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Connected

294: Software, Firmware, Situation, Update

 

00:00:00   (upbeat music)

00:00:02   - Hello and welcome to Connected episode 294.

00:00:12   It's made possible this week by our sponsors,

00:00:14   Pingdom and Hover.

00:00:16   My name is Stephen Hackett

00:00:17   and I'm joined by Mr. Federico Vittucci.

00:00:19   - Hello, what's up?

00:00:21   - What's up?

00:00:22   How are you?

00:00:23   - I'm good, how are you?

00:00:25   - I'm good.

00:00:27   We're right in the curve of spring going into summer,

00:00:30   which is like a really nice time.

00:00:32   It's gonna be really hot soon. - This is taking too long.

00:00:32   - But today's very nice.

00:00:34   - Hi.

00:00:35   - Oh my God, it's so good lately.

00:00:36   - I'm here.

00:00:37   I can't accept a whole conversation to begin before.

00:00:40   - You used to be a pretty patient, polite--

00:00:43   - Not anymore.

00:00:44   - English boy. - Not anymore.

00:00:45   - What happened to you? - In this economy?

00:00:47   No, I'm not patient anymore.

00:00:49   - You gotta stop that joke.

00:00:50   You just gotta stop it.

00:00:51   - It's a good joke.

00:00:53   - I am not familiar with this joke.

00:00:55   What's the joke?

00:00:56   Don't worry about it. I'll explain it to you when you're older.

00:00:58   Okay. Yeah, I don't care. I've already forgotten about it.

00:01:02   Uh, follow up.

00:01:05   What are you doing?

00:01:07   I'm moving along.

00:01:07   Stop.

00:01:08   What do you have at this point in the show?

00:01:10   Myke, how are you? I'm trying to be nice.

00:01:12   I'm good.

00:01:12   You crashed my intro.

00:01:14   I'm impatient. We've established this.

00:01:16   Yeah, you're very feisty, but you doing okay?

00:01:18   Mm-hmm.

00:01:19   Good.

00:01:21   Follow up. Bridge had a software firmware situation update that came out, I think

00:01:28   basically right after we recorded last week. Federica, you have one of these, the Bridge

00:01:33   Keyboard Pro Plus Pro with trackpad. Did you do this update? And did it make it better?

00:01:39   Yeah, I did. And it did not make it better. So took the keyboard and I connected it to the iPad.

00:01:47   I downloaded the app from the App Store and it's really the update process is relatively easy

00:01:52   you just gotta follow a couple of on-screen instructions and the

00:01:57   the update took a while, like a couple of minutes, just sitting there and watching this progress bar

00:02:03   go and after that I thought well the app is saying that the keyboard is updated

00:02:12   so I should be ready to use it again.

00:02:15   And I did notice that maybe the pointer

00:02:19   is a little bit faster in moving on screen

00:02:25   and less jittery than before.

00:02:28   However, the update made it worse in a bunch of ways.

00:02:33   And I think Bridge is already working on an update,

00:02:38   on another, on a second update, so maybe we'll--

00:02:40   - You gotta update the update.

00:02:41   Maybe we'll talk about the update to the update in a future episode.

00:02:46   But basically this version, which I think I'm free to talk about because it's up on the App Store.

00:02:51   So context menus, like now when you right click, I get this weird flashing animation before the context menu comes up.

00:03:00   And I sent you guys a video. You basically see like the context menu pop up for a fraction of a second and then pop up again.

00:03:08   it flashes once on screen before you actually see the menu. It's very visually strange.

00:03:14   And also the second issue, which Jason Snell also mentioned in his review on Six Colors,

00:03:21   that when using the Bridge Pro+, and if you scroll to the bottom of a page, any page of

00:03:28   any application on your iPad, you basically see this phantom content appear at the bottom

00:03:34   of a page, that did not get resolved and in fact even after the update I now see this

00:03:41   phantom empty content at the bottom of Safari even.

00:03:45   So even if I go to Mac stories and I scroll to the bottom of the page, instead of the

00:03:50   footer I see this like huge empty area that's not supposed to happen.

00:03:56   So and it happens in notes, it happens in settings, it happens everywhere.

00:04:01   So real-time follow-up Federico if you will allow me to do some at this stage.

00:04:06   The bridge say that they will have another update later this week with huge improvements

00:04:13   to the menu and webpage quote-unquote bounce.

00:04:16   Okay, where is this from?

00:04:19   Twitter?

00:04:20   Yep, from the bridge Twitter account.

00:04:22   So I guess we'll be reporting again next week I suppose.

00:04:27   Okay, alright.

00:04:28   So, perfect! And really just using this again for 10 minutes made me realize how even if the update is perfect,

00:04:37   even if scrolling becomes super smooth and fluid and they get rid of these flashing animations and they get rid of the phantom content at the bottom of a page,

00:04:47   I've just gotten so used to the multi-touch gestures on the Magic Keyboard, I really struggle to see myself going back to the Bridge Keyboard

00:04:54   without the three finger swipe gesture to move between apps and use multitasking and

00:05:02   control multitasking from the trackpad. Just using the trackpad for scrolling is not enough

00:05:07   anymore for me, because the Magic keyboard, the Magic trackpad before and the Magic keyboard

00:05:12   now have spoiled me, and now I always want that kind of experience.

00:05:18   No one's going to switch from a Magic keyboard to the bridge keyboard? I don't think anyone

00:05:23   is even suggesting or expecting that, but it's more about if Bridge can make this product

00:05:31   better than it currently is within the constraints that they have available to them, it just

00:05:37   means that there is another player in the space, right? We have a cheaper product, which

00:05:46   some people may prefer in some other ways, and then there's a functionality they get

00:05:53   in return of not having the gestures or whatever, right?

00:05:55   But the problem is right now they can't get the basics right

00:06:01   for whatever reason.

00:06:02   I think I think a lot of the reasons is kind of just nothing

00:06:06   they could do, even if they wanted to, because of the fact

00:06:10   that they made this product before the Magic Keyboard and before iPadOS 13.4.

00:06:16   But it's a shame that it's still like new problems

00:06:21   rather than fixing the old ones.

00:06:23   Yeah. So it's unfortunate.

00:06:25   We'll see. We'll see how things progress with the updates.

00:06:28   But so far, still problematic.

00:06:31   And at least it's good to know that they are very much aware of the issues

00:06:35   and they're continuing to work on fixing them.

00:06:37   Up next, Microsoft has added

00:06:41   what 9to5Mac called Split View, but is actually multi-Windows support.

00:06:44   And also what MacRumor is called Split View, which makes me wonder if that's why

00:06:49   the 9to5Mac report said Split View.

00:06:51   So let me ask you what is worse.

00:06:54   Okay.

00:06:55   People who call multi-window split view or people who call Siri shortcuts?

00:07:00   People that call multi-window split view.

00:07:03   That's just completely wrong.

00:07:05   I gotta agree with you.

00:07:07   Well, but basically...

00:07:09   Okay, okay, okay. What's worse?

00:07:11   Okay, here we go.

00:07:12   People who call multi-window split view or people who call iPhone and iPad apps?

00:07:20   apps by their names but they also append .app to the end of the name. So like, people who

00:07:29   in 2020 say things like shortcuts.app.

00:07:34   I still think the split view one, because there are some of the .apps that you kind

00:07:38   of have to do sometimes, like mail.

00:07:41   But you don't have to say .app.

00:07:44   Or music.

00:07:45   You don't have to say...

00:07:46   Or Apple Notes.

00:07:47   You don't have to say that.

00:07:48   It's not Apple Notes.

00:07:49   You can say Apple Notes.

00:07:50   Because you don't have to say apple-notes.app.

00:07:52   Yeah, I mean, again, it's better to say apple-mail than to say mail.app, but I still think it's

00:07:59   worse to say splitview.

00:08:01   Because like, all of these, the things that you're mentioning, they're just like adaptations

00:08:06   of the phrase or how things used to be called.

00:08:10   But you're right, this isn't splitview.

00:08:13   This is multi-window.

00:08:15   Splitview only existed in one application and that was Safari, but now they do multi-window,

00:08:19   right? They don't do that split view thing anymore. It is multi-window.

00:08:25   And again, it's like, if Word was still one application and they cut it down the middle

00:08:31   inside of Word, then maybe you'd call it split view, because they've created their own view

00:08:36   inside of their application. But it's not that. It is multi-window support. It's two

00:08:40   distinct windows of Word.

00:08:45   Also because you can have multiple windows without necessarily using them in split view.

00:08:49   You can have multiple word windows of multiple other apps, right?

00:08:53   You could have two word and two notes pairings.

00:08:56   But anyway, semantics aside, this can like coupled together

00:09:01   with information from Craig Federicchi's own mouth on App Stories,

00:09:07   which congratulations again for having Craig on the show.

00:09:10   People need to go listen to episode 162 of App Stories where Federico

00:09:14   interviewed Craig Federicchi about the iPad OS cursor support stuff, primarily.

00:09:19   That was kind of the primary part of the discussion.

00:09:21   But Craig mentioned during the episode about the fact that later on this year,

00:09:26   kind of around the fall, that Microsoft would be implementing full trackpad support.

00:09:31   And I get that like for some applications that were doing their own text rendering

00:09:36   for legitimate reasons, they're going to need time.

00:09:39   But it's good to hear that Word is doing this.

00:09:42   All of these features made me think to myself, I haven't done this yet,

00:09:47   but I'm planning it. What is Word's collaboration like now?

00:09:50   The only reason we use Google Docs is because it has live real-time

00:09:56   collaboration, but it doesn't appear that Google is really doing anything.

00:10:02   Right? Like, you know, and even if they are working on both

00:10:08   Trackpad support and multi-window, which I'm sure that they maybe are somewhere,

00:10:15   they're not being open about it, right?

00:10:17   Like Microsoft is at least allowing it to be communicated

00:10:20   or communicating themselves that they are implementing these features.

00:10:24   So if words collaboration stuff is good now

00:10:27   and a lot of people have told me that it is, including the people in the chat

00:10:31   right now saying that there is a lot of that, the features are basically the same.

00:10:36   I think it might be worth looking into again, because I really want both multi

00:10:40   window and trackpad support in the application that I put show notes

00:10:46   together in and maybe word is that app I don't know word.app

00:10:52   m$word.app that's how it's referred to well let us know that goes if you

00:11:01   find somebody take you up on that Federico you have big news in the audio

00:11:04   Not really, not really big news. News, but not necessarily big. Plex Amp, we mentioned

00:11:13   this before, it's the new music utility by the Plex folks, and it's a dedicated music

00:11:19   player for your Plex library. I got very excited when I saw in the changelog for this week's

00:11:26   update to Plex Amp on iOS that they supported native DSD playback, and DSD is one of the

00:11:33   high-resolution lossless file formats that I use for some of the albums in my

00:11:39   music library. Most of them are in the FLAC format, but some of them are in DSD.

00:11:44   I was very excited because, as we talked about before, my current solution for

00:11:49   streaming high-resolution music and using my Sony Walkman as an external

00:11:54   USB DAC for the iPad Pro is to use the beautiful and sometimes misunderstood

00:12:00   Neutron music player for iPhone and iPad. There's an entire episode of Connected

00:12:06   about this app that I, you know, you should go listen to if you if you miss

00:12:09   that segment. Still, I was very excited. I thought, "Oh, okay, finally I have a good

00:12:15   looking, you know, very visually attractive utility to listen to music in

00:12:20   its native file format while outputting that audio via USB to my external

00:12:27   Sadly, DSD playback is only on device, so yes, you can listen to DSD and it will not transcode

00:12:37   DSD to PCM, but it only happens on device. So if you're using the iPhone or iPad app, you will see

00:12:44   DSD, but as soon as you connect a USB DAC, it goes back, as we talked about before, it downsamples

00:12:53   everything to 48 kilohertz. And also this is limited to DSD, so if you have

00:12:58   anything higher than 48 kilohertz in your music library, if you have FLAC files

00:13:04   of say 24-bit with 96 kilohertz bitrate, they will still get down sampled to 48

00:13:11   because that's just what Plex does. So literally the only thing they've done is

00:13:15   add in-app support for streaming DSD files.

00:13:21   So yeah, Neutron is still king when it comes to taking your high-resolution

00:13:27   music, leaving it untouched, and allowing you to output that music from an iPhone

00:13:34   or an iPad to an external DAC via Lightning or USB-C. So, Neutron... I mean, and

00:13:44   after some visual customizations, you know, because as we talked about before,

00:13:48   for. Neutron has a lot of settings. After a bunch of customizations, it is passable.

00:13:53   It's a passable, you know, it's not... It doesn't make me want to throw my iPad out

00:14:01   of the window anymore, is what I'm trying to say.

00:14:05   Also, Neutron gets frequent updates, not in the visual department, in the technical department,

00:14:12   but at least it's very frequently updated. So, shout out to the developer for working

00:14:16   on it continuously.

00:14:18   I saw something interesting.

00:14:20   I saw this being shared on Twitter today.

00:14:22   It was a Reddit post, and I've confirmed it myself

00:14:25   by looking at the show notes.

00:14:26   And not the show notes, the update notes.

00:14:29   Everything's a show note to me, you know?

00:14:32   Everything's a show, and they're all the notes.

00:14:34   Procreate, the latest update for Procreate,

00:14:37   allows for 2020 iPad Pro models to enable

00:14:41   more layers in a project.

00:14:43   Ah, damn it, now I got an update.

00:14:46   The iPad or Procreate?

00:14:48   I gotta update my iPad only because of this feature.

00:14:52   You are making a joke, but it's an interesting point that one of two things have happened.

00:14:59   Like either A, you're able to or B, Procreate has found a way to enable features for iPads that have more RAM in them.

00:15:07   And that's intriguing.

00:15:10   They don't really need to find a way.

00:15:13   But yes, they have made this decision.

00:15:17   And it makes sense, right?

00:15:19   All iPads in 2020 have two extra gigs of RAM.

00:15:24   And I think it would be trickier for them to say,

00:15:29   you can have this feature, but only

00:15:31   if you have this specific model of the 2018 iPad Pro.

00:15:35   It could potentially be done in a very inelegant way by--

00:15:41   They might struggle with AppReview for that though.

00:15:43   They might struggle with AppReview.

00:15:45   It could be technically possible, I guess,

00:15:47   to see which iPad model you have.

00:15:49   And if they see the one terabyte storage,

00:15:52   they could unlock certain functionalities.

00:15:54   But I'm not sure how that would go with AppReview.

00:15:57   So it makes sense to restrict that feature to the 2020 iPad

00:16:02   Pros.

00:16:02   I really don't think--

00:16:05   actually, no.

00:16:06   I want to be optimistic and hope that we do not

00:16:09   see any more of this, especially from Apple, but I may be wrong. And maybe if there's a

00:16:16   new, you know, if Apple makes Xcode or Final Cut or Logic or whatever for iPad and they

00:16:21   say some of these features are for the 2020 iPad Pro only, at that point I will consider

00:16:26   upgrading. No, you will upgrade. You won't consider. We all know you and that's fine

00:16:30   because that would make sense at that point because there would be things you wouldn't

00:16:32   be able to test. No, because I don't use Logic, I don't use Final Cut, I don't want to be

00:16:36   a YouTuber and I don't want to edit my podcasts.

00:16:38   So...

00:16:39   What about Xcode though?

00:16:41   I'm not a developer.

00:16:42   You're still?

00:16:42   I'm not a programmer.

00:16:45   So...

00:16:45   What about shortcuts?

00:16:47   Folders for one, if you have 2020 iPad Pro, you can have folders.

00:16:51   First of all, I think you mean Siri shortcuts.

00:16:54   And if Siri shortcuts gets exclusive features on the 2020 iPad Pro, then yes, I will get a new one.

00:17:01   I am still standing by the idea that I'm not alone in thinking, but I believe that all of the 2020

00:17:10   iPad Pros got the same RAM amount for a reason, and I think it is a reason of an application or

00:17:18   applications upcoming that require it. So we will see, but I think that's the case.

00:17:28   But this is just showing that it's parts things can be done. So if you have a 2020 iPad and you

00:17:35   use Procreate, then congratulations. We wanted to let people know that we have launched a Discord

00:17:42   for Relay FM members. This is part of a larger emphasis on membership moving forward. You know,

00:17:49   the world is a uncertain place right now and all businesses, including ours, have been affected.

00:17:55   and we are really going to focus on producing more content for our members,

00:18:00   making that a better and more fun experience.

00:18:03   So if you go to relay.fm/ford, you can read something Myke and I wrote about this.

00:18:08   If you're already a member, it's really easy to join the Discord.

00:18:12   And if you're not a member, I would recommend signing up at relay.fm/membership,

00:18:17   and you'll get directions on how to join the Discord,

00:18:19   how to get access to all the other perks.

00:18:20   We're having a lot of fun.

00:18:22   We launched it last week and it's been a really great few days getting to know a bunch of

00:18:27   new people in the Discord.

00:18:29   Yep, over a thousand people in there already, which is wild.

00:18:32   So if you are an existing member, I know we don't have all of our members in here, if

00:18:36   you're an existing member you can sign up or you can become a member.

00:18:40   There's a link in the very top of our show notes in your podcast app of choice.

00:18:44   If you click on that you will be able to become a Real

00:18:44   If you click on that, you will be able to become a Real

00:19:03   going to give you more in return. The emphasis is not like it's staying as it was before

00:19:09   and we want to just get you to become a member if you hadn't been one. We're going to be

00:19:13   spending a lot of time, probably over the next six months, adding more and more. So

00:19:17   we spoke about Backstage, which is our members only behind the scenes podcast which teaches

00:19:22   you how to make a podcast of your own. That's one. And now the second thing is the Relay

00:19:27   FM Members Discord. And we're working on some exciting stuff that we're hoping to

00:19:33   launch sometime in the summer maybe or before the end of the year we're not sure but we're

00:19:39   working on a lot of stuff that we want to be able to bring to you to make your support

00:19:45   in us even more worth your while and time thank you for your sign up and we'll see you

00:19:49   in the discord can i tell you all about a struggle that i've been having with my iphone

00:19:54   did you drop it again no you sure so i texted you all this but i wanted to share it on the

00:19:59   the show because it's really odd and I'm curious if any other people are having this experience.

00:20:03   So the iPhone 11 Pro it's on this like public release of iOS, I guess 13 point, whatever

00:20:11   what's current I don't even know 13 point whatever not the 13.5 beta is what I'm saying

00:20:17   about every fifth or sixth unlock the color temperature of the screen is like green tinted.

00:20:24   very strange. And then it clears up after a few seconds, or even sometimes longer, I've

00:20:30   had to hang out for like 30 seconds and then all of a sudden it's like clip back to my

00:20:34   normal color temperature. I tried a couple of things. I tried turning off true tone for

00:20:40   a while that didn't make any change. I tried turning off the the one at nighttime the night

00:20:48   site. What is it called? Night shift night shift, true tone and night shift I've had

00:20:53   on and off and various combinations. I can't seem to make this go away. It's very strange.

00:21:00   I'm afraid that my phone is slowly dying or it is going to be green permanently one of

00:21:04   these times. But that's that's kind of where I am with my iPhone life.

00:21:09   Honestly, have you dropped this phone?

00:21:13   Not recently.

00:21:14   Because I'm wondering if like something's gotten detached somewhere.

00:21:17   Someone in the discord has has the same thing. Oh, really? Someone in the discord has the

00:21:21   the same thing yes not just me all right well I guess you're part of a club now

00:21:28   congratulations the the green tent Club huh the GTC I don't know if you should

00:21:34   really be that proud of it is to brand it but like I'm pleased for you both of

00:21:39   you and Zach for having this issue that's where the class-action lawsuit

00:21:43   against Apple you need a brand Oh so people blog about you and then right

00:21:47   Should we call that tent gate?

00:21:50   Tent gate.

00:21:51   Green gate.

00:21:52   Green gate?

00:21:53   Green gate.

00:21:54   Green gate.

00:21:55   I already have one gate to my name, I don't need a second.

00:21:58   I can't, I mean I have no answer for you.

00:22:01   It's weird though.

00:22:02   I'm assuming it's because you drop your phone all the time and you don't have it in a case.

00:22:07   I've dropped this phone maybe twice.

00:22:11   Both times in a case.

00:22:12   And not very far.

00:22:13   Like there's no damage to the phone.

00:22:15   there's a little nick in the top corner of the leather case that's it. I don't

00:22:18   remember, remind me is this the same 11 Pro that you got last year? Have you

00:22:24   replaced this one? I have not, this phone has survived. Wow.

00:22:28   Mm-hmm. Look at that. Mm-hmm. Very proud of you. It's uh it's pretty good. It's a

00:22:33   good, it's a good run. I feel better that other people are saying that they've

00:22:38   seen this so I'm just gonna keep an eye on it.

00:22:41   Green Gate. Did you file a radar? It's a lot of work. If you remember last time we

00:22:49   started a series as we run up to WWDC what I like now is knowing that our show

00:22:57   WWDC week is episode 300 I now know every time we start the show how many

00:23:02   weeks we are away so 294 means six more so and now we're gonna be doing

00:23:08   another Anticipating WWDC, Federico came up with the topic this time, which is that every

00:23:13   year Apple seems to do something that we like, like they do it and like "oh I'm so pleased

00:23:20   you did this" but we did not expect them to do so. The always used example of this is

00:23:26   third party keyboards, that's the easiest one that everyone can appreciate. It's like

00:23:30   "wow, like you did this but no one expects it" or SF symbols, so like the symbol thing,

00:23:37   So basically developers have Glist that they can choose from to put in their applications.

00:23:42   It's like, this is great, but never expect you to do that.

00:23:44   Or maybe even external storage via USB for iPad, or maybe, I don't know if I'm going

00:23:50   to be taking somebody's pics here, but like third party watch faces would be one, right?

00:23:54   We all want them, but don't expect Apple to do them.

00:23:57   So we wanted to talk about, we all compiled some lists of things that we feel would fall

00:24:02   into this category.

00:24:03   This is not a list of predictions because we consider these things unlikely.

00:24:11   I was considering that potentially this is a training ground for the Rikis because these

00:24:16   are a bunch of things that we all want to see but think they won't do.

00:24:21   So who knows, maybe one of these could end up becoming our Riki picks as we lead up to

00:24:27   WWDC.

00:24:28   So Federico, as the originator of the Anticipating WWDC topic today, would you like to go first?

00:24:36   My criteria for considering these potential features was, what would be sort of crazy

00:24:44   or unexpected or so surprising on iOS and iPadOS at this point that they might just

00:24:53   do it because we could never see it happen.

00:24:57   So my first one is actually something that I do not personally want, and I think it would

00:25:03   be kind of weird to have, but I could also make the case for it.

00:25:11   And that would be an option in settings on iPad to completely disable drag and drop for

00:25:18   multitasking.

00:25:20   So my idea would be that Apple is not ready to move away from the current multitasking

00:25:27   system on iPadOS. I would be very surprised if we get a major iPadOS redesign in terms

00:25:34   of managing Windows and managing Split View and SlideOver this year. That would be very

00:25:41   welcome, I just think they're not ready for it yet. However, I think Apple is very much

00:25:47   aware of the challenges and the difficulties that a lot of people have

00:25:51   with using multitasking with the current drag-and-drop based system. And you know

00:25:57   we've seen the articles from John Gruber a while back at a really solid

00:26:02   collection of link posts and articles about all the challenges with drag and

00:26:08   drop and picking up icons and placing them on screen. A lot of people don't

00:26:12   like the current system. And so I could see Apple make a global setting that

00:26:16   says disable drag and drop for multitasking, only use drag and drop for content. And if

00:26:21   they do that, they could implement something like context menus to replace the drag and

00:26:27   drop infused multitasking system. So, a setting to disable drag and drop entirely for multitasking,

00:26:35   so that you no longer have, or can, pick up icons to manage split view and slide over.

00:26:42   I have a drag and drop related question I would like to enter into the conversation

00:26:46   at this point. How often do you two use drag and drop in general on the iPad?

00:26:53   For what? For anything?

00:26:55   Never.

00:26:56   For content?

00:26:57   Yeah.

00:26:58   I do occasionally.

00:27:00   Because I want to say, just at this stage in the conversation.

00:27:04   I do all the time for like, whenever I want to share a photo or screenshot and I'm using

00:27:08   the iPad and I want to share that like in messages. I use drag and drop. I also use

00:27:14   it to attach photos to tweets and images to tweets because you can drag and drop in Twitter.

00:27:22   And I guess I use it for files and mail, like when I'm sending a message and it needs an

00:27:26   attachment I usually drag it from files or photos. But yeah, that's all I do.

00:27:33   So I feel like drag and drop gets in my way more than I use it, like for content.

00:27:43   Maybe they could disable drag and drop for content but leave it for multi-dancing.

00:27:46   I would prefer that.

00:27:47   Maybe I have my prediction backward.

00:27:49   Well, it could be one of the two, right?

00:27:51   They could just away to the...

00:27:53   Yeah, I can see...

00:27:54   Because I have had this problem much, much more with 13.4.

00:28:01   if I'm using a mouse or a trackpad, sometimes I want to say perform a gesture

00:28:06   so I click and try and drag something and it tries to drag and drop it. Right?

00:28:11   Or like if you're trying to select text with the old little blue guys, you know

00:28:20   like when you're dragging it around, if an application doesn't have the new

00:28:23   track cursor support so you have to like double click and move the

00:28:26   little selectors, I'm finding myself accidentally grabbing and dragging the text more than I

00:28:32   would want. So at the moment I am getting more incorrect drag and drop than I am use

00:28:39   out of drag and drop when I honestly forget that it's there a lot of the time. Like there

00:28:45   are a lot of times where like I'm adding attachments to a mail message and I realize I've added

00:28:52   two attachments via the document picker and it's like, "Oh yeah, I could have drag and

00:28:56   drop that. Too late now because I never think to do it. And I feel like it's because I drag

00:29:05   and drop more on the Mac because it's like a windowing based system. So there's like

00:29:09   always stuff all over the place. Right. So it's easy for me to get to a finder window

00:29:13   because it's usually a finder window snuck behind something else. So I remember to do

00:29:18   it. But on iOS, I'm so frequently in one app at a time. I kind of just get locked into

00:29:24   the thinking of like I'm working in this one application so I forget to drag and drop.

00:29:29   Like I know it's there, I know how to do it, but I forget it and so I don't use it very

00:29:33   often even though I know it's useful, right?

00:29:37   So for me, whilst I appreciate drag and drop as a thing and it has a lot of use and maybe

00:29:44   if like, and I'm not just making a joke now, if there was a shelf, Federico's shelf idea

00:29:50   I was about to say that.

00:29:51   Then I would be more...

00:29:53   You would use it a lot more if you had a shelf.

00:29:55   Genuinely, if there was a bucket where I could just drag and drop stuff from all the time,

00:30:01   like Finder, really, like Finder kind of is that in a lot of ways for files and all kinds of stuff.

00:30:07   But if there was something that I was able to drag and drop all kinds of stuff in out of all the time

00:30:11   that was built into the system and not a third-party application,

00:30:14   because again, that's still the main problem,

00:30:16   and I would maybe use it more.

00:30:18   But at the moment I find myself being more frustrated with drag and drop when I don't want it

00:30:25   than getting use out of it when I do.

00:30:28   That was the side I wanted to have on drag and drop.

00:30:31   Yeah, so do you want to do this round robin style? Because I have a bunch of things to mention.

00:30:35   No, do your list. Do your list.

00:30:37   Okay, so my next pick is actually a shelf or a clipboard manager.

00:30:42   They would essentially, more like, I'm really interested to see Apple actually make a clipboard

00:30:48   manager to sort of defy conventions and be like, "Yeah, you can totally make a clipboard

00:30:54   manager on iPadOS."

00:30:56   That would require, of course, new, well, it could go two ways, I guess.

00:31:02   They could have actual background APIs to monitor system stuff in the background all

00:31:07   the time as it's possible on the Mac.

00:31:09   it could be a private thing that it's a private API that only Apple can use.

00:31:13   In any case, I think a clipboard manager

00:31:16   would be really useful to have. It's one of the features that I find myself

00:31:19   appreciating about the Mac whenever I use my Mac Mini and

00:31:23   really missing an iPadOS despite some of the alternatives that exist on the platform.

00:31:28   But they're just not as good as an actual clipboard manager on the Mac.

00:31:32   You know, being able to copy and find everything that you copied later.

00:31:37   There are clipboard managers on iPad and iPhone, but they usually require you to manually

00:31:42   Save stuff and remember to save the things that you copy either from a widget or from an extension or from a shortcut

00:31:50   so an actual clipboard manager or

00:31:53   clipboard manager APIs would be really what I would love a board manager on iPad OS like I really really would

00:32:00   Yeah, yeah, especially if they do widgets on the home screen imagine

00:32:05   Oh, that would be so sweet.

00:32:06   Oh, dude.

00:32:07   That would be so sweet.

00:32:08   That would be awesome.

00:32:10   Next one, and this is--

00:32:13   some people may say, oh, no, they're

00:32:14   never going to do that, but hear me out.

00:32:16   The ability to run Swift code--

00:32:18   so Swift inside shortcuts.

00:32:21   And I can imagine to have, like, a little run Swift action

00:32:27   that is sandboxed to shortcuts,

00:32:30   and that would be kind of similar to how there's a precedent

00:32:33   precedent for this. In fact, you can run JavaScript in shortcuts, but it's limited

00:32:38   to Safari. So there's an action called "run JavaScript code"

00:32:43   that allows you to run arbitrary JavaScript in Safari when using a

00:32:48   shortcut in the sharesheet as an extension in Safari. And it would be

00:32:52   pretty awesome to compensate for some of the more advanced features that

00:32:57   shortcuts is missing, like string manipulation or dealing with lists or

00:33:02   or just more advanced concepts and ideas

00:33:06   and features that shortcuts doesn't have,

00:33:09   you could have a little Swift action

00:33:11   that if you know what you're doing,

00:33:12   you can put in Swift code and you can read variables

00:33:15   from preceding actions and you can output data

00:33:18   as a variable to the following action.

00:33:20   So run Swift inside shortcuts.

00:33:22   What a crazy concept.

00:33:24   That would be actually pretty sweet.

00:33:26   Next on my list, and this is kind of crazy,

00:33:30   they're probably never gonna do it,

00:33:31   but if they do it, you heard it here first, I guess.

00:33:34   Markdown support in Apple Notes.

00:33:36   I would really love to have Markdown in Notes

00:33:41   in a way that I don't wanna see raw Markdown syntax in Notes,

00:33:46   but I wanna be able to input Markdown

00:33:49   and have it transform in real time into rich text.

00:33:53   I want that, and I also want the ability to export a note

00:33:57   from rich text to Markdown.

00:34:00   Apple is familiar with Markdown. They support Markdown, I believe, in Swift Playgrounds on the Mac or

00:34:05   in Xcode on the Mac. In one of those two places, they do support Markdown. So they are aware of what Markdown is.

00:34:12   I mean, who isn't?

00:34:14   So I would love to have Markdown as an input option in Notes. There's a very... well, right now

00:34:21   it's not really Markdown, but in Apple Notes if you enter an asterisk and you leave a space it automatically becomes a list.

00:34:29   sort of like in Markdown, and I'm talking about that kind of real-time transformation, right? So imagine entering

00:34:35   sort of like, I know that a lot of people don't like it, but the new visual editor in Slack, how if you enter

00:34:43   the right syntax

00:34:45   the format changes in real time, so italics and bold text and that kind of stuff,

00:34:50   I would love to have something similar in Notes.

00:34:52   Finally, and

00:34:55   and this is kind of a weird one, which is, you know, why I wanted to do this segment.

00:35:00   The ability to customize the icons that you see in the iPhone status bar.

00:35:08   So here's my thinking for this.

00:35:10   Wait, what?

00:35:11   The what?

00:35:11   So you know the status bar on the iPhone?

00:35:14   Oh, what? Like the top, the black bar at the top?

00:35:16   Yeah, the little ears.

00:35:19   Okay, the varied bar. The what used to always be black.

00:35:22   That's why I think of it as black. It's not anymore, but yeah.

00:35:25   Is the name not the status bar?

00:35:26   But it misses it.

00:35:27   Yeah, but I just didn't remember that name.

00:35:29   Yeah, okay.

00:35:30   Do you remember in like iOS 6 it would get tinted?

00:35:33   So like you'd be in like Twitter and the status bar would be tinted blue?

00:35:37   Maybe.

00:35:38   Oh my god, that was that was high of six, right?

00:35:41   Yeah, that was a weird.

00:35:43   That was weird.

00:35:44   iOS 6 was weird.

00:35:46   It really was.

00:35:47   It was really weird.

00:35:48   No, don't you have like fond memories of iOS?

00:35:52   I found an article on I'm more about it. I'm going to put it in the show notes.

00:35:57   Although imagine being Scott Forsall, right? And knowing, getting the feeling that maybe

00:36:03   you're on your way out at Apple and just living with the bang of a weird release. That's,

00:36:11   you know, fine. You want to, you want me out of Apple?

00:36:14   I don't think he knew he was on his way out, did he? Oh yeah. I guess cause there's, there's

00:36:19   There's like a lot of conjecture about that point, right?

00:36:22   That like, Apple Maps was like the last nail in the coffin kind of thing.

00:36:27   Yeah, yeah.

00:36:28   You know, he had already like spilled coffee on Tim accidentally before that.

00:36:31   Johnny had had enough.

00:36:32   That's right.

00:36:33   Parked in his parking spot.

00:36:35   iOS 6 was a weird really...

00:36:37   Oh man, remember reminders in iOS 6?

00:36:40   Uh huh.

00:36:41   Oh wow.

00:36:42   Yeah.

00:36:43   Notes still has the paper texture.

00:36:44   Yeah, yeah.

00:36:45   Oh wow.

00:36:46   And podcasts?

00:36:47   Okay, moving on.

00:36:48   Moving on.

00:36:49   Okay, anyway, so here's my thinking.

00:36:52   If the notch is getting smaller in the iPhone 12, that likely means more space in the status

00:36:59   bar.

00:37:01   Now, more space, you could say, well, that gives Apple an opportunity to fit even more

00:37:07   icons in there.

00:37:08   Like if you have more space, now finally, for example, maybe your carrier information,

00:37:14   you know, the cellular carrier thing, could always be in there.

00:37:19   Or maybe the VPN icon, which right now you only see by swiping down and opening Control

00:37:25   Center, which gives you like the expanded double row for the status bar, maybe the VPN

00:37:30   icon could go in there.

00:37:31   But as I was thinking about this, I realized if they make it bigger, they probably don't

00:37:36   want to stuff it full of icons like on Android.

00:37:40   So why not give users the opportunity to customize the status bar, much like they can customize

00:37:47   the controls for Control Center in Settings, but imagine that for the status bar?

00:37:52   Because maybe I never want to have the battery in there, or maybe I don't care about the

00:37:56   VPN icon, but maybe you do care about the VPN icon, and you would rather have that,

00:38:01   the VPN information, than say how many bars of 4G you have.

00:38:06   So for, I mean, the status bar has been a fixed element, untouched visual element, since

00:38:12   the iPhone's inception over 10 years ago.

00:38:15   Maybe that could also become a customizable thing, just like Control Center.

00:38:19   Maybe, maybe, it could have a mix of elements that you cannot remove, and others that you

00:38:25   can.

00:38:26   Like the Mac.

00:38:27   Like the Mac.

00:38:29   Or like Control Center, again.

00:38:30   Some elements you cannot remove from Control Center, but others you can customize.

00:38:34   So maybe if the status bar gets larger and you have more room for icons, maybe Apple

00:38:39   doesn't want to go with the obvious solution, which is, "Let's just put more stuff in there."

00:38:44   Maybe they're going to take that as an opportunity to say, "Well, I guess we could give users

00:38:49   the choice to customize what they see."

00:38:51   So I don't know.

00:38:52   It would be a little strange, but it would be useful, I think.

00:38:55   It would be cool.

00:38:56   Especially on the iPad, you could take all the things you could put in there.

00:38:59   It would be awesome.

00:39:00   Yeah.

00:39:01   I mean, the iPad right now is basically useless.

00:39:03   Wait, do you mean in general?

00:39:07   The status bar on the iPad, it's so like, you got the time and like such...

00:39:12   I like the date. I like that the date's in there.

00:39:15   I like the date.

00:39:16   That's nice.

00:39:17   That's nice. But it's, you know, you could use some additional information in there.

00:39:21   I don't know. You know what I would love? A scrolling ticker of what music is playing.

00:39:28   Music, not stocks. What was the name of that thing that people used to leave on their desktops

00:39:35   for music?

00:39:36   iTunes.

00:39:37   And you could like, no. It was like this third party widget.

00:39:41   Oh.

00:39:42   Bowtie? Or something like that? What was the name, Steven?

00:39:47   Is it Bowtie?

00:39:48   You should...

00:39:49   It is Bowtie.

00:39:50   Is it Bowtie?

00:39:51   How did you pull that out of your memory? Wow.

00:39:54   would be the kind of widget that if they do homescreen widgets in IPRS 14 I would love to

00:39:59   have something like that. This bowtie website oh there is nothing that is dating it more than the

00:40:04   red curtains. Or the audio support. Oh man. Oh that yeah maybe the audio but like the red curtains

00:40:11   right it's like front row or like photo booth you know like. Oh man bowtie so many memories and you

00:40:18   can make themes for bowtie and there were so many custom themes around like the super minimal themes

00:40:23   or the super skeuomorphic themes. Yeah, those were the times.

00:40:28   I have a list. It's not as big as Federico's list, but it's a list.

00:40:32   System-wide customizable keyboard shortcuts on iPadOS.

00:40:37   So I can make my own shortcuts. So like if I want to play or pause music, I can do that.

00:40:43   If I want to run a Siri shortcut, I could do that with just a keyboard shortcut.

00:40:50   Apple's so big on keyboards now, then give me the shortcuts. I want them. I want the shortcuts.

00:40:55   My next one, I don't think I want this. I don't think it will happen.

00:41:03   That's the exact spirit of this segment. Go on.

00:41:08   But what about dashboard for iPadOS?

00:41:11   There you go.

00:41:12   If there's gonna be widgets, then, you know, maybe I want to bring up the widgets anywhere

00:41:20   and not have to go back to the home screen, you know, I could just bring up some,

00:41:24   maybe I could go over to the right left hand side, you know, like do a little slide over from the

00:41:29   left hand side, there's my dashboard of widgets, you know. I mean, that's basically what we have

00:41:33   on the phone. Yep. It's just, just full screen. You mean the grand return of the dashboard?

00:41:39   Can you imagine like if maybe they renamed the home screen dashboard like

00:41:44   that feels like a very helpful thing to do.

00:41:46   This is the kind of thing that you say now. Yeah, we forget about it.

00:41:51   They eventually rename it at WWDC and we all scrambled to find the point where Myke said

00:41:57   dashboard. But like these are also like the things that pop into my head and I say them

00:42:03   because if I'm right, I look like an oracle. But if I'm wrong, no one, no one remembers

00:42:09   because nobody cares. But if they call the home screen the dashboard then Myke looks like a genius.

00:42:14   Another one is the return of the magnifier for text selection on iPadOS.

00:42:20   Honestly this is just a bug fix.

00:42:22   I mean we will all agree at this point that that's what it is but it's like one of those things where

00:42:29   it's like I don't think they would do this but it would be really good if they did it and everyone

00:42:34   would be happy. I will throw this one out there. I left my usual one out, which I

00:42:39   maybe I'll mention it, I left it out, but true proper rich tech support, but it's

00:42:43   not actually on my list I left it out. But the one other one that I will always

00:42:46   keep asking for forever is proper handling of audio on iPadOS. So I can

00:42:52   record in one application and have a video, an audio call in another

00:42:56   application, which will enable me to be able to actually record podcasts the way

00:43:00   that I want on my iPad, and then left turn, shortcuts for the Mac.

00:43:06   Of course, of course. If there was a time when Apple engineers would understand the

00:43:13   limitations of the current audio system, you would think that during a lockdown, with everybody

00:43:19   doing video and audio calls, they would probably get the sense of why the system needs to be

00:43:24   redone.

00:43:25   Yep. I think a lot of this stuff, like the fact that, you know, if you're on a video

00:43:29   call and you go home, it cuts your video off. So I saw somewhere on Twitter or Reddit, someone

00:43:37   said, and I was not able to confirm this, that in the 13.5 beta, I've seen this too,

00:43:43   yeah, this is no longer the case, but I've been too lazy to confirm this because it was

00:43:48   late at night when I saw it and I didn't want to go to the kitchen and grab my iPad. Do

00:43:52   you want me to FaceTime you? I'll just FaceTime you real quick. I don't have my, well, I do.

00:43:57   Alright, let me FaceTime you.

00:43:59   Okay.

00:44:00   Roll time follow up.

00:44:01   I wished I had some more things to say at this point that would enable for this to be

00:44:06   like a more seamless transition while you two are arranging your FaceTime call, but

00:44:11   I don't have anything else on the list.

00:44:13   But here's the problem though.

00:44:15   I think FaceTime was already whitelisted for this.

00:44:18   Mmm, so we can try something else.

00:44:19   Try Zoom or Slack or...

00:44:21   I don't have Zoom on my iPad.

00:44:24   Slack doesn't do video calls, does it?

00:44:26   Slack doesn't do video.

00:44:27   Oh, not on iOS it doesn't.

00:44:29   And we are already on Skype.

00:44:31   You could use Discord.

00:44:32   Here, Federico, I will send you a Zoom link real quick.

00:44:36   It's going to be great.

00:44:38   Oh my god.

00:44:39   We're doing this on the show.

00:44:40   I think what this person said something, again, I wish we both saved this tweet now, that

00:44:46   they said it was on a web browser anyway, so maybe that is of use to you.

00:44:50   Alright, start a meeting.

00:44:52   I'm just in a meeting by myself.

00:44:53   Here we go.

00:44:55   I'm currently on the iPad OS 13.5 public beta, and one of my long-standing iPad OS gripes,

00:45:01   the front camera turning off when sliding over into split screen with another application

00:45:07   using the camera in Safari is now gone. Is this a bug or a feature? This is from MajorK.

00:45:12   This is a lot of wrong terminology going on. Sliding over to split screen means a bunch

00:45:17   of different things.

00:45:18   Well yeah, and we've already established that nobody knows any of this stuff.

00:45:22   We are gonna test this right now. Okay, Steven sent me a link, I tapped on it. So, again,

00:45:30   Apple, please... Oh my god. Safari cannot open the page because the address is invalid.

00:45:36   This is an error that I just saw in desktop class Safari on my iPad Pro. And now it just

00:45:45   launched the App Store.

00:45:47   To download Zoom?

00:45:48   To download Zoom. It does nothing.

00:45:49   - Download Zoom, it does nothing. - If you copy and paste it, it should work.

00:45:54   - Rather than clicking the link. - No, it gives me the same error.

00:45:57   - Really? Wow. Well, we tried.

00:46:00   - No, we need to do this. - No, we need to do this now.

00:46:03   There has to be a way. There's gotta be an app of some--

00:46:06   Oh no, it has to be in Safari, right? We've already established this.

00:46:08   Does it have to-- I mean, I can download Zoom on the iPad.

00:46:11   Well, the guy said Safari.

00:46:14   What was the guy using, though?

00:46:16   So I don't know.

00:46:17   Seriously, you cannot use Zoom in Safari on the iPad?

00:46:21   I don't know.

00:46:22   I will read you the tweet again, Federico.

00:46:24   I'm currently on the iPad OS 13.5 public beta

00:46:27   and one of my longstanding iPad OS gripes, which is the front camera turning off

00:46:31   when sliding over or split screen of another application

00:46:34   when using the camera in Safari is now gone.

00:46:37   Is this a bug or feature?

00:46:40   OK, so I'm just going to try and join

00:46:43   with the Zoom app, Steven.

00:46:46   Okay.

00:46:46   It says "Waiting."

00:46:48   "This meeting is not valid."

00:46:50   Oh.

00:46:51   Steven, what are you doing?

00:46:52   Oh, sorry. I closed it because it didn't work.

00:46:54   I knew it was your fault!

00:46:55   Alright, hang on. Let me add you again.

00:46:56   Maybe that's why it wasn't working, Safari.

00:46:59   You're doing your crazy shenanigans over there.

00:47:01   If you want to support this high-quality content,

00:47:02   become a relay FM member today.

00:47:04   As Myke is right. As always.

00:47:06   It's a hashtag.

00:47:07   Alright, I sent you another link. I'm in Zoom.

00:47:10   Okay. I'm gonna try this again.

00:47:13   Okay.

00:47:13   Please enter your name.

00:47:15   So I call myself... Federico?

00:47:19   teaching. Continue.

00:47:22   I agree. Change

00:47:25   virtual background. Nah, I want to see where you are.

00:47:28   I'm in my bedroom, Steven. So am I.

00:47:31   Okay. I've admitted you to the room. This is the microphone.

00:47:35   Hi. Hey, I see you!

00:47:39   Hi. What's up? Hi. So

00:47:43   To hear others, please join audio.

00:47:45   Yeah, we don't need audio for this, because we can hear each other on Skype.

00:47:48   Cancel. Yes.

00:47:49   So if you swipe over, I'll tell you what happens.

00:47:52   Okay, you ready? Yes.

00:47:54   It's not doing anything.

00:47:56   I cannot use Zoom in Splitview.

00:47:58   Your video is paused.

00:47:59   So, the guy's wrong, Myke. I knew it.

00:48:02   [laughter]

00:48:03   Again, just to state, he never said in the Zoom app, though.

00:48:07   He said in Safari. He was very clear about that.

00:48:10   Oh. Yeah.

00:48:11   Well, we tried. Bye, buddy.

00:48:12   Bye. So we tried.

00:48:15   The guy was wrong, as most people are on Twitter, honestly.

00:48:18   I don't feel it's fair to say he's wrong.

00:48:20   You have not recreated the testing environment that made you...

00:48:23   Well, you should have said more details then.

00:48:25   I told you.

00:48:26   Don't get in touch with us.

00:48:27   He said, in Safari, using the camera in Safari.

00:48:30   In Safari, which service?

00:48:32   I don't know. That's not important for him to tell you.

00:48:36   Could be anything.

00:48:39   Maybe it is possible to get zoom to work, but you just haven't found a way yet.

00:48:43   Maybe. I've got a list of things. All right. I forgot we were doing this. Yep. Carry on.

00:48:49   Yeah. So I'm going to start with my, with my smaller ones, health app on the iPad and Mac.

00:48:55   Be great to see that data elsewhere. It's already in iCloud, right? Just

00:49:00   sync it around to my stuff. It's fine. Is it in iCloud? Yes. Or it's in your iCloud backup,

00:49:05   at least I think right. If I have to factor on I'd like the option to see that dashboard

00:49:10   on my iPad or Mac, you know, understand the data is mostly coming to it from my phone.

00:49:15   But it'd be nice to see those charts and stuff on a bigger display. Handoff for music between

00:49:20   Mac and iOS or some sort of awareness of my state. So if I'm playing something in my truck,

00:49:25   and I get in, I want to play it on my Mac, some way for me to, or for Apple Music to

00:49:31   know what I was just listening to, and just pick it up where I was. This is so key.

00:49:35   That was a thing back in the iPod days. iTunes and iPod.

00:49:39   If you're listening to Spotify on an Echo and then open the iOS app,

00:49:43   it says would you like to continue listening here?

00:49:45   And then you just do and then it just seamlessly transitions.

00:49:49   So do that Apple. Cross app VIP system for iOS, where I could say, you know what, I do want

00:49:56   Slack and Twitter and mail and iMessage notifications for my confederico, but I don't

00:50:02   I don't want to hear from other people.

00:50:05   So you would want some kind of contact API

00:50:09   that apps could tie into, right?

00:50:10   A deep and open contact notification API.

00:50:15   Rethinking of Notification Center/Today View on the Mac,

00:50:19   it's mostly useless.

00:50:21   And a bunch of apps don't even support widgets.

00:50:24   Just get rid of the widgets or just do something.

00:50:27   Make it something that people want to use.

00:50:29   Like Dashboard.

00:50:31   Yes.

00:50:31   bring dashboard back.

00:50:33   Just kidding.

00:50:35   But my big one is a rebuilt messages app for the Mac

00:50:38   with as close to feature parody with iOS as possible.

00:50:42   I understand the apps and stuff may not be there

00:50:44   or that maybe they could be with catalyst,

00:50:46   but you know, the features that we have on iOS,

00:50:50   like I don't know if you guys ever tried searching

00:50:52   for messages on the Mac, it's real bad.

00:50:54   Like it's just, they've built so much on the foundation

00:50:59   of what was there before with iChat

00:51:01   with mess the early messages app and there's so much stuff the iOS version

00:51:06   can do the Mac version can't and messages is a really important part of

00:51:09   Apple's services strategy it's one of the things that keeps people in the

00:51:12   ecosystem and doing that primarily from a Mac is a pretty a pretty secondary

00:51:18   experience compared to on mobile so I'd really like for them to bring that up to

00:51:22   par. Steven this is a great list although there's a problem there's not enough

00:51:27   weird yeah give me some weird give me some weird these are all these are all

00:51:32   really good things which do fit the unlikely area but like they're sensible

00:51:36   I'm gonna count to three and you're gonna say the first thing that pops in

00:51:39   your mind one two three go finder looks like tot dots instead of labels Myke

00:51:56   Like what's worse, people who say Siri shortcuts, people who when a new beta comes out say "fresh

00:52:03   bits" on the developer website.

00:52:05   Definitely worse to say "fresh bits", has that happened? While we've been recording?

00:52:09   No.

00:52:10   Oh.

00:52:11   No no no.

00:52:12   You're just continuing to think of new ones?

00:52:13   Yeah yeah.

00:52:14   Yeah, fresh bits. Fresh bits doesn't make any sense. There is no freshness state for

00:52:18   software. Like, it's not like... it doesn't rot, you know, it doesn't go old.

00:52:26   This is the hill Myke dies on.

00:52:27   Yes, this one.

00:52:28   Fresh bits.

00:52:29   This one.

00:52:30   And the only one.

00:52:32   Okay.

00:52:33   My only opinion.

00:52:34   The only one.

00:52:35   Okay.

00:52:36   Okay.

00:52:37   So, Steven, thank you.

00:52:38   This is a great list, plus some weird at the end.

00:52:42   Very well done.

00:52:43   Glad I could help.

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00:54:22   AirPods Studio. That's HeadPods. There's a couple of rumors, a couple of pieces of information,

00:54:28   which are going to condense into one topic. Some came from front page tech via 9to5Mac,

00:54:33   and the other from 9to5Mac directly. So Apple's upcoming over-ear headphones are expected

00:54:40   to be called AirPods Studio, which I think Steven suggested on an episode recently.

00:54:46   of Steven. You still don't understand what that means, you just need to stop it. You pick the right things for the wrong episode, you get up, come up,

00:54:54   pick the actual predictions for when we do the predictions, not during the year, because that does not qualify for year of Steven.

00:55:02   Also, you've been saying year of Steven for the past couple of years. It's not how it works.

00:55:06   It's a decade of Steven. Four more years. Four more.

00:55:10   AirPods Studio, tell us about it, Myke.

00:55:13   $3.99 is apparently going to be the price. I think it's gonna be more than that. Really? Do you for headphones?

00:55:19   That's a lot of money for headphones

00:55:21   $3.99

00:55:23   $3.99

00:55:25   $3.98

00:55:26   Okay, so launching later this year probably with the iPhone you would assume that is my conjecture in the room

00:55:32   It did not say this but when else would they launch it?

00:55:35   And it's going to have a couple of interesting features via some sensors

00:55:39   One kind of category is ear detection so pausing when you remove from your ears like AirPods

00:55:46   But also neck detection, so if you take the headphones off and put them on your neck

00:55:51   It doesn't put them to sleep. It just kind of holds it right so

00:55:56   I have a question about detection. Okay, okay, so we have ear detection

00:56:02   We have tongue detection in Memoji right remember that slide. I have a screenshot of it. Which is tongue detection

00:56:07   I don't I don't like where this is going neither do I but carry on a giant letter we have neck detection

00:56:13   It's like do you have an end to this point or is that it punch? What's your punch line?

00:56:19   No, the punch line was tongue detection, but I kind of blew through it. So

00:56:35   We have ear detection we have tongue detection we have neck detection tongue detection, am I right so

00:56:41   If I was to go back to the actual information

00:56:46   Because I wasn't finished so neck detection. I'm sorry. I got excited about tongue detection. You did he did it's okay

00:56:53   So keeping the headset

00:56:56   Like actually turned on but kind of just waiting for you to put it back on your ears again

00:57:01   so it would immediately kick back in. I would assume if you didn't have it on at all it would

00:57:06   probably go into a lower power state at that point. I'd assume similar to when you put your

00:57:11   headphones like your AirPods down or they're completely both out of your ears right so like

00:57:17   there's these different states between ear and neck detection. It detects left and right ear

00:57:22   to route stereo sound correctly. There is no defined left or right apparently according to

00:57:28   into these rumors. I think this is amazing. And at this point I was like, I hate that

00:57:32   I have to do this with headphones. Like just at that point I was like, oh, I'm so mad about

00:57:36   left and right that I have to get it right every time. I don't know how on earth you

00:57:41   would do this, but maybe some like accelerometers and gyroscope type deal that could work it

00:57:47   out. Obviously, both active noise canceling and transparency modes would be built in.

00:57:52   I guess you would assume that the noise cancelling would be more powerful in these because it's

00:57:59   much bigger, right?

00:58:00   Like the headphones are much bigger and you would want that anyway.

00:58:02   I would feel from over ear headphones you'd want it to be even better and that would be

00:58:06   kind of amazing if it was even better because I really love the AirPods Pro noise cancelling.

00:58:11   And also custom equaliser settings for iOS and Mac OS.

00:58:16   Federico as the resident headphone audio file, I would say, of the show.

00:58:23   What is your opinion on this set of rumors?

00:58:26   The more we hear about these AirPods Studio headphones, the better they sound, and that

00:58:33   makes me concerned.

00:58:35   Because all of these sounds incredible.

00:58:38   Like yes, neck detection, genius.

00:58:41   No left and right, genius.

00:58:43   I've always wanted this to...

00:58:45   It's one of those things that you read about it and you realize, "I can't believe that

00:58:51   nobody's done this before.

00:58:52   Yes, I want my headphones to behave like this."

00:58:55   But then, you know, you consider everything and they just sound too good to be true.

00:59:01   And I don't know, like, are we gonna get all of this?

00:59:05   And you know, the magnetic attachments, the interchangeable parts, and the super, you

00:59:11   know, high quality audio and now neck detection and ear detection, like, I want

00:59:19   all of this to be correct. I want this to be the product. I just, I want to be

00:59:24   cautious with, you know, getting my hopes up too much. But I mean, this sounds

00:59:30   incredible, honestly, like, I totally, I would totally buy these headphones. And

00:59:34   And especially the combination of having those interchangeable parts.

00:59:40   So if you remember the rumor that we discussed that Apple was making this magnetic design

00:59:45   that allows you to change the earcups of these headphones via simple magnetic attachments.

00:59:50   So the theory goes you could have earcups for more comfortable listening and maybe a

00:59:56   sports mode where you could change the parts or you could change the colors.

01:00:01   So that combined with the smart detection for whether you're wearing these headphones

01:00:05   around your neck or the orientation that you're wearing them, I want all of these personally.

01:00:12   It's the kind of stuff that I feel like Apple could do well, because we've seen it happen

01:00:18   before with AirPods, right?

01:00:22   I just, I don't know.

01:00:24   I want the rumors to be right.

01:00:26   How do you think these will charge?

01:00:29   With the cable.

01:00:30   they'll have any wireless charging in them?

01:00:32   iPhones are kind of weird to charge wirelessly because the way that you fold them they're

01:00:38   never stable enough so I could see maybe placing them in a case that charges.

01:00:42   Yeah I was gonna say do you think they will have a charging case?

01:00:46   If they do support some kind of charging mode that does not require you to plug a cable

01:00:52   into the iPhones that's gonna be the way that they go.

01:00:54   I mean like the case charges the iPhones.

01:00:55   I was assuming that like it will they will have a lightning port on them. Yeah, but there

01:01:00   is also a case you can buy which has a battery in it as well. I can't imagine them. I think

01:01:08   the case comes I think the case comes with your headphones. Really? That seems like a

01:01:12   lot. For 400 bucks it should. Well that maybe not for 349. Maybe the charging case is an

01:01:19   extra 50. I wonder too if it's if it's USB-C or lightning or something that you could do

01:01:23   like you can other headphones in this class where if the battery is dead you

01:01:27   can still listen to them via USB while they charge? USB-C would make sense if

01:01:32   you were to use these headphones with devices that are not iPhones. Yeah.

01:01:35   Because you could easily buy these headphones and use them with your

01:01:38   Android phone for example via USB-C. But you could do that with

01:01:44   lightning to USB-C cable anyway. Sure, it just will be easier to have USB-C to USB-C.

01:01:50   Definitely, I mean all Apple devices should charge by USB-C. I think we can all agree

01:01:54   on that anyway at this point because the USB-C cable is everywhere and it's about the same

01:02:01   size and would be amazing. I want everything to charge by USB-C now but that's neither

01:02:06   here nor there for the time being because the next iPhone's not going to have it. I'm

01:02:12   really intrigued by this product. I definitely want them and I see a place in my life where

01:02:23   they will be useful. I just don't know if that place is going to be possible this year.

01:02:30   Because I only use over-ear headphones when I'm travelling. Otherwise I just use AirPods.

01:02:37   like for most of the cases where I would want to use any kind of headphone or earphone,

01:02:44   I would pick AirPods for like home use.

01:02:47   Like I can't, I mean I can't imagine wanting to use the over ears unless the over ears

01:02:51   are like so much better, like so much better, right?

01:02:54   That like I would, I would choose something that's maybe a little less comfortable.

01:03:00   I don't know, we'll see.

01:03:02   I am really intrigued about this product.

01:03:03   it is a product that I definitely want but it's like I just don't know if I

01:03:10   will have the immediate use case for it when it becomes available but who knows

01:03:14   at this point we'll see. Definitely feels like a September thing to me though like

01:03:18   that you would want to announce this alongside the iPhone like that that

01:03:22   feels like the right time for this kind of product. Yeah. Plus like definite

01:03:26   really strong holiday gift. People are gonna really want these I think. Yeah I

01:03:33   I think that makes a lot of sense.

01:03:34   I mean, AirPods did that.

01:03:37   EarPods, when they switched to that design,

01:03:39   it was in the fall, I think, with a new iPhone

01:03:41   or new iPods or something.

01:03:42   So that all makes a lot of sense to me.

01:03:45   I'm still very curious.

01:03:47   I think either Apple will go out of their way

01:03:49   to really explain the difference

01:03:51   between this and Beats products,

01:03:52   or they're not gonna mention it at all.

01:03:54   - They will not mention it at all.

01:03:56   Because why would they?

01:03:57   - I just wonder if that will lead to confusion.

01:04:00   what separates us from what Beats can do?

01:04:03   I don't know, like a very, very--

01:04:04   - It doesn't need to.

01:04:06   It's just another product.

01:04:08   Like it's another company, it's another brand.

01:04:10   People buy Beats because they want Beats.

01:04:12   I don't think that's gonna change anytime soon.

01:04:15   Like Apple have never felt the need to explain

01:04:19   why AirPods are different to BeatsX.

01:04:22   - True.

01:04:23   - They've never even shown Beats products on a stage, right?

01:04:27   - No, they did, at some point when they said,

01:04:29   "Oh, it has this new wireless chip."

01:04:31   And then they're like, "Oh, and this Beats product

01:04:33   is gonna have it too."

01:04:33   But that's as far as they've gone.

01:04:35   - Right, but like, you know,

01:04:36   I don't think it would be necessary

01:04:39   to show it off against Beats,

01:04:42   'cause, you know, the Beats is still a money-making product.

01:04:45   Like, they wouldn't wanna show one off against the other.

01:04:49   I feel like, I just think it would just be like,

01:04:52   this is what this product does, and that's that.

01:04:55   Because I can imagine them giving the exact same technology

01:04:58   to a Beats product, either at the same time or a time in the not too distant future afterwards,

01:05:03   because why not? It's the same as they've done with all of their headphone and earphone

01:05:07   initiatives so far. Like, there will be a new Beats product which has Beats styling

01:05:13   and most of the same features, like I would assume. Like, why would they not do that?

01:05:17   They've done that consistently to this point, right?

01:05:20   Yeah. It just, this just feels like more into the Beats territory than they've gone before.

01:05:26   That's all.

01:05:27   I can imagine these will be really premium, high-end materials, and then there will be

01:05:32   a Beats version which is all plastic and will be colorful and different and maybe a little

01:05:37   bit cheaper and have similar-ish...

01:05:41   It's like, why do they have MacBook Pros and MacBooks on iPads and iPad Pros?

01:05:48   Different types of people want those products.

01:05:50   They want things that work and look and price differently.

01:05:54   They just happen to luck out with a second brand as opposed to needing to come up with

01:05:58   a bunch of brands of their own.

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01:08:20   Federico, you have been swimming in the sea of Devontink. How's that going?

01:08:27   It's complicated. It's exhausting and complicated, but potentially good in the

01:08:33   end. So I've been slowly but surely finding my way around Devontink and

01:08:40   setting up things. The way that I like them and thinking ahead, like how can I kind of

01:08:49   set this up in a way that will scale this summer when I will be working on this big

01:08:55   project that is the annual iOS review and what are the things that I would like to improve

01:09:01   from the setup that I've been essentially using for the past two years. So, okay, the

01:09:10   The first thing that I want to mention is that soon after doing last week's episode

01:09:15   of Connected, I immediately forgot about the global inboxes and regular inboxes and databases.

01:09:22   Like I forget about, like you explained it to me, and in that moment I understood what

01:09:27   it meant, but once that moment passed, I forgot again.

01:09:33   So a few days ago, I was struggling to figure out where two files I had saved in a database

01:09:40   were, because I couldn't find them anymore, and it took me a while but I figured it out.

01:09:47   So basically I created a new database called iOS 14 Review in Devonthing, and I saved two

01:09:55   items into the inbox of that database. However, and I was using the app on the iPad, so Devonthing

01:10:03   to go on the iPad, when I opened... when I tapped on that database in the sidebar, that

01:10:11   database was empty.

01:10:13   And I couldn't understand why.

01:10:15   Because it had a badge indicator that said "2" next to the name.

01:10:20   But then when I tapped on the database, there were zero items, not two of them.

01:10:26   And that happens because the inbox of a database is not shown in the database itself, which

01:10:34   is very confusing to me, because the inbox is part of a database.

01:10:38   However, if you tap on the database, it's not there.

01:10:42   So it's not like email where... because you told me it's like email, and yes, it sort

01:10:47   of is.

01:10:49   The problem is that if you were to continue this email comparison, when you open a mail

01:10:55   account in the mail sidebar, you still

01:10:57   see the inbox for that specific account,

01:11:00   whereas the inbox of a database in DevOnThink

01:11:02   can only be seen in the standalone inboxes view.

01:11:07   So basically, the lesson that I learned

01:11:11   is that I never want to save anything into the inbox.

01:11:14   I always want to save data directly into a database, where

01:11:19   I can create groups or I can save files

01:11:22   into the main root view of a database.

01:11:25   So I dislike this inbox structure

01:11:29   because when I create a database,

01:11:32   I would expect the database to also contain the inbox.

01:11:35   And it does technically, but not so visually speaking,

01:11:40   at least in the iPad app.

01:11:42   I don't know if things are different on the Mac,

01:11:44   but this is how it works on the iPad

01:11:45   and it's very confusing.

01:11:46   So I will not be saving anything into the inbox anymore.

01:11:51   Now, I've been thinking about ways to save web pages.

01:11:56   We talked about this.

01:11:58   I will soon have the need to archive web pages in DevOnThink.

01:12:05   And those web pages, ideally, I will

01:12:07   have to annotate and reference as I'm

01:12:11   writing the iOS 14 review.

01:12:14   And there's a couple of ways to go about this.

01:12:17   You could use the Clipper, so the DevOnThink extension

01:12:21   on iOS and iPadOS.

01:12:22   This extension you can use from the share sheet.

01:12:25   And when you tap it, it gives you a bunch of options.

01:12:28   You can rename an item, and you can choose the format.

01:12:31   You can save as a web archive.

01:12:32   You can save as a PDF.

01:12:34   You can save as a clutter-free markdown view of the web page,

01:12:38   which is kind of neat.

01:12:41   And then you can choose the group.

01:12:42   You can choose where to save it, and you save it directly

01:12:46   from Safari or any other app that you're using.

01:12:49   The problem there is that when you use the extension, in my case, from Safari, it saves

01:12:57   that item into the database inbox, which again, I do not want.

01:13:03   I want to be able to save stuff directly into a database, skipping the inbox, ideally going

01:13:10   into a specific folder, or maybe a folder that I get to choose.

01:13:15   However, this behavior is not possible in the devonthink extension, which by default always goes into the inbox.

01:13:21   So, I remembered that years ago when I last tried devonthink,

01:13:27   I had created a bunch of devonthink shortcuts that were still available on the Max Stories shortcuts archive.

01:13:34   So, it is with great pleasure,

01:13:36   guys, that I can announce that I made a new shortcut that I have already

01:13:43   posted on the MacStory Shortcuts Archive. However, I have not talked about this shortcut anywhere

01:13:50   else, so it is for the time being an exclusive for connected listeners. So big time!

01:13:57   AppStories gets Craig Federighi, we get a Devin Thinks shortcut.

01:14:02   Yeah, so...

01:14:03   Who's winner now, am I right?

01:14:04   Take that, Jon!

01:14:09   So it's called dev on web.

01:14:13   So I'm really good with names, if I do say so myself.

01:14:17   So the idea is that in a web page,

01:14:21   you can run the shortcut and it'll ask you,

01:14:24   do you wanna save this web page as a web archive or as a PDF?

01:14:28   And the difference is that you can,

01:14:32   before running the shortcut,

01:14:33   you can create your own list of your favorite databases

01:14:37   and your favorite folders, and when the shortcut runs, you can pick the folder when you want the new item to be saved into.

01:14:45   So I created folders for like Siri, and shortcuts, and design, you know, all the features that I tend to cover in my reviews.

01:14:53   And when the shortcut runs, you can pick the folder and the item will be saved in the format of your choosing,

01:14:59   in the folder of your choosing. So it's the kind of behavior that I want.

01:15:03   Of course, devon.think does not support modern shortcuts with parameters,

01:15:09   so the shortcut needs to use X callback URL to launch devon.think.

01:15:15   Well, first it launches shortcuts, then it launches devon.think,

01:15:19   then it goes back to shortcuts, which is somewhat unfortunate.

01:15:25   That's a blast from the past right there.

01:15:27   It's very, very much so. Eventually, I hope that the devon.think folks will be able to support

01:15:34   modern shortcuts with parameters, skipping the need to open and launch devon.think entirely,

01:15:42   but right now this is the way that it works. Now, I have a system that works, I understand

01:15:48   for now at least how inboxes behave with databases, and I kept thinking,

01:15:56   Do I want to save web pages as web archives or as PDF documents?

01:16:01   Now, the web archive has a big advantage in that it's a 100%

01:16:08   high fidelity replica of the original web page you're looking at, but it's entirely offline.

01:16:17   So the web archive downloads images, the CSS, JavaScript assets, and it creates an offline

01:16:24   copy of the page. And you open the web archive, for that reason web archives can be relatively

01:16:31   heavy files, you know, you can make a web archive and it's like 20 megabytes, and that's

01:16:35   because it depends on how many resources it downloads from the original page. But you

01:16:40   look at it, and it looks exactly like the page you're looking at in Safari. You can

01:16:45   select text, and you can follow links, you can do anything that you can do in Safari.

01:16:49   And it's all local, right?

01:16:51   And it's all local, it's all local and all the time.

01:16:53   These files may be kind of big because they have all the images and everything in them.

01:16:56   But it's all local.

01:16:58   That's awesome.

01:16:59   However, for my purposes, for what I need to do for this review, web archives cannot

01:17:04   be annotated because you cannot annotate web pages unless you use some plugins or stuff

01:17:11   like that.

01:17:13   They are meant to let you download the page.

01:17:15   They're not meant to be annotated and modified.

01:17:18   That's what PDFs do.

01:17:20   And DevonThink has pretty good support for annotating and modifying PDFs inside the app.

01:17:25   You can add highlights, you can add comments, you can have a grid view for pages inside

01:17:33   a PDF, and you can search inside the PDF, and you can have a table of contents.

01:17:37   All the usual suspects are here when it comes to PDFs.

01:17:41   However, PDFs are not necessarily a complete replica of the page you're looking at.

01:17:48   you convert a page to PDF and it looks slightly different from the page

01:17:56   that you're looking at in Safari. And that happens because in the conversion

01:17:59   to PDFs something happens, I don't know exactly how to describe it, but

01:18:05   I think it tends to be differences between the WebKit engine that

01:18:10   shows you the page in Safari and the WebKit engine that is responsible for

01:18:14   for converting that to PDF.

01:18:16   But sometimes those PDF pages,

01:18:18   they lose some of the elements

01:18:20   of the original webpage in Safari.

01:18:22   A good example,

01:18:23   if you go to the Human Interface Guidelines from Apple

01:18:26   and you save that to PDF using Devontin

01:18:29   or using shortcuts in my case,

01:18:31   you do get the content.

01:18:33   However, the sidebar for navigating sections

01:18:36   does not get converted to PDF.

01:18:39   So you lose the sidebar and something funky happens

01:18:42   with the iPhone screenshots that Apple uses,

01:18:45   the image inside the iPhone frame

01:18:49   gets smaller than the iPhone itself.

01:18:52   It's kind of weird, I don't know what happens,

01:18:54   but it happens.

01:18:55   So it's not a complete,

01:18:57   it's not a high fidelity replica of the page,

01:19:00   it's a PDF version of that.

01:19:01   The more I think about this,

01:19:03   the more I keep thinking that web archives

01:19:07   are conceptually ideal for me,

01:19:11   because I love the fact that they look exactly like the original webpage.

01:19:15   However, PDF documents give me more freedom in terms of annotating and extracting information

01:19:22   out of those documents. And not only that, but also if I were to archive these web pages as PDF,

01:19:30   I could use a combination of apps to compensate for the features that are missing from DevOnThink.

01:19:38   Primarily, I'm thinking of this sort of setup where I could archive developer pages from

01:19:44   apple.com in devon.think as PDF documents.

01:19:48   And because devon.think supports or will soon support opening files, individual files, in

01:19:57   place in other apps, I could use the app called Highlights on my iPad to browse to the devon.think

01:20:07   location in files, open the PDFs that I saved, and rely on Highlight's superior annotation

01:20:16   tools.

01:20:18   Highlights is really good because it allows you to, for example, if you have a long document

01:20:23   and you have a bunch of highlights in the document, like a bunch of passages of text

01:20:29   that you highlighted, in Highlights you can have a split view for that document.

01:20:34   So you can have the document on the left side and a summary of all your annotations and

01:20:38   highlights on the right side of the screen.

01:20:40   Can you be multi-window?

01:20:41   No, I mean in-apps, lowercase, split view.

01:20:45   And it's very good, and it even lets you export all those annotations in a bunch of different

01:20:50   formats, including Markdown and, I believe, HTML and even OmniFocus and Devontink formats.

01:20:59   So thanks to the... because DevOnThink shows you the database structure of DevOnThink on

01:21:09   the iPad, you can browse in the Files app, because DevOnThink is also a file provider.

01:21:15   And thanks to Files, I could use DevOnThink as a document repository and use additional

01:21:23   apps for specific features.

01:21:26   In this case, Highlights.

01:21:27   So I could use highlights plus devonthink to store everything in devonthink, sync everything

01:21:32   with devonthink, but then use highlights to come in and take care of the annotations and

01:21:38   export those annotations.

01:21:40   This is the kind of workflow that I would be really interested in trying this summer.

01:21:45   There's a second part to this point.

01:21:48   I believe, at least I hope, that Devant Think will soon support opening folders in place.

01:21:58   So if they do this, if they add support for, say, letting you open a Devant Think folder

01:22:05   via the Files picker in, say, iWriter, right?

01:22:11   This is the Files Bookmarks technology with Open in Place that we've talked about many

01:22:15   times before.

01:22:17   If that was possible, this is not possible yet, but if it became a feature of Devontink,

01:22:23   I could see a scenario where the entire review is stored in Devontink, backed up to multiple

01:22:31   places of course, and IA Writer accesses the Devontink folder for the review and accesses

01:22:41   my text editor on top of Devontink.

01:22:44   So devon.think has a centralized location for research material, markdown documents,

01:22:51   and even screenshots.

01:22:54   And if they do this right, I could have these markdown chapters for my review that reference

01:23:03   local files stored in devon.think that would show up in the markdown preview both in devon.think

01:23:13   and in IARider. So the same syntax, the same file structure, a centralized location, and

01:23:22   I get to choose what is the text editor that I want to use, what is the PDF viewer that

01:23:28   I want to use, but everything is inside Devontink. And of course I have my shortcuts for backing

01:23:32   up the whole thing to multiple places, including Ico, Drive, and Dropbox. This is all, again,

01:23:37   this is all wishful thinking, basically, because right now this feature does not exist yet,

01:23:42   I'm very optimistic that it will, and I am very intrigued by this idea of using

01:23:50   OpenInPlace for individual files, so PDF documents, that I could view and

01:23:56   annotate and process in highlights, and the review itself, which could be stored

01:24:03   in Devontink, but opened in place inside iARider. And in my experience, OpenInPlace

01:24:10   works well for folders. I've had a working copy folder open in iA-Rider as an external

01:24:18   location for months. Nothing happened. It works very well, even across system updates

01:24:25   and device reboots. The external folder remains pinned to the iA-Rider sidebar. It works really

01:24:33   So I'm thinking about this because I'm very intrigued by the idea of having

01:24:41   Devant Think as the centralized location where I can reference local screenshots

01:24:46   and research material and then use IE Writer on top of it. And today IE Writer

01:24:52   got updated to version 5.5. I have a link on Mac stories, but basically they now

01:24:58   lets you highlight text inside of a markdown document, and the text actually gets highlighted

01:25:04   in yellow. So this is perfect for me because I've always wanted to have this kind of feature.

01:25:09   It used to be possible in Scrivener years ago. I wrote one of my reviews, I believe it was the iOS

01:25:15   10 review in Scrivener, as rich text. And one of the great features of Scrivener is that it lets

01:25:23   you highlight text inside the text editor. And so I would use highlights as a way for me to mark up

01:25:30   certain passages of the review that maybe needed to be looked at again in the future, because maybe

01:25:36   there was a missing feature or a bug that I needed to re-evaluate later in the summer. Now I can do

01:25:42   this in iA writer without giving up on markdown, because you just need to enter two equal signs,

01:25:48   and you can highlight text. So basically what I'm thinking of is an evolution of the current setup

01:25:55   that I have. So I will keep using IARider, I will keep storing the review as Markdown,

01:26:02   but I'm considering devon.think as a centralized location for everything.

01:26:06   However, they need to support a bunch more features first, because all of this right now,

01:26:14   The only part that's possible, I think, at least in the current beta of devon.think that is up on

01:26:21   TestFlight, is to open files in place. But folders, not yet. And yes, web pages I will probably store

01:26:31   as PDF instead of web archives because I want to be able to annotate them and because I really want

01:26:36   to use highlights because I really like that app and I really like the idea of seeing the document

01:26:44   and annotations on screen at the same time.

01:26:47   - Yeah, I too have been dealing with sort of

01:26:50   what format do I save things into.

01:26:53   A lot of the times I will do PDF.

01:26:55   But one thing I've done the last week

01:26:58   is I've added a bunch of RSS feeds into Devant Think.

01:27:01   So Devant Think can basically import the contents

01:27:04   of an RSS feed and then keep them locally.

01:27:07   So I added all my podcasts so I could like search of,

01:27:10   you know, across the show notes

01:27:11   and show links really quickly.

01:27:13   I also added a couple of specific RSS feeds from 512.

01:27:16   So I have like KBase of the Week and Apple History,

01:27:20   those feeds.

01:27:20   So I can have a quick view of what I've done before.

01:27:24   - How does it get saved?

01:27:27   Like what is the format when you import an RSS feed?

01:27:31   - So I set, so when you save,

01:27:34   when you bring in an RSS feed on the Mac app,

01:27:36   you can change the format that you want.

01:27:40   I left mine on automatic and I got HTML documents.

01:27:43   So there's no anything in the article is there,

01:27:47   but there's no Chrome of the site around it.

01:27:50   And it's just text, HTML text.

01:27:52   So I could copy and paste if I wanted to.

01:27:54   But in terms of research materials, I mostly do PDF.

01:27:59   I haven't done much with web archive really in a long time.

01:28:05   When I tried it last probably years ago,

01:28:08   like really weird things would happen.

01:28:10   Like if you had some sort of video or audio embedded

01:28:13   on the page, the player would like cover up other content

01:28:15   and it was kind of buggy.

01:28:18   And maybe it's better now,

01:28:20   but PDF isn't always the right option.

01:28:23   A lot of the times it is.

01:28:25   A lot of the stuff that I pull,

01:28:26   it's like really old stuff where a PDF,

01:28:29   it super easily handles it, right?

01:28:32   Because the web, some of the stuff I pull off the web

01:28:36   not as complicated as something like the the HIG that Federico mentioned, but it

01:28:42   gives you options which is what's what's cool and I'm glad to hear that they are

01:28:47   doing more with the iOS app. Now one question I have for you Federico is do

01:28:52   you feel strongly that the the review and the research should live in the same

01:28:56   place? I don't feel strongly but it's basically what I've already been doing

01:29:04   So I know that a lot of people think that this may sound complex

01:29:08   But this is the how the review has been done for the past couple of years only the location was different. It was iCloud Drive

01:29:15   But yes for the past couple of years

01:29:18   The the markdown files and the screenshots were all stored and tagged in

01:29:25   iCloud Drive and I used the

01:29:28   the local file references in

01:29:32   an IA writer to sort of embed those local files into the review so that I could preview

01:29:39   them and take a look at the review as it would appear on Mac stories, because I have a custom

01:29:46   preview theme, without having to upload the images to my CDN. The images I upload to the

01:29:53   CDN only one session. Like, I have a script that, you know, I sit down a couple of hours

01:30:00   afternoon and I upload like 300 images all at once, but during the summer they

01:30:05   are actually local files in iCloud Drive. Yeah, because they change over time, right?

01:30:10   Apple tweaks a design or an app changes, you don't want to be uploading those to

01:30:14   your server repeatedly. Exactly, exactly, exactly. So I just store local

01:30:18   references for that reason. And over time if a feature changes I can

01:30:23   replace the local screenshot instead of having to upload multiple

01:30:26   multiple times. So this is basically the main idea would be to change the

01:30:31   the location from iCalc Drive to Devontinq, but still the same suite of

01:30:37   apps and really the bigger change would be what I do about research because

01:30:42   really for research I didn't have a system last year or two years ago and

01:30:47   I'm starting to feel disorganized there but I'm still gonna use iAider and I'm

01:30:53   still gonna use my, you know, all the the features that I talked about last year

01:30:58   and I'm still gonna use Scriptable and shortcuts to upload my

01:31:02   screenshots. So nothing is changing about the writing process. Primarily I'm

01:31:06   considering a location change and DevOnThink for research because for

01:31:10   research I didn't really have any system. Okay, I just want to clarify that.

01:31:15   You know, I think you could totally leave the markdown where it was and just use

01:31:20   DevanThink for like a research tool. I don't think you necessarily have to mix them but...

01:31:24   Yeah, no, no, I could do that. In fact, if they don't add support for opening place or if I run

01:31:32   some tests and I'm not sure about it, that's what I'm gonna do for sure. I'm gonna keep storing

01:31:38   the review in iClue Drive and IE Writer and use DevanThink for PDF documents.

01:31:44   Okay.

01:31:44   Yeah, yeah.

01:31:46   Cool. Thanks for the update.

01:31:48   Sure, I will follow up at some point again, which reminds me, how many days left in the

01:31:55   trial?

01:31:56   Oh, 99 hours left!

01:31:59   Uh oh, take it off.

01:32:02   This is now an hourly countdown.

01:32:05   You got some decisions to make over the next couple of days, huh?

01:32:08   So by the next episode, I will have made a decision.

01:32:12   By the next episode, you will have signed up and not made a decision.

01:32:15   We'll see about that.

01:32:17   how I think this is going to go. All right, I think that does it for this week's episode

01:32:22   of connected. If you want to find links to all the stuff we spoke about there in your

01:32:26   podcast player, you can find them at relay.fm slash connected slash 294. While you're on

01:32:34   that webpage, there's lots of fun activities you can partake in, you can send us an email

01:32:38   with feedback or follow up, you can become a member to show your support for the show

01:32:42   directly. You can also find us over on Twitter. Myke is there as I M y ke and Myke is the

01:32:49   host of a bunch of shows here on relay. You can find Federico on Twitter as Vitichi v

01:32:55   it I CCI. He is the editor in chief of Mac stories.net. You can find me online as is

01:33:03   m h you can find my writing at 512 pixels.net. Until next time, gentlemen, say goodbye.

01:33:10   Adios!