time and customize their iPhones they're only

01:48:23   going to love them more and they're only going to want to be more likely to

01:48:27   replace it with another iPhone next time they upgrade. Right?

01:48:30   That's only good for Apple. Apple wants and needs its users

01:48:34   to love their devices and to make them their own. I think

01:48:37   that's why we saw things like that MacBook Air commercial a

01:48:41   few years ago was like all the stickers on the Mac players like

01:48:44   Apple's trying to tap into this. Now whether or not they foresaw

01:48:47   how far it's gone, I don't know probably they may have no one

01:48:51   no one knew this was gonna happen. I don't know. I think I

01:48:54   I think they may have had maybe some idea,

01:48:57   but I don't know.

01:48:59   It doesn't really matter because this doesn't matter

01:49:02   from Apple's brain perspective.

01:49:04   It's like, oh no, Apple's losing their design focus.

01:49:08   No, they're giving tools to the people

01:49:11   to make their own stuff,

01:49:12   and nothing is more Apple than that, nothing.

01:49:15   And I don't know, it's a tired argument,

01:49:18   and the only reason we brought it up here,

01:49:21   and I wrote a thing about it this morning,

01:49:23   it's in the show notes,

01:49:23   But the only reason we're talking about this is because we've seen some of it.

01:49:27   And it's like, you know, like, there, that's just a silly complaint.

01:49:31   And just because, like, I want to be more utility focused on my home screen, like, doesn't

01:49:38   in any way minimize if someone wants to take the time and make a really themed home screen,

01:49:44   right?

01:49:45   And if you search like iOS 14 home screen on Twitter, or if you look on Reddit or Instagram

01:49:50   or any social media, like, some people, like, they're spending real time making amazing

01:49:55   things. And just because I don't want to take that time or it doesn't really jive with how

01:49:59   he's my device, doesn't mean that it's not valid.

01:50:02   Yeah, very well spoken. I think creativity is always beautiful in all its shapes and

01:50:08   forms. And in this case, it's like people are doing these cool things with icons and

01:50:13   wallpapers and colors and widgets. It just, whenever I see someone, no matter if they

01:50:18   are more proficient at using iOS devices or iPads than me are not, but they're doing something

01:50:25   cool with it, I'm fascinated by it. And I think it's kind of sad, honestly, that people

01:50:31   don't see the beauty of that, right? Of like a teenager coming up with a theme for their

01:50:38   iPhone that they spent like hours designing. Like I see people designing their own icons.

01:50:44   I think it's incredible. I think it's beautiful, and if you don't see why that's beautiful,

01:50:49   I feel sorry for you.

01:50:51   I really hope that Apple does something sooner than iOS 15 to just allow for the shortcuts

01:50:57   app, to do something that allows people to just throw them straight through the application.

01:51:00   You know, because I just think that that would be really taking advantage of something that

01:51:05   people want right now. They don't have to go so far as to have custom icon packs. Apple's

01:51:11   already done enough by allowing you to set it up that way. Millions of people are doing

01:51:15   it with shortcuts. It's actually not that hard to do. There's a lot of steps, but it's

01:51:18   not hard to do. And it works in the system already. I think one of my favorite things

01:51:23   about this is that people are getting frustrated about like, "Oh, it looks ugly," or whatever,

01:51:28   when there are many, many people who are creating things that they know aren't good looking,

01:51:33   and that's kind of the point. And that is like a gen- that's like a part of the aesthetic,

01:51:39   like that that might be what you're going for of like a it's ironic and I

01:51:45   think that's kind of fantastic really in and of itself like you see these these

01:51:50   like the windows 95 one that went around that the person that made that they're

01:51:54   not like oh man the windows 95 aesthetic is exactly what I'm looking for my phone

01:51:59   but it's just like this is funny to me and interesting to me and I just want to

01:52:05   see if I can make it happen and lol it looks amazing you know but they're not

01:52:08   doing it because it's like this is my dream aesthetic maybe it is maybe you're

01:52:12   super into Windows 95 and that's fine too totally fine I mean maybe so anyways

01:52:17   don't don't shame people for their home screens embrace the change and just to

01:52:22   wrap this up can we just all like laugh at iPad OS for not doing this like that

01:52:28   section of my review is going to be fun I wrote it months ago and I stand by

01:52:34   every word of it. So yeah, having those widgets locked to the side is bad. No app library

01:52:40   is bad. I don't know what the deal is with that. I mean, I've shared this theory before

01:52:44   that part of I don't really believe this, but part of me thinks like maybe they just

01:52:48   leave low hanging fruit. So like when they announced 15, everyone's like, Oh yeah, which

01:52:51   is anywhere. I'm sure it was a resources issue. I kind of don't care about the app library,

01:52:56   but the widgets thing. Oh man, I want to banish all folders. I'm not saying I don't want it,

01:53:01   like comparing those two things, right?

01:53:03   Like the no widgets on the home screen for the iPad

01:53:07   was a wild decision they made

01:53:10   when you could actually make the argument

01:53:12   that it's more useful on an iPad screen than a iPhone screen.

01:53:16   - Yeah, someone in the Discord many messages ago was like,

01:53:19   "It'd be great to have an iPad mini

01:53:20   "and set it up as like a virtual dashboard.

01:53:23   "Like you can just see all this data coming in all the time,

01:53:25   "like stick it on the wall."

01:53:26   - Status board, baby.

01:53:28   would be awesome to see that sort of utility like the iPad is just the

01:53:32   perfect device for it and they've just left it on the table. I think that does

01:53:36   it. If you want to find links to the stories we spoke about, things we covered,

01:53:41   go to relay.fm/connected/313. While you're there, there's some fun

01:53:48   activities you can take part in. You can send us an email with feedback or

01:53:52   follow-up. You can join and get Connected Pro each week, which is an ad-free longer

01:53:57   version of the show, which is a lot of fun. You should also go

01:54:00   to stju.org/relay and donate we are raising money through the

01:54:04   end of the month. Thank you so much to everyone who has already

01:54:06   participated. If you haven't, you still have a few days to do

01:54:10   that. I'd encourage you to go check that out. If you want to

01:54:13   find us online, we're easy to find Federico is on Twitter as

01:54:16   Vitici V I T I C C I and he's the editor in chief of max

01:54:21   stories.net Federico What was the name of your first pet? Oh,

01:54:27   this is a long story. This is a very, I can tell you the name, it means nothing, but I

01:54:33   don't have time for the full story. The name was Bob Udall. Remind me, yes. Follow up.

01:54:43   This is the next pre-show. Oh yeah, go to connectedpro.co and you'll find out on our

01:54:47   next pre-show why Federico's first pet was called Bob Udall. Is that what you said? Yes.

01:54:54   Alright, okay.

01:54:55   I'm very curious about that.

01:54:59   You can find Myke on Twitter as @imyke.

01:55:04   Myke is the host of a bunch of podcasts.

01:55:06   Myke, what is the most recent podcast you've listened to?

01:55:10   The Stratechery Daily Update.

01:55:12   Oh, me too.

01:55:13   I just finished a little while ago.

01:55:15   We're the same.

01:55:17   You can find me on Twitter as @ismh and my writing over at 512pixels.net.

01:55:22   I'd like to thank our sponsors this week,

01:55:24   Ahrefs, StoryWorth, and Reidel.

01:55:26   Until next time, guys, say goodbye.

01:55:29   - I love you, that's you.

01:55:30   - Cheerio. - Bye, y'all.