0:00:00So, how are you doing, Myke?
0:00:02Fine. Everything's fine. It's all fine over here, totally fine.
0:00:06There's not much time left.
0:00:09Oh no, it's almost...
0:00:12T minus seven days now.
0:00:15Yep, in seven days time, the year of adulting takes a harsh, very steep turn.
0:00:22As I become Mr. Hurley...
0:00:27I mean, you're Mr. Hurley now.
0:00:29Yep.
0:00:30That's not how this works.
0:00:32Interesting.
0:00:33Yeah, I will be a married man next week, from a week today.
0:00:37From a project planning perspective, how in place are things?
0:00:41Because weddings are nothing if not logistical nightmares of 10,000 tiny decisions.
0:00:48All right, we made a really smart decision about 18 months ago when we hired a wedding planner.
0:00:55That is a very smart decision.
0:00:57It's one of the best things I have done in my adult life.
0:01:00Like it is one of the greatest decisions that I ever made was to hire a wedding planner
0:01:06because we were talking about this today at lunch.
0:01:10We wouldn't have gotten to the point that we're at right now without their help.
0:01:15Like it wouldn't have happened.
0:01:16Like we would have made so many compromises.
0:01:19We would be in such a different state to where we are.
0:01:24So hiring a wedding planner was brilliant to the point now where we had a call
0:01:28with her this morning.
0:01:29I feel like I'm good.
0:01:30Oh, really? Wow.
0:01:31Basically, everything's taken care of.
0:01:34There are tiny little details just to work out, but it's like mostly
0:01:37the movement of things and people, because even today, like we just were like
0:01:42in passing, mentioning some things that we thought we needed to do.
0:01:44And she's like, I'll do that.
0:01:46I feel like I don't have the right to feel as confident as I feel,
0:01:50because like knowing people that have gotten married, right, like how
0:01:53They feel like everything's falling apart, but I honestly feel like everything's kind of in hand.
0:02:00- I mean, that is both quite impressive.
0:02:03I've never heard anybody a week before their wedding feel this way.
0:02:06Which then does immediately rouse my suspicions as well.
0:02:10That maybe you are deep into unknown unknowns territory here.
0:02:15- Yeah, that's also highly likely,
0:02:16but I feel confident in our professionals, you know?
0:02:20- That's good, that's very good.
0:02:22I'm glad to hear it.
0:02:23- I mean, like, don't get me wrong.
0:02:25I am about as nervous as I've ever been
0:02:27for anything in my entire life.
0:02:29- No, no, no, no, no, but Myke, Myke,
0:02:31that's your personal side.
0:02:33That's why I was asking from a project management side,
0:02:38which cares not about your nervousness
0:02:41and your emotional feelings,
0:02:44about the upcoming, perhaps most important day
0:02:47of your adult life, only seven days away now.
0:02:51So that's I wasn't asking about that side of things.
0:02:53Definitely feel worse now.
0:02:54That's the feeling side of things.
0:02:56I was like, there are lots, there's lots and lots of things to do, right?
0:03:01But it all feels in hand.
0:03:03Good.
0:03:05You know, like we have so much stuff that we have to do over the next seven days,
0:03:09but it all feels like kind of as it should be.
0:03:12And I expect a part of this is the way that our wedding planner has set this up for us.
0:03:18You know, like she has let us know like the kind of things that we need to be doing.
0:03:23So we're being guided through.
0:03:25So it feels like we just got this safety net.
0:03:28Right, like she's just taking care of it for us is like, you've got to be here, you've
0:03:33got to do this, you've got to take this to this point, this to this point.
0:03:36Like the wedding day itself is there's a huge Google doc with timings of everything.
0:03:41Oh, wow. Yeah, it's amazing.
0:03:43Like everything is timed.
0:03:45There are every everyone knows what they're doing.
0:03:48You know, like there is assigned people for every job because we have two people in the
0:03:55day so like our wedding planner hires someone.
0:03:58I want to give you an example of how good our planner has been for us.
0:04:02So at our venue, the place where we're doing the meal and all that kind of stuff, we had
0:04:07someone that we were working with through the whole period of time.
0:04:11That person has quit her job and leaves one day before the wedding.
0:04:16Right?
0:04:17Perfect.
0:04:18We told our wedding planner this.
0:04:21Our wedding planner, without us knowing, hired this woman for one day.
0:04:26Oh, that's amazing.
0:04:27How good is that?
0:04:29She's freelancing one day after her official quitting.
0:04:32She's going to freelance one day for the company that we're using.
0:04:35That's amazing.
0:04:36So she can be there to do everything she would have done.
0:04:40That's perfect.
0:04:41That's really good.
0:04:42See what I mean?
0:04:43This is how good these people are.
0:04:44So like, when you do things like that...
0:04:46That is an excellent wedding planner.
0:04:48Exactly! I'm like, "You've got this!"
0:04:49Like, "We don't need to worry."
0:04:51Oh yeah.
0:04:52I feel like that story then makes me feel much more confident in your confidence
0:04:56about everything's under control.
0:04:57They've just got it.
0:04:58Yeah, they've got it.
0:04:59Now all you have to worry about is keeping your emotions under control.
0:05:02Which I can't and won't, but...
0:05:03Which, no, you're not.
0:05:04I've already accepted that about myself.
0:05:06That is a mic failure point.
0:05:08Yeah.
0:05:09And I think you know that about yourself.
0:05:11It's a leak, a literal leak in the system.
0:05:15It's gonna be, I'm gonna be an emotional wreck,
0:05:17but we all know this about me, everybody knows this, so.
0:05:20- Everyone's expecting it, it's a key thing in life,
0:05:24is to know and understand yourself,
0:05:27and make decisions about that.
0:05:28And no one is expecting stoic Myke
0:05:33to show up on his wedding day.
0:05:34(laughing)
0:05:37- I think if I don't pass out,
0:05:38everyone will be really proud of me.
0:05:40(laughing)
0:05:41- Yeah, yeah, I mean like honestly,
0:05:43if you spend less than 45 minutes on the fainting couch, like I will be quite impressed.
0:05:50So of course, wedding day is going to be great. It's been a whole thing. But there's also
0:05:55the after part, which is the honeymoon, right? Right. So I am actually going to be taking
0:06:03pretty much all of July off of the majority of my work. So it basically starts with pretty
0:06:11much the publishing of this episode and then this is one of the last things that I will
0:06:17do kind of in my normal work until all the way at the end of the month. Now, obviously
0:06:26going through this is a pretty big thing. I've been making like lots of decisions over
0:06:31the last six months. Been flip-flopping a little bit about what is this actually going
0:06:35to look like? Will I 100% stop everything?
0:06:39You mean during your honeymoon time?
0:06:41During my honeymoon, yeah. Which is pretty much two weeks, two and a bit weeks.
0:06:45Or will I still be checking in on things?
0:06:49So I've landed in a place that I feel pretty comfortable in.
0:06:53And so one, obviously no recording or editing will occur during this period of time.
0:06:58That's the no-brainer. You're not bringing podcast equipment with you on your honeymoon.
0:07:02Sit on the beach, with the waves behind me.
0:07:05Yeah, this would be a loser on every front. It's a bad idea for you.
0:07:08But for you, it's a bad way to start your new marriage, and the recording would be terrible.
0:07:13So that's obviously out of the window.
0:07:17General kind of day-to-day business duties, like invoicing and coordinating with people,
0:07:23all of that's out of the window too.
0:07:26We have a great team, right?
0:07:28And everyone, you know, there's more than enough capability around me that people can
0:07:32pick this stuff up.
0:07:33there was one point though that I was uncomfortable with and that was email.
0:07:38Mhm. The wheel. What do I do about email? Because I cannot touch it, but then there's
0:07:45a pile of it when I get back. I can set an out of office, but the more I think about
0:07:52out of offices, I think they create more problems than they solve.
0:07:55Yeah, out of offices are the worst. Everybody thinks this is a great idea, but it's actually
0:08:02a terrible idea because you still receive the message,
0:08:07but the person gets a reply saying you're out of office,
0:08:10which then leaves that message
0:08:12in this quantum undetermined state?
0:08:15- Yep.
0:08:16- Is this a thing that when the person
0:08:17saw the out of office message, they thought,
0:08:20"Oh, whatever, I don't need to worry about this.
0:08:22Like, Myke's out of the place,
0:08:24and I'll find someone else to take care of this."
0:08:27Or is it still in your inbox
0:08:28because it's something that needs to be resolved?
0:08:30Like, they're out of office messages could only work
0:08:34if upon receiving them, the receiver had an option
0:08:38to then delete or add information to the message
0:08:40that had just been sent.
0:08:41But that's not the way email works.
0:08:44- There are services that exist that can do this,
0:08:48but I didn't want to employ any of them.
0:08:49Where like, you would send an email to someone
0:08:51and say they're out of office,
0:08:52you can press a button to actually send this to them,
0:08:55or you can send it to this person instead,
0:08:57or just not send it at all, right?
0:08:59So they kind of sit in the middle.
0:09:00But I didn't want to do this because I know who I am.
0:09:05And I know how I'm made.
0:09:09And I know I'm gonna open email and check email.
0:09:13I'll probably open Slack every now and then
0:09:15because Slack has all my friends in it as well, right?
0:09:17- Right, of course.
0:09:18- I won't be able to completely switch off for two weeks
0:09:22because I would be thinking, is everything okay, right?
0:09:27Is probably where I'm gonna be.
0:09:28So let's say I open my email, right?
0:09:30And there's an email in there
0:09:33and I know I can respond to it super quickly.
0:09:35But that person got an out of office and then I respond.
0:09:39What does that say about me to this person?
0:09:41- Right, now you look like a crazy workaholic
0:09:44if you're replying to a thing.
0:09:45It just takes two seconds.
0:09:46And that person is imagining that you're on the beach
0:09:50right now with your new wife under an umbrella,
0:09:53coconut drink in one hand and email client in the other
0:09:57and doing business. It makes you look terrible.
0:10:00And I don't want to give that impression to people.
0:10:02Even if it's true, you don't want them to think it.
0:10:04I don't want people to know that about me.
0:10:06And then the other problem is, so I would put on my out of office, if it's urgent, to email my assistant.
0:10:13How do I know what she's gotten?
0:10:15Exactly.
0:10:16And then she's dealt with a situation, and then I then deal with the same situation. It's a nightmare.
0:10:21A lot of the thinking around this was clarified to me after WWDC because we trialed using
0:10:29an email app called Spark 2.
0:10:31So we spoke about Spark in the past during my "all email apps are bad" realization
0:10:36a few months ago.
0:10:38And Spark 2 came out.
0:10:40The app was almost unchanged.
0:10:42All of the things I don't like about Spark are still the same.
0:10:45There's a bunch of weird decisions that they make about the way stuff works and looks.
0:10:49Don't need to get into it today.
0:10:50It's not important.
0:10:51But what they came out with was a Teams feature. So you could set up a team, you could share email
0:10:57messages, you could have conversations in email messages, and we used it during WWDC and it changed
0:11:05everything. Oh okay, so yeah, you showed this to me just briefly one night when we had a few moments
0:11:11at WWDC and it looked like you and your team can privately have a conversation about the email
0:11:21before someone responds to that email and I thought that was a very interesting idea. I
0:11:28didn't quite realize that you were in beta mode for this project for you for WWDC. It was a test.
0:11:34How does it work? That's very good. That's really good. Because that is a very similar scenario
0:11:41where like whilst I'm working, I have no time during that week, right?
0:11:45Like the way that I am interacting with email is very different.
0:11:48Like I'm not checking it throughout the day,
0:11:50I'm checking it at just points during the day.
0:11:52So the way that some of this stuff would work,
0:11:56so say somebody sends me an email and they need something.
0:11:59I can assign it to my assistant and she can just reply
0:12:02as if the email was sent to her.
0:12:05There's no forwarding information in the email.
0:12:07It just takes that email and drops it in her inbox and she can deal with it.
0:12:11it. Another thing I can do is add her to it. I can respond and she will see all the responses.
0:12:17So if there's things that she needs to do, she can pick them up. And then also in that
0:12:20chain we can have a conversation. So I can say to her, "Hey, did you see that? Can
0:12:25you take care of this?" So like I'll say to someone, "Yep, no problem." And then
0:12:29she will take whatever's in that email and do whatever needs to be done. Or there's
0:12:33another thing, sometimes people will send me a spreadsheet that needs to be completed,
0:12:36I can drop her in on the email, say download that,
0:12:40complete it, and she can upload it to me
0:12:43in the conversation thread inside of the email,
0:12:46which I can then take and attach to the email and send back.
0:12:49This is what I'm gonna do.
0:12:51- I think that sounds like a really good solution.
0:12:54Again, in the key of knowing yourself,
0:12:57like it's important to recognize
0:12:59that simply not replying to email is not an option for you.
0:13:03- If I take 20 minutes every day, maximum,
0:13:05broken into like two, 10 minute stints,
0:13:08I can probably deal with all of the email that I get.
0:13:11And I feel like that is perfectly reasonable.
0:13:15There are going to be times, either late in the evening
0:13:18or just sitting down at the beach,
0:13:20where I can just pull out my phone and do it,
0:13:22and it's not gonna affect anything.
0:13:24You know, if we're having dinner,
0:13:26I'm not gonna be responding to email.
0:13:27If we're snorkeling, I'm not responding to email.
0:13:30There will be more than enough time during my day
0:13:33where I can jump in, do a bit of triage,
0:13:36and just get things taken care of.
0:13:38Anything big and chunky,
0:13:39I can either leave for when I return,
0:13:41or I can send to my assistant,
0:13:44she could just deal with it, she takes care of it,
0:13:45and it's done for me.
0:13:47This feels to me like the optimum way for me
0:13:51to be able to not feel like I'm completely in the dark,
0:13:55to not have to worry about what's going on,
0:13:59and then not have to come back to 200 messages.
0:14:01Now I understand I'm leaving myself open for things to upset me and annoy me,
0:14:06but I feel like that that will,
0:14:08that the overall feeling that I will have will be better.
0:14:11I feel like I'll be less annoyed about things, right?
0:14:14Cause I'm sitting on a beach sipping a pina colada, right?
0:14:16Like it's not going to be so much of a problem,
0:14:19but I know that I will be happier this way than if I just kind of shut myself
0:14:24off completely.
0:14:24Yeah. I mean that, that is exactly the key that you're, you're trying to,
0:14:29especially on a trip like this,
0:14:31trying to minimize any kind of anxiety and worry.
0:14:34And it's perfectly legitimate to recognize
0:14:37that being completely in the dark
0:14:40would be more of an anxious situation for you
0:14:43than having some contact with the outside world.
0:14:46So it seems really great.
0:14:47It seems like this system arrived just in time
0:14:50for you to trial it, to make sure that it works perfect.
0:14:53- The way we were gonna do this was gonna be hell.
0:14:56Like I said, right, so maybe we set up a Google sheet
0:14:59and you write in every email you've responded to.
0:15:01- Oh God, yeah.
0:15:02- And then I can go in and see,
0:15:04and then I don't respond, like that's just the worst, right?
0:15:08Like I can't do that.
0:15:09I wouldn't want to give like her my email credentials
0:15:12'cause that doesn't make any sense.
0:15:14Like that just doesn't work for me.
0:15:15Like everything would come through
0:15:17'cause she doesn't need everything.
0:15:19And then you add on top of it,
0:15:21we're on the other side of the world
0:15:22for two weeks from each other, right?
0:15:24Look, the time zone difference is gonna be hellish.
0:15:28So really I feel like this has ended up being kind of perfect.
0:15:33Yeah. I did the, uh,
0:15:34Google docs spreadsheet of email thing for a while years ago.
0:15:38I don't recommend it.
0:15:39It was like the best of all the bad possible solutions
0:15:46that we came up with. Right. And it still was going to suck,
0:15:49but at least it was something, but this is so much better.
0:15:52I really like the Spark email team stuff. It's very, it's, it's very,
0:15:57very good. It's like the only good thing in an email app that I've ever used.
0:16:04(laughing)
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0:17:45- Now, Myke, you did a bad thing last episode.
0:17:47- Yeah, yep.
0:17:49- You left the previous episode on quite a cliffhanger.
0:17:54We were together in person,
0:17:59Always uncomfortable and always a very different sounding episode whenever we listen to those
0:18:06live ones.
0:18:07I know they make you upset but it's okay.
0:18:09They do.
0:18:10I don't like the live in-person ones.
0:18:12It's so different.
0:18:13I have such a hard time listening to it afterwards.
0:18:16But the people seemed happy.
0:18:17It's a fun event.
0:18:18I wouldn't want to do every episode like that but one a year I feel like it works pretty
0:18:22nicely but I do share with you they never sound as good, right?
0:18:28I have some ideas actually to make it sound better next year and still be in the same
0:18:31room but we'll get to them when we need it.
0:18:33Yeah, so we can set up a glass wall between the two of us and then we have little separate
0:18:37booths.
0:18:38That's what I would like.
0:18:39Yeah.
0:18:40But only if my side has a little window that I can, like a window shade that I can pull
0:18:44down so then be like in the same room.
0:18:46You have to look at my face.
0:18:47Yeah, because the looking at you is uncomfortable.
0:18:49We've mentioned it before but I tend to look away a lot when recording a person because
0:18:53it's like I can't.
0:18:54You never look directly into somebody's eyes, like that's too much.
0:18:57Yeah, it's too much in person.
0:19:00But when we are in person,
0:19:03sometimes there are things that a person can notice.
0:19:08I was intentionally trying to provoke you
0:19:11with a T-shirt that I had that had many pockets on it,
0:19:13which you were studiously trying to ignore,
0:19:16which I enjoyed. - Well, pockets.
0:19:18- Exactly, Myke was like,
0:19:19I don't see that shirt that you're wearing
0:19:21that has a pocket zipper that goes from the shoulder
0:19:24down across the side that's full of stuff.
0:19:26Like, you know, you were not intentionally not looking,
0:19:29but also in person.
0:19:31You were not wearing your Apple Watch.
0:19:34- No.
0:19:35- And we wanted to discuss it, but you said, "No,
0:19:38we could not discuss it on that live episode.
0:19:40We would have to leave it until later."
0:19:42And now it's later.
0:19:44So what's the deal, Myke?
0:19:46What's going on?
0:19:47- So I guess the other piece of information
0:19:49that maybe wasn't abundantly clear
0:19:51is not only was I not wearing my Apple Watch,
0:19:54I was wearing a mechanical watch.
0:19:56- The relevant thing to me is not Apple Watch.
0:19:59I was like, well, of course you're gonna wear something
0:20:01on your wrist. - Right.
0:20:02- You're Myke, you're a very fashionable guy.
0:20:04- Thank you. - Are you going to leave
0:20:06that section of your body unadorned?
0:20:09I think not. - It's an accessory to be had.
0:20:11- Yeah, obviously there's going to be something there,
0:20:14but yeah, so I was like, there's no Apple Watch.
0:20:16And yeah, there's some other mechanical watch on your wrist.
0:20:20- All right, so two months ago,
0:20:23I stopped wearing my Apple Watch.
0:20:25- Two months ago?
0:20:25- It was two months ago. - Wow.
0:20:27Okay.
0:20:29- And the reason that this happened was
0:20:33as I was building up to the wedding,
0:20:35I was thinking about photos.
0:20:37- Ah, mm-hmm, okay.
0:20:39- Right?
0:20:40This is about a year ago I started thinking about this.
0:20:43I was like, I don't wanna wear an Apple Watch
0:20:45in my wedding photos because it will be like,
0:20:49I will look like Zach from Saved by the Bell with my huge phone. That's all I could keep
0:20:58thinking about. I have some huge first ever cell phone, like the ones that are basically
0:21:04holding a brick up to the side of your head. I figured that's how an Apple Watch would
0:21:08look in a few years time. Even a couple of months later, the design of the Apple Watch
0:21:16could change significantly, right? So I thought to myself, I don't want to date the pictures
0:21:20in such a way that I will laugh at myself every time I see them in like 10 years time.
0:21:24I can completely agree with that. For example, we were watching on television recently a
0:21:31very prominent wedding in the UK in which one of the speakers at that wedding was using
0:21:37an iPad and wearing an Apple watch. And I was thinking the same thing like, it's a historic
0:21:42And maybe don't, like, maybe print out your speech and maybe wear a more timeless watch.
0:21:48Yeah, or just take it off.
0:21:49You be you, man, but I can't help but notice this and also think the exact same thing.
0:21:54Maybe also don't mention Facebook in your speech, but yeah, like, don't temporarily
0:21:57date a moment in your life that's a moment like this.
0:22:01So I can completely agree with your decision to not wear an Apple Watch at your wedding.
0:22:06I'm behind that 100 percent.
0:22:08And I'm just realizing we haven't actually used it yet, but my wife for our first year
0:22:15anniversary bought me a nice mechanical watch.
0:22:19And when I got the Apple Watch, we intentionally saved that as like a ceremonial watch.
0:22:26And there hasn't been an occasion where I've actually worn that.
0:22:29It's somewhere in the house, but it's that same idea that like there may be a moment
0:22:34where you don't want to be wearing your Apple Watch and you want to have a nicer looking
0:22:38watch for those moments. So the first thought was maybe I just take
0:22:42it off, just leave it off, right? And then our mutual friend Marco, he is a big watch
0:22:49nerd. Ah, I should have known. Of course! Of course
0:22:54it's Marco! He had sent me to some watches.
0:22:58Getting his tendrils into everything. Like about two years ago, I think. And one
0:23:05of them was by a brand called Nomos which is a really cool, more modern brand and he
0:23:10thought that it really kind of fit with my style and he sent me a link to this one which
0:23:16is from their metro range and it's called the power reserve. It has this little power
0:23:21indicator of how much power is left in the spring of the watch, right, because you have
0:23:26to wind it every day. And I really, really liked the design of this watch. So I decided
0:23:32about a year ago, I am gonna buy that watch and I decided I would save a little bit of
0:23:38money every month because it's expensive and I thought this would be a nice thing for me
0:23:43to save up for and I will buy it just before the wedding and then I'll wear it on my wedding
0:23:48day and then it will become my special occasion watch, right?
0:23:52Right.
0:23:53Then when we were in Austin for my bachelor party, I realized I had the money I needed
0:24:00together and I thought wouldn't it be nice to buy it with Marco? Like he started me on
0:24:05this path and plus I was a little intimidated going to a fancy watch store and I thought
0:24:09it would be a good idea to go with somebody who knew what they were doing, right? Could
0:24:13talk in the lingo, right? And he even got me a discount because apparently you should
0:24:18never buy a watch without a discount but I never would have been able to ask for one.
0:24:22Marco, I have seen firsthand, Marco is the man who knows his way around a fancy watch
0:24:27store. He does. So I thought I'll buy it with him. He convinced me to get this in the first place
0:24:32and also I have somebody with me. I put that watch on and my life changed. I have not taken it off
0:24:41since. It's really nice looking. It's really comfortable and I like to look at it. Right?
0:24:48So at first it was like I want to wear this because it's new and it's beautiful. Like it's
0:24:52something I've coveted for a year. Like I don't... This isn't a typical thing for me to like find a
0:24:57a thing and then save for it? Like it's, I've never, I haven't done something like this
0:25:02since I have been an adult, right? I either buy it or I don't buy it and then that's it,
0:25:08right? I either have the money and I buy it or I'm like, well, I haven't got the money
0:25:11for this, so I just won't buy it. Maybe sometime in the future I'll buy it. But like the idea
0:25:16of like making a conscious effort to like save money every month to get the money together
0:25:20to buy this thing.
0:25:21- That's interesting.
0:25:23Okay, I can see how this works its way into your mind
0:25:28because yes, that's a very different experience.
0:25:33- Every month I take some money and I'm like,
0:25:35this is my watch money this month and it goes in
0:25:37and I will see that account build up
0:25:38and it's like a ticking time, right?
0:25:40Like it's getting bigger, it's getting bigger
0:25:43and then once it hit the amount, I could buy it.
0:25:45So when I bought it, I was like, I say for this so long,
0:25:48I wanna wear it and plus I'm at a special event,
0:25:51You know, like I'm with all my friends, we're doing this thing.
0:25:53Oh, right. Yeah.
0:25:54You don't, you don't feel like you're abusing the specialness because you're in
0:25:58Austin at a, at a one time special event, of course.
0:26:01Yep. We're having nice meals together. We're doing, you know, so I'm like, okay,
0:26:05I'll put the watch on. So, and plus it's like, uh,
0:26:07I want to wear it when Marco's here. Cause there's like,
0:26:09the things you need to think about, right?
0:26:10So like I want to ask him questions as like questions come up and stuff.
0:26:13Cause this thing is made of springs and gears, right? Like it is a,
0:26:17an item which requires some attention.
0:26:20So I wanted to kind of like understand the foibles of it and have an expert
0:26:24with me who could help explain to me what I was doing.
0:26:26So I wore it for the week and I got home and I kept wearing it.
0:26:32And then two months passed because over that period of time,
0:26:37I learned that the system that I had, whilst important,
0:26:40I could change and nothing happened.
0:26:43So my previous system was all my devices on Do Not Disturb,
0:26:49all notifications come to my watch.
0:26:51Well, now my phone is not on do not deserve anymore.
0:26:55And my phone gets notifications.
0:26:58And that's kind of how it goes now.
0:27:02And it's fine.
0:27:05There are downsides to it.
0:27:06Having notifications on my phone is more distracting than they were on my watch.
0:27:14Yes. This is this is my one question, because, well,
0:27:19I've been thinking about notifications as well.
0:27:20We can get to that later.
0:27:22I think if you're switching away,
0:27:23you perhaps have chosen a good time.
0:27:25But the thing, and particularly for you again,
0:27:29because you're much more notification heavy than I am is,
0:27:33how, like do you find yourself just pulling the phone
0:27:38out of your pocket way more and just kind of dealing
0:27:41with that or like also a question,
0:27:45how much are you able to,
0:27:46because I presume you're getting vibration alerts.
0:27:49I just wonder, how much are you able to
0:27:51distinguish notifications?
0:27:53Because I think there's ways you can set custom vibrations
0:27:56for different things for different people.
0:27:58- Yeah, I don't do anything like that.
0:27:58- Okay, so you just get a bzzt in your pocket,
0:28:01and you have no idea is that a text message
0:28:03or is that an email?
0:28:04And then you just take a look.
0:28:05- So it's way more distracting.
0:28:07- Okay.
0:28:08- And I do not prefer this in any way to the watch.
0:28:12- But life is full of trade-offs,
0:28:13and you can't always get everything that you want.
0:28:15The vast majority of time when I'm at home, I have a device in front of me that can receive
0:28:20notifications.
0:28:23Them being on my watch when I'm at home working is no different than them being on my phone
0:28:28or my iPad.
0:28:29Yeah, that is totally true when you're like doing actual work in front of a device.
0:28:35That is the only time I can actually sometimes kind of find the watch a little bit annoying
0:28:39where it'll ping out of sync with whatever thing I'm on.
0:28:45it doesn't realize like, "Oh, I'm talking to this person right now."
0:28:47And it goes like, "Boop, did you know that this person just sent you a message?"
0:28:49Like, "Yeah, I'm looking at it on the screen at this very moment, watch.
0:28:52I did know. Thank you."
0:28:53So, and then, you know, when I'm out and about,
0:28:56yeah, it's more, it is more distracting, right? Like it is.
0:28:58And also, you know,
0:29:01and this happens a lot, I will have my phone somewhere else
0:29:04and I'm doing something else and stuff's buzzing, right?
0:29:07And I don't know about it.
0:29:09But I'm kind of just, that's just how it is now.
0:29:14And by and large, nothing's happened.
0:29:18I still get all the same notifications that I would get before, you know,
0:29:22so I'm still getting notified about all my email, but most of the time,
0:29:25like that's in a place where I can just grab it and deal with it.
0:29:27I don't have an emergency system, right?
0:29:30Like that was kind of the,
0:29:31always the idea of if something crazy was going on someone could always get to
0:29:34me cause where on my watch? Well, I just don't have that anymore. Uh, that's,
0:29:38that's just gone.
0:29:39Yeah. I mean, I'm,
0:29:41I'm going to say whenever I talk to people about reducing notifications,
0:29:44people are always worried about the emergency scenario.
0:29:47And I think people vastly over rate that.
0:29:51It's like, it's a thing that's on your mind because you,
0:29:55you can very easily imagine some terrible downside scenario under which, you know,
0:30:00you like,
0:30:01you would have wanted to be able to be contactable and not being contactable is a
0:30:04huge problem. But those events are,
0:30:07are so rare in life.
0:30:10I don't think it makes sense to optimize what your life is like on a daily basis
0:30:16for an event that may occur once every five years. So yeah, I'm with you on this. It can
0:30:24feel a little unnerving to lose that, but it's not nearly as bad as people think it is.
0:30:30And so I really stand by the way that I wore my Apple Watch, right? If I was going to wear a
0:30:38device that notifies me, the decisions that I made about shutting everything else off,
0:30:45it all goes there, I think is great. But if I'm not going to wear that device, my system
0:30:50is just different, it's just somewhere else. And the thing is, my Apple Watch never made
0:30:56me happy. My new watch makes me happy. I like looking at it. I love hearing it tick.
0:31:04The ticking is, like, that is one thing that I do miss from having a mechanical watch ages ago,
0:31:09is that the ticking is deeply satisfying.
0:31:12And it's so interesting to me, like, the way I hold my hand. So if I hold my hand to my head
0:31:18and it is facing me, kind of like with my palm facing me, I can hear the ticking. But if I turn
0:31:23my wrist, I can't hear it anymore. And it's just like, so I hear it every now and then. I love the
0:31:28act of winding it every day. You know, like, I wake up in the morning and I have to turn the crown
0:31:33and it's got the power in it. I love the little power indicator that I have on it.
0:31:38Um, I like looking at it. It makes me happy. I like that if I'm not doing anything at the
0:31:44moment the date turns over, I can feel it because the mechanism is quite powerful. The spring is
0:31:50quite powerful. So kind of when the date turns over, I feel like, dunk. And I really like that.
0:31:55I do get phantom taps. Oh, you mean phantom taps on your wrist? Every now and then I think that
0:31:59that my wrist is notifying me or something and I look at it, but that's not true.
0:32:04I think there's going to be a long half-life on those Phantom taps.
0:32:08I can't believe it's still happening.
0:32:10I remember when I switched to the Apple Watch, the Phantom taps from my pocket, which now
0:32:15were no longer occurring because I did the same thing that you did, which is like, "Phone,
0:32:18you're never going to do anything ever again, phone."
0:32:20But yeah, it took a long time for the Phantom, "Oh, my phone buzzed" to go away.
0:32:26It's kind of a crazy insight into your brain.
0:32:30Your brain is expecting a certain kind of stimulus, and if it doesn't get it, it's
0:32:34just going to manufacture that stimulus on its own.
0:32:37Well, this hasn't happened for a while, so I guess I'll just pretend it happened?
0:32:41Yeah.
0:32:42It's like, wow, that's a concerning look into the mind of humans, and perhaps applicable
0:32:47across very many things, but we'll just put that aside for the moment.
0:32:51Apple Pay sucks.
0:32:52I used to love Apple Pay on my watch.
0:32:56tap that side button twice and I could use it to get in the tube. Apple Pay on the iPhone
0:33:0010 is terrible. The requirement for it to see your face and authenticate, I don't like
0:33:05that. That's nowhere near as good as just like you can tap it and just get it ready
0:33:10without ever looking at it. Honestly, I actually think that's the biggest frustration that
0:33:14I have with doing this.
0:33:15I mean, especially if you're using the underground, like that's where it is just the smoothest.
0:33:19It's like, you know, don't break your stride, boop boop, tap the watch twice, click on the
0:33:23way in click on the way out like that that is the smoothest Apple Pay watch
0:33:27experience that exists. I put my face to it it's like can't recognize I had to put in the
0:33:31passcode and standing at the turnstile putting in my passcode. Yeah now you're
0:33:36that guy especially. What am I a tourist? Like it's the worst I hate it I really
0:33:42hate doing that but look the thing is I have not worn my Apple watch for more
0:33:47like if I when I swim I put my Apple watch on because like this watch isn't
0:33:51waterproof really, like not for swimming, and the Apple Watch will track the workout
0:33:56so I put it on then.
0:33:57Oh yeah, I was going to ask why you even bother. So you're just using it as a "how well did
0:34:01this exercise go" tracker at that point?
0:34:04Yeah, it's just a workout tracker, right? That's what I'm using it for. And it also
0:34:08lets me, so I can time how long I've been swimming for as well, right? I prefer that
0:34:13than the big clock, which you can't always see or whatever. I like to just know how long
0:34:17have I been here, like how long, when am I going to leave, that kind of thing. But I
0:34:21I have absolutely no desire to go back to the Apple Watch.
0:34:25Like I don't miss it.
0:34:27I just don't miss it.
0:34:28There are trade-offs and I'm dealing with those trade-offs,
0:34:32but for my current state,
0:34:34I feel like the trade-offs that I'm having to make,
0:34:36they're not equivalent to how much I enjoy
0:34:39wearing this piece of jewelry.
0:34:41I get more enjoyment out of that
0:34:44than I do dissatisfaction for having to do with my system.
0:34:48And again, we're gonna talk about iOS 12 in a bit,
0:34:50iOS 12 is making it even easier for me to deal with this stuff.
0:34:53Yeah, like I said, you picked a good time to make this transition if you're going
0:34:57to make this transition.
0:34:58Roll back the tape to the last episode.
0:35:00Why do you think I was focusing on notifications so heavily as what I was interested in, right?
0:35:05Because my phone's been getting them all for like six weeks or something before that.
0:35:13I'm not saying I will never go back to the Apple Watch, because I don't want to say
0:35:17that because I don't know that's the case.
0:35:19I just know it is very unlikely at this point.
0:35:22But I could, and what will probably happen,
0:35:25I might end up flip-flopping.
0:35:28If the next Apple Watch is really amazing in some way,
0:35:31maybe I'll drop in on it for a bit and see what's going on.
0:35:35But there are little things.
0:35:36I have my hand on the table right now.
0:35:38I can look down.
0:35:40Oh, look, there's the time.
0:35:42I don't have to raise my wrist in front of my face
0:35:45to see what the time is.
0:35:46It's stuff like that.
0:35:48Like the reasons I used to wear watches before the Apple Watch, those reasons are back and
0:35:54they're back with something that I really love.
0:35:59I love my watch.
0:36:00It's beautiful and I'm very happy to wear it.
0:36:04I'm in total agreement with you when you run through your reasons.
0:36:08And the number one thing there is if a human is not trying to optimize in some sense for
0:36:14happiness, right? Either happiness in the long term or happiness in the big picture.
0:36:19Like, what is the point of what you're doing? So, like, this is this is definitely a thing that I
0:36:26have I think as I have gotten older, there are things that I used to think of as not real,
0:36:37which I now, as a more mature person, recognize as real.
0:36:42And so, like I know a younger version of me
0:36:45would think about watches in terms of a feature checklist.
0:36:49And I think this is a thing that you can see
0:36:51in many conversations about technology,
0:36:53where people want to argue a feature checklist.
0:36:56And it's like, well, but it's not,
0:36:58it's not all about that, or it makes me happy,
0:37:02is a real feature, right?
0:37:05It may not be a feature that you can put on a product page,
0:37:08but it's a feature that really matters.
0:37:10And something like pleasant ticking sound
0:37:14is also a feature that really matters.
0:37:16- And do you see on this watch page, the back of it?
0:37:19Oh, all the beautiful gears and stuff.
0:37:22- Oh, okay.
0:37:23So this is one of the ones where you get to flip over
0:37:25and take a look at it.
0:37:26- If you scroll down on the page,
0:37:27they have an image and you can click front and back.
0:37:30- Oh, okay, yeah.
0:37:32- It's so beautiful to just look at.
0:37:35I mean, Myke, you don't have to sell me on the beauty of well-made gears turning in a
0:37:41precise manner.
0:37:42I mean, is there anything more beautiful in the universe?
0:37:45I think not.
0:37:46So I am with you 100% on this decision.
0:37:51It's like if this watch gives you an ineffable happiness, then that is a totally reasonable
0:37:58thing to optimize for and the trade-offs of not being able to get notifications in a particular
0:38:06way. It's like that's a completely sensible trade-off and it would almost seem crazy to
0:38:10try to argue it from the other side like you should have more features but be less happy
0:38:14isn't that the better solution like well no not really and yeah also I think it's good
0:38:18to get on the record that this doesn't mean that you're wearing a mechanical watch for
0:38:22all of time. No. Right like things change and.
0:38:27Apple could make something that I consider to be truly beautiful, which I don't consider the current Apple watch to be
0:38:34It's like well
0:38:36You are now
0:38:38Beautiful. I want to wear it and I get extra stuff
0:38:41right
0:38:42like there is this is like this is why I would never I try as much as I can now to make less like
0:38:50permanently declarative statements
0:38:53about the decisions that I make,
0:38:55and this is definitely one of them.
0:38:57Right, it's like, right now, this is what I like.
0:39:00But I completely reserve the right to change.
0:39:04Yeah, and, like, thinking about the Apple Watch as a product,
0:39:12one thing when I do talk to people who are watch people
0:39:17and I'm discussing the Apple Watch is,
0:39:19I do just think about the Apple Watch on a longer timeframe
0:39:22that mechanical watches are beautiful and they can make you happy.
0:39:28But the Apple Watch is a product where, well, at a certain point, if they do keep adding features,
0:39:34they can end up with killer features that override the aesthetic pleasures of a mechanical watch.
0:39:40And they also have the ability to make it more attractive over time.
0:39:44That's something that they can do, you know?
0:39:47- That is true.
0:39:48That is maybe one that I wouldn't be like
0:39:50holding my hope out for, right?
0:39:52But at a certain point, like when the Apple Watch
0:39:54is able to do like continuous glucose and insulin monitoring
0:39:59in your system and give you like real-time updates on it,
0:40:01like at that point, you just become crazy to say,
0:40:05"No, I'm going to accept tremendous negative health
0:40:09downsides in the future that the Apple Watch
0:40:11can help me avoid."
0:40:12Like in that future world,
0:40:14it becomes a different kind of thing.
0:40:16But no, for right now, I think if this watch makes you happy,
0:40:20I think it's a good decision.
0:40:22It's a very good decision to wear it.
0:40:24And it also feels, listening to you tell the details
0:40:27that I was unaware about how this came to be,
0:40:28that the stars of the universe aligned
0:40:32to make sure that Myke was wearing this watch.
0:40:35Everything was perfect.
0:40:37You were in an environment where you felt okay
0:40:39wearing it for a little bit.
0:40:40You had a shepherd leading you, leading the way
0:40:44to get the exact correct watch and everything seemed like it was just perfect for you. So
0:40:50I'm very happy for you and your mechanical watch.
0:40:52I already have my eye on my next one.
0:40:54That's what happens though, right?
0:40:56I know what I want next. This was always my concern as being a pen person, right? I know
0:41:04I like expensive, beautiful things. Because pens, the pens that I buy, are expensive and
0:41:11beautiful. They're not as expensive as these watches are though, and that's why I was concerned
0:41:16about myself. Right? Like, where do I go from here? I don't know.
0:41:21It's like, "Oh, that's why you're pushing for more Cortex episodes. I understand now."
0:41:25I haven't watched a bunch, come on! Or I could just do what I do for the pen addict, right?
0:41:30Like start a pen podcast and the business buys the pens.
0:41:33Right, yeah.
0:41:34Coming soon to Real AFM. Watch show!
0:41:39I've enjoyed this section of WatchTech.
0:41:45There we go.
0:41:46We talk about watches and Cortex and now there we go.
0:41:49Watch reviews.
0:41:50Yeah, by branding it WatchTech it's now officially part of the business.
0:41:54There you go Myke.
0:41:57That's my wedding gift to you.
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0:43:44Make your next website.
0:43:45Great. Where actually where in the world are you right now?
0:43:48I don't actually think I know.
0:43:50You still like roaming the desert lands somewhere out in California.
0:43:54Where are you?
0:43:55My body is no longer in California.
0:43:58- Okay.
0:43:59- But my brain is still in California.
0:44:01I'm having a hard time placing the timeline,
0:44:06but I think I just got back from West Coast time
0:44:09two days ago, and I'm in the midst
0:44:15of some really bad jet lag.
0:44:18Sometimes I come back and I feel like,
0:44:19oh, I luck out and I relatively smoothly
0:44:22get back into the swing of things,
0:44:23but this time after a month almost exactly in America,
0:44:28I'm having a real bad jet lag day.
0:44:32- I would say I'm not surprised, man.
0:44:33Like when I came back from WWDC, I was a wreck.
0:44:36It's the worst jet lag I've ever had.
0:44:38It lasted like 10 days.
0:44:41- Yeah, like this is me coming,
0:44:43returning from the back of VidCon
0:44:45and returning from a conference is the additional barrier
0:44:49where like if you had just,
0:44:51let's say you lived in California, Myke,
0:44:53and you went to WWDC.
0:44:55You would still need several days after that
0:44:58to just recover from what the event was.
0:45:01I don't know, this is one of those things,
0:45:02whenever you talk about it on a podcast,
0:45:04like I just, it's impossible to convey,
0:45:06and I think it, maybe it comes across a little bit
0:45:09as like complaining about an awesome thing,
0:45:11because like the conferences are interesting
0:45:13and important to go to,
0:45:15but they are, as someone doing shows,
0:45:17or like meeting people, or going to events,
0:45:20like doing all of this stuff,
0:45:22it is just so draining in a way that is impossible to explain.
0:45:27Like it's a very different experience from being an attendee at a conference.
0:45:32And yeah,
0:45:34so I think when like you've been at WWDC and you've gone through like you in
0:45:39particular,
0:45:40like you went through an emotional roller coaster on like it was a,
0:45:44it was a big WWDC for you as like,
0:45:46but that just on top of all of your responsibilities as like a person who is
0:45:52participating in the conference, to then return
0:45:55and also have to go through, you know, whatever it is,
0:45:58like nine hours of readjustment.
0:46:01I think those two things have a dark synergy,
0:46:04which makes a jet lag way worse.
0:46:08And this year, for my big summer of traveling,
0:46:12I was intentionally trying to turn down the dial
0:46:16on a lot of things to try to make it
0:46:19a little bit easier this time for me.
0:46:21And thank God I did because there was like a lot of unexpected things that came up, which
0:46:25is like, "Oh boy, if I hadn't turned down the dial, I'd be really screwed."
0:46:29But last year, which was like the roughest one for me, yeah, when I came back from that,
0:46:33like the jet lag, you know, it was a long time before I felt like a normal person.
0:46:38And it was just because you're combining all of these various effects.
0:46:40So I think I'm in a little bit of that right now.
0:46:45Like we were recording the podcast in the evening, but I woke up like barely two hours
0:46:50before we were scheduled to record, and I had no idea or no intention. I was just like,
0:46:57"Ah!" I woke up.
0:46:58You're going to be closing down the bar next weekend. You're going to be great!
0:47:03What time is it? And I look at the clock and I'm like, "Jesus, how did this even happen?"
0:47:08I look at my little sleep tracker and I'm like, "You have been asleep for 13 hours."
0:47:12Oh dear. Okay, that was unexpected. Thanks, brain.
0:47:16Morning!
0:47:17But no, I won't be closing down the bar next week because I'll probably be readjusted just enough,
0:47:24like just right in time to then have like a wild night of my wedding party to then mess everything up again and throw it all off.
0:47:32So I can't say that I'm really looking forward to this next 10 days or so of readjustment.
0:47:40But anyway, that is the long answer to I'm back from conference season.
0:47:46(laughs)
0:47:47- Is VidCon more or less tiring for you than WWDC?
0:47:52- Oh man, that's an interesting question.
0:47:55Okay, let me put it this way.
0:47:58I enjoy going to WWDC more,
0:48:03but it's a totally unfair comparison
0:48:08because at WWDC, things are much more spread out
0:48:13because it's a week versus--
0:48:16I set myself a hard max of three days at VidCon.
0:48:21Technically, I could spend five days there,
0:48:22but I've learned it's like three days and I'm out.
0:48:24I don't care what is happening the day before,
0:48:27and I don't care what is happening the day after.
0:48:29I can't--
0:48:30Right, because the conference is three days,
0:48:31but there are ancillary events on either side, right?
0:48:33Yeah, yeah.
0:48:34There are an enormous--
0:48:36VidCon unofficial is much more like a five-day conference.
0:48:41Because anybody who watches vloggers
0:48:43go to VidCon. Like you see all sorts of companies are throwing ancillary events immediately
0:48:47before and immediately after and like there's always stuff to do. But I give myself a real
0:48:51hard limit to like three days and then I'm out of here, right? Like I am on a plane into
0:48:57the sunset as fast as I can possibly be. So VidCon is way more draining even though it's
0:49:03the shorter period of time. But that's also just because like at VidCon I have so much
0:49:08more work-related stuff, right? It's like every day is filled with things that are,
0:49:16even if it's not like directly business-related, it's much more like my industry. Whereas
0:49:22at WWDC, I feel almost like an interloper. I mean, like I'm there and we record a podcast
0:49:29about WWDC and, you know, we do talk about Apple stuff, but it's much more like, "Oh,
0:49:34I'm here and this is just like an interesting experience
0:49:39that I get to have as a foreigner.
0:49:44And I get to see like, oh, here's all the developers.
0:49:46This is their work conference that they're going for.
0:49:49And I'm just observing this herd of developers
0:49:53and their lifestyle.
0:49:54Whereas like VidCon, it's like, oh,
0:49:56it's all wrapped up in my industry
0:50:00and it makes it just a much more complicated experience.
0:50:03But that is why the VidCon is way more draining.
0:50:05But the interesting thing though, Myke,
0:50:08is in terms of getting recognized,
0:50:12WWDC is ground zero for me getting recognized.
0:50:17- That's so weird, it's so weird.
0:50:19- Like no joke, I must get recognized.
0:50:23I'm like, I don't think I have a reasonable number.
0:50:24I guess what I can say is, I'll phrase it this way,
0:50:27at WWDC, if I leave the hotel,
0:50:30I think I've got something like a 60% chance
0:50:32getting recognized if I'm just running in errands. And at VidCon that number is way
0:50:40lower.
0:50:41Because it's like, with your combined audiences of your two shows, it is a fraction of your
0:50:51YouTube audience size, right? Like of the people that would see one of your videos.
0:50:58The only thing I can think of is that, no, do you know what, I have no idea, I have no
0:51:03idea why.
0:51:04I can't work it out because, you know, just by the law or averages, there's probably more
0:51:10people at VidCon that know who you are because combined with the shows and the videos, it's
0:51:17so weird to me.
0:51:18I wonder, I can't place why that would be.
0:51:21Well there's a couple of things.
0:51:24One of which is, I mean, VidCon, I don't know how many people were there this year, but
0:51:27last year. I think the number they estimated was something like 50-60,000 people at VidCon
0:51:32last year. And it is a lot of people and I do get recognized there. But I also think
0:51:38that VidCon shifts very heavily towards a particular screaming demographic.
0:51:45Oh, the demos are different. Yeah.
0:51:48So there's two things that are going on there. I think among the VidCon screamers demographic,
0:51:54my videos are going to be much underrepresented compared to the general population. And then
0:52:01on the flip side, while the people who go to WWDC, I think those people are overrepresented
0:52:13in my demographic. Like the phrase I kept using is like, "Oh, these people are my
0:52:17kind of nerds," right? And it's like, "Ah ha ha ha." So I think that's partly
0:52:21what it is. There's a big demographic skew and the number of people who watch my videos or
0:52:29listen to Cortex in particular is way over-represented in the types of people who go to WWDC.
0:52:35That is a good point. And there's an interesting thing where even for me,
0:52:40I think Cortex is over-represented at WWDC.
0:52:44Yeah, it was quite fascinating to see, like, there were a lot of Cortex shirts around San Jose.
0:52:52There were, and lots of high fives.
0:52:53Oh yeah, one-sided high fives.
0:52:55You know, if you think about all of my shows, even like my Apple-focused shows, I would get
0:52:59just like, more people tell me they listen to this show and maybe another one of those, right?
0:53:04Or just tell me this show in like a way that didn't make sense based upon how like, those
0:53:10shows stack up against each other. It's really weird in a good way. I love it. It's very strange.
0:53:15It's an interesting comparison against your other Apple-focused shows because like while
0:53:18we do talk about Apple stuff on here like this isn't an Apple podcast in the same way that like
0:53:24Connected is a technology podcast but it's way Apple. And it's like I think it's there might be
0:53:31this thing where you know like Connected is focused on news right and if you don't care
0:53:37about that, but you are a nerd. You might be more likely to listen to this nerdy show
0:53:45than the news show. As you say, our kinds of nerds, right? The people that listen to
0:53:51our show really care about certain specific things that are maybe a little bit more general.
0:53:57Except for time tracking. No, but see, here's the thing. I got a lot of people saying, "Oh,
0:54:01they want to hear more about time tracking in person." They took the opportunity to
0:54:04Those people, they keep themselves private, right?
0:54:07They won't talk about it on Reddit if they want to hear it, but they'll tell us.
0:54:10Yeah. Like, I was getting petitions from people where they're like,
0:54:13"You gotta do more of the time tracking stuff."
0:54:16Like, I really enjoyed it, but I was just gonna say, it was interesting as well,
0:54:20just observing you, that it seemed like your recognition at WWDC also went up
0:54:27quite a lot this year.
0:54:29This year was incredible.
0:54:31like it's just the amount of people that would stop their scooters and say hi, right?
0:54:35Like I had that a few times, right?
0:54:37And it was very different this year and I never really took selfies before with people.
0:54:43In previous WWDCs, but this year it was like a lot like where last time it happened but
0:54:49was infrequent.
0:54:50Like mostly people just wanted to talk.
0:54:52This time there were a lot of selfies.
0:54:55I did want to mention a tip.
0:54:57I took a picture with someone and afterwards she gave me the phone and it was in markup
0:55:02mode and said sign the picture.
0:55:04Oh yeah, I saw this.
0:55:05This was genius.
0:55:06This is one of the smartest things that I've ever seen.
0:55:09So I just want to impart this tip to someone.
0:55:11If you ever meet anyone and take a selfie with them, ask them to sign it.
0:55:16Like it's genius.
0:55:17Yeah, I saw her do that and I was like, that is a brilliant idea.
0:55:21I thought that was like, why have I not seen a million people do this before?
0:55:26such a clever idea.
0:55:27Like, I think she was using Snapchat.
0:55:28Yeah, she was using, yeah, she totally was using Snapchat.
0:55:30But you can do it in the photos app, right?
0:55:32You just mark up the photo in the, in, or like take a screenshot of it and go into markup
0:55:36mode and sign.
0:55:37Genius.
0:55:38Like, you changed the way that I think about interactions with people.
0:55:42Like it was so smart.
0:55:43But yeah, like my, like, yeah, it was way more for me, um, than it had been previously.
0:55:49Like there, there had been a change.
0:55:50I don't know what it is, but there's been a change.
0:55:52Maybe it was old Timmy C on stage talking about me.
0:55:55It changed everything.
0:55:57Yeah, I mean, the other thing,
0:55:59again, comparing the two conferences in my mind,
0:56:02I am genuinely glad that it works out this way for me
0:56:06because it's like,
0:56:08I was having such a hard way of delicately saying this,
0:56:11I am fine with being recognized at these conferences
0:56:15because I think it would be unreasonable to go to them
0:56:19and expect people to just leave you alone all the time.
0:56:23stupid. Like you can't, you can't be public in the way that we are and go to an event
0:56:29with his people and be like, "I don't want to see anyone." Like, why are you there then?
0:56:33Yeah, well, I mean, you can be there for other reasons. And it's like, I go to the conferences
0:56:38for other reasons. And this is totally a thing that's like a trade-off in life. It's like,
0:56:44I accept that this is a thing that's going to happen. And then I'm like, "Okay, I'm
0:56:48fine." Like I'm going into it and knowing that. But I'm sort of glad that I get recognized
0:56:53much less at VidCon because that one is already so overwhelming, and it's also the one where
0:56:58it's like I'm much more pressed for time, like moving between different locations to
0:57:01do different things. So I'm glad that WWDC happens to be the one where if I'm going
0:57:08to pick one that I'm more recognised at, that's the one.
0:57:11Yeah, and I bet the interactions will be way more chill at WWDC.
0:57:15Yeah, the interactions are much more relaxed. And the other point that I wanted to make,
0:57:20is I think also why, like when you're trying to mentally puzzle out like you do these Apple
0:57:26podcasts but then people are mentioning Cortex in particular, I was aware last year but I
0:57:32was particularly aware this year that lots of people who said hi wanted to say hi and
0:57:41then also convey some way that this show had an impact on them. And so I think that's partly
0:57:47why it may be in the front of their minds. And it's just interesting to hear people
0:57:54talk about, I think particularly with this show, like side projects they have started
0:58:00or changes they've made in their life or ways they've tried to improve themselves.
0:58:06WILLIE Yay themes, man. So many people were talking to me about either yearly themes or
0:58:11the daily questions stuff. And it just made me so happy to hear and like I see it in the
0:58:17on the Reddit too and people share them
0:58:20and they share their themes
0:58:21or they share their daily questions that they do.
0:58:23And it just makes me so happy to see that.
0:58:27I love it.
0:58:28It's really, it warms my heart to see that people
0:58:32take some of the stuff that we're talking about
0:58:34and it makes some kind of positive impact,
0:58:36especially when those two things specifically
0:58:39I believe in so strongly now
0:58:41and have made such a big impact on my life
0:58:44I genuinely believe the power of them. And it's really nice to know that there are other
0:58:50people in the world that are that are using them to affect. I love it.
0:58:55You know, those two things I think of stuff that we've done on the show recently, like
0:58:58those those have had a clear impact on people thinking about it, like bringing that to their
0:59:02attention. But I also, I think about it in a particular way that I heard reflected back
0:59:10from people who wanted to say hi, which is that it is often just useful to feel like
0:59:18you are part of a conversation between two people who are just talking about this stuff.
0:59:24And even if it's not any particular thing, the idea of being able to listen in to other
0:59:31people discuss like, "Oh, how do you do this?" or "How do you do that?" that that just puts
0:59:35your mind in a good spot for thinking about that with yourself.
0:59:40Like it causes you to be more aware of,
0:59:45"Oh, is there a way that I can change this in my life to make it better?"
0:59:48And yeah, so I don't, you know, I don't want to get all mushy or anything,
0:59:53but it is one way that at WWDC in particular, like it's
0:59:58a very meaningful kind of feedback to receive
1:00:04that you've had like a positive impact on a person's life.
1:00:07So I'm gonna take this emotional conversation as part of a result of your jet lag.
1:00:14But I think we're perfectly warranted to talk about this as we have just passed
1:00:20our third anniversary of this show like a couple of weeks ago.
1:00:24So I feel like, you know, it's perfectly fine to be so introspective.
1:00:30And talk about the show this time because we're now three years old.
1:00:35I didn't realize that, Myke. We've been doing this a lot. I still think of this as like a new...
1:00:40It's my new show. It's my most recent show, even though I have so many shows that have
1:00:44started since. I think it's because we're three years old but only like 70 episodes in.
1:00:51Yeah, maybe that's what it is.
1:00:52It breaks my mental model of how shows work, right? This doesn't make any sense.
1:00:59Because I have shows that are basically as old as this one that are approaching 200 episodes, so
1:01:04right, you know, it's all broken. But yeah, that's why we can get, we can talk about the show because
1:01:09we've just passed a milestone. Yeah, yeah, okay, good, yeah, I feel this, I'm like, why am I, why
1:01:15am I feeling this so strongly? And yes, it's exactly, it's a milestone, which I didn't recognize,
1:01:19but yeah, it's a milestone and also I'm deeply jet lagged, but you know, I still want to, still
1:01:25want to just impart that if I do meet someone and say hello and you say a meaningful thing,
1:01:32I'm still going to put hand sanitizer on my hands after saying hi. So just like, don't
1:01:37take it personally.
1:01:38[laughter]
1:01:39"With a tear rolling down my face and the puerile of my hands."
1:01:43[laughter]
1:01:44"It's very nice to meet you. Scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub."
1:01:48[laughter]
1:01:49"This is the first conference that I have ever considered hand sanitizer. It was like
1:01:54an important thing and this is because there's a show that I love called Dubai Friday and
1:01:59whilst I was on my way out to WWDC they did an episode about germs. It's a challenge show.
1:02:05I love it by the way you should check it out it's a fantastic show and they set challenges
1:02:10every week and they complete the challenges and the challenge of this one was to swab
1:02:14things in your house including your hands leave them for a week and see how the bacteria
1:02:18grows. I was listening to this on a plane which is possibly the worst place to think
1:02:23about bacteria, locked in this tube. But then when I arrived at WWDC, there was a phrase
1:02:31that Max on the show was using, "hot hands" was the phrase. Like, you touch anything and
1:02:37you have hot hands, so don't put them on your face because they're hot hands. So I went
1:02:41and bought hand sanitizer and hand sanitizing wipes and this is the first time I've ever
1:02:46come back from WWDC with a clean bill of health. No cold, nothing. And it's because, you know,
1:02:51meeting people all the time, everyone's got germs all over them, right? And these aren't my germs,
1:02:56so they can make me sick. And there are people that are sick that are going to be there,
1:03:00and then I'm talking to people, I'm shaking hands with people, I'm just touching loads of stuff
1:03:04because I'm out in the world. Yeah, like, I want to back this up because, again, people can think
1:03:11you're kind of like a nutty germaphobe for this sort of thing, but it is also, again, like,
1:03:17When you, for example, Myke, like you do a live show and then afterward you stick around and you're saying hi to everybody, you're shaking 100, 200 hands in the space of an hour.
1:03:28Right? It's, you know, people are like, oh, what a nutty germaphobe for carrying sanitizer.
1:03:32Like, but this is a different situation, right? The people meeting you are just shaking your hand.
1:03:37Yeah, I have multiplied my possibility of getting a cold by 200.
1:03:41Yeah, exactly. And also as people think, oh, people overestimate or they think you're
1:03:46being ridiculous about it, but a big quality of life improvement from when I left teaching
1:03:51and became self-employed and interacted with, you know, went from interacting with several
1:03:56hundred children every day—
1:03:58No disgusting children anymore.
1:04:00—to interacting with no one is—this is going to sound like an overstatement, but
1:04:06It was almost like I forgot what just not being sick was.
1:04:13I hadn't quite realized that I was very frequently, just constantly at a low level
1:04:20of sickness, aside from just genuinely being unwell on a very frequent basis.
1:04:28Whereas now, when I get a cold or something worse, it's like, "How dare this happen
1:04:33to me?!"
1:04:34It happens so rarely!
1:04:35"Get out, you dumb spot! Be gone!"
1:04:38I used to just accept this as a regular part of life, but then after leaving teaching,
1:04:43it's like, "Oh, of course! The number of times I get sick has gone from always to a rare event."
1:04:50And yeah, I try to be very conscious at conferences about keeping your hands clean,
1:04:57touching your face, like you said, is a very clear one.
1:05:00Like, "Watch the eyes, man! Don't touch your eyes!"
1:05:03and then also just food. Like you have to be very careful about the food and like don't eat
1:05:11don't eat stuff that's in the conference hall, you know, have your own supply or go somewhere else.
1:05:17Yeah, you have to be careful about that stuff because otherwise you're guaranteed to come back
1:05:20and like fingers crossed many many bottles of hand sanitizer have prevented me from being sick
1:05:28on top of dealing with jet lag coming back?
1:05:32I can't guarantee that that was the reason, but I just know it's the only
1:05:36thing I did differently. Right. Right, and I feel like I've
1:05:41gotten through and it's not a terrible thing and there we go. And now,
1:05:45also, I just in general wash my hands a lot more these days and I think it's
1:05:52helping me. Like just in random points points in a
1:05:55day I'm like, "I wash my hands now. This could end up being a problem for
1:05:58me right now. It's good.
1:06:01Right, I want to be clear. This is not a compulsion, but for you, Myke, this might be how a compulsion
1:06:07starts.
1:06:08It's not a compulsion. I just sometimes feel like I want to do it, and then I just do it.
1:06:11It's not a compulsion. It's fine. It's nothing to worry about.
1:06:14You could not wash your hands when that thought came into your head of you could wash your
1:06:17hands. You could just sit there and try to avoid it for the next several hours.
1:06:19We have nice soaps. I just like to use them. That's all it is.
1:06:23You do have very nice soap. I can vouch for that.
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1:08:00Gray, are you running the iOS 12 beta?
1:08:04Well, if we rewind the clock on a previous episode, I think I said that I wanted to wait
1:08:11until public beta 2 or public beta 3.
1:08:15No joke, I had the public beta 1 on my phone within 45 minutes of it being announced.
1:08:22Yeah, that makes sense.
1:08:23I am on the developer beta because I basically, as soon as beta 2 came out, I was like, "I've
1:08:30just got to do it."
1:08:31So I did it, I went for it.
1:08:32I actually think I saw it before beta 2.
1:08:33I think I was on the tail end of beta 1.
1:08:36I mean, I would criticize you for living dangerously by putting the developer beta on your phone.
1:08:43said I was having some, it doesn't matter, but I was like, you know what I'm gonna
1:08:48do? I'm gonna put the developer beta on my watch.
1:08:52That is an absolute do not do. Like Federico put it on his watch and it is not reading
1:08:58his heart rate correctly anymore.
1:09:00Yeah, it's not a recommended.
1:09:03The watch is a bad idea.
1:09:04No, it's a terrible idea.
1:09:06It was such a bad idea for the first week that Apple had to remove it because it was
1:09:10bricking watches like do not do. Yeah I waited until after that but then then you know put
1:09:17it on. You actually have the watch better and yeah I have the watch beta running. How's
1:09:21that going? Is it okay? Ah it's fine it's it's fine I did it because this is how I talked
1:09:31myself into doing it so obviously the reason that you and I have put the beta on our phone
1:09:36is the same reason that we want to play around
1:09:39with the notification stuff.
1:09:40Like that's the big thing to do right now with the beta,
1:09:44because the shortcuts app,
1:09:45which we both discussed last time,
1:09:47is going to be a huge deal for iOS in general,
1:09:50is not currently available in the beta.
1:09:52I don't know if, or when, or how that's ever going to appear,
1:09:56but at the moment that's not around.
1:09:57So the main thing to do with the beta
1:09:59is notification stuff.
1:10:01And as I said last time,
1:10:05the details of how they implement the notifications really,
1:10:10really matter and really affect if this can be a useful thing or not.
1:10:14And so I was trying some of the notification stuff and recognizing that I was
1:10:20getting notifications on my watch when I wasn't expecting them based on the
1:10:26settings on my phone. And it suddenly, it occurred to me, I was like,
1:10:29wait a minute,
1:10:31Nothing they ever said at WWDC had anything to do with notifications on the watch. It
1:10:36was all just notifications on the phone. I was thinking, you know, I wouldn't put it
1:10:41past Apple to not have this system work in both places. And then I just like, I started
1:10:48wondering, and I couldn't stop myself from wondering. I'm like, well, the only way
1:10:51I can find out is if I just install the developer beta on my phone.
1:10:54I disagree with that.
1:10:55Which I did.
1:10:56Because I do have the answer to that question.
1:10:57No, the only way to know was to install the developer beta.
1:11:01- For sure. - For sure.
1:11:03- It's the only, 'cause who can trust Myke?
1:11:05The only way to truly know. - The only way to know.
1:11:08And the answer is I still don't quite know
1:11:11if some behavior is buggy or if it's expected behavior,
1:11:14but there are group notifications on the watch.
1:11:16So that's one thing.
1:11:18- And you can get notification center
1:11:19anywhere on the watch now.
1:11:21- Yeah, so anyway, yeah, the public beta came out.
1:11:24I could not resist and I immediately threw it on my phone.
1:11:28And it's been very interesting.
1:11:31We're talking at the point where, you know,
1:11:35I guess it's been on my phone for about a week.
1:11:38Yeah, actually looking at my screen time chart,
1:11:40it's been seven days exactly
1:11:41that I've had the beta on my phone.
1:11:43And I think this is going to be useful for me,
1:11:48but this is going to be a time of change
1:11:51and experimentation in how I'm using my phone.
1:11:54So I'm at a very indeterminate point right now
1:11:57or I'm just trying to figure out how can this be useful
1:12:00or how do I need to change the way I work on iOS
1:12:04to take advantage of the new notification stuff in iOS 12.
1:12:09- So I mean, I would say it is an improvement for me
1:12:14in basically every single way.
1:12:16Grouping is incredible.
1:12:18I'm so happy that that has come back
1:12:20because I've bemoaned many times that in iOS 11,
1:12:24they removed grouping by app,
1:12:26which was sorting by app and notification center
1:12:28for seemingly no reason.
1:12:30Looks like the reason was because they were doing this.
1:12:32I kind of wished that Apple sometimes did everything
1:12:35at the same time rather than half here and half there.
1:12:38- Right, yeah.
1:12:39- But they did it and now the grouping system is incredible.
1:12:42So it groups currently by applications.
1:12:46In future, I believe when developers take advantage
1:12:49of everything that's going on here,
1:12:51the phone will actually be able to group
1:12:52by broad topic area, so like social networking.
1:12:57And also if you have an application
1:13:00which is maybe conversation based, something like Slack,
1:13:03it will be able to in theory group all of your notifications
1:13:07based upon certain channels that you're talking in
1:13:09in the same way that iMessage does.
1:13:10- Oh wow, okay, interesting.
1:13:12I didn't even realize that.
1:13:13- So iMessage right now,
1:13:15it will group all of your individual conversations.
1:13:18So if you have a thread,
1:13:20like two different conversations going on,
1:13:22you get notifications for them, it collapses them by the thread that you're in.
1:13:27And developers can use that as well, is my understanding. So it can,
1:13:31it will get even better, but this grouping is, it's perfect for me.
1:13:36Like I can look at my notifications and I can see what's going on.
1:13:39The new tools that they have,
1:13:42I have been managing my notifications more in the past two weeks than I have in
1:13:46the last two years. I was like, apps come in, you swipe over,
1:13:51you press the manage button and I'm like turn off completely or deliver quietly,
1:13:55which I really like.
1:13:56And that it's finally separated the lock screen and notification center from
1:14:01each other again, which again, they brought them together in iOS 11,
1:14:03but it didn't make any sense. But now you look at the lock screen,
1:14:06you see what's there, you pull up and you see things that are notification center.
1:14:10And this stuff is either old stuff or it's stuff that you've asked not to buzz
1:14:14you and not to alert you. And that's what deliver quietly means.
1:14:17They just go into notification center and you don't find out about them any
1:14:20other way. The thing with deliver quietly, which I think is kind of genius on
1:14:24Apple's part, is that's not new. You could in iOS 11 set up
1:14:30notifications to do that. It's just it was not obvious to people that this was
1:14:35even a thing that was possible. Well because it's one button that operates
1:14:39like four different checkboxes. Yeah. Because it turns off sounds, it changes
1:14:43the alert type, and turns off badges. Yeah I had a million things set up to the
1:14:48"deliver quietly" feature so that they would only appear in the swipe up thing.
1:14:53But I think it is a great idea for Apple to bundle that stuff together into a concept.
1:15:01Nobody's going to remember, "Oh, I've got to flip these four switches if I want this behavior."
1:15:06The "deliver quietly" button is a great, great addition.
1:15:09And I think it's a good example of user interface making something easier for people to do.
1:15:17yeah, this was possible in the past, but essentially nobody did it because
1:15:22you'd have to be a lunatic about managing your notifications to figure it out
1:15:25and to also set that up on, you know, a dozen apps or something. So I think it's,
1:15:29it is a really great addition to have that swipe over and be able to just hit
1:15:32deliver quietly. It's, it's really nice.
1:15:34So, I mean, for me, like the notification stuff so far is,
1:15:38is an absolute win and there's still so much more functionality that can and
1:15:42will be added. Like it's,
1:15:44It's considering how I'm moving back to the phone.
1:15:47- Yeah. - It's perfect for me.
1:15:49- Like I'm really smiling, being aware
1:15:52that you've moved back to the phone
1:15:53because I think the current state of things
1:15:57is like actually maybe notification management
1:16:00on the phone particularly for someone like you
1:16:02is the better way to try to do it
1:16:04than notifications on the watch.
1:16:06Because the way you receive notifications,
1:16:10you're going to want to take advantage of that screen space
1:16:12in a way that the watch just can't really replicate.
1:16:16So it really is like perfect season for Myke
1:16:21with moving back to the phone and having these features
1:16:23because if you are a heavy notification user on the phone,
1:16:26like it's a much better way to interact with stuff.
1:16:30- Do Not Disturb's really good too.
1:16:32Some of the changes that they've made,
1:16:33like in Control Center where you can just hold it
1:16:36and be like for an hour or until this calendar event is done.
1:16:40I've liked that a lot too, because now my phone will buzz
1:16:45when I'm recording a show where it didn't before
1:16:47and that can be distracting or sometimes you can hear it
1:16:51in the recording, but now I can just,
1:16:53'cause I have all my shows in my calendar,
1:16:55just 3D touch on the little icon in Control Center
1:16:59and say until Cortex is done or whatever.
1:17:03And stuff like that is just nice little improvements
1:17:05that I like a lot.
1:17:07- Yeah, that is definitely a nice little change.
1:17:10The leave this location one is also,
1:17:13I can definitely see using that for
1:17:15being at a meeting with someone,
1:17:17like, oh, I'm at a cafe and we're having a conversation.
1:17:18It's like, this isn't on the calendar.
1:17:20I don't know how long this is going to be.
1:17:22Maybe if it's over in 20 minutes,
1:17:24then I'm back in the world.
1:17:25That is for sure a thing I would have used a bunch
1:17:27at conferences where the tension there is always,
1:17:30I have the phone much more open to the world.
1:17:33And until I leave this location is a perfect use
1:17:36of Do Not Disturb in that situation.
1:17:39Like I want to pay attention to this meeting
1:17:40and then when it's over, I want to know what happened.
1:17:43- Something that I really like,
1:17:44and it was a reason that I was quite,
1:17:47I didn't like to turn notification,
1:17:48Do Not Disturb on and off,
1:17:50it's like sometimes I never remember if I have it on or not.
1:17:52- Yeah, it's very easy to lose track of it.
1:17:54- Now it shows you on the lock screen,
1:17:56there is a big banner that says Do Not Disturb is on
1:17:59and it's telling you what's happening.
1:18:01It says that calls and notifications are silenced
1:18:03while your iPhone is locked.
1:18:04like it's telling you what it's gonna do,
1:18:06and then you can just turn it off straight from there.
1:18:08So I can feel comfortable in setting it more often
1:18:11because I'm not gonna forget that it's on
1:18:12for two days or whatever.
1:18:14- Yeah, it's funny 'cause I wanna talk about
1:18:18the downtime feature as well,
1:18:19like that's the one that's most interesting for me.
1:18:22But the one place that I find myself
1:18:24that I do kind of want to manage notifications
1:18:26is I've been getting a lot of notifications
1:18:29from the notification system,
1:18:30like from the downtime system, right?
1:18:32or I'm aware of the do not disturb stuff.
1:18:35And I'm like, I don't need to see this every,
1:18:37like you can just put the little moon there and I know,
1:18:40like I really don't like,
1:18:42I just don't like excessive verbiage in my user interface.
1:18:48And a lot of the phone feels super chatty.
1:18:51And so it's like, if I pick up the phone in the morning,
1:18:53it's like, oh, I have that bedtime mode on,
1:18:55so it hides stuff and it's do not disturb.
1:18:57And also I have downtime enabled.
1:18:59My phone has like four messages on the screen,
1:19:02which are all telling me stuff.
1:19:03I'm like, I know, like I know phone,
1:19:06I don't need to know what's the weather,
1:19:08do not disturb is on, downtime is on.
1:19:09Also, I've gotten this notification from downtime
1:19:11that a thing has expired.
1:19:12It's like, why is there no setting
1:19:14to change the notifications from the notification system?
1:19:19I'm just so aware of this frustration.
1:19:21Like don't show me this stuff every time.
1:19:23I know, I know, man, I know.
1:19:27I want to talk about downtime with you actually.
1:19:30It's part of this new system that Apple's made
1:19:32that we spoke about last time about kind of trying
1:19:36to tackle smartphone addiction, et cetera, et cetera, right?
1:19:38Like letting people take control of their devices.
1:19:41I feel like I missed this feature completely
1:19:45until I installed the beta.
1:19:48- Well, yeah, like I remember when we recorded
1:19:49our live episode last time,
1:19:51like I had to point it out to you as a little thing
1:19:53because they did blow past it really quickly.
1:19:57And it was one of my frustrations when I was trying to find out information from people
1:20:00is I think a lot of people missed it in the keynote.
1:20:02I thought it was just the family thing.
1:20:05Because I knew that what you could do was, for yourself, set what they're calling app
1:20:09limits.
1:20:10An individual application, I can use it for this amount of time every day.
1:20:13And I knew that parents in a family group could set app limits for other people.
1:20:17Right.
1:20:18So they call that downtime, right?
1:20:20They're using the phrase downtime in two different locations.
1:20:23I thought it was just something for children.
1:20:26- Right, so that is why last episode I was saying,
1:20:30oh, I think I may have to set myself up as a child.
1:20:32- Exactly.
1:20:33- Because there was no indication in the keynote
1:20:36that downtime is going to be a user level feature
1:20:40for an individual.
1:20:41Like that is the thing that I was most curious about.
1:20:44And that's the thing I've been playing with the most
1:20:46is like, okay, great.
1:20:47I don't need to have some crazy cockamamie scheme
1:20:51where I set myself up as a child from another device.
1:20:54Like, downtime is just a feature that exists along with notification center
1:20:59that any user can just do for themselves to limit access to apps.
1:21:06So what it will do is you can set it on a schedule or you can turn it on manually.
1:21:10I think there should be a control center toggle for it, but there isn't right now.
1:21:12Yeah, there totally should be. Yeah, 100%.
1:21:15So you can set a period of time where only currently,
1:21:19that a default app you can't turn off is the phone, which makes sense, and then you can
1:21:23set a list of applications that are white listed, so you can say maybe only let me get
1:21:28access to messages and overcast, and literally everything else I can't open until the time
1:21:35is off. Now if you are an adult setting this up for yourself or an individual setting it
1:21:40up for themselves, you do have to access a little self-restraint because you can press
1:21:45a button to allow yourself 15 minutes of access or to turn it off for the day. Like if you're
1:21:49in a family unit, you can say no, right? Like you cannot turn it off. So there is a slight
1:21:56difference but I did think that for you, I think you're a person that can operate that
1:21:59kind of self-restraint because you basically have your own weird cockamamie way of doing
1:22:04this to your own devices, right? Where you turn off Safari and stuff like that. So I
1:22:08thought this is exactly what you wanted, right?
1:22:12Yeah, so this is the thing that I'm playing around with the most.
1:22:16And I am thinking of it in a totally different way from the way that they are intending.
1:22:22But it's like, how is this thing useful to me?
1:22:24So I'm going to send you a screenshot of what my home screen looks like at this very moment.
1:22:29Now, again, users understand this is like a time of experimentation and change.
1:22:35There's a lot of wacky stuff here, but I just want to focus on one thing.
1:22:39So you let me know when that comes through to you.
1:22:42- Okay.
1:22:43- All right, so what I'm trying here is,
1:22:46downtime to me is much less useful as a,
1:22:51I need to limit how much I use various apps,
1:22:54because that is a thing that I mostly have under control
1:22:59in different ways, like you said,
1:23:00of just simply restricting different devices
1:23:03to have different apps on them and blah, blah, blah.
1:23:07but downtime can do a thing that I have always wanted,
1:23:12but there has not been a way to achieve.
1:23:15So if someone were to go back through the history
1:23:18of Cortex and collect all of the screenshots
1:23:20of what my phone looks like,
1:23:22there have always been a tremendous lack
1:23:26of communication icons on my home screen,
1:23:29like messages, Slack, email, any of that kind of stuff.
1:23:33I don't have that on my home screen.
1:23:35And one of the reasons for that is, again, this idea that I'm very protective of my mornings,
1:23:43and what I don't want to be distracted by are the communication apps.
1:23:47And I also was always frustrated that even if I wasn't having, say, Slack buzz me, and I had
1:23:56"do not disturb" on in the morning so that the notification wouldn't come through, if I picked
1:24:00up my phone, I would still see the badge. And it would say, you've received 20 messages
1:24:06from Slack overnight. And it's like, I don't want to see that. I want my mornings to be
1:24:11nice and smooth and the same and I don't want to be aware of any notifications. And so what
1:24:17downtime does is if in the morning I set it, and I say, Slack, for example, is not allowed
1:24:24in the morning. It's not that I'm trying to restrict myself like, oh, I use Slack and
1:24:29I wish I didn't.
1:24:30But downtime dims out the app
1:24:33and functionally acts like the app is uninstalled.
1:24:37So you will not see a badge.
1:24:40And the thing that was really important to me is,
1:24:43any messages that would be in Notification Center
1:24:48are removed during downtime.
1:24:51And when downtime is over,
1:24:53they will reappear.
1:24:55- Damn, I haven't played around of it to that extent.
1:24:58I had no idea that it worked like that.
1:25:00That is really interesting.
1:25:01- So what downtime is to me
1:25:05is a much more strict version of notification control.
1:25:10All right, that's what I'm interested in.
1:25:12And so, because before, one of the things,
1:25:16the way I had to be,
1:25:17'cause I had set up almost every app
1:25:19to "deliver quietly," in quotes, right?
1:25:22But that meant I had to be careful
1:25:23about not accidentally swiping up on the home screen
1:25:26and then seeing like, oh, there's some problem in Slack
1:25:29that people want you to deal with.
1:25:30And it's like, oh, but I'm on my way to the office now
1:25:32to do some writing and like,
1:25:33I don't even want this in my head,
1:25:35I don't wanna deal with it.
1:25:36And so downtime allows me to accomplish this thing
1:25:39where in the screenshot I sent you,
1:25:41I now have like messages, Slack and mail on my home screen.
1:25:45And I also have badges on all of them.
1:25:49And I'm just experimenting with this idea
1:25:52that I can have the communications apps back on my phone.
1:25:57I can also have them have badges,
1:26:01which will dramatically reduce me missing stuff
1:26:04that I'm dealing with as important.
1:26:06But those badges go away every night
1:26:10and don't reappear until the next morning.
1:26:15Now, there's a little bit of a problem here,
1:26:17which is like there are times when I want,
1:26:19like with messages in particular,
1:26:20like I want to be able to send a message from my phone,
1:26:23and like it limits me in this ability,
1:26:25but that's where the ability to, on a particular app,
1:26:28break out of downtime by just entering a code,
1:26:31to me, this is not like a,
1:26:33"Oh, you have to express restraint
1:26:36"and not enter that code."
1:26:37I'm like, "No, no, my ability to enter that code
1:26:38"is a total feature," because it's like,
1:26:41"Yes, sometimes I do want to send a message and have it go,
1:26:44"and I need to do something quickly,
1:26:46"and I can say, I'm making the decision
1:26:49that I'll see whatever the badges are, but it's because I need to send this outgoing
1:26:53message now. So, downtime is very, very interesting to me, but not remotely for the reasons that
1:26:59I think Apple thinks it is interesting.
1:27:03But it is cool though, because it is letting you kind of officially do a thing that you
1:27:11were really trying hard to kind of hack together.
1:27:15- Yeah, without a doubt, this is making something
1:27:18much easier to do that was my eternal frustration before.
1:27:23And like I, in particular, the fact that they hide
1:27:26the badges and they remove the notifications
1:27:29from Notification Center, but put them back
1:27:32when downtime is turned back off,
1:27:35is like, that's a huge deal that is like, ah, great.
1:27:38I can have some apps be in this super quarantine.
1:27:41So my downtime whitelist for the apps that are allowed
1:27:45is hilarious, right?
1:27:46Because it's every app that I have,
1:27:48except for the ones that I want to put
1:27:50into this quarantine mode, right?
1:27:51So like, I'm using it in this totally reverse way
1:27:54of like, oh, I'm not trying to like,
1:27:56just a couple of good apps are whitelisted
1:27:59during this period.
1:28:00It's like, no, no, everything is whitelisted.
1:28:01There's just a couple of bad apps
1:28:03that are like disallowed during downtime.
1:28:05So yeah, it's been really interesting.
1:28:07As always the thing with Apple though,
1:28:09that I think all of us worry about
1:28:12when they improve something that you like,
1:28:14is I really hope that Apple doesn't think,
1:28:18"Oh, great, we've done this thing, right?
1:28:21"We've nailed it."
1:28:22Because my feeling is like, this is a great start,
1:28:27but by no means, and that's why when I made my checklist
1:28:32for what I'm looking for at WWDC,
1:28:34and I was like, "Significant improvements to X
1:28:37"and significant improvements to Y,"
1:28:39I'm not gonna give them significant,
1:28:41it's like, you have improved it.
1:28:43Without a doubt, this is better, but this better not be,
1:28:48like, here's how notifications work for the next five years
1:28:51until we decide to add some additional stuff.
1:28:53It's like, please, dear God, Apple,
1:28:55don't think you've nailed it
1:28:56because there's a million things which are,
1:29:00like, we could use a lot.
1:29:01And the one thing that I'm thinking of is, like,
1:29:04for their intended use case of downtime,
1:29:06which seems largely about parents being able
1:29:09to manage kids' schedules, downtime,
1:29:12just like "Do Not Disturb," has no concept of,
1:29:15I don't know, the days of the week.
1:29:18So if you were a parent trying to limit
1:29:20how much your kid is on social media,
1:29:24there's no ability to do the thing
1:29:26that I think every parent in the world would want to do,
1:29:28which is stricter restrictions on school nights
1:29:32and school days, and then looser restrictions on the weekend.
1:29:36It's like, Apple, come on.
1:29:39This is not a feature for me.
1:29:40I don't really care 'cause I'm not using it in that way.
1:29:43But you gotta give people the option
1:29:45to be able to set up their kid's device
1:29:47and say Saturday is perfectly fine
1:29:49to use your device however you want.
1:29:51But Wednesday is not a day
1:29:53where you can use the device however you want.
1:29:55They don't like options and they don't like schedules.
1:29:58And it's like this is a great first step,
1:30:01but I just really, really hope
1:30:03that Apple doesn't feel like they've nailed it
1:30:05and they just leave it untouched for another few years.
1:30:08- So I wanna talk about screen time.
1:30:10Yeah, what do you want to talk about with screen time?
1:30:12- Well, I think one thing I want to do
1:30:15is I want to share my screen time information with you.
1:30:18And then I kind of, I want you to look at it.
1:30:20- That's very intimate, Myke.
1:30:22- I want you to tell me what you think about it.
1:30:25This feels to me almost like
1:30:27how we will share our home screens.
1:30:29There's like some kind of element to me
1:30:31which is very similar in it.
1:30:33And also, you know, for our great love of just data
1:30:38and what it can tell us about each other.
1:30:41- Were you trying to avoid the word time tracking there,
1:30:43Myke, did you not want to mention time tracking?
1:30:44- I had no idea what you're talking about.
1:30:45(laughing)
1:30:47But I just thought that this might be fun
1:30:49because I feel like I'm kinda learning some things
1:30:52about myself looking at this.
1:30:54- Whoa, holy (beep)
1:30:55I have to send you my screen sharing data after this.
1:30:59- I just want to let you know,
1:31:00this is all my devices combined, right?
1:31:03This is all my iOS devices, right?
1:31:04- Okay, let me send you, oh my God, this is amazing.
1:31:07Let me send you, here is the data from all of my iOS devices.
1:31:12For the record, I don't know if you found this,
1:31:16but I'm convinced that the pickup number is totally buggy.
1:31:20That like my pickup, the number of times
1:31:22I picked up the phone, my number cannot possibly be true.
1:31:26And if you look at my data, it's like,
1:31:28there's no way that it's true.
1:31:29- I don't think your data is as different to mine
1:31:32as you think it is.
1:31:34- I wanted to share it 'cause I think
1:31:35This is a very interesting comparison.
1:31:38I would not have guessed that Tweetbot
1:31:43would be your number one use there.
1:31:45Although I guess, okay, so here's an interesting question.
1:31:49If you have, I wonder how it counts this, right?
1:31:51If you have two apps open,
1:31:53like you have Safari open on one side
1:31:55and you have Tweetbot open on the other side,
1:31:57I wonder how it counts that.
1:31:59Does it count both of those? - It's gonna count both.
1:32:00- It's gonna count both of them at the same time?
1:32:02'Cause I ran into and I filed a radar
1:32:05with totally bizarre counting of data for background audio,
1:32:08like things with audio books and overcast,
1:32:11some incredibly weird buggy stuff going on
1:32:13with tracking of that that happened on my device.
1:32:16But yeah, I guess it would have to count them both
1:32:19as what's going on.
1:32:21Holy cow, you get a lot of messages.
1:32:25- Yeah, I do, don't I?
1:32:26- Just to pause there before we go into the details
1:32:29of the data, but that is like another example
1:32:30where it seems crazy making to me that like,
1:32:32Apple, you need more features.
1:32:33It's like the inability to prioritize users and messages and who can send you stuff when
1:32:37is crazy making to me.
1:32:38That is an example.
1:32:40Don't think you've nailed it because there's plenty of room for where you need improvements
1:32:45here.
1:32:46So this is over the last seven days, I've got 1,630 iMessages.
1:32:51Gray's got 115.
1:32:53Yeah, we're literally an order of magnitude apart.
1:32:58That's amazing.
1:32:59our notifications in the last seven days I've got 2590 and you've got 345.
1:33:08Yeah, I think this is total evidence of what we have described on the show many times.
1:33:15We have very different notification management systems.
1:33:19We do, but our actual device time is way closer than I would have expected.
1:33:23You're at 41 hours for the week and I'm at 51.
1:33:28I think that's partly because my data is a little wacky
1:33:32because having just returned from America,
1:33:33I was doing things like driving a car
1:33:36where I had navigation maps open a lot.
1:33:39So I think there's some stuff that's in there.
1:33:42- Yeah, I understand that.
1:33:44But my thinking is like, there's always something.
1:33:46- I'm with you on that 100%.
1:33:48I just, for this kind of data, I would love,
1:33:51like when I look at my time tracking data,
1:33:54I do like to look at the really long time scale.
1:33:58So I always like to look at the past 365 days
1:34:01and then like the past 30 days,
1:34:04precisely because any particular week
1:34:06is always a bit wacky for some reason.
1:34:08And I always much prefer to see data
1:34:11on the really long trend.
1:34:13I doubt that something Apple would do,
1:34:14but I would love it if they had something in here
1:34:17which is like, show me my data over the last year.
1:34:20So I have like a real sense of what does my time
1:34:23actually look like. - Yeah.
1:34:24another thing where it's like you've done a great job so far but please add more.
1:34:28But you know, so like okay, so let's look at some of this stuff then, right? So you mentioned
1:34:34Tweetbot. Tweetbot for me is huge, right? So in the last week, last seven days, eight hours of my
1:34:4251 hours has been using Tweetbot. Now you may look at that and be like "Myke spends way too much time
1:34:49on twitter yeah but but it's not crazy if it's on the side in the way i was just thinking about
1:34:54well no i i think i mean sometimes it's there but sometimes it's just the app that i'm in
1:34:58right a lot of the time i bet it's just the app that i'm in but like let me kind of see if i can
1:35:05qualify this a little bit so yes i use it as a social networky thing but i'm also i don't use
1:35:10any rss or anything like that like all of my news consumption is going for a tweetbot yeah and i'm
1:35:18there getting follow up and feedback from my shows and monitoring social media accounts
1:35:24for the shows that I do like that eight hours. The fact that tweetbot is my most used app
1:35:30is not a surprise to me at all. Because of the way I use it, it might be more interesting
1:35:36as an experiment if I use two different Twitter apps. And I use and I might do this at some
1:35:42point I use one for me personally, just me thinking I use one when I'm considering it
1:35:47work time. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, that's an interesting kind of seeing how it differs.
1:35:51And I think it would probably be about half at that point. I reckon it might kind of split
1:35:55in half. But you know, and then again, right, like, YouTube six and a half hours, not a
1:36:00surprise to me, because I watch lots of YouTube videos in the day. Like it's kind of what
1:36:04I do is like when I want to take a little break, I'll watch a YouTube video. And also
1:36:08at night, like it's kind of the way that I unwind before going to sleep. I'll watch some
1:36:12YouTube videos or whatever, right? It's not a surprise. Yeah, that's that's a that's a
1:36:15a good point. And this is also a case where part of the reason why I am less interested
1:36:20in this as a tracking tool than you are is because this is going to capture much less
1:36:26of a picture of my life than it does for you. Right. Whereas when, like you said, like you're
1:36:31watching Netflix and YouTube on your iPad. And that's just not an experience that I do
1:36:36very often. Like if I'm watching Netflix or YouTube, very often I'm watching it on my
1:36:42Apple TV at home, right? And then it's like, okay, that data is just totally uncaptured.
1:36:47And so yeah, that's, that's one way where this is getting like a better picture for
1:36:51you of your time than it is of what does my time look like.
1:36:56Yeah, I just sent you one more screenshot, which is the expanded view of the apps just
1:37:00to give you as kind of a sense of more stuff. Right? So you look at stuff like Spark and
1:37:04Slack and Docs and Notes and Safari and Sheets. That is all work stuff.
1:37:10Oh, WWE in there, look at that.
1:37:12Yeah, I watched a video.
1:37:14Same as Twitch, right?
1:37:15I was watching a stream.
1:37:16I was going to say, what do you do in the WWE app?
1:37:18Watch videos.
1:37:18They've got a Netflix-style thing for their content.
1:37:22Well, Twitches work for you now too, Myke.
1:37:24Exactly.
1:37:25So but I was watching a Twitch stream.
1:37:27So it's like, you can kind of see that it's interesting to me
1:37:30how it's broken up.
1:37:31I think three hours of in-email is quite a lot.
1:37:34But it's not surprising when you look at my notifications
1:37:37And see, I got 283 emails in the last week.
1:37:42But I will also say that I'm,
1:37:44I think due to some bugs in Spark
1:37:46and maybe some bugs in Apple's notification system,
1:37:49I'm not getting consistent email notifications now.
1:37:53I actually know I got more emails than that in the last week.
1:37:58It was more than 283.
1:38:00But I'll tell you something,
1:38:03and then something that really kind of puts it all
1:38:05into perspective for me is when you look
1:38:06the categorization. And I am using more of what Apple considers or what is classed as
1:38:13productivity apps by a significant margin. So it's like six, nearly 17 hours of productivity
1:38:20compared to 11 hours of entertainment and then 11 hours of social networking. I think
1:38:25it's quite interesting. I'm liking this data. I want to see more from it, but I like kind
1:38:29of I like what it's showing me so far, honestly. And like when I look in their productivity
1:38:33apps so you want to kind of go into it it's like yeah okay everything in here makes a lot of sense
1:38:38i like that it includes a url so fresh books i spent an hour and seven minutes in fresh books
1:38:46and it's including that in the productivity section just that url i'm like okay that's
1:38:52really cool right yeah like yeah they've done some interesting stuff with being able to
1:38:56tie the websites to the thing i think that that's a really it's a it's a really well done to be able
1:39:03to link these things to say like, "Oh, if you're on Twitter on the Twitter app or you're on
1:39:09twitter.com or you're in tweetbot, it's like they're all the same thing. It has an understanding
1:39:14of the relationship of these things to each other. So, I mean, you know, and then obviously the one
1:39:20that we haven't mentioned yet but it has to be spoken about is pickups. I pick up my phone once
1:39:25every five minutes and you pick up your phone once every seven minutes. I thought that was going to
1:39:29say something like every hour.
1:39:32Yeah, I don't think that number is correct.
1:39:36No, you don't.
1:39:38I genuinely don't because...
1:39:40I do, man.
1:39:41I really do.
1:39:42I think people have, and that's why they made this, I think that we have a very skewed understanding
1:39:51of how much we use our devices.
1:39:53There may be an element of incorrect data in here, right?
1:39:57where it's looking at sensors incorrectly, but I would bet that it is closer to true than not.
1:40:04B: The thing that would make it closer to true, which I would, this is where I love to note the
1:40:10details, is because I'm just hearing you talk about it, I'm realizing and I'm watching myself
1:40:16do a particular behavior that I don't think about until just now, which is I tap the screen of my
1:40:24phone and I hit the lock button a million times as almost like a fidget device.
1:40:30I think I actually told you at WWDC when it was, I discovered this habit in myself that
1:40:35I never knew that I had last year when they introduced the feature where you click the
1:40:40home button three times and you set off the emergency phone call thing that after that
1:40:45software update rolled out, like your phantom taps, I was getting actual emergency phone
1:40:51calls for like two months because I was just click click click clicking the button in my
1:40:56pocket and it was like "blam" like an enormous alarm.
1:41:01Even with this tremendous negative feedback of like there's a scary alarm sound and like
1:41:07someone from 911 who wants to know what the emergency is right now sir, it took me a long
1:41:11time to get out of that habit of like click click click clicking the lock button on and
1:41:17off on and off and like while we've been talking here even just in the last few
1:41:20minutes like I have the phone in my hand and I'm just like I tap the lock screen
1:41:25and just have it come on and I tap even though I don't have notifications going
1:41:29to that lock screen it's like a fidget habit thing but I think that there's
1:41:32something in that though right no no no but like I will agree with you right I'm
1:41:36not saying to be like this doesn't count and I bet they're 100% counting that
1:41:40like that that is yeah the if the phone is lit up either by you picking it up
1:41:44while tapping it, they're counting it as a pickup.
1:41:46- Yeah, because if that counts,
1:41:48like I have picked up in quotes the phone,
1:41:51I don't know, like two dozen times in this conversation,
1:41:54but it's just like fidgeting with the lock button
1:41:57and tapping the screen.
1:41:59And then, yeah, then I can believe that data
1:42:01because other, like I'm thinking of it in terms of like,
1:42:05pick up and unlock, and then I'm like, this data's crazy.
1:42:08Like it can't possibly be true.
1:42:10But if it's just screen illuminated,
1:42:14then I can believe that number.
1:42:16- Yeah, and again, I know you're not necessarily
1:42:19disagreeing with what I'm saying,
1:42:20but I just kinda wanna say it anyway,
1:42:21which is I think that that counts
1:42:23in the idea of phone addiction.
1:42:26I think something in your brain,
1:42:27yes, it's a fun thing to play with,
1:42:29but is just going for the button,
1:42:32going for it time and time again.
1:42:35There's so many times where I notice I'm doing this,
1:42:37where I close Tweetbot and I open it again.
1:42:39Like, what am I doing?
1:42:40Why is it open?
1:42:41I don't need it to be open.
1:42:42I've just seen everything. And I think this is this this pickup thing I think is meant
1:42:47to show us that we're touching our phones all the time. And like, I don't necessarily
1:42:54think that this is a bad thing for society. But I think it is important for people to
1:42:59understand. And that's why I really like this screen. I like all of this information to
1:43:05just dip into. I mean, honestly, one of the things that I like about it is it's vindicating
1:43:09some of the things that I think I know about myself that are good, which is how much time
1:43:13I'm spending working on these devices, right? I am happy to see that that is one, the predominant
1:43:20thing and two, it's kind of around equal with my entertainment stuff. It's like, yeah, that
1:43:25feels like how I believe I'm using my iOS devices, you know? So I'm happy with it.
1:43:31Yeah, I'm thinking like I almost wish they called it something like, they wouldn't, but
1:43:35to be like, "Phone touches," right?
1:43:37Like, how many times have you touched the phone?
1:43:39Or at least, like, maybe just when it rolls out,
1:43:40like, have a little description underneath,
1:43:42like, what are they counting?
1:43:43Because I suspect, like, when you look at that number
1:43:45of, like, every seven minutes,
1:43:47I think a lot of people would have, like,
1:43:48"I can't possibly be true."
1:43:49I was like, "Uh, yeah, but if you're counting
1:43:51lock button presses and screen taps,
1:43:53like, it totally is true."
1:43:54It's how many times have you touched your device?
1:43:58And then it's like, "Okay, yeah, I can believe that.
1:44:00I can believe that number."
1:44:03That's very interesting. That's very interesting.
1:44:05I gotta say, I like this feature.
1:44:07- I'm glad that they're rolling it out.
1:44:09And like, you know, as someone who's into time tracking
1:44:13and has been into time tracking for a while,
1:44:15and as you know, like I was your shepherd
1:44:18into time tracking with like, do it all the time
1:44:20and like, and see what it looks like.
1:44:22And like, you'll be horrified.
1:44:23I am like, I cannot wait until this rolls out
1:44:27to the rest of the world,
1:44:28because I think people are gonna be horrified
1:44:30that first week when it comes out.
1:44:32And I'm kind of like giggling with delight at that moment.
1:44:36But like here, here, like look at the data
1:44:39and see what your life looks like.
1:44:40And you don't have to do the tremendous effort
1:44:45of I'm gonna constantly be flipping timers all day long
1:44:49and keeping a record and looking at reports.
1:44:51Like normal people aren't going to do that,
1:44:55but I've always encouraged everyone I know
1:44:59who does any kind of independent work to do time tracking
1:45:02because it's so valuable to really know.
1:45:05So I'm thrilled that Apple is having this as a feature
1:45:10that's just easy for everyone.
1:45:12I just, I really think everyone is going to have to go
1:45:14through that moment that previously,
1:45:16just like my self-employed friends that I've talked into
1:45:18have gone through of like,
1:45:19oh God, I didn't know what my life really was.
1:45:21(laughs)
1:45:22What have I become?
1:45:24Yeah, or it's not even what have you become?
1:45:26It's just, the reason that data is so valuable,
1:45:31It forces you to be aware of mindlessness.
1:45:36And like, mindlessness is this invisible enemy
1:45:40in everyone's life.
1:45:42And you can catch yourself being mindless,
1:45:45but you don't realize how often you act with mindlessness,
1:45:49or what I think of also as like one of my timers
1:45:51is like, unintentionally.
1:45:53How often do you act with unintentionally?
1:45:56And that the timers help you fight back
1:45:59against that kind of stuff.