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Cortex

70: CORTEK - WWDC 2018

 

00:00:00   No, I don't have anything on my phone. I don't know. I was like, I'll just look at my home screen

00:00:03   my disgusting messy home screen

00:00:05   Why would it be disgusting and messy?

00:00:08   Because I'm traveling, because I'm traveling

00:00:10   Oh, okay

00:00:11   Everything's... look at this, look at this mess. It's disgusting

00:00:15   That is really bad actually

00:00:17   It is

00:00:17   See? I wasn't kidding you, it's terrible

00:00:22   32

00:00:23   Have you got an iOS update to do?

00:00:26   Oh, no, that's a Twitter DM hiding in a folder

00:00:29   Do you have badges for Twitter DMs when you travel?

00:00:32   - I'm in conference mode.

00:00:33   I need Twitter DMs.

00:00:35   - All right.

00:00:36   - You didn't even ask me about the 32 in the folder as well.

00:00:39   - No, I said the number and then quickly moved on.

00:00:41   What's 32?

00:00:42   32 what?

00:00:42   - Okay, 32 is my email app hiding two folders,

00:00:47   two rows over, because as well,

00:00:49   I have to turn on one of my email accounts

00:00:51   when I'm traveling.

00:00:52   - Why do you have to?

00:00:53   - I have to for like tickets and hotels and like notifications.

00:00:56   It's just like, it's too impossible

00:00:58   to be the lockdown version of myself that I want to be.

00:01:00   I've got 19 items on OmniFocus.

00:01:02   A badge has appeared on my calendar.

00:01:04   I don't even know what it is.

00:01:05   Let me find out.

00:01:07   - I don't like traveling gray.

00:01:09   - Oh, it's a notification about a change to a flight.

00:01:12   Oh boy.

00:01:14   - Oh no.

00:01:15   - There we go.

00:01:16   I have cleared one badge while we started the show.

00:01:18   - Did you wanna clear that badge?

00:01:19   - Yeah, it's cool.

00:01:21   I'll look at it later.

00:01:22   - We're back in San Jose, California.

00:01:25   It's WWDC time again.

00:01:27   we are sitting around the exact same table that we sat around last year just

00:01:32   through some beautiful stroke of luck I've got the exact same hotel room which

00:01:35   is amazing I believe it has been dubbed the mic suite yep the suite this very

00:01:39   it's very sweet here and so I was able to coerce you to sitting in front of me

00:01:43   again I think I did try to push for the separate rooms and then again

00:01:47   immediately caved because I realized that would require me to bring equipment

00:01:51   and I was like for this summer of traveling no equipment so we're here in

00:01:56   person. Yep. And I'm looking looking right into your eyes,

00:02:00   which makes me a little bit uncomfortable, but they're just

00:02:03   they're so big and bright and they're they're as full of life

00:02:08   and enthusiasm as a Memoji and it's making me a little

00:02:12   uncomfortable. Why can't we can't talk about Memoji yet

00:02:14   because we'll lose the rest of the episode. I think at this

00:02:18   point, I'm able to just say equipment and then we can just

00:02:22   and that's that's my way of convincing you. You've learned

00:02:24   one of the buttons you can press with me, which is the,

00:02:27   can I bring fewer things or prepare less?

00:02:31   And if you can press that button, it's like immediate sale.

00:02:34   - So here we are, we're back in San Jose.

00:02:36   There's been a big addition to San Jose this year

00:02:39   in the form of electric scooters.

00:02:42   In some cities in the US right now,

00:02:44   there are these, I think two companies

00:02:47   that are dropping scooters,

00:02:49   littering scooters into the city.

00:02:52   - Littering.

00:02:53   I imagine kind of like ticket-tape parade type style.

00:02:56   A truck comes by and a bunch of scooters

00:02:58   get thrown out of the side.

00:03:00   And you can sign up in these applications

00:03:02   and you scan them with a QR code,

00:03:03   and then you have access to these electronic scooters,

00:03:06   which probably travel at like maybe 10 to 15 miles an hour.

00:03:10   - Yeah, 15 miles an hour is what they top out at.

00:03:12   - And there's a bunch of controversy around it

00:03:14   because whilst we have been here,

00:03:16   they have been banned in San Francisco.

00:03:18   - Really? - Yeah.

00:03:19   - Wow. - The exact scooters

00:03:20   that we're using are banned in San Francisco now.

00:03:22   right now.

00:03:23   So I wouldn't be surprised if by the

00:03:26   time this episode is released, they

00:03:28   are banned in San Jose.

00:03:29   Because it's just the next town.

00:03:31   Like I'm looking over the looking

00:03:32   out the window.

00:03:33   They're still there.

00:03:35   Are they taking away?

00:03:36   Are they taking away my scooters?

00:03:37   At any moment the scooter police may

00:03:39   come in and take them away.

00:03:40   Oh.

00:03:41   This was one of those things where it

00:03:43   was like I don't know if

00:03:45   I'm really a person who

00:03:46   typically would jump on a

00:03:48   15 mile an hour scooter and ride it

00:03:50   through a city.

00:03:52   But it was like, "Oh yeah, okay, I'll give it a go."

00:03:54   And there is this arc that we've been talking about

00:03:57   with people where you're a little trepidatious of it,

00:04:00   you get on it, you're not sure, it starts going,

00:04:02   you fall in love with it and then realize

00:04:04   how horrifically dangerous it is as a mode of transport

00:04:09   for you and everyone around you.

00:04:11   - But Myke, they're really fun.

00:04:15   - Yes, they are really fun. - They're super duper fun.

00:04:17   - There was a moment where it was me and you

00:04:20   and some of our friends and we're like zooming down a little street and it was

00:04:24   just this really weird thing, like "what am I doing right now?"

00:04:27   It's super fun. I was very interested to see these scooters because I've been

00:04:32   vaguely reading about them on places like Hacker News and it's one of these

00:04:35   things where you keep hearing about like there's cities where there's piles of

00:04:40   scooters in the street like I don't really under- I never really understood

00:04:43   what it was and people were complaining about them like I just didn't get it.

00:04:46   Because when you're done with them you just get off and leave it wherever you

00:04:49   want basically and again like with all of these things that the company suggests

00:04:54   the kind of areas you're supposed to park them in and you know they say oh of

00:04:58   course you're wearing a helmet right like all these little things yeah like

00:05:01   and you know oh don't definitely don't ride them on the sidewalks but yeah

00:05:05   literally everybody rides them on the sidewalks yeah is they're not fast

00:05:09   enough for streets one of the apps asked me to scan my driver's license and I

00:05:13   noticed there was a little X on the screen so I just click the X and it let

00:05:17   me right on through. It's like, "driver's licenses are required, we just want to verify

00:05:22   your driver's license." No, I'll do it later. Sure, that's fine. Keep driving the scooter.

00:05:26   Please get on the scooter, sir, we need you, we need you. And they're so cheap, it's like

00:05:30   a couple of dollars for like a 10-15 minute ride. It's like, I see the utility in them,

00:05:36   but they're a nuisance. It reminds me of Uber. When Uber first launched, and like, all of

00:05:44   the cities tried to ban it, and then they had to slowly work

00:05:48   with each city to get them to come back.

00:05:51   It reminds me of that, because it's like,

00:05:53   you're taking something that is established,

00:05:56   you're changing it, and it's disrupting stuff,

00:05:59   and all of the traditional lobbies don't want it to occur,

00:06:03   and then over time, these companies have to find ways

00:06:06   to work with these cities, because otherwise,

00:06:08   they go out of business.

00:06:10   - Yeah, the Uber comparison is an interesting one,

00:06:11   because, you know, when, much to my surprise,

00:06:16   I was convinced to try one of these things,

00:06:19   and then much to my surprise, I totally loved it.

00:06:22   Like, it's just fun to ride.

00:06:24   It was like a fun novelty for the first day,

00:06:26   but there have now been, I think, three or four times

00:06:29   where I have legitimately run errand on those scooters,

00:06:33   and I realized, sort of like Uber,

00:06:36   it solves a very particular transportation problem

00:06:39   of, oh, I need to get to the Walgreens,

00:06:41   The Walgreens is far enough away that it's going to be like a 15 minute walk, which is

00:06:47   too short for an Uber.

00:06:49   But then this scooter turns that into a four minute walk, right?

00:06:53   Walk in quotation marks because you're going 15 miles an hour down the sidewalk wearing

00:06:56   your helmet and with your driver's license.

00:06:58   Not on the sidewalk.

00:06:59   No, not on the sidewalk of course.

00:07:01   Wearing my helmet in the road.

00:07:02   Yeah, wearing my helmet in the road and doing proper hand signals on this scooter that I

00:07:07   wouldn't want to let go of with two hands.

00:07:09   Like I'd want to hold tight very close.

00:07:10   So it's like, but it was genuinely interesting to notice

00:07:13   an immediate change in behavior in myself

00:07:16   of a kind of expansion of the radius of the city,

00:07:20   like how far away is the city?

00:07:21   I did the same thing where I went

00:07:23   to a coworking space to work, and I was like,

00:07:25   "Oh, this makes it really achievable to go and come back."

00:07:29   So I think they genuinely solve

00:07:32   a short distance transportation problem

00:07:36   in a super useful, super interesting way,

00:07:38   precisely because they're left everywhere.

00:07:41   So you can just pick one up,

00:07:43   and when you go to the place, you can just leave it.

00:07:46   And it is great, but it is very obvious as well

00:07:50   that these things are kind of a public nuisance

00:07:52   being strewn about everywhere,

00:07:54   but that's also the advantage of them.

00:07:56   They're kind of a nuisance on the sidewalk,

00:07:58   but that's also the advantage of them.

00:08:00   And I am very interested to see how this shakes out.

00:08:05   - Have you heard of the jump bikes?

00:08:07   - No.

00:08:08   like it's a bicycle that is part electric powered and uber bought them a while ago and they've just

00:08:16   launched them in London. Oh interesting. So it's like a part electric powered bike and they call

00:08:22   jump and they're coming to London now. Is it the same idea though that people just leave them

00:08:25   everywhere? No it's kind of like a cross between these scooters and our current like city bike

00:08:32   system. Okay. So like there are places that you pick them up from and leave them but if they're

00:08:37   prevalent enough like our current bike situation in a lot of places you can get them basically

00:08:42   anywhere right yeah it but like i think it's interesting like i can see now why people feel

00:08:48   so divisive about the bikes i like i now i understand in retrospect all of these stories

00:08:53   that i've been reading that they're this nuisance but they're all so amazing and they're great like

00:08:57   they just totally solved this problem that i never really thought of as a problem before

00:09:01   and i don't know how it's going to shake out but even things like oh we're going to have

00:09:06   designated dropping spots. It's like, yeah, but that just like, Oh, well,

00:09:10   it's one of the great things about these is that you just find one when they're

00:09:14   all GPS.

00:09:15   So you can look on the app and find one near to you and you just get off it.

00:09:18   And then there's, do you know how they get charged? Yeah.

00:09:22   I've been hearing about this, that they send,

00:09:24   they send like children around to go pick them up and charge.

00:09:26   Let's not say it's like that so much you as an individual can sign up to pick

00:09:31   them up, take them home.

00:09:34   they send you this specific type of charger

00:09:35   and they pay you like $5,

00:09:37   they give you an amount of money, right?

00:09:39   So it's like the gig economy on the other end of it.

00:09:42   - Yeah, exactly.

00:09:43   - It's quite an interesting business model.

00:09:46   You can see people just driving around in vans

00:09:48   and just picking them up to take them home.

00:09:49   They charge them and then just put them,

00:09:50   I guess they're told to put them

00:09:52   in a specific place the next day.

00:09:54   - I was looking at it and that's what they say.

00:09:55   It's like they give you drop off spots to try to put them.

00:09:58   And presumably again, like everything,

00:10:00   they're using a computer to figure out

00:10:01   where's the best spot to leave them,

00:10:02   Where do people want them?

00:10:04   I know they're super interesting

00:10:05   and we have all been saying like they're so fun,

00:10:08   but it is inevitable that they're going to be banned.

00:10:10   So it is amazing to me that while we are here,

00:10:13   they have been banned.

00:10:15   But I think they're a real plus to a city

00:10:18   and in my like most optimistic timeline,

00:10:23   the existence of these bikes would encourage municipalities

00:10:26   to have better separated biking lanes.

00:10:29   Like that would be the best possible outcome,

00:10:32   But that's an outcome that takes decades to do.

00:10:36   - And again, they could keep bringing up London,

00:10:38   but since the introduction of the city bikes,

00:10:43   there are much better bike lanes in London

00:10:47   because they basically created new ones.

00:10:50   They call them like bike super highway or something

00:10:52   for these bikes when they were created.

00:10:54   So like, and this was because

00:10:56   it was a part government backed scheme to put them in.

00:11:00   But I think what these scooters show

00:11:02   and what all of this stuff shows is

00:11:04   that there is a change in the way that people wanna move.

00:11:07   And you're completely right.

00:11:09   Like I have somewhere I wanna go tomorrow,

00:11:11   which is a 35 minute walk, an eight minute taxi drive.

00:11:16   Now, neither of those are great.

00:11:19   But these scooters would be perfect.

00:11:21   That's like maybe like 10 minutes or 15 minutes or whatever

00:11:25   and that's perfect for something like this.

00:11:27   And it's showing, I think it's showing a lot about the way

00:11:30   that people today are outgrowing the way

00:11:33   that their cities allow them to move.

00:11:34   - Yeah, they're really at the intersection

00:11:37   of a whole bunch of different things.

00:11:38   And I've found it very fascinating to see them here.

00:11:41   I've found it great to use them to find out immediately

00:11:46   that like, oh, this solves all these problems.

00:11:48   Like I've thought of so many cases

00:11:50   where if they existed in London,

00:11:51   I've realized all of these point to point walking journeys

00:11:56   that I do that I would totally replace with the scooter.

00:11:58   And now I'm frustrated with the technology of walking.

00:12:03   I honestly have found myself thinking,

00:12:04   why am I walking to someplace like a chump?

00:12:07   Why am I not on a scooter right now?

00:12:09   But I think that is a sign of how perfectly

00:12:11   a technology is solving a problem.

00:12:13   - Yeah, but just the issue with them is they are dangerous.

00:12:16   They are, like, they go too fast.

00:12:17   - They go way too fast on the sidewalks without a doubt.

00:12:21   - For everyone, for you and other people,

00:12:23   but they are not safe enough to be on with cars.

00:12:28   - Oh yeah, there's no way, like every,

00:12:29   I have ridden them on the roads every time,

00:12:32   but you know, of course. - Of course, of course.

00:12:34   'Cause you're a law-abiding citizen

00:12:35   with your big helmet that I've seen you be wearing.

00:12:37   - Yeah, it's with my big helmet and my respect for society.

00:12:39   - It has lights on the back of it

00:12:41   so people can see you, all of those things.

00:12:43   - All of those things.

00:12:44   But no, it'd be crazy to drive them in the streets.

00:12:48   It'd feel like you're just asking to die.

00:12:52   So there's no good place for them.

00:12:54   And this, along with all the other kinds of things

00:12:57   like the various segues and boosted boards,

00:13:00   it feels like we've just hit this tech.

00:13:03   - There are so many boosted boards here.

00:13:04   I mean, we're in California, so it makes sense,

00:13:06   but they're just everywhere as well.

00:13:08   - Yeah, and I've been seeing them pop up in London as well,

00:13:10   along with these unicycles. - Oh, really?

00:13:12   - And yeah, all of these things are popping up.

00:13:15   My understanding is part of all of these things

00:13:17   have come into existence because a bunch of segues,

00:13:19   original patents have expired, like with self-balancing,

00:13:21   and so now these things can exist,

00:13:23   combined with where we've reached with battery technology.

00:13:26   But the point is, there's a million different companies

00:13:29   coming at this same problem

00:13:31   from all of these different angles

00:13:33   of short distance electric transport.

00:13:37   And I feel totally convinced that these bikes have shown

00:13:40   there needs to be physical infrastructure changes in cities

00:13:45   in order to accommodate them.

00:13:46   Because they're a third solution

00:13:48   that just doesn't fit on sidewalks,

00:13:50   doesn't fit in roads.

00:13:51   But in like in this potential future are you operating these though or are they autonomous?

00:13:58   Oh these scooters?

00:13:59   That's the other way of getting around this kind of thing right?

00:14:02   Is that humans just don't drive them at all.

00:14:04   That's how you remove the, well that's how you change some of the safety equation.

00:14:09   I mean yeah okay now if we can fast forward to a place where all the cars are self-driving

00:14:13   as well and they feel like oh everything's very safe then that does change things but

00:14:17   that seems to me like oh it's too far off right?

00:14:20   Like, we've got scooters right now.

00:14:22   I don't want to walk ever again, Myke, starting today.

00:14:27   How do we solve this as fast as possible?

00:14:28   I thought you wanted one of those what are they called rascal scooters?

00:14:32   You're getting one of those next.

00:14:33   I think they're more generally accepted than these other types of scooters.

00:14:38   All I know is walking is for chumps now.

00:14:39   That's what these scooters have taught me.

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00:16:23   So even though we've been at ScooterCon there's other stuff happening. Of course we are here

00:16:30   for Apple's WWDC Worldwide Developers Conference and we are in San Jose but something that

00:16:36   is 15 minutes away from here is Apple Park,

00:16:39   which is Apple's new campus.

00:16:41   And every time we come to California,

00:16:44   we always go somewhere.

00:16:46   And typically, in the past couple of years,

00:16:49   we've been able to get tours of a building.

00:16:52   That does not happen at Apple Park.

00:16:54   You do not get tours of that building.

00:16:57   But they have built a visitor center.

00:17:00   Now, we have been to One Infinite Loop,

00:17:03   which is the previous campus.

00:17:04   They have a store and it's a very small Apple store, that's it.

00:17:08   But I think Apple very cleverly knew that this had become a bit of a destination for

00:17:12   visitors in general.

00:17:14   So at the new campus they built an entire building which has in it a store, a cafe,

00:17:21   a kind of, has an AR experience which is just kind of information about their building which

00:17:26   they're very proud of.

00:17:27   They're very proud of the building and the AR experience.

00:17:30   And as a roof deck as well where you can go up and you can take pictures of the huge circular building

00:17:35   So what did you think of it?

00:17:37   Mean

00:17:40   There's there's an interesting thing. So when we went today when you pull up to see you know Castle Apple Park like this this

00:17:47   Infinite ring. I think they have a moat around the edge of it so that you can't approach too closely

00:17:53   A very peculiar looking fence is what it was very strange a fence with no horizontal slats

00:17:59   Just vertical just lots of poles aluminium poles. I'm assuming

00:18:03   I'm just assuming that if you walk through any of those two poles Apple has some kind of

00:18:08   instant stun laser that just knocks you unconscious and then

00:18:12   The grass opens up below you and that you go fall down a shoe that foliage is hiding stuff

00:18:17   Yeah, there's no it's not just it's not just trees

00:18:20   Yeah, like you wake up two days later on the beach in San Francisco thinking what happened like that's I think that's what happens

00:18:25   If you try to get close to Apple Park, the building is so

00:18:28   enormous that I

00:18:31   Found from the from the vantage point that we came up to and where they have this visitor center

00:18:36   You just lose all sense of scale of it

00:18:39   Like it's it's so big that one of the things that happens is it almost looks like it's flat again

00:18:45   Like you almost can't realize that it's a curved

00:18:47   structure

00:18:49   And I had been closer to it when it was under construction and like had this feeling of how enormous it really is

00:18:56   and so if I feel like I had a better sense of how just

00:19:00   Tremendous it is but it's it's a funny trick of the brain where the thing becomes so big that you lose all of your normal

00:19:06   Frames of reference and then it almost feels like not that it's small but it it feels like it's way

00:19:13   Smaller yeah than you think it is. Yeah. I've had an experience like this before

00:19:18   In Bucharest there is a building called People's House,

00:19:21   a palace of the parliament, which is,

00:19:23   this is a whole thing.

00:19:24   I actually did an episode of "Ungeniest"

00:19:26   about the history of this building.

00:19:27   - Yeah, you sent me the Wikipedia page on this one.

00:19:29   So it was one of those things where when you send it to me

00:19:31   and I'm reading through it, I'm thinking,

00:19:32   how did I not know this existed?

00:19:33   - I think it's like the second or third largest

00:19:36   man-made structure on earth, only behind the Pentagon.

00:19:38   Like, it is mammoth.

00:19:40   And it's the same thing that I found with Apple Park.

00:19:44   With these two buildings, anytime you are close enough

00:19:47   to look at it, your eyes cannot see all of it.

00:19:51   Like you have to move your head to see the edges

00:19:55   and that kind of scale is so wild.

00:20:00   Like it breaks everything that you,

00:20:03   'cause it never can look as big or as like,

00:20:07   it never just looks right.

00:20:08   It looks almost too big and too small all at the same time.

00:20:10   It's very, very, very peculiar.

00:20:12   But again, I've only seen what I've seen from the outside,

00:20:15   but it is unbelievable.

00:20:17   - Yeah. - To look at.

00:20:18   - It really is.

00:20:19   I keep thinking of when I used to play Magic the Gathering,

00:20:24   Magic cards, like they have giants are a standard feature

00:20:27   and there's a joke in the game

00:20:29   about how every giant requires birds for scale

00:20:32   and as soon as you tune into it in the artwork,

00:20:34   you realize it's like, oh, there's a giant thing,

00:20:36   you have no sense of scale,

00:20:37   so they'll put like a flock of birds,

00:20:39   very tiny, like flying around

00:20:40   and I think Apple Park needs to just constantly release

00:20:44   doves from out from the center

00:20:46   then you would realize like my god it's enormous right that's that's my

00:20:51   suggestion for apple park but it's it's a beautiful building it it really is a

00:20:55   beautiful building it's it's nicely set like it's again i think it was like it's

00:20:59   like a castle because it's up like yeah it's higher than everything basically to

00:21:05   put it on which is probably where all the secret chambers are in the hill yeah

00:21:09   and it's also better as a defensive structure right if if you're you've got

00:21:12   - You've got to have the high ground.

00:21:13   Everyone wants the high ground.

00:21:14   - Yeah, without the high ground you have nothing.

00:21:17   - But, you know, and I just, you know,

00:21:19   as a obvious fan of this company,

00:21:23   there is something to be said about effectively building

00:21:26   the ancillary parts of a museum,

00:21:28   the gift shop, and the cafe.

00:21:31   Because when you then go there just to look at it,

00:21:35   you don't spend 10 minutes and leave,

00:21:37   your journey gives you an hour.

00:21:40   - Yeah.

00:21:41   like we went and looked around the store and you buy the t-shirts you can only buy at the store

00:21:45   right because that's your merchandise for making it and they also sell everything else that you

00:21:50   know you can buy all the of course you can buy an iMac Pro if you really need to yeah I was thinking

00:21:55   of just grabbing one for the trip while I was there I have a podcast to edit later but then

00:22:00   also you can go and sit and I had an old grey tee like and you can appreciate there's this weird

00:22:05   kind of like feeling of it almost being like a gallery anyway because it's so

00:22:09   beautifully built. Yeah the visitor center I don't know it's it's not a mini

00:22:16   version of the main building but it's like it's there to inspire the idea of it.

00:22:20   It's closer to an Apple store, a really nice Apple store in design and you can see all

00:22:26   these little elements like the roof looks like the store they just built in

00:22:29   Chicago and the handrails and the stairs like the stores in London like they're

00:22:35   just kind of showing off everything. There's like this corridor where the bathroom is,

00:22:38   which is one of the most beautiful corridors I've ever seen in my entire life. Like, you

00:22:42   know, they made it this thing for people to go to when really like the old store One Infinite

00:22:48   Loop just looked like a not very good Apple store.

00:22:50   Yeah, it looked like they took some offices that were against the window, knocked out

00:22:54   the windows, right, put in a door.

00:22:56   Because that wasn't, you are right. And I think it's kind of what happened. I was told

00:23:01   that by a friend who used to work at Apple a long time ago

00:23:03   that the store used to be inside the building

00:23:06   and was more like the company store.

00:23:09   - Okay, that makes sense.

00:23:10   - And then they started to kind of open it up

00:23:12   to the world a little bit and turned it into an Apple store

00:23:14   'cause there wasn't always Apple stores, right?

00:23:17   But they had the kind of company store

00:23:18   where you would go and buy the new products

00:23:21   when they were all released.

00:23:22   But then they kind of opened it up to the world.

00:23:24   But I mean, when we went there a couple of years ago,

00:23:26   like that's not your day.

00:23:28   Like we went there on the way to Facebook.

00:23:30   - Yeah, we just, 'cause we knew it, we stopped off,

00:23:32   we wanted to see it, you know, we took a picture

00:23:35   in front of the Apple flag and then it's like,

00:23:36   and then you just keep on going, but you're right.

00:23:40   Apple did a great job of making this,

00:23:42   it's not like a full day expedition,

00:23:44   but it's a place that you wanna go.

00:23:45   - We spent like our afternoon, you know,

00:23:47   like a big part of our afternoon there, it was nice.

00:23:49   - Yeah, you go, you take a look, it's a beautiful setting,

00:23:52   you can sit upstairs and look at the building

00:23:55   and be in the sunshine and then you go down

00:23:57   and get some refreshments, it was,

00:23:58   And it's a nice space to be in for, for a thing that is also like a busy

00:24:03   retail environment, they did a good job of giving you these spaces to just be

00:24:09   like the cafe has a lot of space and it's separated from the store and the upstairs

00:24:13   has a lot of space and is separated from the store.

00:24:16   So they did such a good job of giving you a place to go.

00:24:20   If you are a fan of this company.

00:24:23   And I think they also probably saved themselves an enormous amount of hassle

00:24:27   patrolling that perimeter, right?

00:24:29   Because they can tell everybody, go to this place,

00:24:31   here's the visitor center, you can take some pictures,

00:24:34   like this is the spot to congregate.

00:24:36   - Because they don't want people to be in there.

00:24:37   Like it's almost, it's impossible to get in there.

00:24:40   - Yeah. - Like it's very,

00:24:41   very, very hard. - Yeah.

00:24:42   - I've come close so many times and then they like,

00:24:45   they do a little bit of research, you can't come in here.

00:24:47   And I do understand, like I almost find it strange

00:24:52   that we've been able to go into as many buildings

00:24:55   as we have been able to go in.

00:24:57   because all of these tech companies are so very secretive

00:25:00   about what they do anyway.

00:25:02   It is almost funny to me that I've been able to go to

00:25:05   as many companies as I've been to.

00:25:07   - Yeah, I think I felt that most strongly

00:25:09   when we visited Facebook.

00:25:11   It's not that I wouldn't have expected

00:25:13   Facebook would give tours,

00:25:15   but it was just that once we were on the inside,

00:25:17   it was such a strange alternate Facebook land.

00:25:21   - There is danger to showing to the world what they do.

00:25:24   - Yeah.

00:25:25   Universal Studios like campus that they built for themselves.

00:25:28   - That's a good way to put it.

00:25:29   - Yeah, I've saw that from someone.

00:25:31   Someone mentioned, we were talking about this,

00:25:32   that's what it's like.

00:25:34   - Yeah.

00:25:34   - That it's, it almost feels like a risk

00:25:38   to show it to people because, you know,

00:25:42   from talking to people at Facebook,

00:25:44   they seem very, you know, they're very adamant,

00:25:46   like, you know, we don't sleep here, we don't live here.

00:25:49   Right, but nobody believes that.

00:25:51   - Right, yeah, nobody believes that.

00:25:51   - And when you see the fact that you can get a haircut there

00:25:54   you need it. It doesn't enforce that idea and we haven't actually spoken about

00:26:00   this. We'll get to it at some point in the future but like Facebook are building a

00:26:03   village. Yeah yeah that's been on our list for a while of like we thought we

00:26:07   saw the walled city of Facebook and it's like oh no. They are literally building one. But that is yet to come.

00:26:12   Right this was this was just the start of it but but I but I agree like that

00:26:17   was where I had the feeling the most strongly like I can't believe that

00:26:20   they're letting us tour this and I'm still so grateful that we were able to

00:26:25   do that like that was such an interesting day even though I had to lay

00:26:28   down on the floor in my bathroom and stay with the blank ceiling for a while

00:26:31   to like defrag my brain from the whole experience.

00:26:35   Oh I've gone on this riff by the way. I bought one. I lasted like two days and now I have one.

00:26:40   And it is as good as it was in that place.

00:26:44   Okay I've got to come over to your place then and we're gonna be fine.

00:26:46   I played the game. So you know the game we played on the train?

00:26:49   Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

00:26:50   They've epic made a game based on that.

00:26:53   Mm-hmm.

00:26:53   And I can only play it for like 15 minute chunks because it's way too intense.

00:26:57   It's way too intense.

00:26:58   I have to like, I love it, but I have to take it off like I can't do it anymore.

00:27:01   All right, I'm definitely coming over to your house.

00:27:04   Yeah, it's, it's, there's a game called Beat Saber. Oh, it's like a rhythm game.

00:27:08   My god.

00:27:09   You've so good. Anyway.

00:27:11   As soon as, as soon as I'm back. As soon as I'm back from, from my summer of traveling.

00:27:15   From your travels.

00:27:15   - I will be.

00:27:16   I'm gonna go right out of Heathrow, right to your door.

00:27:19   - Just come straight to my place, to the cottage.

00:27:21   - Let's do some VR.

00:27:22   But no, it is an interesting thing.

00:27:24   We could get into Facebook,

00:27:25   we can get into all these other places.

00:27:26   And they seemed genuinely happy to show us around.

00:27:30   - They have a whole program for visitors and everything.

00:27:33   - And then, you know, Apple is Apple,

00:27:35   and they are fortress Apple upon a hill.

00:27:38   But they also built the world's most beautiful fortress.

00:27:41   - It's the most desirable one to get into.

00:27:43   They've made it worse.

00:27:45   - Not only was it hard before, you've now built this like,

00:27:49   I don't even know how to describe it.

00:27:52   Like it's kind of like a statue to themselves, right?

00:27:55   It was kind of a way that we were describing it.

00:27:57   It's like this thing which is,

00:27:58   you have built a tourist attraction.

00:28:00   Well like previously it was a tourist attraction

00:28:02   because it was Apple, but now you've built,

00:28:04   you have a piece of architecture

00:28:06   that people just wanna look at and then go inside

00:28:09   and see the garden on the inside.

00:28:11   - Right, but we don't get to see the garden on the inside.

00:28:13   - That's not for you.

00:28:14   So you mentioned about travel.

00:28:17   How is the Year of Order surviving all this travel?

00:28:21   - I'm very tired, Myke.

00:28:22   - Yeah, are you going to anywhere else after this?

00:28:25   - Oh, Myke, this is but chapter one of part two.

00:28:29   - Well, 'cause I know that there is a big conference

00:28:31   which is focused on video, which is coming up soon.

00:28:32   I don't know if you're going, but that's coming up.

00:28:36   - Yeah, I was trying today to mentally place

00:28:40   what has been going on with me, but yeah, I think,

00:28:42   I'm dividing up the past couple months for me is two parts.

00:28:46   We're in part two. This is chapter one. WWDC.

00:28:51   I think the, I think I can say that it ends chapter three.

00:28:55   Vidcon.

00:28:58   Oh, you're going again. Okay. Okay.

00:29:00   It's the place to be Myke.

00:29:02   Oh, all right. Sorry. I don't know how I missed that.

00:29:05   Um, yeah, it's been, it's been interesting. Uh,

00:29:09   it's been interesting because one of the things I'm doing in this part two is I

00:29:14   am thinking a lot about the year of order and

00:29:18   Well because year of order was created because of this last year.

00:29:23   Yeah. Largely because of last year.

00:29:24   You're basically doing the same amount of travel again.

00:29:26   Yeah. Depending on how you want to count it, like it's,

00:29:29   I think cumulatively it's going to be more travel this year. It's just,

00:29:32   it's just broken up a little bit more. There's a space in the middle. But yeah,

00:29:36   But last year, Summer of Travel was great, super valuable for me to do, but completely

00:29:42   destroyed my life.

00:29:43   It really did.

00:29:45   I was just destroyed.

00:29:46   And so that really did get me started thinking about Year of Order and like I can't possibly

00:29:50   do that.

00:29:51   So I'm trying this time to be much better.

00:29:55   Spoiler alert, part one, I totally failed at this.

00:29:59   So all of my initial travels, I was not very good.

00:30:02   But that's what life is, right?

00:30:03   You try to figure out and you try to get better.

00:30:05   So for part two, I've made myself a little spreadsheet and I'm trying to keep track of

00:30:10   two things.

00:30:11   I've set myself a kind of low but still difficult to achieve goal, which is that I'm trying

00:30:18   to be very consistent about doing some kind of exercise on a regular basis and doing some

00:30:24   kind of what I'm classifying as "real work" on a regular basis.

00:30:29   work for the purposes of this summer is doing something that moves a project closer to publication

00:30:37   or closer to closure. So like we're doing real work right now, Myke.

00:30:42   Yeah.

00:30:43   Right, because we're recording a podcast. This is necessary to happen in order to make

00:30:47   the podcast go up. So it's like I'm going to be able to give myself a little tick right

00:30:52   after we're done with this.

00:30:53   Right, because you have at least spent some time today

00:30:56   Yeah, exactly.

00:30:57   pushing something forward.

00:30:58   Yeah. And so my, like with the way I work, I've mentioned it before on the show,

00:31:02   but I tend to think of things in terms of units, which for me are about 40 minutes.

00:31:06   So the goal is like do 40 minutes of work that push,

00:31:11   like that is real work that pushes a project forward.

00:31:14   And I'm aiming to do that like, and every seven, seven days,

00:31:18   do that like five days on average, which here's the thing.

00:31:21   I know when I say that,

00:31:23   that it sounds like there's no amount of work being done.

00:31:27   But the interesting thing I can and what I've come across on this,

00:31:30   this conference in particular is like the reason we go to these things is it is

00:31:35   valuable to interact with the people who are here and to do the events that are

00:31:41   here and to go to meetings while you're here.

00:31:42   And I'm so aware that taking out time to try to do exercise and to try to do real

00:31:48   work,

00:31:50   it has to play off of taking time away from the very reason that we're here.

00:31:57   - Which in and of itself is a very valuable

00:32:00   work related thing.

00:32:01   Like it is networking, it is meeting,

00:32:04   and it is stuff that helps to find new opportunities

00:32:07   and strengthen current ones.

00:32:09   Even finding like a solid hour every day to do work in

00:32:14   can be tricky when there is all this other stuff going on

00:32:19   which you wouldn't technically class as typical work.

00:32:22   - Right.

00:32:23   - But there is, depending on how you're approaching

00:32:25   something like this, there is a work benefit to it.

00:32:28   - Yeah, like again, thinking of last summer,

00:32:30   the things that got done, like would I consider them

00:32:32   real work, no, but they were super important

00:32:34   and they're exactly that kind of thing.

00:32:35   Like, you never know what comes out of meetings,

00:32:38   you never know just like where conversations can go,

00:32:41   even if they don't pay off for like three years, right?

00:32:44   Or you just like, you start establishing

00:32:45   relationships with people, it's a really valuable thing.

00:32:49   And it's just, it's been very interesting for me to,

00:32:53   being very deliberate about I'm trying to carve out this time and realizing it's

00:32:58   like, man, it really,

00:33:01   it is really hard to do that on a consistent basis when the very reason you're

00:33:06   here is to spend as much time as possible doing the things that you came here

00:33:11   for. So I've, I'm, I'm happy with what I've done so far, but like I'm just,

00:33:16   it's a,

00:33:16   it's one of these cases in life where I'm just very aware of these trade offs.

00:33:22   So like basically in the mornings, like if I wake up early enough,

00:33:25   like I'm trying to sneak out and go get coffee and like take all the less

00:33:29   populated routes to the coffee store and back to the hotel to try to be able to

00:33:34   get back into my room without running across anybody and like getting swept into

00:33:38   the maelstrom of the day. Uh, and it's like,

00:33:40   it is hard or just finding a little window of time between events.

00:33:44   You're also in conflict with the exact reason that you've made the trip.

00:33:48   Yeah, exactly. It's like I've come across the face of the earth.

00:33:51   Avoiding everything is kind of silly.

00:33:54   Because otherwise you've taken such disruption out of your life anyway.

00:34:00   Why even do it if you're just going to hide away in a hotel room all day, right?

00:34:06   So this is, I feel like for the Year of Order, this week so far, being at WWDC, has been

00:34:11   an interesting case of, I think I've hit it pretty well attempting this balance between

00:34:18   maintaining some kind of regularity in work and health while I'm traveling,

00:34:23   while also participating largely in everything that's going on,

00:34:26   but not everything because I am sneaking away sometimes.

00:34:30   I've been thinking a lot of, um, like what you think of as,

00:34:33   as decreasing marginal utility of things.

00:34:36   And so I'm just very aware of, I guess,

00:34:39   the first half an hour of exercises and there's like a great marginal increase

00:34:45   what the day is like and the same thing with the first unit of work is a great marginal increase

00:34:49   so like i'm just trying to hit the maximum point on that curve and then like bail immediately and

00:34:55   then and then do all the things that are the very reason that i'm here so yeah but i'm very tired

00:35:00   even though this is probably i reckon probably end up being a similar amount of work that you

00:35:05   probably did on the last trip it is the system of having this like i've checked this off this

00:35:11   I guarantee will make you feel like there has been more orders to these trips.

00:35:15   Yeah, it is also partly keeping the order. I mean, I will disagree with you because last year the

00:35:20   amount of real work and particularly exercise was like horrific. I understand. I did not do well

00:35:27   at all. But so already I feel much better about this balance. But again, I was thinking about the

00:35:34   year of order and just, you know, in my mental time frame of when years are like, oh, I still

00:35:39   live on teacher time and the year starts in the summer. I'm just letting you know now,

00:35:43   and I think I've gotten it on the record before, that the year of order is not a year-long project.

00:35:48   It's not the year of order. It's going to be the regime of order. Like this is going to be a longer

00:35:52   thing. But I'm feeling good about it. This episode of Cortex is also brought to you by

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00:37:40   I have ticked off a huge year of branching out moment last night. Yes. We had a live show last

00:37:47   night um for one of one of my tech podcasts called Connected and we had a big theater and we had a

00:37:53   big audience and it was a big production and really good. There are very few

00:37:58   things in my professional career just any amount of work that I do where when

00:38:04   it's completed I say that was perfect. This was one of those things.

00:38:10   Everything went perfectly. Absolutely not one thing I would want to change about

00:38:14   the event. The show went great. Meeting everybody was amazing. Everybody that

00:38:19   came was wonderful. I got to have so many of my friends come out and see me do

00:38:23   this thing. It was fantastic. It was so good. Yeah and I gotta say as an

00:38:29   audience member, as like you ended up with an amazing venue. You're up

00:38:35   on stage like you guys killed it in the show. I really felt I was

00:38:40   sitting in the audience just like beaming with happiness for you guys

00:38:43   because I could just... it's one of those things where you're at an event and you

00:38:46   can just tell like man this is just going great like everything about this

00:38:50   is going great and so yeah it's it was a big big like it felt like such um just

00:38:58   being in like a semi-circular theater with a balcony and everyone like it felt

00:39:04   like you really put on such a thing. We had like spotlights and red velvet curtain.

00:39:10   I'm sure there were gaffers I don't know there was like things. We had

00:39:14   production managers and it was a we had a green room yeah which had a tv in it so we could see

00:39:19   the stage and could listen to it and dressing rooms i had a dressing room uh it was it was so

00:39:26   good it was at a as a location here called the hammer theater which is um i think it's part of

00:39:31   the university here uh so they as also like we had students helping us out as part of like as

00:39:38   well as the like the professional people that they have it was it was so good we had the show was

00:39:43   just done so perfectly I absolutely loved it and this is a massive tick for me professionally.

00:39:48   I mean this week has been a pretty big week for me in general. Well yeah because when you were saying

00:39:53   oh you've hit a big tick I was thinking which big tick has Myke ticked because

00:39:59   yeah if we can jump a little bit ahead you did tick the biggest of ticks that I think you possibly can

00:40:07   in your industry. Which is connected the artwork and the name were shown on stage during WWDC

00:40:18   not as part of a list or anything but as the center item on the stage while they were

00:40:26   talking about podcasts and they showed the "Hey Siri play an episode of connected command"

00:40:33   on the stage and it was amazing.

00:40:36   - It was so good.

00:40:37   I did not know this was gonna happen.

00:40:41   This is the way, you know,

00:40:43   obviously the Apple keynotes are what they are

00:40:46   and people make the decisions.

00:40:49   We had no idea that this was gonna happen.

00:40:51   And I almost blacked out.

00:40:56   Like there is a part of the keynote that I know happened

00:40:59   but I don't remember it,

00:41:00   which is basically everything preceding this moment.

00:41:03   So like podcasts are now gonna be a thing

00:41:05   on the Apple Watch in September.

00:41:08   And for whatever reason, they decided that on stage

00:41:12   they would show our show.

00:41:13   There are many more shows with much more mainstream

00:41:18   and wide appeal that they could have picked,

00:41:19   but for whatever reason, they chose to show Connected.

00:41:23   And I think it makes, I can see why they did it,

00:41:25   'cause it's a developer conference for developers

00:41:28   and this is a show that's listened to by people

00:41:30   in our community and it was incredible.

00:41:32   And one of the really amazing and kind of hilarious things

00:41:36   is Getty Images took a photo of Tim Cook

00:41:41   standing in front of the kind of Apple Watch wrap up slide,

00:41:45   which is these five watches in a row

00:41:48   showing the major features.

00:41:50   And they showed our artwork as in like the podcast thing.

00:41:53   But this image is taken in such a way

00:41:55   that there are two things in this image.

00:41:57   There is Tim Cook and a huge Apple Watch

00:42:01   with our logo on it.

00:42:02   And this image has been used everywhere.

00:42:05   I've seen it on Sky News.

00:42:07   I've seen it printed in newspapers.

00:42:10   So many large websites ran this, with this image.

00:42:15   I have actually bought rights to the image

00:42:18   just so I can have it.

00:42:20   - Right, so you can get the full high resolution

00:42:22   professional Getty image.

00:42:23   - This is mine, me and my buddy Timmy.

00:42:26   Yeah, and I ordered a fracture of it as well.

00:42:29   (laughing)

00:42:32   - Okay, I have to ask, what size fracture did you order?

00:42:34   - I just went with a small one.

00:42:36   - Oh, okay, all right. - Because I have this like,

00:42:38   wall in my office where I have a bunch of like,

00:42:42   professional achievements, and that's gonna go on there.

00:42:45   And I want them all to be the same size,

00:42:46   they're all kind of the small size.

00:42:47   - Okay, I wasn't sure if when I show up to play VR

00:42:50   at your house that I was going to discover--

00:42:52   - What? - Yeah, that there's

00:42:53   a wall size printout of Tim Cook,

00:42:55   right with the connected-- - I ordered a split in half

00:42:57   - The two of the largest ones.

00:42:59   - And just to be clear,

00:43:01   that would be perfectly fine with me.

00:43:03   You would be 100% justified if you wanted to make that

00:43:06   a permanent wall-sized feature in your house.

00:43:09   I could not blame you because it really is an amazing thing.

00:43:14   - I still can't believe it happened.

00:43:17   - No.

00:43:18   - It was unbelievable because it just kept happening, right?

00:43:25   The first part that was shown,

00:43:27   you could see it in a list. They were scrolling through a list and that was all I needed.

00:43:31   Oh, I didn't even realize it. Okay.

00:43:32   That was when I saw it for the first time.

00:43:34   There was a little teaser preview.

00:43:36   Because what happened to me is they start showing podcasts.

00:43:40   Now I had friends who were there and I started getting a barrage of messages

00:43:46   just saying, Oh my God, Oh my God.

00:43:49   Right. Because the,

00:43:49   in the WWDC conference is happening live and we are watching it streamed a lot

00:43:54   watching it streamed a little bit delay. It's not a lot, but it's a little bit.

00:44:00   So I start getting all these messages and I see that they're showing... so I know something's

00:44:06   happening. I don't know what it is, but something's happening. And they start scrolling through

00:44:09   this list and you could see the connected artwork in it. So I start screaming and then

00:44:17   they demo Siri and use the name of our show in it. And then it just becomes the artwork

00:44:24   to show off the feature. And we were in the room together, I just lost it. I don't even

00:44:29   remember how anybody else was reacting. But I just, I still can't get my head around it.

00:44:35   I've watched it back since once and I'm sure I'll watch it many more times. Anyone who

00:44:43   I guess is kind of in our position would always dream of something like that to happen to

00:44:51   them but it feels like such an impossibility.

00:44:55   - Hmm.

00:44:56   - Right, like you know you may one day see your app

00:45:00   or a picture that you had taken on a website

00:45:03   or the artwork for your music or album or show

00:45:07   to be part of an app.

00:45:09   You know, if you care about this thing,

00:45:11   it's like one of the highest honors you can achieve

00:45:13   because none of this is accidental.

00:45:16   Like they weren't just scrolling through a list

00:45:18   and this show happened to be there.

00:45:19   like it's all specifically picked for reasons

00:45:22   that we have no way of understanding.

00:45:25   But to be in that, what is ultimately

00:45:29   a very small group of people in kind of history

00:45:33   is incredible and you know, I'm sure if this isn't something

00:45:38   you care about as deeply as we would, it sounds mad,

00:45:42   but there is this kind of feeling of like acceptance

00:45:48   and like credit being shown, which is,

00:45:51   I can't even begin to express it, like what it means to me.

00:45:54   - I think of it as like a mark of acknowledgement from Apple

00:45:58   is what it is. - Yeah.

00:45:59   - Right, it's-- - It's like we see you.

00:46:01   - Yeah, we see what you're doing

00:46:03   and we're putting you up on stage as part of that.

00:46:07   And I think that combined with doing the show

00:46:12   that you did this week,

00:46:13   I feel like you've had this incredible week

00:46:15   and as a friend of ours said,

00:46:17   It has been very interesting to see like relay grow over the years as a result

00:46:22   of the work that you and Steven have put into it.

00:46:25   And it's like the keynote is not accidental and the growth of relay is not

00:46:30   accidental.

00:46:32   Like it's it's the result of all of the work that you have put in over all of

00:46:37   this time. And it's like,

00:46:40   it really feels like a bunch of that has just come together in very visible ways

00:46:44   this week. And it's like, I'm just, I'm so happy for you,

00:46:47   I really am. I really am.

00:46:49   So yeah, it's been a good one.

00:46:52   This has been one of the busiest WWDCs that I have and usually really busy,

00:46:56   means I don't enjoy it as much.

00:46:58   It's not been the cases here.

00:47:00   No, I think you have been a very happy Myke.

00:47:02   I am very happy.

00:47:03   You've been a very happy Myke this year.

00:47:04   Which is actually an interesting segue.

00:47:06   Year of Positivity.

00:47:08   Now, the timeline on the Year of Positivity is up.

00:47:12   Oh, is it? Right.

00:47:14   So I decided that I was going to be positive about the what Apple has been up to

00:47:20   After lots of negativity right beginning with WWDC last year to WWDC this year

00:47:25   Now you had preemptively labeled this as the the tumbleweed. Yeah. No, no, not a year of tumbleweed

00:47:32   It was it was a ww DC of tumbleweed which marks the start of the year

00:47:36   So then you would assume that a tumbleweed event would maybe not lead into a year of positivity

00:47:42   Like if you think about all of these things landing together, so I guess we should talk about

00:47:47   WWDC in the announcements

00:47:49   I will give a spoiler alert in saying that my year of positivity is going to continue for another year

00:47:56   because I am

00:47:58   Very surprised about how good I feel about the announcements. Mm-hmm

00:48:03   So I think we'll break down a few of them. There's way too much stuff for us to get into here and plus

00:48:10   There is this weird thing about being at WWDC when you were here and you were participating in the events and stuff

00:48:16   You actually don't get as much information as you could get when you're at home

00:48:22   I'm gonna put a little asterisk on that because I know exactly what you're talking about. It's

00:48:27   It's one of the reasons why I really enjoyed coming to WWDC because it's a you know

00:48:35   I get even though I'm not a developer like I'm not deeply in this world. It's still

00:48:40   incredibly interesting, but I want to add this asterisk to what you're saying,

00:48:44   which is yes, in some ways by being in WWDC,

00:48:47   you sort of know less because you're not connected to the news cycle in the

00:48:52   outside world.

00:48:53   You're much less connected to simply the thing where people recap everything

00:48:58   that has been done and you like,

00:48:59   you get refreshed in your head about like everything that was announced.

00:49:02   When people find a new little feature about it. Right.

00:49:06   Cause I never read Twitter when I'm at these types of events.

00:49:09   - Yeah, you don't find any of that stuff.

00:49:11   So in one sense, yes, I agree with you.

00:49:13   You feel like you know less.

00:49:14   On the other hand, there's this weird thing

00:49:17   where you're right at ground level zero

00:49:22   and you have the chance to see people messing around

00:49:26   with some of the features in ways

00:49:28   that the outside world reporting on it

00:49:30   might not see what can be done.

00:49:33   So I feel both like I know less

00:49:36   and I know more from being here.

00:49:38   - The way that I look at it is I have less information,

00:49:41   but I have more of a sense of enthusiasm.

00:49:43   So like, I'm not getting the nitty gritty parts

00:49:47   of everything, but I am understanding much more greatly

00:49:51   what people are excited about,

00:49:53   because all of the conversation is surrounded by this stuff.

00:49:57   But it does, it is also based upon people

00:49:59   that are not spending the time yet

00:50:03   to really pour through a lot of the information.

00:50:05   - To go back to, you know what I'm saying before

00:50:07   about being around people is the valuable thing.

00:50:10   I have found it really interesting to particularly talking to developers,

00:50:14   just seeing like,

00:50:14   what is your take on this as the person who has to work with it? And I've,

00:50:17   it has definitely expanded my thoughts on some of the aspects of the keynote in

00:50:22   ways where when I was watching the keynote, I was thinking like, Oh,

00:50:24   that's neat. And then I realized like, Oh wow, like I didn't,

00:50:27   I didn't really understand this. And I think were I not here,

00:50:31   I wouldn't really understand it if I wasn't talking to like developers working

00:50:36   on various things, so it's interesting.

00:50:40   - But the reason my year of positivity is continuing

00:50:42   is because so many of the things that I really wanted

00:50:46   have happened, so we're gonna get into some detail

00:50:49   on some of these a little bit.

00:50:51   We know what's happened to the workflow team,

00:50:54   and we know where that's going.

00:50:55   We're getting more time tracking-esque information

00:50:58   about how we use our devices,

00:51:00   and there's a bunch of changes to notifications

00:51:02   in Do Not Disturb to make them more manageable.

00:51:04   Again, I think all of these things, this is typical,

00:51:07   never go to the full extent that you would like to see,

00:51:10   but movement on this stuff means that focus

00:51:12   is being put in the areas that you care about.

00:51:15   We didn't get any iPad hardware or anything like that,

00:51:18   but there are hints in some changes to iOS on the iPad

00:51:22   that tells me that the exact thing that I'm looking for

00:51:24   is coming, but I just need to wait for it,

00:51:26   which is an iPad with Face ID,

00:51:29   because they've moved a bunch of gestures around,

00:51:31   it's more like the iPhone X.

00:51:33   - Control centers in the corner, it's like, oh really?

00:51:35   - You can see like they move the clock.

00:51:37   Oh, how would you move the clock?

00:51:38   - Why would you move the clock?

00:51:39   We got tired of it where it was.

00:51:40   - We just like to move stuff around every now and then.

00:51:43   So, you know, there's a lot of stuff

00:51:44   that is there for me for later.

00:51:47   So my positivity is guaranteed

00:51:50   because I'm still gonna get what I want.

00:51:53   But was this tumbleweeds like you expected?

00:51:56   - Okay, we're gonna give you a visual metaphor.

00:51:59   - All right.

00:52:00   - 'Cause I know you like the visual metaphor.

00:52:01   - You're very good at those.

00:52:02   Well known.

00:52:03   - Let's set the scene.

00:52:06   Desert, nighttime.

00:52:08   A road going through the desert.

00:52:12   There's nothing around except tumbleweeds

00:52:17   blowing across that road.

00:52:18   Bam!

00:52:22   - Oh, oh, wow.

00:52:23   - Strike of lightning.

00:52:25   - Yep.

00:52:25   - Back to tumbleweeds.

00:52:27   - Ah, okay, yeah, okay.

00:52:28   - So that is my visual metaphor

00:52:31   for WWDC. I understand that completely. See? Yeah. Isn't it good to paint a picture? There

00:52:37   was a lot of stuff that maybe wasn't amazing. There also wasn't a lot like last year. You

00:52:42   know like we got such huge changes and depending on how you take it for good or bad but need

00:52:46   to do some big stuff. I would say there was probably a couple of bolts of lightning for

00:52:52   this but. One. Okay. I don't know. Alright go on then. What's the one bolt of lightning?

00:52:59   Well, just to be clear, to put my cards on the table here,

00:53:02   like I said in the last episode,

00:53:04   I was not taking a tumbleweed year as a bad sign at all.

00:53:08   And I think that this is the best possible quieter year

00:53:13   that I could have imagined or hoped for.

00:53:16   So there's lots of little improvements.

00:53:17   The bolt of lightning is obviously Siri shortcuts

00:53:19   and what happened to the workflow team.

00:53:21   You know, your question was answered

00:53:23   and that was the bolt of lightning that came through.

00:53:25   And that is also the thing where

00:53:28   I was interested in it during the keynote,

00:53:30   but having now spoken to developers

00:53:32   and seeing what they're doing with it

00:53:33   and getting a better sense of what the details of this are,

00:53:36   that's the thing that's like, wow, that is impressive.

00:53:40   It is unexpected, it was out of the blue,

00:53:43   and I think it has really huge ramifications.

00:53:46   Many, many of the other things, I think,

00:53:48   are much, much lower key.

00:53:50   - What about iOS apps on the Mac, though?

00:53:53   I mean, I know this is a 2019 thing,

00:53:55   but that's a pretty big deal,

00:53:57   especially for someone like yourself

00:53:59   where you are right now with your computers.

00:54:00   - Oh yeah, it is a big deal.

00:54:05   I think it's fascinating that Apple

00:54:06   talked about it ahead of time.

00:54:07   I think it's a great move.

00:54:09   - It is a fantastic public relations move is what it is.

00:54:12   - Yeah, I think it is a good move for the platform.

00:54:15   I think it's a good move for both platforms as well.

00:54:17   Like I think that's good for pro iPad stuff.

00:54:20   I think it's good for the Mac.

00:54:22   - So this is my kind of feeling on this.

00:54:24   So we'll get back to Siri shortcuts in a minute,

00:54:27   but basically what Apple have announced is in 2019,

00:54:31   they're gonna be delivering tools to developers

00:54:33   to allow them to take iOS apps and do some poking around

00:54:38   and make them work on the Mac.

00:54:39   So much so that there are a bunch of system apps

00:54:42   that Apple are debuting to macOS this year,

00:54:44   which are iOS apps that they have ported over

00:54:47   to the new system.

00:54:48   - Stocks.

00:54:49   - Stocks, stocks.

00:54:50   - Stocks got more mentions in this keynote.

00:54:54   - It was so funny 'cause--

00:54:54   - That it's gotten in the history of keynotes.

00:54:56   - Going through the keynote and they were talking

00:54:57   about stocks and he's like,

00:54:58   "Why are we spending so much time on this?"

00:55:00   But it was a fake out.

00:55:01   - Right, it made sense later on that they showed,

00:55:04   oh look, stocks is on the Mac is one of their,

00:55:06   'cause it's stocks, it's home, there's two others I think.

00:55:09   - There's news and voice memos.

00:55:10   - Voice memos, that's what it was.

00:55:11   Yeah, so they're showing that they put four iPad apps

00:55:16   on the Mac, but yeah, they were really focusing on stocks.

00:55:19   And I think in the room everyone was like,

00:55:20   "Why do they keep talking about stocks?"

00:55:22   - It just seems so weird.

00:55:23   - Well that was what made it feel like,

00:55:24   oh no, they have nothing to talk about.

00:55:26   - It did, it did, yeah.

00:55:27   - Really, I think it was very clever.

00:55:30   I think that they were not stupid

00:55:31   about how much time they gave to the stocks app.

00:55:34   They knew what they were doing.

00:55:35   - Yeah, it was a good bit of theater

00:55:36   when you think about it afterwards, yeah.

00:55:38   - But so this whole thing, this iOS app on the Mac thing,

00:55:43   this was put in the Mac section, it closed the keynote.

00:55:46   And so this whole thing has been positioned as a,

00:55:48   look how great this is gonna be for the Mac.

00:55:51   It's our continued commitment to the Mac.

00:55:53   We're gonna let more apps appear on the Mac.

00:55:56   We're gonna give you, as developers,

00:55:57   easier ways to make cross-platform applications.

00:56:01   I think that this is just as big a deal for the iPad

00:56:04   as it is for the Mac.

00:56:05   - Oh yeah. - But it's not what's

00:56:06   being focused on, because now, over the next year,

00:56:09   developers of iOS applications will be spending time

00:56:12   thinking about how they can make their iPad-sized apps

00:56:16   powerful enough that they live at home on the Mac.

00:56:19   Like that is huge.

00:56:21   And also they're talking about this multi-year project.

00:56:23   My belief is that something that will come from this project

00:56:26   is differences in the input methods for the iPad,

00:56:31   like track pads, pointing devices.

00:56:35   It feels like some stuff could start to trickle down

00:56:37   as well as go up.

00:56:38   But I think that this is an incredibly smart move

00:56:43   to bolster two important platforms

00:56:48   that have significant failure points,

00:56:50   which is nobody makes Mac apps anymore

00:56:53   and iPad apps aren't powerful enough.

00:56:56   This fixes both of those things and it's incredible.

00:57:00   And the way that they are positioning this right now

00:57:03   to the community of people that are there is perfect

00:57:06   because everybody in that room uses and loves the Mac

00:57:09   because that's the way they make their apps.

00:57:11   So they position it as, hey, your iOS apps that you make

00:57:14   are gonna be amazing for that platform that you love,

00:57:17   hee hee hee, iPad apps are gonna get real good.

00:57:20   - Yeah.

00:57:21   - I think it's very, very clever.

00:57:24   And I think the fact that they did it was brilliant

00:57:29   because if they didn't do this,

00:57:30   so much conversation post WWDC would be focused

00:57:33   on the fact that Apple didn't talk about this.

00:57:36   They did this last year when they showed off the iMac Pro,

00:57:39   that they are doing a very good job of understanding

00:57:42   and I think listening to the enthusiast community

00:57:45   understanding what could take the sales out of the stuff that we're doing and

00:57:50   they are adjusting this specific keynote to address some of those points.

00:57:55   There are unanswered questions about Mac laptops and stuff but the announcements

00:58:00   that they have had this week far outshone any of that. Oh yeah, I agree with

00:58:06   all that. I think it's a great move. Like you said, it solves the weakness for

00:58:10   both platforms because you take Apple's two smaller platforms and instead of

00:58:15   also splitting developer time across the two smaller platforms.

00:58:18   It gives developers way to say like, well, you know,

00:58:20   we can kill two birds with one stone. I think it's,

00:58:23   I think it's totally great. The, I,

00:58:26   I'm so fascinated by Apple talking about it ahead of time.

00:58:29   I think it makes perfect sense for them to do it, but it's just,

00:58:31   it was so unlike Apple's like watching the keynote. It did,

00:58:35   it really felt like falling into an alternate universe where it's like, wait a minute,

00:58:39   wait a minute. I think giving us a roadmap, like is that,

00:58:42   did they just hand us a road? Like I've never, you never hand us anything at these,

00:58:46   these keynotes and like, Oh no, but look, and they said like a timeframe.

00:58:49   It was, it was very interesting. Um,

00:58:52   I just,

00:58:54   the only reason why I'm not giving it bolt of lightning is simply because it's

00:58:59   not a thing that's happening right now. That's the only,

00:59:03   that's the only reason I'm doing it right. It's like, I love it. It's great.

00:59:06   Can't wait to see what happens next year. And I think it's,

00:59:10   It's useful for developers to have that timeframe,

00:59:14   but for some, like for iPad apps,

00:59:17   I can see that developers would spend more time

00:59:19   making them more powerful,

00:59:20   but it is a little bit of a holding pattern

00:59:23   of like be aware that this thing is coming.

00:59:26   So that's the only reason why I don't give it

00:59:27   a lightning bolt, even though I agree with you,

00:59:29   like it's incredibly important.

00:59:31   It's very interesting to think about

00:59:33   what does this mean for the platforms, and I love it.

00:59:35   But I'm giving my one lightning bolt

00:59:38   across the desert sky to Siri shortcuts.

00:59:41   Like that's the thing that was really quite striking.

00:59:45   - This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Fracture.

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01:00:26   over his shoulder.

01:00:27   I also ordered a fracture for our live show

01:00:29   and also an image put on a beautiful fracture

01:00:32   on some lovely piece of glass of just a bunch of me

01:00:35   and my friends just walking down the street in San Jose.

01:00:38   They're gonna go right in front of me,

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01:01:48   right now. Our thanks to Fracture for their support of this show and Relay FM.

01:01:52   Siri shortcuts. What seems very clever about it is that they've done the beginner level and then

01:01:58   in the advanced level.

01:01:59   So there's like Siri shortcuts is workflow.

01:02:02   For us workflow nerds,

01:02:03   it seems like all the complicated stuff is there.

01:02:05   But on the basic level,

01:02:06   if you're explaining to someone who doesn't care

01:02:08   about any of this stuff,

01:02:10   there's just a way now to tell Siri

01:02:11   to do a thing in an app.

01:02:13   That's the basic idea.

01:02:15   - So they did this thing where you can basically tell Siri,

01:02:20   that action that I just performed,

01:02:22   whenever I say to you, adding you to do,

01:02:24   I want you to open things and let me add in you to do,

01:02:27   And you can do this from anywhere. You can do it on the watch.

01:02:30   You can do it on the home pod if things are,

01:02:32   you're able to perform these actions.

01:02:34   Yeah. And what has been interesting,

01:02:36   like what I have found interesting to see with developers is, um,

01:02:40   like part of the reason why it's such a lightning bolt and it's,

01:02:44   I only realized it in retrospect is I just like Apple has solved these two

01:02:49   problems with their platforms,

01:02:51   with merging them with iPad and Mac in some way. Uh,

01:02:56   I feel like they pulled off this amazing judo move with Siri shortcuts where

01:03:01   everybody knows like Siri's not that great compared to all of the other voice

01:03:05   assistants.

01:03:05   And they did this move where they've drew,

01:03:10   they've like infinitely expanded in every direction,

01:03:13   all of the things that Siri can do without them having to teach Siri how to do

01:03:18   any of it. And it's all local on the device.

01:03:23   Like Siri can just interact with this app.

01:03:25   as like, it's a great judo move because in some ways,

01:03:28   like Siri doesn't have to be any smarter

01:03:30   in terms of natural language processing.

01:03:33   Like that part doesn't have to get any better.

01:03:36   It's just, it allows Siri to press these buttons

01:03:39   to do the things for you.

01:03:40   And it's just, it's so impressive.

01:03:42   And it's doubly impressive seeing

01:03:43   from the developer end of it,

01:03:45   how much Siri shortcuts can interact with,

01:03:49   even without the developers having changed anything

01:03:52   in their app.

01:03:53   Like it doesn't need to be added in.

01:03:54   - This method of the way that some of the APIs have worked

01:03:58   for the last couple of years,

01:04:00   means if you're developing to a specific API

01:04:02   that everybody has suggested that they develop to,

01:04:04   it exposes these actions in the operating system right now.

01:04:08   Like a developer doesn't have to do anything.

01:04:10   If they've been following the kind of the suggested rules

01:04:13   of the road, the Siri can already unearth these actions

01:04:16   and launch an application straight into it,

01:04:17   or just perform the action with nothing needing to be done.

01:04:21   And then Apple is adding all of the tools in

01:04:23   to allow you to do more with it, to add these buttons to it,

01:04:26   and to basically build this underpinning system

01:04:29   to allow Siri to do effectively anything.

01:04:32   And then there's an app.

01:04:33   The app is called Shortcuts.

01:04:35   It's an app you download from the App Store.

01:04:37   If you take advantage of Shortcuts,

01:04:40   you get the most powerful version of workflow

01:04:43   that could have ever existed.

01:04:45   It's been made by the same team, same people.

01:04:47   The app looks exactly the same.

01:04:49   It has all of the things in it.

01:04:51   From what I understand, it has everything that Workflow had.

01:04:55   Nothing is being taken out.

01:04:57   You can move your workflows into this application,

01:05:00   is what I have heard when this app ships,

01:05:03   'cause it's currently not in the beta right now.

01:05:05   And then you will be able to create these new shortcuts,

01:05:09   which is a much better name than Workflow, I love the name,

01:05:12   to do basically anything your device can do,

01:05:16   and you can chain them.

01:05:17   So you could say, for example, hey, good morning.

01:05:21   Turn on the lights, turn on the WeMo

01:05:24   with that power in the coffee maker.

01:05:27   Start playing your favorite morning flash briefing show.

01:05:30   Open up your favorite news app

01:05:32   and get you ready for the day.

01:05:34   It is huge, you can make these huge chains,

01:05:38   which Workflow could always do,

01:05:39   but it is now exposed out to the system

01:05:42   in such a powerful way.

01:05:44   And it is so easy to get swept up in this stuff,

01:05:47   'cause there's so many things that we don't know yet.

01:05:48   There are gonna be limitations,

01:05:50   but if this is able to pull off what I've seen on stage,

01:05:54   and even what I've seen

01:05:55   just with developers tinkering around with this,

01:05:58   the way I use my devices is going to change significantly.

01:06:02   - Oh yeah, yeah.

01:06:03   - I will be turning on the ability to call Siri

01:06:07   from anywhere, and I'm gonna be speaking to my devices

01:06:10   all the time. - A lot more, yeah.

01:06:11   - Because in theory,

01:06:12   every time I wanna perform some kind of action,

01:06:16   I will be able to ask my device to set a bunch of parameters for me to open some

01:06:20   applications and get me ready to perform a specific action in a way that is as

01:06:25   simple and yet more so than workflow ever was.

01:06:28   It is mind blowing what they have done.

01:06:31   And one of the things with the WWDCs is like you said,

01:06:35   it can be very easy to get carried away.

01:06:38   And so I feel like I always try to try to temper expectations,

01:06:42   especially after many years of these things. Uh,

01:06:45   But I am giving myself a bit of a pass on this one,

01:06:48   simply because it is the workflow team.

01:06:50   And the things that they have done in the past,

01:06:54   what they were able to accomplish with that app

01:06:56   without Apple was already so impressive.

01:06:59   - Wild, yeah.

01:07:00   - Yeah, it was beyond what any of us ever thought

01:07:03   was possible.

01:07:05   And I think for a very large number of people

01:07:08   was the key tool that allowed them to move a huge portion

01:07:11   or all of their work onto iOS devices.

01:07:15   And so the fact that it is that team

01:07:18   that has done this Siri integration, the Siri shortcuts,

01:07:21   I'm very confident that it is going to be

01:07:24   like the powerful tool that was demoed on stage.

01:07:26   And that like, yes, of course,

01:07:27   there will always be restrictions,

01:07:28   but it won't be the kind of thing

01:07:30   that I would normally expect from Apple,

01:07:32   where it's like, oh, we have some automation,

01:07:34   but we've given you baby automation.

01:07:36   Like I don't think that's what we're getting here.

01:07:38   But no, it's a huge deal.

01:07:41   And if there is one thing that is true about Apple

01:07:43   is that they are often slow to do something,

01:07:48   but when they get there,

01:07:49   they tend to do it in a very nice way.

01:07:51   And this is like, boy, Apple has been very slow

01:07:56   to any kind of automation or scripting on iOS devices.

01:08:01   And this is the first time they're really opening the door

01:08:04   to a thing that can have a loop and variables,

01:08:08   which is opening the door to general purpose computing.

01:08:12   And it looks like they've done it in just an incredible way. And,

01:08:17   you know,

01:08:18   we've talked about software acquisitions in the past on the show and how it's

01:08:22   always like, Oh, sad trombone day when your favorite thing gets acquired.

01:08:26   And I can't wait to get my hands on shortcuts,

01:08:29   but I think I can say right now,

01:08:31   like this looks like maybe one of the most successful software acquisitions ever.

01:08:36   if this becomes what the foundation of automation

01:08:40   and scripting on iOS devices are,

01:08:42   combine that with the judo trick

01:08:44   of making Siri infinitely better

01:08:46   without having to actually make her understand things better

01:08:50   it's, the more I think about it, the more impressed I am

01:08:53   by that whole new thing that's coming in.

01:08:58   So I am really looking forward to getting my hands on it.

01:09:01   I was like, I'll wait until a couple of public betas

01:09:04   before I put it on my machine.

01:09:06   I'm traveling, I don't want to put beta software on my,

01:09:08   now it's like the instant there's a public beta

01:09:11   that has Siri shortcuts available,

01:09:12   it's like that is going right on my phone.

01:09:14   - Yeah, as soon as the shortcut app shows up,

01:09:16   if it shows up during the beta period,

01:09:17   I'm installing it immediately.

01:09:19   I guess the last thing that I've been thinking about

01:09:21   in regards to Siri shortcuts

01:09:23   is the idea of Siri as a digital assistant.

01:09:26   As someone who works with an assistant,

01:09:29   there is I think a misconception in technology

01:09:32   that digital assistants have to work

01:09:35   completely on machine learning,

01:09:37   that they must be these things

01:09:39   that can anticipate your every need and cater to them.

01:09:42   When it's not necessarily what it's like

01:09:43   to work with somebody else,

01:09:45   sometimes you just have a thing you wanna ask someone

01:09:47   and have them perform an action based upon it.

01:09:50   And that's what Siri Shortcuts is, right?

01:09:52   You can just say, "Do this thing for me,"

01:09:54   and the thing is done.

01:09:55   It doesn't need to be constantly Siri being like,

01:09:58   "Oh, I have a million ideas for you

01:10:01   "and I've learned every pattern of your life

01:10:03   "and looked into your calendar

01:10:04   and all of your email and here is this thing.

01:10:06   It doesn't need to be that way.

01:10:08   And I'm actually enthused more than I have been in years

01:10:11   about Siri as a product based upon the fact that

01:10:14   it is a very complex machine

01:10:17   that I can give very specific instructions to now

01:10:20   in a way that I haven't been able to do before.

01:10:22   Because the way it's been before

01:10:23   is I would ask Siri a question

01:10:25   and hope that Siri understands what I want

01:10:28   and gives me the result.

01:10:29   But now I program what I want the results to look like

01:10:33   and then record a shortcut with my own voice as to what I want Siri to understand,

01:10:40   then whenever it hears that specific trigger phrase, it will perform those series of actions.

01:10:44   Most of the time that's all I ever really want it to do. It doesn't need to be smart in the sense of

01:10:52   the anticipation of my needs, and it does an element of that still, right? But a lot of the

01:10:57   time all I ever really want is for Siri to or any like the echo any of these

01:11:02   things to just perform the action that I expect and a lot of the time I can

01:11:09   program that once and then it will work great yeah I completely agree like it's

01:11:14   again I just I just think of it as this this opening the door to this automation

01:11:21   that can be done like I'm interested to see they were they were saying on stage

01:11:24   as to Siri will have these suggestions for you.

01:11:28   And that's always sort of fallen flat in the past

01:11:32   because Siri can't be a mind reader.

01:11:35   And I do have a little bit more anticipation

01:11:37   that those suggestions will be more useful

01:11:39   when Siri has like a pattern

01:11:41   of when you do particular things,

01:11:42   when you're invoking particular shortcuts,

01:11:45   and that'll be great.

01:11:46   But yeah, 100%, the big win here is turning Siri

01:11:50   from a thing that I use as an egg timer

01:11:53   to a thing that I can very easily see becoming just an integral part of my

01:11:58   workflow and an integral part of, of my life. I was already thinking, Myke,

01:12:05   you know, it was cause I was like, Hmm,

01:12:07   the only thing Siri can't do is like automatically kick off at a particular time

01:12:12   thing. All right. As I got like a cron job is what I'm looking for there.

01:12:16   But then I thought, well I could just have, you know,

01:12:20   like a recording play in my house at a particular time to be the thing that kicks off a Siri

01:12:27   action.

01:12:27   Oh wow.

01:12:28   Right? Like basically I'm thinking I could leave it my glass cube where things are always

01:12:34   running it's a possibility that I could just have my main computer just kick off a sound

01:12:39   at a particular time of me speaking and invoke a Siri action.

01:12:43   Goes to a HomePod?

01:12:43   Yeah it goes to a HomePod.

01:12:45   Yeah.

01:12:45   So that's pretty fun.

01:12:47   I'm looking forward to what can be done with Siri shortcuts.

01:12:49   is one thing I have wanted since I begun time tracking that this may allow which

01:12:54   is to start a timer with my voice. Oh my god that was the first thing I thought

01:12:57   of is like the number of times I want to say like start a whatever timer it

01:13:03   happens all the time that was the that was the very first thing I was thinking.

01:13:07   Just so you know on the current version of the beta you can already do this.

01:13:11   Sweet. Because any workflow in the current workflow app can be turned into

01:13:16   to a Siri shortcut now, like the basic version.

01:13:20   So you could do it now.

01:13:21   I don't know what it would look like.

01:13:23   There might be some adjustments you'd have to make.

01:13:25   But this is something I even looked into creating

01:13:28   my own echo skill at one point

01:13:30   to try and understand what that would require.

01:13:32   Because this is just something I wanna be able to do

01:13:35   'cause sometimes I'm like halfway through a job

01:13:37   and I'm like, oh, I need to set the timer.

01:13:40   And then I have to stop what I'm doing,

01:13:41   go to an app or go to notification center.

01:13:44   But really I want to just, hey computer, start a timer.

01:13:48   And then I can categorize it later if that's necessary.

01:13:51   But that is going to be amazing.

01:13:53   Yeah, I have buttons everywhere I can possibly

01:13:56   have buttons to launch the timers to start whatever

01:13:59   it is that I'm doing.

01:14:00   But nonetheless, the ability to do it by voice

01:14:03   will be amazing to make that work.

01:14:04   So yeah, that was the first thing I was thinking of.

01:14:07   I was like, man, if it could just do this, it'll be great.

01:14:09   I'm also looking forward to coming up with my command words.

01:14:13   You have to create words for everything,

01:14:15   a phrase for everything.

01:14:16   So I'm trying to think of this two-step system.

01:14:18   So a category and an action.

01:14:22   So tweet something or timer this.

01:14:27   Timer, sponsor.

01:14:28   Timer, work.

01:14:29   I'm looking forward to creating that system.

01:14:32   - Yeah, this is the keyboard shortcuts/text expander/keyboard

01:14:38   maestro issue of when you get into this automation,

01:14:41   you have to create your own taxonomies.

01:14:43   And I think it's going to be interesting to see how everybody who is a power

01:14:49   user of this thing ends up creating their own Siri little language that they

01:14:53   talk to, which again is another just incredible win that everybody doesn't have

01:14:57   to do the same thing in the same way with Siri. It's like,

01:15:00   you can say it the way it makes sense for you. And if you're like us,

01:15:04   you want to create your little squirrely system of like,

01:15:07   here's the way I say the thing. That's great.

01:15:08   If you just want to say it in more natural language, that's great. You know,

01:15:11   Siri will just make it work in either way.

01:15:13   - Talk about making the HomePod useful.

01:15:15   It's gone from this device I have in the house

01:15:18   just because it's a nice speaker,

01:15:20   to potentially it's going to become

01:15:22   one of the most important mechanisms for me

01:15:26   to perform actions in my daily life.

01:15:28   It's pretty incredible.

01:15:30   I'm very excited for Siri Shortcuts.

01:15:32   And I really hope that the enthusiasm that we have right now

01:15:35   based upon everything we've seen and heard

01:15:37   is carried through.

01:15:38   That it is as good as it seems.

01:15:40   and you can be rest assured we're gonna follow this through

01:15:44   until September and beyond.

01:15:46   But there were some other things,

01:15:48   I don't wanna let this episode end without touching on them.

01:15:51   Screen Time, which is this new system

01:15:53   of showing you information about how you use your device,

01:15:56   it shows you what apps you're in, what web pages you're in,

01:15:59   how many times a day you pick up your phone,

01:16:02   all of this type of stuff synced across all of your devices.

01:16:04   Does this interest you?

01:16:05   It feels like it's right in our wheelhouse as a thing.

01:16:09   - Yeah, I've been getting a lot of feedback

01:16:10   from people on Twitter about this one.

01:16:12   And this is a case where I think it's hard to explain

01:16:15   where I have my own time tracking system set up.

01:16:20   So this to me, I am very glad that it's part of the system.

01:16:25   I will want to see those numbers.

01:16:27   But for me, this falls into the category

01:16:30   much more of just it will be interesting to see.

01:16:34   More data is always better.

01:16:36   But I don't feel like this is going to be

01:16:38   huge revelation for me in any way or even like an incredibly important tool because

01:16:43   I'm mostly already doing manual time tracking about what activity am I engaged

01:16:49   in and my devices, except when I'm traveling for conferences, are already so

01:16:54   locked down that I don't feel that I have the relationship that some people

01:17:00   do with their phones where they're using them too much. Like I don't have that

01:17:03   feeling. I have other problems with the phone bothering me too much with

01:17:07   notifications, but that's a different thing from like, oh, I picked it up and I spent

01:17:12   30 minutes on Twitter when I didn't mean to or like whatever because I just don't have

01:17:16   those things on the phone normally. So I'm going to be interested to see it. I think

01:17:21   it's a great tool and 100% I think it's a great addition to the operating system. I

01:17:28   think Apple did handle it very well. The idea of like we want to report to you what you're

01:17:32   doing with the device. So I'm very glad it's in there. But when everyone's like, oh, it's

01:17:37   time tracking isn't that exciting it's like well yes but I like I already have

01:17:40   like this this Rube Goldberg machine to track my whole life it'll be interesting

01:17:44   but not vital to me. I'm keen to see how this information reflects what I believe

01:17:51   is my accurate form of time tracking. Like how does the how do these two

01:17:56   things stack up because one is me reporting it the other is my device

01:18:00   being a little snitch. Right. Right the device really knows what's going on and

01:18:05   And I'm interested to see how, in the same way that when I went from not tracking my

01:18:09   time to tracking my time, how it enlightened me about how I actually spent my time.

01:18:15   And then we're going to get some real cold, hard information rather than just what I think

01:18:19   is going on.

01:18:20   Yeah.

01:18:21   I have to say that, like, well, for me, I'm like, "Ooh, I'm interested to see."

01:18:26   I think there are going to be a lot of people come September or October who are more or

01:18:31   are forced to go through the thing that we have told people

01:18:36   about when they start time tracking.

01:18:38   - Yeah, you laugh, you wait.

01:18:40   - Yeah, all the listeners are like,

01:18:43   "I know what I do all day."

01:18:45   Like, "Oh no, you don't."

01:18:46   - You have no idea.

01:18:48   - You have no idea.

01:18:49   - You pick up your phone.

01:18:50   Do you know what even does stuff like,

01:18:52   it will tell you how many notifications you got?

01:18:54   - Oh, that's interesting.

01:18:55   - So it would say like, in the last 24 hours,

01:18:57   you got 159 message notifications, 25 Slack notes.

01:19:01   So again, it's like all that sort of stuff,

01:19:03   is that cold hard data I think is gonna help me

01:19:05   make some decisions.

01:19:07   And the notification stuff in general looks very interesting.

01:19:10   - Yeah.

01:19:11   - They gave us one of the exact things we spoke about,

01:19:14   which was a notification comes in

01:19:16   and you can from the notification say,

01:19:18   I don't wanna see this anymore.

01:19:20   - Yeah, this is the one place where

01:19:24   I am very consciously tamping down any expectations

01:19:27   because before the keynote, I made my little wishlist

01:19:29   And I like my big, my gigantic taking up half the page items were like serious

01:19:33   improvements to do not disturb and serious improvements notifications.

01:19:36   I'm going to give them like a half tick on those.

01:19:39   Like there have been improvements. But for me,

01:19:44   this I'll have to wait until I see the beta because the implementation details

01:19:49   really matter.

01:19:50   This might be a thing that doesn't help me at all depending on the details of

01:19:53   how they implemented. It might be very helpful,

01:19:56   but I'm happy to see that there's motion

01:19:58   in the right direction.

01:20:00   I just hope that this isn't the thing

01:20:01   where Apple improves something

01:20:03   and then they leave it for several years.

01:20:06   I have to dig around in the settings,

01:20:08   but what I'm interested in and what I don't understand

01:20:11   at the time of our recording is,

01:20:13   you know, there's this distinction

01:20:14   where there is a bedtime mode

01:20:16   where it keeps things silent for a longer period of time,

01:20:19   which may be very useful for me in my mornings

01:20:22   of wanting to be separated from the world.

01:20:23   like I'll just set the bedtime ends at noon

01:20:27   and see how that works.

01:20:28   But the one that I'm very interested to play around with

01:20:31   and obviously when someone shows me like,

01:20:34   oh I put the beta on my phone,

01:20:36   what I can't do is say, oh I would like to take your phone

01:20:39   and I'm going to put it into child mode.

01:20:41   Could you have another device that I can set up as a parent

01:20:43   to enforce restrictions on this

01:20:44   because I'm very curious to see the exact details

01:20:49   of what they're, I think it's called downtime.

01:20:51   - Screen time.

01:20:51   - No, no, screen time is the tracking one.

01:20:53   - Oh. - Downtime is a mode

01:20:56   that you can set, and I think you can only set

01:20:59   for a child device where,

01:21:03   I don't think even in the current beta it's fully baked,

01:21:06   because I was trying to even just look at the settings,

01:21:08   but again, I may have to be looking at a parent device,

01:21:11   looking at a child device,

01:21:13   but the text description is that downtime allows you

01:21:16   to set hours where particular apps are unavailable.

01:21:20   - Yeah, so this is kind of two parts.

01:21:22   There's something you can do to yourself,

01:21:23   and something you can do to a device that you manage

01:21:25   as a parent. - Yeah, so like,

01:21:26   bedtime is the thing you can do to yourself.

01:21:27   - Well, but there's also something called app limits,

01:21:29   where you can say, I only wanna use Instagram

01:21:32   for an hour a day. - Right.

01:21:34   - And when you get to that hour, a pop-up comes up,

01:21:36   and they're like, you said you didn't wanna look

01:21:38   at this anymore, maybe you should stop.

01:21:40   But it's like suggestions, and you can override it.

01:21:42   But if you manage a device that's classed

01:21:45   as a child's device, you can straight up say, no.

01:21:49   And that app cannot be used, and it is locked out.

01:21:51   And even, because of some of the ways that,

01:21:54   I think it's called universal linking,

01:21:56   so you know when sometimes you tap on a URL,

01:21:58   like a tweet URL, and it opens a Twitter app.

01:22:01   If an app uses that, if you say,

01:22:04   "I don't wanna use Twitter,"

01:22:05   you also can't look at it on the web browser.

01:22:07   - Right, yeah, which I think is very clever.

01:22:09   - It's very clever, and it's one of those things

01:22:11   where Apple seemed like they were giving something

01:22:13   to developers that they wanted,

01:22:14   and now it's like, "Oh man, why did I do that?"

01:22:17   - Yeah, now we know the website's associated with your app,

01:22:19   so we can block the whole thing.

01:22:21   - So but yet for someone like you who likes to lock,

01:22:23   this is like past gray and forcing on future gray

01:22:27   and I wonder how is that going to work

01:22:31   for an adult setting it up for themselves

01:22:35   on another device that they own?

01:22:36   - Yeah, this is what I mean,

01:22:37   like the implementation details really matter.

01:22:39   Like I may be wrong about my guess

01:22:40   that I even need to set up as a child device,

01:22:42   I just don't know.

01:22:43   - I think it needs to be a separate Apple ID

01:22:45   within a family group.

01:22:46   - I think so too, but here is a case where,

01:22:50   Like if I have to go through a gigantic rigmarole

01:22:52   to set it up once, like I'm totally happy doing that.

01:22:54   Like whatever.

01:22:55   - I think it's completely possible that you could do this.

01:22:57   - Yeah, the only other question then is like

01:23:00   ability to break out of that mode if I have to, right?

01:23:04   Where it's like, I just need to see like

01:23:06   what are the details, but I am hopeful

01:23:11   that this gives me a little bit of a work around

01:23:14   to what we said last time is like my main thing of like,

01:23:17   I want periods where some apps are quiet and other apps are not.

01:23:22   And I think I might be able to get that by enforcing downtime on

01:23:27   myself and saying like, Oh, in the morning I message in Slack and like,

01:23:31   everybody's quiet unless you're the calendar or your Omni focus.

01:23:36   And that's, I'm just going to be curious to see how that works out. So I'm,

01:23:39   I am, uh, I'm hopeful about how that goes and very curious. Uh,

01:23:44   once I get my hands on the beta to actually monkey around with it,

01:23:46   because I can't monkey around with a developer's phone

01:23:49   and be like, "Let me just put all these restrictions on

01:23:51   "and see how it works."

01:23:52   Like, "Oh no, it's a beta.

01:23:53   "I've totally locked you out of your device, I'm sorry."

01:23:56   - I think the only other thing I'm doing at Stub

01:23:58   that I like is that it's getting smarter in some ways

01:24:01   that you can say when this meeting ends

01:24:04   or when I leave this place.

01:24:06   - Yeah, leaving the place is the really interesting one.

01:24:08   And I was also wondering, you mentioned it last time,

01:24:11   the thing that we never even thought about,

01:24:12   like I'm just wondering, Siri shortcuts.

01:24:15   Can you, I wonder like what, what can you do with do not disturb and,

01:24:19   and Siri shortcuts? Because I was,

01:24:20   this is actually what I was thinking about with like a recording of my own

01:24:26   voice in my office that says the thing and like set up, set up everything.

01:24:29   All right.

01:24:30   Do not disturb Siri short, can you turn on Siri? Yeah.

01:24:33   Can you do that or can you do other things? Like I'm just very,

01:24:35   can you locate them? I mean we don't know, but we don't know. Right.

01:24:39   I think this is going to be the power that comes out of the shortcuts app and

01:24:43   Like, will that enable you to turn these on

01:24:46   in any interesting ways?

01:24:47   This is the stuff that we don't know yet,

01:24:48   because no one's actually really been able

01:24:51   to play around the app in detail.

01:24:52   - Yeah, so again, this is where I'm very curious

01:24:54   to see the implementation details.

01:24:56   But I'm just glad that there is some motion

01:24:59   in the correct direction.

01:25:00   And we have brand new grouping notifications by app.

01:25:04   Never been seen before.

01:25:06   - Never, imagine.

01:25:07   Someone coming up with something like that

01:25:08   or the blue. - Imagine what we could do.

01:25:10   I enjoyed that moment.

01:25:12   is like, oh, here we are again.

01:25:15   - Do you know, we haven't even spoken

01:25:16   about the most important part yet,

01:25:18   which is the fact that I can now create an Animoji

01:25:20   of my own face, it's called Memoji,

01:25:22   and I can create stickers and I can call you over FaceTime

01:25:25   and you can see my amazing cartoon head,

01:25:27   and it could be anything I want it to be

01:25:29   with beards and glasses, imagine.

01:25:31   - Myke. - Yeah.

01:25:32   - Myke, I know you wanna talk about Memoji,

01:25:37   but it's like, we're many days into this conference.

01:25:41   I'm very tired.

01:25:43   (laughing)

01:25:44   I haven't yet done any exercise for today as well.

01:25:48   And I'm afraid that this is like opening the gates of hell

01:25:52   if we discuss Memoji.

01:25:54   So I don't, let's put a pin in that.

01:25:57   - Okay.

01:25:58   - Put a pin in that.

01:26:00   I am curious however,

01:26:01   why aren't you wearing your Apple Watch?

01:26:05   - I think we're gonna put a pin in that as well.