00:00:00 ◼ ► Welcome back to Cortex. This time I talk to David Pearce, who is The Verge's editor at large. I've been following David's work for years, from The Verge, when he went to Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, he's now back at The Verge again. He works on stuff that is of great interest to me, from The Verge cast and the podcast that they do over there. He's also a writer, a product reviewer, and I want to get into all of that with David today.
00:00:25 ◼ ► I think it's really interesting to talk to someone who really works for the premier place, in my mind, for technology coverage, which is The Verge, and looking at how he thinks about the work that he does, how it fits into the overall mission and work of a site like The Verge, and how he thinks about product reviews and the impacts that they can have on the companies. Yes, we're going to talk about the humane AI pin. I really hope that you enjoy this episode of State of the Workflow.
00:00:53 ◼ ► David, I want to get started by asking you, as I ask every guest on State of the Workflow, what is the most important device for you for getting your work done?
00:01:02 ◼ ► Okay, I knew you were going to ask me this, and everybody only gives you one of two answers.
00:01:07 ◼ ► I mean, the specific answer for me at this point in my life is the M4 Mac Mini that I'm using right now.
00:01:15 ◼ ► I also have a MacBook Air that I use and like a lot. I also have a phone that I use and like sometimes. But a couple of years ago, I really started to go out of my way to try and make my computer a place instead of just a device.
00:01:32 ◼ ► Like I work from home. I work in the basement. I work a sort of hours-wise chaotic job. I'm in the news business. Things are always happening. Like there's never a moment where it's very easy to just be like, I am not at work anymore.
00:01:44 ◼ ► And so I have tried to confine as much of my work as I can to this spot and this device.
00:01:52 ◼ ► So I leave the basement and I leave work. But what that means is that like this Mac Mini is the center of all of my computing universe at this point.
00:02:01 ◼ ► Okay. I like that. So you said like, you know, you're in the news business and it's chaotic. So something starts happening. Are you getting notifications on your phone? Like you've got Slack on your phone and it's pinging you? And then you will then get up, come down to the basement and boot up the Mac?
00:02:17 ◼ ► It depends. We have a big newsroom full of much smarter people than I am who are on tap for that kind of stuff. And one thing I think the verge is good at is quickly responding to news, but also routing it to the right person.
00:02:29 ◼ ► So like we have people who are much more able to quickly spin up on certain kinds of news than I am. But yeah, I have Slack notifications on for more things than I'm proud of. And I think I will do a lot of slacking from my phone.
00:02:43 ◼ ► Like if it's a matter of like, we need to hash out how we're going to cover a story or who is the right person or what should the headline be that I'll do sitting on the couch, two thumbs on my phone.
00:02:54 ◼ ► But the minute it's like I have to write something or I have to really start doing serious research or I need to start compiling stuff together. That's a computer task. And that's usually when I like sprint down to the basement and fire up the Mac Mini.
00:03:07 ◼ ► And I assume like as well, looking at my own life, it's like why I have a whole second space is that you once were doing it on a laptop and then realized you were doing it all the time, just like working all the time everywhere.
00:03:19 ◼ ► Kind of. Yeah. And I think especially so I was on parental leave this summer and I actually found that having a laptop for doing computer tasks that wasn't attached to all of my work stuff was really valuable.
00:03:32 ◼ ► So like, could I do all of this on many fewer devices? Like, yes, of course, absolutely. But why? You know, so what I found is having a laptop that is a the thing that goes places with me, but is also the thing I can fire up when I'm like sitting at the dining room table and want to like write in my journal.
00:03:51 ◼ ► That is not also the thing that is not also the thing that has all of my work email synced to it and my Slack synced to it and whatever was really useful.
00:03:58 ◼ ► And that stuff is now being pulled back to being my work computer. Also, as I get back to being more at work, I'm still technically part time on parental leave.
00:04:07 ◼ ► So I've been trying to keep that boundary more sort of coherent. But yeah, having a laptop that was like a personal computer and having this be my work computer has been really helpful.
00:04:18 ◼ ► I have never attempted to differentiate those things before, and I've done a better job of it the last few months, and I've actually really liked it.
00:04:30 ◼ ► I think you wear a lot of hats at this point. And so trying to just follow one workflow through with you in my preparation felt like an impossible task, because I can't even imagine where your day is going.
00:04:45 ◼ ► Good, good. I have three areas with you that I want to look at, and I want to kind of follow each one of these through.
00:04:50 ◼ ► And I actually want to start with product reviews, because you're the first person I've gotten to talk to on the show who reviews things in the way that you do, in a kind of, I would say, traditional gadget review way, right?
00:05:04 ◼ ► Where, like, you're writing primarily. People make video, you make video. But there's just something different about a long article that's getting written on a website like The Verge.
00:05:13 ◼ ► Reviewing is not all you do at The Verge. I know you have product reviewers, but there are still items that you review.
00:05:19 ◼ ► Like, for example, I would guess, famously, infamously, the humane AI pen, right? Obviously, it was a really popular review, you know, stretched far and wide.
00:05:35 ◼ ► It's a mix of, I wanted to, and also, I think it fell into an interesting gap at The Verge, which is a thing we've spent a lot of time talking about, right?
00:05:58 ◼ ► Like, I haven't used the last two generations of Samsung phones, which makes me officially a bad smartphone reviewer.
00:06:10 ◼ ► These AI gadgets are kind of a new category and just fill some sort of weird Venn diagram of space.
00:06:21 ◼ ► Like, I think a belief that I have that is different from a lot of people is I think there is absolutely room in the world for new kinds of gadgets.
00:06:28 ◼ ► And I think, in a funny way, the meta Ray-Bans have proven me right more than anything else that has come out.
00:06:34 ◼ ► That there is something that changes when you change the form factor that is meaningful and relevant.
00:06:40 ◼ ► A product that they say is for AI, but nobody cares about that part, realistically, who wears them.
00:06:48 ◼ ► But it's headphones that don't look like headphones, and it's a camera you don't have to hold in your hand.
00:06:52 ◼ ► And I think both of those things are powerful, and they change the actual nature of your experience with the device.
00:06:57 ◼ ► So I think that is proof of sort of a small version of a big thing that I believe, which is there's, like, lots of new ideas about gadgets yet to be had.
00:07:05 ◼ ► With those, it was just a mix of, like, I want to see what it is like to live with this thing.
00:07:15 ◼ ► Because I think the thing that I've always said about product reviews, and I think the thing that's hard to do well with product reviews, is to tell a story, right?
00:07:22 ◼ ► Like, to say, is this thing faster or slower, does its battery last longer or not, is, I think, a useful service to people, but is not, I think, the sort of best version of a product review.
00:07:35 ◼ ► Many years ago, when I was running the review team at the Verge, the thing I would always say to people is, like, we should be thinking about these as, like, feature stories, but the main character is a gadget.
00:07:51 ◼ ► The thing that you, the author of this review, have that no one else has is, you have this thing.
00:07:57 ◼ ► And it's your job to help people understand what the world looks like through the eyes of this device.
00:08:08 ◼ ► Like, it wound up being a real bummer that both the Humane AI pin and the Rabbit R1, like, really sucked.
00:08:14 ◼ ► Because if they were good, it's a whole different universe of stuff we can talk about, right?
00:08:31 ◼ ► But I really like when there's an opportunity to not just say, is this thing better or worse than its competition?
00:08:48 ◼ ► So this one, maybe more than other reviews, I'm sure takes a lot of effort to use the product.
00:09:03 ◼ ► How long do you need to spend with a product before you feel like you could write a review?
00:09:08 ◼ ► And also, I'm assuming sometimes you don't get the choice, essentially, of how much time you would get to spend with it.
00:09:24 ◼ ► But I think at this point, if you give me a week, I can pretty quickly figure it out, right?
00:09:34 ◼ ► Like, frankly, at this point, like, you spend three hours with the iPhone and you sort of know the story of the iPhone, right?
00:09:40 ◼ ► Which I think is, like, the iPhone Air was such an interesting version of that this year.
00:09:43 ◼ ► Where, like, you pick up the iPhone Air and it is such a visceral thing that you have reviewed the iPhone Air in four minutes, right?
00:09:51 ◼ ► And it's probably correct because you understand what the trade-offs are and it either feels that way in your hand or it doesn't.
00:09:57 ◼ ► With some of these newer devices, the thing I always try and do is both, like, push the thing all the way to its limits, which you can do pretty quickly, right?
00:10:17 ◼ ► You take a million pictures, you try all the stuff, run down the product spec sheet and try all the things.
00:10:21 ◼ ► The harder part is actually trying to think about the device less and just live with it.
00:10:28 ◼ ► Because I think the failing of a lot of product reviews, and a thing that's very hard as a product reviewer, is you just don't use the products like people do, right?
00:10:34 ◼ ► Where it's like, you do a battery test of a phone and it's like, well, okay, sure, if I'm sitting here staring at the phone running benchmark tests for 11 straight hours, I'm going to get a lower battery life number than you do.
00:10:47 ◼ ► And so I always try to do the, like, really aggressive testing for testing's sake stuff as fast as I can, and then just figure out what it looks like to live with this thing.
00:10:58 ◼ ► And there's always a little bit of intentionality with it where it's like the kind of thing I would instinctively just pull out my phone to do.
00:11:04 ◼ ► I have to go like, oh, no, and then put my phone away and take out this weird AI device and see what happens.
00:11:11 ◼ ► So the flip side of that is I think you start to get a much cleaner sense of how these things work and what it is like to actually have them in your life in a way that I think is really valuable.
00:11:23 ◼ ► So that's always the thing, and there's no maximum on the amount of time that it would be helpful to have with that stuff, which is the real challenge.
00:11:31 ◼ ► When you're actually conducting a review, where are you recording your thoughts for it?
00:11:40 ◼ ► So I'm a person who aspires to be a good member of society, and what I actually am is just like a true lunatic about note-taking apps, and I basically spend my life flitting between different tools that all seem like they're like this close to being what I need.
00:12:02 ◼ ► I think I am better than most people at, like, when I have a good idea, I write it down.
00:12:10 ◼ ► My problem is that I'm perpetually switching between apps, and so I never remember where I wrote anything down in a way that is incredibly unhelpful and unproductive, and I'm forever just, like, moving batches of notes from place to place.
00:12:23 ◼ ► Right now, today, the answer is an app called Workflowy, which is basically an infinite outliner tool, and you can focus an outline sort of at any level of the outline.
00:12:33 ◼ ► And that is the one that just sort of works the way that my brain does, and having something that I can just write a million bullets and then organize them as I go is very helpful.
00:12:43 ◼ ► But I've also, I use Notion sometimes, which I think is, like, a remarkable piece of software that I kind of hate using.
00:12:49 ◼ ► I use Craft, which I think is a really lovely piece of software that is missing a bunch of really obvious features.
00:13:12 ◼ ► And that is, like, the thing that I have found most useful, especially as I'm testing a device.
00:13:17 ◼ ► Just knowing where all of my unordered thoughts are, and importantly, knowing that I can put them there easily, which makes me do it more often,
00:13:25 ◼ ► is way more important than having some, like, really helpful folder structure that I can get back to later.
00:13:49 ◼ ► I do a lot of testing before I start writing, but then there's always a lot of testing to do as I'm writing.
00:13:54 ◼ ► I'll sort of write myself into a thing I haven't tested, and then it's like, oh, I have to go test that and see.
00:13:59 ◼ ► So there's a lot of process, but I think no matter what I'm writing, whether it's a product review or a reported story or a narrative feature or whatever,
00:14:10 ◼ ► There was this guy, Chris Jones, who used to write for Esquire, who said that his way of writing was that he didn't like to start writing until he could have sat down at a bar stool next to you and told you the story.
00:14:28 ◼ ► And often I don't end where I think I'm going to end, but I think often the stuff that at least the first draft of the stuff that I write, I could have basically said out loud to you in some shape or form before I started writing.
00:14:40 ◼ ► And so when I'm reviewing something, I try to know kind of the shape of the story at the very least and how I feel and what conclusion I'm coming to before I start writing.
00:14:50 ◼ ► Otherwise, I feel like I end up like a sort of AI model that like makes a bunch of slightly wrong decisions and ends up in some completely different place that I didn't mean to be.
00:15:04 ◼ ► Are you assigned like with an editor for a story like this who's going to go through and make suggestions?
00:15:09 ◼ ► I have different editors for different kinds of stories, but I have an editor whose job is at the beginning to kind of help me shape the broad structure of the story.
00:15:19 ◼ ► And then at the end, to do everything from like make sure I'm not missing something to making sure the sentences are good to making sure the whole thing like makes sense just as a like object.
00:15:31 ◼ ► And yeah, it differs depending on the kind of story and some things require like a specific kind of expertise.
00:15:39 ◼ ► But yeah, there's almost always an editor kind of throughout the whole process, which just makes me better at everything.
00:15:54 ◼ ► I don't think that there is a Verge video review that does not have a companion written article on the website.
00:16:15 ◼ ► And I think the thing it took me too long to realize is that good video and good writing are not the same.
00:16:25 ◼ ► A thing I'd really like about video reviews is just that you can do so much showing and not telling.
00:16:30 ◼ ► And especially with new kinds of things when what I want you to understand is not just how long the battery lasts, but like what it looks like to be walking around with this thing.
00:16:44 ◼ ► And like how this actually fits into my life, you just communicate it differently on video than you can in other ways.
00:16:55 ◼ ► And I think the way video works often is you have to write the script before you write the review, just because video takes a long time to make.
00:17:13 ◼ ► But one of the fun things, like I think the thing I really enjoyed about the Humane AI pin review I got to do was you see so much of the testing in the review and in the video.
00:17:24 ◼ ► And like so little of that is staged or like me repeating a thing that I've done before.
00:17:33 ◼ ► And like, let's just spend a day running around trying to use this thing and figure out where it's useful and just show people what that's like.
00:17:44 ◼ ► And again, I think like if you just want to know the specs of something or how it roughly stacks up to what you've had before, you're so spoiled for choice on the Internet.
00:17:54 ◼ ► Now, there are a million people doing great versions of that on every platform you can think of.
00:18:02 ◼ ► And it's like, OK, I can tell you what it feels like in my hand because I've held every iPhone since the first one.
00:18:14 ◼ ► And I think I've gotten much less interested in like sitting behind a desk and telling you something on video, which is kind of what a written review is always going to feel like.
00:18:27 ◼ ► Whereas like video, I increasingly want to feel like you're just with me, like you're just over my shoulder as I'm using this thing.
00:18:36 ◼ ► And even if you don't see all of that and come to the same conclusion that I did, that's fine because my job is just to show you what it is like to be in the world of this thing.
00:18:57 ◼ ► And I think the best stuff we do, I think, is when we get to do all of that stuff together.
00:19:27 ◼ ► I don't know, but like I wonder if maybe they take more of the review in if it's a video
00:19:56 ◼ ► Like your ability to sort of bring somebody on a journey with you on video is just so different.
00:20:02 ◼ ► Like I just have so much more control over it as the storyteller because odds are you are
00:20:16 ◼ ► And there's so much other stuff for you to watch that the penalty for that is super high
00:20:30 ◼ ► But it does, I think, make the work a lot harder because I can just lose you at any moment.
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00:23:12 ◼ ► Have you been doing it for so long that it's not so much of a thing anymore, or is there
00:23:21 ◼ ► I should say, this is not the official opinion of The Verge, but it is the official opinion
00:23:30 ◼ ► I think it is important and helpful as a reviewer to be forced to come to a conclusion.
00:23:37 ◼ ► I think you see so much, quote unquote, criticism that has no point and arrives nowhere and just
00:24:22 ◼ ► I have always really liked Netflix's thing where they have the two thumbs up for love it,
00:24:30 ◼ ► I actually think that is the closest to a universally understandable system that I've ever seen.
00:24:48 ◼ ► He's like, what if the score went from negative 10, which is like, I absolutely hate its guts,
00:25:01 ◼ ► Whereas like for us, it's like, okay, I think the Verge's main problem is we give too many
00:25:19 ◼ ► So it's like, we have this just, I think, impossible translation problem that makes scores hard.
00:25:28 ◼ ► It's that so many people come to the thing, they read the score, they read the conclusion,
00:25:46 ◼ ► But if you click on the review, look at the score, decide what you think that score means
00:26:00 ◼ ► So I think the reason we haven't gotten rid of scores is because I really do think it is
00:26:10 ◼ ► So even if the decision is always and necessarily imperfect, I'm still pro scores for that reason
00:26:30 ◼ ► And at the moment there is like a thing seems to be going on that if something is an eight
00:26:40 ◼ ► And I think part of the problem, especially in video games, is nobody reviews a two out
00:26:59 ◼ ► Like I imagine there are many products that you could pick out to review that would be three
00:27:05 ◼ ► Does anyone really want to read that review of like some random piece of technology that
00:27:22 ◼ ► Where it's like, okay, I could find a thing that somebody made on Kickstarter that no one
00:27:33 ◼ ► I don't know that it accomplishes anything for anybody, like including our audience, which
00:27:45 ◼ ► It doesn't really accomplish anything, which was, to be frank, the reason it was interesting
00:28:02 ◼ ► Like I think Emma Roth on our team just wrote a review of Telly, the free TV with a big bar
00:28:10 ◼ ► Of like, that's a thing that is out there and people are talking about it and people are
00:28:22 ◼ ► Those are the things where it's like, okay, I will take the time to write about why this
00:28:35 ◼ ► people who took themselves too seriously, but was like largely a company of smart people
00:28:45 ◼ ► But again, at the same time, like my job is to tell the reader whether this is worth your
00:28:53 ◼ ► But in many cases, it's like if the question of should you buy this or not is never going
00:29:07 ◼ ► But to your point about the eight out of 10 thing, I think about this with like the sort
00:29:12 ◼ ► of star creep on places like Uber and stuff, like if you're an Uber driver and you have
00:29:35 ◼ ► It's like if I give you a three out of five review, which is a six out of 10, which is a
00:30:25 ◼ ► Like, I don't know, then you drive into a lamppost and maybe I'll knock you down to a four.
00:30:32 ◼ ► You mentioned, I mean, I know we're talking about Humane, but you mentioned like the team
00:30:48 ◼ ► And I think the two most impactful pieces of journalism on this was you and Marques Brownlee's review.
00:30:55 ◼ ► And Marques took a lot of this, I think, because he was also a thing about a car, right?
00:31:03 ◼ ► When you're working on a review like this and you know it's a high stakes review and you know it's going badly,
00:31:15 ◼ ► I'm definitely cognizant of what it means to write this stuff and publish it to a large audience.
00:31:54 ◼ ► You just try to go into it and not hold a grudge and not, you know, hold anything against it.
00:31:59 ◼ ► And I think one of the interesting things about the Humane AI pin in particular was that that company was so proud of itself and was so self-serious
00:32:07 ◼ ► and was talking this incredibly high-minded game about replacing the smartphone and how it was going to be the biggest thing in the world.
00:32:13 ◼ ► And it was ex-Apple people who were like clearly on this path to like we're going to be the next app.
00:32:17 ◼ ► And there is such an impulse to want to like poke fun at that and knock them down a peg and sort of write the scathing takedown.
00:32:27 ◼ ► And the thing I try hard not to do is write a takedown for the sake of writing a takedown.
00:32:38 ◼ ► Like we see the end of the story in the same way that like if you do sports journalism, the team either wins or they lose.
00:32:50 ◼ ► Like I either get to say all of this high-minded stuff that they're saying, all of this ambition that they have, all of these like weird videos that they're making about how they're going to change the world.
00:33:03 ◼ ► And at some point, you have to have the courage of your convictions to just say out loud what the answer is.
00:33:12 ◼ ► And the thing I have always tried to do is like, A, I was trained to say these things to people's faces.
00:33:18 ◼ ► Like when I worked at the Wall Street Journal, one of the Wall Street Journal's rules is no surprises.
00:33:21 ◼ ► Which means that if you're going to write an unpleasant story about a person, you have to call that person and say out loud to them every single unpleasant thing you're about to say to them.
00:33:33 ◼ ► And it makes you do your job better because I have to, A, I have to be willing to say to you everything I'm about to say about you.
00:33:41 ◼ ► And B, it means I have to be so certain and so right and so backed up and so sourced that I am willing to say all those things to you.
00:33:54 ◼ ► Like if you're willing to be in an embarrassing, awkward situation in telling someone that their product is bad, you would feel very convinced that you were right in that scenario, right?
00:34:06 ◼ ► And so I think in cases like this, and it can be a little tricky because like with certain things, like how much do you give away and when and how much do you let companies try to like front run what you're going to say?
00:34:17 ◼ ► And so there are tricky balancing acts, but I think in general, the idea of I shouldn't write anything I wouldn't say to the founders of these companies has largely steered me in the right directions and has also made me unafraid to say some pretty harsh things to people who run companies.
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00:37:13 ◼ ► It is like, here's just a bunch of stuff that I like, and I would like you to know about it.
00:37:34 ◼ ► When I just read the part that is like, here are all the things I've been doing this week, which is how you start.
00:37:40 ◼ ► So, I mean, I'd be lying if I said part of the idea of this newsletter was not to just formalize me screwing around with new apps all day.
00:38:11 ◼ ► Like, I play some video games, but I mostly play like the same two or three all the time.
00:38:15 ◼ ► But having a thing that forces me to just go like download a bunch of new games every week from Apple Arcade and just goof around with them and see what's fun has been really fun.
00:38:24 ◼ ► And it's the kind of thing that is like, I could either scroll on Reddit for an hour or I could go like try out a bunch of new games.
00:38:37 ◼ ► And so like, I am learning new tricks to not get set in my ways, which I think both as a person and as a journalist, getting set in your ways is death.
00:38:51 ◼ ► And so I'm, I've just developed a thing that is sort of forcing me to always get out of my comfort zone, which is really fun.
00:39:04 ◼ ► There are definitely times where it's like, oh God, this is the show everybody's watching.
00:39:15 ◼ ► But then every once in a while, it's like, oh, I have to watch K-pop Demon Hunters because everybody's talking about it.
00:39:24 ◼ ► So like I've been exposed to a lot of good stuff I wouldn't have otherwise because I feel like I need to expose myself to it.
00:39:31 ◼ ► Like one thing the installer audience is super into that I am not generally super into is like anime and manga stuff sort of in general.
00:39:41 ◼ ► And I've been exposed to tons of that from emails that I've gotten from people and new things that are coming out that I want to like make sure I'm aware of.
00:39:57 ◼ ► But I would say much more often, it is like not a hard chore to like play a fun new game or watch a new thing on Netflix to see if I like it.
00:40:06 ◼ ► What are you keeping your eye on to know what the things are that you should be looking at?
00:40:18 ◼ ► So I'll tell you the reason I started this newsletter is because I kept looking for it and never found it.
00:40:23 ◼ ► And it was just like what I want is just like a compendium of cool stuff this week that I should check out.
00:40:56 ◼ ► I do a lot of like curating curators who are already doing wonderful work and finding interesting stuff.
00:41:01 ◼ ► There are a lot of little tricks like there's a website called TV Insider that does a good job of just having a calendar of here or all the TV shows coming out this week.
00:41:23 ◼ ► I actually don't know if this is still officially a feature that exists, but I have a bunch of them.
00:41:32 ◼ ► I went and just added 10 subreddits or whatever to a thing that I called Installer and I just go to that multi Reddit and it is just a running feed of just those 10 subreddits.
00:41:45 ◼ ► I'm just like, these are the ones that I find Installer stuff from and I load them in that way.
00:42:01 ◼ ► I also like, again, Installer is a bad excuse to keep scrolling social media, trying to find stuff.
00:42:09 ◼ ► Like this would be a much harder job if I wasn't in a newsroom full of people dropping links in Slack all week.
00:42:21 ◼ ► One of my favorite things is I get like sheepish text messages from my friends who are like, I found this thing.
00:42:43 ◼ ► And one great thing about running this newsletter is I bet my test flight is better than anyone else's.
00:42:51 ◼ ► Like, I think there is a good chance that I am in more cool app betas than any other single person on planet Earth.
00:42:58 ◼ ► And I like, it is one of the great fun things that has happened as a result of writing this newsletter.
00:43:06 ◼ ► And like, I get pitched all the time anyway, just by virtue of like what I do for a living.
00:43:16 ◼ ► The biggest difference now is a thing I think is very cool is when I will link to someone and they will get like a noticeable uptick in their app downloads or whatever.
00:43:30 ◼ ► Because I linked to them and a fun thing about it is like it's always a mystery for them where it came from because it this is like weird internet nerdery.
00:43:37 ◼ ► But clicks on an email don't register as traffic coming from anywhere in most analytics systems.
00:43:44 ◼ ► So I just get to send people this like magical, unknowable spike of traffic sometimes, which is awesome.
00:43:51 ◼ ► It's like the thing I have always said about Installer is like the goal is for people to click the links.
00:44:10 ◼ ► What it means is I get a lot of like individual app developers who are like, I have been working on this thing for two years.
00:44:22 ◼ ► And that is a thing I want to say yes to every single time because like I want to help people who are making things.
00:44:44 ◼ ► But I will say I found a bunch of things that I ended up linking to and liked from pitches.
00:44:50 ◼ ► I continue to feel bad for like every teenager who is like, I spent my summer making this app.
00:45:51 ◼ ► Like you can just take stuff from anywhere, copy it, paste it into Typeora, and then paste it out somewhere else.
00:46:01 ◼ ► But like everywhere else that you're like, I try to copy and paste and all the formatting breaks, put it into Typeora first and then put it where it's supposed to go.
00:46:21 ◼ ► Again, I try not to be particularly precious about where I write because like I know a lot of people have very specific sort of writing environments.
00:46:31 ◼ ► And I used to be a person who was like, I would really like to like pour a glass of red wine and write late at night.
00:46:46 ◼ ► How does it feel writing an email newsletter compared to something that goes on the web?
00:46:59 ◼ ► Like obviously, you know, like an easy one is if you make an error, you can't change it when it's in someone's inbox.
00:47:04 ◼ ► But like are there other things that you like and don't like about the format difference?
00:47:08 ◼ ► If you ever want to juice engagement on your email newsletter, just make a really glaring typo like in the third paragraph and a thousand people will email you about it.
00:47:31 ◼ ► And it's the thing I really try to do deliberately in the newsletter is I write the word you a lot in Installer because it's like it both is addressed to you, a person, and it is also intended for you, a person.
00:47:55 ◼ ► Like you go to a website being like, here's a thing that they made and I'm going to go look at it.
00:48:02 ◼ ► And I think like I noticed the difference in emails that feel like a person writing an email as opposed to feeling like somebody is emailing me an article.
00:48:18 ◼ ► Like if I wrote in the like paragraph length that I write verge features at in emails to my friends, I would not have any more friends to email.
00:48:30 ◼ ► And so it's just like what it should feel like to go through it in my inbox is a thing I think about a lot.
00:48:37 ◼ ► And if I just wrote you 2,000 words of text, it would feel like a really long email and not like an interesting article, which is why like there's lots of bullets and there's lots of links and we break up sections.
00:48:46 ◼ ► And it's like this thing should feel breezy and lively in the way that good email does.
00:48:52 ◼ ► And that like you can get away with when I've gone to an article to read the article, I just come at it with different expectations.
00:49:09 ◼ ► It's just it was a reminder to me that you can publish things on the Internet that are essentially just intended to be positive.
00:49:15 ◼ ► So when I went on parental leave this summer, Jay Peters on our team took over Installer for the summer and did a great job.
00:49:20 ◼ ► And the main note I gave him when I was leaving was like, it is super important to me that you remember that it is okay to like things.
00:49:28 ◼ ► And it is like the job of that newsletter is not to have big heady thoughts about the world.
00:50:06 ◼ ► Because I imagine you're similar to me of like, you're going to hear me talk about the bad things.
00:50:16 ◼ ► You'll get my whole set of opinions, but I don't need to give you all of them in every place.
00:50:41 ◼ ► And I like that personally a lot more where it's like, actually, this is all going to be votes
00:51:00 ◼ ► That's why I'm pleased to let you know that FitBod is an easy and affordable way to build
00:51:06 ◼ ► So it's going to work for you because everybody has their own path to personal fitness.
00:51:17 ◼ ► So every workout remains challenging, pushing you to make the progress that you want, because
00:51:22 ◼ ► your muscles improve when they work together, when your entire musculoskeletal system is
00:51:29 ◼ ► So overworking some muscles while underworking others can negatively impact your results.
00:51:34 ◼ ► So FitBod tracks your muscle fatigue and recovery to design a well-balanced workout routine.
00:51:39 ◼ ► They store all of this information, including your body, your experience, your environment,
00:51:54 ◼ ► They have analyzed billions of data points, fine-tuned by certified personal trainers to make
00:52:04 ◼ ► The app will mix up your workouts with new exercises, rep schemes, supersets, and circuits.
00:52:12 ◼ ► done before, I can watch one of the demonstration videos right inside of the app to make sure
00:52:50 ◼ ► So from the outside, it feels like your main work now is The Vergecast and associated podcasts
00:53:03 ◼ ► Like, I'm sure you're doing tons of stuff behind the scenes, but I would expect The Verge
00:53:24 ◼ ► But the relationship I have with our audience and The Verge community is so much deeper and
00:53:31 ◼ ► richer because people are seeing my face and hearing my voice all the time that it is like,
00:53:35 ◼ ► definitely, I have gone from being like a writer who occasionally people hear on a podcast to
00:53:42 ◼ ► being like a podcaster who sometimes writes for The Verge, which has been a really weird
00:54:09 ◼ ► I've had the pleasure of working with and being friends with so many writers who became podcasters
00:54:27 ◼ ► You know, I feel like the thing is, is like, you're on every episode of The Verge cast.
00:54:39 ◼ ► But, like, one of the wildest things that happens to me is around, like, Spotify wrapped
00:54:50 ◼ ► And people will send us screenshots of, like, you listened to 110 hours of The Verge cast
00:55:04 ◼ ► And it has taken me time to wrap my head around both how wild that is and how, like, huge a
00:55:29 ◼ ► that I wrote and then going on about your day versus, like, I'm there with you when you walk
00:55:42 ◼ ► But I'm sure you get the same thing when people are like, I know everything about you because
00:55:50 ◼ ► The first time that these things started happening to me, I was very taken aback by it.
00:55:56 ◼ ► And then over time, realized that it's actually a superpower because I can have a conversation
00:56:01 ◼ ► with people that listen to my podcasts knowing that they know the things that I'm talking about.
00:56:10 ◼ ► Shows like ours, you know, like The Vergecast, like most, like, say, a show like Upgrade that
00:56:25 ◼ ► And I think one of the reasons that these types of shows kind of give such a connection
00:56:30 ◼ ► to the listener is because typically the only time you hear those conversations, they're actually
00:56:38 ◼ ► And so you are inviting us into your brain for a couple of hours, maybe more, a week, every
00:56:55 ◼ ► And I think about all the podcasts that I used to listen to and then stop listening to.
00:57:03 ◼ ► You're like, okay, I've heard these people say this same thing over and over and over again.
00:57:11 ◼ ► Like, you spend enough time with somebody, you've heard all their stories, and you know
00:57:15 ◼ ► But it's like, I think one of the reasons I have spent more and more of my time doing the
00:57:21 ◼ ► podcast is because I think it would be really easy to spend less and less of my time doing
00:57:26 ◼ ► And it's like, it is true that one of the reasons people like the Vergecast is they just
00:57:48 ◼ ► And I never want to settle into that because I think, A, that's how you hemorrhage your audience
00:57:56 ◼ ► So it's like, for me, it's like, okay, how do we keep that feeling and that vibe and do
00:58:06 ◼ ► And I think, like, you know, everybody talks about how Reply All was the greatest podcast
00:58:10 ◼ ► But I think, like, an underrated thing that Reply All folks did really well was that was
00:58:15 ◼ ► both, like, unbelievably tightly produced and just felt like two people hanging out with
00:58:23 ◼ ► And there have been a few of these shows that have done a really good job of being natural
00:58:38 ◼ ► And it's like, that's the fun project that we're forever poking at is like, how do I do
00:59:19 ◼ ► And ultimately, people will just go find something else because you build the connection based on
00:59:24 ◼ ► But there also has to be something that people take away that feels valuable at the end.
00:59:29 ◼ ► And it's like, I think all the time about like, what if this is your first ever episode?
00:59:33 ◼ ► And there are so many Vergecast episodes that are just utterly impenetrable to somebody
00:59:43 ◼ ► I just have to hope, you know, just like, you'll get at least 50% of what we're talking about.
00:59:53 ◼ ► Because it's like, okay, if I'm going to define my terms every time I use them, it's going
01:00:12 ◼ ► And we make like eight year old references that we then get emails about because people
01:00:17 ◼ ► Like, but then I'm like, okay, and especially now that we're doing video and it's on YouTube
01:00:25 ◼ ► And one of the reasons it's very hard to grow a podcast is because most people don't start
01:00:30 ◼ ► And it's super hard to just jump in the middle of somebody else's friendship and figure it
01:00:38 ◼ ► It's like, how do we keep this feeling the way that it does both for us, which is really
01:00:44 ◼ ► fun to make, but also like means something to this big audience of people we've had for
01:01:29 ◼ ► shouts to Eric and Brandon and Travis, who are the ones who actually make the show every
01:01:32 ◼ ► But we have this big team of people again, like I've been asked the question before, like,
01:01:44 ◼ ► Like, hey, I always like team sports because it's like more fun for me to make things with my
01:01:49 ◼ ► But also like, holy God, are there other smart people who are better at this than I am who
01:01:57 ◼ ► But to your specific question, we currently don't have a great system for tracking stuff
01:02:04 ◼ ► The Verge's official productivity platform of choice is Airtable, which is a horrible piece
01:02:26 ◼ ► And every time I touch it, something goes wrong and then messages start getting sent in Slack
01:02:31 ◼ ► And it's like I start updating something and then there's like six Slack messages that then
01:02:48 ◼ ► And I think it's hideous and I don't want to use it, which as the host of the show makes
01:02:56 ◼ ► So we've kind of veered between like when tabs dropped in Google Docs, we started making tabs
01:03:18 ◼ ► Right now, we're mostly in a Google Sheet because that just seems to be the kind of middle of everybody's
01:03:24 ◼ ► Venn diagram of like it's nobody's favorite way, but everybody kind of understands how to
01:03:29 ◼ ► And so we have basically all of the different segments that we're doing in rows on a spreadsheet
01:03:48 ◼ ► Like the real truth is like our team is pretty small and we just spend all day every day
01:03:56 ◼ ► And like I am both the problem there in that like I'm sort of running around doing so much
01:04:02 ◼ ► that I'm not great at documenting everything all the time, but also like I would like it to
01:04:07 ◼ ► be more beautiful and, you know, full of Kanban boards in Notion, but I'm not going to win
01:04:29 ◼ ► I mean, I think now we do two episodes a week on the Vergecast and on one episode in particular,
01:04:39 ◼ ► But yeah, I mean, we've tried in the past to like have a Monday morning meeting about the
01:04:48 ◼ ► Like, we're going to eventually sit down and figure out what is the news and then we will
01:04:54 ◼ ► You know, I had just naturally assumed that there was a planning meeting that occurred.
01:05:01 ◼ ► But I think the truth is between Neelai and me and our new senior producer, Travis, we just
01:05:11 ◼ ► And so we're able to just kind of build the show from scratch a few hours before we record
01:05:18 ◼ ► And then I think we're getting better at is, again, and it's an effort to like give people
01:05:22 ◼ ► more context and help them understand and like explain the story before we start talking
01:05:27 ◼ ► about the story, like our, our rundowns have gotten much longer than they used to be for
01:05:31 ◼ ► The Friday Vergecast rundown was just a series of links and I would put the links in on Thursday
01:05:37 ◼ ► And the expectation would be that both Neelai and I would have read all of the links by the
01:05:49 ◼ ► And it like relies on the hosts, both sort of understanding each other and also being ready
01:05:57 ◼ ► We're getting better at being more prepared in part because Travis is doing a huge amount
01:06:01 ◼ ► of work, putting stuff together and pulling other information and giving us more reading
01:06:08 ◼ ► So like the length of a rundown has probably like five X in the last three months since
01:06:16 ◼ ► So I've, I've actually focused predominantly on the Vergecast, but you have launched a new
01:06:31 ◼ ► Like you're telling tech stories, basically straight true crime, but for tech is how I'm thinking
01:06:39 ◼ ► No, I think of it as like, we basically just grabbed a bunch of things that we liked about
01:06:55 ◼ ► And I think it strikes this balance of like, it is two people who have very clearly done
01:07:11 ◼ ► Where it's like, there are a lot of podcasts that I listened to and I won't name them because
01:07:16 ◼ ► I'm about to say mean things about them, where it is people trying to sound extemporaneous,
01:07:29 ◼ ► oh, no person would actually say that you're reading and trying to sound like you're not
01:07:40 ◼ ► But The Rest is History guys do such a good job of like, they're very clearly prepared.
01:07:47 ◼ ► If you ever watch the YouTube videos, you can see that they have the notes because sometimes
01:07:57 ◼ ► Right. It's just people talking to each other who are very smart about the thing that they're
01:08:00 ◼ ► talking about. And so it's like that vibe, I think it's exactly right. And is the thing
01:08:08 ◼ ► And the way that they've thought about, okay, how do we structure a conversation around a
01:08:13 ◼ ► thing in such a way that the show sort of moves the same way every time, but is completely
01:08:19 ◼ ► different every time. It's with a really rigid and a really loose structure all at the same
01:08:36 ◼ ► the show and they go through the episodes. And I think like the Always Sunny podcast is actually
01:08:44 ◼ ► I know. And they would come in and they would tell stories about the episode and they would
01:08:48 ◼ ► like play clips from the episode and they would remember things about the episode. But then
01:08:52 ◼ ► they would also just go off on like wild tangents about things that were going on in their lives
01:08:55 ◼ ► in the world at the time, tell stories or sort of around it. Like for anybody who didn't watch
01:09:00 ◼ ► Always Sunny, two of the main characters are married and like dated in secret while they were making
01:09:04 ◼ ► the show for a long time. So like their romance is sort of a through line through a whole chunk
01:09:08 ◼ ► of the show. And that kind of thing is like, we're here to talk about a thing that exists that you've
01:09:14 ◼ ► seen and experienced, but that we have a different experience with than you do. And we're going to try to put
01:09:19 ◼ ► those two things together. And so for us as like tech reporters, like I was there for and have used
01:09:24 ◼ ► and have reviewed and have covered. And I know a lot of the people who made a lot of these things.
01:09:28 ◼ ► And so trying to like bring our own experience with that to these things. So we basically just
01:09:33 ◼ ► like stole a bunch of things we liked about other podcasts. And then we're like, we just want to make
01:09:37 ◼ ► a show about old gadgets. And that is somehow where we landed. And we're recording this before it
01:09:43 ◼ ► launches. And I'm extremely nervous about how people are going to feel about the first episodes,
01:09:48 ◼ ► I'm really excited about it. Yes. To pull back the curtain, we are recording before it comes out.
01:09:53 ◼ ► It will be out. So where can people get it? You should tell people where they can get it.
01:10:02 ◼ ► or we're running the first eight episodes all on the Vergecast's podcast feed. Because fun inside
01:10:08 ◼ ► baseball, the best and in many ways, only way to launch a new podcast is through another podcast.
01:10:14 ◼ ► launching a podcast from scratch is very hard. It is impossible with any expectation of success,
01:10:19 ◼ ► if that makes sense. Yeah. Unless you are vastly more famous than I am. If you already have a gigantic
01:10:25 ◼ ► audience of millions of people who will do anything you tell them to, Godspeed, best of luck. You'll have
01:10:30 ◼ ► at least, you know, eight episodes that people listen to. All of which is to say, the best thing you can do
01:10:35 ◼ ► for me and version history or for anyone that you like is go subscribe to their podcast.
01:10:44 ◼ ► to the algorithms that promote these things and to the people who curate the best of lists. Like,
01:10:50 ◼ ► that's the stuff that matters. And that is the thing people are going to spend the next two months
01:10:56 ◼ ► I mean, I'm just excited there's a new tech podcast because that just doesn't really happen
01:11:05 ◼ ► And I'm really excited to do something that is not timely, right? Like one of the things we started
01:11:09 ◼ ► by doing with this is like, okay, I want to build a library of episodes that you can just drop into
01:11:14 ◼ ► at any point and listen to. Like, it's one of the things I like about the rewatchables and other
01:11:19 ◼ ► shows like that. You can just scroll back through and be like, oh, I like that movie. I'm going to
01:11:22 ◼ ► listen to that episode. Nevermind that it's from four years ago. Like if you listen to a four-year-old
01:11:26 ◼ ► Vergecast episode, which thank God people do, but if you listen to a four-year-old Vergecast episode,
01:11:31 ◼ ► most of it is just going to be nonsense. And so it was, it was fun to go and be like, okay,
01:11:36 ◼ ► how do we make something that is sort of deliberately not in the news cycle or dependent
01:11:43 ◼ ► I think it is good for when people do come to a show for the first time, you know, maybe it's
01:11:48 ◼ ► like they saw someone talk about an episode and it's like, oh, listen, I like this. And then I can
01:12:02 ◼ ► But then I was, I've just gone back over time and I've caught up with all of the series that I care
01:12:07 ◼ ► about. And now I listen to stuff that I never thought I would care about, but it's all just
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01:14:31 ◼ ► I think you can do a lot about how someone works and thinks by looking at their home screens.
01:14:37 ◼ ► And I've been very excited for your home screen because you are a man who loves a home screen.
01:14:42 ◼ ► In Installer, you also get people to share your home screens. I've had the pleasure of doing it,
01:14:52 ◼ ► and I was expecting that. There's clearly a lot of thought going into this. So I have some questions
01:14:58 ◼ ► and we're digging into some apps too. So you're at the moment, all dark icons. You're on the dark
01:15:03 ◼ ► icon train. I go back and forth on this one. This is actually the thing about my home screen. I like
01:15:09 ◼ ► the least is the icons. iOS 26 came out. I went to the clear icons for a minute and did not like that
01:15:15 ◼ ► at all. But that was just like, what if you couldn't find anything? It was like how it felt
01:15:19 ◼ ► with the clear icons. I also for a long time had custom icons. I found this really great. I think
01:15:24 ◼ ► it's called formless icon pack on gum road that I really liked. So I had them all as like shortcuts,
01:15:29 ◼ ► bookmarks, but that got just annoying enough to maintain over time that I kind of bailed.
01:15:34 ◼ ► I am permanently on dark mode on my phone. My phone never, ever, ever leaves dark mode. And
01:15:39 ◼ ► especially once I had a dark background, this just felt right. But I'm even looking at it now and it is
01:15:45 ◼ ► like a few more colors than I would like. Interesting. Okay. But you still have some custom stuff here. I can
01:15:51 ◼ ► see there's some shortcuts on the home screen, like craft and workflow-y shortcuts that exist. So I assume
01:15:57 ◼ ► you're just tapping those and they're jumping you into places. You're a man who has no time to dig
01:16:02 ◼ ► through pages. We're just going to go straight there. So I have a row on the second page of my
01:16:07 ◼ ► home screen of four shortcuts. And each one of those opens a text box and I type in that text box and I
01:16:14 ◼ ► hit done. And that text goes where the shortcut tells it to go. So what this actually does is prevent
01:16:18 ◼ ► me from having to open an app at all. Because the thing that I've discovered in my many journeys
01:16:23 ◼ ► through every note-taking app that exists is all I care about is input. For me, the biggest thing is
01:16:29 ◼ ► like the organization tools don't matter. The like beauty of the app is not important. What I need is
01:16:34 ◼ ► the thing that gets something out of my head and into whatever system it is, the fastest will always
01:16:40 ◼ ► win. And it turns out every app is garbage at this. Like the amount of time it takes to put something
01:16:46 ◼ ► into notion is like horrific and everyone should feel bad. And like Obsidian is an app I really love
01:16:54 ◼ ► and like believe in at a principles level more than maybe any other app I've used. But if you just have
01:17:00 ◼ ► a thought that you want to put into Obsidian, there's too many hoops. Yep. But so what I have here is like
01:17:06 ◼ ► if I want to add something to installer, I just have a page that is just a running list of links and
01:17:12 ◼ ► information I want to put it in installer at some point. I have it as a shortcut. So if I'm looking
01:17:16 ◼ ► at a link in the browser, I hit that shortcut and it just dumps it as a link onto that page.
01:17:20 ◼ ► But I also, if I'm on my home screen, I tap it and it opens up a text box that says, what do you want
01:17:25 ◼ ► to add to installer? And I type like book from Cory Doctorow, which is a real thing that I'm going to add
01:17:32 ◼ ► in the next few weeks. And I hit done and it's gone. That's it. And it just dumped it to the top of that
01:17:36 ◼ ► list and puts me right back on my home screen. And being able to do that where it's like not only
01:17:42 ◼ ► really fast input, but really fast input with sort of that first level of filing has been incredibly
01:17:48 ◼ ► helpful. And it's like a thing I use a hundred times a day now. I generally think Apple shortcuts
01:17:53 ◼ ► are awful and way too complicated and a total waste of most people's time and energy. This has been
01:17:58 ◼ ► awesome. I want to make a recommendation for you. Hit me. What do you have assigned to your action
01:18:04 ◼ ► button on your iPhone? Oh, right now it's clawed voice mode. Okay. I've been goofing around with
01:18:10 ◼ ► like personal assistant AI stuff. So it's right now it's clawed voice mode. So I have a somewhat
01:18:16 ◼ ► similar system for to do apps to what you're doing. Okay. But what I do is I hit the action
01:18:21 ◼ ► button, a text box pops up. I type in my task. I hit next. It's like, where do you want it to
01:18:28 ◼ ► go? Ooh. Oh, I like that. And the reason I like this is because the action button is available to
01:18:35 ◼ ► me no matter where I am. I don't have to leave the app that I'm in. I can do it from the lock screen
01:18:42 ◼ ► of my iPhone even. So my recommendation to you is to think about it starts with a text box and then it
01:18:49 ◼ ► gives you a list of like, which place do you want it to go to? And then you can send it to each of those
01:18:53 ◼ ► places. You're going to need to send me this shortcut. I would send it to you, but it's so
01:18:57 ◼ ► simple because it is essentially, here's a shortcut that runs a bunch of shortcuts. So that is how you
01:19:02 ◼ ► should set this up. Sure. Right. I will send you mine so you can see the form of it, but it is very
01:19:08 ◼ ► simple. That is the first good case for the action button I think I've ever heard. I am a lover of the
01:19:13 ◼ ► action button because I use it all day because I have a utility to it. Do you think the action button's in
01:19:19 ◼ ► the wrong place? I think it should be below the volume buttons, not above the volume buttons.
01:19:23 ◼ ► You know what? I actually do agree with you. My thumb is more naturally there. I think the only
01:19:28 ◼ ► reason it's there is because that's where the silence switcher was, right? It's like the only reason,
01:19:33 ◼ ► which is that is one of those weird product decisions of you put something somewhere because
01:19:40 ◼ ► something else was there that is completely unrelated to the thing that is now what it is.
01:19:48 ◼ ► And actually the point was never to touch it really. Like for me, it's like I turned that
01:19:55 ◼ ► This is one of those like low stakes things that bothers me about the iPhone. So I'm glad that's
01:20:05 ◼ ► Sure. I think what I would say is it is the least bad calendar app on the iPhone for my purposes.
01:20:11 ◼ ► It's not perfect, but it does a pretty good job of what I need my calendar to do, which is just
01:20:19 ◼ ► like a quick at a glance view of what's coming up. There are a bunch of things that's missing. I think it
01:20:25 ◼ ► doesn't do natural language as well as an app like Fantastical, which I used for a really long time.
01:20:30 ◼ ► It's a little finicky to like move stuff around on it. But like most of the time, what I need from my
01:20:37 ◼ ► calendar is I want to open up my calendar and just get like a rough sense of what's coming up. And the
01:20:47 ◼ ► I think Notion calendar on desktop is terrific. I love it on desktop. It's fine on mobile.
01:20:53 ◼ ► Fantastical has totally broken me. I cannot imagine a calendar app without proper natural
01:21:02 ◼ ► It is one of the single best features of any app on the iPhone. I really sincerely believe that.
01:21:08 ◼ ► Like where I've even internalized the little shortcuts that you can do to like add it to a
01:21:13 ◼ ► certain calendar and that kind of stuff. It's just how I think about entering a calendar appointment.
01:21:17 ◼ ► But I do have Notion calendar. I use it with my personal assistant because it allows us to pull
01:21:23 ◼ ► a bunch of stuff together because we use Notion together and date support on things in Notion.
01:21:28 ◼ ► And so it helps to see not only appointments, but also tasks and due dates for certain projects.
01:21:41 ◼ ► Like again, I think Notion is feature wise an essentially perfect piece of software. I just
01:21:51 ◼ ► who is running your life out of Notion databases, just the way that it interacts with Notion calendar
01:22:03 ◼ ► There are many apps that they become subscriptions and then they become SaaS companies. And I think
01:22:25 ◼ ► For any time-based task, the input is almost always Siri. And it's like, I'm on a walk with
01:22:33 ◼ ► the dog and just want to shout it into my Apple watch. Or I'm like in the middle of doing something
01:22:37 ◼ ► else and I just need to like quickly pull out my phone and do it. Or I'm wearing headphones
01:22:40 ◼ ► and I just want to do it without even pulling out my phone. Like Todoist is my favorite to-do
01:22:45 ◼ ► list app by a mile, but it doesn't integrate with reminders, which meant that I always had
01:22:49 ◼ ► tasks living in two places, which ironically is the reason I used Fantastical for a long
01:22:52 ◼ ► time because it's the only app that will show my calendar events, my reminders, and my to-do
01:22:56 ◼ ► as tasks all in one place. That's great. But yeah, again, I just eventually churned out
01:23:09 ◼ ► all the features that I require. And again, one of the other apps you saw on my home screen is this
01:23:13 ◼ ► app called Remind Me Faster. And what that does is really good natural language input for reminders.
01:23:20 ◼ ► The worst thing about the reminders app is if you want to attach any other kind of information,
01:23:26 ◼ ► like a due date or a time or repeating, the interface for that is horrific in reminders.
01:23:32 ◼ ► With Remind Me Faster, you just write out what it is and it dumps it into reminders. And so reminders
01:23:38 ◼ ► is to some extent kind of like a syncing engine for all of my tasks just to make sure that things
01:23:48 ◼ ► to-do list app because six out of 10 tasks that go on my list go through Siri. And it just started
01:24:00 ◼ ► I mean, the most important thing about tasks is actually recording them. So if you found a way
01:24:08 ◼ ► Yeah. And frankly, when I have just like a running to-do list, I'm bad at checking it. And so at this
01:24:14 ◼ ► point, I kind of don't write something down to do without putting a time or date on it. For so many years,
01:24:23 ◼ ► I had one of those like someday, maybe, or like anytime to-do lists. And I, there's just a waste.
01:24:29 ◼ ► Like I just, I'm sure they work for some people. My overwhelming failure with all productivity
01:24:35 ◼ ► systems is I'm bad at reviewing. Like the weekly review is just not a thing I'm good at doing in a
01:24:41 ◼ ► disciplined way. And so I've just sort of rebuilt systems to make my notes and tasks confront me all
01:24:48 ◼ ► all the time. And so like, I have things in fewer places so that like my list of stuff is much longer
01:24:54 ◼ ► because I want to look at it 50 times a day, because then it will make me remember the things
01:24:58 ◼ ► that I have to do. And it's the same with reminders. Like I would much rather get notifications for things
01:25:03 ◼ ► that I don't technically have to do right this minute than have to go check a thing every time
01:25:11 ◼ ► Have you ever tried to be a person who like sat down on a Sunday night and like did a really
01:25:16 ◼ ► I want to be that person. I would love to be that person. I just, what I know will happen
01:25:23 ◼ ► They're gone now forever. Unless I am confronting myself on a weekly basis of moving a task,
01:25:28 ◼ ► you know, and then at some point be like, okay, I'm not going to do this. So it's going to be removed
01:25:33 ◼ ► now, you know? Yeah. And I like, there were so many times where I would move from to-do list
01:25:37 ◼ ► app to to-do list app, and I would just move the same set of six month old tasks I hadn't looked
01:25:42 ◼ ► at into the new app and then not look at them for six more months until I moved them to another.
01:25:58 ◼ ► I feel bad for me too. I still think ARK is the best browser. And I am slowly coming to grips with
01:26:04 ◼ ► the fact that I don't think it'll be around forever. The browser company, I've gotten to know Josh
01:26:09 ◼ ► Miller, their CEO fairly well over the years. He is adamant that ARK is not going away. They sold the company
01:26:14 ◼ ► to Atlassian. They swear Atlassian has a plan for ARK. ARK is going to be fine. I don't believe it. I am
01:26:25 ◼ ► I think at a certain point, he's not going to be the person who makes the decision anymore. That
01:26:34 ◼ ► on my phone. Like I kind of think desktop browsers are much more varied and mobile browsers are kind
01:26:40 ◼ ► of a dime a dozen. So I'll probably land back in Safari or Chrome, or I think Vivaldi is developing
01:26:47 ◼ ► in some really interesting ways. I used the Quiche browser for a while, which I really like.
01:26:53 ◼ ► It's an insane name, but it's actually a really lovely browser. I mean, not that any of them are
01:26:56 ◼ ► good. You know, Safari is a hilariously weird name. Like when you actually think about it.
01:27:06 ◼ ► No, but I'll tell you that this is the strangest thing for me. The reason I keep using ARK on mobile
01:27:10 ◼ ► is because it syncs my tabs from desktop and that's useful. The reason I keep using ARK on desktop
01:27:15 ◼ ► is because it hides the address bar on the left. Like the whole appeal left of ARK for me
01:27:21 ◼ ► is the aesthetic of it. The way that it looks where I'm in this super clean window with
01:27:26 ◼ ► everything. I have my address bar. I have the favorites. I have my bookmarks and I have my
01:27:30 ◼ ► active tabs just in a rail on the left side and everything else is content. Every other browser
01:27:40 ◼ ► Yes, because every time you use Microsoft edge, you get 400 pop-ups that are like, did you look,
01:27:45 ◼ ► do you want to use this other Microsoft product? Like this is the thing that kills me. Microsoft built
01:27:54 ◼ ► just, I hate using that browser, even though it did everything right. Because like Microsoft shipped
01:28:03 ◼ ► I can't believe that Microsoft is still trying to get individual users to make decisions.
01:28:08 ◼ ► We all have to use Microsoft products. You don't need to convince me. Like I don't have a choice.
01:28:15 ◼ ► Like, so like you can't make me be like, oh man, I really want to use teams. Teams will be forced
01:28:25 ◼ ► Yeah. Like you're born, you die, and you give Microsoft $100 a year. Like that's what we do.
01:28:31 ◼ ► Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the State of the Workflow series on the Cortex
01:28:37 ◼ ► podcast. I really enjoyed talking with David and I hope that you enjoyed it too. If you want more,
01:28:42 ◼ ► you know you can go to getmoretext.com where you'll get a longer ad-free version of the show.
01:28:52 ◼ ► professional person who loves stuff, just like me. We're both enthusiasts. We love the things that we
01:28:57 ◼ ► love. You know, we spoke about Installer. I asked him for some recommendations, and we end up at some