Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► This is not our usual WWDC episode, not in person this time.

00:00:05 ◼   ► Well, I mean, we don't always record in person at WWDC.

00:00:09 ◼   ► We only didn't record in person once.

00:00:11 ◼   ► And then I think we recorded in person three times after that in the same room.

00:00:15 ◼   ► But the tables may turn from here on out, Myke. Yeah.

00:00:19 ◼   ► We may eventually have more non in person

00:00:22 ◼   ► WWDC episodes than in person WWDC episodes, depending on how this goes.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Yeah, we'll see.

00:00:28 ◼   ► I mean like there is a possibility that maybe in a year's time I just come over and we watch

00:00:33 ◼   ► the keynote together and we record straight after.

00:00:35 ◼   ► That'd be fun, right?

00:00:36 ◼   ► That doesn't sound like fun to me actually.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Wait, no wait.

00:00:38 ◼   ► Did you just invite yourself over?

00:00:40 ◼   ► That's not what I meant.

00:00:42 ◼   ► No, no, no, no, no.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Backing up, backing up, backing up.

00:00:45 ◼   ► I'll just pop around.

00:00:46 ◼   ► I'll bring the popcorn.

00:00:47 ◼   ► It'll be nice.

00:00:48 ◼   ► We'll see.

00:00:49 ◼   ► We'll see how it goes.

00:00:50 ◼   ► But no, we're not recording in person this time.

00:00:52 ◼   ► But I assume that since WWDC is an entirely online remote experience this year, it's

00:01:01 ◼   ► probably been a much easier week for you than normal, right?

00:01:04 ◼   ► You just get to chill out at home, check in every once in a while, see what's up.

00:01:09 ◼   ► This WWDC week, almost certainly this is your easy week, right?

00:01:13 ◼   ► With Cortex as well, it's the easy week?

00:01:15 ◼   ► I don't think I could have foreseen that a conference which I'm not attending could make

00:01:22 ◼   ► me more tired than a conference that I'm actually attending.

00:01:27 ◼   ► That's exhausting because attending conferences is the most exhausting thing in working life.

00:01:33 ◼   ► So please explain how is not attending WWDC more exhausting than attending WWDC?

00:01:41 ◼   ► So there are a couple of areas here. I think I can split this into two kind of flows for

00:01:47 ◼   ► why I am so tired.

00:01:49 ◼   ► One is Apple is a California company so everything's happening on California time.

00:01:55 ◼   ► The worst time.

00:01:56 ◼   ► Yes, the worst time. It's the worst time for everybody except people that live in California.

00:02:00 ◼   ► Other than that it's inconvenient for everyone.

00:02:02 ◼   ► I do think that is literally true.

00:02:04 ◼   ► So every day they publish a selection of videos, they're session videos. If they publish these

00:02:09 ◼   ► on Eastern Time, it would be way nicer because I would get them at like three o'clock in

00:02:14 ◼   ► the afternoon rather than six o'clock in the evening, right? So that's been one part, it's

00:02:19 ◼   ► like the time shifting of everything has made things a little bit more tricky than usual.

00:02:25 ◼   ► And then there is the element of things that I have not done very well for myself, which

00:02:32 ◼   ► Which is, when I go to WWDC, I do not record all of my usual podcasts.

00:02:38 ◼   ► I will pre-record some of them, or skip episodes or whatever.

00:02:42 ◼   ► I didn't do that for this conference, because I thought, I'm at home, I don't need to move

00:02:47 ◼   ► the pen addict, I'll just do it on Wednesday, no problem.

00:02:50 ◼   ► Ohhh, okay.

00:02:52 ◼   ► Because I'm not away, I didn't plan my week as if I was away.

00:02:58 ◼   ► Yes, I can see now, yeah, this is very like, "I have made a huge mistake."

00:03:04 ◼   ► I could see why you would have thought that, and that is a terrible decision.

00:03:10 ◼   ► It never even really crossed my mind to think about moving things,

00:03:15 ◼   ► because what I wasn't foreseeing is the fact that I've ended up with additional recordings put into my diary this week.

00:03:21 ◼   ► So in a five-day period, I am recording nine podcasts.

00:03:26 ◼   ► Oh my god.

00:03:27 ◼   ► So I'm nearly at the end now.

00:03:30 ◼   ► I have two more after this one to do.

00:03:33 ◼   ► Okay.

00:03:34 ◼   ► More recording, more editing than normal,

00:03:37 ◼   ► and then the other part of it all is

00:03:40 ◼   ► there's so much information coming out

00:03:42 ◼   ► and because I'm not at the conference,

00:03:46 ◼   ► I'm not receiving information by osmosis

00:03:49 ◼   ► in the way that I usually would,

00:03:50 ◼   ► which is just every conversation is about what's happening.

00:03:53 ◼   ► but also I kind of feel this different responsibility to be more informed this year

00:04:00 ◼   ► because all I have is time to consume the information and to try out the operating system

00:04:09 ◼   ► and all that kind of stuff so I feel like I am spending 13-14 hours a day either consuming

00:04:21 ◼   ► WWDC related content or producing shows around it. So again, I love to consume all of that stuff

00:04:29 ◼   ► and I want to because I'm as interested in it personally as I am professionally,

00:04:34 ◼   ► but it just has resulted in the unexpected phenomenon of being more tired at WWDC at home

00:04:43 ◼   ► than I am at WWDC in California. Yeah, I can see that because the fun thing about WWDC in person

00:04:51 ◼   ► is also the thing that is one of the reasons especially for you to go

00:04:56 ◼   ► is that when you're there, you get to talk to people who know things

00:05:02 ◼   ► or there's tons of developers who are installing the new system on their devices and pointing things out

00:05:09 ◼   ► and there's this interesting asymmetry of information where people who are following it online

00:05:15 ◼   ► sometimes have more of a like "oh we know all of the features"

00:05:19 ◼   ► But by being there in person, you can pick up some of the details or the way things are intended to be used

00:05:26 ◼   ► in a way that's not obvious if you're just reading all of the reports and things.

00:05:31 ◼   ► It's also the discussion.

00:05:32 ◼   ► So like the reason people listen to podcasts produced like this one about stuff happening at WWDC

00:05:39 ◼   ► is to hear people's opinions, to hear people's interpretations, what they like, what they don't like.

00:05:45 ◼   ► And it's way harder for me to get that type of input this year.

00:05:49 ◼   ► because there are no lunch conversations or conversations happening in the bar.

00:05:55 ◼   ► So like I'm having to do way more than usual to just gather all of my own original opinions on

00:06:03 ◼   ► these things rather than hearing somebody say something and I was like, "Well, why is that?

00:06:07 ◼   ► What makes you feel that way?" and getting the information that way. So it's just a lot more

00:06:12 ◼   ► research and I'm putting more I've definitely put more pressure on myself

00:06:17 ◼   ► this year to get that information. As well like last year I was really

00:06:24 ◼   ► disconnected from iOS 13 I felt like I really didn't get to grips with it and

00:06:30 ◼   ► that really frustrated me like that there was a lot of features that I kind

00:06:34 ◼   ► of didn't really try out the way that I would have wanted to and I just didn't

00:06:38 ◼   ► put the same level of focus on it that I would have normally so this year I also

00:06:42 ◼   ► feel like I don't want to repeat that

00:06:46 ◼   ► again and I want to be really testing

00:06:47 ◼   ► everything out and trying it out from

00:06:50 ◼   ► the get-go as well so there's a lot

00:06:52 ◼   ► kind of going on this year which is

00:06:56 ◼   ► contributing to being very tired. I mean

00:06:57 ◼   ► we're gonna talk about the whole

00:06:59 ◼   ► WWDC thing but I'm just I'm just

00:07:01 ◼   ► curious as a preview are you running

00:07:04 ◼   ► the beta on any of your devices? Yeah. All

00:07:05 ◼   ► right Myke's doing the real legwork. I

00:07:09 ◼   ► put it on on Tuesday on my iPad. Keynote

00:07:09 ◼   ► was on Monday. I only didn't put it on a Monday because I was super busy Monday evening recording

00:07:15 ◼   ► Upgrade. Right? And so...

00:07:17 ◼   ► Day one podcasts gotta go out.

00:07:19 ◼   ► Podcasts gonna be done. I drink in a Red Bull at 10 p.m.

00:07:24 ◼   ► Right? So like that's where I am.

00:07:28 ◼   ► It's awful. I've done that late night coffee thing a few times and it's like you've created

00:07:36 ◼   ► such a visceral feeling in me of the like, "Ugh, I'm over caffeinated and tired and

00:07:43 ◼   ► it's awful."

00:07:44 ◼   ► And it just, it f*cks me up the next day.

00:07:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:48 ◼   ► Like I just feel like trash.

00:07:50 ◼   ► Because like our eating schedule's all off because I'm working in the evenings so we're

00:07:54 ◼   ► eating dinner at lunchtime.

00:07:56 ◼   ► Like it's crazy, it's crazy here.

00:07:59 ◼   ► Like I will say, Idina has been an incredible support for me this week.

00:08:03 ◼   ► She created like a little snack bar in the hallway,

00:08:06 ◼   ► which I've been dealing with

00:08:08 ◼   ► as I'm just going from living room to office,

00:08:11 ◼   ► to bathroom and back.

00:08:12 ◼   ► And like that has been my 12 hour, 13 hour stints

00:08:16 ◼   ► for the last four days.

00:08:18 ◼   ► It's been very intense.

00:08:20 ◼   ► But the thing is,

00:08:20 ◼   ► this is the first time I've experienced this, right?

00:08:24 ◼   ► For as long as I have been covering WWDC intensely,

00:08:28 ◼   ► I've been attending.

00:08:30 ◼   ► I had been attending for six years, seven years,

00:08:32 ◼   ► something like that.

00:08:34 ◼   ► And so I am very used to only really having

00:08:38 ◼   ► to professionally report on one conference.

00:08:42 ◼   ► And I'm used to doing that.

00:08:44 ◼   ► Like in my first couple of years, I did it all wrong, right?

00:08:48 ◼   ► And like way over committed myself

00:08:50 ◼   ► and ended up learning over time,

00:08:52 ◼   ► like what is the right balance for how I approach

00:08:56 ◼   ► covering a conference while at the conference.

00:08:59 ◼   ► This is the first time I've tried to cover

00:09:01 ◼   ► week-long conference while at home and I'm making the same mistakes that I made

00:09:07 ◼   ► when I first started attending. So like I just have to learn from it that if this happens again,

00:09:13 ◼   ► I think it will, then I need to approach it a little differently and I've already learned a lot

00:09:19 ◼   ► this week. I was going to say as a record for future you, while you're still in the middle of

00:09:24 ◼   ► it. What are your top tips for future Myke for how to do this better next time?

00:09:30 ◼   ► One, move all non-timely podcasts. Record them the week before or skip them. Two,

00:09:37 ◼   ► leave lots of space in the calendar for the inevitable things that will be put

00:09:42 ◼   ► into your calendar. Oh yeah that's a good one. That's a good one. And three, have

00:09:47 ◼   ► more of a plan beforehand as to what information you want to get. Hmm. My

00:09:54 ◼   ► My friends that write reviews, like Federico and John, they plan their kind of content

00:10:01 ◼   ► gathering like a month before, right? They start being like, "This is what I want to

00:10:06 ◼   ► research. This is how I'm going to approach it." I had no idea because I didn't think

00:10:10 ◼   ► that I would be. Like, I've been watching session videos for developers.

00:10:15 ◼   ► Yeah, you're not writing a review.

00:10:16 ◼   ► No, but I do need to be informed, and typically that information was disseminated to me via

00:10:23 ◼   ► these conversations that we would have with friends. And whilst I've been having some,

00:10:27 ◼   ► iMessage conversations just don't do the job really. So I have been watching session videos

00:10:33 ◼   ► and I've never watched session videos before. So the sessions that Apple developers would

00:10:39 ◼   ► usually present, they've made like video versions from Apple's campus and they're talking about

00:10:45 ◼   ► what's going on. And typically I watched what are called the overviews where they kind of

00:10:50 ◼   ► introduce a big feature. I'll get about halfway through and then it goes over my

00:10:54 ◼   ► head and I stop watching it because then it starts to get into the code or

00:10:56 ◼   ► whatever. But like I'm trying to understand like where are they coming

00:11:00 ◼   ► from with this stuff? Why are they doing it? What are the key things I need to

00:11:03 ◼   ► understand? I didn't think that I was gonna watch any of those videos because

00:11:08 ◼   ► I never did before. Because I never needed to and I've come to realize this

00:11:14 ◼   ► week that I have needed to try and get more background information. So one of

00:11:20 ◼   ► the things that's been happening is on two of my podcasts this week, Upgrade and

00:11:25 ◼   ► Connected, that are coming out this week I've had the opportunity to interview

00:11:29 ◼   ► some engineers and marketing people at Apple about the features. Ooh that's very

00:11:35 ◼   ► exciting. Yeah that was that's been a first for me and that has definitely

00:11:38 ◼   ► added to the pressure. Added to the workload, would you say? Yes, like so you know these are two

00:11:46 ◼   ► podcast recordings that I wasn't expecting and I really needed to be prepared for those. Because

00:11:55 ◼   ► that was important to me that I was going into these with all of my questions, everything

00:12:01 ◼   ► researched, really making sure I get the most out of that time. So yeah. I can only imagine what that

00:12:07 ◼   ► looks like because, listeners, as I've mentioned many times, one of the things I really appreciate

00:12:12 ◼   ► about doing Cortex with Myke is how incredibly thorough the show notes are, right? That like,

00:12:17 ◼   ► Myke makes very detailed show notes going through topics that we may or may not cover and I can only

00:12:24 ◼   ► imagine if for this show, the level of show notes that you create, if you were then in an interview

00:12:32 ◼   ► situation you're going to want to have prepared show notes and you want to know

00:12:38 ◼   ► the topics that the person is going to be talking about so I can easily imagine

00:12:44 ◼   ► that adding two interviews to your schedule adds many hours of preparation

00:12:49 ◼   ► to to get it right.

00:12:50 ◼   ► Yep, lots of hours of preparation, writing questions,

00:12:53 ◼   ► anticipating follow-up questions, writing those follow-up questions based on the

00:12:58 ◼   ► answers I think people will give me. Like it's, that's a big thing. Like that's

00:13:03 ◼   ► how I prepare for interviews.

00:13:05 ◼   ► Right, you're doing the pretend answers in your head that the other person gives you

00:13:08 ◼   ► and then it's like, okay, what would be a good follow-up question to that? Yeah, yeah.

00:13:11 ◼   ► To make sure that I'm really prepared. Like I never want to be in an interview situation

00:13:16 ◼   ► and feel like I'm fumbling.

00:13:18 ◼   ► Right.

00:13:19 ◼   ► I hate that feeling. So I try and like anticipate what follow-up questions I might have based

00:13:24 ◼   ► on what I think answers might be.

00:13:26 ◼   ► And then there's just an additional pressure in that,

00:13:28 ◼   ► like making sure that those interviews go well,

00:13:30 ◼   ► making sure that they fit within the podcast recordings

00:13:32 ◼   ► that we're doing around them,

00:13:34 ◼   ► editing the interviews to make sure that they're clean.

00:13:37 ◼   ► Like, and you know, there's,

00:13:38 ◼   ► I basically edit those the way I edit Cortex, you know?

00:13:42 ◼   ► Like really like taking a fine tooth comb to them.

00:13:45 ◼   ► So yeah, it's been a weird week, but a good week,

00:13:50 ◼   ► but also a really tiring week.

00:13:53 ◼   ► - I feel so bad because I'm sitting here

00:13:55 ◼   ► and all I could think is, I'd totally forgotten about WWDC.

00:14:00 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:14:01 ◼   ► It's like two days later, I was like, oh, wait a minute.

00:14:05 ◼   ► It's just maybe there's a thing I can watch and there was.

00:14:08 ◼   ► - What is time, you know?

00:14:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was as very what is time

00:14:12 ◼   ► and I completely forgot that WWDC existed

00:14:15 ◼   ► and now I'm listening to what Myke had to go through

00:14:19 ◼   ► and I feel bad, but you know,

00:14:21 ◼   ► this is the busy week of your life.

00:14:23 ◼   ► - This is the big week.

00:14:24 ◼   ► This is my Super Bowl or whatever sporting analogy

00:14:28 ◼   ► you'd like to make.

00:14:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is the big game of Apple.

00:14:32 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:14:33 ◼   ► - But I think for me it's like it's more that

00:14:36 ◼   ► this is a big week for the stuff that I make.

00:14:40 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

00:14:41 ◼   ► - We have a lot of listeners to these episodes.

00:14:43 ◼   ► Like people want the content more than normal even.

00:14:47 ◼   ► They wanna hear what we have to say.

00:14:49 ◼   ► It puts a lot of emphasis on it for me.

00:14:51 ◼   ► You know, it's like this week

00:14:52 ◼   ► and then the iPhone announcement week.

00:14:55 ◼   ► For most of the shows that I do,

00:14:57 ◼   ► that's about as big as they get, you know?

00:14:59 ◼   ► And adding pressure into those and unknown into it

00:15:04 ◼   ► has really, really kind of ramped up

00:15:08 ◼   ► the stress level this week.

00:15:10 ◼   ► 'Cause not really knowing what WWDC was gonna be like

00:15:14 ◼   ► and how we would cover it has been a lot to deal with.

00:15:19 ◼   ► Plus, I mean, we're gonna talk about some other stuff

00:15:20 ◼   ► in a minute that I've been working on.

00:15:22 ◼   ► That's, you know, launching a whole new thing

00:15:26 ◼   ► on top of all of this has been quite the experience.

00:15:29 ◼   ► Yeah, it's been a wild couple of weeks.

00:15:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, busy week on top of a busy month for you, for sure.

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00:17:45 ◼   ► So how is things with you? You mentioned you obviously didn't know what time was. You've

00:17:51 ◼   ► also released quite a few YouTube videos since we last spoke.

00:17:54 ◼   ► How am I? I don't know.

00:17:55 ◼   ► I think two at least, both the pirate videos.

00:17:58 ◼   ► I guess.

00:17:59 ◼   ► I think we're in between the last episode and now.

00:18:02 ◼   ► I guess. I don't know. I'm deep in the "time means nothing." We've been in it long enough

00:18:10 ◼   ► that I genuinely have no sense of time and I have nothing to report about my boring life

00:18:18 ◼   ► where days are the same and I'm just like just working on my videos and I was like oh

00:18:24 ◼   ► right there was a WWDC and and this is like the only thing on my calendar for two months

00:18:30 ◼   ► and I've missed it and forgot about it. Yeah so everything's everything's fine with me.

00:18:35 ◼   ► Just having the nice little daily routine each day exactly the same as the last.

00:18:40 ◼   ► We are in maximum routine mode.

00:18:42 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, we are in maximum routine.

00:18:44 ◼   ► Because there's nothing else.

00:18:46 ◼   ► There's two choices. There's the

00:18:48 ◼   ► existing in the structure that you create

00:18:50 ◼   ► for yourself, where you're floating aimlessly

00:18:52 ◼   ► in the void. That's what life is like right now.

00:18:54 ◼   ► I actually went to Mega Studio.

00:18:56 ◼   ► Oh yeah? Yeah.

00:18:58 ◼   ► How did you get to Mega Studio?

00:19:00 ◼   ► We took an Uber. Okay.

00:19:02 ◼   ► Was this like the first

00:19:04 ◼   ► time you've been out of the house in

00:19:06 ◼   ► months? The first time I've

00:19:08 ◼   ► been anywhere significant yeah okay like I've taken walks around the neighborhood

00:19:14 ◼   ► yeah but this is the first time I ever went to like a different geographical

00:19:19 ◼   ► place right this is the first time you've you've left like the radius of

00:19:23 ◼   ► your house yeah how was that experience it was what it felt way more normal than

00:19:29 ◼   ► I was expecting okay so like a be real I was a little bit concerned about myself

00:19:33 ◼   ► that I was going to start like fearing the outdoors because I was

00:19:38 ◼   ► starting to feel a little bit like that right?

00:19:40 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah the last time we spoke I do I do remember thinking like I was I was

00:19:44 ◼   ► slightly worried that you were going to become a bit agoraphobic.

00:19:48 ◼   ► Yeah I've been worried about that too.

00:19:50 ◼   ► But that was not your experience?

00:19:51 ◼   ► No I mean what I'm concerned about is the virus right?

00:19:56 ◼   ► Right.

00:19:56 ◼   ► And so luckily for me at least I have been able to keep those things separate.

00:20:02 ◼   ► Like, outdoors isn't problem, virus is problem.

00:20:06 ◼   ► Ah, okay. That's a good mental pattern to reinforce.

00:20:09 ◼   ► That has been able to keep me kind of grounded for a bit.

00:20:14 ◼   ► Because there was a probably like a six-week period where I did not leave my front door.

00:20:20 ◼   ► That was just where I was during this like, so long.

00:20:25 ◼   ► Like, this has been going on for so long now.

00:20:28 ◼   ► Basically, as some of the lockdown restrictions were being lifted,

00:20:32 ◼   ► We had some deliveries where the companies were basically

00:20:36 ◼   ► Calling every day and be like we we have to deliver this to you now. Oh, oh, we mean deliveries for the mega studio

00:20:43 ◼   ► Yeah, so we ordered a large rug and a sofa for the studio in

00:20:49 ◼   ► February right these things were ready to be delivered in

00:20:53 ◼   ► March but it was too late. Mm-hmm. So they've just been sitting in warehouses for like three months

00:21:02 ◼   ► And it kind of got to the point where the sofa company was like,

00:21:06 ◼   ► "This has to leave now. So you just, this isn't a question.

00:21:11 ◼   ► You just have to tell us what date we're bringing it."

00:21:13 ◼   ► We set it up to have both things delivered at the same time.

00:21:16 ◼   ► And just go see how everything was there and get everything set up.

00:21:20 ◼   ► And it's great. Like we got a nice sofa and chair in there now and this huge rug.

00:21:25 ◼   ► It's actually something called a carpet remnant, which our friend Jason tipped me onto.

00:21:30 ◼   ► Which is if a big company is like carpeting, I don't know like a hotel or whatever

00:21:36 ◼   ► They have very large pieces of carpet left over

00:21:40 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, and there are a lot of companies that do this

00:21:43 ◼   ► You can just request a size and they'll just cut a piece of carpet to that size and back it like a rug

00:21:50 ◼   ► Hmm. Oh, okay that makes sense. So it's effectively a huge rug, but it's just a large piece of carpet, right?

00:21:56 ◼   ► But it doesn't get laid like carpet, you know, like you don't actually affix it to the floor. It's just a huge rug

00:22:02 ◼   ► So we got all that set up and it's really like it's come together

00:22:06 ◼   ► Do you get to pick the pattern or do you say like I need this?

00:22:10 ◼   ► Anything no, you like those people who buy books by the weight

00:22:14 ◼   ► I'm like look I need to I need to make my office impressive to other people. I need 20 feet of books

00:22:19 ◼   ► I don't care what books is that a thing? Yeah, that's totally a thing. Did you not know that?

00:22:23 ◼   ► You can buy books by the foot and it's for office decorations and stuff. I don't care what those books are

00:22:30 ◼   ► I'm not gonna read them. That's the people who were gonna be impressed by feet of books won't know what they are anyway

00:22:36 ◼   ► No, it's not like that. You can pick from styles and then they have like size ranges that they can do within different styles

00:22:44 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. So that was actually pretty nice

00:22:46 ◼   ► I'll say that like it was stressful in the sense of us not really having a

00:22:53 ◼   ► good sense of procedure for the studio.

00:22:56 ◼   ► Like we do at home.

00:22:59 ◼   ► When anybody passes the threshold of the home,

00:23:03 ◼   ► there is like a set of steps that we go through

00:23:06 ◼   ► to be comfortable in sanitizing.

00:23:10 ◼   ► Little chlorine spray on everyone passing through the front door.

00:23:14 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like one of those, I don't know, like you see it in science fiction movies, like an airlock.

00:23:19 ◼   ► Yeah, hands up, you think it's sprayed, turn around,

00:23:22 ◼   ► Hands up again, spray, then they can come in. Yeah, I got one of those, I understand.

00:23:26 ◼   ► And there's just, there's more kind of back and forth with the studio, right? Because we don't,

00:23:30 ◼   ► obviously it's a, because it's a large space, we don't have a bathroom in our studio. There's like

00:23:37 ◼   ► communal bathrooms, right? Oh, right, I forgot about that.

00:23:40 ◼   ► So there's stuff like that, which we hadn't really been thinking about, where like there's more in

00:23:44 ◼   ► and out. And we had deliveries, which means that people had to come into the space. And so,

00:23:51 ◼   ► So it was just much more of a to-do and we didn't really have our plan for sanitizing.

00:24:03 ◼   ► So it was just much more stressful.

00:24:05 ◼   ► But we've now kind of like made that a priority for the future of having a plan for sanitizing.

00:24:15 ◼   ► Let me ask you, so having, you know, because the thing I like to ask everyone is like,

00:24:19 ◼   ► when's the next time you're going to get on a flight, right?

00:24:22 ◼   ► But it just occurs to me now that there's a much smaller version of this,

00:24:25 ◼   ► which is when's the next time you're going to step into an Uber?

00:24:27 ◼   ► And I feel like having broken that seal,

00:24:31 ◼   ► what I'm wondering is are you thinking of maybe working from mega office

00:24:37 ◼   ► more regularly going forward?

00:24:39 ◼   ► Like is that a thing that you might consider having broken the Uber seal?

00:24:43 ◼   ► Yeah, we have decided like, so we did it once, right?

00:24:48 ◼   ► and it went well but was also a disaster in its own way because again like we just didn't have

00:24:53 ◼   ► our procedures in place so we decided we would leave it for like a couple of weeks like i was

00:25:00 ◼   ► too busy this week to even think about it anyway yeah no no this week is not the time our plan is

00:25:05 ◼   ► next week we're gonna go back and we're gonna spend some time there we're gonna do some little

00:25:09 ◼   ► things that we need to take care of we have hand sanitizing stations that we're gonna be putting

00:25:14 ◼   ► in place inside of the studio and then I'm gonna do some work from there and

00:25:18 ◼   ► gonna try and like realign ourselves to where we were three months ago in the

00:25:23 ◼   ► plan. All right now what things do we need to continue trying to get this

00:25:28 ◼   ► place set up because very aware of where we are right and like like everyone I

00:25:34 ◼   ► don't stop thinking about coronavirus you know it's always ever-present but at

00:25:40 ◼   ► the same time I want to live my life a little bit and we're being very careful

00:25:49 ◼   ► wearing face coverings ensuring that anyone around us is wearing face

00:25:54 ◼   ► coverings we are also going to start taking public transport again at some

00:25:58 ◼   ► point like we're not just gonna only uber okay because you know if we go if

00:26:03 ◼   ► we get trains at the right time we can stand further away from people than we

00:26:06 ◼   ► can in a car yeah there's an interesting calculation there about yeah

00:26:10 ◼   ► the risk and I can I can totally see that if you time the train right I would feel like

00:26:15 ◼   ► The train is less of a risk than an uber and we were doing that before anyway

00:26:20 ◼   ► Because we just didn't want to be in the rush hour

00:26:22 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, so we were getting trains at times when there weren't a lot of people so, you know

00:26:28 ◼   ► We've got to work that out, but I'm paying rent on a studio space

00:26:32 ◼   ► So I really want to be in yeah, so we're gonna start

00:26:39 ◼   ► Looking at how we can make that more of a feasible part of our lives now

00:26:43 ◼   ► What I'm not going to be doing is the move that is paused the idea of moving to the studio

00:26:49 ◼   ► That's not happening. Hmm. All right, so

00:26:53 ◼   ► What are you envisioning as the studio life then where you're there?

00:26:58 ◼   ► More but you're not moving your work there. I don't really I don't understand what your plan is here. I will be working from there

00:27:06 ◼   ► But not removing the home office. Okay, because the plan was there just wouldn't be a home office anymore, right?

00:27:13 ◼   ► Right, that was all the equipment was going to the studio, but I can't do that in case

00:27:19 ◼   ► Overnight we're locked down again

00:27:22 ◼   ► Okay. All right, that makes sense. That makes sense. So I still need to have the ability to work from here

00:27:28 ◼   ► So I will set it up like halfway basically is the plan so then we can I don't know maybe a few days a week

00:27:35 ◼   ► We can be in the studio instead and we can work from there and see

00:27:40 ◼   ► What that's like so that's kind of where I am with the studio stuff

00:27:44 ◼   ► Yeah

00:27:45 ◼   ► that makes sense, you know in the matrix of calculations that we all have to do of

00:27:50 ◼   ► risks versus rewards

00:27:53 ◼   ► That feels reasonable. It feels like a pretty reasonable

00:27:56 ◼   ► thing to try and

00:27:59 ◼   ► You also have a fairly big upside there of having a different space to go to than just your apartment

00:28:05 ◼   ► Megastudio was for my mental health as well.

00:28:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:09 ◼   ► Right?

00:28:10 ◼   ► And I would more than anything love somewhere else to work from.

00:28:16 ◼   ► More than I wanted it in March.

00:28:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I totally understand.

00:28:22 ◼   ► I'm not going anywhere else, right?

00:28:25 ◼   ► Like the plan was I would still be traveling when I had the studio.

00:28:29 ◼   ► Like I would travel less, but I still would be.

00:28:32 ◼   ► And I'm not doing that either.

00:28:34 ◼   ► Mega Studio has been the thought of it the whole time.

00:28:37 ◼   ► And I just sent you some pictures

00:28:40 ◼   ► of what we've got going on, like what we've been doing.

00:28:42 ◼   ► It was always meant to be set up

00:28:43 ◼   ► as like a very comfortable place to be.

00:28:46 ◼   ► Like that was what I wanted.

00:28:48 ◼   ► So I would enjoy being there

00:28:50 ◼   ► and would happily spend work time there.

00:28:53 ◼   ► And I really want to be in this space

00:28:57 ◼   ► that I had started to create where, you know,

00:29:01 ◼   ► it was like you have a blank canvas

00:29:03 ◼   ► to build your working environment.

00:29:05 ◼   ► So you can have what you want

00:29:09 ◼   ► rather than use what you bought, right?

00:29:13 ◼   ► 'Cause the office here is, I've said this many times,

00:29:16 ◼   ► it is not fit for purpose anymore

00:29:18 ◼   ► because I made it a certain way,

00:29:23 ◼   ► changed what I wanted to use it for,

00:29:25 ◼   ► and I also don't wanna be in it in the long term anyway.

00:29:28 ◼   ► The plan was always to get something out of home,

00:29:32 ◼   ► So it felt kind of fruitless to even attempt

00:29:34 ◼   ► to try and get this office right.

00:29:36 ◼   ► When it even, no matter how good I would get it,

00:29:38 ◼   ► it would always feel like not what I wanted, right?

00:29:42 ◼   ► Which was an out of home office space.

00:29:46 ◼   ► And now I have this space,

00:29:47 ◼   ► which is like so much more than I need,

00:29:52 ◼   ► but it's just what I want.

00:29:54 ◼   ► So I wanna be able to try and see

00:29:57 ◼   ► to what level can I use it again.

00:30:01 ◼   ► because very aware of the risks and I'm doing everything I can to observe what I hear smart

00:30:08 ◼   ► people tell me. But like things are relaxing a little bit more here now and I'm just trying

00:30:15 ◼   ► to balance a level of being safe and trying to live my life a little differently to the

00:30:27 ◼   ► way I've lived it for the last 12 weeks.

00:30:30 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean it totally makes sense. You're making the place look quite cozy and I get

00:30:36 ◼   ► it and I'm with you of like having a place to work outside of the home is a huge deal.

00:30:42 ◼   ► My personal goal right now is either episode 104 or 105 of this show is the first episode

00:30:51 ◼   ► recorded from Mega Studio.

00:30:53 ◼   ► Okay. Sounds like it's possible based on what you've said.

00:30:58 ◼   ► Yeah, we'll see.

00:31:00 ◼   ► I was just sitting here like, I don't dare to guess what number cortex it will be where

00:31:11 ◼   ► I will again have an office outside of the home, so I will be quite envious of you when

00:31:15 ◼   ► you're recording from your plush mega office hanging out on your blue and yellow couch,

00:31:22 ◼   ► chilling in what looks like a palatial amount of space.

00:31:26 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:31:28 ◼   ► All that space, Myke, you've got so much that you can do.

00:31:33 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:31:34 ◼   ► I'm happy for you though.

00:31:35 ◼   ► Like I'm genuinely glad that you're feeling comfortable

00:31:38 ◼   ► enough to go back and you're like figuring out a way

00:31:40 ◼   ► to make this work.

00:31:41 ◼   ► And I think it's a sensible trade off to make in life.

00:31:44 ◼   ► - I genuinely believe there is a way to do this safely.

00:31:47 ◼   ► We just have to be really mindful of it.

00:31:52 ◼   ► and that's what we're trying to work through right now.

00:31:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, stay alert.

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00:33:07 ◼   ► So you said you've been working on something new, something big this year.

00:33:13 ◼   ► And from my perspective, as someone you've talked to about this,

00:33:18 ◼   ► I would say that this has been the biggest change for how you view Relay

00:33:25 ◼   ► since the start of conceptualizing Relay as a company.

00:33:30 ◼   ► So I've made reference to this on previous episodes that it's been

00:33:36 ◼   ► difficult, more difficult to run an advertising based business during the

00:33:41 ◼   ► pandemic than it was before the pandemic.

00:33:43 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:33:44 ◼   ► - And I would say that through a lot of work from our side,

00:33:49 ◼   ► we're in a position which is much better than we thought

00:33:52 ◼   ► that we would have been at this point.

00:33:54 ◼   ► But what it has highlighted to both of us, me and Steven,

00:33:58 ◼   ► is thinking about where our efforts should be placed

00:34:02 ◼   ► and thinking about what we want our company to look like

00:34:08 ◼   ► into the future.

00:34:10 ◼   ► And for about a year or two, we have wanted to do more with our membership program, but

00:34:17 ◼   ► we're not sure what we wanted to do exactly and how we would do it.

00:34:23 ◼   ► Nothing will make you make decisions more than threat of your company's existence.

00:34:28 ◼   ► Yeah, a random global disaster that threatens the thing that you've spent years building

00:34:37 ◼   ► focuses the mind.

00:34:38 ◼   ► Yeah, it does.

00:34:40 ◼   ► And it can, if you are the right type of person, drive you to action.

00:34:45 ◼   ► And that's what it did for us.

00:34:47 ◼   ► So over the last few months, we have been working on making some enhancements to what

00:34:54 ◼   ► a relay FM membership can be.

00:34:56 ◼   ► And we've been adding in a lot of features for existing members.

00:35:00 ◼   ► So new content, been adding in new monthly shows that everybody gets.

00:35:04 ◼   ► There's a show that me and Steven are doing called Backstage, which is basically our advice

00:35:10 ◼   ► and tips on how to start a podcast of your own.

00:35:13 ◼   ► We added a Discord for members, but these were all groundwork for increasing how often

00:35:21 ◼   ► we talk about our membership, which has usually just been once a year, while we were getting

00:35:25 ◼   ► ready to put everything in place to allow for something much bigger, which is individual

00:35:32 ◼   ► show content. So we've been working very hard behind the scenes to effectively

00:35:39 ◼   ► create a platform where any Relay FM show can make its own membership only

00:35:44 ◼   ► show. So we have one now and it's called MoreTex and MoreTex is longer

00:35:52 ◼   ► episodes of Cortex with no ads and it costs $5 a month or $50 a year. So you

00:35:59 ◼   ► you can go to get more text.com and sign up for the monthly plan and go to our

00:36:03 ◼   ► website and sign up for the annual plan. This is still a part of the relay FM

00:36:06 ◼   ► membership program so it comes with all of the membership benefits so all of the

00:36:11 ◼   ► annual bonuses like our Texas adventures, the extra podcasts, the discord but if

00:36:15 ◼   ► you choose to give your membership money directly to cortex you also get more tax

00:36:22 ◼   ► so it's a special feed which is only available for relay FM members who give

00:36:28 ◼   ► their money to call text directly. If you are an existing member who does this, you

00:36:33 ◼   ► have access to this and anybody that signs up at getmoretext.com, you will also get access

00:36:38 ◼   ► to this. Once you sign up, you get sent to a podcast page where you can subscribe with

00:36:43 ◼   ► just one tap to all major podcast apps. It's really easy to do. It's a wonderful system

00:36:48 ◼   ► that we've got set in place. And now that we have this system set in place, we can offer

00:36:53 ◼   ► this extra content because something that we've not had before which was the

00:36:58 ◼   ► ability to check for active subscriptions. So now if you stop paying

00:37:03 ◼   ► you no longer get the content which is really important if you want to build a

00:37:09 ◼   ► business on this which is what we're trying to do here as a company is to try

00:37:13 ◼   ► and build a bigger part of our business on membership. So I want to talk a little

00:37:19 ◼   ► bit more about Moretex because that's kind of the background kind of because I

00:37:22 ◼   ► I think Cortex Listener is a little bit more interested

00:37:25 ◼   ► in some of the behind the scenes type stuff of this.

00:37:28 ◼   ► And I have a little bit more that I wanna talk about

00:37:31 ◼   ► about me as a content creator and what this means

00:37:33 ◼   ► and one of the reasons that I wanna, I think, follow you

00:37:37 ◼   ► in the way that I think about my business a bit

00:37:41 ◼   ► and who I am and what I do.

00:37:43 ◼   ► But just to kind of give a more concise pitch on Mortex,

00:37:46 ◼   ► it is longer episodes, so there'll be an additional content

00:37:52 ◼   ► for people that sign up.

00:37:53 ◼   ► 'Cause basically what happens is,

00:37:55 ◼   ► Gray mentioned my show notes earlier.

00:37:56 ◼   ► I always generate tons of show notes.

00:37:59 ◼   ► We always cut things out of the document

00:38:01 ◼   ► that we don't get to.

00:38:03 ◼   ► And typically what happens is, we'll do it next time.

00:38:05 ◼   ► And then next time we don't do it, we'll do it next time.

00:38:07 ◼   ► Next time we don't do it.

00:38:08 ◼   ► And then that topic gets so old that it's just removed.

00:38:13 ◼   ► But this will allow us to actually include more in the show.

00:38:18 ◼   ► Because typically what happens is,

00:38:20 ◼   ► we'll get to a certain point

00:38:21 ◼   ► and we'll feel like that's probably enough or this stuff doesn't fit with the rest of

00:38:26 ◼   ► the stuff that we've done in the episode.

00:38:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:29 ◼   ► As strange as it's gonna sound, it just sort of happens every time but it feels like each

00:38:34 ◼   ► of the shows kind of ends up thematic as we're going through it and we do often have a sense

00:38:42 ◼   ► by the end of like, "Oh, this additional thing about, you know, oh, this thing that happened

00:38:47 ◼   ► this week like doesn't feel like it fits anymore and we always have like a resistance to talking

00:38:55 ◼   ► about it then and as we know from over the years now we lie to each other every time

00:39:02 ◼   ► about like "ah we'll talk about it next time so we could feel better about not talking

00:39:06 ◼   ► about it this time" but it never happens and so this this provides a venue for an additional

00:39:14 ◼   ► segment that doesn't necessarily have to feel like it's thematic with the rest of

00:39:19 ◼   ► the show. It can be a segment on like, "Hey, here's the thing that otherwise we will

00:39:24 ◼   ► never get to without a reason to get to it." So that's part of the idea behind Moretex,

00:39:29 ◼   ► which also is the most perfect name. When you said it, I was like, "Great! Moretex

00:39:33 ◼   ► is a fantastic name. Get that URL immediately. Get moretex.com."

00:39:40 ◼   ► get-more-text.com. And I have it in both of the ways that you'd be willing to spell it.

00:39:43 ◼   ► With and without the E. Oh, okay. I have decided we are spelling it with the E,

00:39:48 ◼   ► so it's not necessarily like cortex, but I think without the E it looks strange to me. So it's

00:39:55 ◼   ► M-O-R-E-T-E-X, not M-O-R-T-E-X. But if you do go to get-more-text-without-the-E.com, it will work.

00:40:03 ◼   ► Okay. I'm so confused when you said both ways, because I'm like, wait, do you mean like get-more-text

00:40:07 ◼   ► or get more text like M O A R T E X. I need more more text.

00:40:14 ◼   ► Please don't make me buy more URLs. Great.

00:40:17 ◼   ► Please buy more text.

00:40:18 ◼   ► Now I need that one as well. So as I'm editing this show, I know what's happening. I'm going

00:40:23 ◼   ► and buying that URL now. But yeah, basically it just allows for us to have extra content.

00:40:30 ◼   ► So there's nothing that we're taking away from the show. It's really a stuff that, and

00:40:35 ◼   ► I think this is still a selling point, but it really is stuff that otherwise would not

00:40:39 ◼   ► be in an episode. But it's stuff that we still want to talk about. A really good example

00:40:46 ◼   ► of this is the iPad Pro Magic keyboard. I have wanted to talk to you about this product

00:40:53 ◼   ► for months now, and we've never spoken about it. It's always been in the document, and

00:40:59 ◼   ► we'll do it next time, we'll do it next time. And now it's too old, it's gone. But we would

00:41:04 ◼   ► have spoken about that type of thing on more tax of like here is like a self-contained

00:41:08 ◼   ► thing. It doesn't fit with the rest of the episode for us, but we can include it as bonus

00:41:13 ◼   ► content for people that want more from the show.

00:41:17 ◼   ► That is a, that is a specifically good example because I think that that one got pushed the

00:41:21 ◼   ► most for sure. Or I think anyone who follows me knows like I've just always really resistant

00:41:27 ◼   ► to timely stuff. And so that, that's also a thing that like I push back on sometimes

00:41:32 ◼   ► as topics of like, "No, no, Myke, like the shows should exist as like isolated from the

00:41:38 ◼   ► world things as much as possible." And this provides a format to sometimes be like, "Oh,

00:41:43 ◼   ► okay, you know, this thing that I wouldn't like as a topic regularly like we can cover

00:41:47 ◼   ► in like the more tech segment." Like we've been talking about the membership, like this

00:41:53 ◼   ► has been like a long ongoing conversation about like, "What could be done with the membership

00:41:57 ◼   ► program or like you know what could what could we as a show do and this does feel like the

00:42:04 ◼   ► thing that makes the most sense to both of us is you know I don't want to paywall like

00:42:11 ◼   ► an existing part of the show right like we wouldn't want to say oh ass cortex is now

00:42:17 ◼   ► behind the paywall.

00:42:18 ◼   ► And I'd considered that yeah like that was something I thought about like what if we

00:42:21 ◼   ► just did it ass cortex as a membership thing and that didn't work in my mind because yeah

00:42:26 ◼   ► I like that being part of the show and and it's that exact idea. The easy thing to do is to take something that already exists

00:42:33 ◼   ► Put that behind the paywall and like that's the easy way out, right?

00:42:38 ◼   ► But instead what we are gonna do is spend time working on alright

00:42:42 ◼   ► What do we have that we can talk about that doesn't fit with a show?

00:42:46 ◼   ► But it's still stuff that we think cortex listeners would be interested in but if they miss out

00:42:52 ◼   ► they're not losing a big part of the episode.

00:42:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean this is such a funny thing because for listeners of or followers of any kind of entertainment or media

00:43:02 ◼   ► that's produced in the world, they may hear something and you hear the solution of like, "Oh, this is what we're doing

00:43:06 ◼   ► we're doing this thing called more text." And it sounds like, "Oh, this is very obvious."

00:43:10 ◼   ► But it's I always find that there's the feeling of like it

00:43:14 ◼   ► feels like it's the obvious first thing that you would think of when it's the right thing to do.

00:43:20 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, but yeah as creators you sometimes stumble around for a really long time trying to figure out like

00:43:28 ◼   ► What's it? What's a way to do like the freemium model like what makes sense here to do and what doesn't you try and be?

00:43:36 ◼   ► Really clever with it. Yeah. Yeah, that is a trap

00:43:39 ◼   ► That's very easy to fall into you try to be too clever with it

00:43:42 ◼   ► or

00:43:43 ◼   ► There's all these various things and it is just a funny thing

00:43:47 ◼   ► because I'm just thinking of the listener listening to us trying to explain like, "Oh,

00:43:51 ◼   ► we've been talking about this for a long time." It's like, what is there to talk about for

00:43:54 ◼   ► a long time? It seems very obvious, but it isn't obvious in the trying to figure it out

00:43:59 ◼   ► phase, like what makes sense. And so, yeah, this is what we landed on. And also a big

00:44:06 ◼   ► thing for me, it was also the ad-free back catalog.

00:44:09 ◼   ► Yes. Yeah. So that we, I, we haven't mentioned that yet. So not only are there no ads in

00:44:13 ◼   ► the episodes that are current.

00:44:16 ◼   ► We have also gone back and removed the ads

00:44:18 ◼   ► from all of the episodes in the More Text feed

00:44:21 ◼   ► because if you sign up for More Text,

00:44:23 ◼   ► you get a new feed which has the entire back catalog

00:44:26 ◼   ► of the show.

00:44:28 ◼   ► So you don't need to be subscribed to both

00:44:29 ◼   ► if you wanna listen to old episodes.

00:44:32 ◼   ► And I've been doing this stuff with some of my other shows

00:44:34 ◼   ► as well, doing ad-free with more content.

00:44:37 ◼   ► I'm doing that with two other shows right now.

00:44:39 ◼   ► But they don't have ad-free back catalogs

00:44:42 ◼   ► because two reasons.

00:44:44 ◼   ► One, they both have 300 episodes

00:44:46 ◼   ► and that feels like a horrible job to do.

00:44:49 ◼   ► And two, I just don't think that those shows

00:44:51 ◼   ► are as relistenable because they are

00:44:53 ◼   ► purely current event stuff.

00:44:55 ◼   ► Where Cortex has more of an inherent

00:45:00 ◼   ► relistenability to it.

00:45:02 ◼   ► Or for new people coming to the show,

00:45:04 ◼   ► there is more of a benefit to go back

00:45:06 ◼   ► and listen to some of the old episodes.

00:45:08 ◼   ► So I thought that that made a lot of sense

00:45:11 ◼   ► for providing to people that want to become more tech subscribers.

00:45:16 ◼   ► Yeah and that was like, you know, this is also a thing that it was very easy for me to say the words

00:45:24 ◼   ► like "all the episodes should be ad-free comma mic" because we all know like who's the person

00:45:32 ◼   ► who's going to end up having to actually do the work for that. But again thinking about like,

00:45:38 ◼   ► you know, trying to figure out what are we going to do as the Cortex part of the of the Relay FM

00:45:46 ◼   ► membership program and thinking about the like the kinds of stuff that I support, the ad-free

00:45:53 ◼   ► was like a was like a big deal for me and also the ad-free back catalog, but I was, you know,

00:45:59 ◼   ► I was aware in discussions that this was this was really throwing something over the wall to

00:46:04 ◼   ► to feel like I'm going to say these three, four words and it's going to mean many hours

00:46:09 ◼   ► of work for Myke on the other end. So I'm sorry about that.

00:46:12 ◼   ► I definitely agreed with it, but it was a lot of work. Like making the back catalog

00:46:16 ◼   ► took many, many, many, many, many hours. So one, I'm so happy we have kept all of the

00:46:23 ◼   ► logic projects for this show. I don't do that for my other shows, but we have always kept

00:46:28 ◼   ► from episode one onwards, the entire project,

00:46:32 ◼   ► we saved them in Dropbox and it's like 700 gigabytes

00:46:36 ◼   ► or something at this point.

00:46:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a crazy amount of data.

00:46:39 ◼   ► - And so I've gone in and opened up every episode,

00:46:42 ◼   ► removed all of the ads, tightened up the transitions,

00:46:46 ◼   ► re-exported the shows and have re-uploaded them

00:46:50 ◼   ► for the Moretext feed.

00:46:53 ◼   ► Because of the way we edit, it was like,

00:46:55 ◼   ► I had to do like so much checking,

00:46:56 ◼   ► like sometimes there are multiple Logic projects

00:46:59 ◼   ► for each episode.

00:47:01 ◼   ► - What do you mean, Myke?

00:47:02 ◼   ► I don't understand.

00:47:03 ◼   ► - Like gray edit final final final for publish.logic.

00:47:08 ◼   ► - Oh, I don't know what you're talking about.

00:47:09 ◼   ► - And so having to open up every project,

00:47:11 ◼   ► check it's the right runtime against the published episode,

00:47:14 ◼   ► right, that was what I was doing.

00:47:15 ◼   ► - Oh, okay, that's good idea.

00:47:17 ◼   ► Right, that makes sense.

00:47:18 ◼   ► - And then pulling out the ads,

00:47:20 ◼   ► re-exporting them, re-uploading them.

00:47:22 ◼   ► This was like the perfect example of on paper,

00:47:25 ◼   ► a job somebody else could and maybe should do,

00:47:28 ◼   ► but it's something I would only trust myself to do.

00:47:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is a perfect example of that sort of job.

00:47:33 ◼   ► It does seem like it should be fine,

00:47:36 ◼   ► but we don't want the half edited version of the show

00:47:40 ◼   ► to end up being one of the version that goes up

00:47:43 ◼   ► and ultimately you're the best person

00:47:46 ◼   ► to be able to check that and be able to make sure,

00:47:49 ◼   ► yes, this is really the correct one.

00:47:52 ◼   ► in spite of my very consistent file naming method,

00:47:55 ◼   ► which was there to help you.

00:47:57 ◼   ► - Really a good assistant along the way.

00:48:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause the more finals there are,

00:48:02 ◼   ► that lets you know that it's the really final one.

00:48:05 ◼   ► - Going back to those early episodes,

00:48:08 ◼   ► like the way we sound, so different to now.

00:48:12 ◼   ► One, our microphones are different,

00:48:14 ◼   ► so just the audio quality is better.

00:48:16 ◼   ► And two, both of our accents are very different now.

00:48:20 ◼   ► I know how like your accent is messed up,

00:48:24 ◼   ► but although I would still say,

00:48:26 ◼   ► I think your accent is definitely,

00:48:29 ◼   ► is it fair of me to say better?

00:48:30 ◼   ► - Oh, I think it's better.

00:48:31 ◼   ► I hate the way I sound in the early episodes.

00:48:33 ◼   ► Chim chimity me gov, you know, like it's terrible for me.

00:48:37 ◼   ► Like I prefer this now.

00:48:39 ◼   ► - Okay, good.

00:48:39 ◼   ► Like you said it, I didn't say it, right?

00:48:42 ◼   ► But I think you've developed a more professional

00:48:46 ◼   ► radio voice is maybe a way to put it.

00:48:48 ◼   ► I've rounded off the rough edges, I feel.

00:48:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, you sound less like you've come from the gutter.

00:48:52 ◼   ► - Oh, no, that's not fair.

00:48:55 ◼   ► You can't say it.

00:48:56 ◼   ► I think the thing for you is like,

00:48:59 ◼   ► I couldn't tell you what it is,

00:49:01 ◼   ► but I can tell it's different.

00:49:03 ◼   ► And that's normal.

00:49:04 ◼   ► Like if I go back through the back catalogs

00:49:07 ◼   ► of any show I've done, everyone sounds different.

00:49:09 ◼   ► 'Cause people's voices change,

00:49:11 ◼   ► they change as you get older,

00:49:12 ◼   ► they change depending on the type of people you talk to,

00:49:14 ◼   ► where they come from.

00:49:16 ◼   ► and you pick up like affectations from other people.

00:49:20 ◼   ► Like it's very normal.

00:49:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, there's, I almost think of them

00:49:23 ◼   ► as like linguistic fashions that make their way around.

00:49:27 ◼   ► And also I just like much more so for me than you,

00:49:32 ◼   ► I'm much more used to just talking in a podcast format.

00:49:36 ◼   ► Like there's less metacognition going on

00:49:38 ◼   ► when I'm talking on a podcast than there was before.

00:49:41 ◼   ► Like I have to pay attention less.

00:49:44 ◼   ► And I imagine that can sort of change the way

00:49:46 ◼   ► that a person sounds.

00:49:47 ◼   ► - Because you probably, because of that,

00:49:49 ◼   ► sound more relaxed now than you would have before.

00:49:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, probably.

00:49:53 ◼   ► - So it's just funny to go through those old episodes

00:49:56 ◼   ► and hear the progression, like at high speed.

00:49:59 ◼   ► - Oh, right, yes, 'cause I guess you'd be listening

00:50:01 ◼   ► to a little segment of each of them.

00:50:02 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Right.

00:50:03 ◼   ► You're flying through time at 100x is what you're doing.

00:50:07 ◼   ► - And something that only I care about,

00:50:09 ◼   ► but I do care about it, they're all re-encoded

00:50:11 ◼   ► at a higher bit rate, so they sound better to me.

00:50:13 ◼   ► - Oh, nice.

00:50:14 ◼   ► It's like the Blu-ray release of the show.

00:50:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's the special editions.

00:50:18 ◼   ► Because I'll tell you as well,

00:50:19 ◼   ► I have George Lucas them a little bit.

00:50:21 ◼   ► When I was editing some stuff, recent stuff,

00:50:23 ◼   ► it's like, oh, there's a breath in here

00:50:25 ◼   ► that I would take out now.

00:50:26 ◼   ► Let me just take it out.

00:50:27 ◼   ► So there are very minor differences

00:50:32 ◼   ► between the Mortex versions and the Cortex versions.

00:50:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think you wanna say the remastered edition, right?

00:50:38 ◼   ► The special edition would be,

00:50:40 ◼   ► if we went back and like rerecorded lines we didn't like

00:50:45 ◼   ► with our new different voices,

00:50:46 ◼   ► and so it would fit just perfectly, right?

00:50:49 ◼   ► - I'm so, I really wanna do that now.

00:50:51 ◼   ► Like, somewhere in the back catalog,

00:50:54 ◼   ► like just put in one little conversation, right?

00:50:58 ◼   ► Like just like a very short, oh, that would be so fun.

00:51:00 ◼   ► We're not gonna do it, or are we?

00:51:02 ◼   ► We're not gonna do it, but it would be fun anyway.

00:51:04 ◼   ► - It would be an amazing Easter egg

00:51:07 ◼   ► if there was a small new segment

00:51:09 ◼   ► somewhere in that back catalog.

00:51:11 ◼   ► - Oh, I wish I would have thought of this earlier.

00:51:14 ◼   ► What a selling point, right? It's like the golden ticket?

00:51:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:19 ◼   ► CGP Grey and the podcast factory.

00:51:23 ◼   ► Yeah. That's, you know, it's tempting. You know, it could happen at any time.

00:51:30 ◼   ► I guess that makes me the Oompa Loompa, which I'm not that happy about.

00:51:34 ◼   ► Sure. Yeah, you have to be, I think in this scenario, you are the Oompa Loompa. And I'm

00:51:39 ◼   ► I'm the madman maybe driving a boat to a land of insanity or maybe not, who knows?

00:51:45 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah I can imagine that. Wait, spoilers for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I could

00:51:50 ◼   ► be the guy who pretends to work for the other Chocolate Factory.

00:51:53 ◼   ► Oh, isn't he the villain? He's the villain of the…

00:51:58 ◼   ► No, he pretends to be the villain.

00:51:59 ◼   ► Oh, that's right.

00:52:00 ◼   ► Right?

00:52:01 ◼   ► I don't know. Look, we don't have very many options of who works in the Chocolate

00:52:07 ◼   ► Factory.

00:52:08 ◼   ► Not really.

00:52:09 ◼   ► really only two people.

00:52:12 ◼   ► - You know, in all of this, right,

00:52:15 ◼   ► for me it's about thinking what my business looks like

00:52:20 ◼   ► for me.

00:52:21 ◼   ► So last year was the year of diversification for me, right?

00:52:24 ◼   ► And one of the elements of that was Cortex brand.

00:52:29 ◼   ► And that continues to be an ongoing project.

00:52:31 ◼   ► But similarly now, it's like, okay,

00:52:34 ◼   ► my main product that I make available to the world

00:52:39 ◼   ► is audio content.

00:52:41 ◼   ► That's what I quote unquote, sell.

00:52:44 ◼   ► And the way it is sold right now is put out for free,

00:52:47 ◼   ► supported by advertising.

00:52:49 ◼   ► And as a side note, if you do not subscribe to More Text

00:52:52 ◼   ► or can't or don't want to, just by listening to this show,

00:52:55 ◼   ► you continue to support both of us

00:52:57 ◼   ► because we have advertisements on our show.

00:52:59 ◼   ► So it's like the way that you would say it,

00:53:01 ◼   ► like completely guilt free, right?

00:53:04 ◼   ► Just by listening to this show, you are supporting us.

00:53:07 ◼   ► That is fantastic, right?

00:53:08 ◼   ► And that has been what allows me and us to continue doing all the work that we do is

00:53:13 ◼   ► at the moment primarily advertising.

00:53:15 ◼   ► But I have this other opportunity here where I can offer more of what I do but make it

00:53:24 ◼   ► available for people to purchase from me.

00:53:28 ◼   ► Which is not really something that I've done before in any serious way.

00:53:34 ◼   ► Because I know this about myself.

00:53:36 ◼   ► I subscribe to membership programs from my favorite podcasts to get additional content

00:53:41 ◼   ► from them because they're the shows that I love. And there is always an element to this

00:53:46 ◼   ► of like, Oh, I want to support those creators. But for me more, it's like, no, I love this

00:53:51 ◼   ► show so much. I want to get more of it. So like I want to subscribe to this membership

00:53:56 ◼   ► or this Patreon to get additional content. And I've just kind of gotten to the point

00:54:01 ◼   ► where I want to be able to offer it and we have got the technology to be able to offer

00:54:06 ◼   ► it in the way that we want to.

00:54:09 ◼   ► Advertising has been wonderful for me.

00:54:11 ◼   ► I know how to make it work for our audiences, but this kind of revenue model is susceptible

00:54:18 ◼   ► to market forces outside of my control.

00:54:22 ◼   ► That's what I've learned more now than anything.

00:54:26 ◼   ► Because this stuff had always happened in little pockets.

00:54:30 ◼   ► runs out of money and needs to cancel its advertising. It's like okay, it happens.

00:54:34 ◼   ► But nothing will make you realize the volatility of an industry than a pandemic, right? It has the

00:54:42 ◼   ► ability to shake all the leaves out the trees and that's what's happened. And again, we are in a

00:54:50 ◼   ► much better position than I thought we would be because of a lot of hard work. But I have

00:54:56 ◼   ► I have had highlighted to me that there is a risk area.

00:55:00 ◼   ► And also for myself, I have felt for a while

00:55:04 ◼   ► that I wanna be able to focus more on the content side

00:55:09 ◼   ► of what I do and less on the running

00:55:13 ◼   ► of an advertising business side of what I personally do.

00:55:17 ◼   ► So going forward, I want to be able to put more

00:55:22 ◼   ► my own work time into making the best content I can rather than trying to run

00:55:31 ◼   ► an advertising business. Right. So like behind the scenes at Relay FM we have a

00:55:37 ◼   ► very talented sales manager that we work with and over time what I want to do is

00:55:43 ◼   ► transition more and more of the advertising business to her instead of me.

00:55:48 ◼   ► So I can focus on doing what I want to do.

00:55:52 ◼   ► The whole reason that I created any podcast and then co-founded this company is to make podcasts, not to sell ads.

00:56:02 ◼   ► I sold the ads because the ads needed to be sold so we could make this our living.

00:56:08 ◼   ► But the ads was never what I wanted to do. I just had to do it because someone had to do it.

00:56:14 ◼   ► But what I am best at is making podcasts. That's my skill and I want to do more of that.

00:56:23 ◼   ► So going forward, I want my work to be supported by advertisers and by listeners.

00:56:31 ◼   ► So I am putting more time into making more content in that way.

00:56:39 ◼   ► And in many ways I have looked up to you and what you do.

00:56:44 ◼   ► And when you made that transition,

00:56:46 ◼   ► you made that really great kind of like open letter

00:56:48 ◼   ► type video talking about this,

00:56:50 ◼   ► I think it started to plant the seeds in my head of like,

00:56:54 ◼   ► that's actually where I wanna be.

00:56:57 ◼   ► Focusing on making the best content that I can

00:57:00 ◼   ► and hoping that people will choose to support that content

00:57:06 ◼   ► and get something extra that goes around it.

00:57:10 ◼   ► As a side note, I have a new yearly theme.

00:57:12 ◼   ► We will talk about this next episode.

00:57:15 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

00:57:16 ◼   ► - We have not got enough time to get into that today,

00:57:19 ◼   ► but I encourage our listeners to also consider

00:57:23 ◼   ► changing their yearly themes if they're unhappy with them.

00:57:26 ◼   ► Because my yearly theme, I can't do it.

00:57:30 ◼   ► Everything I wanted to do, I can't do it.

00:57:32 ◼   ► - Well, you know, it's a great time

00:57:34 ◼   ► to think about adjusting your yearly theme

00:57:36 ◼   ► because we've just crossed the threshold into official summer.

00:57:39 ◼   ► - A new season as they say. - So it's a brand new season.

00:57:42 ◼   ► I mean of course pandemic season lays over all of this, but it's a brand new season.

00:57:46 ◼   ► So yes, excellent time to reconsider yearly themes.

00:57:49 ◼   ► - But I've just gone through so much over the last three months.

00:57:54 ◼   ► - Yeah. - That it's made me face rethinking what I do.

00:58:00 ◼   ► So I now have a yearly theme in place to focus on that for the rest of this year,

00:58:06 ◼   ► at least, which is tying into this idea of what do I actually do, right?

00:58:13 ◼   ► Like what do I make?

00:58:14 ◼   ► And what I want to make is content and make that content the best it can be.

00:58:21 ◼   ► So that's, this is in a couple of ways, right?

00:58:24 ◼   ► Like this isn't just making the best membership content.

00:58:28 ◼   ► I want to make the best shows that I can possibly make and also make the best membership content

00:58:36 ◼   ► I can possibly make. By creating the membership stuff and having that as a potentially sustainable

00:58:43 ◼   ► part of my income and my business, I believe that it will allow me to be able to put more

00:58:50 ◼   ► focus on the content that I create in general with a feeling of stability there, therefore

00:58:58 ◼   ► allowing me to put more focus on the shows. Like, I believe this will help Cortex itself

00:59:06 ◼   ► get better because I will be able to put even more focus into making the show as best as

00:59:12 ◼   ► it can possibly be.

00:59:13 ◼   ► Yeah, and that makes sense from a creator psychological perspective

00:59:20 ◼   ► because if you think about how do you fund content

00:59:24 ◼   ► you have advertising and you have member supports and crowdfunding

00:59:29 ◼   ► and advertising is the

00:59:33 ◼   ► what I think of as the high variance part of that question

00:59:37 ◼   ► And crowdfunding is the reliable part of that question.

00:59:44 ◼   ► And I do think that the membership program in the past has basically been a like annual birthday celebration for Relay

00:59:54 ◼   ► is probably the best way to put it.

00:59:56 ◼   ► It's like it's Relay birthday time. Happy birthday to Relay.

01:00:00 ◼   ► And there's a bunch of fun bonus shows.

01:00:03 ◼   ► But I do think that there is a lot of benefit psychologically as a creator to be having a more like

01:00:12 ◼   ► Direct connection with the audience in a way that the crowdfunding model

01:00:18 ◼   ► Encourages so I've been very interested, you know to see you like

01:00:23 ◼   ► move towards this and I think it totally makes sense for relay and for you like and for cortex as

01:00:32 ◼   ► as an adjustment and a change in the business model going forward.

01:00:36 ◼   ► getmoretext.com

01:00:39 ◼   ► However you spell it. Any way you can think of spelling getmoretext.

01:00:42 ◼   ► Not any way. Not any way.

01:00:44 ◼   ► I believe that's what Myke said. Any of the ways you can think of spelling getmoretext.

01:00:51 ◼   ► Typically conceivable ways of spelling that URL is what I will say.

01:00:56 ◼   ► getmoretext.com

01:00:58 ◼   ► I'm gonna blow like the entire first month on just domains.

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01:03:04 ◼   ► All right, so it's WWDC.

01:03:06 ◼   ► - Oh, right.

01:03:06 ◼   ► - WWDC 2020.

01:03:08 ◼   ► - I forgot about that.

01:03:09 ◼   ► This has gotta be the longest of any of our WWDC episodes

01:03:13 ◼   ► before we really get to WWDC proper, you know,

01:03:16 ◼   ► the meat of WWDC.

01:03:18 ◼   ► Well, the theme system conversation was quite long. That's the thing. The theme system's

01:03:22 ◼   ► a year old now.

01:03:23 ◼   ► Oh, is it?

01:03:24 ◼   ► Yeah, because we announced the journal on our WBC episode last year.

01:03:29 ◼   ► Right, right. How young and naive we were about timelines back then.

01:03:34 ◼   ► Look, in case you're wondering, we have some on a boat right now. I will tell this

01:03:39 ◼   ► story later. But there are some on a boat, which is a new experience for us. But there

01:03:47 ◼   ► There are journals on a boat.

01:03:49 ◼   ► So there's quite a lot of stuff that happened at WWDC this year.

01:03:56 ◼   ► More than I was expecting considering the circumstances of the world.

01:04:00 ◼   ► I think I was actually quite surprised at the output that Apple had.

01:04:05 ◼   ► Before you start getting into like the specifics of it, can I just say I think Apple should

01:04:13 ◼   ► never do a live event again.

01:04:14 ◼   ► Alright, so this is a controversial opinion that I have so many conflicted feelings about.

01:04:21 ◼   ► Okay.

01:04:22 ◼   ► Because if they never do another live event again, it means I never got to go to one,

01:04:26 ◼   ► which is the thing that will always bug me.

01:04:29 ◼   ► However, the presentation of their keynote, their video, was so much more entertaining.

01:04:38 ◼   ► Yeah, okay. So it was an interesting viewing experience, right?

01:04:43 ◼   ► Actually, you must know, I don't know.

01:04:45 ◼   ► On YouTube, did they premiere the video

01:04:48 ◼   ► or did it go up like after it was live

01:04:51 ◼   ► on Apple's website or something?

01:04:52 ◼   ► Like how did the logistics of that actually work?

01:04:54 ◼   ► - I expect they premiered it.

01:04:57 ◼   ► I watched it on Apple's official stream.

01:04:59 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:05:00 ◼   ► - But they did have a YouTube video

01:05:03 ◼   ► that was going up at the same time.

01:05:04 ◼   ► So I assume they used the premiere feature.

01:05:07 ◼   ► And they've never put it up on YouTube immediately before,

01:05:10 ◼   ► but they did this time.

01:05:11 ◼   ► - All right, but I presume when you were watching it,

01:05:13 ◼   ► you couldn't fast forward on the Apple thing.

01:05:16 ◼   ► They didn't make it available as here's just a file.

01:05:18 ◼   ► - It's like live, recorded live.

01:05:21 ◼   ► It was a video that obviously they were not live, right?

01:05:24 ◼   ► Nothing was live, it was all prerecorded.

01:05:26 ◼   ► - I love how complicated it is to try to explain

01:05:28 ◼   ► in the modern world the concept of broadcast TV.

01:05:32 ◼   ► It's like, well, there's a thing that you've recorded

01:05:34 ◼   ► and it's playing, but it's not live.

01:05:36 ◼   ► It's funny to me how this idea has fallen off the world

01:05:40 ◼   ► in a funny way.

01:05:41 ◼   ► So they premiered this thing and they did a fantastic job of putting on a show.

01:05:47 ◼   ► Now, the one thing I was aware of is they had the huge advantage that they really

01:05:54 ◼   ► leaned on of, "Hey, we can use this as an opportunity to take you on like a pseudo

01:06:01 ◼   ► tour of the campus of, of like their new Apple spaceship campus."

01:06:06 ◼   ► And I thought that was kind of a great framing of all of the content and added like an extra little bit of fun of like,

01:06:15 ◼   ► Oh, you know, where is this theater exactly?

01:06:19 ◼   ► Oh, where is the exercise area in Apple?

01:06:22 ◼   ► Is the secret lab really underneath the lake?

01:06:25 ◼   ► I don't know, but I kind of assume that it is now.

01:06:27 ◼   ► Like, I think that was really fun.

01:06:29 ◼   ► And that's not an advantage that they would have in the future, but it worked great for this one.

01:06:34 ◼   ► But I don't know, like, just watching it, the only thing I could think the whole time is like,

01:06:39 ◼   ► I don't think they should ever do another live event again.

01:06:42 ◼   ► I think that they should make produced videos for people to watch in this way, and

01:06:50 ◼   ► maybe, maybe the only thing that they could do is like,

01:06:56 ◼   ► it wouldn't really make any sense, but they could do a live presentation to some people they lock down

01:07:00 ◼   ► under a life-destroying non-disclosure agreement.

01:07:03 ◼   ► That's pointless.

01:07:04 ◼   ► You think that's pointless?

01:07:05 ◼   ► Either, I mean, it's kind of like, I, for me, it's one or the other.

01:07:08 ◼   ► Do one or the other.

01:07:09 ◼   ► You either do it all live or not live.

01:07:12 ◼   ► I'm trying to think of a way that you could attend one of these.

01:07:14 ◼   ► Right?

01:07:16 ◼   ► It's like you could be in the audience because it is funny to think that they

01:07:20 ◼   ► built this brand new Steve Jobs theater and is like, do we need to use it?

01:07:26 ◼   ► You know, maybe it's just for company movie night is, is what happens.

01:07:30 ◼   ► I honestly think that they really like having the press there.

01:07:34 ◼   ► I do. And they like having it, they like being able to take these people and show them the products afterwards

01:07:40 ◼   ► and have all the videos made and all that kind of stuff.

01:07:44 ◼   ► It would surprise me if they moved away from that.

01:07:47 ◼   ► I would say I could more imagine them making this video for WWDC.

01:07:53 ◼   ► I can't imagine them doing it for the iPhone.

01:07:56 ◼   ► Oh, I wasn't really thinking about the iPhone.

01:08:00 ◼   ► Okay, I don't know. I think if I was at Apple, I'd like I'd still my vote if I was on the executive team would be to say like let's never bother with these live events again.

01:08:09 ◼   ► I think this went this went well enough even though there's a kind of excitement there but I'm going to bet that you're right that the live events continue.

01:08:19 ◼   ► That this ends up being like a one-off but I really do want to congratulate them on how well it was done.

01:08:25 ◼   ► And it was just very interesting to watch.

01:08:27 ◼   ► Just a couple of little stylistic choices I was really aware of, like even how right in the beginning

01:08:32 ◼   ► they have the camera on the stage, pointed at Tim Cook with the empty audience in the background.

01:08:39 ◼   ► And I thought like, "Oh, it's the right call. That's totally the right call."

01:08:43 ◼   ► Like, everyone knows why this is happening.

01:08:45 ◼   ► Because it was like, it started like you see the screen as normal and then the camera moved around him, right?

01:08:51 ◼   ► And then he was facing the camera.

01:08:53 ◼   ► One, I like that move because they immediately were able to show you this is not going to

01:08:57 ◼   ► look like what you're used to.

01:08:59 ◼   ► Which I thought was quite a clever framing device.

01:09:02 ◼   ► But then also you say, it's like owning it, right?

01:09:04 ◼   ► Like this is what you're used to seeing.

01:09:06 ◼   ► There should be people in those seats.

01:09:07 ◼   ► There's nobody in those seats.

01:09:08 ◼   ► Yeah, it was really well done.

01:09:11 ◼   ► If I'm not going to be like in previous years, physically in California, where it can be

01:09:18 ◼   ► fun to watch the live stream with other people who are there for WWDC and it becomes like

01:09:24 ◼   ► a community experience. Like that's fun and I would miss that. But the highly produced

01:09:30 ◼   ► video I just I found like a much better, denser, snappier way to convey the information.

01:09:36 ◼   ► Which makes sense, right? Like if you have the ability to A) do multiple takes and B)

01:09:42 ◼   ► after the fact, you have the ability to make, and you should, make a more engaging, better paced video.

01:09:50 ◼   ► You can pull those editing tricks like you can have that hidden cut where Craig goes off camera

01:09:56 ◼   ► so he can catch his breath after running up the stairs and then pop back in and keep talking

01:10:01 ◼   ► normally, you know, like "oh we'll just we'll just keep on moving moving right along."

01:10:04 ◼   ► They set the bar for everyone else, again as they do with presentations, right? Like

01:10:10 ◼   ► Apple set the bar, like Steve Jobs set the bar for what a product demonstration should look like.

01:10:16 ◼   ► Nobody was showing off products the way that they show off products now before Steve started doing

01:10:20 ◼   ► it. Having these big stage events and there's all these slides and we're gonna and the CEO of the

01:10:26 ◼   ► company is presenting to you. Like CEOs don't have to be presenters. CEOs only present because Steve

01:10:32 ◼   ► Jobs presented because he was a very good if not the best product presenter. And so then all CEOs

01:10:38 ◼   ► felt like they needed to be the people that present products, which isn't always the best

01:10:42 ◼   ► thing for the product. And it changed the way that this type of stuff was done. And

01:10:47 ◼   ► I think that there was a lot of question about how were Apple going to manage this. And I

01:10:52 ◼   ► think they have set the bar again for how you can do something like this. If you're

01:10:58 ◼   ► going to try and show off your products in a similar way that you did before, but now

01:11:02 ◼   ► there's no audience, how do you do it? And they did it. The way that everything was done

01:11:07 ◼   ► visually was very refreshing and still worked very well. From a production

01:11:12 ◼   ► perspective it was just superb.

01:11:14 ◼   ► I only watched the keynotes. I started to watch the

01:11:18 ◼   ► like the developers State of the Union.

01:11:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:11:21 ◼   ► But I ended up abandoning it because I felt like it was more of like a rehash

01:11:25 ◼   ► than it has been in past years.

01:11:27 ◼   ► Right.

01:11:28 ◼   ► But I just kind of wondering because I

01:11:30 ◼   ► haven't seen the rest of the videos that have come out like what is the style for

01:11:34 ◼   ► all of the other sessions that have been going on.

01:11:37 ◼   ► Like when you're watching the video about,

01:11:39 ◼   ► here's the details of WatchKit.

01:11:41 ◼   ► Like what is the visual presentation for those?

01:11:43 ◼   ► - It's typically one or two people, but not together, right?

01:11:47 ◼   ► So they might have like one person in one location,

01:11:49 ◼   ► then they switch over to one person in another location.

01:11:52 ◼   ► But they're all shot at Apple Park

01:11:55 ◼   ► with beautiful backgrounds, right?

01:11:57 ◼   ► You're either looking out on the outside area

01:11:59 ◼   ► through the windows, or they're in a room

01:12:02 ◼   ► which has beautiful furniture in it.

01:12:03 ◼   ► And it's one person presenting to the camera.

01:12:06 ◼   ► And when they have slides,

01:12:07 ◼   ► they like kind of shrink them down to a picture in picture

01:12:11 ◼   ► and they have the slide

01:12:12 ◼   ► and they had the person in the corner still talking.

01:12:14 ◼   ► And again, it's like,

01:12:15 ◼   ► we all thought they were just gonna have engineers

01:12:17 ◼   ► doing Zoom calls from home and they will record those, right?

01:12:20 ◼   ► That's what people thought

01:12:20 ◼   ► these sessions were gonna look like.

01:12:23 ◼   ► But instead they found a way to produce them

01:12:26 ◼   ► at incredible quality.

01:12:28 ◼   ► They all look fantastic.

01:12:30 ◼   ► And they're set in such a beautiful way.

01:12:32 ◼   ► And there's like a weird thing that we started to notice

01:12:35 ◼   ► where they always have a table.

01:12:37 ◼   ► Most of them, they have a table in front of them.

01:12:40 ◼   ► And every person has a item on the table

01:12:44 ◼   ► and they're becoming increasingly peculiar.

01:12:47 ◼   ► So I've seen somebody who had a Newton, the old PDA.

01:12:52 ◼   ► - Right, yeah, yeah.

01:12:53 ◼   ► - One person had what looked like a tiny porcelain dog.

01:12:57 ◼   ► Another person had one of those desktop pool tables,

01:13:01 ◼   ► tiny pool tables. Like they seem to be, I think what I'm guessing is like these are

01:13:07 ◼   ► set dressings. They wanted a set dressing, but it's individual to the person. Like

01:13:11 ◼   ► bring something meaningful to you or like bring something from your desk. And so like

01:13:15 ◼   ► they are adding these like fun little personality items to the presentation set dressing, which

01:13:21 ◼   ► is really kind of peculiar but fun to see.

01:13:24 ◼   ► Hmm. It's interesting that they're in Apple Park and that if there's more than one person,

01:13:29 ◼   ► cutting between two different locations. It's just it's funny to me because it's a little bit like

01:13:36 ◼   ► you know I'm sure Apple can create an incredibly safe and very sterile environment if they want to

01:13:45 ◼   ► but they're visually presenting. People are separate. I think they are going to a good length

01:13:51 ◼   ► here to really show that they're being cautious way more than they probably are.

01:13:58 ◼   ► Like I said, look, I'm sure they are practicing social distancing there.

01:14:02 ◼   ► Like we've seen reports that they are, they have people back at the office.

01:14:05 ◼   ► They could have people in the same room, but on either ends of a large table,

01:14:09 ◼   ► but they're not doing that.

01:14:10 ◼   ► In the main presentation, it sort of struck me as funny.

01:14:13 ◼   ► Like it was a little bit of a clean apocalypse. I'm like, Oh, in the future,

01:14:17 ◼   ► three people live on the Apple campus, right? Like they,

01:14:22 ◼   ► they have all of this space just to themselves.

01:14:24 ◼   ► It just struck me as a visually funny thing that it like, while it was very well done, it did have a little bit of this, like, what a beautiful post apocalypse this is, because no one can be in a room with anyone else.

01:14:37 ◼   ► But it does make sense, you know, when if like, you're visually deciding how do you want to show this, like I would have made the same decision too.

01:14:44 ◼   ► It's just once you tune into it, it's sort of it's sort of funny. So I was interested to hear that they're continuing that aesthetic in the individual sessions.

01:14:51 ◼   ► It has been known throughout Cortex's history that the Apple Pencil is an important tool in our arsenal.

01:14:58 ◼   ► It was fun for me because during the keynote they were talking about how, you know, like some people like to use the Apple Pencil to navigate their iPads.

01:15:06 ◼   ► And I'm like, yeah! Yeah! Do you remember that? When we forced you to put it back?

01:15:11 ◼   ► Right? So yes, you're right. You're correct.

01:15:15 ◼   ► Huge acknowledgement of people like to navigate with their Apple Pencils for sure.

01:15:21 ◼   ► But they've added a couple of things to this release,

01:15:24 ◼   ► and the biggest one for me,

01:15:27 ◼   ► and it is my favorite new iPadOS feature,

01:15:30 ◼   ► is called Scribble.

01:15:32 ◼   ► And this is where you can use the Apple Pencil

01:15:35 ◼   ► to handwrite in any text box,

01:15:37 ◼   ► and it converts it automatically to text.

01:15:40 ◼   ► - Yeah. - And it's fantastic.

01:15:42 ◼   ► Have you used it?

01:15:43 ◼   ► Yeah? - Okay, so I haven't installed

01:15:44 ◼   ► any of the betas on any of my stuff.

01:15:47 ◼   ► Again, in no small part,

01:15:48 ◼   ► because I totally forgot about all of this,

01:15:50 ◼   ► but I also think this is the year where I'm gonna pass on any of the betas.

01:15:53 ◼   ► I know I often say that, but I really do think this is the year where I'm just not going to.

01:15:57 ◼   ► What would you do if I told you...

01:16:00 ◼   ► - What? - That I am running iPadOS Beta 1.

01:16:03 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm. - And it is incredibly stable.

01:16:06 ◼   ► I mean, that's, you know, that's interesting.

01:16:07 ◼   ► It's like, do you remember how good iOS 12 was?

01:16:10 ◼   ► It feels like that right now.

01:16:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, okay. - Nothing is broken.

01:16:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, cool story bro, but I think I'm gonna hold off this year.

01:16:18 ◼   ► The scribble was the thing that immediately caught my attention.

01:16:22 ◼   ► And partly because, you know how Apple talks about, what are the names for those teams

01:16:27 ◼   ► that they say they have?

01:16:28 ◼   ► We're like, "Oh, we have a bunch of professional video editors in-house and we spy on them

01:16:32 ◼   ► while they work to see what it is that they're doing."

01:16:33 ◼   ► The pro workflow teams.

01:16:34 ◼   ► Pro workflow teams.

01:16:35 ◼   ► The scribble feature feels a little bit like there's a pro iPad team, like people who just

01:16:43 ◼   ► to use the iPad all day long.

01:16:45 ◼   ► And that feels like a feature that someone picks up on of,

01:16:50 ◼   ► oh, the people who never like to put down the pencil,

01:16:53 ◼   ► it's always a pain in the butt

01:16:54 ◼   ► when they have to work in an actual text field.

01:16:57 ◼   ► And so that is a great, great feature to see added.

01:17:01 ◼   ► And I know that that's something

01:17:03 ◼   ► I'm really going to take advantage of,

01:17:05 ◼   ► because right now the way I've sort of gotten around it

01:17:09 ◼   ► is on my iPad I have the keyboard float

01:17:12 ◼   ► as like the teeny tiny floating keyboard

01:17:15 ◼   ► where you can then also turn on the swipe gestures.

01:17:19 ◼   ► And so that's how I've always done

01:17:20 ◼   ► when there's a text entry is like, okay,

01:17:23 ◼   ► I use swipe on the tiny keyboard with the pencil

01:17:25 ◼   ► and it's fine.

01:17:27 ◼   ► But Scribble is like, it is that perfect kind

01:17:29 ◼   ► of Apple feature of it would never have occurred to me

01:17:32 ◼   ► to request this, but I'm really glad this is a feature

01:17:36 ◼   ► that's being added.

01:17:38 ◼   ► And so I'm happy to hear your report

01:17:40 ◼   ► that it's working well in all of the various text boxes?

01:17:43 ◼   ► - So it works basically everywhere except applications

01:17:46 ◼   ► that are doing super weird stuff with text,

01:17:48 ◼   ► like Google Docs.

01:17:49 ◼   ► - Okay, right, yeah, well that makes sense.

01:17:51 ◼   ► - Because they have like their own

01:17:52 ◼   ► complete text rendering system.

01:17:55 ◼   ► But any application that has a standard text

01:17:58 ◼   ► entering system, which is pretty much all of them,

01:18:00 ◼   ► you know, like I'm using apps like Slack and Twitter

01:18:02 ◼   ► and stuff and it's all working.

01:18:04 ◼   ► All you need to do is you just take the Apple Pencil

01:18:06 ◼   ► and you start handwriting.

01:18:08 ◼   ► and it's converting the text as you write.

01:18:11 ◼   ► And I have found it to be really forgiving and very accurate.

01:18:16 ◼   ► Oh, hey, here's a question.

01:18:17 ◼   ► You have the iPad in front of you right now, right?

01:18:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I do.

01:18:20 ◼   ► Does it recognize joined up handwriting or cursive?

01:18:24 ◼   ► Yep, and you can mix.

01:18:25 ◼   ► Interesting.

01:18:26 ◼   ► Because that's how I write.

01:18:27 ◼   ► You write with cursive, is that what you're saying?

01:18:28 ◼   ► I do both.

01:18:29 ◼   ► That's the crazy thing about my handwriting.

01:18:31 ◼   ► Sometimes it's a really weird form of cursive

01:18:35 ◼   ► because my handwriting is not particularly neat.

01:18:38 ◼   ► Sometimes I write in block letters, right? And I mix them in the same sentence and it recognizes all of it

01:18:44 ◼   ► That's pretty good that it does cursive. I wouldn't have expected that. I was impressed when I tested it that the writing

01:18:50 ◼   ► recognition and notes will recognize cursive words

01:18:53 ◼   ► Which I'm always surprised at and so I figure their new like copy paste thing would probably work with cursive

01:18:59 ◼   ► But I was wondering if the scribble would would let you actually write in cursive into a text box

01:19:04 ◼   ► So that's that's very interesting and it does that thing that you will do with dictation

01:19:08 ◼   ► Where sometimes it will put a blue underline on a word?

01:19:12 ◼   ► Which you can tap and select from other words that it think it might be if it's messed up one

01:19:17 ◼   ► Hmm, but then there's some other stuff

01:19:19 ◼   ► So if when you're using this mode if you want to delete a word you just scribble over it

01:19:24 ◼   ► Hmm and it deletes like how you would if you wanted to scribble something out because you spell it incorrectly

01:19:29 ◼   ► mmm, if you want to select text you just draw a line over it or

01:19:33 ◼   ► circle it. And you can select the text which has been converted from handwriting to text.

01:19:40 ◼   ► It's so cool.

01:19:41 ◼   ► Yeah, I have to say I was quite impressed with a lot of the notes stuff.

01:19:46 ◼   ► But this is more than in notes though.

01:19:48 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, what I mean though is I was thinking of like copying the handwritten text.

01:19:53 ◼   ► Yes, that's another part of this. So like there's these two things. One is you write

01:19:58 ◼   ► in handwriting and it converts it to text. The other is you can, if you just want to

01:20:02 ◼   ► do handwritten notes, so it's written in your handwriting

01:20:06 ◼   ► and you're looking at that, you can then also copy that

01:20:09 ◼   ► and convert it to text.

01:20:11 ◼   ► Or you can draw shapes and stuff and you can have them,

01:20:15 ◼   ► it's like if you draw a circle that's imperfect,

01:20:17 ◼   ► it can snap it to be an actual perfect circle.

01:20:20 ◼   ► They've done some wild stuff and any app

01:20:23 ◼   ► that uses PencilKit, which is like the pencil API,

01:20:27 ◼   ► gets all of this stuff.

01:20:29 ◼   ► - Oh, interesting.

01:20:31 ◼   ► It's not just in notes, it's part of Pencilkit.

01:20:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, I assumed it was system-wide text input stuff,

01:20:39 ◼   ► but I didn't realize it was baked right into Pencilkit.

01:20:41 ◼   ► That's very interesting.

01:20:42 ◼   ► As always with any of these things at WWDC,

01:20:46 ◼   ► you never quite know how you're going to actually use it.

01:20:52 ◼   ► But I have been very impressed with all the updates

01:20:54 ◼   ► that they've done to notes over the years.

01:20:56 ◼   ► And with this, I did find myself wondering

01:21:00 ◼   ► for the first time if I would start to actually be able to use

01:21:05 ◼   ► handwritten notes and things for more of like the research work that I do.

01:21:11 ◼   ► Because I've never really used that because it's always been a pain to like

01:21:15 ◼   ► get stuff out or move stuff around.

01:21:18 ◼   ► But it just like, it just occurred to me like, "Oh, this might be an interesting thing to try

01:21:23 ◼   ► on a future video project to test this out is to like

01:21:29 ◼   ► have a notebook like I would have had a notebook in school where it's like these are my handwritten

01:21:33 ◼   ► notes like on this topic and I can I can easily get stuff out and in and move it around so

01:21:38 ◼   ► it's it's really quite impressive what they've done with all of that.

01:21:42 ◼   ► Yeah the system is it's one of those things that I can't even believe is as good as it is

01:21:47 ◼   ► like they even have like if you write a phone number down it recognizes that it's a phone

01:21:53 ◼   ► number and you can tap it to call. I don't think I'm going to be calling people from my

01:21:58 ◼   ► my handwritten notes anytime soon, but it's impressive that I can do that.

01:22:02 ◼   ► It's like it's good if you're a meeting person, you know?

01:22:05 ◼   ► Yeah, no, of course, I take a lot of meetings.

01:22:09 ◼   ► Hey, give me your phone number so I can give you a call, I'll write it down.

01:22:13 ◼   ► But Myke, the big thing is the widgets.

01:22:16 ◼   ► The widgets are the big thing.

01:22:17 ◼   ► So there's a few things going on with the home screens on iOS and iPadOS.

01:22:21 ◼   ► There are now widgets that look very different to the widgets we've had in the past.

01:22:26 ◼   ► the iPhone you can put them anywhere on the home screen now. On the iPad they

01:22:32 ◼   ► still stay on the left hand side. You can't put them wherever you want. And these

01:22:37 ◼   ► widgets are very heavily designed and they show information. The best way to

01:22:44 ◼   ► think of these widgets is more like Apple watch stuff than the widgets we've

01:22:48 ◼   ► had before. What do you mean by that? Okay so you know how you have like our

01:22:52 ◼   ► favorite app Timery has a widget where you can tap and it will start a timer and you

01:22:58 ◼   ► don't have to go into the application. These new widgets do not work like that. So the

01:23:02 ◼   ► widgets can have no interactive buttons in them.

01:23:05 ◼   ► Ah, okay. So they are intended to show information only and you can tap them in certain areas

01:23:12 ◼   ► and it will open the application to different functions but things can't be done in the

01:23:17 ◼   ► background. The only widget that can do things in the background is the

01:23:21 ◼   ► shortcuts widget.

01:23:22 ◼   ► Oh, okay, okay. Alright, so that's interesting though, so then that means like

01:23:26 ◼   ► this is a totally different category of widget.

01:23:32 ◼   ► Yes. So like on my iPhone one of the widgets that I have is the OmniFocus

01:23:38 ◼   ► widget. And I can check off to-do items from that widget, but that would

01:23:43 ◼   ► not be possible under the new system. It could display like, oh here's your top two items

01:23:48 ◼   ► or whatever. But if I were to tap on it, it then has to open the OmniFocus app.

01:23:53 ◼   ► Yes.

01:23:54 ◼   ► Huh. That's kind of a pain for developers. Like now they have yet another thing that's

01:23:58 ◼   ► a little bit different?

01:23:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:24:00 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

01:24:01 ◼   ► Especially because the old widget type has been deprecated. So you can still run them,

01:24:07 ◼   ► but then they're no longer officially supported. So developers are being encouraged to leave

01:24:12 ◼   ► their old widgets behind basically and make new ones.

01:24:15 ◼   ► Oh okay, so they're taking away my old widgets.

01:24:18 ◼   ► Not yet, not yet.

01:24:20 ◼   ► I think, like many of us think now, that like maybe next year there'll be buttons.

01:24:25 ◼   ► Yeah that makes sense.

01:24:26 ◼   ► But this year no buttons.

01:24:27 ◼   ► That makes sense.

01:24:29 ◼   ► So basically we're going into new territory with these widgets and we'll have more interesting

01:24:35 ◼   ► things going on because our home screens will now be able to show us information.

01:24:41 ◼   ► We won't be able to get the interactivity out of them for me. I feel like this is a fine trade-off to begin. Yeah

01:24:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean look I'm happy for

01:24:49 ◼   ► Anything at all to happen with a redesign of the iPhone in particular home screen. Yeah, which has been mostly

01:24:57 ◼   ► Completely useless to me for years anyway, so even without the buttons

01:25:02 ◼   ► I'm happy to be entering a new widget eworld and to be able to explore

01:25:07 ◼   ► options with that because the home screen for me has just been a

01:25:10 ◼   ► dead blank

01:25:13 ◼   ► rectangle of uselessness for years

01:25:15 ◼   ► So I'm interested to see how the widgets go and please stop if you're standing feedback now to tell us that Android's been doing like

01:25:21 ◼   ► We know that Android has widgets

01:25:23 ◼   ► You don't need to tell us the same as what I'm about to say

01:25:26 ◼   ► I know Android does this and I'm now very happy that it's coming to iOS which is what Apple calling App Library

01:25:32 ◼   ► Which is a list of applications in two different ways

01:25:37 ◼   ► They categorize them for you and you can also get an alphabet alphabetized list of all the applications that you have installed and

01:25:44 ◼   ► You can now remove the extra home screens that you don't want anymore

01:25:49 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. I cannot wait to do our first home screens episode after

01:25:54 ◼   ► iOS 14 ships

01:25:57 ◼   ► Mmm, because our home screens are gonna look nothing like they did before like I just expect your home screen

01:26:03 ◼   ► and will have no apps on it anymore and just widgets,

01:26:06 ◼   ► 'cause you'll be able to do that.

01:26:07 ◼   ► And if you want the apps, you can either search for them

01:26:09 ◼   ► the way you always have before,

01:26:10 ◼   ► or you can swipe over to the app library,

01:26:13 ◼   ► they're categorized and also alphabetized.

01:26:15 ◼   ► So I'm really happy about this

01:26:17 ◼   ► because I only wanna have one home screen now,

01:26:20 ◼   ► like, and I've wanted that for a while.

01:26:22 ◼   ► Everything else is basically just in folders.

01:26:24 ◼   ► And then I installed another app.

01:26:26 ◼   ► And then it's like, oh, now I have a third screen.

01:26:28 ◼   ► What app do I need to move?

01:26:29 ◼   ► I'm not sure.

01:26:31 ◼   ► I will be super happy to have one home screen with less app

01:26:34 ◼   ► icons on it, some widgets on there, maybe a second screen

01:26:37 ◼   ► that just has more widgets.

01:26:38 ◼   ► But all of my app icons are all hidden away in lists

01:26:42 ◼   ► that I don't need to maintain anymore.

01:26:44 ◼   ► I am very much looking forward to that.

01:26:46 ◼   ► One more question that occurred to me about the widget, which

01:26:49 ◼   ► you may or may not have the answer to.

01:26:51 ◼   ► But I'm thinking, what is the situation now

01:26:55 ◼   ► with the lock screen and widgets?

01:26:57 ◼   ► So like on your phone, you can access the old style widgets by sliding over.

01:27:02 ◼   ► Like is that basically unchanged currently?

01:27:06 ◼   ► I believe so. I mean, you could still do that on the iPad.

01:27:09 ◼   ► I'm not running iOS 14 on my iPhone.

01:27:12 ◼   ► Right. Right.

01:27:13 ◼   ► But my expectation is that you can still get to some form of widgets there, too.

01:27:18 ◼   ► And you can have multiple instances of a widget.

01:27:23 ◼   ► So I have two shortcuts widgets in my widgets on my iPad.

01:27:28 ◼   ► The reason I'm doing this is this is how I'm gonna get

01:27:30 ◼   ► around the fact that in the future,

01:27:32 ◼   ► my beloved Timery widget won't work.

01:27:35 ◼   ► I'm gonna create a set of Timery shortcuts

01:27:40 ◼   ► that I access through the widget.

01:27:42 ◼   ► And when I assume there will be a Timery widget

01:27:45 ◼   ► that shows like information about the timers

01:27:48 ◼   ► that I'm running, which I'm assuming they will probably try

01:27:50 ◼   ► and do something like that.

01:27:51 ◼   ► 'cause you can drop widgets on top of each other, right?

01:27:54 ◼   ► So I will have like a time tracking widget stack

01:27:57 ◼   ► where I will see one widget will be the time rate widget

01:28:00 ◼   ► and I can swipe to the other one

01:28:01 ◼   ► and press the buttons that I want

01:28:03 ◼   ► and they just run the shortcuts in the background.

01:28:04 ◼   ► - Ah, oh, that's clever.

01:28:06 ◼   ► That's a clever idea.

01:28:07 ◼   ► - So I'll hide the buttons,

01:28:09 ◼   ► like the shortcuts related to the other widget behind it,

01:28:13 ◼   ► to swipe, tap it, swipe back.

01:28:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, that makes sense.

01:28:16 ◼   ► That's a really good idea.

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01:30:23 ◼   ► We should actually talk about shortcuts because Gray, there's so much and you probably don't

01:30:28 ◼   ► know it because they didn't put it in the keynote.

01:30:30 ◼   ► My overall perception of the WWDC was a little bit of, "Oh, nice!"

01:30:36 ◼   ► You know, like nice, nothing super exciting, but a bunch of welcome improvements, particularly

01:30:41 ◼   ► to maps as well.

01:30:42 ◼   ► I'm always happy about the map section.

01:30:44 ◼   ► Oh God, I forgot about that.

01:30:46 ◼   ► You and your maps.

01:30:47 ◼   ► I'm just going to assume.

01:30:48 ◼   ► When the maps part was happening, I was like, oh, snooze fest.

01:30:51 ◼   ► I just wasn't paying attention at all.

01:30:54 ◼   ► How dare you?

01:30:55 ◼   ► I was like, Meg Frost is my girl.

01:30:57 ◼   ► Like tell me about maps.

01:30:58 ◼   ► Like, oh, this is great.

01:30:59 ◼   ► Cycle directions.

01:31:00 ◼   ► Fantastic.

01:31:01 ◼   ► This guides clearly yet more hints at your AR program.

01:31:05 ◼   ► "Yeah, no, the map section." I was like, "Great, tell me everything that you can."

01:31:09 ◼   ► But so generally, over the whole thing, I just felt like, "Oh, this is nice." A bunch of nice

01:31:14 ◼   ► improvements, but nothing super exciting. But it felt like, "Okay, maybe they'll iron out some

01:31:20 ◼   ► bugs and we'll have a nice stable year." And it did only occur to me afterward that I was like,

01:31:26 ◼   ► "Was there anything about shortcuts?" And I don't think there was in the actual presentation itself.

01:31:30 ◼   ► So I know nothing about this. Please tell me the exciting things for automation that's coming down the line here.

01:31:36 ◼   ► The app has been redesigned in that it has this new iPad kind of design style which includes

01:31:44 ◼   ► sidebars and toolbars and stuff like they look closer to the new Mac OS design.

01:31:49 ◼   ► So now we have sidebars on the side which adds for folders.

01:31:55 ◼   ► Oh thank god.

01:31:57 ◼   ► and you can create widgets from shortcuts in folders.

01:32:01 ◼   ► So you can have multiple widgets that relate to folders.

01:32:05 ◼   ► Hmm. Right?

01:32:06 ◼   ► So basically there's new ways of categorizing things.

01:32:10 ◼   ► And they're called folders, but really they're just sections in a sidebar, you know?

01:32:14 ◼   ► Yeah, but whatever. I'll take it.

01:32:16 ◼   ► But it's organization, right? Like any is good.

01:32:18 ◼   ► Currently for all of my timers, I've ended up having to name them all like

01:32:24 ◼   ► T colon space and then whatever the name is for the actual timer just to try to like

01:32:29 ◼   ► have some way to search for just those and it's like it's been such a nightmare trying to have

01:32:35 ◼   ► any level of organization for shortcuts so if that was the only feature added to shortcuts I would be

01:32:43 ◼   ► thrilled. They've added multi-window support. Oh nice. So you can have two versions of the

01:32:50 ◼   ► the shortcuts app side by side, which can help with dragging and dropping and stuff.

01:32:55 ◼   ► In the shortcuts builder, you can now copy and paste actions.

01:33:00 ◼   ► Fantastic.

01:33:01 ◼   ► Right?

01:33:02 ◼   ► So needed.

01:33:03 ◼   ► Fantastic.

01:33:04 ◼   ► But then, my friend, they have done some wild stuff to automation of shortcuts.

01:33:12 ◼   ► Okay.

01:33:13 ◼   ► Please tell me.

01:33:14 ◼   ► Okay.

01:33:15 ◼   ► So they've added in a bunch of new automation triggers.

01:33:19 ◼   ► So there are new kind of things that can trigger off an automation.

01:33:24 ◼   ► So before we had stuff like time of day and all that kind of stuff, right?

01:33:29 ◼   ► And when you open an app, you can run a shortcut.

01:33:33 ◼   ► There is now email and message automation triggers.

01:33:37 ◼   ► So when I get a message from this person or when I get a message from this person that

01:33:46 ◼   ► includes the following phrase run this shortcut or an email that contains a subject or to

01:33:58 ◼   ► any account an account that I choose recipient that I choose run this shortcut with the real

01:34:07 ◼   ► key now being that you can run automations without you needing to approve them.

01:34:15 ◼   ► Oh, thank f***ing god.

01:34:17 ◼   ► Yes.

01:34:18 ◼   ► Okay, alright, because it's like you're telling me there's new triggers and it's like, great,

01:34:21 ◼   ► great, but like my disappointment last year was tremendous.

01:34:25 ◼   ► Like, we have all of these triggers, but you still need to manually confirm each time,

01:34:30 ◼   ► completely negating all of the value of the thing.

01:34:34 ◼   ► That is fantastic.

01:34:37 ◼   ► I cannot believe that they can run without user interaction.

01:34:40 ◼   ► So the new ones in total are when I get an email, when I get a message, when an app is

01:34:46 ◼   ► closed, when a battery level is reached, when I attach my phone to a charger, and then there

01:34:52 ◼   ► are also some shortcuts that can be set off from the new sleep actions that they have

01:34:57 ◼   ► which tie in with the Apple Watch.

01:35:00 ◼   ► Now there are also a selection of automations that you can run without there needing to

01:35:04 ◼   ► be input.

01:35:06 ◼   ► Unfortunately one that is absent from this list is location change, which I know is a

01:35:10 ◼   ► frustration for you because I know that was one you really wanted.

01:35:14 ◼   ► But not a problem right now, so I can probably let that one go for a bit.

01:35:18 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not a problem right now.

01:35:20 ◼   ► And if you can have something run at time of day, you can get around the location change.

01:35:25 ◼   ► ways to fix that if you can have stuff run without you manually needing to check it.

01:35:30 ◼   ► I will say for the moment I'm not sure if the when I get an email or when I get a message

01:35:36 ◼   ► runs without your input. I'm not 100% sure about that but I do have a definite list of

01:35:41 ◼   ► ones that can be triggered.

01:35:43 ◼   ► Okay, can time of day run without input?

01:35:46 ◼   ► Yes.

01:35:47 ◼   ► Great. That solves every problem.

01:35:48 ◼   ► So this is the list that I know. Run without input includes a time of day when an alarm

01:35:53 ◼   ► is set when the sleep mode starts when you begin a workout when you have car

01:35:58 ◼   ► play related stuff mm-hmm put your phone into airplane mode touch an NFC trigger

01:36:02 ◼   ► put into do not disturb when low power mode turns on when you open an app when

01:36:06 ◼   ► you close an app when you've reached a certain battery level or attach your

01:36:10 ◼   ► phone to a charger great so you still get a notification mm-hmm but you don't

01:36:14 ◼   ► have to confirm it yeah as long as you don't have to confirm it that's great I

01:36:17 ◼   ► can live with notification clutter from one app if if it can run things

01:36:21 ◼   ► automatically. Isn't it cool? That is amazing, yeah. And I have to say I'm a

01:36:25 ◼   ► little surprised because I wasn't... there was a part of me that thought for

01:36:31 ◼   ► security reasons Apple would never allow that stuff to run without a user

01:36:35 ◼   ► confirmation. So I'm really glad that they've allowed it to run automatically

01:36:40 ◼   ► because like I said last year I felt sort of frustrated of like all of the

01:36:44 ◼   ► stuff that I wanted to do. At least for my own personal use cases I found it

01:36:48 ◼   ► more annoying than to just not bother because I had to tap stuff.

01:36:52 ◼   ► So it's a huge, huge, huge improvement. I'm really excited about that.

01:36:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:36:57 ◼   ► The sheer level of stuff that they've put into shortcuts this year is mind

01:37:01 ◼   ► boggling, honestly. Like, so other stuff that they've done,

01:37:04 ◼   ► you can now run shortcuts from the new search.

01:37:08 ◼   ► So like the search that looks like spotlight and can run them without ever

01:37:13 ◼   ► opening the application,

01:37:14 ◼   ► even if it needs an interaction from the search menu.

01:37:17 ◼   ► Nice.

01:37:18 ◼   ► And all of the UI now, when you're running a shortcut,

01:37:21 ◼   ► just looks like notifications.

01:37:24 ◼   ► Even when you use them from the widget,

01:37:26 ◼   ► they look like notifications.

01:37:28 ◼   ► So it's like a whole new UI that's running.

01:37:30 ◼   ► And there are new actions for the Apple Watch.

01:37:34 ◼   ► So you could automatically, at a time of day,

01:37:37 ◼   ► have your watch face change.

01:37:39 ◼   ► Oh, great.

01:37:43 ◼   ► That's amazing.

01:37:44 ◼   ► I feel like, yeah, watch face changes--

01:37:46 ◼   ► Oh boy, that's really interesting that they've done it in shortcuts.

01:37:49 ◼   ► Like that makes sense actually.

01:37:50 ◼   ► I never would have thought to put it there, but that's, Oh man, that is great.

01:37:55 ◼   ► I am going to use that for sure.

01:37:59 ◼   ► And also there is now shortcut support on the Apple watch.

01:38:02 ◼   ► Oh right.

01:38:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:38:03 ◼   ► Cause they used to have a complication for shortcuts back when it was workflow.

01:38:07 ◼   ► They used to have an app too.

01:38:09 ◼   ► So now you can run them from an app or you can set them as complications.

01:38:13 ◼   ► Nice.

01:38:14 ◼   ► And one of the great things about the new WatchOS 7 is there are a bunch of different tweaks to the watch faces

01:38:22 ◼   ► where you can now have multiple complications from the same application on a watch face.

01:38:28 ◼   ► I think is the biggest deal and like a frustration I have run into numerous times.

01:38:34 ◼   ► The two apps in particular for me were always Carrotweather.

01:38:37 ◼   ► Sometimes I wanted two different complications from Carrotweather.

01:38:41 ◼   ► And of course, WatchSmith by our friend _DavidSmith was another one of these like,

01:38:47 ◼   ► a lot of great little complications and the ability to use multiple complications from that on one watch face is really nice.

01:38:53 ◼   ► That is a very welcome improvement in WatchOS 7.

01:38:57 ◼   ► So the Apple Watch stuff, they are included in the automations part of shortcuts.

01:39:03 ◼   ► It's kind of amazing that you can now set it up that you can like turn on theater mode and silent mode at certain times.

01:39:11 ◼   ► Or you can change to different watch faces that you want at certain times.

01:39:15 ◼   ► So you would be able to, I guess, like when you start a workout, maybe you could set your

01:39:22 ◼   ► workout watch face or something.

01:39:26 ◼   ► This is really cool that they've done a lot of this stuff.

01:39:29 ◼   ► It really is very surprising because we've seen a lot of improvements to shortcuts over

01:39:36 ◼   ► the time that Apple has had it under its stewardship.

01:39:40 ◼   ► But they've been a lot of stuff where it's like a thing.

01:39:44 ◼   ► You think you've got a thing, but you don't actually have that thing.

01:39:48 ◼   ► Yes, yes.

01:39:50 ◼   ► And it feels like this year they've given us a lot of the things that we thought we had.

01:39:54 ◼   ► That is a really good way to put it.

01:39:56 ◼   ► Yeah, because yeah, like last year I felt like,

01:39:58 ◼   ► oh, you didn't really give me what I thought you were giving me.

01:40:01 ◼   ► The watch faces and shortcuts is interesting

01:40:04 ◼   ► because that also feels like another way that shortcuts is becoming the core tool for power

01:40:15 ◼   ► users for the whole system instead of having something in the watch app which says oh at

01:40:20 ◼   ► this time change the watch face to this other thing which I would have been thrilled just to

01:40:26 ◼   ► get that but the option to be able to change the faces through other kinds of arbitrary shortcuts

01:40:32 ◼   ► and automations is way more powerful. And so it's really nice to see that in the shortcuts app.

01:40:39 ◼   ► Yeah, that is really interesting. This is the most interesting stuff that I would have wanted

01:40:45 ◼   ► in the keynote. I would have been way more pumped if this section was in the keynote.

01:40:50 ◼   ► It's only for people like us though, right?

01:40:53 ◼   ► No, Myke, look. Here's what the WWDC keynote should have. Part one, maps. Part two, automation.

01:41:02 ◼   ► Part three, new Apple Watch faces, the end, right?

01:41:06 ◼   ► No one else wants anything.

01:41:07 ◼   ► That's all anybody's looking for.

01:41:09 ◼   ► Talking more about the Apple Watch, they've added some sleep tracking stuff into the Apple Watch,

01:41:16 ◼   ► which is cool.

01:41:17 ◼   ► And they have like kind of wind down and wake up type features, like reminding you to charge.

01:41:23 ◼   ► I've seen people saying that like it's very basic sleep tracking,

01:41:27 ◼   ► which is kind of what you would expect Apple to do.

01:41:29 ◼   ► and then if you want more, use an application that's doing a lot more tracking.

01:41:33 ◼   ► It's nice to have.

01:41:35 ◼   ► It's nice to have the one little part of that that I also really liked was the option to have the silent wake up alarm.

01:41:43 ◼   ► I think that's really nice. That's always been a thing that I can get that to work with some other apps,

01:41:51 ◼   ► but it's really nice that that's just to wake the one person up.

01:41:55 ◼   ► wake up everyone if there's multiple people. So yeah, I'm glad that they have the silent

01:42:00 ◼   ► alarm for waking up as well. I'm curious because my bet is that introducing sleep tracking

01:42:07 ◼   ► is also an indicator that the next version of the watch is going to have another like

01:42:12 ◼   ► quantum leap with the battery. Like that's that's my guess anyway. They're doing this

01:42:18 ◼   ► because they are gonna have a bigger battery for next time around. I have to say like there's

01:42:22 ◼   ► There's a bunch of other stuff in the keynote this year.

01:42:25 ◼   ► There's a lot, and there's a lot I think that we're going to get to later in the year.

01:42:29 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:42:30 ◼   ► As different things start coming out.

01:42:31 ◼   ► The new Mac OS looks interesting.

01:42:34 ◼   ► There's another big architecture transition on the horizon, which will be interesting.

01:42:41 ◼   ► I think I'll be trying to hold out any computer purchases until after then.

01:42:45 ◼   ► Oh, I know, right?

01:42:48 ◼   ► Like, I remember that happening last time as well, of like, when I heard it was coming,

01:42:53 ◼   ► like, no more Macs for me!

01:42:55 ◼   ► Until after this transition.

01:42:57 ◼   ► I had been weighing up if I wanted to replace my MacBook Pro.

01:43:00 ◼   ► I am not doing that.

01:43:02 ◼   ► Like, I will wait now because it's very possible that some wild, ARM-based laptop is on the

01:43:09 ◼   ► horizon.

01:43:10 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I think that's extremely likely.

01:43:12 ◼   ► So yeah.

01:43:13 ◼   ► There's much more stuff in here, and I think we'll talk about some of those things as they

01:43:17 ◼   ► come up.

01:43:18 ◼   ► have to say for me as someone who forgot that WWDC was happening this week, I can say that

01:43:25 ◼   ► I have greatly benefited from all of the work that you have done this week to check up on

01:43:31 ◼   ► all the details and be the person who is knowledgeable and knows everything because you've pulled

01:43:36 ◼   ► out a ton of stuff from the additional information that I had no idea and is way, way exciting

01:43:43 ◼   ► to me. So thank you for all of the work that you have done this remote WWDC20.

01:43:50 ◼   ► Okay, I have an app that I've been using that I think you will find interesting and that's

01:43:58 ◼   ► what I want to talk to you about in our first Mortex bonus content.

01:44:01 ◼   ► Okay. So if people want to hear that, go to getMortex.com, sign up, we'll really appreciate

01:44:07 ◼   ► it if you do and you'll get to hear about an app that I've been using.

01:44:11 ◼   ► See you in more techs.

01:44:13 ◼   ► - Get more techs.com.