295: Another Italian Interjected · Connected

Select a time to play from there. The line being spoken is highlighted as the audio plays.

0:00:15Software, firmware, situation, update.

0:00:23Steven Hackett, Myke Federica, connected.

0:00:27Hello, what's up? What's up? How are you? Pretty patient, polite. What are you doing?

0:00:47No. I don't care.

0:00:48Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

0:01:18by our friend Federico Vatici. What's up? Hey buddy. Hi. Hi, how are you? I'm pretty

0:01:25good. It's good information to know. Pretty good. Yeah. We have some follow-up and we

0:01:32should start with the music you heard at the beginning of the show. It was a little bit

0:01:36different this week. Myke, do you want to explain what we played as our intro? Last

0:01:40week on the show, well after the show, which by the way you can listen live, we recorded

0:01:46this show live, what time is it in America? It is 1 p.m. Eastern. 1 p.m. Eastern or 6

0:01:53p.m. in London, 7 p.m. in Rome. We record every week on Wednesdays. You can listen live

0:02:01at relay.fm/live or even better you can listen live directly in the Relay FM members Discord.

0:02:07So if you're a Relay FM member you can listen and chat along as we go. And we were looking

0:02:12at our titles as we do every week because our listeners suggest titles and then we pick

0:02:15from one. And we liked the title of last week's episode, which was, what was it called?

0:02:22Software Firmware Situation Update.

0:02:24There you go. Software Firmware Situation Update. Where that was just a sentence that

0:02:28Stephen said. He said during the show, "Software Firmware Situation Update."

0:02:31It's not really a... Calling that a sentence is nice to me.

0:02:34Well, you just said it. Like, you know, okay, you said it's like, "The Software Firmware

0:02:38Situation Update." Or something like that, right? And when it was written down as a title,

0:02:43of us thought, I don't remember who thought it looked funny because it looked like the

0:02:50Daft Punk song, "Stronger, Better, Faster, Something." What was that song called? I'm

0:02:56terrible at this today. This shouldn't have been given to me.

0:02:58"Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger." Thank you. "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger."

0:03:01You didn't have your coffee today, did you? I just had it, so it's yet to kick.

0:03:05Oh, yeah. Also, it's going to be fun in 10 minutes over here.

0:03:08In about 15 minutes or so. 15? Okay.

0:03:10The Japes will return, right? But we've got to wait for that.

0:03:13So we were making fun of the fact that it looked like the Daft Punk song.

0:03:17So that was why we titled the episode with the commas.

0:03:20We added the commas and then Carter

0:03:23created the musical version

0:03:26of that title with some additional clips in it as well.

0:03:30So that was very good.

0:03:31I'll put a link in the show notes to Carter's creation

0:03:33in case you want to check it out for yourself.

0:03:35Maybe download it as a ringtone or something. I don't know.

0:03:38Yeah, it's a very, very, very good remix.

0:03:40We, we thoroughly, uh, encourage all kinds of, uh, fan artwork, creations and music

0:03:48creations.

0:03:49Yeah.

0:03:49Tattoos, whatever.

0:03:50Fanfiction.

0:03:52If that's your thing, you know, if you want to, if you want to do that, you can

0:03:56connect to the fanfiction.

0:03:57Yeah.

0:03:58Whatever, man.

0:03:59There's going to be a lot of, uh, muting from me today because I'm using a

0:04:02mechanical keyboard because yesterday, uh, I was on a zoom call and I want to explain

0:04:07to you kind of how I have my general… Where is this going? How can we talk from fan fiction

0:04:12to mechanical… Well because I just typed something very quickly to put into the show

0:04:16notes and I'm concerned that it might make a noise because I was on a Zoom call yesterday.

0:04:21It was like one of those like not a meeting but like a more hangout-y Zoom call, right?

0:04:25You know? Yeah. And it was encouraged that like, you know, this is cool. So like, you

0:04:29know, we're all hanging out so maybe bring a beer. So I had a beer with me and where

0:04:34sitting right now, I have my notebook in front of me, my keyboard behind that, then I have my mouse

0:04:41and my trackpad to the right, and then I have two coasters to the right of that. At the moment is my

0:04:45empty coffee cup, which by the way it's happening right now, I'm feeling it kicking, and my bottle

0:04:51of water, they sit on the coasters. And I thought to myself, I want to be sipping from the beer more,

0:04:55so I'm going to bring the coaster to the left of the mouse and put the beer on it. So I did that.

0:05:0120 seconds later, I knocked the beer into my keyboard.

0:05:04Like it was I put it down.

0:05:06I moved my arm. I moved my back, moved it back, and it just went everywhere.

0:05:10So it filled the keyboard with beer and then picked up the keyboard.

0:05:14Then the beer spilled on me.

0:05:16This is all happening while on a video call.

0:05:18I'm trying to pretend like nothing's going on.

0:05:20It's like a whole big thing.

0:05:21So I have now ordered another Microsoft sculpt ergonomic keyboard.

0:05:24That thing saw about six years of use.

0:05:26So, you know, it was kind of getting to the point that like

0:05:29it needed to be replaced because it was gross. You know how keyboards just get gross over

0:05:33time? So I have today the Keychron K6, which is a mechanical keyboard in front of me.

0:05:39Let's hear it. Let's hear it. Put the mic down to it.

0:05:42Okay.

0:05:43[Mute sounds]

0:05:49Pretty good.

0:05:50Yep. So there's going to be a lot of muting from me today as I have things to show notes

0:05:54so you don't have to edit me out.

0:05:56Oh, you forget that I strip silence. It won't be a problem.

0:05:58Oh, well then I'm gonna go wild then.

0:06:01I still don't understand fully. So you just hang out on Zoom and you drink in front of

0:06:04other people on Zoom?

0:06:05No, it was like a collection of people getting together to talk about topics. It was like

0:06:13we would have had dinner.

0:06:14That's a podcast.

0:06:15No, we, okay, so this particular group of people, we would have been having dinner together,

0:06:20but we can't do that, right?

0:06:21Is it like a town hall meeting?

0:06:23Let's call it. I mean, if that's going to help you so we can move on, then yes, it was

0:06:28a town hall meeting. I just need to visualize what is the purpose of this call. I can't

0:06:35say right now, I'll tell you later. Wait, were you on Chatroulette? Can you imagine?

0:06:42I wonder if that's happening, I mean that's gotta be happening right? So you had a town

0:06:45hall on Zoom and you were drinking beer and you spilled beer all over the place. Into

0:06:49a keyboard, yeah. So now that keyboard is dead and I have a mechanical keyboard in front

0:06:55would be now which makes more noise. And what do you think is your lesson there? Not to

0:06:59do these town halls on Zoom anymore or not to drink during Zoom calls? No, just don't

0:07:02disrupt my very clearly internalized layout of my desk. Because by moving the beer, I

0:07:08knocked it over immediately. So I just need to keep the beer on the coaster where the

0:07:13coaster lives. Don't move it, you know? That's what I've learned. The lessons don't be like

0:07:18Casey. That's a lesson for the ages. I learned that one a long time ago. It's completely

0:07:22related to any water-based thing. Okay. So there you go. But still, why did fanfiction

0:07:33make you think of this? Oh, it didn't. As I said fanfiction, I typed something and then

0:07:39was like "Oh no, you can hear that!" Oh, okay. I was still waiting for the punchline, I guess.

0:07:45They were completely unrelated except to me. In my life they were related because I was

0:07:51whilst talking adding something to the show notes which made noise.

0:07:54Now you understand, now you understand, thank you.

0:07:57I appreciate that you understand. I'm surprised that you do but I'm also happy.

0:08:02I was thinking about some of our past titles of our show and thinking about which ones

0:08:07would make good fan fiction. I think 287 wins, Rub-a-Dub-Dub my friend. Just saying, that's

0:08:12probably the place to start. Geez, Steven, that was not... that was...

0:08:17Wow, all right, cool. So send, if you do write anything, please send it by email to stephen@relay.fm.

0:08:27That's with a "ph".

0:08:29Poor Stephen.

0:08:31He'll definitely circulate it to us. If you send it to me in Federico, it will just get

0:08:38eaten up by our spam filters. You have to send it to Stephen and then he can share it.

0:08:43You know what happened to me a few weeks ago?

0:08:46I don't know.

0:08:49And I'm trying very hard to think of a way to phrase this that doesn't make me sound

0:08:54like a jerk.

0:08:55However...

0:08:56This is gonna be great.

0:08:57Whatever this is, it's gonna be great.

0:08:59Please carry on.

0:09:01So how can I say this?

0:09:03You clearly can't, so you may as well just say it.

0:09:06Just say it as it is.

0:09:07I get a lot of mentions on Twitter every day.

0:09:09Oh, look at me.

0:09:11No, I know. What happens?

0:09:13I have 60,000 followers!

0:09:15People want to just talk to me all the time!

0:09:18You cannot have a conversation with this too, it's impossible.

0:09:21So I get a lot of mentions every day and I also try as much as possible to stay away from Twitter and actually write or work on my shortcuts.

0:09:32So you want to stay away from the people that want to talk to you is what you're saying?

0:09:36No, I appreciate that people want to talk to me.

0:09:39However, I'm trying to limit my social networking time

0:09:42because I know that if I open Twitter,

0:09:44I'm gonna end up spending like three hours

0:09:46just browsing Twitter and responding to people.

0:09:49And while I do appreciate the fact

0:09:50that people get in touch with me, I need to be selective.

0:09:53So usually like when, like there's a lot of folks

0:09:58who use Twitter as tech support,

0:10:00even though I am not Apple's tech support,

0:10:03but just people ask you like technical things like,

0:10:05"Hey, do you know why my MacBook will no longer work with this cable?"

0:10:11And what do I know about your MacBook and the cables that you have?

0:10:14Like, ask Apple, because that's why you buy your computer.

0:10:17Anyway, I guess that there are some people who are upset that,

0:10:21in the past, I may have not replied to them on Twitter.

0:10:28And so a few weeks ago, I saw a person ask me something in Italian on Twitter.

0:10:37And another Italian interjected in that conversation and basically said something

0:10:42along the lines of "Good luck getting an answer from him because he never replies to anybody."

0:10:46And that really annoyed me. So just out of spite, I did reply to that person, including the second

0:10:54guy, even though normally I wouldn't ever reply to that person.

0:10:57I'm not really sure what lesson you could have learned from this.

0:11:04Oh there's no lesson, I'm just a horrible person.

0:11:07So I guess what I want to know is, what has that got to do with what we were just talking about?

0:11:13So it's just the same question.

0:11:16Yes, that because you said if you email Federico and me, you were basically never gonna see it.

0:11:22And that made me think of what happens when people send me tweets.

0:11:26Like me, I'm assuming.

0:11:28I just want to say though, I do go through my mentions every night.

0:11:32So at least once a day, I sit down and I open my mentions.

0:11:36If I don't reply, it's because I know that if I reply, it's going to become a whole thing.

0:11:41And I'd rather disappoint people at the beginning rather than during an ongoing conversation.

0:11:46Right. Okay.

0:11:48Because then I'm gonna reply and then I know, like you get the sense that some tweets, if you engage, if you reply, you just know that it's gonna become a whole thing.

0:11:57Because like, people are like, "Oh, now that I have your attention, I actually have three more problems for you to solve."

0:12:04And so I would rather disappoint them once at the very beginning of this stage rather than after getting their hopes up.

0:12:11Hmm.

0:12:12Does it make sense? I know that it makes me sound like a jerk.

0:12:15What I will say is this is definitely a thing that I can understand your feeling.

0:12:21Okay, thank you.

0:12:22I don't want to say one way or another what I do here. What I will say, for me in general,

0:12:31I much prefer tweets to emails, you know? Like if somebody wants to ask me a question

0:12:37or get like some advice on something, tweets are so much better than emails.

0:12:44Oh yeah, oh yeah, for sure they are. DMs could be, I don't know.

0:12:53I would like to just state this is long-term follow-up, right? So I opened my DMs many,

0:12:58many, many weeks ago. As of right now, there hasn't really been any benefit to it. You

0:13:06know, like you guys talk about like, "Oh, sometimes I get like a thing." I have had

0:13:09nothing which has been particularly useful. What has happened mostly is

0:13:17exactly what I thought would happen, which is people send me DMs for things

0:13:21that should be replies. That's because you haven't... the people out there

0:13:27can feel that you haven't opened yourself up to the idea of receiving

0:13:31something potentially interesting. It's like something like

0:13:36like karma. Like as soon as you accept it, you know it's gonna happen. You have to embrace

0:13:42the idea and when you do, you will start receiving interesting DMs.

0:13:46There's actually now, I'm looking at my DMs now, there's more interesting stuff in the

0:13:51additional messages area, which I think is what they filter out and don't show you.

0:13:56That's what we've been talking about all along.

0:13:58No, no, no, no, no. So you've got messages, message requests, and at the very bottom,

0:14:04additional messages including those that may contain offensive content. I haven't found

0:14:08any offensive... Oh, did you prefer the ones with offensive content? There's no offensive

0:14:12content in any of them, but they're more interesting. Why are they filtered out? Oh, no, here's

0:14:18an offensive one. That's fine. I was wrong. Oh, they're in here. Oh, no! And close the

0:14:24tab goodbye. Let's move on with the show. I'm here to save you. Last week I spoke about

0:14:30the current gate of iPhones that's sweeping the nation. I'm very happy to tell you that

0:14:36our numbers have swelled. I'm up to five people reporting that sometimes their iPhone screens

0:14:41look a little green.

0:14:43Why is nobody talking about this?

0:14:44Why is no one talking about this?

0:14:45I can't believe nobody's talking about this.

0:14:46I can't believe it.

0:14:47Yeah.

0:14:48Five people.

0:14:49Uh, congrats?

0:14:50It's a movement, man. Sweeping the nation.

0:14:54Oh, okay.

0:14:55Cool. Very exciting. Thank you.

0:14:57Good luck.

0:14:58Good luck with your class action lawsuit. Yeah, well, it's a you know it's like a small group

0:15:04Action now not a full class

0:15:07Sure yeah like a lunch table action suit

0:15:11Like a zoom call

0:15:15Yeah, oh no my beer. Yeah, you gotta be we've got to be careful with those boys

0:15:19Yeah, I think they could turn nasty real fast all right Myke tell us about your new watch band

0:15:23I bought the Nike pride watch band because I thought it looked super cool. I also have it

0:15:28It's not just Myke's new watch band, I also have it right now.

0:15:31All right, when did you get yours?

0:15:32You got it before, so it's technically Myke's.

0:15:36There you go, I got it yesterday.

0:15:37And as of recording, like right now is the first time I've been able to set the

0:15:42rainbow watch faces. They have some pride faces and some rainbow colors

0:15:48being added to existing faces like the California dial and stuff.

0:15:52There's two pride bands, they're both sport bands this year.

0:15:57like the the rubber ones what does apple call them like poly something something something

0:16:02polymer i don't know they got it they give it a different name they don't call it rubber do they

0:16:07write the sport bands i don't remember now but um florilastomer there you go florilastomer that's

0:16:13it florilastomer get a little bit lost in the middle i was about to say polyamorous but that's

0:16:17a different thing that's a different thing it's not at all related um but uh oh man you've lost

0:16:26me now. But they added... oh geez there's two bands. One is like the typical pride flag,

0:16:37right? Like the rainbow pride flag in stripes. And the other one is a white Nike sport band

0:16:44with the pride flag colors inside the holes that are in the band. Now I really like this one

0:16:50because I have the white ceramic edition watch and I've always worn my Apple watch with just the

0:16:58white band that it came with because I think that pairing was really nice but this was like another

0:17:02one was like oh that's a good pairing right like that still white which I like and it adds some

0:17:06color and I'm currently setting up the California watch face which is the one that I use with the

0:17:12rainbow um like the rainbow option so for the hands or another rainbow color so I think it

0:17:18it looks really cool. I like that they continue to do this, but I like that what Apple does

0:17:25is they make a new one every year or whatever. Like I think that's a nice way to do it rather

0:17:28than just doing the same thing. I've had some trouble trying to get watchOS and iOS to understand

0:17:35that they have this watch face capability. There seems to have been like some weirdness,

0:17:38like watchOS came out first and it had some of the options and not all of them. It's very

0:17:44peculiar, but I guess it will work eventually.

0:17:47So the one, the pride watch face that I'm playing around with now, this one is from

0:17:52last year, right?

0:17:54You can spin the digital crown and there's like these colored threads that like jump

0:18:00around as you spin the crown.

0:18:02This is from last year.

0:18:03Yeah, yeah.

0:18:05There was a few different ones.

0:18:06Has anybody talked about how awesome this watch face is?

0:18:09Probably last year, yeah.

0:18:10Mmm, you sure?

0:18:12Can I have a brief segment?

0:18:14I'm still spinning the crown, by the way.

0:18:16Can we have a brief, can I have a brief, just a quick comment on, and again, I don't know

0:18:21why I keep choosing these topics that make me sound like a jerk today, but how bad the

0:18:27situation is for those who have multiple Apple Watches when it comes to updating them.

0:18:32I'm so sorry.

0:18:33I left my violin in the studio, otherwise I would play it for you right now.

0:18:40So as somebody who literally has a day watch and a night watch, I'm here to tell you that

0:18:48updating them is a nightmare.

0:18:51Updating all Apple watches is bad.

0:18:52So updating all Apple watches is bad.

0:18:55It's gotten better through the years if you have like a single Apple watch because you

0:19:00have the notifications and you can start the update on the watch itself and there's like

0:19:04multiple reminders.

0:19:06Like it used to be very very very bad, now it's just very bad.

0:19:11So there's been some progress there.

0:19:14But if you have multiple Apple Watches it's just so annoying that it's one of those things

0:19:18that I keep pushing, like I just keep ignoring until it's become impossible for me to keep

0:19:28ignoring it basically.

0:19:30What I don't like about the Apple Watch updating thing is that if something happens and you

0:19:35knock the watch off the charger you will break the Apple watch right like that's

0:19:39so scary to me is like an update thing that I get I kind of put it off for that

0:19:44reason because I have my watch in a like in a charger that puts it on its side

0:19:49and sometimes I don't know why like the connection will break between them like

0:19:54it stops charging and so when I'm updating it I'm like terrified that it's

0:19:59going to fall off the charger because then I will need to take my Apple watch

0:20:06to an Apple store and that's not a thing I can actually do right you know what

0:20:09the trick is with that cuz I have the same problem it's to basically tighten

0:20:13the band around the stand so it's like stuck to it I'll try that that's a good

0:20:21tip I'll try that yeah still anyway if you have multiple Apple watches well two

0:20:26of them, I guess. Is two of them the limit? I don't know. So anyway, there's this option in

0:20:31settings in the watch app for the iPhone that is called automatic pairing, and the idea would be

0:20:37that when you take the first watch off your wrist and you put on the other, the iPhone automatically

0:20:43switches between them. The problem there is that if you leave automatic pairing on, and by all

0:20:50intents and purposes you do want to leave it on. If you start the software update, right, for

0:20:57watch A, and you reach the point where it tells you this needs to be on the charger,

0:21:04you put it on the charger, and at that point I assume you're going to be taking watch B and put

0:21:09it on your wrist, because if you're a multi-watch person you always want to have a watch on you.

0:21:14But when you put the second watch on your wrist, automatic pairing kicks in and says "oh, well,

0:21:20"Oopsie, now this iPhone is paired with the second watch, I guess we can all forget about the software update for the other watch."

0:21:25And so what happens there is that every time I have to update the watch, I need to disable automatic pairing,

0:21:32complete the software update process for the watch, without wearing the second watch,

0:21:37wait for the whole thing to finish, which can take hours. Like, I don't know why, but updating the Apple Watch software, like,

0:21:44you know, might as well go back to Viterbo and see my mom and come back home and it's still going.

0:21:49And then when it's done, I need to unlock the watch, re-enable automatic pairing, and

0:21:58put on the second watch, go check for updates, and do the whole thing again.

0:22:04Disable automatic pairing, and stuff.

0:22:05So basically I need to book a full afternoon just to do the software update on the watch.

0:22:11And it's like, I mean, unless there's a major new feature, I'm just gonna leave it on the

0:22:15old version.

0:22:16Yeah, I mean I guess at this point because the new watch faces they look kind of nice I

0:22:21Am gonna be doing it

0:22:23but I you know I'll have to put in a task in my task manager and everything because it's gonna be a whole thing so

0:22:30basically what I'm asking is for

0:22:33watch OS team try and think of you know that many many of us who have multiple Apple watches and

0:22:40Try and make the installation the software update process a bit easier

0:22:44I don't understand why the Apple Watch has to be on the charger to be updated.

0:22:50I know right? Why?

0:22:52No other device that I own needs that.

0:22:55I don't know.

0:22:56Right? Like I understand that devices need like a certain battery limit, you know, so like it's got to be 50% or whatever.

0:23:03Right.

0:23:04But the Apple Watch is the only device that I have that requires itself to be currently charging while updating.

0:23:12And I just find that to be very peculiar.

0:23:15So, the latest version is 6.2.5, is that correct?

0:23:20That is correct.

0:23:21Okay, cool. I will be scheduling a software update session for some time this weekend.

0:23:27Hopefully.

0:23:29Good luck. Good luck, sir.

0:23:31Thank you. Thank you, mate.

0:23:32Maybe while you're doing that you could reply to tweets.

0:23:34Yeah.

0:23:36Yeah, I guess I have to.

0:23:38Seems like you could put them both in, shed them, you know, it's like update and tweet time.

0:23:42I used to have a...

0:23:43So if you get a reply from Federico over the weekend, you know he's updating ZappaWatch.

0:23:48I used to have a recurring task in Reminders years ago that said reply to tweets.

0:23:54That's a terrible task.

0:23:55I know, I know, it just made me so stressed.

0:23:57But you like to be, you know, connected with the people, I suppose.

0:24:01I do like, and I, like, again, this makes me sound worse than I actually am as a person,

0:24:06I think. But I do love the fact that I have people... It would be a problem if I had nobody,

0:24:14you know, interested in talking to me. So I'm not complaining. It's just that also it

0:24:19is true that the volume of all those tweets sometimes gets out of hand. That's all I'm

0:24:24saying. And also people follow me because I write. If I spend my whole day replying

0:24:30to emails and writing tweets, I wouldn't be writing anymore. Therefore, I'm actually doing

0:24:36them a favor. You keep justifying it. Yeah, yeah, that's good. Is there any more or are

0:24:41we good now? No, I'm done. Okay, we'll see. Maybe you'll come up with another one. Sure.

0:24:46As the episode goes on. Let's take a break. This episode of Connected is brought to you

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0:26:10Before we go on, I have like a nosebleed.

0:26:13Can you give me like five minutes?

0:26:15- Yeah, you should go handle that.

0:26:16- It's not bad.

0:26:18I'm just gonna get a tissue.

0:26:18- It's the first time that's ever happened

0:26:20that I've been on recording with somebody

0:26:22and then they started bleeding. - It's not like bad.

0:26:23I'm just gonna get a tissue, so.

0:26:25- Go deal with it.

0:26:25I don't know why you're still here.

0:26:26- Yes, don't worry about it. - I'll be back.

0:26:28I wanna talk about OpenDoc, don't start without me.

0:26:29- Yes, don't bleed all over your keyboard.

0:26:31He's like, "What is wrong if you just leave?"

0:26:33Like, he's just gonna stay around to make jokes.

0:26:35It just kept talking.

0:26:36There's a hierarchy.

0:26:37Nosebleed comes before jokes.

0:26:40We all know that.

0:26:41That phrase.

0:26:42Nose before jokes.

0:26:42[LAUGHTER]

0:26:45No.

0:26:47I like that.

0:26:48Nose before jokes.

0:26:50Yeah.

0:26:50So the chat room is going wild.

0:26:54Which chat room are you in, the Discord?

0:26:56I'm in the-- well, yes.

0:26:59The Discord is where it's at.

0:27:00They're all going wild in here.

0:27:01I am in all places and nowhere at the same time.

0:27:07Oh, yeah, especially on Twitter, right?

0:27:11It's like I'm Schrodinger-ing myself.

0:27:15I exist and I do not exist at the same time.

0:27:19Oh, this is fun.

0:27:20I just opened up Twitter because they're doing that people--

0:27:23they got that new thing, right?

0:27:25And Sarah Dietschy just tweeted, "Welcome to the exclusive club

0:27:29the 858 people I follow. So that's kind of funny, right? Like you can just make tweets

0:27:34and they're just like little clubs amongst only the people that you've deemed to be able

0:27:38to respond to you. I also see this tweet because she follows me. Well no, everyone can see

0:27:44it, but only people that she follows can reply to it, right? I don't have that feature yet,

0:27:51but I think that is a really good feature. You should just do all of your tweets that

0:27:54way and then no one will reply to you. So now I can tweet things. You can tweet things

0:28:01and only and you can set it, well if you are in the beta rollout that they're doing. I'm

0:28:09here. You doing okay over there? Yeah it's not bad. I wonder what's caused it. I don't

0:28:13know. My allergies have been bothering me this week. I don't know if it's like. Does

0:28:17it, does that a thing? I don't know. Nose is scratchy. So you can now choose between

0:28:23everyone can reply, people you follow or only people that you mention in a tweet.

0:28:28If you're in part of this beta that they test that they're doing.

0:28:32Oh yeah.

0:28:32Where would the control be for that?

0:28:37It's just in the tweet compose window.

0:28:40Yeah, I don't have it.

0:28:41Yeah, I don't have it either. But I think that's a really cool feature.

0:28:44Like I will finally be able to tweet all of my controversial opinions again

0:28:49and just lock them down, you know?

0:28:51Hmm.

0:28:51This would be great.

0:28:52But will third party clients see them?

0:28:55I don't know.

0:28:57Yeah.

0:28:58I don't know what happens with those.

0:29:00If it's the API level, maybe...

0:29:01they could just block them? I don't know.

0:29:04Maybe they could just block them.

0:29:06Hmm.

0:29:08Sorry guys, this is very weird.

0:29:12Hey, don't apologize.

0:29:13Your nose is bleeding.

0:29:14My body's falling apart.

0:29:15Yeah.

0:29:16♫ Your nose is bleeding ♫

0:29:18Was that a rough party song, Myke?

0:29:22Was it a block party song?

0:29:23And your nose is bleeding, doo doo doo doo doo

0:29:26And your nose is...

0:29:26Luna from Block Party, maybe?

0:29:28I don't know.

0:29:29Yeah, I think it's Luna.

0:29:30So, Tweetbot can see those tweets?

0:29:34Right? So like it doesn't hide the tweets of people that are using the feature,

0:29:38but I don't know if...

0:29:41Like you're blocked from replying to them, maybe?

0:29:43I don't know. I don't want to test it.

0:29:45You know?

0:29:47Like I can see a tweet that I could reply to,

0:29:49But I think it would be kind of weird if I just then started replying to the tweet

0:29:52so

0:29:55We'll find out

0:29:57All right, let's see if this holds together

0:30:01Do you mean you yeah, okay. Yeah, see if this thing can hold together. Yeah

0:30:08There's a lot of people listening live. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they just like that list is long. Oh, yeah in

0:30:16- All right, Federico, do you want to start this one?

0:30:18- All right, so yesterday,

0:30:20Microsoft had some kind of event.

0:30:23What's it called, Microsoft Build?

0:30:24The annual, like the-- - The developer.

0:30:28- Yeah, by Microsoft, and one of the many announcements,

0:30:32so they announced the new Windows Terminal,

0:30:34like a bunch of things,

0:30:35but I want to talk about this Fluid Office,

0:30:38Fluid Framework, and specifically applied,

0:30:42in this case, we got a demo of the Fluid Framework

0:30:45from Microsoft in the Office apps and Outlook.

0:30:48So I saw this story on The Verge

0:30:49and I read the article on The Verge.

0:30:51And my first reaction was, oh, this is cool.

0:30:55And I saved the article for yesterday.

0:30:58I wanted to read it today before the show, and I did.

0:31:01And as soon as I started reading the story,

0:31:04as soon as, basically, the moment I started reading

0:31:08the first paragraph, a single word started sort of like,

0:31:14instead of visualizing this word in front of my eyes,

0:31:17and that word is "open dock."

0:31:19Now, I was not around to remember, you know,

0:31:23I'm not old enough to know what open dock was

0:31:26when it came out, but Steven, I believe, if he wasn't,

0:31:29I mean, did you actually ever use open dock, Steven?

0:31:34- I know what it is.

0:31:35In fact, when you said, this reminds me of open dock,

0:31:37it was like a light came down from heaven

0:31:41and illuminated just me as like,

0:31:42I'm the perfect person to talk about this.

0:31:44I was not using the Mac in the OpenDoc days,

0:31:48but I do know quite a bit about it.

0:31:49And so I went into my dev and think database

0:31:52and searched OpenDoc.

0:31:53And I've put some notes together for y'all

0:31:56I'd like to share.

0:31:56- Of course you had it in there.

0:31:58- Of course I did.

0:31:59There's actually an OpenDoc group now.

0:32:01'Cause I was like, oh, this should be together.

0:32:02So it's a lot of OpenDoc stuff to talk about.

0:32:06So you're totally right that this idea

0:32:11that they were showing off is reminiscent of OpenDoc.

0:32:15So maybe do you wanna talk a little bit

0:32:16about what they showed off and then I can explain OpenDoc

0:32:18and then we can compare them?

0:32:20- Sure, so what they showed off,

0:32:22and I'm gonna simplify here because that article,

0:32:25they have some quotes from Microsoft

0:32:27and if you actually go watch some of the promo videos

0:32:29from Microsoft, they are, I don't wanna say like

0:32:32concept videos because the feature is working

0:32:34and we do get some footage out of the fluid framework

0:32:38in practice, but the way that it's presented

0:32:41and the way that it's shown off in most of the promo videos,

0:32:45it's very marketing heavy and not so much focused

0:32:50on the practicality of it.

0:32:52But from what I've seen, the idea is the following.

0:32:55So with the Fluid framework,

0:32:57Office apps will start taking advantage of Microsoft,

0:33:04the Verge is referring to them as Lego blocks, basically,

0:33:09but they're also officially called fluid elements.

0:33:12Think about the functionality of each Office app

0:33:17as an individual standalone element.

0:33:21So the word processor is made of a text field,

0:33:25and in Excel you have a table,

0:33:30or maybe you have a chart,

0:33:32or maybe in Word you have a picture

0:33:35to go alongside your text.

0:33:37and maybe in power and of course in powerpoint you have slides. Now all of these elements, rather

0:33:42than being features of a specific application, they can become embeddable objects. And the idea

0:33:51would be that with the fluid framework, rather than being limited to using like these apps as

0:33:56silos to get your work done, you can end up in a scenario where in your email client,

0:34:05in this case Outlook, you may have a table, a spreadsheet, that you can edit

0:34:11right there inside the email client. So each element becomes its own module that can be embedded

0:34:19regardless of the application that you're using. So Outlook could embed a live version of a

0:34:26spreadsheet, and maybe a spreadsheet could embed a live version of your task manager

0:34:34list, or Word could have a table and a presentation inside of it.

0:34:40And Microsoft is presenting this, again, this idea of fluidity between applications,

0:34:47the ability to embed these elements in different apps from Microsoft and maybe third-party

0:34:55developers, because this is an open source framework that developers can use. And

0:35:02all of this with collaboration on top of it. So it's going to be based on the Office 365

0:35:07cloud collaboration system. And so it's not just that you can embed these elements within different

0:35:16apps, you can also collaborate in real time with other people on those elements. So the idea would

0:35:23be, rather than thinking of "oh okay I'm doing my email therefore I'm using Outlook" or "I'm writing

0:35:29an essay, therefore I'm using Word, everything becomes so much more fluid in the sense of

0:35:36everything can be anywhere at the same time. And in theory, it's a beautiful idea, right?

0:35:45It's the idea of stop thinking of your computer as a series of applications and start thinking of

0:35:52your work as a concept that follows you around all the time. You're not limited by

0:35:58clicking a specific icon and opening a specific app anymore, all kinds of work, whether it's a

0:36:05table or an image or some text or a project from your task manager, everything can live together

0:36:12all the time. And it's not just you, you can also invite other people in this. You cannot even call

0:36:20them documents anymore, they're just content or they just work. I don't understand this,

0:36:25I cannot get my head around this. I'm really struggling.

0:36:30The idea or the technicality of it?

0:36:32I just don't understand. So what is Word then?

0:36:36Okay, see, okay, so we're getting to the point of this. So the idea would be that

0:36:42Word is... Well, first of all, that is also my question for all the criticism that I have

0:36:49of this idea, but Word is a place where you can start writing your Word documents, but where

0:36:58maybe you also want to embed a task list from Microsoft To-Do, or where maybe you want to embed

0:37:05the conversation from Outlook. I guess when you think about it, you start losing the identity of

0:37:12all these applications, right? Because everything can just be anything, right? It's like Word can

0:37:18also be Excel. And Excel can also be... So do you think that they're like, they're just moving to

0:37:23Office and that's it, right? I think that's the goal, right? Which would also be, which would also

0:37:29explain why they launched the unified Office app for mobile devices, right? You don't, like, you

0:37:35still have the legacy, well not legacy because they're still updated, but you still have the

0:37:40standalone apps for Word and PowerPoint and Excel, but you also have the main Office app. So the idea

0:37:46would be stop thinking of individual applications and start thinking of the big picture of this more

0:37:52cohesive whole that is your work. And the idea again is you can take these elements anywhere

0:38:02you want and then you can collaborate with other people and you can have integration with Microsoft

0:38:06Teams on top of it as well. Which again, I think conceptually speaking, I do see the beauty of it.

0:38:16What if you were not constrained by application A, application B, application C, and so forth? What

0:38:25if your work was this abstract concept that doesn't require a specific app anymore? It's just content,

0:38:33and content follows you around. It's a beautiful idea, for sure. However, as Stephen is going to

0:38:39explain, it's the kind of idea that has been done before by multiple companies, including

0:38:45Microsoft itself. A similar idea used to be called the OLE framework, the Object Linking and

0:38:53Embedding Framework in the 90s, and of course, as Stephen mentioned, OpenDoc created by Apple

0:39:00in the 90s also. So Stephen, what was OpenDoc? It is an amazing coincidence. The things that you just

0:39:11talked about Apple and others tried to basically do in the 90s. And so they were kind of two big

0:39:18questions. The first one you just stated, why should applications be locked to specific types

0:39:23of work? Why should data be locked in certain file formats? Why can't you have a sales chart

0:39:29that updates automatically in the document that you're working on? Right? So there's that side of

0:39:34the coin, there's the work side of the coin, then there was a side of the coin of sort of the

0:39:40push for object oriented programming and object oriented work. And that was something that next

0:39:45and some others had been doing Apple kind of wandered in the desert a bit with this, but

0:39:51really struggled and actually like third parties came to rise to prominence in in Mac development

0:39:58tools. And so OpenDoc was kind of a way for customers for users to be able to do this new

0:40:04type of work. And for Apple to say this is how we're going to develop things now and try to regain

0:40:09some of that control. It was made in conjunction with Apple and IBM.

0:40:15Microsoft had been working on similar ideas in the same time frame. This

0:40:19isn't new for Microsoft either. And Apple, you know, think about the 90s, had a very

0:40:23tiny market share and they didn't want to be locked out of a more interchangeable

0:40:27future, right? Like there were already huge compatibility issues between

0:40:33Microsoft and Apple software and they wanted to do what they could to stay

0:40:38relevant in there. So OpenDoc is introduced in '93 and ends up shipping in '95, and it

0:40:47basically never got off the ground in any huge way. So it had the ideas that you talked

0:40:56about where you could have—they called them—canvas was a big word in OpenDoc. You could have

0:41:02app was like a canvas and then you could put in the parts from these different

0:41:07applications you can kind of think like the closest thing we have to this today

0:41:13is kind of like shortcuts where shortcuts the app is a place where you

0:41:18can build things with intents and things supplied by different apps on your

0:41:24devices kind of the same idea so your word processor your spreadsheet your

0:41:30your contact manager, your calendar would all have little bits of code that could interface

0:41:36with each other on a canvas and you could kind of make your own thing.

0:41:39So it was like part document creation, part programming.

0:41:42Like I said, it didn't really go any well.

0:41:45Apple really got distracted with things like Copeland, which was their one of a couple

0:41:50attempts at building a next gen OS that failed and they ended up buying next and launching

0:41:55OS 10 years later.

0:41:57warrior came to basically dominate the IDE space on the Mac. So OpenDoc just

0:42:02wasn't supported by the community, really wasn't supported by Apple. And then there

0:42:07were the issues of these parts. Like the idea was it was to be so open that say

0:42:13that I create a document and I sent it to you Federico and you were missing one

0:42:18of the parts. Like I had made something in application A, you didn't have

0:42:23application a where the open doc format was designed to work around that but in

0:42:28practice developers didn't really do the work to make that happen so you couldn't

0:42:33really guarantee that it was even interoperable because if I sent you

0:42:36something and I created part of this doc in Excel you didn't have Excel it just

0:42:41wouldn't show up in your copy or it would be like broken somehow that's very

0:42:46counter to know what they were trying to do it really kind of the idea

0:42:53Clearly that idea has merit because it keeps coming back, but there's this particular swing at it just

0:42:58Did it didn't really work?

0:43:01I guess the way that Microsoft is probably trying to get around the problems of

0:43:05Something like open doc is like no this is our thing, right?

0:43:09Right, like they don't have to worry about getting other people to jump on board, right?

0:43:13It's like no these are the Microsoft products and all the Microsoft products can be interoperable

0:43:19I am still like struggling to get my head around the conceptual nature of this.

0:43:26Yeah, it's weird. It's really weird.

0:43:28And you know, you're right. Apple in a way, OpenDoc in a way, was way more ambitious than what Microsoft was talking about because

0:43:35there were those with an Apple who really wanted OpenDoc to be the future of the Mac, right? You didn't have these

0:43:41giant programs. You could go out and get these little tiny itty bitty programs and like build them together and to have just what you needed.

0:43:49It just never panned out.

0:43:52Your partner is IBM, they're working on OS/2, which went down in flames.

0:43:56It never really got the momentum it needed, and even if it had, I'm not sure it was the

0:44:02right implementation of the idea.

0:44:06I think one of the reasons for this type of thing never being able to work cross-platform

0:44:10is you take away a company's ability to brand itself.

0:44:17If you say like, "oh hey developer, you're just now a plugin."

0:44:22Companies like to be able to brand themselves, right?

0:44:26This is who we are, this is how we design, this is the experience we want our customers

0:44:30to have.

0:44:31I think this is always a problem with this type of stuff, even with things like Siri,

0:44:37or even something like shortcuts.

0:44:39A lot of companies would be like, "no, we want people in our app, we believe it's good,

0:44:46because we made it."

0:44:47whether that is or not is up for your own interpretation.

0:44:50But companies are made up of people who want to make the thing that they want to

0:44:55make.

0:44:56They don't want to be just a little piece of technology that goes into something

0:45:01that somebody else makes.

0:45:03So I think the only way to do something like this in the modern day is to own and

0:45:08operate a stack of technology which is broad.

0:45:11And obviously Microsoft have been doing that, right?

0:45:14Like they have everything now, you know,

0:45:16They have word processor, spreadsheets, PowerPoint is obviously a thing.

0:45:22I was going to say PowerPoints.

0:45:23Now they own PowerPoint is the thing.

0:45:25Slides, I guess.

0:45:27But they have their team chat thing.

0:45:29They have to-do managers.

0:45:30They even have a new one, like another new one that they showed off a couple of days

0:45:35ago.

0:45:36So I guess that they feel that they can do it.

0:45:39But it's still like...

0:45:41I think the thing that I'm just struggling to get my head around is like not saying like

0:45:46this is just one thing that we have now, we just have this one product, by saying like

0:45:50you can put an Excel spreadsheet in Word. It's like...

0:45:54But why would I want to?

0:45:55Why? Yeah, like why are they different things then? You know, like in my mind, like when

0:46:01I first saw this, I thought, oh, they've built a new online collaboration tool called Fluid,

0:46:07and it has all of this functionality, but that's not what they've built, right? At least

0:46:11that's not what they're showing off. Like what they have is, or what they're saying

0:46:15they're gonna have is, like, you can just use this functionality inside of it. It's

0:46:20very confusing to me. Like, is there like a fluid.microsoft.com where you can go and

0:46:25just start doing whatever you want, like a Dropbox paper?

0:46:28No, I don't think there is.

0:46:31Like I don't think that's the product that they're building.

0:46:33And they're actually very light on details and actual demos right now. It feels to me

0:46:39like they're trying to sell people on the idea and the concept still.

0:46:42Yeah, there's a way to get to go and try it, but you have to have a very specific type of Microsoft account.

0:46:48I was trying to log in here and it wouldn't let me.

0:46:51So I have a few personal problems with this sort of idea.

0:46:56And I guess I could boil them down to three separate types of issues.

0:47:01My main problem, technically speaking, with this idea of you can embed anything you want, anywhere you want,

0:47:09is that you don't have a tailored experience for anything anymore if you were to do that.

0:47:16You end up in a situation where you can have a table in Word and you can have a task manager

0:47:22inside your email client and you can have your email client inside of your presentation app.

0:47:26And I'm very much a believer in the idea that, like, I like to use dedicated apps,

0:47:35I like to use native apps and each app does something specific to that.

0:47:40This idea of, yeah, let's just put everything together and

0:47:45base everything off of plugins and you can have all kinds of experiences everywhere.

0:47:51It just doesn't make for a well-designed core experience in my opinion.

0:47:55Can I provide some real-time follow-up?

0:47:57Sure.

0:47:57The Fluid preview that you can sign up for if you have one of these specific type of Microsoft

0:48:03things it looks just like a Dropbox paper document. So it's just like a blank thing and then you can

0:48:09press a button and you get like "oh what do you want what type of content do you want to add?"

0:48:14and it's like table, date, checklist, bulleted list, number line, like it's like a whole thing.

0:48:18Then there is this that's their preview website but all of the stuff from the the big Verge article

0:48:23just talks about integrating the functionality inside of our applications. Like this is why

0:48:28why I'm getting so confused, because I can't work out what they're actually trying to show

0:48:32me.

0:48:33>> And in the Verge article, they're talking about, like, how it's going to be so easy

0:48:38for developers to just adopt the Fluid framework by, like, replacing a static string in their

0:48:44app, and it's going to -- and it provides, like -- like, it's going to be instant, like,

0:48:50a web-based -- and I'm quoting -- a web-based framework that you can use to instantly make

0:48:55your apps collaborative.

0:48:56First of all, like nothing is instant, right?

0:49:00Nothing is just, oh, it's just a single line of code

0:49:02and you're gonna make your app collaborative.

0:49:04Like that does not exist.

0:49:05Like it's that idea of, oh, just put in a single line

0:49:09and suddenly you have a collaborative app.

0:49:11No, coding does not work like that.

0:49:13It just doesn't, it's not true.

0:49:15- And that also kind of makes it sound like Microsoft

0:49:19want to own like web collaboration.

0:49:23Like now they're just like,

0:49:25"Oh, don't worry about building it, just drop in wood in the middle."

0:49:32I am very skeptical, personally, it's just my nature.

0:49:35I'm very skeptical of anything that is heavily reliant on plugins,

0:49:42because plugins are a good way to start poking holes in your system

0:49:49and add failure points to whatever you have.

0:49:53whether it's a WordPress installation,

0:49:56whether it's a custom, like an app that you've made

0:50:01and you wanna let others extend with plugins.

0:50:04Like plugins by their own nature, they add complication,

0:50:09they add complexity and they add failure points.

0:50:12And everything that is so heavily based on plugins,

0:50:15every time I see them I'm like, mm-mm, I don't trust that.

0:50:19You know, just what I am.

0:50:21Finally, I want to mention how, at a very basic level, this idea, it sounded progressive in the

0:50:2890s with OpenDoc, and it sounds progressive now. It sounds kind of... Honestly, if you just

0:50:33take the concept of it for what it is, it sounds kind of awesome.

0:50:38Your work is always available to you no matter the app that you're using. So moving away from

0:50:43this concept of individual applications as silos, I think it's kind of neat, conceptually speaking.

0:50:51But in practice, I just don't think it's the way that humans like to think and operate computers.

0:50:58I believe that at a fundamental level, people think in compartments, people think with boxes,

0:51:07right? And I think it's only natural for a person to say, "Okay, I need to write an email,

0:51:12therefore I open my email client, and I need to write something for school, therefore I open

0:51:18pages or words. I think it's only natural, because it's what we do when you think

0:51:22about it, when you take a look at the bigger picture, it's what we do as humans.

0:51:26We compartmentalize tasks and things to do, and just the way that we do

0:51:33anything, we categorize things. Like, I put it in the document, but like, look at

0:51:40your home right now. You have rooms, you have a kitchen, you have a living room,

0:51:45you have maybe a garage where you keep your tools and your workbench, and you wouldn't

0:51:50want to be in a situation where your partner comes back home and finds you cooking pancakes

0:51:55in your closet. And you're like, "What are you doing in there?"

0:51:58I could do it anywhere! I could do it anywhere, because what is a

0:52:01kitchen anymore, right? And I just don't think it's a good idea. I just don't think it's

0:52:07what... I mean, you could do it, right? You could sure put a stove in your closet and

0:52:11you could do pancakes in there. You could get one of those little all-like

0:52:12conduction here, thanks. For sure you could do it or you could maybe go sleep in the garage

0:52:18or you could you could do all kinds of things. I just don't think it would be optimal and honestly

0:52:23I just don't think you will like it and I think all these concepts this fluid framework and open

0:52:30doc and sometimes we see also these concept videos for this like this smart operating systems when

0:52:37where you have no apps, all you have is projects and your work follows you around. You know what?

0:52:43They look kind of pretty. I just don't think you will like it. I would hate it. Every time I see a

0:52:49concept like that where it's like, oh, I've rebuilt the operating system. No, I like having things in

0:52:56places. I will say, right, like if they built a tool. Yes, I like having things in places. That's

0:53:03Exactly what it is. Yes. Right. Like I,

0:53:05if they built a web tool that could incorporate all of this functionality into

0:53:10one place.

0:53:11So you have one collaborative place where you can make like all,

0:53:15you can pull in all this functionality from different office stuff.

0:53:18I think that's great. What I don't like is this idea of like,

0:53:21you're in Word and now you can also put a PowerPoint in the middle of it.

0:53:26It's like, that's not what I want. Right. Like, because then the,

0:53:31The fluid thing is like, well, that becomes its own thing and its own place.

0:53:36Right. You have this place where you go.

0:53:38And in that place, in the collaborative environment you've built,

0:53:41you can do whatever you want, but you keep specific types of work in that place.

0:53:46Right. Like that's where that stuff goes.

0:53:48It's like I don't write in Google Docs.

0:53:51Google Docs is where my collaborative documents go for sharing stuff for shows.

0:53:56If I want to write something, I will use something like notes

0:54:00or Bear or IARiter, right? Because functionally they are the same thing, but they're silos for

0:54:07where specific types of work goes. So even if you have this web tool called Fluid, which lets you

0:54:15seamlessly switch between different types of functionality and different types of documents,

0:54:20that's great, but that's its own thing? Not that now I can put a to-do list in my email,

0:54:27which seems like hell. I don't want to put to-do lists everywhere, right? I don't need to do that.

0:54:34I have my to-do manager where they go. So it's an interesting idea. I think people get excited

0:54:41about this idea of like, "Oh, they're going to kill Google Docs." And it's like, "Yeah,

0:54:44but I actually don't think that's what they want to do." They want to make Office absolutely

0:54:52dependent from like other people completely dependent on office, right?

0:54:56Like they want developers to integrate this functionality into their

0:55:01applications. So everyone needs to have office 365.

0:55:05Yeah. I mean, it's yeah, that's their play here, right? It's it's.

0:55:09Yeah, which is totally fine if that's what they want to do.

0:55:12I'm just not sure that I want.

0:55:13Yeah, but you're not a big company with people making reports all the time.

0:55:16We are the target market for really good collaboration tools, right?

0:55:20Like building a really good online collaboration tool, we're totally that.

0:55:25But when also not the people using Microsoft Teams and integrating our shared list in Microsoft

0:55:30Teams, that's a different customer.

0:55:33I think something you said about people want these categories, they want these boxes to

0:55:37go into, that's what we've been trained to do not only on the desktop, but since the

0:55:41very beginning in mobile.

0:55:44It's why I struggle with apps like Drafts or other things, like you start one place

0:55:48and you send things elsewhere, it's like, I'm just going to open the mail app, right?

0:55:52And it's not that those apps don't have a place, but for me, I tend to work in that

0:55:58older way. Like, you know, I'm going to open the app, then I'm going to start stuff in,

0:56:01and that's where I'm going to go.

0:56:02Yeah, like, I think it would be fair to say that iOS and Android are even more like this

0:56:09than Mac and Windows, right? Because the operating systems have been built that way. They have

0:56:14built app first. Programs were different, right? Because you can have multiple versions of the

0:56:23same application running at once, multiple windows all over the place. That's only in its

0:56:28mere infancy on the iPad, right? And probably not implemented that well, as we mentioned, right?

0:56:36Like, they could be better and different, and we should have these locked spaces and that kind of

0:56:41of idea, but apps are way more siloed on mobile platforms than they are on traditional platforms.

0:56:49Yeah, and I guess, really, you could make the argument that as a species we are programmed to

0:56:56think with boxes and categories. It's just like, it's the easiest way to approach life,

0:57:03to categorize different things and different people in groups and responsibilities in groups,

0:57:09like, everything goes into a group, into a box in our brain, and, like, without those

0:57:15boxes, I think we would just fall prey to anxiety all the time, which is exactly how

0:57:21I feel whenever I use something like Notion, because I can do anything I want, I just don't

0:57:26know where to start, I don't know what the boundaries are, I cannot see the boxes that

0:57:29I'm used to. And so, while this freedom is beautiful, conceptually speaking, and it's

0:57:37quite the paradox, I guess, that it makes me feel less free because I just don't

0:57:43know where to start. So that's how I've always felt about these tools and these

0:57:47concepts where, oh, it doesn't matter, anything is anything, it doesn't matter,

0:57:53and I'm like, no, give me some ground rules, because that's how I like to

0:57:58operate as a person and as a computer user, like, the absence of rules just

0:58:04leads to madness. And this is like, these concepts and this fluid stuff, I look at it

0:58:09and I'm like, man, I could never work like this. It would just be so confusing. I wouldn't

0:58:13know where to start and we're just like, a confusing mess of things all over the place.

0:58:19No, no, no, that's no way to use a computer for me. So, I don't know. Maybe I'm getting

0:58:23old. I don't think I'm getting old because this idea was tried before. I think I'm right.

0:58:26I don't think I'm old. I think I'm right. So, modularity. Can be a beautiful thing,

0:58:31also definitely like you know this is the the part of it that I don't

0:58:35necessarily appreciate. We'll see how it goes for Microsoft you know open dot got

0:58:39killed when you know who came back to Apple so see how it goes. Let's take our

0:58:45second break how about that? Go for it. That sound good? I want to talk about my

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1:00:04slash connected our thanks to bombus for the support of the show and relay FM

1:00:09alright so next up in our ongoing series of anticipating WWDC we are four weeks

1:00:16away now right four weeks two days something like that

1:00:20or a month and two days, right?

1:00:22Yeah, 32 days.

1:00:24Excellent.

1:00:24We're going to turn to watchOS today.

1:00:28We're going to talk about watchOS.

1:00:30I'm not sure if we're going to

1:00:31I don't think we're going to go to every platform like this,

1:00:34but watchOS is kind of different because it is a smaller platform.

1:00:37So rather than like breaking it up into little chunks

1:00:40and talking about things that might be across iOS, MacOS,

1:00:43we're just going to talk about watchOS 7.

1:00:46One of the reasons that we're going to do this today is because underscore

1:00:49David Smith published a blog post which did a lot of the work for us because nobody, I

1:00:56don't think anybody knows watchOS like David does. Underscore has made many, many watch

1:01:03apps and really knows the platform. The article itself has a lot more in it than we're going

1:01:10to talk about today because there's a lot of developer focused things that if you're

1:01:14a watchOS developer would be more important to you. I think we're just going to focus

1:01:19on the customer focused things. So I'll go through these one by one and we can stop wherever

1:01:25you guys want to want to talk about them. So the first is sleep tracking. So this is

1:01:31something that a lot of people wanted. It seems like it's kind of been waiting for one

1:01:35of two things for Apple either to have the software just right or to have the hardware

1:01:38just right to be able to take the battery hit that this will inevitably give to watches,

1:01:43right, if they're going to be on all night. This is why one of the reasons I believe Federico

1:01:47So you have two watches, right? Because sleep tracking requires that for you?

1:01:51Yup. That's why.

1:01:52Because you've got to charge the watch or swap the watch, right? If you want to do sleep

1:01:57tracking because you're going to have it on 24 hours a day rather than like 14 or something.

1:02:03But one of the things that I really liked that Underscore mentioned is that adding in

1:02:07sleep tracking could add in the concept of maybe a fourth ring to the activity rings

1:02:13called recovery and this could tie in of a few different things.

1:02:16It could tie in with workouts, right?

1:02:18And the fact that your body needs to recover after workouts.

1:02:21It could tie in with stress measurements that it's doing to basically say like

1:02:25how recovered are you and could maybe help with workout planning.

1:02:29And I thought that this was a really nice and interesting idea of rather than just

1:02:34adding the sleep tracking functionality to the watch,

1:02:40it would also integrate more deeply into the idea of what WatchOS does.

1:02:45Because you would be able to make better decisions for how you would work out

1:02:51based on how recovered you are, and sleep would definitely be a big factor of that.

1:02:56If you hadn't slept enough, you can't work out as well, maybe.

1:02:58Yeah, I agree. I'm just trying to think of what other factors could tie into this recovery idea.

1:03:05Maybe there could be third party apps that could generate the information.

1:03:10I don't know what, so you could use maybe a workout app that knows that you had a particularly

1:03:16hard workout yesterday or an easy workout yesterday and that will allow for a different

1:03:21recovery level, that kind of thing, which is interesting.

1:03:23This also actually then adds into another point that David made about custom rings.

1:03:27So what if you could track specific things like maybe you don't care so much about standing

1:03:33but you do care about your step count or your water intake throughout a day. And you could

1:03:38maybe have activity rings that track the things that you want rather than the three that Apple

1:03:42have defined. It'd be spectacular. I think that's a great idea. I'd love to have something like

1:03:47mindful minutes in there. And you could maybe, I mean, they could do it where you have different

1:03:52activity ring sets, right? So days that, um, a recovery day, I've got things like water and

1:03:58sleep and mindful minutes and then days when I'm working out maybe I do want

1:04:02activity and exercise and stand. I think that could be a really nice way to

1:04:07broaden what the watch tracks. You can already track a lot of that stuff now

1:04:12through third-party apps. They seem to open it up. Yeah it's interesting that so much

1:04:16of the Apple Watch's identity is based around the activity rings but those

1:04:19three rings have never changed. I think they need to be careful with this if

1:04:24they do it because I don't think they should move away from the fact that you

1:04:28can buy an Apple Watch and it's got the three rings and they're on by default and it's all

1:04:31you need to care about. I think it would be a neat addition for power users to say now

1:04:36you can customize your rings and you can have like custom rings and you can customize all

1:04:40the metrics there. But I think for most people, they just want to buy an Apple Watch, have

1:04:43the three rings and they want to follow Apple's recommendations for increasing the goals or

1:04:48decreasing the goals of each ring. Well, the activity ring in this case is the only, you

1:04:53know, that can be taken up or down.

1:04:54Yeah, I feel like you wouldn't want to change the default, right? Like it ships with the three,

1:04:59but in the activity app maybe you could customize it, right? But like that...

1:05:03Those three were picked for a reason. They are a really good place to start,

1:05:08but they're maybe not what every person cares about.

1:05:11I agree. I also don't think that if they do end up adding rings... I've seen some people share

1:05:17the idea that maybe a slip ring should be the new default fourth one, and I disagree with that.

1:05:23If only because sleep is a, like, it's very hard to make any assumptions about sleep for other people.

1:05:31And by this I mean that the watch already makes some pretty broad assumptions about, like, oh,

1:05:37you need to stand 12 hours a day. But to make an assumption about another person's sleep schedule

1:05:44and to have a default value for a sleep ring, you need to account for what if, you know,

1:05:51what if I'm the mother of a young child and I cannot sleep six hours per night anymore?

1:05:59Or what if I work the night shift and my sleep schedule right now is all messed up because of

1:06:05this? Yeah, sleep is a hard one. Like, all the other ones are so basic, right? Like, 12 hours

1:06:11standing up a day, you know, and 30 minutes of activity. Like, they seem to be pretty simple.

1:06:18like they're not very... for a lot of people it wouldn't be hard to miss those, right?

1:06:23But to say eight hours a night, like that's not gonna work.

1:06:30Exactly. And I personally cannot get eight hours of sleep anymore, like eight consecutive hours of

1:06:36sleep. Like I just... it just doesn't happen anymore. And if I sleep more than seven hours,

1:06:40I wake up and I have a headache and I feel super groggy and everything. Like it just doesn't happen

1:06:45anymore. But it's also something that like, what if you don't get the sleep ring full,

1:06:52then what? You're gonna have to take a forced nap during the day? No, I don't want to take

1:06:58sleep.

1:06:59That's why I think Underscore's recommendation of sleep could be a factor in another ring,

1:07:06right? That could be the idea of recovery. Underscore's in the Relay FM members Discord

1:07:13as we're recording live and says that sleep quality, heart rate variability, resting heart

1:07:18rate are also good recovers of how like indicators of stress or recovered you are. So like that

1:07:23recovery ring could be a lot of things. However, at the same time, all of those things still

1:07:29feel like it could be tricky to achieve that one in a streak mentality if so many things

1:07:36are factoring into it. Like what do you do to bump the number up if you play that game?

1:07:41Yeah, it's a very fine line to walk between gamifying the system and just making people

1:07:48feel stressed and unaccomplished for this stuff, you know? And like, what if it's like a difficult

1:07:55period for me right now, especially now with all the things going on? It's like, yes, I'm more

1:07:59stressed, don't make me feel bad about that. You know, so I get it and I do want to, of course I

1:08:05I want to have native sleep tracking.

1:08:07But to have it as a ring that is for sleep alone,

1:08:11which is an idea that I've seen shared on Twitter with, again,

1:08:14some concepts and all that kind of stuff,

1:08:17I think it could be tricky to make it work and make

1:08:19assumptions that will work for everybody

1:08:22and without running into the issue of making

1:08:26people feel bad.

1:08:27I don't know.

1:08:29It could be part of a bigger recovery ring, which is--

1:08:33I think it's a more interesting idea.

1:08:35Then again, it all comes down to the data

1:08:37that you're collecting there.

1:08:38Like, what is recovery for you?

1:08:41Like, how do you know that I'm not stressed?

1:08:44Is that because of new sensors that you have?

1:08:48And like, is it something that I need to tell you?

1:08:51Like, I've also seen like these mood trackers, for example,

1:08:54right, that multiple times during the day,

1:08:56they ask you, are you happy?

1:08:57Are you feeling stressed or relieved?

1:08:59Like, sure, I just don't think it's something

1:09:02that I want to do all the time. So let's actually touch on that because one of the

1:09:08things that Underscore mentions is more mental health applications for the watch in general

1:09:12and I saw a separate rumor about watchOS 7 potentially getting a blood oxygen sensor

1:09:19that apparently could help with stress detection. Okay so see that's something. I don't completely

1:09:23understand how that works but like I'll just take it on the surface. Just science man.

1:09:28Yes, science. But like, you know, if I would, I think I would like my watch to be able to

1:09:34understand how stressed I am. I don't know if I would. I think I would really need to

1:09:38understand how that made me feel. I do feel like my watch telling me I'm stressed might

1:09:45make me more stressed.

1:09:48But I'm not sure yet. And in the same vein of like, if it only is recognising when I'm

1:09:53in intense moments if it can provide me with things to do, you know, more than just, as

1:10:01Underscore mentions, more than just to breathe. Maybe there's like, as Stephen was talking

1:10:05about, mindfulness, meditation built in like the Apple could do to try and help me calm

1:10:10down. That might be good, but I also do feel like if I'm feeling particularly stressed,

1:10:15my watch sound like, "Hey, you're stressed." I could imagine many times of me taking my

1:10:19watch off and launching it across the room. So I feel like I'm not sure yet how that would make me

1:10:26feel but could be interesting if done correctly. But I think this honestly like this is quite

1:10:34similar to sleep in that I think these things would differ for a lot of people as to what they

1:10:39might want and I think this might be why some of these things have taken maybe more time than we

1:10:46we would have expected to come to the Apple watch because I think trying to implement

1:10:51them for a large amount of people rather than people that opt in to get third party applications

1:10:57that do this stuff is I expect quite a tricky prospect. Yeah. At rest days, this is one

1:11:03that should be added. I can't believe they haven't added it. Like if you are injured

1:11:08and have a 1000 day exercise streak and you've twisted your ankle, right? Or like broke your

1:11:16leg or you're sick. Losing that streak feels so mean. The concept of rest days exists in

1:11:25exercise. It is a very normal thing that you will take a rest day, that you won't exercise

1:11:31every day to give yourself a break if you want one. Sometimes this can be a mental health

1:11:36thing, right? Like, "I don't want to exercise today. It will make me feel better than not

1:11:41Like not having rest days is really wild to me. Like it really is wild.

1:11:46Yeah, it's surprised, very surprising to me that it's still not part of the

1:11:51activity stuff and especially like right now I sure hope that you know the

1:11:57lockdown and a global pandemic must, I guess it must have shown Apple why this

1:12:01isn't like a feature that needs to happen because maybe you know you

1:12:07haven't been able to go for a run or you haven't been able to go to the gym and

1:12:10Maybe you cannot have a gym inside your apartment.

1:12:14Like, this is a feature that, and maybe, again,

1:12:18you're just sick and you cannot get out of bed

1:12:20and you're not crazy like Kyle, you know,

1:12:22goes for a run even if he's running a fever.

1:12:25Like, most people don't do that, right?

1:12:28I mean, I would die if I do that, so.

1:12:31- It could be argued that maybe you shouldn't, right?

1:12:34Like, everybody's different, but--

1:12:35Sure, and not everybody is, you know, 23 years old and super strong, but yeah, I mean, you know,

1:12:43when you're sick you likely want to stay in bed and just, you know, hope to get better. So, yes,

1:12:49a rest day is a not so... Most physicians will tell you that you're not supposed to work out heavily

1:12:55every single day, right? They will tell you that you actually do need a past day in your work,

1:13:02in your workout routine because that's how the body recovers. And you know when tissues recover

1:13:07and muscles, you build muscle during those days. So I'm very surprised that this is still not a

1:13:17native feature of the whole activity system by Apple. And I think that people think about the

1:13:23exercise ring as the hard thing to achieve here, but I think it's the move ring because the move

1:13:28The movering adjusts based on you. The exercise ring is fixed at 30 but the

1:13:34movering is changing based on the amount of calories that you burn based on your

1:13:38movement and it will increase and decrease over time and there's been many

1:13:43people I've seen like online talking about the fact that like a 400 for you

1:13:48and a 400 for me are different. Like the numbers the same but what that

1:13:52watch is gauging as to what it would take me to burn that is different from

1:13:56person to person. So I think that that's when, like if you're changing your moving and doing

1:14:01what the watch is suggesting that you do to be more and more active, like that gets harder

1:14:06and harder to achieve and if you're sick or you want to take a break, like maybe you can't

1:14:12now and that seems very strange.

1:14:16Improved workout detection is something. I think this is an interesting one. Like the

1:14:21automatic workout detection exists but could always be better. The Apple Watch can do very

1:14:29interesting things to when I'm doing a workout, right? To be like, "Oh, we think you've moved

1:14:35this way and this way and this way based on what we know about this type of workout."

1:14:40Could that be expanded? If I'm doing yoga and haven't told the watch I'm doing yoga,

1:14:45could it know? When I'm doing yoga, it knows I'm doing yoga. It's tracking yoga movement,

1:14:50But like, could it? No. I don't usually move my arms around and around in this way, right?

1:14:55Like, could you be doing something with the senses to be like, "This is abnormal," and ask me then,

1:15:01as opposed to if I'm just working up a real sweat, you know? Like, is there more types of workouts

1:15:07that could be detected? Because whenever I do yoga, I always forget to tell my Apple Watch.

1:15:13Every single time, I just forget. I wonder if it could apply some of the same logic where it says,

1:15:18"hey you've used this app this time of day" like "hey you seem to do yoga every other day at 8 am

1:15:25maybe i could start suggesting so you don't forget to hit the button" that could be a nice middle ground

1:15:31true watch independence so this has gone a long way right like this with being able to have apps

1:15:40installed or like that just watch apps and stuff like that but there were two parts of the watch

1:15:45independence that David mentioned that I thought were that seemed to make sense to me. Being able

1:15:50to set up an Apple Watch without an iPhone, that's an eventual thing. I don't think we're there yet,

1:15:55but I think that will happen one day. And also having CloudKit adapted for watchOS more. So

1:16:00you could sync, the watch can sync with the phone when it's close, but also sync with the cloud

1:16:06directly when it can't. So having more CloudKit stuff could be good for watchOS, I guess.

1:16:12The thing about the watch being set up independently from the phone is that

1:16:15fundamentally changes the watch's position in the world right now the watch is a satellite to the phone and

1:16:22I think when they say hey, okay

1:16:25You can now set this up on its own then the watch becomes its own product in a way the same thing happened with what?

1:16:30Ios 5 I think where the PC free right?

1:16:33Hey, you can set up a phone an iPhone without a Mac or a PC

1:16:38You can install software updates without iTunes right and they added those things over time

1:16:41I don't know the last time I plugged my iPhone into a computer. It's probably been years, right?

1:16:46And I think the watch will get there. I just I don't know if it's quite ready

1:16:51Yeah, I just figure with iCloud, you know, like you can still tie them all together in a way

1:16:56But just not needing it for that initial setup could be interesting

1:17:00Last two things these are things that we've spoken about recently, but they're just worth mentioning here

1:17:05The always on during workouts. I think I mentioned this maybe last week or the week before

1:17:11that the screen dims, right? And shows that little digital clock, which I hate.

1:17:15I think during workouts it should be possible to just leave some kind of always on screen,

1:17:22which is better, more useful, and more customizable watch faces in general.

1:17:27Like, I think this needs a huge amount of work done to it. Being able to have more

1:17:32complication types and more watch faces and have them be a lot more flexible than they are right

1:17:36now is a big project, but I think a much, much, much needed project.

1:17:42Especially like David mentions in his wishlist the ability to have, for complications, to

1:17:49be able to export like multiple versions of the same complication basically, which is

1:17:54definitely something that I noticed when I was playing around with WatchSmith and also

1:17:58with other apps. Apple apps can do this, you can have multiple complications for the same

1:18:03that's not possible for third parties yet and it does feel like something that

1:18:07should exist on the platform for watch face customization because I would

1:18:11love to have like multiple complications for say you know the timezone thing in

1:18:19WatchSmith right so definitely more freedom there to have multiple versions

1:18:26of multiple complications from the same app that would be lovely. I do have some

1:18:31additional things to share and a quick story to tell if you guys are okay with

1:18:37it. Of course. I actually have photographic proof of the story. Is this

1:18:43gonna be another like really relatable man of the people story? I think I think

1:18:48so but you also need to wait for me to send you like it'll happen in a few

1:18:54minutes so stay with me. So I mentioned in terms of like other watch

1:18:59features that I would like to see. Better and easier and faster software updates, that's a given.

1:19:05I also would like to use the digital crown to scroll through different sets of complications

1:19:18for the same watch face. So right now the digital crown, I thought that it was unused. Myke actually

1:19:26mentioned that you can use the crown to wake the screen, like you can dim it up and down,

1:19:32and I totally forgot that this existed because I never do it. I always wake the watch the

1:19:36old-fashioned way by just flicking my wrist. So I totally forgot that the crown was an

1:19:40option to wake the display. What I would like to do, basically, is I always want to use

1:19:46the same watch face. However, I feel like I want to cycle through different sets of

1:19:51complications either during the day or based on what I'm doing. Like, I never want to switch

1:19:56between faces by long pressing and swiping, like, I find that so inconvenient and kind of,

1:20:01you know, that gesture I really don't like. Instead, I want to keep the same watch face,

1:20:05but I want to basically alternate between different sets of complications for the same

1:20:11face, and I figured why not use the digital crown, maybe have some Aptiq feedback action going to,

1:20:18to make that more tactile.

1:20:20You could actually feel the swapping between complications.

1:20:24I don't know, it's just something that I would like to have

1:20:26instead of having to press down and recreate my watch face

1:20:29and swipe to the other watch face with other complications.

1:20:32Just let me customize one,

1:20:34and let me have different sets of complications

1:20:38for the same face.

1:20:39And use the crown to swap between them,

1:20:41because I think this could actually be more useful

1:20:43than using the crown to wake the screen.

1:20:46I mean, you already have a relatively easy and reliable gesture to do that, so...

1:20:51I don't know, it could be an option.

1:20:54I want to have a grid view for the dock.

1:20:56I really dislike the vertical carousel for the dock.

1:21:00I just want to have some kind of grid view that shows me more thumbnails at the same

1:21:05time and that is faster to navigate.

1:21:07Would you imagine you would be tapping things to open them, or would it scroll like left-right-down,

1:21:12left-right-down, left-right-down, you know?

1:21:14Like if you're scoring with the digital crown.

1:21:16I would imagine, like, first of all, I would imagine a horizontal display, not a vertical

1:21:22list. And basically something like the app switcher is what I'm thinking of from the

1:21:29iPad. But of course, I adapted to watchOS, but like a grid of tiny windows that I can

1:21:37choose. It just feels very slow to browse the dock right now and to very carefully scroll

1:21:43this list of windows, I just dislike it. I think it could be easier and faster to use

1:21:49as a grid. And I think that's the main list. There's one last feature that I would like

1:21:57to talk about and to show you photographic proof. So I would really like to have a standard

1:22:06QWERTY keyboard with support for multiple languages. I think it's absolutely wild that

1:22:13Apple still does not offer a system keyboard for the Apple Watch. And if you go to the

1:22:18Watch App Store, you're going to find that the Flick Type keyboard is consistently at

1:22:23the top of the paid charts, exactly because people just want a keyboard to type their

1:22:29things. Yes, you can have the scribbling feature, yes, you can have dictation, but really, sometimes

1:22:34you just want to press letters without having to draw them, especially because I cannot

1:22:39seem to get some letters right with the scribble thing. And I have a story to tell here. So

1:22:45during the first couple of weeks of lockdown here in Italy, doing online grocery shopping

1:22:53was basically impossible. Amazon Prime now was not working, and the websites for our

1:22:59local supermarkets were also not working due to the excessive demand. So once a week or

1:23:06twice a week I would have to go out and actually do the grocery shopping myself.

1:23:10And usually I go to this relatively small grocery shop that doesn't have everything that we need,

1:23:18but has the essentials, until we reach the point where I needed to get the essentials,

1:23:22which meant I needed to go to the real big supermarket. But to go to that supermarket,

1:23:28I knew that there was going to be a line. So imagine, picture Federico a couple of months ago,

1:23:35wearing a mask and gloves. Where a lot of people are right now. Exactly. Where a lot of people

1:23:40sadly are right now. So mask on, gloves on, and waiting in line in the parking lot of a supermarket

1:23:48for one hour and 15 minutes under the sun. So I was sweaty and covered with a mask and gloves and

1:23:58I could actually see the sweat dripping out of my gloves and into my wrist which was super gross.

1:24:03it was very hot. And I was standing in line with my empty car in the parking lot, waiting

1:24:10because they were just letting a couple of people in at a time. So at some point I was

1:24:16just browsing Twitter, actually. It was one of those few times where I was replying to

1:24:20people. You were replying to tweets. I was replying to tweets and my phone died. Like,

1:24:28My iPhone just went black screen, it just straight up died, it rebooted, and it got

1:24:35stuck with a spinner in the middle of the screen, and it wouldn't do anything.

1:24:42Like I tried to, like a combination of pressing the physical keys on the iPhone and it wouldn't

1:24:48do anything, it was just a spinner.

1:24:51And the longer it kept spinning, the harder the phone got.

1:24:56I've had this.

1:24:57I realized that something terrible is happening here.

1:25:01And I remembered that I read somewhere

1:25:04that there was a specific combination of pressing

1:25:06the volume and the side button that

1:25:10would get my phone unstuck.

1:25:12But of course, because my phone died,

1:25:14I couldn't Google that combination of things to press.

1:25:19And I didn't want to ask random people

1:25:21to let me use their phone, because it

1:25:22was the first couple of weeks of lockdown.

1:25:24everybody was freaked out by, you know, just being near other people. So I needed

1:25:31to tell something to Silvia, but my phone was dead and I remembered, "Oh, this is

1:25:37actually a perfect use case for my watch." Sorry, because I do have a cellular watch

1:25:43and I can see that it's actually connected right now and I

1:25:47can send her an iMessage to tell her something about the grocery

1:25:54that I needed to buy. Except I opened iMessage and I realized this message is way too long

1:26:00to be scribbled down by drawing the letters. And I also kept getting the letters wrong.

1:26:06And I tried to use FlickType because I had it installed on my watch, but it was not letting

1:26:11me type anything in Italian. Because I don't think it's supported, or because it was just

1:26:17defaulting to English. And the more I kept pressing letters on the QWERTY keyboard, the

1:26:22more it kept auto-correcting to something else. And I was getting very frustrated because

1:26:30I just couldn't type the message that I needed to tell Sylvia. So I realized, okay, I'm gonna

1:26:37be looking ridiculous right now, especially because I'm also wearing a mask and I cannot

1:26:41take the mask off, but I'm gonna have to dictate this message on my watch in front of a lot

1:26:47other people, which I'm very, you know, self-conscious of doing still in public.

1:26:52So sure enough, I enable dictation and I start dictating this message. And the way that dictation

1:26:58works is, as soon as you press done, you cannot review the message. The message is sent instantly

1:27:04to the other person, right? So I will now share with you a screenshot of the message that I sent.

1:27:11Can I put this in the show notes? Yes, you can. Can you tell me what you were trying to say? Like,

1:27:15Like can you see? I honestly, I honestly don't remember. I do remember. I do remember. I

1:27:22was telling Sylvia that my phone died and that I couldn't get it to work anymore and

1:27:29that if she want and that I still had that she couldn't call me, but that I had the grocery

1:27:36list available in reminders. Okay. That's what I was going to tell her. Now you were

1:27:41I assume it's in Italian, I assume.

1:27:43I was dictating in Italian, of course, because I mean, I already look ridiculous, right?

1:27:47Talking into my watch in public.

1:27:49Imagine talking to the watch in public in English, right?

1:27:52In Rome.

1:27:53As clearly an Italian person who has been talking to other people in line in Italian,

1:27:58suddenly started talking in English into his watch.

1:28:01So as soon as you receive this screenshot, Myke, I want you to read it out loud.

1:28:06Okay.

1:28:07So...

1:28:08This is what Sylvia received, and you can imagine her reaction.

1:28:14Okay, Miss Empanada's telephone, on so I guess for chess when...

1:28:21I need to do this again, this is gonna be really hard to do in one go.

1:28:25Alright, okay, okay.

1:28:26Okay, Miss Empanada's telephone, on so I guess...

1:28:29Go slow, you need to...

1:28:33Okay, Miss Empanada's telephone. On so I guess for chess, win the others.

1:28:38Roddy of the Arlo, hey, send me that he keeps giving me some messages.

1:28:43Miss Empanada's telephone! Oh my god, that's good. Oh wow.

1:28:54All this to say, Apple, you do support multiple languages for dictation and typing on your iPhone.

1:29:03Is it really that difficult to support multiple languages for dictation and a keyboard input mode on the watch?

1:29:10Because I honestly don't want to be in this situation anymore.

1:29:13So the problem there then is that it is taking in Italian and trying to translate it to English

1:29:21based on what it thinks it's hearing. I don't even know how it's possible to get that result

1:29:27because Italian doesn't sound like English, right?

1:29:32I can't imagine. I mean, telephone is telefono, which I said.

1:29:37I mean, like, obviously the occasional word, right? Like, is going to be...

1:29:42Okay, mis empanadas. Like, I honestly... It's weird to me that, like, it even tries.

1:29:48It's not just like, I don't know what you're saying, right? Like, it's very peculiar.

1:29:53So, yeah, please give me a keyboard where I can choose to type in there in English or in Italian.

1:30:02And it's so surprising because it's the kind of feature that Apple got right years ago

1:30:06on the iPhone and the iPad.

1:30:08And last year they added support for dictation in multiple languages in iOS 13.

1:30:13So it's not something that doesn't exist.

1:30:16It just doesn't exist on the watch.

1:30:18And especially now that we have a cellular watch, with the freedom to use it without

1:30:21the iPhone, I just think it's obvious that it needs to happen at some point.

1:30:29So hopefully in watchOS 7.

1:30:31Yeah, and then there was a whole back and forth between Sylvia and me later.

1:30:39She got concerned, like she thought that somebody stole my phone, basically.

1:30:44Apparently you can change the dictation language by force touching, that's what I'm being told in the Discord.

1:30:51Oh, how would I know, right? Force touching? See, that's the problem. Just give me a button.

1:30:56Is that too hard? Also, can you really change? So if I press on the microphone...

1:31:03Oh, look at that! You can choose a language. Of course I had no idea.

1:31:06So there you go.

1:31:08Well, okay, so there's two things here. Yeah, okay, that's great. You can do that.

1:31:12It should be detecting it. Like, Apple has a system for that. Like, it exists in iOS,

1:31:17as you said, right? Like, the detection of a language. It would be good if you could

1:31:23do that rather than needing to manage.

1:31:24So all this time I could have dictated just...

1:31:26You've got half the way there. Just by long pressing. Wow.

1:31:28Mm-hmm. I think that says something about, you know, hiding functionality behind the

1:31:33first press, but, you know, discussion for another time. So what I want to know, are

1:31:39you now calling Sylvia "Miss Empanada's" telephone around the house? Is that like a

1:31:44cute nickname? I am. I am. I am not. Honestly, I know that empanadas are like a

1:31:54a Mexican food, I don't think I know what they are.

1:31:57- They're really nice.

1:31:58You would like an empanada.

1:32:00- I guess I would.

1:32:02I do like Mexican food. - I think you would.

1:32:03You would like an empanada, I'm telling you that.

1:32:05- Okay, that's good information to have.

1:32:08- One day, Federico, we will eat empanadas together.

1:32:11- One day.

1:32:12- Until then, if you wanna find links in the show notes,

1:32:15head on over to the website at relay.fm/connected/295

1:32:20while you're there.

1:32:21There's a bunch of fun activities you can take part in.

1:32:23you can become a member to support the show directly and get access to that

1:32:26Relay FM members at Discord, which is a whole lot of fun.

1:32:29You can send us an email with feedback or a follow-up or you can find us on Twitter. Myke is there as

1:32:36I-M-Y-K-E. Myke is the host of a bunch of shows here on Relay FM.

1:32:41You can find Federico on Twitter sometimes at Vitici, V-I-T-I-C-C-I.

1:32:46He is the editor-in-chief of MacStories.net.

1:32:49You can find me there is ismh and my writing at 512 pixels dotnet. I'd like our sponsors this week

1:32:57Pingdom and bombus and until next time gentlemen say goodbye. I think we did you cheerio adios