0:00:00December is an important time around here.
0:00:02Cortexmas. Cortexmas season.
0:00:04It's winter cortexmas, right?
0:00:05It's both summer and winter cortexmases. They do have important parts to them. Like summer
0:00:12cortexmas is WWDC time. Winter cortexmas. It's very traditional around here of winter cortexmas.
0:00:21I like that you're getting on board this idea of seasonal cortexmas. I think last year I finally
0:00:28broke your will a little bit for Cortexmas is all year long and this this
0:00:32feels a little bit like you're coming up with a way to frame this for yourself.
0:00:36This is as far as I am willing to go. There are two Cortexmas seasons.
0:00:40Oh, there are two Cortexmas seasons. Okay.
0:00:42But see, okay, so summer Cortexmas, that means there's gonna be a long break.
0:00:46Right. Winter Cortexmas is just merely the celebration of the original Cortexmas.
0:00:52Ah, okay. Winter Cortexmas is traditional Cortexmas.
0:00:56Pretty busy in December. Yes, that is very true. And we start with State of the Apps.
0:01:02State of the Apps. So in case anybody doesn't know what State of the Apps is, we've been doing this,
0:01:07this is our third year doing State of the Apps, which was an idea that came from a blog post that
0:01:12Gray wrote in 2014, where you went through a bunch of applications and categories of applications,
0:01:20and kind of spoke about your feelings to the stuff that you're using, the things you would like there
0:01:24to be the things that have surprised you, that kind of stuff, right? Like, these are
0:01:28the apps that I use, etc. And then over the last couple of years, we've refined it a
0:01:33little bit. And so we talk about apps that we use for productivity, apps that we use
0:01:38for writing research, and then do a little lightning round. So that's what kind of what
0:01:42we've established over the last couple of years. But I want to add a new part in to
0:01:46state of the apps now, which we will do in years to follow, where we will share our home
0:01:51screens, which I don't think we've done for quite a while.
0:01:53That's a good place for it, yeah. That fits into state of the apps.
0:01:56I figured it's a good time, right? Because we get to show these are the apps that we find that are most important
0:02:02and then we can dig into some categories that lend themselves nicely to the show.
0:02:07Yeah, that works really well. The apps that a person has on their home screen, it tells you what they're favoring.
0:02:12It says a lot about the person.
0:02:13Yes, it says a lot about the person. We all know that.
0:02:17So I'm gonna go first because you're gonna have some weird s***, right?
0:02:20Like it's gonna be some crazy thing you're doing.
0:02:24Myke, Myke, Myke.
0:02:25What?
0:02:26Pro I promise you this.
0:02:28You can go first.
0:02:29Okay.
0:02:29But I promise you.
0:02:31There's nothing crazy.
0:02:32It's it's very boring.
0:02:35It's nothing crazy going on.
0:02:36So you can, you can relax.
0:02:38No, I'm going to share mine first.
0:02:39I'm going to send you my iPhone and my iPad.
0:02:42Oh, okay.
0:02:42I have a lot of similarities, but the iPad does bad differences now, which I thought.
0:02:47So I've sent those to you.
0:02:49They're coming through over the wire, over the wire.
0:02:51There shouldn't be anything surprising here.
0:02:54I don't think it's always surprising the completeness of your home screen.
0:02:59Like I forget how many apps a person can shove into one home screen.
0:03:04And it's a lot.
0:03:04It's it's it's a lot like this.
0:03:06They give you the space for it.
0:03:07The phone is a portal to applications.
0:03:10That is all it's for.
0:03:12Not filling up the home screen.
0:03:14You're just making things more difficult for yourself, you know?
0:03:17That's my new view on this and going into 2020.
0:03:20#4homescreen. That's where I'm going in 2020. That's my new campaign.
0:03:25Yeah, okay, I get it. I get it.
0:03:27It's just a little shocking, that's all.
0:03:30I don't normally see a homescreen that is this full.
0:03:32No, my iPad homescreen isn't full, but that's because it's got tons of folders,
0:03:36and the second screen is just games from Apple Arcade Games that I haven't tried out.
0:03:40But my iPad homescreen is as full as I would make it.
0:03:43The iPad homescreen is a bit of a different situation.
0:03:45It's a different beast because there's a dock and all that stuff.
0:03:48Yeah, now that we have iPad OS, the iPad is a very different beast.
0:03:52So I'm looking at a beautiful grid wallpaper background on your phone there.
0:03:59It's a cortex wallpaper.
0:04:00Of course, there will be a link in the show notes to that.
0:04:02Yeah, it's cortex wallpaper and you have filled every single slot with an app.
0:04:07Otherwise, there would be empty spaces in a grid.
0:04:09Who wants that?
0:04:10No, an animal wants that.
0:04:11That's right.
0:04:12You've got four apps in the dock, full grid.
0:04:16The one that actually, this is silly,
0:04:18this is the one that catches my attention first,
0:04:21is Reader at the bottom, R-E-E-D-E-R.
0:04:25That is the one that immediately drew my attention.
0:04:27- Well, this is new for Myke of 2019.
0:04:30- Yeah, you mentioned a long time ago
0:04:32that you were trying to go back to RSS.
0:04:37And I think I'm sure past me said something like,
0:04:41good luck with that, you know, let me know how that works out.
0:04:44And then we haven't brought it up since.
0:04:47And so this is why Reader is actually the first one that catches my attention.
0:04:51Well, this is me letting you know that it is working out fantastically for me.
0:04:55OK, tell me, tell me.
0:04:56The main reason I'm using RSS and I use Reader and a service called Ino Reader.
0:05:02There are a bunch of other services.
0:05:04I don't even remember why I signed up for this one, but I have a year on it.
0:05:07Right. So this is the one that I have.
0:05:09It has reduced my reliance on Twitter as a source of news.
0:05:15Because that's what I was using it for and that meant that I was using it more than I wanted.
0:05:20So now I'm more mindlessly browsed Twitter again, which I'm way happier about.
0:05:25Ah, okay.
0:05:27And now with Reader, the great thing is, because of the way RSS works compared to trying to get your news from a social network,
0:05:34the stories don't go away.
0:05:36They just wait for me until I go to them.
0:05:38So I may be checking on reader. I will check in on reader on average every couple of days
0:05:43Unless I'm doing a show like I'm preparing for a show
0:05:47Then I will go into reader to check that there's no news that I haven't missed. I have a very small subscription list
0:05:54which just basically is like I have
0:05:58the blogs of like my friends and colleagues that I want to read and then a couple of
0:06:03websites for each kind of main topic area that I cover to make sure that I've got the news and I would say that like my I
0:06:11believe the quality of research that I have been able to do for my shows has improved since going down this method
0:06:19So I think it's actually making my shows better because I'm finding more
0:06:23Interesting things to talk about then just what is what is everyone talking about today?
0:06:29because it's on Twitter, like I find like, oh here's a story that's interesting to
0:06:33me, let me talk about this one and so I think that that's been of a great
0:06:37benefit. I do the vast majority of my RSS reading on my iPad, I also have it on the
0:06:43phone. I like it so you know you got you when you've got those minutes to spare
0:06:47right you're just like oh what am I gonna do, I'll just open Twitter. Now
0:06:51sometimes I open Reader instead and I'm happy with that right like every now and
0:06:55then it will be the thing that like I'm on a train it's like oh well you know
0:06:58what I can be doing. I can be doing something that's gonna make me feel like
0:07:02I'm being productive rather than just wasting time. And a lot of the
0:07:06time it's just triaging the headlines, you know, like I'll find a headline, I'll
0:07:10read the first paragraph and then I add it to an Apple note, which is like my
0:07:14research note for each show, which I will then go to to read the article in full
0:07:18when I'm doing the preparation for say Upgrade or Connected or this show.
0:07:23That experiment has been a successful one and RSS 2019/2020 is back in my life, baby.
0:07:31That's interesting to hear.
0:07:32I think one of my concerns was about the widespread-ness of RSS support.
0:07:38That was doubtful.
0:07:40And so obviously that's not something that you've run into.
0:07:42You feel like the place, whoa, okay, maybe you have, but…
0:07:45There were some websites where I felt like I had to give them a stranglehold to get their
0:07:50RSS feed.
0:07:51there are some websites that I would like to have but I can't get their RSS feed so
0:07:56I have to kind of just hope that somebody else is going to write up their story.
0:08:02So like on one of my shows, Upgrade, which is mostly focused on Apple, we do a segment
0:08:06called Upstream which is to like highlight the changes in streaming media technology
0:08:12now that all of the major technology companies are getting into streaming video as well,
0:08:17right?
0:08:18It's like the next battlefield.
0:08:20A lot of these outlets that report on this type of thing do not have RSS feeds.
0:08:27I would like to give a shout out to Variety, which does.
0:08:30I'm very happy about. Thank you, Variety.
0:08:33Like the only website in this world that has RSS feeds.
0:08:36It's also one of my favorite sources for this type of information.
0:08:39This world is like any kind of news journalism world.
0:08:44If a story is big enough, everyone will write about it, no matter who broke it.
0:08:48So I get the majority of information that I need from Variety.
0:08:51But now a lot of technology websites are also doing this reporting because they
0:08:55are also realizing, oh,
0:08:56we should also all be talking about streaming media now because it's where all
0:09:00the big technology companies are going.
0:09:01Okay. That's interesting.
0:09:03This may be a dumb question because I'm now a user of neither of these things,
0:09:07but why not use Apple News?
0:09:10What is the reason for using RSS over something like Apple News?
0:09:13Because Apple News will do all that possibly can to shove stuff that I don't
0:09:16want to see in front of my face.
0:09:18Okay, so it's the algorithmic part of it, as opposed to the reverse chronological order.
0:09:22Okay, alright, that makes perfect sense.
0:09:24I just want to choose the sources, right, and Apple News wants to give me more.
0:09:29Plus, I like the user interface of Reader a lot more, it's more customizable.
0:09:34It's a very nice iOS app, with lots of good gestures and stuff, so I like it for those
0:09:39reasons as well.
0:09:41Yeah, that was the last RSS app that I used, was Reader, and I really liked it.
0:09:45It's really nice. This is version 4. It came out a few months ago, I think. It's really,
0:09:50really good.
0:09:51I remember it feeling very iOS-y, which is nice when you have an app that feels like,
0:09:56"Oh, it's taking advantage of the platform."
0:09:57It feels more iOS-y than Apple News does to me. At least what I consider a nice iOS app
0:10:03to be.
0:10:04I presume that another nice iOS app is Pipedrive there.
0:10:09That dopamine hit. The tap tick that they have behind the button, you tap when you win
0:10:14a deal.
0:10:15Oh boy.
0:10:16They coded that one just right.
0:10:18I've said this before, but Pipedrive is a sales management tool.
0:10:22I do advertising sales.
0:10:23We track our sales through this tool.
0:10:25But I will be, say, on my iPad completing a sale and I'll pick up my iPhone to press
0:10:31the little button to complete the sale because the TapTick feels so good.
0:10:34Okay, that's good TapTick design then.
0:10:38That's really good.
0:10:39It's like a little button and it feels like it has a click when it depresses.
0:10:43And you know, when you press it down and it depresses is how it feels.
0:10:46Like it's like a kind of feeling.
0:10:48Oh, it's so good.
0:10:49Live for that feeling, man.
0:10:51Live for it.
0:10:52Okay.
0:10:53Wow.
0:10:53That was, that was a much more positive response that I was actually expecting.
0:10:56I thought I was mostly joking about your boring sales pipeline app.
0:10:59It's super boring, right?
0:11:00It's the same as air table.
0:11:01We're using that for like tracking some sales stuff.
0:11:04Like these are just, these are my boring apps, but they live on my home screen
0:11:08because I use them all the time.
0:11:10- Yeah, yeah.
0:11:11Workhorses don't have to be the most exciting apps.
0:11:14- If anything, a lot of the time,
0:11:15you don't want them to be.
0:11:18- So there's a lot of things that either I think
0:11:20we're gonna talk about more in depth later in the show
0:11:22or things that we have discussed before.
0:11:23But another one that catches my eye here
0:11:25is again at the bottom, right next to Reader, is Moodpath.
0:11:28- I knew you were gonna ask about Moodpath.
0:11:30- I don't know this app, and I also,
0:11:33you don't have an abundance of badges.
0:11:35You only have four apps that have badges.
0:11:37messages of course, slack of course, todoist of course, and then there is mood path which
0:11:45has a little one on top of it.
0:11:47So that helps it stand out and makes it interesting to me.
0:11:49So what is this mood path?
0:11:51It is a mental health app is the easiest way to describe it and what it will do is about
0:11:57three times a day it prompts me and say hey we have some questions for you and it asks
0:12:01you some questions to check in on how you are feeling in yourself and it asks like really
0:12:07probing questions that like, and that they ask them in such a way which is like really
0:12:11interesting. And you have to answer if something is bothering you or isn't bothering you.
0:12:16And depending on whether like that is a positive or negative response, dependent on the question,
0:12:21if you give a negative response, it asks you like, well, how much does this bother you?
0:12:24And you get to say like, extremely considerably slightly or not at all. So it's like examples of
0:12:29questions that it could ask like, are you exercising at the moment? Do you have things
0:12:35that are distracting you from getting your tasks done, all this kind of stuff.
0:12:38It then analyzes your questions and you can actually write in it like a diary if you want to.
0:12:43You can tag how you're feeling at certain points, so different emotions, and it then
0:12:48generates reports for you based on how you've been answering over a week and stuff like that.
0:12:53I have found it as a very good tool over the last few months to help me keep focused on myself.
0:13:02because I don't do it three times a day, I do it once or twice a day. It kind of depends on
0:13:07how busy I am in a day. So I leave the badge there so I will remember to do it. Again,
0:13:13if I have a minute or two to spare, then I'll open it up and answer the questions.
0:13:16It kind of analyses your responses and it will give you a report, like this is how we think
0:13:23you're feeling and these are some things you should consider. And they have, I haven't done
0:13:27done this stuff yet but they have meditation audio in there like you know
0:13:31like Headspace mm-hmm it has some of that kind of stuff in there as well I've
0:13:35really liked it it's not a difficult thing to do and it helps me feel like
0:13:42I'm doing something for my mental health which I feel like a lot of the time I
0:13:46have not really felt like I was doing anything unless I explicitly needed to
0:13:51so this has been a nice application I've been using it for like three or four
0:13:55months now pretty much every day. I like it. It's good. So you're saying that you
0:14:01feel like the tracking is good for the mental health or are you doing the more
0:14:06active stuff that's in the app? For me having the questions asked and me having
0:14:12to answer them it's just interesting. Right? It's making me realize I'm
0:14:19feeling things that I wouldn't have thought about unless somebody asked me
0:14:22the question. I could maybe be like, "Oh, I feel like I can't be bothered to do anything
0:14:27today. I feel lethargic or whatever." The mood path will pop up and it will say, "Is
0:14:32how you're feeling affecting the amount of work you can get done?" And I'm like, "Yeah,
0:14:37it is." So it's stuff like that where it's like, "Hmm, okay." And then answering, "How
0:14:45much does this thing bother you?" is also interesting because there's some stuff where
0:14:49It's like, yeah, this is affecting me, but I'm not worried about it because I know I'm having a tough day today or whatever.
0:14:54So I think it's a very interesting implementation of an app like this.
0:14:59I've found it to be a nice app to use over the last few months.
0:15:03That's really interesting. I might actually give that a try because we've discussed journaling on this podcast a few times and
0:15:10obviously, you know, one of the things about asking yourself questions at the beginning or at the end of a day and
0:15:16Reflecting on that in writing is a good thing to do.
0:15:19My questions always tend to be very tactical and explicit
0:15:23about like, "Did you exercise? Did you not?"
0:15:25And I've made some vague gestures in the direction of mood tracking,
0:15:29but I always found it like...
0:15:31just pointless.
0:15:33I know that, "Oh, how happy do I feel today?"
0:15:36"Three happy?" Like, I don't know.
0:15:38You know, it just...
0:15:39I've never found a good way to try to think about that.
0:15:43And I feel like I would just be interested to have an app like that that's asking interesting questions.
0:15:50Like, you sell it well of here's maybe a way that an app is trying to poke you a little bit about introspection.
0:15:57It surprises me sometimes. Like, it'll ask me a question, I'll be like, "Oh, I haven't seen that one before.
0:16:03What an interesting question to ask."
0:16:05Yeah, see, that's a good sales pitch. Like, an app that can ask an interesting question,
0:16:09even if it's not a mood tracker, is an interesting thing to bring in your life by definition.
0:16:13It has mood tracking as well. So once you're finished answering the questions, it's like,
0:16:17"How do you feel?" And then you tap one of the faces, you know, like, "Good, very good,
0:16:21moderate, bad, very bad." That's how it ends the question round.
0:16:25Huh, okay.
0:16:26I like it.
0:16:26Yeah, I think I might take that and give it a bit of a whirl.
0:16:28It's free to start, and then you can pay for more features.
0:16:33I also, you know, a man with so many brightly colored app icons has got to be happy all
0:16:39the time.
0:16:40You can't fathom.
0:16:41I can't help but notice that with things like PCALC, excellent calculator application by
0:16:46our friend James Thompson, or Carrot, you've chosen the clown vomit options for the color
0:16:54schemes on those apps.
0:16:56Very Myke, very on brand, but also just draws my attention.
0:16:59I have the purple slack icon.
0:17:00Oh yeah, the purple slack icon.
0:17:01I don't remember if the purple one is the default or not anymore, but I go for the purple
0:17:05one.
0:17:06She can't know what the white one is the default one that sucks.
0:17:09I didn't know that you could change it.
0:17:11I think I'll have to change that.
0:17:12They added that very quietly a while ago.
0:17:15I think you can do black, white or purple because I noticed, Myke, that you are a beta
0:17:19tester for some apps here and I saw that you had the purple and I thought maybe that was
0:17:24a special mic feature.
0:17:25No, I don't think so.
0:17:27Okay.
0:17:28Oh, look at that app icon.
0:17:30Oh, thank God.
0:17:32There you go.
0:17:33You have changed the icon for Slack.
0:17:35Changing lives over here today.
0:17:37Honestly, we are.
0:17:38I have never gotten used to the white Slack icon.
0:17:41No, I never liked it.
0:17:42It still throws me off.
0:17:43It was like--
0:17:44It's too generic.
0:17:45Too generic, way too generic.
0:17:47They're censored, pinwheeled.
0:17:50It's like, it's too much.
0:17:52OK, great.
0:17:52Back to Obrigine for Slack.
0:17:56Oh, this is great.
0:17:58Myke, I really appreciate you sharing this home screen with me.
0:18:00This is amazing.
0:18:01I'm getting some real wins over here.
0:18:03Do we want to move on to my iPad now?
0:18:06Do you have any more questions about my iPhone?
0:18:07I don't have any questions about your iPhone that I don't think are going to come up later.
0:18:10I want to talk about your iPad.
0:18:13Now here's the thing, just as a little bit of comparison.
0:18:16Your iPhone, while it is shockingly busy, I can say it looks nice.
0:18:23It's full, but it looks nice.
0:18:26iPad, I can't quite say the same thing.
0:18:29It's a visual disaster, I'm aware of that.
0:18:32Yes, it's not a great look.
0:18:34Because I actually think with iPadOS it is difficult to make a good looking home screen
0:18:39now.
0:18:40Yes.
0:18:41But I don't care because it's so useful now, so it doesn't bother me.
0:18:45I just want to get it on record that I can go with you here because iPadOS has increased
0:18:52utility but any user is struggling with a real uphill battle about trying to make it look good.
0:18:59The real thing that kills you is the way that folders look in iPadOS. It's just like they're
0:19:06very busy, there's lots of stuff in them, you just have a bunch of little dots. So your iPad screen
0:19:11is very ugly but it's not mostly your fault. Well here's the fun thing. So you see my artwork,
0:19:17right, it's a logo, right, the upgrade logo.
0:19:19Yes, the upgrade logo.
0:19:20One of the many wonderful wallpapers available for Relay FM members.
0:19:26The arrow of the upgrade logo is centered, because it's lining up with the two dots,
0:19:32but the app icons are not centered.
0:19:34Oh, okay.
0:19:35When you use the widgets, the app icons, they don't have one that runs through the center
0:19:40of the iPad anymore, slightly to the right.
0:19:43Okay, so if you did not have the widget on the side, everything would be perfectly centered,
0:19:48but because you do, it's not.
0:19:50That's brutal.
0:19:51That's absolutely brutal.
0:19:52I try not to think about that one.
0:19:56But yes, this is visually overwhelming.
0:19:58It's just too many folders, too many things.
0:20:02But it is nice to see that, like on iPadOS, you can now have the widgets pinned to the
0:20:08side, which is such a nice, such like a huge win.
0:20:11And so it's like, you've got your shortcuts, and you've got your timer-y buttons, and you've
0:20:15got fantastical on the side.
0:20:18And I think that this looks good, and it's like, I don't know how much of this you're
0:20:21going to have blurred or unblurred for the final show, but it's interesting to see what
0:20:25Myke does frequently, including turning on and turning off his fan through shortcuts.
0:20:30Yeah, I have a really nice Dyson fan.
0:20:33It's like one of their humidifier things.
0:20:36And you can turn on and off the fan in shortcuts.
0:20:40Okay.
0:20:41frequent enough to get real prime center real estate there.
0:20:45At the moment, I think so. There is a bit of a war about my fan in the household.
0:20:51Oh really? Yeah, because the fan also heats up, right?
0:20:57And I don't like the bedroom to be too hot. No, you can't have a bedroom too hot. Bedrooms
0:21:02should be an icebox. There is another member of my household who
0:21:06likes the bedroom to be hot. So I have to make sure I can turn that fan off as soon
0:21:14as I hear it come on. In the general war of it. Because the fan is turned on when I leave
0:21:21the room or before I come to bed, right? Like I'm tidying up in the kitchen and it goes
0:21:26on, right? And I've got to make sure I can get that thing turned off.
0:21:29I can, yeah, I understand the situation.
0:21:32I think many of us are involved in a war of what is too cold and what is too hot.
0:21:38Yeah, and it can be on either way, right?
0:21:40Like, you may be in the cold side or the hot side, but there's always a war.
0:21:44[laughter]
0:21:46Yes, there is always a war.
0:21:48Okay, well then that makes sense as to why it's right there in shortcuts.
0:21:52So the moment your perky mic ears pick up the sound of the fan turning on,
0:21:57You can just click.
0:21:59I like the office to be warm, the bedroom to be cold.
0:22:03That's how I am.
0:22:04That makes sense.
0:22:05Because you've got a big duvet, you know?
0:22:07Yeah.
0:22:07That's the point of the duvet.
0:22:08That's the point of blankets.
0:22:10Yeah, I'm with you 100 percent.
0:22:12I agree. I agree here completely.
0:22:14OK, a couple of other things are just catching my attention here.
0:22:16What is Tripsy?
0:22:18You have a little little icon there.
0:22:20I don't know what that one is.
0:22:21Tripsy was going to make my lightning round, but we can talk about it now.
0:22:24It is a very nicely designed trip itinerary management app.
0:22:31You think like your Trip-its, right, if you use Trip-it?
0:22:35Okay, I'm not familiar with Trip-it, so I don't know what you...
0:22:37When you say trip itinerary, what do you mean?
0:22:39So with Trip-C, I will create any trip that I'm going on, vacation, work trip,
0:22:44I will create an entry for it, and inside of that entry, I can add in a bunch of information.
0:22:51I can add in all my flight information, I can add in the hotel that I'm going to be
0:22:56at and it also has a catalogue of restaurants, locations, events, bars, points of interest
0:23:05that I can then add as activities into the trip or the itinerary.
0:23:10So I can say like, oh I want to make sure I go to this restaurant, I'm going to do that
0:23:13on this day and it will create an itinerary of the trip.
0:23:17So then I can have all of the information saved in one place.
0:23:20So all of the places I might want to visit.
0:23:22I can also save all of my documents in here like PDFs and stuff.
0:23:26You can also send forward emails to an email address and Tripsy will suck in that information
0:23:32for you and put it into the trip.
0:23:33So like flight info, hotel info, and it will add it all to each individual trip.
0:23:38I really really like it.
0:23:39I've used it for a bunch of trips now.
0:23:41Just as a way to collect up all the information for each trip that I'm going on in one place,
0:23:47But then also add in any places that I want to visit and it all lives in one little home.
0:23:53Hmm.
0:23:54Okay.
0:23:55Can you explain the benefit of this over a calendar?
0:23:58I wouldn't put in restaurants I might like to go to as inspiration into a calendar.
0:24:06Okay.
0:24:07Okay.
0:24:08So this is a place where uncertainty can live.
0:24:10Yes.
0:24:11As well as certainty.
0:24:12So you can add something into the like restaurant section, but you don't have to say you're
0:24:17you're going to it on any specific time.
0:24:19But then when you're at the place,
0:24:21I can then open up the app and be like,
0:24:22what places do we think we might want to go to eat?
0:24:25- Okay, hmm.
0:24:26- I was keeping all of this stuff in Apple Notes,
0:24:29just in like lists.
0:24:31But this application is much nicer to manage it all,
0:24:36in my opinion.
0:24:37- Okay, this might not be the thing.
0:24:38But does it have like a map feature?
0:24:41Can you see things on a map?
0:24:42- Don't think so.
0:24:43- Hmm, okay.
0:24:45Okay, so like I can go into each, say like I add a restaurant, I can go into each entry
0:24:50for the restaurant and see it on a map, but I can't look at a map of everything, right?
0:24:54That's what I think you're looking for.
0:24:56Like you would say, show me a map of this location and you have like every point of
0:25:00interest you've saved beyond that map.
0:25:02Yeah, no, I can't see a way that you can do that.
0:25:05Hmm, okay.
0:25:06But that's, if you're out there, Tripsy developers, that's actually a really nice feature request.
0:25:10Yeah, this is something I've been looking for for years and I used to do it in Google
0:25:15And you can sort of do it in Apple Maps if you're willing to clutter up your Apple Maps.
0:25:19Right, because then every restaurant that I've saved,
0:25:22I could then open up and be like, "Which one of these is actually near me right now?"
0:25:27Yeah.
0:25:28Mmm. I like that feature idea.
0:25:30Yeah, like this is this is what I've been looking for and just have not satisfactorily found.
0:25:35Allow me to see a map with
0:25:38everything that I have ever marked as interesting that's in a physical location.
0:25:43Right.
0:25:43I realize now I've forgotten to talk about one of the best features of this application.
0:25:48You can share these itineraries with other people.
0:25:52And whilst you need the application, I think you get some stuff free, but it's a paid app.
0:25:58If you share the itinerary with somebody who doesn't pay for the app, they get all of the
0:26:02benefits inside of the trip that you've shared with them.
0:26:05Okay.
0:26:06Share as in sync or share as in send?
0:26:08Share as in sync.
0:26:11So let's imagine me and you were planning a trip for our anniversary, which we just
0:26:15celebrated.
0:26:16Our friend anniversary.
0:26:17Our friend-iversary.
0:26:18Yeah, we celebrated with a text message.
0:26:21We did do it though.
0:26:23We observed it.
0:26:24And so did many cortexes.
0:26:25We got many messages congratulating us, which is very nice.
0:26:29Thank you to everybody that did that.
0:26:31I feel like I'm getting bullied into cementing a thing into being a thing, but okay, yes,
0:26:35continue onward.
0:26:36If there's one thing about me that you must know by now is I love a tradition.
0:26:40Yes, I know you do.
0:26:41So if we were going to go on a trip, I could create the trip.
0:26:44I could say like, these are our flights.
0:26:46This is the lodging and this is the restaurants that I wanted to go to.
0:26:49I could then share it with you. You don't have to pay for it.
0:26:52Then you can also add things to that trip and then everything is synced between us.
0:26:56So you get all the information, I get all the information.
0:26:58You can say, I want to go to this place. You can put that in.
0:27:01I can say, I want to go to this place, I put that in.
0:27:03And then we have a shared itinerary.
0:27:05This is one of the other main reasons that I use this application
0:27:07because I take a lot of trips with my wife
0:27:09and we were able, like when we were going somewhere like for work or vacation or whatever,
0:27:14I would share an Apple note with her and we always had so many problems with those things.
0:27:18Yeah, yeah.
0:27:19I don't know why and now it's like we have all that information shared between us and
0:27:23Adina does like to do a lot of research for places that we go and so she can add
0:27:27all of that information in and then I get to see it. Oh, it's really great.
0:27:30Okay, I might try to play around with this because that again is a similar thing of,
0:27:35I don't have a good place to put that kind of information.
0:27:39Like if you see an interesting place that you might want to visit, or if my wife sees
0:27:43an interesting place that she thinks might work for a trip, like where does that go?
0:27:47Where does that information live?
0:27:48There's no good place for that right now.
0:27:51So maybe this makes sense.
0:27:52And what I also like about this application is that it doesn't actually have to be a trip
0:27:57for you to want to save information about a place.
0:28:00So we have a trip in Tripsee for Tokyo because we really want to go to Tokyo one day.
0:28:05And just as things come up, we save them into the Tokyo trip that we've created.
0:28:11Right.
0:28:12Yeah.
0:28:13That's why if the Tripsee developers are listening, that's why I feel like I would want a map
0:28:16as well.
0:28:17Like that feels like a real killer feature of love.
0:28:19Let me just see stuff.
0:28:20A map of all of the points of interest and locations that you've added would be an excellent
0:28:25feature request.
0:28:26Boy, I feel you really, you really, you got a good batting average for things that are
0:28:30new that I'm interested in, Myke.
0:28:31I've been saving them all up.
0:28:32I can't help but notice that you still have the white slack icon on your iPad.
0:28:36I don't know why you haven't changed that.
0:28:37Because I'm a fool, Gray.
0:28:38I'm a fool who didn't notice.
0:28:41I will change that immediately.
0:28:42Yes, please do.
0:28:44Just for consistency's sake.
0:28:45You have Outlook and Spark.
0:28:47What's going on with the wheel of email?
0:28:48You've got two email apps here?
0:28:50Outlook is where all the Cortex email goes to.
0:28:52The Cortex brand email.
0:28:53Right, okay.
0:28:54So you're just using it to physically silo off all the ones.
0:28:56I can't have that all in my regular email.
0:28:59Okay. All right. That makes sense.
0:29:01YouTube Studio?
0:29:03For...
0:29:05What are you tracking with YouTube Studio?
0:29:07An incredibly successful YouTube channel.
0:29:10Okay. All right.
0:29:12That's all I wanted to just check in.
0:29:14I wasn't sure if there was a secret new project
0:29:16or something that Myke was keeping a real close eye on.
0:29:18I don't know if we've ever mentioned on this show
0:29:20the Cortex animated videos.
0:29:22I'm not sure that we have, but people should go watch them.
0:29:24go watch them. So every episode has a Cortex animated video which is
0:29:29animated by the wonderful HeyChamberDay and it's every typically even a few days
0:29:34I was posting the episode and they will pick out something that they have
0:29:38enjoyed and they animate it and we put it up on our YouTube channel. So that is
0:29:42youtube.com/cortexfm but I think you could just search Cortex.
0:29:46Yeah just search for Cortex. Yeah they're very cute. Yeah they're really
0:29:49cute. They're very very funny and they're very clever so you should check those out.
0:29:52Okay, and you can track them in YouTube Studio.
0:29:54Well, I can. Not everybody can.
0:29:56[Laughter]
0:29:59That one's just for me.
0:30:00That one's just for Myke. That's a top tip for Myke, is he can track his own things.
0:30:06Okay, do you want to tell me about any of these folders?
0:30:09Because these folders are so overwhelming, I can hardly parse them.
0:30:13And sometimes they have ambiguous names like just the Apple logo or Pencil.
0:30:17Pencil is a folder name.
0:30:19Alright, so the Apple logo is for Apple apps.
0:30:23You know, like all the stuff you don't want to deal with, but it has to be there somewhere.
0:30:28Can't you delete all those things now?
0:30:29Doesn't Apple let you get rid of all of those things?
0:30:31Yeah, but these are the ones that I don't want to delete, but I don't really have
0:30:34a good place for them otherwise.
0:30:37Like GarageBand?
0:30:38You're busting out GarageBand a bunch on your iPad?
0:30:40Hey, look, you never know, man.
0:30:42Okay, right.
0:30:43It's there because I needed it at some point.
0:30:46Right, it's there in case of podcast emergencies.
0:30:49Exactly. Pencil is just apps that I like to play around with that have good Apple Pencil support.
0:30:54Right, so Procreate is in there, Notability and Good Notes, Linear, Pigment, the Coloring app,
0:31:01like they all just live in there. Games and Entertainment should be pretty self-explanatory.
0:31:06And then I have the folder in the Dock, right, which is just like these are the
0:31:11tools that I tend to find myself needing in Split View a lot. So like Google Docs,
0:31:15Google Sheets are in there, Things is in there, Word and Excel live in there, Evernote's
0:31:21in there. We're going to talk about Evernote later on.
0:31:23Good old Evernote.
0:31:24Mmmmmm.
0:31:25Mmmmmm.
0:31:26We're going to get to Evernote. We're going to get to Evernote. Because this will conclude
0:31:31one year since I started using Evernote again.
0:31:34Right. Yes. Yes. The question last year's State of the Apps was, "Is Evernote the
0:31:39solution to all of your problems with Cortex brand?" And I think we already all know
0:31:44the answer to that.
0:31:45you to- well, wow, but like what else would I be using? Right? We'll find out later on.
0:31:49Maybe you've been sneaky. You've hidden it in plain sight on this home screen.
0:31:53Maybe.
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0:33:13All right let's move on to yours. I want to see your home screens.
0:33:17See what horror will be for me.
0:33:18You know, Myke, please. Let me send you my iPhone home screen.
0:33:25Boop. It's coming to you over the wires.
0:33:29I know because the people don't hear this but I heard your oh my god gray.
0:33:34Yes, Myke?
0:33:35My word.
0:33:36What's the matter?
0:33:38It's not even worth talking about home screens anymore with you.
0:33:41You don't even have one.
0:33:43I don't know what you're talking about.
0:33:48I don't know.
0:33:49What's the problem?
0:33:50Would you like to do a quick plug for your wallpaper?
0:33:52Like I did for mine?
0:33:56I am using one of my Patreon wallpapers, which is the Solar System, which I think happens
0:34:01to work quite nicely on an iPhone.
0:34:03That's actually look really nice.
0:34:05That's that's, that's actually a good wallpaper.
0:34:06It looks really nice because there's a lot of space on my iPhone.
0:34:10You might not want to use this if you have a lot of icons on your phone.
0:34:13So you have used space to show just how much space is on your phone, right?
0:34:19Like just blank, empty void.
0:34:22Right.
0:34:23But hang on a second.
0:34:24What?
0:34:25No, wait, nevermind.
0:34:26Wait, hold on.
0:34:27Hold on.
0:34:28Okay.
0:34:28What's going on here, Myke?
0:34:30Nevermind.
0:34:31Doesn't matter.
0:34:32Ignore me.
0:34:33I was listening to the second screen and I was like, "No, wait, that's just how phones work now."
0:34:37The second screen is the first screen.
0:34:39Yes, Myke, okay, so what Myke is looking at is a home screen.
0:34:42I've just been simplifying my setup over the years.
0:34:45Simplifying? There's nothing on it!
0:34:48Okay, no, that is a slanderous lie.
0:34:50There are five things on the home screen.
0:34:54There's the four folders at the top and there's an icon in the dock.
0:34:58And otherwise, there's nothing else on the screen there.
0:35:01Myke was thinking I was pulling some kind of trick on him because of course iPhones
0:35:06now always show these little two dots even if you only have one screen.
0:35:09But that's just because there's the widget screen as well which just for completeness'
0:35:14sake I will send over to Myke as well.
0:35:17I'm sure that's nothing on it.
0:35:19No, widgets are useful.
0:35:21Widgets are handy.
0:35:22Okay, I have a grievance.
0:35:23Okay, what's your grievance?
0:35:24We are currently running Cortex preparation as a timer.
0:35:28We are fully prepared my friend.
0:35:29We are.
0:35:30We are in the show.
0:35:31like we are in it.
0:35:33- Yeah, no, I understand that.
0:35:34What time was the screenshot taken?
0:35:36- Oh, okay.
0:35:38- This is hours ago, Myke, right?
0:35:40The screenshot isn't, I'm not live screenshotting.
0:35:44This was, I took a picture earlier today, so.
0:35:46- Screenshots aren't actual time, are they?
0:35:48- Yes, yes.
0:35:49When you look at a screenshot,
0:35:50it's not currently the way it looks on the phone.
0:35:53Otherwise, no one would take or share screenshots
0:35:55'cause it should be a window into whatever you're up to.
0:35:56So that's not how this works.
0:35:58I'm not trying to pull any tricks here
0:36:00with this iPhone screen.
0:36:02This is largely just a byproduct of,
0:36:06for a ridiculously long time,
0:36:09there was this bug in iOS.
0:36:12And the bug was, if you pulled down on the screen
0:36:15to search, like to type out an app
0:36:18that you wanted to pull up,
0:36:19instead of tapping on the icon on the screen,
0:36:23I don't know, maybe like one in five times,
0:36:26you would pull down and just nothing.
0:36:28It wouldn't let you type.
0:36:30it was, it just like crapped out on you, that like this little search feature didn't work.
0:36:33It was baffling how long that bug lived.
0:36:36It's just like, "Oh, this is just the way this works."
0:36:38You just roll the dice, and if it comes up five, no keyboard for you.
0:36:42You can't type anything.
0:36:43So, that seems to have been genuinely fixed in iOS 13.
0:36:48I seem to get a 100% success rate on that.
0:36:51And the way I tend to use my phone is very much the way I tend to use my computer,
0:36:56that I just don't really tap on or click on icons.
0:37:01Just like on my computer, I'll do Command + Space
0:37:04and bring up Alfred and launch an app.
0:37:06On my phone, I'm very much in the habit
0:37:09of just pulling down.
0:37:11I have the little Siri suggestion thing
0:37:13where it happens to recommend,
0:37:14here's the four apps you're most likely gonna use.
0:37:17- I find that to be very useful a lot of the time.
0:37:19I have it expanded so it shows eight apps,
0:37:22and I feel like a surprising amount of the time,
0:37:25the app that I want is there.
0:37:27- Yeah, so I have it expanded to show the eight as well.
0:37:31It still drives me crazy that if you start typing,
0:37:34there's no way to stop iOS from like searching the web
0:37:38for current headlines of like whatever in the world
0:37:41might be related to what you're typing.
0:37:43Which is, it's crazy to me that there's no way
0:37:46to turn that off, where it's like, you type the letter S
0:37:50and it's gonna find some headline of something in the world
0:37:53that like relates to the letter S and it's like,
0:37:54Is that what I'm looking for or am I looking for Slack?
0:37:57- I don't get headlines.
0:37:58- It's like related websites and articles and things.
0:38:01- Oh, okay, 'cause you can turn off news as an input.
0:38:04But yeah, it will also search for like random web pages.
0:38:08- Yeah, and very often it'll pull something from Wikipedia,
0:38:10which is basically just an article about a current event.
0:38:12It's like, thanks, thanks Apple, I really appreciate that.
0:38:15But if you expand the series suggestion
0:38:17to show you eight apps, it pushes that further down,
0:38:20so you're less likely to see it, which is what I want.
0:38:22the system that they're using to guess what are those eight apps is very good.
0:38:27Like, I think a very large percentage of the time it's one of those apps is like,
0:38:32"Oh yeah, that is what I want."
0:38:34And so, the truth of it is, I just...
0:38:36The way I use my phone, I just don't tend to use a super wide variety of different apps.
0:38:43Or the way I use it is just very consistent.
0:38:46I did a little thing a while ago where I was trying to figure out what app should I put on my home screen.
0:38:51and I had made a bunch of shortcuts that were basically app launchers and time trackers.
0:38:58Like, I press a thing and it starts a time tracker and it launches an app.
0:39:01But I was also having them write to a spreadsheet about what is the frequency with which I actually
0:39:06tap these things. And the truth is, like, the home screen icons, I just don't really tap them that
0:39:13much. And so I thought, "Oh, the hell with this! Let me just get rid of them and I'll figure out
0:39:17something later of what setup do I actually want.
0:39:21And then I just never bothered.
0:39:22Like, I've been really busy for the past few months and I just never sat down and really,
0:39:27after iOS 13, decided, "Let me figure out exactly what needs to go on the home screen."
0:39:31So this is what I've ended up with.
0:39:34It's just four folders to hold four different kinds of things.
0:39:38To-dos, messages, business-related stuff, and then everything else.
0:39:43And that's how I organize my iPhone.
0:39:46So there we go.
0:39:47and simple. I knew there was going to be something. It's not, no but it's not, this
0:39:51it's not something, it's nothing. So you actually just don't have a home screen
0:39:54anymore? No this is the home screen. This is, this is a home screen. Yeah but you
0:39:59don't, what I'm saying is you do not use it, right? You don't use the home screen. I
0:40:04mean I need the little badges so I can see which apps are asking me how many.
0:40:09Yeah so I can work out the 28 that's referring to apps in the folder which is
0:40:14probably like to do and productivity apps.
0:40:16Yeah, that's basically it's OmniFocus.
0:40:17OmniFocus has 28 open items for today.
0:40:20And then the next one over is that folder is reserved for messages.
0:40:23And that's iMessage.
0:40:24It's like there's seven iMessages in there.
0:40:26And then what's the next folder?
0:40:27The next one would be Slack if I had any open messages in Slack right now.
0:40:31OK, so that's work stuff, work related stuff lives in that folder.
0:40:34And then the fourth one is everything else.
0:40:36Everything else just goes in there.
0:40:37And what does the rocket ship do?
0:40:39Oh, the rocket ship is just my manual re-implementation of Launch Center Pro.
0:40:43I think. Yeah.
0:40:44There's just a couple of little
0:40:46things that I use that as a as like
0:40:48a launcher for.
0:40:49But honestly, I barely click
0:40:51it.
0:40:51But what happens when you tap that?
0:40:53If I tap that, it gives me a couple
0:40:54of options for frequently used
0:40:56things.
0:40:56But like, is it opening shortcuts?
0:40:58Yeah, it opens shortcuts and it
0:41:00pulls up a little menu of just a
0:41:01couple of things.
0:41:02So it's like a shortcut that
0:41:04you've created, which is a which you
0:41:06can do, like a shortcut which creates
0:41:08a menu of other shortcuts to launch.
0:41:09Yes, that's correct.
0:41:11It's just for a couple of things
0:41:13that I don't do frequently enough so that searching for them fails very often.
0:41:19For example, it's like a template launcher.
0:41:21So for templates for a new episode of Cortex, or for a new video, or for a travel checklist,
0:41:27any of these things.
0:41:28I don't do any of those regularly enough that the AI is going to guess what it is I'm trying
0:41:33to do.
0:41:34So I'll just use that to be like, "Launch a template."
0:41:35They're not widget-worthy either.
0:41:37Yeah, they're not really widget-worthy.
0:41:38There's no point in having it on the home screen, I'm not going to use it that often.
0:41:42But again, honestly, I don't really click that very much.
0:41:45It's just sort of, it looks really dumb if you don't have anything in your dock.
0:41:50Three icons is fine.
0:41:52One icon is sort of okay.
0:41:54But if you take them away and you just have this empty dock, it looks really stupid.
0:41:57So that's partly why I have the rocket ship there.
0:42:00So does one, though, really.
0:42:01I know.
0:42:02I don't love the one either.
0:42:04But you know, I was trying to think about what would I put on either side of it.
0:42:07And the truth is, like, I don't really have anything to put there right now.
0:42:10So part of that is because some of the stuff that I used before, the little Timery widget
0:42:16on the iPhone is really nice and has like taken over some of the use case that I used
0:42:22to have for buttons on the home screen.
0:42:24Yeah, because you had those to start and stop some timers, didn't you?
0:42:28Yeah, that's what I used to use some of that stuff for.
0:42:30So the Timery widget is amazing.
0:42:32I think, if I remember correctly, you were beta testing Timery this time last year.
0:42:37I was.
0:42:38and I hadn't tried it yet.
0:42:40And Timery as an interface for toggle is a really amazing app and its widget is fantastic,
0:42:46so I use that all the time.
0:42:48The widget is just a great way to primarily interact with Timery for here are the frequent
0:42:53timers that I want to tap or whatever.
0:42:55That's my iPhone.
0:42:57Nice and simple.
0:42:58Straightforward.
0:42:59Show me the one that will be your iPad then.
0:43:00The iPad is, again, simple, straightforward.
0:43:04Now I feel like it's not gonna be.
0:43:06No it is!
0:43:07It's just like, okay, right.
0:43:09It's iPad hasn't changed in forever.
0:43:12Like you, I've added the little widget on the side, which is really nice in iPad OS,
0:43:15but I've never put icons like on the screen.
0:43:19I prefer to just have icons in the dock.
0:43:20I genuinely think there are two ways to run an iPad now.
0:43:24And it's either my way or your way.
0:43:25There's nothing in between.
0:43:27You either go like, put everything you can on the home screen, right?
0:43:30Just because why not have it there or put nothing?
0:43:32Yeah, obviously, I prefer nothing.
0:43:34I like the look of it better.
0:43:36The iPad I'm doing the screenshot of is the one that I use the most as like my research
0:43:39buddy iPad of like here I'm working on a project and you know I don't want a million
0:43:45icons on the screen there because I'm not going to use a million icons on the screen
0:43:48there.
0:43:49It's like this is mainly stuff that I want to have for research buddy kind of tasks and
0:43:54the dock is perfectly satisfactory for that and I do really like being able to have on
0:43:58the home screen the OmniFocus widget open nice and wide so I can see a bunch of relevant
0:44:04tasks usually related to whatever it is I'm working on.
0:44:07It's a very nice addition to iPadOS to have that widget on the side there.
0:44:10So that's the iPad home screen.
0:44:12Okay, I have a few questions.
0:44:14Okay.
0:44:15There is, you've got your little rocket ship, but you have what looks like a credit card
0:44:18and a price tag.
0:44:19What do they do?
0:44:20Oh, um, yes.
0:44:21You're right.
0:44:22No, you are right.
0:44:23I'm not there.
0:44:24It's funny because it's just a muscle memory thing.
0:44:30It took me a second.
0:44:31Those are two different shortcuts that are set up to enter tasks into OmniFocus very
0:44:38quickly in a different way.
0:44:40So the tag is set up so it launches a little shortcut that will very quickly get like,
0:44:45if I have a question that I don't want to pursue now about a video that I'm working
0:44:49on but I want to be able to quickly just file this into the project related to that video,
0:44:54I can hit the little tag.
0:44:55And the little credit card one is a more generic, "Oh, I want to throw something into OmniFocus."
0:45:01let me hit this, type some information, press a few buttons and have it automatically go
0:45:05exactly where it needs to go in OmniFocus.
0:45:07So that's what those two are.
0:45:09But it's almost like a muscle memory thing.
0:45:11It took me a second to think, what is the difference between those two?
0:45:14Even though I use them a lot, I just sort of know.
0:45:17But yeah, both of those are except input to be sorted into OmniFocus buttons that I'm
0:45:21pressing there.
0:45:22And I see there's an icon for an app called Dark Noise.
0:45:26Yes.
0:45:27I assume you've been using for your noise requirements?
0:45:31Yeah, I was going to have this also for my lightning round.
0:45:34I see it's ended up being there in the frequently used one, but yeah.
0:45:38Dark Noise is a white noise iOS app.
0:45:41I think I would describe it as kind of like the carrot weather for white noise.
0:45:46It's incredibly well implemented.
0:45:48It's super iOS-y. It takes advantage of plugging into everything that iOS does.
0:45:54It has lots of different noise options.
0:45:56Yeah, there's lots of different noise options. It works with shortcuts so you can automate it if you want.
0:46:02I have a couple little shortcuts on the iPad for... I'm going into writing mode now, and it's nice to be able to
0:46:08have those work with the white noise background. Like, say, just start playing Thunder noises
0:46:13as part of the getting everything set up.
0:46:16There's a really killer feature that some apps are able to do, and I never quite understand if this is, like,
0:46:22an official thing that Apple allows, or if it's a hacky sort of thing.
0:46:26But dark noise allows you to mix the white noise with other audio that is playing on
0:46:33the system at the same time.
0:46:34I don't know what they're using, but it's possible.
0:46:36You can have audio from games and listen to a podcast at the same time.
0:46:41But that's clever that they've implemented the audio in that way.
0:46:44Yeah, so some apps have allowed this to happen, but I like how dark noise is extremely explicit
0:46:50about it, and then also allows you to adjust the mixed white noise volume relative to whatever
0:46:59the other audio is.
0:47:00So the basic effect for this is it allows me to do the thing on my iPad, which is I
0:47:05want to have noise in the background, you know, it's raining or there's wind or whatever.
0:47:11I'm on a train, there's lots of options.
0:47:14But also be able to listen to a song on repeat at the same time.
0:47:19So that is the real killer feature of Dark Noise.
0:47:21That's good.
0:47:22I've got to give that app very high marks for a new app of the year.
0:47:27It's incredibly well made.
0:47:29I'm pretty sure it's a single developer who's made it.
0:47:33It very much makes me think of Carrot Weather.
0:47:35You are very good at what you're doing, you're providing a lot of options, so yeah, big thumbs
0:47:40up to Dark Noise as a new app for this year.
0:47:44The developer's name is Charlie.
0:47:45They are a cortex.
0:47:46Yes, well, I also looked at the custom icons, which I thought, "Oh, this person is definitely
0:47:52a Relay FM listener."
0:47:54Yeah, there are lots of Relay-themed app icons, which Charlie was very kind in asking if they
0:48:00could use before they did them, which I thought was really cool.
0:48:03That's how I found out about the app, because Charlie reached out and was like, "Hi, I'm
0:48:07making this app.
0:48:08I wanted to have these icons."
0:48:09And I was like, "Ooh, this looks like a nice app.
0:48:10I think Gray would like this.
0:48:12Can you send me a beta for it?"
0:48:13So I tried it out.
0:48:14There's a few Cortex ones in there.
0:48:16is a #mikewasright which is just very colorful, very colorful icon. My favorite, of course,
0:48:22naturally.
0:48:23Of course, of course. Yeah, so great app, really highly, if you like white noise, give
0:48:29it a try. I think it's easy to say it's probably the best white noise app on the store right
0:48:34now.
0:48:35I would agree with you because it actually looks good.
0:48:37Yes, some of them are ugly or I don't know, they try to be like these weird experiences.
0:48:43They want to be more than they are, right?
0:48:45Yeah, yeah, and yeah, so that's why it's really good.
0:48:49Two thumbs up.
0:48:50The Siri Shortcut support is so good.
0:48:53You can just choose everything.
0:48:55And I love some of the sounds that they have in this app, right?
0:48:58Where like, keyboard is one of them.
0:49:00Snoring is one.
0:49:01The sound of a plane, which you must love when you're on planes.
0:49:04Because I know you like that, right?
0:49:06I don't know why you give me a hard time about that, Myke.
0:49:08It's perfectly sensible.
0:49:09I'm not giving you a hard time.
0:49:10I'm just asking.
0:49:11I'm just asking.
0:49:12Yes, I listen to plane noise when I'm on a plane.
0:49:14Yes, that is the thing that I do that helps isolate the sound.
0:49:18The first time you told me that I thought it was madness.
0:49:21I have since...
0:49:22I understand.
0:49:23I get it.
0:49:24I get it more now.
0:49:25So you don't lose your sense of place but you also don't have to hear things you don't
0:49:28want to hear.
0:49:29Yeah.
0:49:30What are you gonna...
0:49:31You're gonna listen to train sounds on a plane?
0:49:32No.
0:49:33You're not gonna do that.
0:49:34That's just confusing.
0:49:35Thunder sounds are terrifying when I hear thunder when you're on a plane.
0:49:37The worst place for thunder.
0:49:39That is also true.
0:49:40Yeah.
0:49:41So that's why you're gonna listen to plane sounds on a plane.
0:49:42That's what you're gonna do.
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0:51:42I don't really have any more questions about your home screen.
0:51:46Yeah, no we can we can dive more into the like state of the apps stuff now.
0:51:50So let's go into our categories then let's talk about productivity applications. So I'm going to
0:51:54assume that at both of our to-do systems have remained exactly the same. You're an omni-focus,
0:52:01I'm a to-do-ist.
0:52:02Yes, this is category time now for State of the Apps.
0:52:06And yeah, I was, I was reviewing all of my various apps and some
0:52:13years are years of upheaval.
0:52:15Some years are years of stability.
0:52:18And I think overall, this has been a relatively stable year for me.
0:52:25For most things, which is a small mercy, but so yes, when it comes to the
0:52:29productivity category. I'm still with OmniFocus, also on the theme of stability.
0:52:34Before Myke can even ask me in a joking way, they have still not added
0:52:41Time Zone Support. Stable with regards to that as well. Stable and will not add the feature.
0:52:46Time Zone Support remains very stable. Time Zone Support remains exactly as it is.
0:52:51Unchanged in five years. We've been talking about it for five years. We've
0:52:55been talking about it for five years. I believe, if I remember correctly, the
0:52:59bug is first lodged on the OmniFocus discussion boards,
0:53:03probably close to 10 years old now at this point.
0:53:06And this is in case you're not following along the idea of fix some floating time
0:53:09zones. I don't even want to explain it anymore.
0:53:12So the idea being if you, if you travel, depending on how you work,
0:53:16you will have a decision as to whether like a task should occur at the time you
0:53:21originally set it at no matter where you are in the world.
0:53:24So if it's 10 AM Eastern time, even if you're on Pacific time,
0:53:28You want that task to fire at 10 AM Eastern time, right?
0:53:31Cause it was, that's like when that thing must be done or as me and gray tend to
0:53:35both like for the way that we work, because we will shift things around when we
0:53:39travel. If I have a task at 10 AM in London,
0:53:42I want it to fire at 10 AM if I'm in San Francisco,
0:53:45I don't want it to fire at 10 AM London time because I'm sleeping.
0:53:49So many applications like my friend todoist
0:53:54will allow you to choose when you set up a task, which do you want it to be.
0:53:59OmniFocus does not do that.
0:54:01OmniFocus will just trigger those tasks in the local time that it was set, right?
0:54:05It doesn't change them.
0:54:06Yes.
0:54:07I don't have hope, but I also do have hope because I think it's fairly obvious if you
0:54:14follow the OmniFocus blog, which I do, that they have been adding more and more features
0:54:19which are all pointing in the same direction of, you know, collaboration and shared OmniFocus
0:54:26tasks and there's no way that that can remain unresolved.
0:54:30I mean, I say there's no way, but who knows?
0:54:33There's no way it can remain unresolved.
0:54:35In preparing for this episode, I listened to last year's State of the Apps.
0:54:39You were saying the same things.
0:54:41Okay, well, they haven't released multi-user support yet, so, you know, I'm sure.
0:54:47But anyway, it doesn't matter.
0:54:49I have an incredibly hacky workaround.
0:54:53I'm not going to reiterate absolutely everything.
0:54:55If you want to hear how I use OmniFocus and why I like it so much, I think do listen to
0:54:58last year's episode.
0:54:59I talk about it in a big section.
0:55:02I've been sticking with it all year.
0:55:04I don't think at any point in the year have I even played around with trying to switch
0:55:08to a different app.
0:55:10And overall, I'm very happy with my OmniFocus setup.
0:55:16And I will still always say that like OmniFocus, better than any app, does the thing that I
0:55:20care the most about, which is I only want to see tasks that I can work on right now.
0:55:28And it's like OmniFocus nails that feature of don't show me that, you know, tonight I'm
0:55:34going to brush my teeth.
0:55:36Only have that item appear when it's actually the time to do it.
0:55:39And I love OmniFocus for that.
0:55:41And that's why I stick with it.
0:55:42Also, as I referenced before, you can really work with it in shortcuts to save a lot of
0:55:49categorization time.
0:55:51And so I really like that.
0:55:53Having set up a bunch of shortcuts to say I want to put something in OmniFocus and have
0:55:57it automatically go wherever it needs to go without me even needing to open up the app
0:56:02is also like a really nice, really big deal.
0:56:05So yeah, I've stuck with OmniFocus and I really like it and I'm very happy with that setup.
0:56:12Sounds like you are still with Todoist.
0:56:14Yeah, my to-do systems remain unchanged.
0:56:16You may remember that I spoke in the summer about thinking I would switch over to reminders.
0:56:21I've just decided not to bother doing that because Todoist has been making some nice
0:56:26changes to the app over the year.
0:56:29They're still working on an upcoming feature, which I also mentioned last year, of being
0:56:34able to look at your tasks in a Kanban format, but they are, at the moment, over the last
0:56:40few months they have been having some updates to the application which is called their foundation
0:56:44updates where they're like working on the basics of a lot of stuff but in that they've
0:56:49made some really nice design changes to the app that I enjoy greatly but things are really
0:56:54nicely color coded they've added much much much better support for nested tasks right
0:57:00so you could have a task and a bunch of subtasks so I'm now using that feature because it's
0:57:05It's way better implemented both visually and from an entry perspective.
0:57:11You can even really easily have subtasks and then subtasks inside of a subtask.
0:57:19I really like the way that they've implemented that and so I've been using that to great
0:57:22effect recently which I'm really happy about.
0:57:24I continue to be happy with Todoist.
0:57:26It is the right application for my usage.
0:57:29OmniFocus, I could have work the way that I want but it's a lot more application than
0:57:35And I need.
0:57:36Yeah, OmniFocus is a very big guns heavyweight solution to the task list problem.
0:57:42I don't use defer dates in the stuff that you're using.
0:57:44And I feel like if you're not using them, OmniFocus might be too much for you.
0:57:48Yeah, for sure.
0:57:49But a lot of the stuff around to-do apps, this is how they're designed and if that
0:57:52works for you.
0:57:54I am still using things for my checklists for when I post Cortex and stuff like that.
0:57:59Still using things for that because I like to have that off siloed into its own little
0:58:02place.
0:58:03Right.
0:58:04cortex-specific, which makes me happy and I enjoy that quite a lot.
0:58:08Actually I realized I do have to put just a little asterisk on that of like having not
0:58:14tried anything else.
0:58:15So Apple did this big redesign of Reminders, which is why you were discussing like, "Ooh,
0:58:20maybe I'll move to Reminders for iOS 13."
0:58:23And I played around with that a bunch just because I wanted to see, you know, what's
0:58:27up, what's the deal with Reminders?
0:58:29How you doing?
0:58:30What's going on?
0:58:31And it's interesting.
0:58:32It's so much better.
0:58:33It is so much better, it does have the feel of like a really well polished beta of like,
0:58:41there's parts of it which feel a little bit to me like, "It's not quite, it doesn't, you
0:58:44know, it's like you're 80% of the way there."
0:58:46But I do think it's a nice big improvement.
0:58:49And I've actually ended up using Reminders.
0:58:52It turns out Reminders is mostly a solution for me now to a different problem that I've
0:58:58always had, which is, I know, like, I hate to even say this out loud because people are
0:59:02This is going to be another one of these things where everybody has like the app they want to tell you about.
0:59:06But I've never really been happy with any of the apps that are designed to just make a list of how much information does a list app show you?
0:59:17Does it have collapsible or non-collapsible categories? How can you sort the lists? How quickly can you get something into it? How quickly can you just see stuff?
0:59:26Can I ask, what are you listing? Can you give me an example?
0:59:29Easy example, movies to watch, books to read.
0:59:32Right, like that's a list.
0:59:34You don't want those in OmniFocus.
0:59:35So this is the thing, I could do it in OmniFocus, it's like yes, of course, for OmniFocus,
0:59:40like it's a trivial thing.
0:59:41They don't even think about that.
0:59:43But I also don't want to use the app in that way.
0:59:48Like I want to keep it, this stuff is actionable, and a list of movies I might watch, it's
0:59:53like yeah, I mean technically that's actionable, but I just don't want to start cluttering
0:59:56it up.
0:59:57Yeah, it's not the same kind of thing.
0:59:58And so I've just, I've never really been happy with all the various list apps.
1:00:02And so Reminders just so happens to like present things in exactly the way that I want in terms
1:00:09of making a list of it'll, I can easily scan the list.
1:00:14You can add a little note.
1:00:16And so that note is always visible because of its nice integration with iOS.
1:00:20It's very easy to hit the share button and say like add a web page to a list.
1:00:26And so I've ended up using Reminders just as my list app now.
1:00:31Or like one of the other things that I do is just for Cortex, of like stuff to talk
1:00:34about on Cortex is just makes it very easy to add to that bottom of the list.
1:00:38I think that's what the app is for, for a lot of people, is like that exact thing, right?
1:00:45Like even a to-do list, that is a to-do list.
1:00:49We do not have to-do lists, like in OmniFocus and Todoist.
1:00:53It's way more than that, right?
1:00:55- Yeah, it's project management more.
1:00:57- Because like a typical to-do list doesn't have like
1:00:59times and dates set to it.
1:01:01It's just like these are a bunch of things
1:01:03I wanna get done. - Right, multiple dependencies
1:01:04on other people. - Yeah.
1:01:05- Yeah, it's a whole different thing.
1:01:07- And it is made really well for that.
1:01:09Like that is what this, that's who this app is to
1:01:12focus on in most people.
1:01:13And you can make it do more.
1:01:15Our friend Federico, he uses Reminders as his to-do list.
1:01:19So he's OmniFocus now.
1:01:21And I mean, he uses these tools as much as we do.
1:01:24and he's found with various shortcuts and stuff,
1:01:26like ways to make reminders work for him in that way.
1:01:30And I look at it, I'm like, yeah, I could probably do this,
1:01:33but I haven't really seen any feature that Reminders has
1:01:38that would make me explicitly want to move.
1:01:42The one feature it has, it doesn't work exactly how I want,
1:01:45which is you can assign a person to a reminder,
1:01:50and then the next time you're sending him an iMessage,
1:01:53it can pop up in the iMessage window and be like,
1:01:55hey, you wanted to talk to Gray about this.
1:01:58But I want that in Slack, not in Messages.
1:02:02- Yeah, yeah, that's true.
1:02:04- If they let third parties plug into this,
1:02:06I would move to Reminders.
1:02:07'Cause that would be like,
1:02:08that is something which is useful enough to me
1:02:11that I would make the move for.
1:02:13But like in Messages,
1:02:14I don't have work conversations in Messages.
1:02:16I have them in Slack.
1:02:17- I agree.
1:02:18That's a great idea,
1:02:20but it needs to be more universal
1:02:21to become a real killer feature.
1:02:23So it was interesting.
1:02:24Reminders has now found this place in my life as just a place to keep some simple lists
1:02:29of some random stuff.
1:02:31And I really quite like it for that.
1:02:33And it's just like it's the correct information density and display.
1:02:38And I do like that you can you can just have one level deep where you can have a little
1:02:42expandable or collapsible section.
1:02:44So I can look at Cortex and say, you know, write out a line that says state of the apps,
1:02:49and then put a bunch of stuff underneath that.
1:02:51if I want to like collapse all of that away and hide it and then show it later.
1:02:54So it's it just happens to hit it hit this sweet spot really nicely of what I'm looking
1:02:59for in a list app, which I was not expecting.
1:03:02So that's that's a place that Reminders has found in my life.
1:03:05When I have those kinds of lists, right, so like you said, like the movie list, the booklist,
1:03:09they go in notes for me.
1:03:10I make checklists in notes.
1:03:12Yeah, I've tried that.
1:03:13But like, I want a separate item for each thing.
1:03:17I don't like the "here's a list" and these, it's a bunch of words all on one page.
1:03:24I just like, I want separate items so I can easily delete them and get rid of them or
1:03:28manipulate them or move them.
1:03:29I don't want it as one unit.
1:03:31It's very important to me that they're separate units.
1:03:33Yeah, when I have to be editing text to remove them.
1:03:37Yes.
1:03:38Sure.
1:03:39I get that.
1:03:40That's a good point, I get that.
1:03:41I do like in iOS 13 there is a feature which resorts checklists.
1:03:45Right, yes.
1:03:46So if you check it, it can go down to the bottom.
1:03:49I think that's a really nice little quality of life feature for Notes.
1:03:53Should we talk about time tracking?
1:03:55Time tracking, yeah.
1:03:56I think we're both very set on Timery as the front end for toggle, right?
1:04:02Oh yeah, yeah.
1:04:05Yeah, since I've had access to it, having it gone public, I use it completely as the
1:04:10interface to toggle.
1:04:12Another app with just fantastic shortcut support too.
1:04:15That is the reason.
1:04:16I took a lot of time off of time tracking in the previous year.
1:04:20I just felt like this is not something I really wanted to do.
1:04:23And I've been building back up my time tracking system over the last couple of months.
1:04:29And the shortcut integration is fantastic.
1:04:33So I'm just trying to build up all of these shortcuts that automatically do something
1:04:38and also start a timer.
1:04:40And it's just a million times easier than it used to be trying to put together URL schemes.
1:04:47And Federico Vittucci did some amazing stuff with toggle and how to get it to work, but
1:04:52Timer Remakes it just a million times easier to do.
1:04:55It means I can build shortcuts on my own again without needing to try and work out how the
1:05:00API works.
1:05:02And I've been able to build this year some really shortcuts that work really well for
1:05:07me.
1:05:08which is just called recording timer.
1:05:10And when I hit it, it sets my phone onto
1:05:13Do Not Disturb for 90 minutes.
1:05:15It looks at what is the most recent
1:05:18or like upcoming or current calendar entry.
1:05:21And then creates a timer
1:05:24with the name of that show in the calendar as the tag.
1:05:28I love it. I'm so happy with that.
1:05:30And it works every single time.
1:05:32Yeah, that's great.
1:05:33Oh, while we're here, there's a little thing I'll mention
1:05:36in terms of shortcuts because it's such a dumb little thing that I've made for myself,
1:05:41but one of my little time tracking ones is something I call WorkWalk.
1:05:46So if I'm working on a project and I feel like I just need a quick mental break, I started
1:05:52a shortcut called WorkWalk, which uses Timery to begin a time tracker that says like, "You're
1:05:57going for a walk now."
1:05:58But it also uses an app called JustTimers.
1:06:04of Do, like this is a new app in my system here, and Just Timers has great shortcut support
1:06:09as well to do this same thing that Do does of "I want a timer that also nags me."
1:06:15Oh great, what is this? Will you tell me about this? Come on, what is this application all
1:06:20about?
1:06:21It is very Do-like, but it's Do with very good shortcut support. We've mentioned Do,
1:06:26D-U-E, many times over many years on the show, but one thing that it doesn't have is great
1:06:31Siri shortcut support and just timers will do the same kind of thing.
1:06:36It'll do like nagging reminders.
1:06:38And so like, it's just the simplest shortcut in the world, but it's like,
1:06:42I'm going for a work walk, start the timer to track that I'm going for a walk
1:06:47and also begin a 22 minute timer that will harass me at the end.
1:06:53Because the thing about a work walk is I don't want to get stuck in walking
1:06:58around too long thinking about the thing.
1:07:00It's like, this is a break.
1:07:02Think about something and come back.
1:07:04And so like when this timer goes off, you should return to where
1:07:08you're working and get back to work.
1:07:10This is not like you're just going to wander around for awhile.
1:07:12So, um, I really like, it's so simple, but I really like this.
1:07:16Just, just do two things at once.
1:07:18And I don't have to think about either of them.
1:07:20And, you know, I use that like once a day when I'm busy working.
1:07:24And so it's, it's great.
1:07:24It's really nice to have a couple of things that have shortcut support.
1:07:27I need to look at this.
1:07:28I never thought that there would be a contender for dew, so has it replaced dew for you?
1:07:33Yeah, I would say at this point it's basically replaced dew, but because I don't use the
1:07:39like to-do reminders part, like I use dew entirely in terms of timers.
1:07:45What do you mean the to-do reminders part?
1:07:46I always forget because it's like these two different things where... yeah there's like
1:07:51reminders and there's timers in dew.
1:07:54Oh, okay, because I use it more in the reminders.
1:07:57So like, I have like a daily reminder to do the washing up, because I don't have a dishwasher
1:08:02still.
1:08:03And so it will remind me every day, but then give me the nagging reminder.
1:08:07Right.
1:08:08So, Just Timers, as the name implies, is Just Timers.
1:08:12Okay, so this isn't for me.
1:08:14Yeah, it doesn't have the reminders section.
1:08:16There are two things that I use as reminders in Do, which is basically the stuff that like
1:08:22harasses me to go to sleep. But other than that, I don't really... I'm mostly using
1:08:28just timers now for the actual timers.
1:08:30Okay, so it won't replace you. Nothing will replace you. Ever.
1:08:35It's a real workhorse again.
1:08:38Project management. Now this is where I've included Evernote. Because I think it feels
1:08:44like that's the project management application we would use.
1:08:47This is where I want to get the answer to what's going on with Evernote.
1:08:51Before we get that answer, I'm naturally assuming that Evernote has remained consistent as a
1:08:56research tool for you.
1:08:58Yes.
1:08:59Nothing's changing it.
1:09:00Nothing has changed.
1:09:01And I will give Evernote credit here, where it's a pain in the butt.
1:09:06We said last year it felt a little bit like Evernote was trying to turn this battleship
1:09:11around a little bit maybe, you know, less socks, more bug fixes.
1:09:18And I would not say that they have turned the ship, but it feels like it is turning
1:09:25ever so slowly in the right direction.
1:09:28So there's still many things that I could complain about with Evernote, but I can say
1:09:32that their releases over the last year, I've noticed less frustration with the app over
1:09:41time.
1:09:42So there's nothing to report to say, "Oh, there's amazing new features and I totally
1:09:46love it, but I can say that I'm much less frustrated with some of the ways that Evernote
1:09:50works.
1:09:51And yes, I'm still 100% in on Evernote.
1:09:54It has features that other apps, even Microsoft OneNote or Devant Think just simply don't
1:09:59replicate for me.
1:10:00So yeah, Evernote is very secure as the oldest iOS app that I still use on my devices.
1:10:10So last year, the state of the apps, I came to the realization that for projects related
1:10:15to Cortex brand and the theme system, I wanted to have a place where a few things were solved.
1:10:21Where I could have some notes and some outlines and some documents that I were keeping around
1:10:25ideas and thoughts and some admin stuff, you know, keeping track of some basic financial
1:10:30things, but also a place to put inspiration and save PDFs of stuff and all that kind of
1:10:36stuff, right?
1:10:37Evernote is made for like a real kind of catch-all of all types of media right
1:10:43right and that was like a perfect thing for it it could also share notebooks if
1:10:47you have wanted to share them with people I get you know made the perfect
1:10:51sense that's why I came to the shocking realization that I needed Evernote but
1:10:55enough is enough I can't I can't use it anymore
1:10:59why why Myke there is one reason and it feels petty but I've experienced this
1:11:05this too much over the last year.
1:11:08No petty complaint that's too small to stop a man from using an app.
1:11:11So something I do quite frequently is to go in and I update a very simple list that I
1:11:18just need to go in once every couple of times a month to add items onto this list.
1:11:23It's just a text list, right?
1:11:25I open the list and it refreshes.
1:11:28It flashes to white and then comes back.
1:11:32Why are you doing this?
1:11:33Evernote is loading like a locally cached version and then in the process of checking to see if there's an update it blanks out for a
1:11:39Second and then comes back. There are a couple of things that are happening here one
1:11:42This is a text list right this text list should be saved in the app natively
1:11:48You shouldn't need to do anything else - I run my app in dark mode. I do not expect to have my retinas
1:11:54By this white screen and also you were getting in the way every time I open the app, right?
1:12:00I open the note, I see the text that I want it to be.
1:12:03As soon as I tap to enter the cursor, it flashes white
1:12:08and then comes back and loads at the top
1:12:10and then scrolls to the bottom.
1:12:11I have experienced this too much.
1:12:13So Gray, I have moved to an application
1:12:17to which many QuaTexans will rejoice
1:12:20when they hear the name.
1:12:22- Okay.
1:12:23- I have moved all of this information to Notion.
1:12:27Oh, there are some real Notion fans out there.
1:12:31The Notion fandom is too much for me.
1:12:33But Notion...
1:12:36What do you think of Notion?
1:12:38It does everything I want, just as well as Evernote.
1:12:41And the things that frustrate me, it doesn't do.
1:12:45Right.
1:12:45So I'll tell you, the import... unbelievable.
1:12:48They have a native importer.
1:12:51They give you $10 in credit.
1:12:53It's like $5 or $10 in credit.
1:12:55If you sign up for the plan or whatever, you can give all these companies money eventually, right?
1:13:01But if you import from Evernote, they give you credit, which I think is kind of hilarious,
1:13:05right? Because a lot of Notion's proposition, I think, is we are better than Evernote.
1:13:10- That is a great idea to give you credit for imports like that. That's a really clever idea.
1:13:16- But like, you know, because you can, I think it's like, it's free as an individual,
1:13:19you pay for a team account or something like that. I think that's their business model.
1:13:23but it does all of the stuff that I would want. Of course it presents things differently,
1:13:29you know, because it's kind of like a really interesting mix of like a note-taking application
1:13:36and like a personal wiki, like you can link things together, but it's also a collaboration tools
1:13:44and like checklists and you know it is a very Evernote, you think you build tables in it really
1:13:51easily but for what I need it to be which is a place where I can save stuff
1:13:56it has a web clipper right it has a web clipper and you can do it on iOS and on
1:14:00the Mac and it can very easily save articles save lists of things save PDFs
1:14:07it does all of it it looks nice it feels more modern it doesn't have the hang-ups
1:14:12that I have of Evernote like if when I go into adding items to this list it
1:14:18It just loads.
1:14:21Everything can be tagged.
1:14:23You can assign things.
1:14:24You can use emoji everywhere if you want to, but I'm not right now.
1:14:28Because I've only been using Notion for a week at this point.
1:14:33It is not perfect, but it is better at what I need right now than Evernote is.
1:14:40And I didn't go straight from Evernote to Notion.
1:14:43I stopped off at Basecamp for five minutes along the way.
1:14:46Oh, Basecamp.
1:14:47Wow.
1:14:48of what I want and then move straight to Notion.
1:14:50Wow, Basecamp.
1:14:51I haven't heard about Basecamp since Web 2.0.
1:14:53They're, you know, they're trundling along.
1:14:55They did a cool thing recently.
1:14:56They have like a free plan now for single users and they have a version 3.
1:15:01Oh yeah, I'm not saying that they don't exist, but it's just, it's like, that's a name I
1:15:04haven't heard in a long time is Basecamp.
1:15:07But I thought, oh, Basecamp might work, but no, it's just, it's too much.
1:15:13It's too focused on you have a big team.
1:15:16that's not what I have. So yeah, I really think that I mean, I'm going to keep playing around
1:15:25more with Notion because I actually think it has even more to offer to me. But like,
1:15:30it is 100% a better tool for me for doing what I need than Evernote is.
1:15:34Yeah, it's interesting to hear you say that I played around with Notion. And like, I can just
1:15:42Sometimes you know with a tool, like, "This is not for me."
1:15:45And it's hard to pin down exactly why, but you just get that sense.
1:15:49It's like, Todoist, even if I spent a million hours in it, it's like,
1:15:52"This, the way this is designed, this is just isn't for me. It doesn't work with my brain."
1:15:57But Notion is obviously really powerful for the people who use it.
1:16:01YouTube colleague of mine, Thomas Frank, who is always showing me what he does in Notion,
1:16:06and he has a couple of YouTube videos about it, like, he runs his whole channel off of Notion.
1:16:11It is crazy how much he gets out of this.
1:16:16When you search Thomas Frank on YouTube, the third answer is Notion.
1:16:19Right, there you go.
1:16:21I'm gonna say he may be top 0.01% of Notion power users.
1:16:29It's very impressive what he does with it.
1:16:30You go watch his videos and you'll be amazed.
1:16:37So it is a very powerful tool and it is a little bit of like an everything all in one tool.
1:16:43It's interesting to hear that that's where you've gone from Evernote.
1:16:47Yeah and I want to dig into it a little bit more. I wondered if it could be,
1:16:51like it could replace some of the stuff that I do in Notes but like we're gathering research for
1:16:56shows but it doesn't really work in the way that I want with that but it is an interesting app.
1:17:01It's one that I've kind of like thought to try out a bunch and then I was kind of turned off
1:17:05buy the fandom. Just too much, you know? And so then, I was like, "Ah, no one's out there,
1:17:13but whatever, whatever." And I was like, "No. I've had enough of it, though. I need to explore
1:17:18what's out there." So I spent a day, try out Basecamp, tried out Notion, and Notion's where
1:17:23I'm gonna stick for now.
1:17:24Yeah, I think Notion has such an intense fandom because, again, the impression that I get
1:17:29from what I've been shown about it is that it really rewards you for the more stuff that
1:17:34you put into it. And so that's why you end up with really super users who like, this
1:17:39is the absolute center of their life in terms of both the dashboard for actions and the
1:17:44place where research is stored. And so yeah, I think it's that kind of app.
1:17:48And I think that is like core to it is the idea of like, you can build your own Wiki,
1:17:53you can link everything together in this application, which is a very interesting thing. So I want
1:17:57to play around with it more.
1:17:59Yeah, everything can link to everything else, which seeing a demonstration of it, like threw
1:18:03me back to org mode and Emacs, which I used to use.
1:18:06And, but like, once you get into this idea of everything is linkable to everything
1:18:11else, like you can really create a whole world and where you can jump between
1:18:15projects and actions and reference very quickly.
1:18:17So yeah, I think if people are looking for productivity tool, it's definitely
1:18:21something to check out and just see like, Oh, does this, does this feel like a tool
1:18:25for you?
1:18:25Because if you like it, you might be one of the people who really likes it.
1:18:30Communication.
1:18:31Slack and email.
1:18:32I think of the two here, right?
1:18:34Like that's where we're going.
1:18:36- Yes, Slack and email.
1:18:37This is how the world turns.
1:18:39- So I guess one of the things that's changed
1:18:41since last year is we now have a Slack.
1:18:44Cortex brand has a Slack.
1:18:46- We do have our own Slack.
1:18:47- We're at that point in our company's life
1:18:49where it needs its own Slack like all good companies do.
1:18:52- Yes, of course.
1:18:53How else could we talk to each other about the company?
1:18:56We're not gonna use iMessage.
1:18:57We're not gonna pollute our personal mode of communication
1:19:01with work communication.
1:19:03So we need another Slack.
1:19:04- Yep. - There we go.
1:19:05- My situation is mostly unchanged, right?
1:19:11Slack for all work communication and Spark for all email.
1:19:15And again, Spark has gotten better in some ways
1:19:20as an email application,
1:19:22but no email app will ever be good.
1:19:25But the service underneath Spark,
1:19:27the fact that I can share email messages
1:19:30with people on our team.
1:19:31I can share them directly with our sales manager.
1:19:34Makes it a tool that I can't give up.
1:19:37I love it, the way it works like that.
1:19:38We can have conversations in line about emails.
1:19:41I can delegate.
1:19:42I can share them.
1:19:43It's fantastic.
1:19:45I'm very, very happy with that.
1:19:47- So last year I was complaining about this problem
1:19:49with Slack of feeling like I have a very hard time
1:19:52keeping track of the conversations in Slack.
1:19:54Like when you start getting lots of Slacks,
1:19:57I just find something about both the interface and my desperate desire to not have this open
1:20:04all the time and to only go and check sometimes.
1:20:06It makes it very easy to lose stuff.
1:20:08So my solution to this right now is, and that's been developed over the past year and has
1:20:13worked pretty well, is Dropbox Paper.
1:20:17So Dropbox Paper, it's just like Google Docs.
1:20:20It's just a place where you can write stuff.
1:20:23But I've ended up with Slack and with the people that I work with trying to be very
1:20:28clear about Slack is not an information repository.
1:20:34Slack is a communication tool.
1:20:36So Slack is instant message.
1:20:38And then Dropbox paper is where the projects, the like communal projects live.
1:20:47So like, here is a video, here's all the things that need to be done about a video or, you
1:20:52between my assistant and I, like, here is all the administrative stuff.
1:20:56What does she need to do? What do I need to do?
1:21:00And, like, is this project open or closed?
1:21:03So I've tried to make it very clear, this distinction,
1:21:08and that has helped me a lot with just trying not to lose stuff.
1:21:13Of like, paper is what is happening, what is open, what is done,
1:21:20And then Slack is talking about those projects, but it is not like, this is not
1:21:26the place where a checklist should live.
1:21:29And it's, that's worked pretty well.
1:21:32Those edges aren't perfectly hard, obviously, because there's always a
1:21:36little bit of bleed here and there.
1:21:38But I've ended up really liking Dropbox paper simply because, you know, the
1:21:42people I work with, most of them are shared on like my company Dropbox account.
1:21:46and you can just @ message someone in a shared document and they will get a notification
1:21:53through Dropbox that there's something waiting for them in this shared Dropbox paper document.
1:21:58So just because of that little feature has made it really useful for me.
1:22:03That is a really interesting system you built for yourself there instead of using Slack.
1:22:08But I get why, because there's more permanence to the stuff that's going in those lists.
1:22:13Yes, it's the permanence of it.
1:22:15Slack just feels like this river, and that's fine, like a river is what you want for communication,
1:22:21but for stuff that is assigned for me to do from my assistant, like I will see a little
1:22:27red dot appear on the Dropbox icon on my Mac, which means like, "Oh, she's tagged me in
1:22:31something in paper."
1:22:33This is a to-do that I need to get to at some point, like something I need to personally
1:22:36handle.
1:22:37In theory, I really would like to use something like OmniFocus for that in the future, but
1:22:43But obviously that is not an option right now.
1:22:46And Dropbox Paper really does have this big advantage that, sort of like Notion, you can
1:22:52throw anything in there.
1:22:54You can throw in relevant screenshots, or here's a PDF of a document that you need to
1:23:00sign, or whatever.
1:23:01So it's free form-ness is a real advantage over something that's like a shared task list.
1:23:08Do you have it tying into Slack in any way?
1:23:10I don't.
1:23:11I don't have it tying into Slack.
1:23:13I know that you can, I've just never felt the need to do any of those integrations.
1:23:17I mean, I don't know if you can do this, but it would seem like interesting that you could
1:23:20maybe add something to a Dropbox paper document from inside of Slack would be kind of cool.
1:23:26Right.
1:23:27Okay.
1:23:28So yeah, I know those integrations exist, like you can do that kind of stuff.
1:23:31But I actually think that there's a benefit in the little bit of friction to going over
1:23:37to Dropbox paper and then thinking, okay, how do I actually want to format this in a
1:23:41sentence for the like future me to remember as opposed to just saying like, oh, what did
1:23:46I happen to type in Slack? Oh, that's a great to do added to paper. Like I just, I think there is
1:23:52a benefit in the separation a little bit, but I do know that there are integrations like that that
1:23:56work, but yeah, so I'm going to highly recommend Dropbox paper for a useful free form area to keep
1:24:05track of stuff that a group is working on. I've really liked it as an addendum to Slack,
1:24:11that these two tools work together very well for me.
1:24:14E-mail?
1:24:16I'm still doing the same thing I was doing last year, which is how infrequently can I
1:24:20possibly open e-mail, that's how often I'll open it. So yeah, I do e-mail as infrequently
1:24:27as I possibly can, and I've moved almost everything that is of serious value into Slack in some
1:24:34So email has become a bit of a strange space for me at this point.
1:24:38I do want to try to...
1:24:41I'll just say for now, we'll see what happens next year.
1:24:44I do have some thoughts about trying to be more regular with email.
1:24:48I think there is a way that that can be useful to me in the future.
1:24:52But for now, I really haven't changed anything with the way I run email,
1:24:56which is basically like as infrequently as possible.
1:24:58What a world you live in, my friend.
1:25:00I know, but this is where hour or two live is made diverge the farthest of almost anything.
1:25:07I mean I could not do email but then I would be on this street very soon.
1:25:10Yeah, exactly, that's what would happen to you.
1:25:13That's not how it works, I mean I'm afraid.
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1:26:31Should we talk about writing and research?
1:26:32Yeah, what are you using as your primary writing tool, Myke?
1:26:36Notes, probably.
1:26:37Notes?
1:26:37I mean, I've already spoken about Apple Notes as like the place where I keep my research items,
1:26:43right? For stuff that eventually goes into Google Docs, which is where all my show...
1:26:46I mean, that's honestly Google Docs is where the majority of my writing would go
1:26:50because that's where I'm doing show prep. Right.
1:26:53Oh, OK. So actually, here's a question.
1:26:55Did you use Apple Notes to write your drafts
1:26:59for the instructions for the theme system journal?
1:27:01Right. Like that's a that's a oh, that's like a thing that you had to write out.
1:27:05Where did you write that? I used Bear.
1:27:08Oh, interesting. OK. For those.
1:27:10Yeah, that all went into Bear. Bear is just like, you know.
1:27:16It's fine. It's a nice app. It looks pretty good and it has pretty decent
1:27:23Markdown support, right? Or at least you can export things in a nice Markdown way.
1:27:29If I'm going to do some writing, then Bear is the app that I will use for that.
1:27:33There are better applications for writing in Markdown than Bear, but it's just one that I have
1:27:39and will use from time to time because I write long form things so infrequently,
1:27:44but Bear does the job for me in those instances.
1:27:47[Music]
1:27:47[Music]
1:27:47[Music]
1:27:47[Music]
1:27:47[Music]
1:27:47[Music]
1:27:47Hmm. Okay. Interesting. Yeah, because I'm just trying to think of...
1:27:50It's a good question.
1:27:51Yeah, of things that you've written that feels like a serious thing that you wrote,
1:27:54and I was wondering what you used to use it.
1:27:56Yeah, they are the most words that I have committed to something in the last year, right?
1:28:01That's like outside of like a show outline, like this prose. Sorry,
1:28:05it's the most prose that I've written.
1:28:06Yes.
1:28:07So you were using Scrivener...
1:28:09Yes.
1:28:11...last year. Has Scrivener remained?
1:28:13Okay, so now that we're a year later, I can talk about the context of some of the things that I was working on.
1:28:19The Billup video that went out, the Christopher Billup race around Staten Island video,
1:28:24and the American Indians video that just went up recently.
1:28:28Like, I've had more projects that are very involved and over very long periods of time.
1:28:37And this is part of why I had switched to Scrivener a year ago,
1:28:42because Scrivener is just an amazing tool that allows you to do this thing of
1:28:47sort of combining parts of your research into the writing process.
1:28:53So, I don't know a really good way to put it, but it's like if Evernote is a filing cabinet,
1:29:00Scrivener is a little bit more like, here's what's on your desktop that you're working with right
1:29:05now. Here's a bunch of papers. Some of them are scripts that you're writing, but some of them are
1:29:11information that's directly related to what you're immediately working on.
1:29:15And so that is part of what was my frustration with switching from Ulysses to Scrivener was
1:29:21trying to solve that problem.
1:29:23So I do really like Scrivener, but I switched back to Ulysses a couple months ago.
1:29:31And one of the reasons is I was able to ask the developer of Ulysses to add a particular
1:29:39feature that I really wanted.
1:29:41The details don't really matter, but for a long time on Ulysses, if you wanted to use
1:29:45Dropbox Sync, which I do need to use as part of my workflow with my assistant, you could
1:29:51only use a subset of the features of Ulysses, you couldn't use all of them.
1:29:56So I had asked like, "Hey, can Dropbox Sync work for Ulysses's native format so I can
1:30:02get access to all of the features in Dropbox?"
1:30:05And that was very graciously added and has allowed me to move back to Ulysses.
1:30:09Seems like a very big thing you had them do.
1:30:12Look, with development, it's hard to know what the difficulty level of implementing
1:30:17something is or isn't.
1:30:19So I guess if other Ulysses users were happy that this update came out over the last year,
1:30:24you can just thank Gray, I guess.
1:30:26Well I do know that this is, having spoken to some other people, there's sometimes this
1:30:30same thing of you're working on something.
1:30:33Ulysses isn't designed to be worked by on a team, but sometimes you do want a team to
1:30:39be able to work on something and that means you have to use Dropbox. You can't
1:30:42use iCloud sync. And so people would run into this frustration of "oh I can't have
1:30:47all of the features." How does Ulysses deal with conflicts? I think it hands it all
1:30:51off to Dropbox. So you're hoping Dropbox takes care of it? Yeah you're hoping
1:30:55Dropbox takes care of it. If you're using Ulysses between two people I think it's
1:31:00the same thing like what Myke and I do with the Logic projects for this
1:31:04podcast. You just make it very clear who's working on what when and don't
1:31:08both of you work on it at the same time.
1:31:10And if you're clearing your communication, you shouldn't have any problem.
1:31:14Um, so, uh, like I've developed a system with my assistant where if she is working
1:31:21on the script, it's because I have physically moved it into a different
1:31:26folder within the Dropbox hierarchy.
1:31:28And then when she's done, it gets moved into a folder that indicates to me that
1:31:33like her work on it is done and it is complete and now it comes back to me.
1:31:37So that's just like a way to be very clear about what is the state of this.
1:31:41Like, have I passed it to you or have you passed it to me?
1:31:44But so, yeah, I've switched back to Ulysses.
1:31:47I like Ulysses a lot.
1:31:49And the way I would describe it is,
1:31:52now with access to all of Ulysses' features, I get...
1:31:57In terms of what I use, I get 90% of the benefits of Scrivener
1:32:02at like 10% of the complexity.
1:32:06Because Scrivener is an application which, and I think this really goes for it,
1:32:10has perhaps more settings than many apps on the face of the earth.
1:32:15And there are times when you really want that power, and I used all of that power,
1:32:21but I'd prefer to use the slightly simpler Ulysses setup.
1:32:25Plus, if you're thinking about using Scrivener,
1:32:28it doesn't handle being used on multiple machines very well.
1:32:34It's really designed to be used on one computer.
1:32:38So if you are writing a book and you're thinking of using Scrivener,
1:32:42I do think a strong consideration in that decision is,
1:32:47are you always going to be using this program on the same computer?
1:32:50And if the answer to that is yes, then Scrivener is fine.
1:32:53But if you know you're going to be trying to like sync stuff through Dropbox
1:32:57and using it on different devices, that's a mark against Scrivener.
1:33:00But what I will just say is why these two apps? Like what is the thing that I like so much about
1:33:07both of these apps? Unlike a traditional writing app, like you open up pages or you open up
1:33:12Microsoft Word and you're given just sheets of paper to start writing on, both of these apps are
1:33:19much more abstract about the idea of like, what is a page? And so it's a lot more like, what are you
1:33:28laughing at? What is a word? What is a sentence? Well, they each have different words for this
1:33:37stuff but it's a lot more like you're writing on index cards. And some of those index cards
1:33:43are big and some of those index cards are small, but you can move them around. And for
1:33:49someone like me who is doing many, many, many drafts of a script, it's really useful to
1:33:56be able to say, "These three paragraphs go together.
1:34:00These three paragraphs belong on one index card because they're about this part of what
1:34:04I'm talking about.
1:34:06And then this paragraph goes on a separate index card, and then these next five, they
1:34:11go together."
1:34:12So you can mark off these blocks of text and then rearrange them arbitrarily as much as
1:34:17you want.
1:34:18It's a totally different way to think about writing, and it is a vital, vital feature
1:34:23for me at this point.
1:34:25the thing that I can now do with Ulysses, which wasn't possible before, is
1:34:29also on those cards like in Scrivener,
1:34:33attach additional information. So to be able to say these paragraphs are part of the script,
1:34:40but I also want to be able, whenever I'm looking at these three paragraphs, to see this reference photograph.
1:34:45I want to be able to have this reference PDF so I can just double-check this complicated thing that I'm talking about, or
1:34:53or have a separate note that I have written to myself about what these paragraphs are
1:34:58trying to achieve.
1:35:00And so I can now do that in Ulysses, and it is fantastic and just so helpful on big complicated
1:35:09projects.
1:35:11Like when something has large scope over long periods of time, being able to have some,
1:35:18pull out some parts of the Evernote research or make notes to future me is just vitally,
1:35:25vitally important.
1:35:26I'm saying this because I genuinely really like both apps.
1:35:29I think they are both good.
1:35:31I've just chosen to go back to Ulysses because I like the simplicity of it a little better,
1:35:37but both of them are great if you're thinking about trying to write a complex project.
1:35:41I think if I was going to choose between one of these applications, I would choose Ulysses
1:35:46just because I like its design more.
1:35:48Yeah, Ulysses is also more iOS-y.
1:35:50You can like put in custom fonts and stuff like that, right?
1:35:53Like there's a lot of interesting things you can do with Ulysses
1:35:56to make it look the way you want.
1:35:58Yeah, again, Scrivener has functionally infinite options
1:36:01so you can get it to look the way that you want.
1:36:03But yeah, if you're used to working on iOS in particular,
1:36:07Ulysses feels very at home right out of the box.
1:36:09The other thing which really for me leans in Ulysses' favor
1:36:13is it is this pseudo-markdown editor
1:36:15And I just, I really prefer writing in explicit markup rather than with styles.
1:36:21And so that that's the other big difference between the two of them.
1:36:24Yeah.
1:36:25Cause I remember that being a sticking point for you as scrivener, right?
1:36:28Like it wanted you to bold things rather than to,
1:36:30now here's the thing.
1:36:31Scrivener is great for that.
1:36:33Like I got used to their, the styles and it's very interesting having functionally
1:36:40infinite styles at your fingertips.
1:36:42And so it allowed me to do like some very interesting things that I cannot
1:36:45replicate in Ulysses, but if given the choice, I'm trading that additional infinite flexibility
1:36:52for the limited subset of Markdown because I much prefer to write an explicit marking
1:36:58of text the way Ulysses handles it.
1:37:00So I don't want to make predictions for my future self, but I'll be pretty shocked if
1:37:06something comes along and dethrones Ulysses in the, you know, conceivable future.
1:37:12I think I'm probably here to stay for a really long time in the same way that I am with OmniFocus.
1:37:18That's my bet.
1:37:19I guess we'll check in 2020, right?
1:37:20Right, yeah, we'll see.
1:37:22Should we do a lightning round?
1:37:23If anything is left, I only have a couple of pics that I wanted to talk about.
1:37:27We've blown through all my lightning round already.
1:37:30I think by doing the home screens, we sort of cover a bunch of the lightning round, but
1:37:34I'm very happy to do some lightning round apps.
1:37:36I have two.
1:37:37Lightning round mic.
1:37:38Oh, okay.
1:37:39Lightning round.
1:37:40Yeah.
1:37:41to mention. The first one is VSCO. VSCO, the photo editing application, right? Made by
1:37:48the company, very famous, like history is making Photoshop presets, that kind of stuff.
1:37:53I use VSCO to edit all of the photos that I publish to Instagram. One of my personal
1:37:58things that I have changed over the last year, I've been very happy with, is taking up
1:38:03mobile photography as a hobby. I take lots of photos that I publish to Instagram and
1:38:08to Instagram stories and I have great fun in doing that is something that I find
1:38:13very relaxing and nice and I get to have all of these images saved you know with
1:38:20Instagram anything you upload to Instagram stories it's saved in an
1:38:22archive for you so I can go back and look at that stuff if I want to but I
1:38:26say things as highlights or I publish things to my feed but I really have
1:38:29enjoyed learning how to use tool at this tool and and now I want to try and one
1:38:36I want to do next year is maybe like branch out into other tools
1:38:39Maybe something like Lightroom and try and get my head around that. Mm-hmm, but it's not just using the tool but like
1:38:45getting an understanding for
1:38:48How to make something look a way that I want it to look in using those tools
1:38:54Right because before it was just like well
1:38:56I'm just gonna keep dragging these slides around until I find something I like but now I can look at an image and be like
1:39:01I want to do this to it and this to it and I know how to do that
1:39:05Right and friend of the show Tyler stormin. He was a great youtuber
1:39:09he helped kind of like guide me through a lot of this and
1:39:12Provided me with a lot of the basics that I needed if you are interested in this
1:39:16I will put a link in the show notes to an episode of connected which is a show that I do where we had Tyler
1:39:21On because I wanted Tyler to give me the foundations of how to use a tool like this go
1:39:26so we spoke through this like creating for Instagram and stuff like that if it's something you're interested in and
1:39:33that kind of gave me the push to then go through this over the last year.
1:39:38And I'm...
1:39:39VSCO is definitely the tool for me.
1:39:41It's like really easy to use on the phone and it has great like preset filters and stuff
1:39:46that you can use but then adjust and adapt to your heart's content.
1:39:50And I've been very happy with what, especially combined with the new iPhone, I've been able
1:39:55to produce.
1:39:56So I really like that.
1:39:57Okay, lightning round.
1:39:58I'm gonna pick Night Owl, which is the tiniest app that hardly does anything.
1:40:05It's for your Mac.
1:40:06It just puts a little owl face on your menu bar at the top.
1:40:11And if you right-click on it, it'll swap your machine from light mode to dark mode.
1:40:16And it's great to have there, just because sometimes you want to switch between the two.
1:40:23Most of the time I'm running my system in dark mode, but I feel like it lets me appreciate
1:40:27the moments where light mode is genuinely better.
1:40:30So I can just quickly click, swap everything over to light mode, and then click, swap everything
1:40:34back.
1:40:35It's the tiniest utility, but it's very, very helpful.
1:40:38I would like to just pick an application that I must have picked in the past at some point,
1:40:42but I don't know if I have and it deserves to be mentioned.
1:40:44It's an app called Deliveries.
1:40:46It's like an old school app, right?
1:40:49Deliveries has been around forever.
1:40:50It is just an app to track parcel deliveries.
1:40:53Right.
1:40:54has become something that I do more and more, especially as I track notebooks traveling
1:40:59across the globe.
1:41:01Right, yes.
1:41:02I need to be able to keep my eye on that stuff and Deliveries is just a really great app.
1:41:07It's designed so well on iOS, like you can just highlight a tracking number in an email,
1:41:12press share and add it to Deliveries.
1:41:15It's a really well made application, I love it a lot and I feel like it should get some
1:41:20love every now and then because you know it's like one of these apps is like
1:41:23surely I can only imagine his feature complete like I don't know what more
1:41:26they could add to it but that means it is the perfect tool for this use it does
1:41:30everything so I love deliveries okay if you if you ever track packages and don't
1:41:36use this I thoroughly recommend it related to that if you want to track a
1:41:40package which is yourself going across the world I'm going to recommend
1:41:45flighty. Yes. As a flight tracker. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, it is, it's just like email
1:41:51app, it's incredibly hard to find a good flight tracking app. I don't know why. This is the
1:41:58good one. This, yeah, this right now is the best one. My understanding of its development
1:42:03is the app began development because there was no good app for this anymore. It's a strange
1:42:09ecosystem. I presume it has something to do with licensing the data for planes, or like
1:42:13Who knows? But I'm gonna highly recommend it.
1:42:16I'm also gonna send to you a little thing that I love that it does,
1:42:22which is it'll track your flights over the course of a year
1:42:27and show you some statistics on it.
1:42:30And confirm for me that this year I had been flying way too much
1:42:36and had been doing way too much travel.
1:42:39And when I found this app, I remember as my summer of travel was coming to a close,
1:42:45I saw that my number of times traveled around the world was approaching one.
1:42:50And no joke, when I got back after the summer and I saw that my number had reached .9 times
1:43:00around the world this year, I swore to myself that I was not going to let that number reach one.
1:43:08And that legitimately helped me say no to some things that I might have done at this last part of the year.
1:43:14I was like, "No, I am maxed out for travel. I refuse to have fully traveled once around the entire world.
1:43:21Like, I will not do it. I'm gonna say no to a couple of little things because I just, like, I just...
1:43:26I cannot travel anymore. I have traveled way too much."
1:43:30[Laughter]
1:43:31My friend.
1:43:32[Laughter]
1:43:34[Laughter]
1:43:35Are you gonna show me-
1:43:35You wait right there.
1:43:36Do you have New York records?
1:43:37- You wait right there. - Do you have records
1:43:38you wanna show me?
1:43:39- Jeez, who do you think you are?
1:43:41Oh, I traveled so much, I traveled so much.
1:43:43Take a look at my statistics.
1:43:45- Okay, I just wanna be clear.
1:43:46Traveled much for me, right?
1:43:49Okay, so you're hitting almost two times around the world.
1:43:53- 1.8 times around the world, 45,240 miles traveled.
1:43:58- Whoa, that's cool.
1:43:59- There is a possibility, and I would need to check this,
1:44:02that there might be a couple of flights in here
1:44:05that I was not on but tracking.
1:44:09But let's say that it is very close to this number
1:44:12if it is not this number.
1:44:14- I'm very happy to round you off
1:44:16to two times around the world.
1:44:18I will give you that.
1:44:19That is perfectly fine.
1:44:20- In the air for over 100 hours of the year.
1:44:22- That's the brutal part, yeah.
1:44:24It's how many hours have you been in the air?
1:44:26- How many hours in a year?
1:44:29Do I wanna do this calculation right now?
1:44:32- There's not gonna be as much as you think it's gonna be.
1:44:34There's a lot of hours in the year.
1:44:358,760 hours.
1:44:38While we're talking about traveling,
1:44:39another YouTube colleague of mine, Wendover,
1:44:42he does lots of videos on airplanes.
1:44:44And he, I think it was just this morning or just yesterday,
1:44:49like Thomas Frank is always pushing notion on me,
1:44:52Wendover is always telling me about his flights
1:44:54because I ask like a man who wants to know more
1:44:57about like a gruesome accident,
1:44:59because the amount he flies is unbelievable.
1:45:04And I don't even want to try to say what the number was,
1:45:08but he told me the percent of his life in the previous year
1:45:12that he had spent on an airplane.
1:45:14It was not like, oh, 0.1% of your life
1:45:16you've spent on an airplane.
1:45:17It was a serious number,
1:45:18but he ended up just releasing a video
1:45:20that tracks all of his flight over the course of the year,
1:45:24and it will make your jaw drop on the floor
1:45:28to watch that kind of thing.
1:45:29So we are both total amateurs.
1:45:31- You can't ask the guy who makes videos about planes,
1:45:36about how much time he spent in the air.
1:45:38It's like if I asked you,
1:45:40"Well, how much time have you spent in Ulysses this year?"
1:45:44I would be like, "Oh, no way, I did like 10 minutes."
1:45:49It doesn't work.
1:45:50But anyway, 1.1% of my year has been on a plane.
1:45:54You told me to do the number, that's still wild.
1:45:56- Yeah, it's too much.
1:45:57- Again, I wanna check it.
1:45:58Like there might be again, there might be like a couple of flights in there, but like
1:46:01that's a that's got to be about it, whatever it is.
1:46:04Oh man, I can't believe that number now I've seen it.
1:46:07I don't feel bad about it because I like to travel, but it's still a huge, just huge.
1:46:13I'm looking at our numbers here and I can't help notice though that we have actually done
1:46:17the same number of flights.
1:46:19It's just that you have done many more of the like London to the West Coast flights.
1:46:24That's what the key difference is here.
1:46:25Yeah, I don't travel inside of America as much as you do, right?
1:46:28Like you have two long-haul, I have eight long-haul.
1:46:32Yeah, I was annoyed by those two long-haul because like, wait, is, you know, London to New York doesn't count as long-haul? I guess not.
1:46:38Yeah, I have that problem too. It's like, look, if I'm going to America, that's a frickin' long-haul flight, right?
1:46:44It's a long-haul flight. I 100% agree with you there.
1:46:47And yes, you were also right. I am vastly more traveling around in the interior,
1:46:51Which also now, now that things are finally out, I can say is yes, that's partly for Indian reservation stuff.
1:46:56There are many places that take a long time to drive to where there are no planes that you can go there.
1:47:00So yes, that's also that's also part of the reason for this.
1:47:02I'm so pleased you've published that first video so you can now acknowledge the fact that you've done that.
1:47:07So we can now acknowledge why all these things have happened this year.
1:47:11Yeah, yeah, I think over the past quite a while on Cortex,
1:47:15I've had to make reference to, we've recorded shows sometimes under relatively adverse recording environments.
1:47:21Yeah, because you were on reservations trying to find Wi-Fi, right?
1:47:25This is like, here is the situation that we're in.
1:47:27I don't intend to be mysterious, but like I just didn't want to talk about that until I released something.
1:47:31Mm-hmm.
1:47:32And so yeah, that's part of what was going on there.
1:47:34I don't want to know what my driving miles were over the course of the year,
1:47:38but I just think I keep looking at these two things for our flights,
1:47:41and I think it's fascinating that we both have 23 flights recorded,
1:47:44but you basically traveled exactly twice as much as I have in terms of actual distance.
1:47:48That is actually really fun that those numbers do match up. I like that a lot.
1:47:52Yeah.
1:47:52Oh, I'm going to mention another one, Calzones, which is the calendar/timezone application.
1:47:58You may not see this, like, in all my widget screens underneath Fantastic Cal.
1:48:03It's always Calzones. It lives in the widget there, so I know what time it is
1:48:07in all the places that I need. But what makes this application superior to every other app like this
1:48:12that I've used is that it's integration into my calendar. So like I can go into an event,
1:48:18hit a drop down and see what time that event hits in all of the time zones that I want to
1:48:23keep track of. That is a very, very useful application for me. Yeah, I love it as well.
1:48:28It's on my widget screen. I don't use the calendar integration stuff a lot. What I wanted is the
1:48:32ability to be able just to see very quickly on the widget screen, like what time is it
1:48:36in a few places that I need to track. And then if I need to be able to expand out and do that
1:48:41calculation of, "Okay, so when it's 9 a.m. in Salt Lake City, what time is it in London?"
1:48:47Like that kind of thing.
1:48:48So yeah, I really love it.
1:48:51Really great app.
1:48:52Thanks to Underscore for making it do exactly what we needed to do.
1:48:54Yay!
1:48:55My favorite kind of application.
1:48:56The one that does what I want.
1:48:59Yes, exactly.
1:49:00I think I might be it for my lightning round.
1:49:01Do you have anything else?
1:49:02Oh, I've got StuffMic.
1:49:03Oh, lightning for days over here.
1:49:04Let me just do some things here.
1:49:07I do want to mention, last year I had just started on Keyboard Maestro as a recommendation
1:49:13from Rosemary Orchard who showed off the amazing things that it could do to me in person at
1:49:18WWDC.
1:49:20And I'm continually amazed by how much can be done with this app.
1:49:24And its ability to allow me to automate some stuff that I just never really thought about
1:49:29before is totally killer.
1:49:31Give me an example.
1:49:32I need to have my mind blown.
1:49:34Here's an example.
1:49:36This won't exactly work for you, but it's the idea of it.
1:49:39So when I'm recording my audio for a video, I end up with these really long audio files
1:49:47where I've talked a bunch and I have many takes of what I want to say.
1:49:51In Logic, there's a way to strip out the silence between these takes.
1:49:57So I pause for a couple of seconds and you can get these little pieces.
1:50:03Now for me, I want to compress all of these little pieces together.
1:50:06So there's a way in Keyboard Maestro I can just have Keyboard Maestro in Logic select
1:50:14each section of audio and slam it into the previous audio section.
1:50:21And so it will create like one continuous block of audio out of what is sometimes hundreds
1:50:27of separate little clips of me speaking.
1:50:29And then from there, I can go on and fine-tune how do I want things to sound.
1:50:33The thing is, if there is anything that you're going to do in a program that's repetitive,
1:50:39Keyboard Maestro can do it.
1:50:42If you could do it in that program with keyboard shortcuts.
1:50:47And even that's not true, because Keyboard Maestro will also do image recognition on
1:50:51the screen, so there are ways that you can do stuff with the mouse as well.
1:50:54But just like, if you're ever in a situation where you're on the computer and you're thinking,
1:50:58"Ugh, I need to do this thing like 300 times."
1:51:01And you can do it with keyboard shortcuts,
1:51:04you can stupidly easily automate it with Keyboard Maestro.
1:51:08Another example is,
1:51:10I recently put up a 45-minute long video
1:51:12where I'm going through a spreadsheet on the Electoral College.
1:51:15Mm-hmm.
1:51:16Uh, which is thrilling viewing, I'm sure, for most people.
1:51:20So I made this spreadsheet that follows the process of
1:51:23adding seats to the House of Representatives one by one.
1:51:26and you know, you're adding a couple hundred seats.
1:51:29Now, I can just add one at a time by manually doing it in a spreadsheet.
1:51:35But with Keyboard Maestro, you can program it so that it will move the cell selection
1:51:42on the spreadsheet. It can copy out the number that's in that cell, and then perform, like,
1:51:49if/then calculations on that, and manipulate the number in memory, and then paste it back
1:51:55into the spreadsheet. So I can have it do something like find the state that gets the next
1:52:01representative by manually moving the cell selector around, copy the current number of
1:52:08representatives by moving one over, add one to that number, paste it back into the spreadsheet,
1:52:13and then put the cursor in the place that it's supposed to be.
1:52:15So that sounds very com- how hard is that to set up?
1:52:19Okay, I'm trying to sell this to you because it is a slightly more complicated version
1:52:26than shortcuts.
1:52:27But if you can make stuff in shortcuts on iOS, you can make stuff in Keyboard Maestro.
1:52:32It is the exact same idea that you have blocks that you're arranging an order and those
1:52:39blocks are designed to do something.
1:52:42But like the thing with Keyboard Maestro is for many of those blocks they can be select
1:52:47this item in the menu. Copy something to the clipboard. Take the thing that you've just
1:52:52copied to the clipboard and see if it's greater or equal to the number one. You can do this stuff
1:52:58with blocks. It's really, really quite impressive. It is a program that I now find myself as having
1:53:03in my mental arsenal of, I'm trying to accomplish something on the computer. Do I need to be the
1:53:09person who does this? Or can I quickly throw together something in Keyboard Maestro that can
1:53:14just do it for me. It's really quite impressive. There's a thing in Logic that I also built where
1:53:19you can sometimes have an error where you accidentally add fades to like every single
1:53:24clip of audio and it's really hard to manually undo, but again like I can do with keyboard
1:53:28shortcuts so I can have Keyboard Maestro like blast through it and undo this error that's very
1:53:33hard to fix otherwise. So it's just it's fantastic, it's really fantastic, and I just can't recommend
1:53:40anymore if you use a Mac like you should play around with it.
1:53:44Okay, super fast lightning round stuff.
1:53:46*pew*
1:53:46Is it-
1:53:47*pew*
1:53:47The smallest app is an app called Better Day for iOS.
1:53:51All it does is it lets you customize how you want the date to be displayed on your Apple Watch.
1:53:55Love it.
1:53:56Another app, Gemini for iOS.
1:53:59This is an app which will find similar photos in your iPhoto library and give you an easy way to select
1:54:05which of the similar photos you want to keep and get rid of the rest.
1:54:08And I have been using this as my, "I'm standing online and I have a couple of minutes to kill,
1:54:13let me just knock out a couple of similar photos and try to work through my library
1:54:17to like reduce it down so that I only actually have the photos that I want."
1:54:21Does this one also like, shows you screenshots and stuff?
1:54:24Yes, it'll also separate out the screenshots. It's really nicely done.
1:54:28I'll also have a pro tip, this is one of the very few apps where they want you to have a subscription
1:54:33to it, and while we have both been very pro subscription stuff,
1:54:37There's something that feels to me like this doesn't really feel like a subscription app,
1:54:41even though I totally understand why, but they do give you an option to do like a one-time,
1:54:47lifetime support purchase. And I just did that. Just like mentally not have this as a subscription.
1:54:52I think that is a good way to do it. And it's like a perfectly valid thing. Like you either
1:54:57pay every month, which you can do if you maybe only want to use it once or like you want to use
1:55:01it for one month and then not use it. And then like maybe six months time, do it again. Or you
1:55:05or you just give them money like one time, larger amount of money.
1:55:08We're all good here.
1:55:09Yeah. I was really glad to see the developers include that option.
1:55:12Again, I'm mostly in favor of subscriptions, but for some reason,
1:55:16like this just mentally triggered my like,
1:55:17I don't want to pay for this every month.
1:55:19It doesn't have to be subscriptions. It's just have a business model.
1:55:23Yeah. So I was like lifetime option sold Gemini, you know,
1:55:27take my money. A little thing for the Mac as well.
1:55:29There's an app called FloTato.
1:55:32think. This replaces Fluid if you are trying to make a web page into an app. So Fluid,
1:55:39I mentioned it last year, it hasn't really been supported in a long time and was starting
1:55:43to fall apart with Mojave, like this wasn't quite working right anymore. So Flotato replaces
1:55:48Fluid if you're looking for "how do I turn a web page into an app?"
1:55:51I wonder if it's like "Flotato" like a potato.
1:55:54You say "Flotato", I say "Flotato". Let's call the whole thing off. That's how that
1:56:00works.
1:56:01One final thing for the lightning round.
1:56:03Now, I don't give app of the year, right?
1:56:06I'm not in like the business of award shows, unlike some of my other co-hosts here.
1:56:11Yo, what's up?
1:56:12Upgradeys coming at you December.
1:56:14Yeah, exactly.
1:56:16If I was going to give an app of the year award, I would give it to the app called Fitbod,
1:56:23which is an exercise app.
1:56:26And this app is the best app that I found this year by a mile.
1:56:31I absolutely love this.
1:56:34I have been pushing it on everyone I know.
1:56:38It is an exercise app like no other exercise app.
1:56:43But I'm putting it in the right lightning round because I specifically want to talk
1:56:47more about it in our theme episode.
1:56:50Not here.
1:56:51Fitbod.
1:56:52Don't like that name.
1:56:54Doesn't matter.
1:56:55It's amazing.
1:56:56Okay.
1:56:57Okay.
1:56:58That's the end of my lightning round.
1:56:59Oh, you've shown me this.
1:57:00it to you because I've shown it to everyone, right?
1:57:02Yeah, if you know me, you've seen it.
1:57:04This company should give me a percentage of their company for how much additional revenue
1:57:07I've been drumming up for them of like, everyone I know I've been pushing this app upon.
1:57:11So yeah, that's my app of the year by a huge mile.
1:57:14But we'll talk about it in the theme episode.
1:57:17I have two items of follow up for you.
1:57:20This is the end of the show, Myke.
1:57:21I know, but this has been long established that we do follow up at the end of the show.
1:57:25Yes, no, I understand, but it's the end of the show and we've been talking for five hours
1:57:29about apps.
1:57:30I know, but these are things that I have to talk about now, otherwise they'll be gone
1:57:34forever.
1:57:35It's urgent follow-up.
1:57:36Yes.
1:57:37Because, one, I need to say this so people stop sending me this link.
1:57:40Okay.
1:57:41The Jiro James Sushi restaurant has lost its Michelin stars.
1:57:44Oh, this link.
1:57:46All three of them are gone.
1:57:48Because it is basically at this point impossible to book a meal at this restaurant because
1:57:55Because it is so popular, basically the only way you can get a table at the Girogin Sesu-si
1:58:00restaurant is to either be friends with them or be a friend of a friend.
1:58:06And the Michelin Guide has removed their stars because if you can't book a table at a restaurant
1:58:10they can't put it in the guide.
1:58:12So we can't go there.
1:58:13Yes, everyone in the world sent us this link.
1:58:16It's written in a way where it sounds to me like they've just made it a private restaurant.
1:58:22It's a little bit unclear from the wording, but this link has mostly bothered me because
1:58:27of the way I hate how headlines work.
1:58:28Oh yeah, because they make it sound like they found a rat in the kitchen.
1:58:31Exactly.
1:58:32They've been stripped of the stars.
1:58:35The restaurant is so popular you can't go there.
1:58:38It's everything I hate about news headlines where it's like, you've written it in a way
1:58:42where what do people think?
1:58:44They think exactly that.
1:58:46There's a rat in somebody's sushi.
1:58:48It's like no, no, no.
1:58:49It sounds like they've basically just turned it into a private restaurant.
1:58:53And the Michelin Star Guide is not for private restaurants.
1:58:57End of story.
1:58:58Thank you for putting that in follow up, because I too would never like to see this story again,
1:59:02especially in the context of "Oh my god, can you believe what 'happened' to Giro's restaurant?"
1:59:08It's like, no, you just read the headline.
1:59:10That's not how this works.
1:59:12He's doing just fine.
1:59:13Better than fine, in fact.
1:59:14Probably better than fine.
1:59:15doesn't have to deal with annoying people who just want to go because it's a famous
1:59:20restaurant.
1:59:21And I'm also very willing to bet that his son who runs the public restaurant is nothing
1:59:27but thrilled with this result.
1:59:30So yeah, this is not a bad news story.
1:59:33This is like a non-news story.
1:59:35I have another piece of follow up for you.
1:59:37Okay.
1:59:38What is that?
1:59:40That's the follow up.
1:59:41I bought the WASD keyboard's keyboard tester.
1:59:45Oh, okay. Right. Right.
1:59:48It's just like, oh, you know, let's see what they feel like.
1:59:50Those mechanical keyboard switches.
1:59:53So they sell a little tester with like a bunch of the different color switches,
1:59:56like blue, brown.
1:59:57And so you can feel like, see how they feel.
1:59:59Yep. And I really like the green one.
2:00:03There is a subsequent thing.
2:00:04There's a link in the show notes that says, please do not click this.
2:00:06You can now click this.
2:00:08OK, I can now click it.
2:00:09Because I bought something else.
2:00:11Okay. Did you buy this keyboard?
2:00:13I both customized and purchased that keyboard.
2:00:16Oh boy. Oh, I'm so excited. What a, what a colorful mechanical keyboard.
2:00:21Boy, that was fast. Myke.
2:00:23I did this while I was editing the episode.
2:00:26We didn't make it one episode between talking about mechanical keyboards and
2:00:30you buying a mechanical keyboard.
2:00:31But it was even now or never, right?
2:00:33Yes, that's true.
2:00:34So I have ordered a custom WASD keyboard. You can see a link in the show notes.
2:00:38It's very, very colorful.
2:00:40I just decided to make it the most colorful it could be because I had that
2:00:43option available to me. So I did that. Uh, it hasn't arrived.
2:00:48Obviously it's being made. I will follow up on this.
2:00:50I told friend and co-founder Steven about this and he said,
2:00:53when you can't move your hands, don't come crying to me.
2:00:56And I agree with what Steven said. I did go with, with Brown switches.
2:01:00They are the least they're not least.
2:01:02They're not the ones that I find the most appealing.
2:01:05I like the green because it's very clicky. The Brown sounds like this.
2:01:09not very quickly, but it requires the least amount of force to depress.
2:01:13So I figured that was probably the best place to start.
2:01:16I have a, uh, well actually another very significant reason for why I did this.
2:01:21Somebody in the Reddit thread, uh, they, they teased me by saying,
2:01:27Hey Myke, definitely don't look at this subreddit,
2:01:31which is a subreddit as one focus, which is two focuses.
2:01:36It's called mechanical head pens.
2:01:38It is a just pictures of mechanical keyboards and pens.
2:01:42That is it.
2:01:46Well, there we go.
2:01:47And didn't take me long being subscribed to that subreddit
2:01:50to also make me definitely want one, so
2:01:52it's on the way.
2:01:55Great. I'm glad I'm glad you've ordered it.
2:01:57I'm glad you I'm glad you have yourself a nice, colorful keyboard on the way.
2:02:00I'll be curious to hear what you think about it.
2:02:03It will serve a purpose to come up in our next episode.
2:02:06Which is yearly themes 2020.
2:02:10Year of color.
2:02:12Year of mechanical keyboard.
2:02:15Year of colors for Myke.
2:02:16Every year we set themes for the year, which dictate a lot of the paths that we will follow.
2:02:22So on our next episode, it will focus on a few things.
2:02:25We're going to review our years.
2:02:28These are our yearly themes.
2:02:29We're going to talk about how we feel we have fared through our year, and if our year
2:02:32theme ended up being the right focus for us and then we are going to unveil the 2020 year
2:02:40theme. Do you have your theme? Yes, I do have my theme. I have mine too, I'm very excited
2:02:45about it. And so that's what we're going to talk about next time. So have a think between
2:02:48now and then, you know, if maybe you've had some ideas circling around in your brain.
2:02:52So we'll be able to talk all about our yearly themes and then unveil the 2020 yearly theme.
2:02:59Feels like an important one 2020, right? Yes, it is. Yeah.
2:03:02Do you want to say decade themes?
2:03:04No, that is antithetical to the very idea.
2:03:09Decade themes, no.
2:03:11Yearly themes, yes.
2:03:13Tune in next time to find out more.