The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► How about your crazy ass mayor?

00:00:03 ◼   ► Mayor of Canada.

00:00:05 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:00:07 ◼   ► Is he your ma- he is your mayor, right? That is...

00:00:10 ◼   ► Uh, he's our religious leader.

00:00:12 ◼   ► It's that whole provin- provincial thing?

00:00:15 ◼   ► You're thinking of, um...

00:00:18 ◼   ► Saskatoon.

00:00:20 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:00:22 ◼   ► Sarsaparilla.

00:00:24 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:00:26 ◼   ► [sighs]

00:00:28 ◼   ► Uh, I don't even know how to respond to that.

00:00:33 ◼   ► You're being so offensive.

00:00:34 ◼   ► I am.

00:00:34 ◼   ► I am.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Seattle is definitely not Canada.

00:00:37 ◼   ► And I'm also not in Seattle, technically.

00:00:40 ◼   ► So that's even-- that's another layer of offensiveness

00:00:42 ◼   ► that you don't even-- you're not even aware of.

00:00:45 ◼   ► You're in Tacoma.

00:00:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:00:47 ◼   ► Beautiful Tacoma.

00:00:48 ◼   ► But Tacoma is Seattle.

00:00:51 ◼   ► It's not?

00:00:52 ◼   ► Well, where do you go when you have to fly?

00:00:54 ◼   ► Where do you go?

00:00:55 ◼   ► What airport do you go to?

00:00:57 ◼   ► We go to SeaTac.

00:00:58 ◼   ► That's Seattle.

00:01:00 ◼   ► Seattle, Tacoma.

00:01:01 ◼   ► Well, that means it's all one city.

00:01:03 ◼   ► It is not?

00:01:05 ◼   ► SeaTac is in the middle.

00:01:07 ◼   ► Who's your local baseball team?

00:01:10 ◼   ► The Tacoma Rainiers.

00:01:11 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:13 ◼   ► Thank you very much.

00:01:14 ◼   ► I haven't been to a game there in a long time though.

00:01:19 ◼   ► I need to get back.

00:01:20 ◼   ► That's a good experience.

00:01:21 ◼   ► What, the minor league baseball?

00:01:23 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:01:24 ◼   ► Oh, I really thought I was gonna get through this show

00:01:25 ◼   ► without mentioning baseball.

00:01:26 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, well you'd think right?

00:01:28 ◼   ► We could stop we could we could we could just move on you know what there is something

00:01:34 ◼   ► I was just reading something that was interesting about minor league baseball

00:01:37 ◼   ► And it's the fact that they don't really it's it's like such low stakes because they don't play to win per se

00:01:43 ◼   ► I mean they you know all things considered. They'd rather win than lose

00:01:45 ◼   ► But at least if the teams are actually

00:01:48 ◼   ► Part of a major league baseball's system. It's all about you know developing the players

00:01:55 ◼   ► You know like and have a pitcher in a minor league game is throwing a no-hitter

00:01:58 ◼   ► But he gets to his pitch count which might be like, you know, 75 or something like that. He comes out

00:02:02 ◼   ► Yeah, and it you know, it makes it a more relaxing it, you know

00:02:06 ◼   ► It's it's like a sit back talk with your friends and yeah have a brewski

00:02:11 ◼   ► You know, the great thing is about you. I mean you can be so close to the players. Oh

00:02:16 ◼   ► Exactly because you can get it. I mean you can get like front row seats at a minor league

00:02:21 ◼   ► It depends on it depends on the team I guess but all right

00:02:24 ◼   ► We have purely we have here and now you can get front row seats pretty cheap

00:02:29 ◼   ► Yeah

00:02:30 ◼   ► We have the the Camden River Sharks right across the river and beautiful Camden, New Jersey

00:02:34 ◼   ► And you can get you get front row seats there for I don't know like four bucks something like that. Is that an Orioles?

00:02:40 ◼   ► I'm assuming you know what actually they are

00:02:44 ◼   ► unaffiliated oh

00:02:46 ◼   ► Really? Yeah, they're in this way. That's interesting. That's interesting. Yeah

00:02:51 ◼   ► And it is just Ricky Henderson play for them

00:02:54 ◼   ► That would be great. No, and they say, they claim that they're roughly AAA equivalent,

00:03:00 ◼   ► but they're not. They're like AA, sort of. But they do have some guys who were in the

00:03:05 ◼   ► show floating around. Like some of the older guys are former Major League Baseball players,

00:03:10 ◼   ► guys who've been at that level, and they've just fallen off the radar or something.

00:03:15 ◼   ► Well Ricky did that for a little while anyway. I think he played in the independent leagues

00:03:20 ◼   ► for a little while after he finished with the A's. I think that's where he finished.

00:03:25 ◼   ► He just loved baseball.

00:03:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, the guy just loves baseball. And hats off to that, right?

00:03:30 ◼   ► Yeah, it's kind of amazing. There's some old pitchers, too, who—I forget some of their

00:03:37 ◼   ► names—but guys who are former major league pitchers who will just bum around the minor

00:03:42 ◼   ► leagues. Roger Clemens threw a game last year.

00:03:45 ◼   ► That seems hard. That seems like your arm would just fall off.

00:03:48 ◼   ► Yeah, well some of those guys though, there's like pitchers, you know, some of those pitchers just have like a superhuman arm

00:03:53 ◼   ► I mean Roger Clemens is one of those guys

00:03:55 ◼   ► I mean, I know he took the PDS and stuff in it, but even without the guy but the guy had helped a little bit

00:04:01 ◼   ► Excuse me, I think it helped with his

00:04:07 ◼   ► Longevity, but I mean there's just no denying it like when he you know when he was a kid

00:04:12 ◼   ► I mean he just he you know, all those guys throw the ball hard, but I mean Roger Clemens just threw it harder

00:04:17 ◼   ► Yeah, oh

00:04:19 ◼   ► But if you guy like like a guy like Jamie Moyer, I mean he could yeah he could pitch forever

00:04:26 ◼   ► He's older than us right ever through never too hard. Yeah

00:04:29 ◼   ► Yeah, like like a year or two older than me never threw hard in the first place, right?

00:04:33 ◼   ► Crafty yeah, that's what I that's kind of crafty left-hander crafty

00:04:43 ◼   ► I'm gonna do something unusual. I'm gonna say I'm gonna do a sponsor read already

00:04:46 ◼   ► Okay, because they got a bunch of sponsors this week

00:04:50 ◼   ► And I want and it's gonna tie in to a topic. I want to talk about them

00:04:55 ◼   ► So I might as well just get it out of the way. I'm gonna do these guys first

00:04:58 ◼   ► I want to talk to you about our good friends at smile

00:05:00 ◼   ► Great great software developers

00:05:04 ◼   ► And the lovely people yeah, and the app they want me to tell you about is

00:05:09 ◼   ► PDF pen scan plus

00:05:11 ◼   ► Now what is PDF/PEN Scan Plus? It's one touch scanning directly from your iPhone or iPad camera,

00:05:22 ◼   ► right? Just use your iPhone or iPad and you can scan documents, you can scan pictures. It treats

00:05:31 ◼   ► the camera as a scanner, but they've got OCR. It's not just taking pictures. What's the difference?

00:05:35 ◼   ► Why not just use your camera to take a picture? This treats it more like a scan. They have OCR.

00:05:39 ◼   ► it'll turn them into searchable PDFs so you can actually you know it actually

00:05:44 ◼   ► reads the text and then you can search for the text. The OCR is performed by the

00:05:50 ◼   ► app itself it's not offloaded to a cloud service so you can do it even if you're

00:05:56 ◼   ► not connected to the network or if you have sensitive documents that you can't

00:06:01 ◼   ► share to a cloud service. You can export PDFs with the OCR text included they

00:06:08 ◼   ► They support 16 different languages for OCR.

00:06:11 ◼   ► I don't know what those languages are, but I'll bet one of them is English.

00:06:16 ◼   ► Perfect companion to PDF/Pen for iPad and iPhone.

00:06:20 ◼   ► And I'll just add, this is what they said here in the talking points, but I'll add PDF/Pen

00:06:24 ◼   ► for the Mac is a fantastic application and I'm sure this works great with that.

00:06:29 ◼   ► PDF/Pen is a great app for – it lets you open PDFs and modify them, which is a huge,

00:06:37 ◼   ► life saver when you have like a PDF and you need to make like one small tweak to it and

00:06:41 ◼   ► you can't find the thing that you originally made it with or maybe you didn't even really

00:06:45 ◼   ► originally make it great app PDF pen scan plus for iPhone and iPad is great companion

00:06:50 ◼   ► to that. How do you get it? Well, it's an iOS app. So you know, get it on the App Store.

00:06:56 ◼   ► It's available right now at an introductory price of 499 and they have a video demo by

00:07:03 ◼   ► David Sparks who's a great guy. You can find that at Smilesoftware.com/talkshow.

00:07:12 ◼   ► And that way they'll know you came from the show. Smilesoftware.com/talkshow and/or just

00:07:18 ◼   ► go to the App Store and search for PDF/Pen/Scan Plus. Great, great app from a great company.

00:07:26 ◼   ► Now the reason I wanted to do that first, what were you going to say?

00:07:29 ◼   ► No, I was just said I need to get my wife into this because she she my wife is a private investigator

00:07:34 ◼   ► And so she has all these court documents that are all in PDF and she prints everything

00:07:39 ◼   ► Which drives me insane?

00:07:41 ◼   ► Oh and she just I mean just so she can like annotate them and like put notes in the corner and stuff like that

00:07:45 ◼   ► No, just like I I have I've I failed our as our internal IT support because

00:07:50 ◼   ► Household IT support because she's doing that and I need to get her I need to get her on the on the smile

00:07:57 ◼   ► bandwagon. I'm looking for I think you guys should have a reality show

00:08:00 ◼   ► She's investigating people and then you just pop in and make wisecracks

00:08:06 ◼   ► It would be mostly about her

00:08:10 ◼   ► Yes, right

00:08:11 ◼   ► Well, it should be and then and then you and and you know

00:08:15 ◼   ► Maybe once in a while, maybe Hank can can make an appearance and you just make wisecracks

00:08:19 ◼   ► We did we did we'd have to get a houseboat. Yeah, so obviously

00:08:25 ◼   ► I'm not even sure honestly, I don't know how she's insured bonded without a houseboat

00:08:29 ◼   ► How can you be a private investigator without living on a houseboat, right?

00:08:35 ◼   ► This might be there's a lot of ways that I'm probably damaged from having grown up in the 80s

00:08:39 ◼   ► And that's that is absolutely one of them. I would never if I needed a private investigator

00:08:43 ◼   ► I mean, you know, I'm sure your wife is great does a great job

00:08:47 ◼   ► But if I had to hire a private investigator and found out that he or she did not live on a on a boat

00:08:53 ◼   ► Houseboat, I mean I would immediately start looking for another investigator

00:08:56 ◼   ► Was Rockford lived in a trailer right just like parked like parked on a roadside of the road someplace

00:09:05 ◼   ► He didn't even live in like a trailer park. I

00:09:09 ◼   ► Don't even know how you do that

00:09:11 ◼   ► You got no hookup to anything. You just lived in a trailer

00:09:18 ◼   ► You know, I bet that was a cool show, The Rockford Files, but I remember desperately

00:09:21 ◼   ► wanting to watch it because I knew it was about a private investigator and he seemed to have a pretty cool car.

00:09:27 ◼   ► Although it wasn't an awesome car. It was just like kind of sporty, but it was cool enough.

00:09:31 ◼   ► And so I just assumed it was a rockin' show with lots of violence and

00:09:35 ◼   ► gunshots and stuff and then like I finally was allowed to stay up and watch it one night and it was it was just

00:09:41 ◼   ► incredibly dull. There was no action. There was no car chase. No, you know, it was I

00:09:47 ◼   ► Don't even know I'm like I said, I'm sure it was a good show

00:09:50 ◼   ► But it was clearly meant for adults and and whatever drama there was had nothing to do with with what I had imagined

00:09:56 ◼   ► I imagined it was like the Dukes of Hazzard

00:09:58 ◼   ► Yeah, no, yeah, we watched it every week. I remember but I don't remember

00:10:03 ◼   ► Anything of it other than one time?

00:10:07 ◼   ► he was being tailed by somebody and he got fed up and he just like

00:10:11 ◼   ► Slammed the car into reverse and slammed into them and jumped out and punched the guy in the face

00:10:16 ◼   ► face. And it turned out it was a cop.

00:10:21 ◼   ► James Garner. Man, that was a guy. He's not dead, is he?

00:10:26 ◼   ► He's still alive, yeah.

00:10:31 ◼   ► That was a man's man.

00:10:36 ◼   ► Anyway, the reason I wanted to do Smile first is because I also, even if they weren't a sponsor, I wanted to talk about something

00:10:41 ◼   ► that they were in the news this week. Did you see the thing yesterday where one of their

00:10:48 ◼   ► other products, TextExpander, which is like a little text snippet thing, has gotten like

00:10:57 ◼   ► a... It's gonna be pulled from the app store and they have to rejigger it. And I mean,

00:11:04 ◼   ► long story short, I think, this is the iOS version of TextExpander. TextExpander is a

00:11:08 ◼   ► utility that you, it's on the Mac too, but you, you let, you set up little shortcuts

00:11:14 ◼   ► so you can type a little three letter thing and it'll expand into a little, whatever you

00:11:20 ◼   ► want, a long snippet of text and you can, there's all sorts of cool features in there

00:11:23 ◼   ► where you can put, I use it, you can put variables. So I have a thing like, just as an example,

00:11:30 ◼   ► if I hit semi colon today, it puts today's date in a certain format. It just pops right

00:11:37 ◼   ► into the, you know, wherever, and it works in every app. Now in the Mac, I don't know

00:11:42 ◼   ► what hocus pocus jiggery pokery they're using to make it work. But that's sort of, you know,

00:11:49 ◼   ► like a utility that runs inside other apps is way easier on a Mac than iOS because iOS

00:11:54 ◼   ► is, you know, everything is sandboxed. The way it used to work, it's always required

00:12:00 ◼   ► on iOS for the apps that it works within.

00:12:03 ◼   ► They had to opt in, right?

00:12:04 ◼   ► They had to opt in and include a text expander SDK.

00:12:08 ◼   ► So, for example, the system apps like Mail and Safari don't support it because Apple

00:12:14 ◼   ► doesn't opt in to the thing.

00:12:16 ◼   ► But a lot of third party...

00:12:17 ◼   ► Kind of like how Dropbox works, right?

00:12:19 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

00:12:21 ◼   ► And how on Mac OS X, Dropbox is just there and it's a folder and it's at the system level.

00:12:27 ◼   ► And apps don't have to opt in.

00:12:30 ◼   ► But on iOS they do, they have to include a Dropbox SDK.

00:12:35 ◼   ► But how did that, the shared snippet data get between, let's say you have four different

00:12:40 ◼   ► apps on your iPhone that support TextExpander, how did they get the same snippet data?

00:12:46 ◼   ► They used to use something called named clipboards or pasteboards.

00:12:50 ◼   ► I don't know what the, I always get those two mixed up.

00:12:54 ◼   ► But it's sort of a long-standing next step sort of thing where there's different paste

00:13:01 ◼   ► boards.

00:13:02 ◼   ► And you can see this on the Mac.

00:13:03 ◼   ► A lot of people don't know this, but like when you copy and paste, you think there's

00:13:06 ◼   ► only one paste board.

00:13:08 ◼   ► But like on Mac, if you go to like text edit or anything with styled text, you can do things

00:13:12 ◼   ► like copy the ruler.

00:13:16 ◼   ► If you set up a paragraph with a certain indentation, copy the ruler, go to another document, select

00:13:21 ◼   ► some text paste ruler and it'll apply that those margins to that text and you

00:13:27 ◼   ► can do the same thing with style so you can copy a style which is a font and

00:13:33 ◼   ► whether it's italics and a text size and then select some other text paste style

00:13:38 ◼   ► and it applies that style so that's not the text clipboard it's the style

00:13:43 ◼   ► clipboard and then there's a ruler clipboard and then apps can make

00:13:46 ◼   ► arbitrarily named paste boards or at least they used to be able to on iOS and

00:13:51 ◼   ► that was how and I you know I think in a nutshell how the text expander shared

00:13:57 ◼   ► data between the apps that opted in there was a named clipboard that the SDK

00:14:03 ◼   ► would know to look for and that's where all the snippet data was and then when

00:14:06 ◼   ► you created a new snippet you just do it in the text expander app and it would

00:14:12 ◼   ► automatically be available to all the apps that are in the text expanders

00:14:15 ◼   ► snippet system. All right, are you with me so far? I am. Apple got rid of named

00:14:23 ◼   ► clipboards in iOS 7 as a security thing or a privacy thing. I don't know which

00:14:29 ◼   ► maybe both a little bit of both but apps were abusing it. Now this text expander

00:14:33 ◼   ► was not. I think text expander maybe would qualify as an app that was doing

00:14:38 ◼   ► what they were meant to be done for but a lot of third-party apps were using it

00:14:43 ◼   ► for shady purposes. You know, like ad networks were using it to track stuff across apps so

00:14:50 ◼   ► that the same ad network, if a couple of games were using, you know, the same ads, they could

00:14:55 ◼   ► somehow share that data, which is, you know, in other words, it was an escape valve for

00:15:01 ◼   ► this data sandboxing in iOS. And so Apple got rid of them. So TextExpander had to do

00:15:06 ◼   ► something else and what they chose to do is use the reminders which is a system

00:15:13 ◼   ► wide you know like the reminders app but other apps there's an API other apps can

00:15:19 ◼   ► can access it and so they use the reminders app to store the snippet data

00:15:27 ◼   ► and I think they were doing something to sort so they wouldn't you know like when

00:15:31 ◼   ► you open the reminders app you wouldn't just be faced with all this you wouldn't

00:15:34 ◼   ► see all this. Yeah, right. Yeah. As a reminder, you know. I don't think it really mattered.

00:15:39 ◼   ► I don't know if they were using dates on this stuff to make it like so they were all expired

00:15:43 ◼   ► or something. But you know, you could find it, I think, in the Reminders app, but it

00:15:47 ◼   ► was effectively hidden. But anyway, Apple has notified them. And that was approved.

00:15:51 ◼   ► It was in the App Store. And, you know, apps, third party apps had to update to the latest

00:15:57 ◼   ► version of the TextExpander SDK to support it. But anyway, yesterday, they announced

00:16:03 ◼   ► that Apple said, "Look, you can't use reminders like that anymore. Reminders are for reminders,

00:16:09 ◼   ► not for arbitrary data." Now they don't know what to do because there's really nothing

00:16:16 ◼   ► left. I saw a lot of criticism on Twitter. Most of the reaction to it seemed to be that

00:16:22 ◼   ► Apple was screwing Smile over, which I don't think that's quite right. I love Smile. I

00:16:29 ◼   ► say this not just because they're a sponsor, but I know some of the people who work there

00:16:33 ◼   ► and I'm a long time fan of their software.

00:16:35 ◼   ► This stinks for them, but I don't think Apple is screwing them.

00:16:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I wouldn't call it that either.

00:16:42 ◼   ► It just, maybe it's, I mean, maybe what the criticism should be

00:16:45 ◼   ► is there should be some other service.

00:16:47 ◼   ► Yeah, there should be some way,

00:16:50 ◼   ► and this goes back to the origins of the App Store.

00:16:53 ◼   ► I mean, this is all the way back to like 2008

00:16:55 ◼   ► when the apps first came out, that there is no,

00:16:59 ◼   ► I mean, sandboxing is all well and good,

00:17:00 ◼   ► but shouldn't there be somewhere where apps can app a can put something and then app B

00:17:07 ◼   ► can see it. You know, right. I think that the best argument for smile using the reminders

00:17:18 ◼   ► this way is that reminders is one of those things like I think I'm like 99% sure on this

00:17:25 ◼   ► because I think I remember doing it or proving it it's like location or the

00:17:31 ◼   ► camera or the camera roll where you the system before it'll let the app write to

00:17:35 ◼   ► it will prompt and say do you want to allow this app to access reminders you

00:17:42 ◼   ► know that's and that is part of the security in iOS is you know like an app

00:17:47 ◼   ► can't just turn on location without letting you know you know there's no way

00:17:51 ◼   ► that the app it's not just like they're supposed to do it it's they actually

00:17:55 ◼   ► app and we'll never get that location data until you the user to tap the

00:18:00 ◼   ► button in the systems provided alert that says yes allow this to happen and

00:18:05 ◼   ► then you can you can turn it off in the settings app at any time and I think

00:18:10 ◼   ► it's the same with reminders where the apps have to opt into it and so I think

00:18:14 ◼   ► that the argument that they should be allowed to do it as well if the user

00:18:16 ◼   ► says they're allowed to do it who's you know the user is saying let me use the

00:18:22 ◼   ► reminders to store this you know non reminder data just so that it can be

00:18:26 ◼   ► shared between apps so I can see it that way but I can definitely apples

00:18:32 ◼   ► perspective yeah it does suck though and it because it's such a useful feature

00:18:40 ◼   ► that there should be some other way to do it but at the same time are the only

00:18:44 ◼   ► things I can think of, you know, is what is the only thing that makes the most sense is

00:18:50 ◼   ► what they had before and obviously that wasn't working either.

00:18:53 ◼   ► Well, and this comes down and we ran into this at Q branch with Vesper because we originally

00:19:01 ◼   ► over the summer in a like a 1.0 something update to Vesper, a minor update, we added

00:19:09 ◼   ► text expander support for iOS 6 and that was the old one with the named

00:19:13 ◼   ► clipboards. And we knew about the

00:19:18 ◼   ► iOS, that it was changing with iOS 7 and

00:19:22 ◼   ► for iOS 7 we decided not to include the text expander SDK

00:19:27 ◼   ► because, even though we had it in an update we did over the summer, for iOS 7

00:19:32 ◼   ► we took it out

00:19:33 ◼   ► because we thought, I,

00:19:37 ◼   ► We all thought that even though this seems like it's been approved by Apple

00:19:42 ◼   ► I don't we didn't I didn't think that it was gonna last

00:19:46 ◼   ► It just seemed like they were starting like smile had been reduced to playing whack-a-mole to find a way to do it

00:19:52 ◼   ► I you know and I don't blame them. I'm not passing judgment, but it just seemed to me

00:19:57 ◼   ► that we you know it I

00:19:59 ◼   ► Almost regretted that we put it in in the first place even though it was a useful feature

00:20:04 ◼   ► I regretted it because I hate putting a useful feature in and then taking it out and we got lots of email from people

00:20:10 ◼   ► You know when we upgraded to seven, hey, what happened to text expander?

00:20:13 ◼   ► You know and we you know, we were just honest about we're like well here's you know

00:20:19 ◼   ► We explained the situation more or less a much shorter

00:20:21 ◼   ► version of the

00:20:23 ◼   ► Description I gave before and said, you know, we're gonna wait and see if Apple is you know

00:20:27 ◼   ► I'm gonna support this and maybe in the long term we will

00:20:31 ◼   ► But it just seemed like weird to me to have Vesper asking for permission to write to

00:20:36 ◼   ► Reminders when Vesper isn't doing anything with reminders, you know

00:20:41 ◼   ► Like I just and who knows if the user even knows, you know that it's for text expander, you know

00:20:46 ◼   ► Like the advanced users do but typical users might not and I think that's weird

00:20:51 ◼   ► I think like when an app asks for location and I have no idea why it's asking for location

00:20:56 ◼   ► I never allow it and I'm very often very tempted to delete the app if it's like a new thing

00:21:01 ◼   ► that I'm trying out.

00:21:03 ◼   ► And so to me, it would be weird if an app that I wasn't using to access reminders, you

00:21:08 ◼   ► know, asked for reminders.

00:21:10 ◼   ► Steve McLaughlin Yeah, there's a whole gray area to app on

00:21:15 ◼   ► both the Mac and on iOS but to apps that try and do stuff that, I mean, it probably varies

00:21:22 ◼   ► by person, but I get a weird feeling from certain apps, even though I know that. It's

00:21:28 ◼   ► not that they're from people who I trust, and there are services that I often want,

00:21:35 ◼   ► but you just get that feeling like, "I don't know how long that's going to be around."

00:21:40 ◼   ► So I don't want to get in to relying on that and have it someday go away.

00:21:46 ◼   ► Another X factor is that the system now has like a sort of shared text snippet thing.

00:21:53 ◼   ► But it's nowhere near as powerful as TextExpander and it doesn't have variables.

00:21:59 ◼   ► And I think there's some people who are suspicious that that's why Apple is doing this.

00:22:03 ◼   ► That Apple is trying to force people to use the system one instead of TextExpander.

00:22:07 ◼   ► And I really, I mean, whether you agree or disagree that Apple should let them use the reminders thing,

00:22:13 ◼   ► They're not doing it to screw TextExpander.

00:22:15 ◼   ► They really are not.

00:22:16 ◼   ► They're not doing it to force people to use it.

00:22:18 ◼   ► It doesn't benefit them at all, really.

00:22:21 ◼   ► They're providing it as a basic feature set, but it's not like they're selling it.

00:22:28 ◼   ► My colleague and friend, Brent Simmons, in our internal discussions about what to do

00:22:34 ◼   ► with VSEPR, I think his idea for how they should do it is right.

00:22:40 ◼   ► the way of the future or at least the way of iOS 7 is that they should write their own

00:22:46 ◼   ► like a web service. And then the SDK, you know, you'd get like you'd have a text expander

00:22:52 ◼   ► account and the SDK would mean that every app would then sync the text, your text expander

00:22:59 ◼   ► data over the cloud. And that's a lot of work though. That's, you know, that's one of those

00:23:08 ◼   ► things were saying, "Hey, they should write their own web service for this," is more or

00:23:12 ◼   ► less, you know, it sounds nice and neat, and you can imagine how it would work. And what

00:23:16 ◼   ► you're really doing is saying they should undertake a massive undertaking, you know,

00:23:24 ◼   ► to implement this feature, which is frustrating as a programmer because you know that if you

00:23:29 ◼   ► could just write the data to a file on disk on the device, you know, it would be so easy.

00:23:37 ◼   ► You just write to a file and then have the other app read from the file.

00:23:41 ◼   ► And now you're asking me to do this incredibly complicated web service where we've got to

00:23:45 ◼   ► have servers, we've got to keep them up, and we have to have an account system, and we

00:23:50 ◼   ► have to make sure everything is secure so that nobody can access somebody else's.

00:23:54 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's not as instantaneous, and it also relies on having a web connection.

00:23:59 ◼   ► Right.

00:24:00 ◼   ► And so instead of having – yeah, it requires a network.

00:24:02 ◼   ► But that's the way of the future.

00:24:04 ◼   ► That's how data gets stored on I/O or gets shared between apps, really.

00:24:13 ◼   ► It seems crazy that it's the only way that apps can talk to each other is by going to

00:24:18 ◼   ► the network all the way to the cloud and then back.

00:24:20 ◼   ► But it's the truth.

00:24:22 ◼   ► That's really how it works.

00:24:23 ◼   ► That's why Dropbox works on iOS 7, even though it works very differently than it does on

00:24:29 ◼   ► a Mac or Windows.

00:24:30 ◼   ► works because they're not there is no actual shared folder Dropbox on iOS it's

00:24:36 ◼   ► everything is going back and forth to the cloud mm-hmm that would be another

00:24:44 ◼   ► thing that they could do if they didn't want to write their own account system

00:24:47 ◼   ► they could use Dropbox but then it would require everybody with text expander to

00:24:51 ◼   ► use Dropbox and you that's it's everybody out there who's listening who

00:24:56 ◼   ► uses text expander and Dropbox I know what you're thinking you're thinking

00:24:59 ◼   ► thinking yeah yeah yeah do that do that because you do want your text expander

00:25:02 ◼   ► to work but you really can't force you can't have Dropbox be the only way to do

00:25:06 ◼   ► it because you know there's lots of people who don't use Dropbox and who

00:25:09 ◼   ► don't want to I notice you're not saying iCloud you know what I don't think

00:25:14 ◼   ► iCloud could solve it because I don't why could it not solve it in the same

00:25:18 ◼   ► way that that um Dropbox would because it with iCloud you don't it doesn't get

00:25:24 ◼   ► you out of the per app sandbox. So if your text expander app writes the snippet data

00:25:31 ◼   ► to iCloud and you open Vesper and Vesper has the SDK, it wouldn't, Vesper, even though

00:25:38 ◼   ► you could be logged into iCloud, it wouldn't let you see it.

00:25:41 ◼   ► >> Yeah, that's right. It doesn't, you know, it wouldn't see outside of its own environment.

00:25:44 ◼   ► >> Right. One of the, well, not weird things, but unique things about iCloud is that iCloud,

00:25:50 ◼   ► know it's a cloud service it's still per application siloed in some ways I don't

00:25:57 ◼   ► know the finder obviously has a magic way around that I mentioned this on the

00:26:03 ◼   ► show a few weeks ago but that's that's what that's that's what's so

00:26:06 ◼   ► interesting about tags in Mavericks is that tags are the way that you can see

00:26:14 ◼   ► documents from different iCloud apps together you know if I have a numbers

00:26:19 ◼   ► document and I tag it "MOLTS" and then I have a pages document and tag it "MOLTS" in the

00:26:25 ◼   ► finder, I can go to my "MOLTS" tag and see both of them together.

00:26:30 ◼   ► Even though they're not, they're in totally different folders because of the way iCloud

00:26:34 ◼   ► is set up.

00:26:36 ◼   ► But there's no way to – like the tags are not visible on iOS yet.

00:26:42 ◼   ► So that would be something maybe in the future that they could use iCloud if they tagged

00:26:46 ◼   ► tagged it. And then you had apps that support iCloud and then it would be tagged, like,

00:26:51 ◼   ► I don't know, TextExpander or something like that. But that's not available on iOS yet.

00:26:56 ◼   ► CB; It's interesting that nobody has, I mean, I guess, other than Dropbox, tried to do a

00:27:05 ◼   ► back-end service like that for developers. Well, I guess Windows Azure is kind of the

00:27:15 ◼   ► thing right yeah but it's there's no like turnkey just yeah just hook it up

00:27:24 ◼   ► and sing right I mean you know Windows is word does a lot of the work for you

00:27:28 ◼   ► compared to the old days where you know you would sure you'd be starting with

00:27:32 ◼   ► just like nothing a server with a fresh install of you know Linux or BSD and

00:27:39 ◼   ► then you've got to start from there I mean you really get a lot to start but

00:27:43 ◼   ► But it's not like writing to a file, reading from a file.

00:27:51 ◼   ► It's really frustrating if you have an idea for something that requires different apps

00:27:58 ◼   ► to access the shared data.

00:28:03 ◼   ► There's no easy way out of it.

00:28:05 ◼   ► That's sort of the unfortunate news.

00:28:06 ◼   ► There is no easy way.

00:28:09 ◼   ► the smile guys have an idea for what they can do in the short term which is these callback

00:28:15 ◼   ► URLs which is you know how like when you tap a thing and it goes to another app, you know,

00:28:21 ◼   ► it would be like a special URL like not an HTTP URL. It would be like an X text expander

00:28:27 ◼   ► URL. But then you'd – the way you'd have to work is every time you want to update your

00:28:33 ◼   ► text expander snippets in say, you know, app A. In app A, you'd have to say, you know,

00:28:42 ◼   ► refresh my text expander snippets. It would take you to text expander and then go from

00:28:46 ◼   ► text expander back to the app. And then in app B, you'd have to do the same thing. But

00:28:51 ◼   ► it's the only way. But it's, you know, really sounds like it's taken all the, you know,

00:28:57 ◼   ► the magic out of it.

00:28:59 ◼   ► So, bad news for Smile.

00:29:04 ◼   ► But it's, you know, really, ultimately what it is, is that they have a product on iOS

00:29:08 ◼   ► that iOS is not designed to support.

00:29:12 ◼   ► And they've gotten away with it, because it used to have a feature that let it happen,

00:29:17 ◼   ► the named Clipboards.

00:29:20 ◼   ► That was taken away not to spite Smile.

00:29:22 ◼   ► It was taken away because a bunch of scammers were abusing it.

00:29:27 ◼   ► I feel like I opened the show on a sour note.

00:29:35 ◼   ► Let me do another sponsor.

00:29:36 ◼   ► I'm just crying.

00:29:38 ◼   ► This was upbeat though.

00:29:39 ◼   ► Let me do another sponsor.

00:29:40 ◼   ► I'm going to tell you about...

00:29:41 ◼   ► I think you were on the show the last time these guys sponsored it.

00:29:43 ◼   ► This is just a happy coincidence, I think.

00:29:47 ◼   ► It's Domestic Beast.

00:29:49 ◼   ► Remember these guys?

00:29:50 ◼   ► Oh yeah, that's right.

00:29:51 ◼   ► They're a small design agency and they love dogs.

00:29:54 ◼   ► And they got tired of ugly dog stuff and dog stuff that doesn't work.

00:30:00 ◼   ► So they find well-designed, well-built dog stuff in a variety of styles, stuff that looks

00:30:09 ◼   ► cool.

00:30:10 ◼   ► And they have a great holiday gift guide for anyone who knows anyone with a dog.

00:30:15 ◼   ► So if you know someone with a dog, this is a great place to go to find like a unique

00:30:19 ◼   ► gift.

00:30:21 ◼   ► gifts for friends and family who are dog lovers. All sorts of cool stuff. You've got a dog,

00:30:31 ◼   ► right?

00:30:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:33 ◼   ► Yeah. They've got hipster stuff. It even says here, even for friends with cats, and then

00:30:39 ◼   ► they put in parentheses, "Don't expect much." You don't have a cat, do you, Jon?

00:30:43 ◼   ► No.

00:30:44 ◼   ► I don't like cats. I really hate cats. I don't have a...

00:30:46 ◼   ► I like cats okay, but I like dogs better.

00:30:48 ◼   ► I don't have a dog, but if I ever did have a pet, I would have a dog.

00:30:53 ◼   ► You can tweet.

00:30:54 ◼   ► If you have a Twitter account @domesticbeast, and you can tweet at them with gift ideas,

00:31:03 ◼   ► and they'll pick their favorite one, feature it on our website, and give the winner $100

00:31:08 ◼   ► worth of cool dog stuff.

00:31:09 ◼   ► So check them out on Twitter.

00:31:10 ◼   ► They have a cool Twitter.

00:31:12 ◼   ► Here's their slogan.

00:31:13 ◼   ► Just because you have a dog doesn't mean you have to live in a doghouse.

00:31:18 ◼   ► Where do you go to find out more?

00:31:20 ◼   ► Their website, easy.

00:31:21 ◼   ► Their name is Domestic Beast.

00:31:23 ◼   ► Their website is domesticbeast.com.

00:31:27 ◼   ► Go there.

00:31:28 ◼   ► Check out their great stuff and it really is a great place to find unique gifts for

00:31:33 ◼   ► dog lovers in your life.

00:31:34 ◼   ► They've got a whole mess of Christmas themed chew toys.

00:31:42 ◼   ► There's ugly ginger fugly gingerbread man, which is pretty good.

00:31:47 ◼   ► is a cool looking website.

00:31:48 ◼   ► As soon as you look at the website--

00:31:50 ◼   ► - My dog likes, my dog, he loves to tear the hell

00:31:54 ◼   ► out of a stuffed animal, but ideally something

00:31:59 ◼   ► that's designed for him that's not full.