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Connected

27: Jony Magic Table

 

00:00:00   (upbeat music)

00:00:02   From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode number 27.

00:00:11   Today's show is brought to you by lynda.com,

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00:00:26   My name is Myke Hurley, and I'm joined

00:00:28   I'm Stephen Hackett. Hello, Stephen Hackett.

00:00:30   Hello, Michael Hurley.

00:00:32   And Mr. Federico Vittigi. Hello, Federico Vittigi.

00:00:34   Hey, guys. Hey, Michael Hurley.

00:00:37   Are you are you a billionaire yet?

00:00:39   I am multiple times over a billionaire. Yes.

00:00:43   So like I saw you're like a trillionaire.

00:00:46   Mm hmm. Hmm. OK, cool.

00:00:47   Is there any specific reason you asked me that question?

00:00:50   Just so I know, because you you have been everywhere today.

00:00:54   Oh, at least in my in my Twitter and RSS feeds.

00:00:58   There's like Myke, Myke, Myke, Myke, Myke all over the place.

00:01:01   Everywhere I turn my face there's Myke.

00:01:04   Feels like I'm being, I don't know, like I'm being followed by you.

00:01:07   I feel like I should reinvent podcasts every single day just so I can, I have to say it's

00:01:13   very nice to see your name in lights in places, you know.

00:01:17   I like it.

00:01:20   In case you don't know what we're talking about, as a show that I do on Relay FM, this

00:01:25   this network of which connected is a part of called inquisitive.

00:01:29   And since like November I've been working on a new show.

00:01:33   Well I've been working on a new kind of direction for inquisitive called Behind the App.

00:01:42   So basically the show is like a series of maybe 10 to 15 episodes we'll see how many

00:01:46   it will end up being where I'm looking at the history of iOS app development in episode

00:01:52   one and it's going to go through to like what it takes to build iOS apps and kind of what

00:01:57   it's like to have Apple as a gatekeeper and stuff like that.

00:01:59   It's a very different type of show to the shows that we tend to make and I would hazard

00:02:05   I guess to say to many of the podcasts you listen to from a production standpoint it's

00:02:08   very different and I put a lot of work into it and I'm very proud of it and I think that

00:02:13   you might enjoy it if you haven't already heard it so you should do that.

00:02:16   So relay.fm/inquisitive/27 is the episode that you want to start with.

00:02:22   I mentioned in my post today about it like this this sort of show is one

00:02:27   reason that we started Relay so you know this is only possible when you control

00:02:34   the whole stack and so you know you we you had the idea we fled we fleshed out

00:02:40   the idea you have the time and your schedule to it's very I mean people just

00:02:45   don't know this is for I don't how long the show in it being 40 minutes or so

00:02:48   45 minutes, hours of editing.

00:02:51   And yeah, just the piecing together of the episode, let alone cutting up all the clips

00:02:58   or the interviews or the script writing.

00:03:00   Like just the actual edit of the episode probably took about three hours.

00:03:04   Yeah.

00:03:05   I mean, I don't know how many drafts and pieces of it I've heard over the last couple of months,

00:03:10   but I know I'm super happy that you're doing it, Myke.

00:03:14   It's really exciting.

00:03:16   Myke you are now full-stack podcasters

00:03:20   Yeah

00:03:24   You control it all you control all the pieces you're like

00:03:27   What's the like the mastermind of?

00:03:31   inquisitive

00:03:33   No, seriously, man. It's it's so like I listened to the first episode twice three times maybe

00:03:39   It's it's really great. And and again, I say this not because you're my friend

00:03:44   I mean, you are.

00:03:46   You know, like, you are my friend.

00:03:49   But I think objectively, it's a great show.

00:03:52   And I think it's a great idea at the right time.

00:03:55   The format is really, feels fresh, but also,

00:03:58   it doesn't feel strange.

00:04:01   Like, it feels just right to me.

00:04:03   And so, I know that you and Steven have been doing so much planning for this,

00:04:08   and, you know, all the work behind the scenes.

00:04:11   scenes, so I'm a big fan myself. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, I'm very proud

00:04:18   of it. I'm very proud of it. But you are my friend, so don't worry when I say that kind

00:04:24   of stuff. You are my friend. Okay, good. I was worried. I was really. Nothing happened,

00:04:30   Myke. I can assure you. No, I am worried. Shall we do follow-up and leave us break it

00:04:40   behind. So Microsoft is still on the move. Outlook for iOS, which we've talked about

00:04:47   the last couple weeks, it's really kind of stuck around, offers straight up IMAP support.

00:04:51   So if you're like me and have mail at Fastmail or some other IMAP service, you can use Outlook

00:04:57   now. And I plugged my Fastmail stuff in, it seemed to work just fine. I'm not using Outlook

00:05:02   day to day, but it's great to have some options in here. And they just keep, they keep rolling

00:05:09   the updates out to the stuff.

00:05:11   The whole Office Suite actually this week also picked up support for iCloud Drive and

00:05:15   other cloud services.

00:05:16   So for a while it was just OneDrive and then it was OneDrive plus Dropbox and now you can

00:05:21   use iCloud Drive or anything else.

00:05:25   Microsoft is doing stuff, they're making their apps sort of better on iOS and that's a good

00:05:30   time.

00:05:31   I still need to add my IMAP accounts to Outlook.

00:05:37   But this is what, like a month that it relaunched?

00:05:42   Maybe three weeks, I don't know.

00:05:45   I'm really enjoying Outlook.

00:05:47   And especially I find myself when I need to look up a time or just my schedule in general,

00:05:54   instead of opening my calendar app, I open Outlook, which is kind of weird because it's

00:05:59   my email client.

00:06:01   But I don't know, I formed this new habit and it's been working fine for me.

00:06:10   I wanted to ask you, Steven, because you seem to be the person who's an expert about this

00:06:15   sort of stuff.

00:06:17   Do you guys have certified email?

00:06:23   Basically in Italy, if you own a business, you have to create these, if you want to receive

00:06:29   like government messages over email and you want them to be certified you need

00:06:34   to create this special it's called a PEC it's spelled PEC in Italy and it's

00:06:40   basically like a certified email account that allows you to I don't know it's

00:06:46   like it's got like a special signature or whatever do you have this sort of

00:06:51   email I guess there's like different name outside of Italy yeah we we don't

00:06:57   here in the States, I mean, I've heard of that before, but it's not something that goes

00:07:03   on here.

00:07:04   I mean, if I wanted this, you know, for instance, the state of Tennessee where the LLC is located,

00:07:12   they send me emails about various things and that could go to an AOL address for all they

00:07:16   care.

00:07:17   It seems like that's going to the state website changes.

00:07:19   So I don't think there's anything real special about that.

00:07:22   It's probably one of those bureaucracy things that we do in Italy.

00:07:28   It's not a bad idea though, right?

00:07:30   Like if you send email attacks information, it just goes to somebody.

00:07:33   I mean, I don't know.

00:07:37   Yeah, it's kind of cool, I guess.

00:07:39   It's just the process of stuff.

00:07:41   I remember last year, it was kind of awful.

00:07:46   We have a special ability in Italy to overcomplicate things, and this is one of them.

00:07:52   So all this to say I'm going to add this account over IMAP for those occasional government

00:07:59   emails that I get.

00:08:00   Right.

00:08:01   They're just like, "Hey, Federico.

00:08:02   How you doing?"

00:08:03   It's a picture of a cat.

00:08:07   How do you do it?

00:08:08   How do you do the certification?

00:08:11   You sign up.

00:08:12   You have to provide your documents, like your ID, like business information, and you go

00:08:20   through this process you pay with a credit card and there's like a couple of providers

00:08:25   that you can use to buy one of these email accounts and they have like a @PEC.IT domain

00:08:33   name and then you wait a couple of days and the email becomes active and you gotta go

00:08:40   you gotta I basically gave this email to my local government business and like office

00:08:47   I don't know how it's called in America.

00:08:51   And then they use this email when they want to send you notices when you do something

00:08:56   wrong and you don't want to get those emails.

00:08:58   So I just get the good emails like, "We remind you that you gotta file your taxes between

00:09:06   January and whatever."

00:09:08   Those kind of messages.

00:09:10   And I need sign up.

00:09:12   The good news is that normally you would be forced to go to a website, to like a web app

00:09:17   for email that looks like Windows 95.

00:09:21   But thankfully you can configure this special email over IMAP.

00:09:27   So that's what made me think of my email account that I need to add to Outlook.

00:09:34   That seems a little crazy.

00:09:40   This was not where I expected the conversation to go.

00:09:45   Businesses and government?

00:09:46   It's a fun conversation.

00:09:47   Oh yeah, my favorite of all conversations.

00:09:50   I bet that there must be some sort of, this sort of expert out there who will send us

00:09:56   some follow up for stuff that I got wrong.

00:10:00   I'm sure there must be some government email certified expert.

00:10:05   Yeah.

00:10:06   I did find the link to the page.

00:10:10   The parts of it that are in English seem to be...

00:10:12   They're talking about the PEC.

00:10:15   So, Federico, if someone wanted to find this in our show notes, where would they go?

00:10:22   They would go to the web and just go to Google and type "connected show notes" and Google

00:10:29   will just give them to you.

00:10:31   I will.

00:10:33   I think you gotta go to relay.fm/connected, which is the name of the show, and then another slash, and you type 27 for 27, and you get the show notes for this very episode.

00:10:47   - Google would probably work as well, though. - It actually does.

00:10:50   - It does? Really? - Yeah, it pulls up episode 8 or something first.

00:10:55   - That doesn't make any sense. - But if you only want to see the show notes for episode 8...

00:10:59   It was a good episode. Yeah, just listen over and over to episode 8. Yeah, just what was episode 8

00:11:06   It was I've closed the tab now it was

00:11:09   Squidges we talked about Twitter and health apps and then the current state of iOS 8

00:11:14   Like every episode for like a month true

00:11:18   We all talk about this was leading up to the retina iMac now. We're just

00:11:23   Reading our own show notes. So we're gonna move on. So I've got a little follow-up

00:11:28   we spoke last week about how Memphis doesn't do very well in snow and ice. I

00:11:34   have no idea how that became a topic, but it was. And the prompt

00:11:41   curse has followed us to connected, and now it's about weather. So we,

00:11:48   Memphis woke up Monday morning to like an inch and a half of just solid ice

00:11:53   over everything and tomorrow is the first day that the schools will be open

00:11:59   this week because like you can't I was out yesterday and today and it's sketchy

00:12:03   to drive and because we don't have snow plows and snow plows don't even deal

00:12:07   with ice we got a little snow last night on top of the ice and now they're calling

00:12:11   ice plow dude go to Kickstarter and start that it's just all it is is me

00:12:19   driving with Federico in the back of my car with a shovel like scraping it long

00:12:22   as I drive.

00:12:23   Do you want me to use a shovel?

00:12:25   I don't know.

00:12:26   I don't think I ever use a shovel in my life.

00:12:28   I don't think a shovel's going to help you with ice too much.

00:12:32   You know when it snowed in Italy a couple of years ago and it was really, really bad

00:12:36   in Viterbo because there was like two meters of snow.

00:12:40   That's like 20 miles, Steven.

00:12:45   So basically it snowed so much that my family was like, "You need to go outside with a

00:12:50   shovel and remove the snow from your car. I was just like, yeah, whatever. I don't want

00:12:56   to. I stayed inside for like three days. I basically ran out of food at one point. I

00:13:04   was forced to bake my own cookies.

00:13:08   I remember that! I'm sure I remember you taking pictures of what was in your fridge.

00:13:15   Yeah, all I can do is make cookies.

00:13:18   Exactly. It was a really popular Instagram picture, I remember. I got a lot of likes

00:13:25   for cookies. So I stay inside, Steven. Don't try to make me use a shovel. The only shovel

00:13:34   I use is a shovel knife. Right, Michael?

00:13:37   Oh yeah. We'll pivot then to something else. But now they're calling for more snow and

00:13:44   ice now tomorrow night so I might never see you guys again but uh so we've

00:13:49   cursed it and we got ice and everyone is dead so that's that's a good time so

00:13:57   moving on to the follow-up we got an email this week from a listener named

00:14:02   Spencer and I thought was interesting I thought it'd be worth talking about

00:14:07   Spencer writes I wanted to know what you thought of a price reduction strategy

00:14:12   for the Apple Watch. This individual device would be expensive. With the iPhone, there's

00:14:16   less initial cost because of a two-year contract with the cellular provider. Basically, could

00:14:21   Apple do that and somehow subsidize the watch with iCloud storage or vice versa?

00:14:26   I thought it was interesting. I don't ever foresee that sort of thing happening for a

00:14:34   bunch of reasons, but what do you guys think about this?

00:14:40   It doesn't to me like those things don't really seem to like add up like that it would happen.

00:14:47   Like it just doesn't seem like those two things would really make much sense for Apple to

00:14:53   do because like the subsidizing of the iPhone is not something that Apple subsidizes.

00:15:02   Like they are selling them at full price just to the cell companies and then they subsidize

00:15:08   it for Apple.

00:15:09   So like Apple still making all of the money and like then they still make money on the iCloud?

00:15:14   Like selling you iCloud services feels like money left on the table?

00:15:18   Because they would sell you the iCloud services anyway?

00:15:22   Yeah, I totally agree. I mean that really sums up my thoughts.

00:15:27   And I think it's especially problematic when you consider how often Apple has changed the iCloud pricing scheme over the years.

00:15:36   It started as one type of service and then they changed the price and then they changed

00:15:43   the price again.

00:15:44   And I think that maybe just trying to sell the Apple Watch in this way would force Apple

00:15:50   to never change iCloud pricing again.

00:15:54   I don't know.

00:15:55   It just seems, it doesn't seem to me like the sort of thing that Apple would do.

00:15:59   yeah and may I think above all of that

00:16:02   iCloud and the watch that from what we know today don't have a ton of

00:16:07   interaction right because the watch is basically a satellite for the phone and

00:16:12   so if Apple was ever going to do more with with iCloud and and may make the

00:16:18   pricing better more aggressive or or something like that

00:16:23   I don't think the watch is the product they would attach it to just you know

00:16:27   back in the day when you bought a Mac you know I remember very clearly the

00:16:31   Apple Store like trying to sell .Mac memberships because that was an add-on

00:16:34   and you know right now iCloud doesn't really connect to the watch it connects

00:16:39   all these other products and so I do think iCloud pricing is still a little

00:16:44   weird in places I hate that I can't pay for just a year but that they paying my

00:16:48   debit card for 99 cents a month but I don't really see a world where the watch

00:16:55   is somehow subsidized or iCloud is subsidized by the watch or anything like that honestly.

00:17:00   But an interesting point I think. So something to talk about. Michael.

00:17:08   Yes sir.

00:17:09   You want to tell us about some of our friends?

00:17:11   Oh I would love to. This week's episode of our fine podcast radio program is brought to you by

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00:20:05   All righty.

00:20:09   So the New Yorker published a, I think I saw 16,000 word.

00:20:14   It's crazy, it's a book basically.

00:20:16   Did you read it Myke?

00:20:19   - No, of course I didn't.

00:20:21   - Hey, I read it.

00:20:23   I've read it all on my iPad and it was great.

00:20:27   It is long and it is at times a little tedious,

00:20:32   but definitely the best look the public's been given

00:20:37   of Ive and his work and so I thought maybe, I mean I'm sure lots of people have read it

00:20:42   again it'll be in the show notes, but I thought maybe we could just kind of touch on some

00:20:47   high points that sort of we thought were interesting and then go from there.

00:20:51   How about you two just tell me the interesting things that you found?

00:20:55   Okay so basically Johnny Ive secretly he comes from Mars and he came to our planet to basically

00:21:05   finish all our aluminum resources, so that basically the human race will end. And it's

00:21:12   like it's part of Johnny Ives' master plan, is to finish us off by using all the aluminum

00:21:20   on Earth.

00:21:21   >>Steve

00:21:21   depleting the world's aluminium sources.

00:21:23   Yeah.

00:21:24   That's the takeaway from the old pieces, this one.

00:21:29   Well, I wouldn't have expected that.

00:21:31   I'm pleased that the New Yorker was able to capture this very important piece of information.

00:21:35   It's also awesome reporting by the New Yorkers.

00:21:38   [laughter]

00:21:39   Should we move on?

00:21:42   Okay, so basically, I will start.

00:21:45   I think the general theme of the article is that Johnny Ive is a really tired and stressed

00:21:52   person that he works a lot and he oversees a lot of projects.

00:21:57   So he's in charge of iPhone, iPad, Mac, hardware design.

00:22:03   He handles the human interface group, so that means software and other design initiatives

00:22:09   in general.

00:22:10   is also in charge of, I mean, he's basically overseeing a major redesign of the Apple Store,

00:22:17   which would include, according to the article, new see-through tables for the Apple Watch.

00:22:23   He's also overseeing the new Apple Campus 2 project, and he drives there basically every

00:22:29   day to check on the status with the Norman Foster company guys working at the site.

00:22:40   What else?

00:22:41   I think that those two things maybe somebody else could do.

00:22:45   Yeah, that was kind of weird.

00:22:47   Basically it's like obsessed over the construction of the site.

00:22:52   There's a lot of details in the article about how the floor and the walls will form some

00:23:01   sort of corner when they collide.

00:23:04   It's like a lot of details, like a lot of, you know, minimal details, small details of

00:23:13   the old structure is in charge of those and it's changing stuff.

00:23:18   Again, I apologize.

00:23:19   I'm just going to apologize once for my ignorance because I haven't read this.

00:23:23   But like when you say about like the floors and walls corner thing, is that like when

00:23:27   you create like a lightbox out of photography and it's got this specific term to it where

00:23:33   Yeah, kinda. That's my understanding. Like the transition is seamless. That's what I understood from...

00:23:42   No, not meant to be a joke.

00:23:43   No, no, no. I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing at the thought that now they'll just do those product videos from any corridor.

00:23:51   Just any office. And if you get lost, you find where they're keeping Scott Forstall.

00:23:56   And he's just like touching an original iPad over and over.

00:23:59   No, no, get this mic.

00:24:01   Basically, I'm not joking.

00:24:04   Johnny Ivey has a problem with sharp corners, so he specifically mentions that he wanted

00:24:12   to change the shape of icons of iOS 5 and iOS 6 to more soft and rounder corners in

00:24:23   iOS 7 because he was annoyed by the shape before iOS 7.

00:24:29   And like the article mentions in other sections that is really like he has a basically a personal

00:24:36   problem with corners of stuff and that he used to argue for hours with Steve Jobs about

00:24:42   corners of basically everything.

00:24:44   Clearly he doesn't use folders on his iOS devices because the corner radius still changes

00:24:48   after load.

00:24:50   I can't look at it.

00:24:53   Yeah, it does.

00:24:54   Oh man, I didn't know that it still did that.

00:24:56   Yeah, at least in iOS 8.1.3 it still does.

00:25:00   Wow.

00:25:01   Yeah, Federico, I was impressed too by the fact that he just seems to be doing lots of

00:25:07   things.

00:25:08   Now, I'm sure that he has lots of people helping him in all these things.

00:25:11   And I know because I've been through a commercial construction project that there's a lot of

00:25:18   parts and a lot of people but it does seem like

00:25:21   Why does he have to go on site and

00:25:25   The question is did he do that because there was a reporter and there's trying to show that he's doing all these things or is

00:25:31   this like is he really as

00:25:33   Thinly stretched as it seems and it definitely is a little concerning

00:25:39   Someone's word of the day was like we're gonna get to the car stuff

00:25:44   but like Apple will do a car to keep Johnny I for being bored like I

00:25:47   Don't think boredom is is the risk with Johnny. I think it's I think it's like

00:25:52   utter

00:25:55   annihilation of your time

00:25:57   Actually, if anything, I think they're making the Apple watch because this guy needs to take care of his health, you know, yeah

00:26:04   They mentioned that there is being so stressed out and so tired before the introduction of the iPhone 6 and the Apple watch

00:26:14   and Apple Pay, the September event, that he was basically really ill and that he needed

00:26:20   to rest so he took a vacation for the first time in years.

00:26:25   Like this guy needs to take like six months off and just sleep.

00:26:30   I feel like that maybe the construction project, like the architecture project, that might

00:26:38   just be something like he wants to do because he's never going to get to do that again,

00:26:43   in theory like you can imagine someone being like really interested in that because he's

00:26:49   probably not an architect right by training like I'm just going to assume that that's

00:26:53   the case. I mean I might sound stupid but I don't know what he's off the top of my head

00:26:58   what his formal training was. So like he's probably in a situation where he can play

00:27:04   architect like in this scenario like and nobody's going to tell him he can't and he might just

00:27:10   be interested in that process?

00:27:12   So I can kind of see that one, but maybe some of the other stuff, like the idea of helping

00:27:19   redesign the Apple stores.

00:27:20   Like there was just to me, just allow the people that do that to just do that.

00:27:26   You don't need to do that.

00:27:27   Yeah, the article says what we already knew, that basically Steve Jobs set up Johnny Ives'

00:27:33   role in a way that he can basically have his say in everything that Apple does.

00:27:39   So and also they say that at Apple the role of designers is held in such high regard that

00:27:47   it's like when a priest walks into a church.

00:27:51   So when a designer walks into a meeting it's like whatever the designer says you got to

00:27:56   basically shut up and listen.

00:27:58   So yeah, Johnny I basically can go to the retail team and say yeah I don't like the

00:28:03   corner of the table.

00:28:05   Then he goes to the campus site and he's like yeah I don't like the corner of the wall.

00:28:09   He's just done Corner Brigade.

00:28:12   Where are the corners?

00:28:15   Well let me eradicate them.

00:28:16   Maybe he has a Tumblr where he makes fun of bad corners.

00:28:19   Johnny AI redesigns corners.

00:28:23   Tumblr.com.

00:28:24   But you know, I think that is interesting.

00:28:28   There was a quote in the article comparing the way design works at Apple and the way

00:28:33   design works at other companies.

00:28:35   that instead of being like one vertical stripe as you move through a product

00:28:39   lifestyle that oh I'm in design now I'm out of design that it's horizontal that

00:28:43   you are always design is always involved and there you know comments the article

00:28:48   about like retail packaging and all these things and it's really you know we

00:28:53   made the joke about being full stack podcasters but with Apple it really is

00:28:56   like full stack design like world where you know the guys in this lab can can

00:29:03   can speak into any project and are involved from the very inception, you know, they're meeting with engineers. They're milling things

00:29:11   I mean, I know they had had

00:29:13   milling machines have put in in Cupertino that's been written about before

00:29:17   but like they just go make prototypes and they had a prototype for all the iPhone sizes when they were going to go bigger and

00:29:24   they, you know, settled on 4.7 and 5.5 by

00:29:28   ruling out all the others and I think that approach

00:29:32   while I'm sure

00:29:34   Exhausting like that's why this stuff is so

00:29:36   Especially the hardware is so good

00:29:39   And there was a there was a bit in the article Myke about the desks that the tables actually that they use in the design

00:29:47   lab, which is basically this

00:29:49   large room where

00:29:51   What's the number like 40 people Steven 50 people?

00:29:54   Yeah, I think that I don't remember but I think that's the high end

00:29:59   >> This is just Johnny's team, right?

00:30:02   >> Yeah, the design team.

00:30:03   It isn't like the really special people at Apple.

00:30:07   They have these tables.

00:30:09   Again, Johnny, I and Steve Jobs obsessed over these tables because they

00:30:15   made them that they are basically low enough when you want to sit down and work,

00:30:23   but also high enough when you want to demonstrate stuff while standing up.

00:30:28   That seems like it defies the laws of physics.

00:30:31   No, they say it's possible. It's a table that you can stand at

00:30:35   and sit at and it's the exact right height for both things.

00:30:39   The giant magic table. They have a trademark.

00:30:43   Yeah, well, the table thing really pulls through Apple.

00:30:48   An interview with Tim Cook several years ago, I think maybe right after he was CEO,

00:30:53   named CEO, he had this quote of "everything we make we can put on this table"

00:30:59   he repeated it on the Charlie Rose show, that's sort of an idea that Tim Cook likes to spout

00:31:04   that "everything we make we can put on your dining room table" and that's our business,

00:31:08   right?

00:31:09   All of it.

00:31:10   And thinking back at this article, they're talking about they would have all these iPhones

00:31:15   on the table and then the old stuff gets cleared off and the new thing is on the table and

00:31:20   That sort of like hands on collaborative approach to design, I think, is something that resonates

00:31:26   even with Tim Cook, on the product side that you know, this is really, it's, there's a

00:31:31   lot going on here, but it's sort of simple to understand.

00:31:33   And that's really, I think, why I was so good at what he does is like, these things are

00:31:39   complicated devices, and iOS seven and eight are complicated pieces of software, but they're

00:31:45   doing what they can to make it simple to use and easy to understand, you know, that one

00:31:50   One of my favorite bits of industrial design ever out of Apple is the iPhone ringer mute

00:31:57   switch where if it's on mute you get a little sliver of that sort of orangey red down there.

00:32:01   So even if it doesn't vibrate, if you can't remember, you can just look at it and know

00:32:06   okay it's on mute because you know what that red means.

00:32:09   It's those little types of touches that really set their stuff apart.

00:32:13   One of the other great parts from the article Myke is when the reporter asks about how do

00:32:23   you relate to the fact that people are about to walk into an Apple store in September and

00:32:29   buy a new iPhone and you're already working on the next iPhone.

00:32:33   And I says when we develop a new product in this way like an iPhone, of course when the

00:32:42   current iPhone comes out we're already using the next iPhone and he says, he looks at the

00:32:49   iPhone 6 and he says this is already boring to me because he's using the iPhone 6s or

00:32:57   the iPhone 7 and I think that's fascinating because we know that of course Apple is working

00:33:02   already, probably they have already finished the next iPhone but just to think that a person

00:33:08   like me and you were all excited to get the new iPhone 6 and the 6 Plus and there's somebody

00:33:14   on this planet who thinks it's already ugly and boring. I think that was kind of funny.

00:33:20   Yeah, because you probably assume, right, that he's using a version of the iPhone 7

00:33:29   when the iPhone 6 comes out because they don't need to start thinking about the 6s or whatever

00:33:34   because it's the same like for Johnny's perspective like his team is done like for a whole like

00:33:41   two years.

00:33:42   I mean, maybe I mean the 4S and 5S did have minor hardware revisions, but I see what you're

00:33:48   saying right that it's adding touch ID or changing the antenna breaks.

00:33:52   Not a huge deal as opposed to the next major release.

00:33:56   Yeah, like he's already thinking about like the whole next full redesign.

00:34:02   Right.

00:34:03   I'm sure there's people in his team that are working on the minor revisions, but he's not.

00:34:07   Like I can't imagine that he's doing that.

00:34:10   They began testing the bigger iPhones with the iPhone 4 design in 2010, 2011.

00:34:19   And basically because of the design, it was all, you know, it was basically with the sharp

00:34:24   edges.

00:34:25   You're carrying like a VHS tape around.

00:34:28   Yeah it was.

00:34:29   I bet he hated it.

00:34:32   They tested this 5.7 inch iPhone 4, and it's like it was too bulky and uncomfortable.

00:34:40   We just decided to wait.

00:34:42   Probably a good call.

00:34:43   Yeah, yeah, the rounded corners, as slippery as it makes it, does help with the kind of

00:34:47   making it seem smaller.

00:34:50   I think kind of the last thing that I wanted to touch on was the sort of Johnny Ive outside

00:34:58   of the lab.

00:34:59   So that means they he interviewed him in his house. He talked to people who know him

00:35:03   They kind of made it a sort of a story about how he

00:35:07   He chauffeured to work now like he was in a car accident several years ago, and I think people were like, okay

00:35:13   Someone needs to drive you

00:35:15   He kind of makes jokes about Toyota's because he rides into Bentley. I

00:35:18   None of that really rubbed me the wrong way. Like dude has been super successful. He's super wealthy because of it

00:35:24   Like that's great. But what what struck me was

00:35:28   the the writer whose name has escaped me

00:35:32   they get to his house and he

00:35:36   apologizes that they got there after

00:35:38   dark like I know part of that's like

00:35:41   sort of like I can kind of like see him

00:35:45   in a top hat with the British flag like

00:35:47   that some of that is sort of ingrained I

00:35:49   think in the in the British culture but

00:35:52   maybe Myke could disagree with that but I

00:35:55   I just, that little thing kind of like, that little story reminded me like he is, he is

00:36:01   a real person, right?

00:36:02   Like he's not just this machine that's cranking out aluminum things, but that sort of like,

00:36:06   Hey, you know, I'm sorry we got here after dark.

00:36:08   Like that, that little like human touch, uh, I thought it was a really nice all, you know,

00:36:13   all throughout this article, really nice touch of seeing him not only at work, but kind of

00:36:18   like, what makes him tick.

00:36:20   And um, I don't know, that little story just kind of jumped out at me.

00:36:23   I thought it was pretty, pretty nice.

00:36:25   And also when they say that he has a poster in his office with a lot of curses in this

00:36:32   poster, like a lot of words that we cannot say here, I was like, yeah, Johnny keeps posters

00:36:39   like teenagers.

00:36:40   It's kind of human, you know.

00:36:43   There's always the thing that I love about Johnny Iov, which was the video of him on

00:36:49   the British TV show called Blue Peter.

00:36:52   Oh, yes.

00:36:53   I'll put it in the show notes in case you've never seen it, but it's such a great moment.

00:37:00   It makes sense to me because if you are a British person and was a child as a British

00:37:07   person in the last 40 years, you would feel that way and that happy about being on Blue

00:37:15   Peter and getting the gold badge like he does.

00:37:18   It's this whole thing.

00:37:20   You can look it up.

00:37:21   much upon me going into it, but the idea is like it really showed to me that like he has

00:37:27   a very human side and I think that especially under Steve Jobs like there was you know

00:37:35   there was at least a time where we kind of thought of Apple executives as kind of like

00:37:42   not real people you know what I mean? - Yeah because he's an alien. - Oh yeah except for the fact

00:37:49   fact that it's an alien. No, I get it. Because like Jobs was such a like, obviously was a

00:37:55   human, you know, but like was was you never saw him that way. And it kind of that that

00:38:02   kind of in the secrecy helps that kind of permeate. Yeah. But it, you know, that that

00:38:10   for me, like it really showed like a personal side to him that I really liked. And I think

00:38:14   It's a personal side that Tim Cook, Tim's Apple, is bringing out in the executives now.

00:38:22   Where Steve's Apple was very much like, "We are not real people.

00:38:27   We are like the machine that you mentioned."

00:38:31   We are above you as a next level human.

00:38:34   I get this sort of feeling from the old Apple.

00:38:37   And what's really sad is that the Steve Jobs biography failed miserably to capture this

00:38:45   human side.

00:38:47   It was factually wrong and it's not really a biography.

00:38:50   And of course, Johnny, I cannot remember the exact quote, but it's not really happy about

00:38:56   the biography in the article.

00:38:58   He says, I think I couldn't hold it in lower regard.

00:39:03   Was really bad.

00:39:04   I did read that. I read that somewhere over the last,

00:39:07   like I've seen a few quotes here and there, you know,

00:39:09   but like I did see that, I was like,

00:39:11   "Oh, like, do you know that just put it down like--

00:39:13   - That's a sick burn.

00:39:14   - "You knew exactly what he wanted to say.

00:39:16   "Like, I could not hold it in lower regard."

00:39:19   What a great line.

00:39:21   And that must be so upsetting, like,

00:39:23   to people like Johnny who,

00:39:25   Steve was such a close friend of his

00:39:27   and maybe thought that this biography,

00:39:29   when he knew it was happening,

00:39:31   would finally give people a taste

00:39:33   what he knew one of his closest friends to be like and kind of the book just

00:39:38   didn't do that. it must suck. I think I'm gonna start saying my regard

00:39:43   couldn't be any lower like in meetings and stuff like what do you think about

00:39:46   this logo concept? I should also get a driver Steven. I should. I bought a Toyota though.

00:40:01   Just buy a Bentley logo and put it on the car.

00:40:08   Done.

00:40:09   I'll be on eBay during the next ad read.

00:40:17   Anything else?

00:40:19   From Jadikal?

00:40:20   Yeah.

00:40:21   I mean there's the Apple Car but we're going to talk about that in a few minutes.

00:40:25   Now I think we summed up the most relevant quotes.

00:40:29   Those are some funny bits that I don't remember.

00:40:34   One more thing that I want to mention, there's no, like, the reporter got access to Apple,

00:40:39   to Johnny Ives' wife, to close friends, to, what's the guy, Mark Newsome, the designer.

00:40:47   He didn't talk to Phil Schiller at Apple for some reason.

00:40:53   That kind of stood out to me, because Phil, we always see him on stage, you know, in videos,

00:40:59   And he talked to Mansfield, I think, to Big Bob, and he didn't talk to Schiller.

00:41:06   Was kind of strange.

00:41:08   If there's, you know, we were talking about like the bigger than you, kind of like look

00:41:14   down upon you type Apple, maybe he's the only person left who's kind of like that.

00:41:20   Probably.

00:41:21   I don't know.

00:41:22   I don't know.

00:41:23   I mean that's allegations to make about the man, but all I mean is like if there's going

00:41:27   to be anybody that's potentially going to still be like that in the Apple Executive

00:41:32   Team.

00:41:33   He may still be in that mindset.

00:41:36   Or he was probably busy just taking pictures of squirrels.

00:41:39   Probably was doing that.

00:41:42   With the iPhone 7, I don't know.

00:41:45   About that, very quick aside, the families of the Apple Executive Teams are very different

00:41:52   all the time.

00:41:53   They have huge families.

00:41:54   They're always talking about their family vacations that they go on and they've got

00:41:58   completely new families in their photos.

00:42:01   There should be a TV show about the Apple executive families.

00:42:06   Call it like I have friends.

00:42:11   I feel like there could be such great stories in this show.

00:42:16   I don't know.

00:42:20   They have dinners together and they talk behind their backs, you know, like a parenthood for

00:42:26   Apple executive families.

00:42:29   That could be such a great show.

00:42:30   Man, where's Joe Steele when you need it?

00:42:32   I need to talk to Joe.

00:42:35   This week's episode of Connected is also brought to you by igloo, the internet you'll actually

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00:44:22   So I guess we should talk about the car thing.

00:44:27   Yeah, sure.

00:44:29   I've sort of been...

00:44:30   I feel like Myke should talk about cars.

00:44:35   Why?

00:44:39   Because I know that you're a very passionate driver.

00:44:44   Oh, right, I get it. Yes, yes, of the three of us I don't have a driving license, that's

00:44:50   correct.

00:44:51   So, let me ask you, if Apple does a car, would you buy one and finally get a license?

00:44:58   No.

00:44:59   Oh, come on!

00:45:01   It's nothing to do with car manufacturers, I just can't...

00:45:03   He could buy one and just keep it at home.

00:45:07   He's a strong drummer.

00:45:10   It's difficult to warrant the cost of a car in London.

00:45:16   Is it really that bad?

00:45:17   It's just a lot of congestion and public transport's really good.

00:45:21   So you can kind of get everywhere you need to get with public transport.

00:45:25   So it kind of seems pointless to spend all that money on a car.

00:45:30   Or maybe, maybe when you all have a family you will move to the British countryside,

00:45:38   in a house in a very big house in the country, Myke, and you will get a car to commute to

00:45:47   London.

00:45:48   I think what will end up changing me is when I have a family, so when I have kids, that's

00:45:52   probably what will change me into getting a car because then you kind of, there are

00:45:55   more tangible reasons for owning a car at that point.

00:45:59   Okay, thank you.

00:46:00   So Steven, tell us about Project Titan.

00:46:03   Project Titan, which is an epic name.

00:46:05   This came out last week or over the weekend I think.

00:46:09   Just a couple links, one to the Wall Street Journals, one to Reuters.

00:46:13   Reuters?

00:46:14   Reuters.

00:46:15   Reuters.

00:46:16   Reuters.

00:46:17   It's not like where you connect your internet to.

00:46:20   That's a modem.

00:46:23   Modem-ters.

00:46:25   So Do-It-J and Modemers.

00:46:28   Kind of conflicting, WSJ says that Apple is working on a car project, could it be as many

00:46:34   is a thousand people working on it. It is for an electric car. This comes on the heels

00:46:39   of a lot of reports that Elon Musk and Tim Cook are fighting over employees in the valley

00:46:46   to work on their apparently respective car projects.

00:46:50   Did you feel like Tim Cook could take down Elon in a fight?

00:46:53   No, Elon Musk is like Iron Man.

00:46:55   Yeah, I don't know, but Tim Cook has some serious bulk. The guy's big.

00:47:00   Yeah, yeah, but Elon Musk has like rocket hands, so you're gonna lose.

00:47:05   I feel like you made up the rocket hands thing.

00:47:08   You don't know that.

00:47:09   Okay.

00:47:10   I made it up.

00:47:14   So obviously like our corner of the internet sort of just went crazy with this.

00:47:20   A lot of people, including myself, my knee jerk reaction was an apple car sort of made

00:47:26   laugh because finder had just crashed

00:47:31   for like the fifth time that day but

00:47:35   I think big picture it's pretty

00:47:39   interesting you know a thousand engineers

00:47:41   working on this they're not pulling

00:47:44   engineering resources from like you know

00:47:47   the Swift framework team more likely

00:47:48   than not you know it's not it's not like

00:47:50   these people were working on iCloud

00:47:51   infrastructure and now working on seat

00:47:55   belts it's I don't think this is a big

00:47:55   of resource drain in terms of they're hiring people in.

00:47:57   But I don't know, like.

00:48:01   Is is an Apple car the most ridiculous thing in the world?

00:48:04   I don't think it is because the.

00:48:06   Technology industry and the car industry are just like

00:48:10   merging more and more every year, and so I don't know.

00:48:14   It's it's it's weird.

00:48:16   The ways in which the emerging

00:48:17   that were still so very far away from each other, like.

00:48:22   Just because a car runs on electricity doesn't make it a consumer electronic.

00:48:28   I know we've had this discussion, I believe, a few times.

00:48:30   My feeling about it, yes, it is electric, but it's very different.

00:48:36   A car will cost 20 grand as opposed to a computer which costs one.

00:48:43   These are very different things.

00:48:48   as well, Apple tends not to have to worry about a myriad of things.

00:48:54   Like, if the computer hits a wall or the computer crashes, will it kill anyone?

00:49:02   Like, no. All it will do is make a Skype recording really upset and you have to

00:49:06   use that and then all of the listeners get upset, you know, if your computer crashes.

00:49:11   Oh, when does that happen?

00:49:15   - Not today.

00:49:16   It's not the same, like the ramifications of issues

00:49:22   are so vastly different, like fundamentally

00:49:25   you have to start thinking things differently as a company.

00:49:28   And where I had the same feeling that you did initially,

00:49:32   like this is insane, and I still do to a point think

00:49:35   this is insane, it's like, I just, like, you know,

00:49:40   I just, like, you know, I get what you're saying.

00:49:45   Like your piece on it, I thought was very, very thoughtful

00:49:52   and I quite liked it.

00:49:54   I still think that like, this is such a huge change

00:49:57   for the company that it doesn't even really make sense

00:50:00   to me, like it would seem so peculiar.

00:50:02   - Oh yeah, oh, it definitely is.

00:50:04   And it's beyond consumer electronics for sure.

00:50:07   I mean, you know, Apple doing CarPlay, like that's still Apple doing iPhone type things,

00:50:13   right?

00:50:14   But this is something totally different.

00:50:15   And I think the reality is that, you know, Apple is the largest, the largest tech company

00:50:24   in the world, one of the largest companies in the world, period, tech or not.

00:50:28   So they're playing with all sorts of things, you know, is Project Height never going to

00:50:34   end up sitting in my driveway?

00:50:36   I don't know but it's not crazy for Apple to be playing with things.

00:50:43   You know one thing that I had kind of came to memory under Steve Jobs R&D at Apple was

00:50:49   very small for the size of the company they were and it's expanded under Tim Cook if you

00:50:53   look at their at their earnings reports and I think I don't think it's necessarily a bad

00:50:58   thing I think Apple needs to be experimenting and thinking about different things but as

00:51:02   As far as a car swimming up in two years or five years, I'm not sold on that.

00:51:07   But um, I don't know.

00:51:09   What do you think Federico?

00:51:12   It all sounds so far away from me.

00:51:16   Not in just in the sense that I'm not really a car expert.

00:51:21   Like I don't think about my car.

00:51:23   I like I just want to drive my car because it needs to take me places.

00:51:28   I don't follow car news.

00:51:31   Not just in that sense that I don't care that much, but also all this talk about self-driving

00:51:39   cars, Tesla, electric cars.

00:51:44   I mean in Italy we are very much far away from this Silicon Valley type of car news.

00:51:52   And also here driving old school manual shift is still very much what most people do.

00:52:03   And I myself have grown up and I learned to drive manual.

00:52:09   And to me driving is manual because I actually like driving.

00:52:15   I like all the gestures and not the gestures in the sense of stereotype, but all the stuff

00:52:22   you need to do to drive a car, to you know, the shift and the steering wheel.

00:52:28   So thinking about these electric cars with presumably automatic shifts and

00:52:34   maybe even self-driving, it sounds so, you know, so different, so new to me.

00:52:43   And so it's difficult for me to imagine this sort of Apple car stuff.

00:52:48   And also, it seems like what you said, Stephen, it's a massive undertaking, it's a massive change.

00:52:56   Because making a car is not like making an iPhone.

00:53:00   And I think Craig Hockenberry made a great point on his blog about you cannot ship thousands of

00:53:10   Apple cars overnight from China on a plane like you can with iPhones.

00:53:17   It's a really big plane. Unless you have a really big plane, exactly. I don't know.

00:53:23   It's so... And I have a friend who works at Maserati here in Italy. He's a project manager.

00:53:32   And when we talk, when he comes down to Viterbo and when occasionally we meet and we catch up,

00:53:38   and he explains to me the process of the manufacturing and all the different pieces

00:53:46   and how many people are involved and all the machinery and they constantly need to upgrade

00:53:52   these machines and like how they build stuff all the little details it's just it's a completely

00:53:58   different manufacturing marketing everything is different so while you can reuse like apple makes

00:54:07   iphones they make ipads and they can reuse components they can reuse people they can share

00:54:12   I don't know, marketing people making a car is like a whole different market. It's not another type of computer

00:54:19   It's another type of object with a completely different type of price

00:54:24   And so for this reason, I don't know it seems

00:54:28   If they're really doing this and this is my other the other half of my feelings about this

00:54:35   I think Apple is working on this stuff because it just makes sense. They have all that cash

00:54:41   They are crazy enough to have people like Johnny Ivo basically don't sleep anymore and they want to oversee everything

00:54:49   and they seem to be

00:54:51   in a good way self-conscious enough that they know that they can make better design than others and

00:54:57   also considering Apple's interest in, you know, being green and

00:55:03   supporting renewable energies that kind of stuff making a car that allows people to drive without, you know,

00:55:11   pollution or that sort of old school, like you need to put gas into your tank

00:55:16   mindset, it makes sense, but it's a massive undertaking and change.

00:55:22   So I'm kind of torn between, you know, my nature of an Italian who drives a manual car and doesn't follow car news and

00:55:28   the idea that Apple is in theory well positioned to do this sort of effort.

00:55:35   But in practice, it's a massive change. And

00:55:39   So, I don't know it's it's fascinating much more fascinating than the iPad stylus for sure

00:55:45   So I'll leave you with that. What if the car will come with a stylus that he could do real work in it?

00:55:51   Yeah, I agree totally it's it's such a different ballgame the

00:56:01   ex CEO of GM who has been in the news a lot recently for building cars that kill people unfortunately

00:56:09   They've got to recalls and whatnot going on right now.

00:56:13   You know, he had a quote that was eerily similar to like Steve Ballmer rejecting the iPhone

00:56:18   and kind of the they're not going to walk in and figure this out type of feeling.

00:56:26   And that is, you know, it's not shocking, but I think even more so than with Ballmer

00:56:33   and the phone and these other companies looking at Apple in the past.

00:56:37   This really is a huge jump.

00:56:38   I mean going from a computer to a smartphone, that's a jump, but it's still a computer type thing and a car is not a computer type thing

00:56:46   You know, maybe all we see out of this is carplay gets a lot better or you know

00:56:50   It's easier to use or something. I would love to see Apple take over the dashboard and in a more robust way. I mean

00:56:56   What can I look for?

00:56:59   Mmm widgets inside my inside my car and

00:57:03   When you add a new and you get the little ripple effect be exciting Steven stop

00:57:08   You like the ripple effect? No, just widgets. Just widgets. Widgets are really helpful. Um,

00:57:14   for some people.

00:57:16   Yeah, I don't know.

00:57:18   Time will tell with this. I think this is, I think Project Titan is one of many things Apple is doing that we don't know about.

00:57:25   This one leaked obviously because it seems to be really big. The fact that it is so big

00:57:30   I think leads credence that Apple is taking it seriously, you know,

00:57:33   it's not just a handful of people in a room somewhere like tinkering with something, but

00:57:38   It would definitely mark a new chapter in the company if this were to come true

00:57:43   I think it would be a really really big deal

00:57:46   It doesn't mean they're losing focus does it mean that the software quality is gonna continue to suffer for the Mac and iOS

00:57:53   I don't know if they're if those things are hand in hand, but it would definitely be an adventure

00:57:59   I think I think for now that's all we could really say

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01:00:10   it beautiful.

01:00:15   So there was something that we kind of wanted to bring up today after Dropbox announced

01:00:22   that they've kind of beefed up their app by adding extensions.

01:00:29   And I'm kind of interested to understand how is everybody using extensions these days.

01:00:39   From the share sheet?

01:00:41   Yes.

01:00:42   Good topic.

01:00:43   I'm sorry, mate.

01:00:45   Okay, so this is a topic that in all seriousness, I'm sorry, guys.

01:00:50   I like to be funny on occasion.

01:00:54   I want to talk about extensions because it's been a few months since IUSAC came out and

01:00:59   I know that I, I mean, you also know that I use my iPhone and iPad a lot but I want

01:01:05   to start from you, Steven, because you seem to be the more Mac OS X type of guy here.

01:01:12   So tell me, when you use your iPhone or your iPad, do you use extensions much?

01:01:18   Do you use them for, excuse me for using this terminology, consumption type of stuff or

01:01:26   do you use to actually do stuff more quickly that is not reading or watching a movie or

01:01:32   whatever?

01:01:33   Yeah, so my usage is really based around only a handful of extensions, but the ones that

01:01:42   have stuck around I'm using pretty heavily.

01:01:46   The big three for me are day one, Instapaper and Pinner, which is a pinboard application.

01:01:51   And so with with day one, for instance, you can have a photo, you can be in the camera

01:01:55   roll, and send it off to day one and add information to it.

01:01:59   That makes it really easy to you know, I really like day one, but it can be a little slow

01:02:04   to go in, add a new post and tell it what info you want.

01:02:07   You can do it all from the share sheet, which is really fast, really nice.

01:02:11   my day one usage has gone up incredibly since that extension has worked.

01:02:15   Instapaper and Pen are definitely more in the consumption space of things, of "hey I

01:02:21   want to send something to one of these two services" but it's definitely something that

01:02:26   makes it a lot faster.

01:02:27   I have gotten rid of almost all of my little bookmarklets that I used to run in Mobile

01:02:31   Safari to do all this stuff.

01:02:32   Extensions have just completely taken over all of that.

01:02:37   And of course there's some others, there's some utility ones like 1Password and the Workflow

01:02:40   extension which are both super powerful and 1Password in particular has really made browsing

01:02:49   and like the other night I bought something on Amazon just on my phone because I knew

01:02:53   that I had the 1Password extension and didn't have to go and copy my Amazon password in

01:02:57   and do all that crazy stuff.

01:02:59   So it was definitely a time saver for me on kind of both sides of that question.

01:03:05   Myke, what about you?

01:03:08   So I think my main problem is that the majority of the time I forget that extensions exist.

01:03:17   Like I might be doing something or I open up that extension and it's paying for something

01:03:23   and I'm like "oh yeah, that extension is here that I can use to do these things" or like

01:03:28   I'm thinking about a way to get something done and don't even consider to think "maybe

01:03:33   an extension could fix this, maybe I should go and find an app that has an extension".

01:03:38   Like that has yet to really truly become part of my kind of thinking.

01:03:46   And I don't know why that is.

01:03:49   Maybe just there aren't as many use cases as there could be yet, or like there aren't

01:03:54   as many ways in which you can pass this information around.

01:03:58   Like maybe there needs to be more extension types before...

01:04:01   Do you feel like the way that you need to activate extensions makes you forget about

01:04:08   extensions?

01:04:09   Yeah, that makes sense.

01:04:10   Like you need to hit this share icon and then there's a panel.

01:04:14   Because one of my, I think I will start, you know, every year I do this annual iOS WISH

01:04:23   round up on Mac stories.

01:04:26   This is the period of the year when I create my note with all my wishes for the next version of iOS.

01:04:34   And one of my big things in this article that I'm starting now is being able to activate extensions

01:04:42   in different ways. Because I imagine, what if instead of going through all these steps,

01:04:51   that I need to press the share icon and then scroll through extensions. What if I could just

01:04:56   customize shortcuts to specific extensions directly in the toolbars or the menus of the

01:05:04   apps that I use? So imagine if you have Instapaper installed, you get an Instapaper icon in Safari

01:05:10   instead of going through the share icon and or for instance, allow me to...

01:05:18   this is gonna sound weird but again allow me to have an extension side by side with the current

01:05:25   app that I'm using so that I don't have to choose either you use the app or you use the extension

01:05:31   that comes on top of the app. You can do stuff for like a few seconds maybe with both apps and

01:05:39   the app and the extension next to each other. So I'm thinking that maybe in iOS 9 it'll make,

01:05:44   because you made me think of this point

01:05:50   that I was just considering.

01:05:52   I get it, it makes sense that you

01:05:54   forget about extensions because

01:05:57   the entire environment, and I guess for

01:05:59   security reasons but also because Apple

01:06:00   didn't have much time,

01:06:02   it feels kind of limited in the ways

01:06:03   that you

01:06:06   as a user can get into extensions and it

01:06:07   seems a bit

01:06:09   slow after a while and then because

01:06:11   it's slow you forget about

01:06:11   the share sheet and extensions. So yeah, all these to say, Myke, that's a great point,

01:06:15   Dana. I think it makes sense. And it needs to change.

01:06:18   Yeah, I've got a couple things I would add to that wishlist. I wish that you could turn off

01:06:23   some of the built-in Apple stuff. So like, I never want to send anything to Reading List.

01:06:28   I never want to print anything.

01:06:31   I also, even though they said they fixed it, they really haven't fixed it. Where if you reorder

01:06:38   something so I remember this and with tweet by and Safari like I can't ever get my ordering

01:06:43   what I want because I change it one place it has a tendency to affect it the other place

01:06:48   that the ordering is still sort of buggy but um honestly I would love to order them per

01:06:55   app even like that would be fine with me just leave them where I put them and let me turn

01:07:00   off ones I don't want but I definitely agree with you it is it's sort of weird that they

01:07:05   sort of hijack the share button for this and I get it gets philosophically like

01:07:09   most extensions send data somewhere else but I do think that by putting them one

01:07:16   layer away it's it's a little bit removed from like a lot of people's a

01:07:22   lot of people's minds I will say though that on the iPad especially like using

01:07:28   something like tweet bot that hasn't been updated yet it I look for them

01:07:32   because you know tweet bot can do some of that stuff natively but it's sort of

01:07:35   weird and like I you know I'm looking for a share button and that's not there

01:07:39   so it has sort of stuck for me but I do wish that someone said there was a

01:07:44   little more polish in the in sort of the experience of actually using and editing

01:07:47   them and that sort of thing. For a second like I heard you say it but then like

01:07:52   didn't think that you said iPad and I was like bro I've got something to tell

01:07:57   The iPhone app was updated ages ago.

01:08:02   - Oh no, I've been running the old one.

01:08:04   Everything looks like metal all the time.

01:08:09   - So basically the only extensions that I use

01:08:13   instinctively of any sort of frequency are workflow.

01:08:17   I mean, I use that a lot because there are some things

01:08:19   that I wanna do and the only way to do them is workflow.

01:08:25   So if I ever think of doing a certain thing,

01:08:27   it's like the only way I can do it.

01:08:29   Or it pops up at certain points, like for example,

01:08:31   it's a bit like, one workflow that I use a lot

01:08:35   is just very simply take the current URL and open in Safari.

01:08:40   And there are a couple of things as being a Chrome user,

01:08:43   which is super frustrating.

01:08:44   Like if you click a link, if I click a link in mailbox

01:08:49   to open the TestFlight app,

01:08:51   because I get an email or something,

01:08:54   it will just, it opens in Chrome

01:08:57   and then opens the app store

01:08:58   and takes me to the TestFlight app in the app store.

01:09:01   And it's like, you're just trolling me.

01:09:03   Like that's fine.

01:09:04   Someone here is trolling me

01:09:06   because that doesn't make any sense.

01:09:07   - You know which email client

01:09:09   can open TestFlight links correctly?

01:09:11   - Outlook.

01:09:12   - Outlook.

01:09:13   - There you go.

01:09:14   - So Myke, question.

01:09:16   Is the workflow extension slow sometimes

01:09:19   to come up for you?

01:09:20   - If it is, I don't remember it being.

01:09:23   - Okay, yeah, because I'm running into this strange bug

01:09:27   and I need to tell the developers.

01:09:29   - You probably have like a billion in there.

01:09:31   And there are other things that pop up,

01:09:33   like I want to use,

01:09:36   like send something to Huffduffer or whatever,

01:09:38   but the thing is,

01:09:40   the workflow extension is like a whole other thing.

01:09:42   Like I don't even think of it as an extension,

01:09:44   it's just like the way I use that app.

01:09:46   But anyway, the other one that I use

01:09:49   of any kind of frequency is group text plus.

01:09:52   And the only reason that I use that frequently is because I open up the share sheet to send

01:10:00   something to someone by text message and then that one's right next to it.

01:10:05   I'm like, oh yeah, that one's easier.

01:10:07   Like I never think, oh, I better send this in group text plus.

01:10:10   It's just like it's right next to the message icon.

01:10:13   This is your problem, your process.

01:10:15   You surprise yourself every single time.

01:10:18   That is effectively all it is.

01:10:19   That's an awesome way to live life, Myke.

01:10:22   They are, they are, you know, it's just little miracles.

01:10:25   They are literally the only ones that I use

01:10:28   of any kind of frequency.

01:10:29   - Interesting.

01:10:33   I didn't think it'd still be using Workflow that much.

01:10:37   - It's just, there are a few things

01:10:39   that I have it do frequently

01:10:41   that just no other app can help me with as easy.

01:10:45   - Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah.

01:10:47   - Yeah.

01:10:48   So there you go. - Nice.

01:10:49   Nice, very nice, Michael.

01:10:51   So is anyone asking me or should I just start talking by myself?

01:10:55   I was just about to ask you, but carry on.

01:10:57   Thank you.

01:10:57   As you were, sir.

01:10:58   As you were.

01:10:59   Thank you.

01:11:00   I appreciate it, Myke.

01:11:01   So the ones that I use the most, the extensions, Todoist, Workflow,

01:11:08   Clips, and 1Password.

01:11:10   These are my big ones.

01:11:12   Todoist, because this has been such a huge help for me.

01:11:17   I always forget to remember things I need to do and thanks to the extension, Todoist

01:11:26   is the todo app that I use.

01:11:27   I switched to Todoist last summer.

01:11:31   I feel like I can remember stuff because I can create todos more easily.

01:11:38   So there's less friction.

01:11:41   It's always right there in the share sheet which I always open so I don't forget about

01:11:46   extensions because I think for work and for, you know, maxstories articles I use them a lot so it's

01:11:52   kind of become really a habit for me and because Todoist is there like I'm forgetting less stuff

01:12:00   I'm still, I still need to get better because I often just don't save something that my girlfriend

01:12:06   or my somebody else tells me to do and then I don't save it manually and I forget but I'm

01:12:12   getting better and the extension has been a huge help.

01:12:15   Clips, it's a clipboard manager for iOS and I love the ability to, like you can

01:12:24   save multiple bits of text like when I'm in Twitterrific

01:12:30   because the Twitter app doesn't have the sharesheet and I want to save, I don't

01:12:35   know, like links to a bunch of tweets that people have sent me. I can just save

01:12:40   them to clips and then using the widget I can pull the link back and like paste it in

01:12:45   my text editor or my or slack or whatever.

01:12:49   Super useful.

01:12:50   1Password of course to log in into websites and apps and especially impressive because

01:12:57   of Touch ID and I didn't think that I would use Touch ID on my iPad much but thanks to

01:13:04   apps like 1Password and stuff that implements Touch ID authentication, it has been useful.

01:13:12   Touch ID on my iPad and 1Password is I think the app that I use the most with Touch ID

01:13:16   every day.

01:13:18   And Workflow, I do so much stuff into this app and I think I do all this stuff because

01:13:26   it has this crazy action extension.

01:13:29   I use it to share links, like when I'm reading in Pocket or in Nasl, these apps use their

01:13:40   own custom short links.

01:13:42   And when I share a link on Maxories or on Twitter, I don't want to use these custom

01:13:47   domains.

01:13:49   So I have a workflow that expands the real link for me, which is super useful.

01:13:54   I have workflows to create what people call text shots, which is like when you want to

01:14:01   tweet a quote from an article and you just assemble.

01:14:05   I learned this terminology from MG Sigler, text shot.

01:14:09   It's a thing that people do.

01:14:12   There's a whole theory on the best color and the best typography to use for text shots,

01:14:17   if you're interested, Myke.

01:14:19   I recommend using the sepia theme because the contrast is much better.

01:14:26   Anyway, I used to share links, I used to save files in Dropbox and getting the link back.

01:14:34   I used this crazy workflow for Virtual and Mac Sorry Weekly.

01:14:40   I save all the links that I want to talk about in an Evernote note.

01:14:47   When it comes to the time that I need to record with you, Myke, or to put together the newsletter,

01:14:52   I want to open all these links back again into Safari and go through them, go through

01:14:58   each link to make sure that I want to talk about it.

01:15:01   So I have a workflow that takes all these links from a note and it opens all of them

01:15:07   at once in Safari.

01:15:09   It's crazy, I don't know how to do it.

01:15:11   These guys are geniuses.

01:15:13   So yeah, I use Workflow to... a lot of the stuff that I used to do in Python with Pythonista

01:15:18   or Bookmarklets in Safari, now I have this visual way with Workflow and it's got the

01:15:25   extension.

01:15:26   So for me, from the productivity perspective, these days working on iOS is much better thanks

01:15:37   to extensions.

01:15:38   There are many others, like today I needed to track a shipment and I used the Deliveries

01:15:44   extension, which is really nice.

01:15:46   There's the Anylist extension that I used to save recipes.

01:15:51   I also basically forced the developers to support Italian recipe websites.

01:15:56   They were awesome, they added support for my favorite recipe website.

01:16:03   I love how like me and...

01:16:05   I knew this was going to be the case that me and Steven have like one or two.

01:16:08   And then it's like, "Oh, let me list the ways."

01:16:11   I mean, because the phone doesn't have any apps anymore, all it is is extensions.

01:16:16   It's like Safari and just a bunch of extensions and nothing else is happening.

01:16:21   That is not too far from the truth.

01:16:22   That was the awesome, really awesome view source, extension to view the source code

01:16:29   of a web page.

01:16:30   I used that on my iPad.

01:16:32   Yeah.

01:16:33   That's good.

01:16:34   tend to be a web developer. Look at me, I'm looking at code. And that's really, really

01:16:40   funny. Yeah, extensions, guys. I cannot wait to see what happens in iOS 9. Assuming it

01:16:48   is going to be called iOS 9.

01:16:50   What else are they calling?

01:16:53   I don't know. iOS next.

01:16:56   8.6. Semicolon. We're bad at new OSes.

01:17:00   Maybe they'll go with Apple phone OS 4.

01:17:03   I think they go with iOS 10, just like Microsoft.

01:17:07   I think that does it for this week.

01:17:12   iOS X.

01:17:13   If you would like to find the show notes for this week's episode, go to relay.fm/connected/27.

01:17:21   If you'd like to find us online, you can find Federico.

01:17:24   He is @vitiici, V-I-T-I-C-C-I, and he writes at maxstories.net.

01:17:28   Stephen is @ismh on Twitter and you can find him at 512pixels.net and I am @imike and I

01:17:38   host a bunch of shows at relay.fm of which this show is a part of that commitment.

01:17:45   Thanks again to our sponsors for this week, our friends over at Lynda, Squarespace and

01:17:51   igloo.

01:17:53   And thank you for listening and we'll be back next time.

01:17:57   Say goodbye gentlemen.