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Connected

240: I Got No Time for Automator

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:07   From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode 240. Today's show is brought to you by Bombas,

00:00:13   Fresh Books and TextExpander. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Mr Federico Vittucci.

00:00:18   Hi Federico.

00:00:20   Hello Myke, how are you?

00:00:21   I'm very good. Steven didn't get the limerick he was looking for, so he's still not here.

00:00:26   Was that one of those riddles we were asking people to send to him, right?

00:00:29   He's still thinking about them, so that's why he's not on the show. He's trying to solve all of the riddles.

00:00:34   Yeah.

00:00:34   Yeah.

00:00:35   So, you get to go first, Deimai. Are you happy that you can go first?

00:00:41   Well, no, no. I was introducing you, though, right? Like, that's the thing.

00:00:46   This is an even episode. This is a Federica Vitticcia episode. Do you want a better introduction?

00:00:50   No. Do you also want to reintroduce you, because I went first?

00:00:55   Oh, and I'm also joined by Myke Hurley. Hi Myke. Hi Myke.

00:01:00   By myself.

00:01:00   We have no follow up, but I wanted to give some like just points of information for our listeners.

00:01:10   This is a new thing on the show, points of information. They're both WWDC related.

00:01:16   One is an event that I think people should be looking into if they haven't already,

00:01:23   which is called Backstage at the Keynote, which is a WWDC Apple-themed escape room.

00:01:29   Now, Federico, do you know what escape rooms are?

00:01:34   No, honestly, I was asking you, I think I'm familiar with the idea that people

00:01:40   voluntarily lock themselves into a room as some kind of game.

00:01:44   I'm trying to understand why is that funny.

00:01:47   So you and a group go into a room, right, and there's a scene that is set up for you

00:01:52   as to why the door of the room that you're in is locked, right? Like there's like a fiction that is

00:01:56   created. And then there is a selection of puzzles in the room that if you solve all of the puzzles

00:02:02   you get clues and those clues will lead you to be able to do whatever it is to unlock the door,

00:02:08   whether you need a code for a keypad or you have to get a specific key which is locked in something

00:02:13   inside the room or something like that. So there's like a set of puzzles that you need to complete

00:02:18   as a way to be able to get out. Now, I've been to a conference a couple of times called the

00:02:23   All Conference that was in... And people pay for this?

00:02:26   Yes, it's a lot of fun. It's like a...

00:02:28   We have no shared references because like the references... Do you know what the Crystal Maze is?

00:02:34   What? Exactly. We have no shared references here, but it is effectively... It's like a video game in

00:02:40   real life. It's like... Can't you just play a video game?

00:02:43   You know that you know those games, the room where you have like that,

00:02:47   like the iOS game.

00:02:49   So you have to like do all these little things to unlock these little puzzles

00:02:51   or whatever.

00:02:52   It's kind of like that type of thing.

00:02:53   And yes, you can just play a video game, but this is an in-person experience

00:02:56   that you can experience with your friends.

00:02:59   Right. So anyway,

00:03:02   a couple of years ago, I completed a two separate

00:03:06   Apple themed escape rooms created by a friend of mine called Chadwick.

00:03:12   And this year he is bringing that to WWDC.

00:03:15   Now, I cannot believe there are still tickets available to this,

00:03:18   but it might be because people just don't know it's happening.

00:03:20   So I figured that I would let people know.

00:03:22   I think they're doing it at Alt.Conf.

00:03:25   It's EscapedKeynote.How, which is a great, just a great URL.

00:03:30   And I have a ticket.

00:03:32   I have a set of tickets.

00:03:34   I'm assigning one to Federico.

00:03:35   I'm going to make him do it with me so we can understand why it's fun.

00:03:37   It's really, really good fun.

00:03:41   just trust me on this one. If you're gonna be at WWDC, buy some tickets and go to do

00:03:46   the escape room.

00:03:48   Can you still get out, even if you don't solve the puzzles?

00:03:50   Yes, yes, yes. You're not literally locked in a room. Right? The door's just closed.

00:03:57   You gotta play within the fiction, you know?

00:04:01   This requires a lot of imagination, sounds like.

00:04:04   Yes, it does. But Chadwick paints very... he has incredible props, and he paints a good

00:04:11   picture, not literally, figurative pictures. I have had a ton of fun with this. I think

00:04:18   you are going to love this because I know the type of person you are and I think you

00:04:22   are the perfect type of person for an escape room. You just don't really have much of a

00:04:25   concept of what it is.

00:04:26   I just, yeah, I think I have a few friends who have done them. Like somebody a while

00:04:32   ago was talking about like a Legend of Zelda themed escape room.

00:04:36   Yes, they went on tour with that and I missed it which was really upsetting.

00:04:40   Yeah, okay, well, we'll try the Apple one and see what it's like.

00:04:44   This will be a topic on the show, I suppose, eventually.

00:04:47   Yeah, I want to talk about it, especially because we're 100% gonna win it, right?

00:04:51   I feel like that's just gonna be the way.

00:04:53   This also does remind me to mention, we still have an increasingly small selection of tickets left

00:04:58   for our WWDC live show. They are selling out, it will sell out, so get your ticket if you want it.

00:05:05   If you're gonna be in or around San Jose on June the 5th, you don't want to miss out on our show.

00:05:08   Federico has surprises apparently, which is a terrifying prospect.

00:05:12   It's all ready to go.

00:05:16   We only have a small amount of tickets left in the balcony,

00:05:20   so if you want to come, you should and you should get one and there will be a link

00:05:24   in the show notes to that so you can get a ticket for yourself.

00:05:28   Federico, on last week's episode you had just very very recently

00:05:32   to the episode beginning taken receipt of the new

00:05:36   2018 iPad Pro bridge keyboard and so I expect you have been using it for the entire week

00:05:44   and I'm very keen to know your thoughts and feelings on this because I'm dying to get

00:05:50   one and I just want to know how good or bad it is.

00:05:54   So people have been asking me can you write an article on Mac stories about the bridge

00:05:59   keyboard and I should, I've just been busy working on this very long story that I'm preparing

00:06:05   for the near future and I've been using the bridge keyboard to write this story.

00:06:11   And I mostly, I think I can confirm my first impressions were mostly accurate I think.

00:06:17   The keys definitely feel different to me.

00:06:24   Coming from the first bridge keyboard, the one that I had with the old iPad Pro, the

00:06:29   The texture feels smooth and maybe the keys are a little more mushy, maybe, than the old one.

00:06:37   They're not bad, it's just a different feeling.

00:06:39   And they're not as clicky as the Magic Keyboard, I would say.

00:06:43   They're not as clicky as the Smart Keyboard.

00:06:45   They are softer.

00:06:47   And I think you can get used to it, I think it's fine.

00:06:51   I have discovered, thanks to somebody on YouTube, I think, and maybe even Peeking, which I never do,

00:07:01   at the instruction manual, I never look at these things, but for some reason I did this time,

00:07:06   that even though the bridge keyboard does not have a Siri key to invoke the assistant,

00:07:15   What you can do, for some reason, you're able to long press the lock key that normally activates the lock screen,

00:07:26   and that brings up Siri on the iPad.

00:07:28   So, on the Bridge keyboard, if you long press the lock key, which is in the top left corner next to the Home button key,

00:07:37   that will bring up Siri.

00:07:38   And also, even though this keyboard does not have a key to cycle through software keyboards that you have installed on your device,

00:07:48   like English, Italian, and I don't know, Yoink, you know, all these keyboards and custom keyboards,

00:07:54   it does not have the globe button that some keyboards do, but you can replicate that.

00:08:02   The bridge used to, didn't it?

00:08:04   I'm not sure.

00:08:05   I think it did. I think it did.

00:08:06   Well, it's not here anymore, but there's a keyboard shortcut, which I think, if I remember correctly, should be Ctrl+Shift+Space.

00:08:14   Or maybe... Yeah, I think it's Ctrl+Shift+Space. It's printed on the instruction manual, or the keyboard.

00:08:21   So, for some reason though, it cycles backwards, so it starts from the bottom and it goes all the way to the top.

00:08:27   Normally, the toggling between multiple keyboards should happen from the top to the bottom, but anyway...

00:08:33   But anyway, at least there's a way to show, you know, when you're typing with an external

00:08:39   keyboard, the software keyboard is hidden by default.

00:08:42   So there's a button at the top row.

00:08:43   I had no idea that that keyboard shortcut existed.

00:08:46   Yeah, me neither.

00:08:48   So we have a magic keyboard right now on my iPad, so it's not just a bridge thing.

00:08:52   And it works?

00:08:53   Oh, perfect.

00:08:54   Well, thanks to Bridge for printing it on the manual.

00:08:57   But now, why is this useful?

00:09:00   Well, if you keep a custom keyboard installed on your iPad, like for example, let's use Yoink, which is an excellent clipboard manager and shelf app.

00:09:09   Let's say that you want to switch from the normal English keyboard to the Yoink keyboard, which is of course a software keyboard.

00:09:17   So you're typing with the bridge keyboard, no software keyboard is shown on screen.

00:09:21   What you do is you press the physical key button in the keyboard, which is next to the

00:09:27   brightness one, that will pop up the software keyboard.

00:09:31   And then you start cycling through all of your installed keyboards until you reach Yoink.

00:09:36   Then when you're done with Yoink, you cycle back to the main Apple keyboard and you hide

00:09:40   the keyboard again by pressing the same button on the reached keyboard.

00:09:45   Works really nice, and if you use a custom keyboard it's really convenient.

00:09:48   more than just custom keyboards if you want to get emoji.

00:09:51   Oh yeah, totally. If you want to get emoji, exactly.

00:09:54   Right, that's what I have always wanted those shortcuts for. And why I'm now pleased I know

00:09:59   how to do it with my Magic Keyboard too, because previously I would just have to long press

00:10:03   on the down arrow and wait for the keyboard to come up and then press the globe key. So

00:10:08   yeah, that's interesting.

00:10:09   Jason Snow is in the chat room and he's saying he has a Siri key on the bottom left corner

00:10:13   of his bridge keyboard.

00:10:15   It does not bring up Siri. It's a dictation key. It's not a Siri key.

00:10:23   So if I exit... Yeah, this is a dictation key. In fact, if you open Spotlight and press this key,

00:10:30   in theory it should open dictation. It does not open Siri for me.

00:10:35   That's interesting. I wonder what's going on here.

00:10:38   I'm trying this right now and...

00:10:41   Oh, now it brings up Siri. So this is interesting.

00:10:45   Okay, well I gotta look into this. So there's a Siri key.

00:10:49   Alright, but sometimes it opens dictation. This is weird.

00:10:53   I guess it depends on the context.

00:10:55   I guess it depends on the context. Maybe.

00:10:57   If you're writing text it makes most sense for it to be dictation? I don't know.

00:11:02   I don't know. Hmm.

00:11:03   Yeah, in any case you can also long press the key, the lock icon and the lock key and that will also work

00:11:10   for some reason.

00:11:12   I have experienced the occasional

00:11:16   Bluetooth weirdness

00:11:19   when typing, which is not really I guess it's not really a bridge thing because I have this problem with the

00:11:26   Logitech Slim Folio Pro as well and I do not have this problem with the smart keyboard because it uses the smart connector.

00:11:33   Sometimes when I'm typing, it's like occasionally the typing slows down and it needs to catch up.

00:11:41   So it slows down for a couple of seconds and then you see all the letters pop up on screen.

00:11:47   As far as Bluetooth bugs go, that's the least annoying.

00:11:51   It's exactly. I have not experienced any disconnections or any problems with pairing.

00:11:58   Just sometimes...

00:11:59   Or dropped keys. That was always the problem with the original bridge keyboards.

00:12:02   Yeah, yeah, this is totally fine. No dropped keys. Everything is good. Just occasionally, you know, it

00:12:08   slows down for like a second and then it catches up again.

00:12:12   But that's totally fine, but it's something that I've noticed.

00:12:15   What else?

00:12:18   I haven't used the media mode yet, which would be that you flip the screen

00:12:24   so that it's not facing the keyboard, but it's facing outwards and

00:12:31   Bridge says this is great for watching movies or you know playing games or stuff like that

00:12:37   I just I've just been working and typing with this keyboard so I have not

00:12:41   Tested the media mode yet. It looks kind of ridiculous because you effectively have an iPad that is not facing the keyboard

00:12:47   It looks like you put it on the wrong way

00:12:49   But it can be used in that orientation if you so like but it's just not something that I've done myself

00:12:56   it is excellent for

00:13:00   traditional laptop usage. So put it on your lap, start typing.

00:13:04   This is classic bridge design. It's stable. It's sturdy. It doesn't move. The hinges are good.

00:13:11   It feels nice. It feels like a laptop, but it doesn't have a trackpad, which of course that's another discussion.

00:13:19   But yeah, I've been working with this keyboard in my car, at the kitchen table, at my desk, on the sofa, in bed.

00:13:26   It's perfect.

00:13:27   So if you want to have a laptop experience with an iPad, this was true with the bridge keyboard before,

00:13:33   it is true with this bridge keyboard now, it works great on your lap.

00:13:36   It is easy enough to remove the iPad from the very small hinges that attach to the the clip on to the bezels of the iPad.

00:13:47   You can just, you know, hold the keyboard down with one hand and pull the iPad up with another hand.

00:13:54   Is it easier to do now that the clips are smaller?

00:13:57   No, I think it's mostly the... Maybe it is a bit easier.

00:14:00   I wouldn't want it to be too easy because that would mean it would probably fall out.

00:14:03   It's not too easy. It's not too easy.

00:14:05   But, but...

00:14:06   Do not lift the iPad and expect the keyboard to follow necessarily.

00:14:14   Like if you need to grab this keyboard from the table, do grab the keyboard.

00:14:20   That's very different.

00:14:21   Because I used to just pick up the iPad all the time and the keyboard would come with it.

00:14:25   I mean, look, this is not surprising because the clips are so small now because the bezels, right?

00:14:32   But it's just something to remember to like...

00:14:35   Basically, I've got to pick it up how I pick up a laptop, which was not what I did with the old bridge.

00:14:40   The old bridge, I would just pick up the iPad and the keyboard would come with it.

00:14:43   But like, I would never pick up a laptop by the screen, right?

00:14:46   So like, I just have to pick it up by the base would be my assumption.

00:14:50   Yeah, I picked it up one time.

00:14:53   I don't even know why, from the screen, and the keyboard thought,

00:14:58   "You know, I'm not gonna follow you."

00:15:00   - And so... - "I'm good here."

00:15:01   "I'm good on the table, thank you."

00:15:03   So the keyboard very quickly dropped on the table,

00:15:07   and the dogs were really scared by that sound, and the iPad...

00:15:12   - That's a lot of metal. - ...remains in my hands.

00:15:14   - Okie dokie. - So that was fun.

00:15:17   So do not grab it from the iPad.

00:15:19   I also have the back cover that is completely optional.

00:15:26   It is... you can remove it. It's some kind of leather. I don't know if it's real leather.

00:15:33   I think it's probably pleather, like it's fake leather or whatever it is called.

00:15:36   Yeah, I think it's synthetic leather. It's fine. It's got a bridge logo,

00:15:43   which apparently is the letter Y printed, sort of a...

00:15:49   what do you call it?

00:15:50   I think, isn't that like the...

00:15:52   isn't that how you draw a bridge?

00:15:54   Like, isn't that the symbol for a bridge in technology, like in electronics?

00:16:00   Is it?

00:16:03   I don't know.

00:16:04   I don't know.

00:16:04   I'm trying to help you.

00:16:05   I don't know.

00:16:07   This is one of those things where like Stephen would like, would be able to help us.

00:16:11   It's like, oh, that's like a thing, right?

00:16:13   But I don't know.

00:16:15   - I've been spending way too much time

00:16:19   obsessively trying to fit the precisely cut corners

00:16:24   of this leather cover around the shape of the clips.

00:16:29   So they have like an L-shape cut

00:16:35   to sort of try and fit the clips around the cover.

00:16:41   And the more that I try to adjust them to make sure that the cover is perfectly flush against the clips,

00:16:47   the more I move it on one side, then it changes on the other side.

00:16:51   So it's not a perfect match.

00:16:53   There's like a millimeter gap, which is really not a problem.

00:16:57   But it really bothers me visually speaking that I can see one millimeter of aluminum in the back of the device.

00:17:05   But yeah, I'm keeping this cover because of protection, I suppose.

00:17:09   I like not having the naked side of the iPad.

00:17:14   It protects it from scratches and stuff like that, which is good.

00:17:17   So overall, I guess your question at this point would be, is this the best keyboard

00:17:23   that you can buy with an iPad Pro?

00:17:25   Is this your favorite keyboard?

00:17:26   Is this the one?

00:17:27   So you would think I would say yes.

00:17:35   My only... it's a great keyboard and I think it's the one that I'm gonna keep using to write all my stories and to write the iOS review.

00:17:45   My only... not a concern, but thing that I've noticed is that I have been missing this Linffolio Pro this past week.

00:17:57   And I think what I've been missing is a few things about that keyboard.

00:18:04   The fact that there's not...

00:18:08   The iPad, when I'm using the Slim Folio Pro, the iPad is closer to my eyes.

00:18:14   Because the base, because the keyboard does not have that huge palm rest area that the bridge keyboard has.

00:18:22   Which is where a trackpad would normally go.

00:18:24   The iPad is a bit closer to me because with the Syncfolio Pro you just have a keyboard in front of you.

00:18:29   You don't have those 8 cm of blank keyboard area, but it's not really a keyboard.

00:18:40   The iPad is a bit closer to me. And the cover case also protects the pencil, which the Breach keyboard does not.

00:18:47   It doesn't have a flap that goes over the pencil.

00:18:50   And I don't know if I ever told you this, Myke, but are you familiar with the thing I've been doing with kickstands on all my iPad keyboards?

00:19:03   Have I ever shown you or told you about this? Alright, so all my keyboards.

00:19:11   So I have an Italian smart keyboard, a US smart keyboard, and the Celine Folio Pro.

00:19:16   and also a smart folio. So I have four different type of keyboards or covers that I tested with the iPad Pro.

00:19:23   This is a tip that somebody last year gave me on Twitter, and sorry that I, you know, I don't remember your name.

00:19:31   You know you are.

00:19:33   Spigen, are you familiar with Spigen, the accessory maker?

00:19:36   Oh, I think you've mentioned this. Yeah, go on, go on.

00:19:38   So they make a metal kickstand for smartphones, which is like a little kickstand.

00:19:45   It's like three centimeters that you attach with adhesive tape to the back of a phone and there's a little

00:19:53   steel foot that you you know you

00:19:57   Basically you you pull back and you can use a phone with the kickstand. Yeah

00:20:01   but what what I started doing last year is

00:20:06   I've been putting two of these metal kickstands on

00:20:13   the back of the smart keyboard and also the Slim Folio Pro so that when they're opened

00:20:20   they

00:20:22   create a touch mode.

00:20:24   So if I don't want to use the smart keyboard, I can flip open these kickstands and

00:20:30   they let me use the iPad in touch mode with the software keyboard at an angle. How does this work?

00:20:39   So I'm gonna send you pictures and I promise that I would write about this on Mac stories

00:20:45   but it's just I'm busy on another story at the moment and I really don't have time for this.

00:20:49   But basically I put it one on the right side, the other on the left side

00:20:54   so they are perpendicular to each other and

00:20:57   I

00:21:00   flip them open

00:21:01   then I fold the keyboard underneath and they create an angle like, I don't know,

00:21:07   30 degree angle or something so that I can use the iPad in touch mode and they're actually stable, you know

00:21:13   But it's strong like you could tap the top of the iPad and it doesn't yes

00:21:17   It doesn't like poke a hole in the cover. No, it does not

00:21:21   Trust me. It's an amazing setup and I've been sticking

00:21:26   The thing is I've been buying these kickstands from Amazon US because they're not available in Italy

00:21:33   And so every few weeks I ordered a couple from Amazon and I have them shipped to Italy

00:21:37   I'm gonna try and send you pictures that maybe you can put in the show notes because it's a thing that you gotta visualize.

00:21:43   Yeah, I need to see this. Like, people need to see what you're doing here.

00:21:47   Yeah, and so yeah, with the Slim Folio Pro, I also put a couple of kickstands in the back of the cover,

00:21:54   so that when I'm tired of using the hardware keyboard, or if I just want to use touch for some reason, like playing a game or something,

00:22:02   I can just fold the cover, open the kickstands and use touch mode. And this is

00:22:09   of course not possible with the Breech keyboard because it doesn't fold

00:22:13   under the iPad, right? It's a laptop setup. So I've been kind of

00:22:18   missing that. But to answer your question...

00:22:23   Because they have different modes, right? Like they have what they call movie mode

00:22:28   where you kind of flip it around but that's not strong enough, it bounces around too much,

00:22:33   more than your speaker instead of...

00:22:34   Oh yeah, oh yeah, no, with the bridge keyboard, the media mode, you mean?

00:22:40   Yeah.

00:22:41   Yeah, no, don't try and type with that mode.

00:22:44   The iPad basically just bounces all the time.

00:22:47   It's merely meant for like looking at things only, not interacting.

00:22:50   Looking at things, yeah, yeah.

00:22:52   So, which iPad keyboard is in my future?

00:22:58   I think the bridge keyboard, if you do a lot of typing, and if you want to use the iPad as a laptop,

00:23:03   Right, it's the best straight keyboard.

00:23:06   Yes.

00:23:06   Yeah, okay.

00:23:07   Yes.

00:23:07   If you want to be a little more experimental and you want to have a smaller...

00:23:13   You want to have a keyboard that makes the iPad closer to your eyes,

00:23:18   because it doesn't waste space with an empty trackpad area.

00:23:22   Yeah.

00:23:23   And you want to have something that is more, a little more portable maybe,

00:23:25   because you know you can you can use it as a cover you can but yeah not really that much

00:23:30   I can't abide by the case that they make you put like it's just too much

00:23:33   The case of the Sling Foil Pro is extremely bad in the sense that removing the iPad from those rubber

00:23:40   angles those rubber corners that they have it's terrible like you gotta press and push on that

00:23:47   rubber to remove the iPad it's awful but I love the cover and the fact that it protects the pencil

00:23:55   and the fact that it supports the t.che. setup, which is what I'm gonna call with the kickstands.

00:24:01   So Logitech, if you're listening, I put two kickstands on the back of your unit.

00:24:09   I hope you won't mind.

00:24:10   I need to understand this kickstand thing. So we're gonna take a break.

00:24:14   You need to send me some pictures.

00:24:16   Oh my god, yes.

00:24:16   And we're gonna... I wanna... We need to talk about these kickstands,

00:24:19   because I need to see what this looks like.

00:24:21   All right, let me try and... Oh my god, how? Okay.

00:24:24   Just take just take some pictures.

00:24:26   You can do this. I believe in you.

00:24:27   Yes. OK.

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00:25:08   You'll always know what's changed since the last time that you logged in

00:25:12   and what needs to be dealt with immediately. So you can get that

00:25:15   all there as soon as you log in which is awesome. Whenever you send

00:25:19   and invoice to a client with FreshBooks. This puts an end to any guessing games and you

00:25:24   can also automate late payment email reminders too so you'll know that you don't have to

00:25:29   chase it up.

00:25:33   FreshBooks is like a partner for you, they help you. That's what I love about FreshBooks,

00:25:38   they have tools and systems in place to help take away some of the frustrating parts of

00:25:44   to be a part of.

00:26:13   Alright, I sent you the pictures.

00:26:17   And are these pictures I can share with our audience?

00:26:21   Sure, you can put them in the chat room but

00:26:25   I'll try and send you a better one for the show notes.

00:26:29   Okay, alright, I see what's going on here.

00:26:33   Yeah? Okay. So you have two

00:26:37   kickstands in the back of the, that's the smart keyboard but it's

00:26:41   you the same setup with the Slim Folio Pro. You have two kickstands in the

00:26:45   bottom of the smart keyboard. You open them, you fold the keyboard underneath and

00:26:51   you have the iPad in touch mode at an angle. And it works because when you fold

00:26:57   the keyboard iOS automatically engages the software keyboard again.

00:27:04   They look small but it's very stable. I've been using this in touch mode for

00:27:09   months and it's totally awesome. So that would be the teaching setup.

00:27:15   So this is how you have it set up on the smart keyboard, right?

00:27:19   Yes, it's the same on the Slim Folio Pro.

00:27:21   OK. I'll make sure that there's images in the show notes so people can go and look at

00:27:26   this. It'll also be chapter artwork if you use an app that shows the chapter artwork.

00:27:31   I'll put that in there.

00:27:33   You can actually use these pictures and they're not terrible. So you can use these pictures.

00:27:37   I will do that.

00:27:38   Wow, look at this.

00:27:39   I'm gonna say though, it looks super precarious.

00:27:44   - It's not really.

00:27:47   Because they, you know, if you,

00:27:51   I did of course multiple tests before

00:27:55   actually attaching them to the iPad

00:27:57   and they never close accidentally for me.

00:28:01   Now, I don't know if you actually try and stab the iPad

00:28:05   instead of typing like a normal person,

00:28:07   they probably would break.

00:28:09   But honestly, just typing in touch mode,

00:28:11   sending a few tweets,

00:28:13   writing a link post on Mac stories, totally fine.

00:28:17   - So like you would use these to just whatever,

00:28:19   like you just don't wanna use,

00:28:21   you just don't wanna have the keyboard

00:28:22   in front of you anymore.

00:28:23   And you just like poking around.

00:28:24   - Yeah, yeah.

00:28:26   Matthew is asking in the chat room,

00:28:28   does it dent the case?

00:28:30   So I use this on the,

00:28:33   on the Italian Smart Keyboard that I had for three months maybe before moving to a US Smart Keyboard.

00:28:44   I can see that there's a very small dent in the case.

00:28:50   So if that's a problem for you, this is going to happen.

00:28:54   I'm not sure how you can mitigate the issue, maybe by having stickers or some other kind of protection

00:29:01   where the kickstand is attached, I can notice a small dent in the cover of my smart keyboard,

00:29:11   but it's really small and it's really not an issue, honestly. And let me look on this US one.

00:29:18   So these kickstands, how do you get them to level? Do you just extend them to the maximum each time?

00:29:31   Is the iPad not like misleveled? Because it's two independent things that you have to extend, right?

00:29:36   Yeah, but you attach them so that they are at the same level, in the sense that they are perpendicular to each other.

00:29:46   Well, that takes some time to set up.

00:29:47   No, not really. Not really.

00:29:51   I put the iPad flat on a desk and I just put them roughly at the same height.

00:30:00   I think I use the measuring tape to make sure they were at the same distance on both sides

00:30:05   so that it's actually quite precise.

00:30:09   Very nice Federico.

00:30:12   Yeah look it's a life hack, it's not perfect. Ideally there should be a built-in

00:30:19   mode for this maybe but it works and I'm not particularly bothered by the small

00:30:28   sign that is left on my Smart Keyboard. The US one actually has no signs, so

00:30:35   it looks pristine even though I've been using the kickstands a bunch. But yeah, it's not perfect,

00:30:43   but it solves a problem that I have with the Smart Keyboard, which is it's great for typing with a

00:30:50   physical keyboard, but if I just want to switch modes and I don't want to switch covers, because

00:30:56   an answer could be, well, just remove the smart keyboard and put on the smart folio, which is

00:31:01   basically the same thing but without a keyboard and with a touch mode. But I don't want to switch

00:31:07   covers all the time, and so it's a way to have both touch mode with an angle and physical keyboard

00:31:14   mode in the same accessory, which works okay. And they're cheap and they're very solid, so

00:31:21   you can get them from amazon but not immediately no what a life hack

00:31:28   yeah all right so back onto more serious subjects

00:31:33   uh there was gamey rambo continued to spread more and more information last

00:31:38   week after his his week of of leaking from

00:31:42   wherever the information that he got was from about stuff in ios 13

00:31:46   Mac 1015 stuff in the Apple Watch, etc.

00:31:50   And there was one report talking about some iOS features coming to the Mac.

00:31:55   One of them was the possibility of a version of shortcuts to come to the Mac.

00:32:02   And so I want to hear what you have to say about this.

00:32:07   Okay. Of course I'm intrigued by this idea of bringing shortcuts to a...

00:32:19   maybe not a bigger audience, but a different audience.

00:32:23   And I've seen... there's a great article by Dr. Drang about what does this mean for the future of automation on macOS.

00:32:33   And to sum it up, he argues that what makes automation great on MacOS is the fact that you have complete communication between two layers of automation.

00:32:43   You have the Darwin and kernel stuff, so Bash, Python, Ruby, how you can have the scripting languages that perform scripting and automation at a very low level.

00:32:54   And then you have AppleScript and Automator and these other user-facing automation tools that can communicate with each other.

00:33:02   So AppleScript can communicate with Bash and Python,

00:33:04   and Python and Bash can also communicate

00:33:06   with AppleScript and Automator.

00:33:08   It's a two-way thing that's going on, which is great.

00:33:11   Now, where does Shortcuts fit into this?

00:33:14   And if you read the report from Rambo,

00:33:19   it's very light on details,

00:33:23   but he mentions Siri Shortcuts,

00:33:26   which is, when you hear me say Siri Shortcuts,

00:33:29   I do not mean the shortcuts app.

00:33:32   So Siri shortcuts are those little actions

00:33:35   that you can set up on iOS and give them a phrase,

00:33:37   and they represent actions or screens

00:33:41   that you can reopen in a third-party app.

00:33:43   And Rambo mentions there will be Siri shortcuts,

00:33:46   there will also be a shortcuts app,

00:33:48   but it doesn't go into these details of how

00:33:51   it will integrate with macOS

00:33:55   and it'll feel a bit different from shortcuts on iOS.

00:33:58   but it does mention how it may be possible that shortcuts on the Mac will only be compatible with third-party apps that have been written in Marzipan.

00:34:07   Now, I would be surprised...

00:34:11   So I want to sort of go over a few layers of this discussion, if that's okay with you, Myke.

00:34:17   I want to hear it.

00:34:19   I would be very surprised if shortcuts on the Mac does not offer any ties to

00:34:26   existing scripting

00:34:29   or tools or automation features of Mac OS.

00:34:33   Shortcuts on iOS already has a native action called "Run SSH script",

00:34:40   which yes, it is different from what we're talking about here. It's not bash. It's not Python. It's not AppleScript.

00:34:47   But there's a small precedent for having shortcuts run a script natively, but with an SSH session.

00:34:59   And it would not be unthinkable, I believe, to imagine how there may be a "run apple script" action,

00:35:08   or maybe a "run shell command" action in shortcuts for Mac.

00:35:12   for Mac and I think I would be very surprised if in the process of bringing

00:35:18   shortcuts over to the Mac the team does not consider this possibility of this is

00:35:24   not possible in the US but we have it on the Mac so why not and actually you know

00:35:29   if you really wanna be precise about this you can use the run SSH action to

00:35:36   run scripts on your Mac this is what I'm already doing with my Mac mini I have

00:35:42   the SSH action "run shell scripts" and perform and run Apple scripts using the

00:35:48   osascript command. This is all already possible, but you gotta enable SSH.

00:35:53   What we're arguing here is, should shortcuts for Mac have native AppleScript, native

00:35:59   Bash support, and all this kind of stuff? And I think it should, or at least it

00:36:02   should have some kind of bridge, some kind of tool that says you can execute

00:36:07   this command. Now the more interesting question for me is, consider how

00:36:12   Shortcuts works at the moment on iOS. You have native actions that you can run

00:36:19   inside of Shortcuts. These are your files actions or your web API actions, your

00:36:26   Apple Music actions, all these native frameworks. Then you have City Shortcuts,

00:36:32   which are these little steps that you can import from apps and they're either

00:36:39   they either show you stuff like they display some kind of visual preview or

00:36:45   they take you into a third-party app. Then you have the good old URL schemes

00:36:54   that you can either assemble by hand or are pre-packaged in shortcuts as visual

00:37:03   actions. But these actions, even though they look pretty and they look visual,

00:37:06   they actually simply launch a third-party app to perform an action or

00:37:14   to show you something. What Shortcuts on iOS does not have as of iOS 12 is a

00:37:21   native API for developers to have their apps become native actions of shortcuts.

00:37:30   There's no, let's call it workflow kit or let's call it shortcuts kit, call it

00:37:35   whatever you want, but there's no native framework for my curly developer of one,

00:37:41   two, three markdown to say, look I want to offer an action for my markdown

00:37:47   editor in shortcuts, but it's got to be a native action. Not something that

00:37:52   launches one, two, three markdown, but something that actually performs inside

00:37:57   of shortcuts, like the Apple Music actions do, like the Reminders actions

00:38:01   do. That's not possible. On the Mac though, automation with apps has always

00:38:09   been modeled around the idea of performing things in the

00:38:17   background. You can run scripts

00:38:24   from the shell, you can run Python scripts or you can keep an app window

00:38:31   open in the background, but to perform something you do not necessarily have to

00:38:37   launch it like an iOS. You don't see the dance of multiple apps opening on screen

00:38:43   like X-callback for example. So if Apple were to bring shortcuts to the Mac, can

00:38:51   you imagine a situation where it's basically X-callback URL all over

00:38:58   again? Like you want to have some drafts actions in shortcuts? Sure, it'll launch

00:39:04   the drafts app and put the window, you know, make it the front-most window and

00:39:10   and it'll be just like an iOS version of shortcuts.

00:39:14   Now that could be entirely possible,

00:39:16   that bringing automation to the Mac

00:39:20   means just launching third-party apps

00:39:23   and opening Windows and that kind of stuff.

00:39:26   But again, I would be really surprised if in iOS 13,

00:39:32   we do not get a proper,

00:39:35   fully customizable shortcuts API for developers to say,

00:39:40   It's time to move on from URL schemes

00:39:45   and these Siri shortcuts that they launched in iOS 12

00:39:48   didn't really allow us to build

00:39:51   meaningful automation features,

00:39:53   but now we can thanks to these proper shortcuts API

00:39:56   that Apple is opening up.

00:39:57   - Can you give me some examples in your mind

00:40:00   as to why it would be beneficial to have this API,

00:40:03   which is more than what currently exists?

00:40:05   - There's all kinds of possible use cases.

00:40:08   One that comes to mind,

00:40:10   Think of text editors and how drafts and Ulysses have actions that can create new documents from shortcuts.

00:40:20   But those actions, they require launching the app and sometimes they fail because they do not activate in the background.

00:40:29   They're basically just a fancy way to represent launching an app and have it perform a feature.

00:40:39   or try and think how OmniFocus and things,

00:40:44   they also offer actions in shortcuts

00:40:47   and they are customizable with parameters,

00:40:50   but at the end of the day,

00:40:51   they still have to launch OmniFocus and launch things

00:40:54   to perform those actions.

00:40:56   And compare this to how you can create notes

00:41:00   from shortcuts in the Apple Notes app

00:41:03   fully in the background, fully automated,

00:41:05   or how you can create a reminder from shortcuts, from the widget, from the extension, whatever.

00:41:12   Fully in the background, fully automated.

00:41:14   You don't have to launch reminders, just like you don't have to launch notes.

00:41:17   And so the idea would be rather than using your schemes, which are by design insecure,

00:41:24   because any website could, for example, embed a URL scheme that when tapped, you know,

00:41:35   you will see a dialog that says,

00:41:36   you wanna open this link in an app?

00:41:39   URL schemes are not great.

00:41:40   What is great is having a proper automation API

00:41:45   that has user permissions like the Apple apps do.

00:41:50   When you try to use reminders or Apple music

00:41:52   or notes with shortcuts, you get a fancy, very nice

00:41:55   permission prompt that says,

00:41:57   do you wanna use these features with shortcuts?

00:41:59   Which means you can control the privacy access in settings,

00:42:03   but which means you have greater freedom to automate these apps

00:42:08   without having to launch them, which means forget about Base64, for example.

00:42:15   Now you can create tasks in OmniFocus with attachments, with images,

00:42:21   without having to deal with Base64 and URL schemes.

00:42:25   It all just happens natively, which means it gets so much easier

00:42:29   for all kinds of users to say, here's a file variable,

00:42:34   here's a text variable,

00:42:35   make a task in OmniFocus with an attachment for me.

00:42:38   And it all just works.

00:42:39   - Sorry, so I guess one of the big differences,

00:42:41   'cause I'm just trying to make sure that I understand

00:42:44   why this is more than what Siri shortcuts gave,

00:42:47   was that Siri shortcuts were very Siri focused.

00:42:51   So it was like input, output, via voice,

00:42:54   and then maybe a small piece of UI.

00:42:57   - And not even input.

00:42:58   - Well, yeah, but sometimes, right?

00:43:00   - Activation more than--

00:43:01   - There's something, right, there's something.

00:43:03   But the difference here would be if you were looking

00:43:06   at shortcuts API, removing Siri from it,

00:43:10   it's like giving developers the ability to build tools

00:43:13   that work like Apple's native shortcuts tools, right?

00:43:17   So like, this is a piece of functionality

00:43:20   that exists in my application.

00:43:21   You no longer need to open my application to trigger it.

00:43:24   Okay, cool, I just wanted to make sure I was following

00:43:26   'cause that, I mean, that's the dream, right?

00:43:29   That I would be able to what?

00:43:30   Like I could say in shortcuts, like oh,

00:43:35   take a look at the, like oh, it's that time of day,

00:43:37   so just go move all of my projects,

00:43:40   all of my tasks in Todoist to tomorrow.

00:43:43   Like and I never, it's just all done for me, right?

00:43:45   Like I don't do anything, it takes all the tasks

00:43:48   and just moves them to tomorrow and that's it.

00:43:50   - No URL scheme, no web API, all just local, private

00:43:56   and automate it in the background for you.

00:43:58   - And I guess the reason that this comes back

00:44:01   to why we're talking about this now

00:44:03   with shortcuts for the Mac is that's the foundation

00:44:07   for why you would want to start replacing

00:44:10   the existing mechanism that exists on the Mac, right?

00:44:14   Like if you're gonna do this, because look,

00:44:17   I think everyone can see the writing on the wall here, right?

00:44:20   I mean, I understand why it's difficult for people,

00:44:24   especially if you rely on these tools.

00:44:26   But I think we can all see what's going on here, right?

00:44:28   We can all see what Marzipan is probably

00:44:31   gonna end up doing, good and bad.

00:44:34   And one of these things is to start to replace

00:44:37   a lot of the older core underlying things

00:44:39   that exist in the Mac that are maybe

00:44:41   a little bit esoteric for most people.

00:44:43   And for whatever reason, right or wrong,

00:44:45   Apple clearly believes in the shortcuts method

00:44:48   of automation because it put it in iOS,

00:44:50   so it believes in it, they gave it time on stage, right?

00:44:53   believe in it. So it might be the case of like, we want to start redoing what automation

00:44:59   means on all of our platforms and that means creating a new set of APIs that everyone can

00:45:05   hook into and it works across platforms and all that kind of stuff, right?

00:45:10   Yeah. Look, my argument is basically this. On the Mac, you have greater access to, let's

00:45:21   call it system automation. Things that you can do with core system

00:45:26   functionalities like the Finder or the Shell, these very core

00:45:31   frameworks and features of Mac OS that you don't have on iOS. But on iOS you

00:45:38   also have some kind of system automation with shortcuts. Things like opening

00:45:44   Safari tabs or changing the brightness of your device. Things that are related

00:45:50   to the system. And then you have app-based automation. So integrating

00:45:58   either with Apple apps, so reminders, notes, music, and third-party apps. And at

00:46:05   the moment on iOS the situation is Apple apps get all the benefits of native

00:46:11   shortcuts integration and third-party developers they are limited to URL

00:46:15   Schemes and Siri shortcuts. It's not exactly automation as much as it is

00:46:21   fancy launching of apps. It's what it is. Now if I were Apple and if I were in

00:46:29   the process of "alright I want to bring... I'm trying to think right... I want to

00:46:34   bring easier automation to the Mac because I mean let's face it

00:46:40   AppleScript and Automator, they're not exactly user-friendly, especially AppleScript.

00:46:47   You could make the case that there's an entire audience of iPad users,

00:46:57   college kids graduating to a MacBook. You use an iPad and now you

00:47:03   want to use a Mac because you're older, you want to have a more professional

00:47:06   tools so you buy a MacBook. So you're new to the Mac, maybe you already know

00:47:12   shortcuts from iOS, but now what do you do? You want to have some automation on

00:47:17   the Mac. Do you learn AppleScript? Do you try and use Automator? Do you learn

00:47:22   Python and Bash? No. You can make a case for Automator, but I feel

00:47:31   like whoever was trying to make that case, maybe Sal.

00:47:35   - It was Sal Seguin, you know who was trying

00:47:37   to make the case, there was one guy.

00:47:39   - The battle was obviously lost because Automator

00:47:42   hasn't received meaningful updates in years.

00:47:45   And so if you were to think of, all right,

00:47:47   what are all these people that,

00:47:50   is there a market for new Mac users

00:47:53   or even existing Mac users who never got

00:47:56   into automation before?

00:47:59   because they were put off by AppleScript and Automator.

00:48:03   Is there an easy, is there a better way

00:48:05   that we can send this, provide a more cohesive message

00:48:10   around you can make your tasks easier and faster

00:48:14   and more efficient with automation?

00:48:15   And there is an answer and there will be shortcuts.

00:48:18   Now, if you were to bring shortcuts to the Mac,

00:48:24   would you rather make it work in two different ways on iOS and macOS?

00:48:32   So would you say, all right, so on iOS we're gonna launch a Shortcuts API, we're gonna get rid of URL

00:48:38   schemes, we're gonna get rid of, you know, these simplistic series shortcuts, we're gonna have a

00:48:43   proper full-on Shortcuts API for third-party developers. But on the Mac though, we're still

00:48:50   gonna use Apple events and we're still gonna use Apple script and URL schemes?

00:48:57   Or would you say all right so if we're bringing shortcuts to the Mac and we're opening this

00:49:03   shortcuts API for developers I guess we gotta make sure that it works the same way everywhere

00:49:08   and the answer would be let's just make it work for marzipan apps. In these situations I think

00:49:18   the sort of an outcomes raiser problem would suggest that the easiest and most obvious

00:49:26   solution is the one that wins in the end. And so I tend to believe the part of the

00:49:32   95-mic report that the shortcuts will work with marzipan apps. But I think that's in the context of

00:49:42   there will be a new shortcuts API for third-party developers that is supported on iOS and on macOS,

00:49:49   provided that you write your macOS app using this so far unnamed tool that we all refer to as Marzipan.

00:49:57   That would not surprise me at all. So you think that this stuff would be Marzipan apps only on the Mac?

00:50:04   Yes. But again, what I said a few minutes ago still stands. Should Apple offer some kind of basic compatibility mode for old apps or for AppleScript or for Apple Events?

00:50:21   I'm not sure the extent of what Apple could do,

00:50:26   but as far as third-party apps go,

00:50:31   I would not be surprised if it's just for Marzipan apps.

00:50:35   And so Apple could have,

00:50:38   this was one of the concerns

00:50:40   that Dr. Drang expressed in his article.

00:50:43   If Apple makes contacts or reminders on the Mac,

00:50:47   Marzipan apps, do I lose access to all my Apple scripts and all my automations that I have?

00:50:54   I feel like that type of stuff feels inevitable to me.

00:50:58   Yes. Yes, I agree.

00:51:00   Like I would expect over the next two or three years, every app that Apple makes moves,

00:51:05   like basic system app moves to Marzipan.

00:51:08   Yes. So I agree that there will be a rough and bumpy transition period for folks who use

00:51:16   automation with Apple apps that will become Marzipan apps with Mac OS 10.15.

00:51:23   But Apple could smooth out this transition by saying all your Apple scripts can now

00:51:32   become native shortcuts.

00:51:35   Right. And there's a I don't know how it'll look like.

00:51:39   You could go as far as say, oh, maybe Apple should have a sort of like a Rosetta system

00:51:45   to automatically translate AppleScript dictionaries

00:51:48   to shortcuts dictionaries.

00:51:49   - You could just straight up just have a AppleScript block

00:51:53   in shortcuts and it would do it.

00:51:55   - Exactly.

00:51:56   - And it's only gonna work on the Mac,

00:51:57   which is perfectly fine, right?

00:51:58   And it's just like, that will do it, right?

00:52:00   And then over time, hoping that people might start adopting

00:52:04   the native tools that they bring about,

00:52:06   but like, it's just like, look, we're moving it to this.

00:52:08   If you run this, we'll make it work, right?

00:52:11   Like, don't worry about it.

00:52:13   Or maybe there's a way to say we made contacts and marzipan app,

00:52:18   and now you can use the shortcuts API that we have in contacts and that we have reminders.

00:52:25   But for the time being, you can still access the AppleScript dictionary of contacts and reminders.

00:52:31   Again, to smooth out this transition period.

00:52:34   And I think last year, Steve Tratt and Smith showed how it is technically possible with marzipan

00:52:41   to embed AppleScript dictionary support in a Marzipan app.

00:52:44   So Apple could also say that.

00:52:46   And I also wanted to point out how,

00:52:49   I've gotten a few responses and comments from people who say,

00:52:54   "Why would you want shortcuts on the Mac

00:52:57   "while Automator is so much more powerful?"

00:53:00   And it depends, I think, on your definition of powerful.

00:53:03   Because Automator, if all you care about

00:53:06   is running shell commands,

00:53:08   and using those classic Mecco S10 automation features

00:53:13   that are still automator, then yes, it is more powerful.

00:53:18   But if you just look at what you can do with shortcuts,

00:53:21   with just a few drag and drops and just a few touches,

00:53:25   I mean, shortcuts has conditional blocks and repeat loops

00:53:30   and custom UIs that you can put together

00:53:35   with alerts and dialogs and menus.

00:53:37   None of this is available in Automator.

00:53:40   None of this.

00:53:41   - Frankly, it is much more accessible

00:53:42   to people that don't understand what they're doing.

00:53:45   I can understand shortcuts in a way

00:53:47   I was never able to understand Automator.

00:53:50   And like power is one thing,

00:53:54   accessibility is another thing, right?

00:53:56   Like people being able to learn something easily

00:53:58   without a lot of knowledge behind them,

00:54:02   that brings more power to more people.

00:54:06   And isn't that the most important thing, ultimately?

00:54:10   - Is it?

00:54:11   It's like, do you value power for power's sake,

00:54:14   or do you value power in the context of empowering people?

00:54:18   Which is a different thing, I think.

00:54:21   Do you just want to have the maximum power,

00:54:23   but it's like, do you want to build a car

00:54:25   that goes to 300 kilometers per hour,

00:54:28   but so very few pilots in the world can drive,

00:54:31   or do you want to have a very good and very accessible car

00:54:34   that most people can drive?

00:54:36   I don't want to get political here. He says, backing head first into this, it's like the

00:54:43   1% idea, right? Like all the money being controlled by such a small amount of people. That's what

00:54:49   it reminds me of, right? Like, you can have all the power as long as you have the knowledge.

00:54:55   Well, that's not fair. I don't have the knowledge, but I want some of the power.

00:55:01   So to sum it up.

00:55:03   We really got off the rails there, didn't we?

00:55:05   Yeah.

00:55:07   But I think it was a good discussion.

00:55:09   In the context of

00:55:11   there's so many questions that are still

00:55:13   of course left unanswered

00:55:15   in terms of, as

00:55:17   Dr. Drang pointed out in his

00:55:19   post, which you really should go read because he raises

00:55:21   a few interesting points,

00:55:23   will shortcuts or Mac

00:55:25   be able to communicate

00:55:27   in a sort of a three-way

00:55:29   system with Darwin and the

00:55:31   AppleScript automator and shortcuts? And will Apple provide some kind of bridge

00:55:38   or some kind of compatibility layer for the shell and AppleScript in shortcuts?

00:55:44   And then we have the broader picture of what's in the cards for

00:55:52   shortcuts too at WWDC? And should Apple open up a proper shortcuts API for

00:55:59   third-party developers and my answer is yes and I've been saying this since my

00:56:03   iOS 12 review last year. There should be... it's time to move on from URL schemes

00:56:09   and Siri shortcuts were not meant for automation it is time to have the same

00:56:14   automation tools that Apple has for their own apps and make them available

00:56:18   through third-party developers. But if that's the case and if that it's also

00:56:25   coming to macOS. I believe it's very possible that it will be for

00:56:31   Marzipan apps only. Which brings us to the final question that we brought up

00:56:38   a few minutes ago of if this new kind of automation is for Marzipan apps only,

00:56:43   what happens to existing Apple apps that become Marzipan apps? So your contacts

00:56:51   and your reminders and mail, maybe?

00:56:55   Is mail too complex for Marzipan?

00:56:57   Maybe.

00:56:59   All these basic-- - Depends what they do

00:57:00   to iOS mail.

00:57:01   - Depends what they do, yes.

00:57:03   So what happens to automation for these existing Mac apps?

00:57:08   Will there be a one-to-one match

00:57:12   between AppleScript and Shortcuts API?

00:57:15   I sort of doubt it.

00:57:17   - You know, like you said that about complicated.

00:57:18   This is something that I keep coming back to,

00:57:20   I keep hearing people mention it.

00:57:22   Like, here's the here's my thinking on this, like the way that I come at this.

00:57:25   Nothing should be too complicated.

00:57:27   It is up to Apple to make it work.

00:57:29   They believe in this system.

00:57:31   They have to find a way to make mail comparable on both platforms.

00:57:36   And it be Marzipan based.

00:57:38   They just have to do it.

00:57:39   Whatever it takes over the next few years, they have to find a way.

00:57:43   I don't expect that they're going to be able to move all of these apps this year.

00:57:47   But over the multiple year rollout of this program, like this, this idea, this

00:57:51   platform, they should be able to get all of their apps running this way because

00:57:56   otherwise why do it, right?

00:57:58   If they can't stand at the front of this and be like, this is the way to make apps.

00:58:03   We believe in it so much.

00:58:04   We're going to make all of our apps this way, and we're going to keep the power of

00:58:06   them. Then what's the point?

00:58:08   Yeah. You know, like if we're 10 years down the line and mail is still made of app

00:58:15   then they're not doing their job properly.

00:58:18   If they are then gonna stand and say,

00:58:20   this is the new way to make apps,

00:58:21   which is what they will say, right?

00:58:23   Like over the next couple of years,

00:58:25   Apple is going to be telling everyone,

00:58:27   the way you should make apps for our platform

00:58:30   is by using this set of tools that we've created, right?

00:58:32   Like that's what they're gonna say.

00:58:33   No matter, like there will be a million edge cases,

00:58:36   it won't be good for this, it won't be good for that,

00:58:37   it's fine.

00:58:38   But Apple's not gonna say that, right?

00:58:39   Like the plan will be, you use your apps,

00:58:43   you make your apps using these tools that we've created and now they've won on all the platforms

00:58:47   so they need to do it too right and the idea of oh itunes is too complicated so they have to

00:58:54   break it up and make it dumb uh mail is too complicated and so either they're gonna remove

00:58:59   uh smart boxes or they're just never gonna bother or like safari is too complicated so we're gonna

00:59:04   have these two versions it needs to be one and it needs to be great on everything because otherwise

00:59:10   Otherwise, what's the point?

00:59:12   Yeah

00:59:15   Few final things I I do not believe that

00:59:18   Automator and Apple script are going away

00:59:21   Immediately. It's not a it. I don't think Apple likes to kill off these existing Mac features

00:59:29   Not when they don't need to and when they're just just gonna hurt people

00:59:33   Yeah, they can just phase them out over time and it'll be obvious and everybody will will adapt

00:59:40   And also a friend of the show and friend in real life, Jason Snell, is making a good point in the chat room

00:59:46   that Apple could offer some kind of bridge

00:59:49   to bring quick actions,

00:59:52   which is a feature of Michael S. Mojave in the Finder, and

00:59:55   sort of say you can have your quick actions in shortcuts and sort of it's a way to bridge old

01:00:01   automation with new automation, which I think is a really good point and I could see how these kinds of

01:00:08   little compatibility steps or like you mentioned Myke, run AppleScript as an action in shortcuts for Mac.

01:00:14   I could see how they may alleviate some of these problems that may arise during the transition,

01:00:21   you know, with Marzipan and all of that.

01:00:23   My main question is, and that's the one that I'm most curious about, is what happens to folks like Drang

01:00:30   that have existing AppleScripts that work with contacts and reminders?

01:00:34   What happens when those apps are no longer AppKit apps, but they are Marzipan apps?

01:00:39   Will they keep their existing AppleScript support or will they use something new?

01:00:43   So my question will be, really the question is, does Drang need to write new scripts? That's the question

01:00:49   we're all wondering because it represents, in that simple question, is a big problem of

01:00:55   how does Apple move from old automation to new automation with shortcuts? And so how much work does Dr. Drang, and people like Dr. Drang,

01:01:03   have to do to update their scripts and automations and workflows.

01:01:09   It's very interesting. I know that it's scary for Mac users. For me, there's all to gain here.

01:01:19   For folks like me, and I think you, Myke,

01:01:22   this is great because it means I can now translate all my iOS automations to Mac automations.

01:01:29   I've got no time for Automator, I've got no time for AppleScript, but I know how to use shortcuts.

01:01:34   And if shortcuts come to the Mac, now I can...

01:01:37   Imagine if all your iOS shortcuts could sync to the Mac and just work out of the box. Wouldn't that be great?

01:01:45   I would love to stop using the toggled Mac app.

01:01:48   Anything to stop using the toggled Mac app would be just a real blessing to me.

01:01:53   Whoo! Alright, let's take a break and then I

01:01:57   I need to talk about something quite sorrowful to me.

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01:03:50   week I decided that this week we would talk about the Samsung Galaxy Fold

01:03:56   because I have you know anything anyone's listen to me on this show and

01:04:02   on upgrade will know that I am like super interested in folding phones and

01:04:06   especially the Galaxy Fold the two the fold and the Huawei Mate X the fold was

01:04:14   the most interesting to me from a design perspective and the reason I want to

01:04:18   about it is like last week somebody initial impressions started coming out so there were

01:04:22   videos from people like Casey Neistat and MKBHD, D-Devone at the Verge, there were videos from

01:04:28   people at the Wall Street Journal, I think Jeffrey Fowler had videos there and they were like hey

01:04:33   come to our place right like what Apple does and spend some time with it and then you can make a

01:04:37   video about it so a bunch of videos came out people were intrigued by it there was a lot of surprise

01:04:44   about the device. People were recognising there was work to be done, but that the bones of an

01:04:51   interesting product were definitely there and it was more put together than people were imagining.

01:04:56   I'm so impressed when I look at how the software works, just from a basic perspective of the

01:05:03   multitasking. There are parts about the multitasking that they have better than Apple do,

01:05:07   that you can have a bunch of apps on screen at once and you can just resize them all and it's

01:05:12   great right and they don't have a lot of apps that use this because they need to integrate

01:05:17   with Samsung's API's and I can't imagine that there are a ton of developers on Android that

01:05:21   are like falling over themselves to support the Galaxy Fold but Samsung worked closely

01:05:26   with companies that were important for them to work with and they got a bunch of apps

01:05:29   working right so it's like okay this looks interesting and again I haven't used it I'm

01:05:34   sure it's janky in a million ways that iOS isn't but it's still intriguing and that was

01:05:39   kind of the way that people were talking about it of like you know and I liked

01:05:42   what D. De Bon had to say about this is like I am genuinely surprised because I

01:05:46   thought this was gonna be like a train wreck but it isn't. Reviewers then started

01:05:50   walking away with the devices and people tweeting about it you know and Samsung

01:05:54   was starting to send more units out to people that didn't get the first

01:05:57   impressions and it seemed like everyone that was getting them was like becoming

01:06:02   really drawn to this device you know like I was seeing a lot of people say

01:06:06   like this thing is very interesting right of like you've got this little

01:06:12   screen on the front which isn't that great but it's like a souped up lock

01:06:15   screen effectively and then you when you need to get something done you open it

01:06:19   up and you have this like big square device and this big square screen right

01:06:23   in front of you then all of a sudden devices started failing it was like I'm

01:06:31   I'm not sure whether it was something where a bunch of people knew that they'd broken

01:06:38   it but were too afraid to mention it or whether they were happening at the exact same time,

01:06:44   but it started with Dieter Bohn publishing on The Verge that a bump appeared under the

01:06:49   screen that ultimately killed his unit.

01:06:51   So like a little bump appeared under his screen kind of towards the middle and then that eventually

01:06:58   caused some lines in the display and then just killed the screen.

01:07:01   When he published that article both MKBHD and Mark Gurman showed that they had attempted to

01:07:08   remove what they thought was a screen protector and it destroyed the screen. So there's like a

01:07:13   little plastic covering that didn't go all the way to the edge for reasons that I will never

01:07:18   understand. But it didn't go all the way to the edge and people will try and pick it off as I 100%

01:07:25   would have if I was them and it destroyed the screen.

01:07:28   It was like it's an important part of the screen, it was like a protection part, you

01:07:31   pull it away and it breaks some of the other stuff, killed it.

01:07:34   So all of these people started talking about it.

01:07:37   Samsung recalled the broken phones, they clarified that the screen protector should not be removed

01:07:43   and they said they will make it clear to customers.

01:07:46   They said they would look into what happened to Dieter's phone.

01:07:49   There's been other phones now since I think I saw YouTuber MrMobile had a similar problem.

01:07:54   It was like a bump in your screen.

01:07:56   Killed it.

01:07:58   But Samsung was steadfast on not moving their release date.

01:08:01   Like, in their original PR release, they were like,

01:08:04   "Don't take the screen protector off.

01:08:06   We're going to look into what happened to the other one."

01:08:09   But the phone's still coming out.

01:08:11   Then rumors started to circulate that Samsung would delay their launch in certain markets.

01:08:16   This then became everywhere.

01:08:18   As it stands right now today,

01:08:20   It is completely unknown what Samsung are planning to do with the Galaxy Fold, but you

01:08:27   can rest assured that they will do everything they literally can to release this product.

01:08:33   This is from the statement they gave.

01:08:36   We will take measures to strengthen the display protection.

01:08:38   We will also enhance the guidance on care and use of the display, including the protective

01:08:43   layer.

01:08:44   There is no timeline as to when this phone will be launching.

01:08:46   It was supposed to be coming out on Friday the 26th.

01:08:50   have pre-ordered and Samsung have contacted the pre-order customers and said that they'll

01:08:54   give them an update in two weeks about what's happening. Apparently Samsung have now also

01:09:00   recalled all review units. My expectation here is they want to get them out of the hands

01:09:08   of people before they break and they also want to probably have a do-over on all of

01:09:13   this. When they fix or if they fix or can provide a more strong experience that they

01:09:23   will want to do this all over again. Have people come in, take a look at it, assure

01:09:28   everyone, then send all the devices out, have them reviewed again. Unfortunately people

01:09:33   have already started publishing their reviews and there are still reviews to come of the

01:09:37   device which is fundamentally flawed. iFixit got their hands on one, which is really intriguing

01:09:44   to me. Somebody gave it to iFixit and iFixit just ripped it apart. They have identified

01:09:50   the following issues as potential reasons for why this screen has failed. OLED screens

01:09:56   in general are super fragile and they're more prone to complete failure than just a section

01:10:01   failing with regular LED screens. So like, if this was somehow able to be an LED screen,

01:10:07   Those little bumps may have just killed some pixels.

01:10:09   But on an OLED screen, if you do enough damage, it will kill the entire panel.

01:10:16   This is the issue with the screen protector.

01:10:22   If you pull it, which is what was happening, because it was glued really heavily down because

01:10:25   Samsung doesn't want it taken off, right?

01:10:26   It's part of the screen.

01:10:27   If you pull it and damage some of the OLED, you kill the screen.

01:10:31   That was what was killing them.

01:10:32   It wasn't that removing the screen protector was somehow electronically attached to the

01:10:38   phone, it was just that you would damage the OLED.

01:10:42   You were separating the OLED from the electronics and it would kill it.

01:10:46   The edges of the device are problematic as well because where the hinge is, there are

01:10:51   these two little gaps, the top and the bottom, where you can see it's not covered by the

01:10:58   case because they need to be able to close the thing.

01:11:01   doesn't have any kind of covering. If you remember from the Huawei Mate X, they had

01:11:05   this little rubber thing, which I hated the look of, but that is protection for the edges

01:11:10   of the screen. The Galaxy Fold did not have that. So that is some exposed edges where

01:11:15   you can hit the... where you're able to cause an impact, which can kill the screen. Or this

01:11:23   could be where debris is getting in, which is what definitely happened to D-Dabone. It

01:11:27   looks like some debris got in and they either got in through the hole at the bottom, which

01:11:31   is a 7mm gap which is completely unprotected or it's got in through the back of the hinge.

01:11:36   Now this is a problem because this is definitely going to happen and unless Samsung find a

01:11:41   way to cover that hinge a little bit more, makes me think of the butterfly keyboards

01:11:47   and MacBook Pros, debris is going to get in there and it's going to destroy the screen.

01:11:53   Because probably what's happening is, is debris is getting in and it's getting caught in the

01:11:56   gears it's it's being pressed against the screen and it's adding a separate

01:12:00   stuff it's basically making the the panel separate from the phone killing

01:12:04   the OLEDs this is where we are right now all right so as it stands no one knows

01:12:11   when this thing is coming out but we're I think everyone's assuming that it's

01:12:15   gonna come out somehow and it is so annoying to me that this happens that

01:12:24   this has happened. Samsung saying they let it happen is maybe a strong thing to say.

01:12:31   Like I saw some people say which is really interesting that they couldn't have done that

01:12:36   much real world testing with this because it would have ruined it. You couldn't have

01:12:41   taken this thing out into the world and do a ton of real world testing because everyone's

01:12:47   going to see it. So that might have been a problem for them as they may have been testing

01:12:52   it in too many controlled conditions. Which hindsight is 20/20 on this type of stuff.

01:12:57   I don't think you can necessarily point at them and be like "haha!" because this stuff

01:13:03   happens. The problem is, it's like the MacBook keyboards. So I can imagine a lot of people

01:13:09   like to look at something and be like "haha Samsung prototypes!" but Apple's keyboards

01:13:15   are still failing. They clearly did not do enough real world testing with those keyboards,

01:13:19   Otherwise the keyboards would be able to withstand dust and debris which they cannot so I think it's worth keeping that kind of stuff in mind

01:13:26   anyway

01:13:28   Samsung have one shot to make the first impression on this

01:13:31   They are the first company in the market with a foldable phone and they blew it

01:13:35   Right, like they needed to do this right and they didn't they failed

01:13:41   So like the first this has been like a big news story, right the first

01:13:46   company to get a product in theory to market. We're like a week away from it being sent

01:13:52   into market. People bought it. They made them. They were ready. And they blew it. Can they

01:13:58   make it right? Can they fix it? I don't know. Or have they actually shown us that this can't

01:14:05   exist?

01:14:06   Mm. This is the same company that came back from exploding phones. So I feel like...

01:14:12   The Galaxy Note was a strong brand.

01:14:17   It was a phone that people wanted.

01:14:18   And I agree with you, they can come back from it.

01:14:21   But it's like, what is the lasting damage to the idea of folding screens?

01:14:26   Because my feeling on this, they will find a way somehow to get this phone out.

01:14:32   They put too much money in it now.

01:14:35   Somebody and like all you know, the reason it costs $2,000 still remains

01:14:40   Someone has to do this

01:14:43   If this type of thing is going to exist, you know

01:14:47   It could have just been bad luck or they took too many risks or there's something fundamentally wrong about their form factor decisions

01:14:53   But like I've seen a lot of people say well

01:14:56   Maybe this actually makes the Huawei

01:14:59   more risky

01:15:01   because the plastic part, which is the problem, right, because that's where the flexible stuff is,

01:15:07   is constantly available to the elements. And if these screens being dinged too hard can kill them,

01:15:16   maybe being just the screen is actually worse? All of this to say Federico,

01:15:23   I cannot uncouple my feelings from this product, I still really want it.

01:15:29   I feel like you're more in love with the idea of having a folding phone than having a Galaxy Fold.

01:15:34   It's the one I like the most. I think it is more attractive.

01:15:39   And I actually believe in Samsung's ability to make this, believe it or not, a

01:15:45   real product more than Huawei, even though Huawei's on some real kicks at the moment,

01:15:52   which I think we're gonna talk about in a minute, but I still really want it.

01:15:57   everything that is good in the reviews and the videos and the images is exactly what I wanted and

01:16:02   It's like you can hear it in a lot of the reviewers when they're talking about it

01:16:07   It's like I know this thing is so fundamentally flawed, but I love it

01:16:13   Right and like that's how I look at it. It's like I like my problem child

01:16:18   Because I can see what is wrong with you, but I still love you

01:16:27   It's so annoying to me that they they that they

01:16:30   Whatever happened happened and like and I understand I feel like I understand like

01:16:36   The leaps that they are taking in technology

01:16:40   To try and do this. It's ahead of its time

01:16:43   But somebody has to do it, right

01:16:47   But they blew it they blew it Samsung. So annoyed at you you blew it. I

01:16:54   I really wonder how this happened, because even if you don't test it in a real world

01:17:02   environment, I don't know, doesn't Samsung have offices with windows where air and dust

01:17:08   can come in?

01:17:09   Don't they have gardens where you can find leaves and more dust, like particles?

01:17:18   I really struggle to believe that they don't have a testing environment.

01:17:23   has confirmed that it is that that's what's happened though right like there

01:17:29   is a possibility that the one of the gears broke right because that hinge is

01:17:35   full of gears and something may have dislodged right like no but no one's

01:17:40   actually been able to confirm because Samsung's not saying what happened to

01:17:45   D to bones phone right like was it debris or did something inside the phone

01:17:51   snap off. It's possible. I feel very confident that this could be the perfect

01:17:57   plot for a podcast series. Oh like Serial Season 5? What happened to Dita

01:18:02   Bone's phone? Yes, but honestly I mean I agree with you that folding phones

01:18:10   should be a thing. Maybe it was a little too early, maybe it was not early

01:18:17   But Samsung had the wrong process in place where different teams couldn't talk to each other.

01:18:24   And maybe Gruber actually had an article about this, I think yesterday, raising a very good point.

01:18:29   That maybe engineers did bring it up, but maybe marketing just ignored it and said,

01:18:34   "No, no, no, go ahead. We got a release this fund to prove a point."

01:18:36   But is Samsung a company that releases things to prove a point? Maybe.

01:18:41   Well, there's also, I mean, there, I think that this happens, this happens everywhere.

01:18:46   This happens in all companies, you know, everybody has a line. I don't remember exactly what

01:18:50   we were talking about. Oh, AirPower, right? Like, that like you get to a certain point

01:18:55   and you make a decision. And it might be that Samsung's decision is, let's hope that this

01:19:03   goes okay. When Apple's decision maybe is a little bit more like, we have strung this

01:19:09   for long enough now and it's time to kill it, right?

01:19:12   But like every company has it,

01:19:14   you sunk enough money into something,

01:19:16   you have enough writing on it,

01:19:17   and a lot of logic starts to go out the window.

01:19:22   - Yeah, but when you reach a point where,

01:19:23   okay, we got a product that may work

01:19:26   or may explode on a person's nightstand,

01:19:29   what are our chances?

01:19:31   I feel like pulling the product is probably the safest bet.

01:19:37   But yeah, it does feel like an instance of Samsung saying,

01:19:41   let's hope that people actually read the sticker

01:19:46   to not pull away the protection and that maybe--

01:19:48   - They need to, before this phone ships,

01:19:50   they need to make sure that there is no,

01:19:52   basically at the moment, it's possible for you to pick at it.

01:19:55   They need to extend it to the full size of the screen.

01:19:57   It's wild to me that they haven't already done that.

01:20:01   That like, you could see the ridge,

01:20:02   like you could pick it off.

01:20:03   I would 100% have pulled that off immediately.

01:20:06   There are things where it's like Samsung are so impressive with their hardware but every

01:20:13   now and then you see an instance of "that's good enough" and that doesn't always work.

01:20:20   It definitely doesn't work in a $2,000 phone.

01:20:23   There should be no gap, right?

01:20:26   There's like a little gap where the screen protector sits on top of the screen.

01:20:29   That gap should not exist.

01:20:30   It should go all the way to the edge.

01:20:32   It should look like it's the screen, not that it's something that can be removed.

01:20:37   That is not good enough.

01:20:39   You gotta go back to the drawing board on that.

01:20:41   And then you need to put some kind of membrane to stop dust getting in.

01:20:45   I don't know what you're gonna do Samsung, but you've gotta find a way to fix this one.

01:20:50   You've just got to do it.

01:20:53   And the fix can't be like what happened with the galaxy, which is we'll just hope we get

01:20:58   it right the next time.

01:21:00   That Galaxy, the Note I should say, the exploding Note, there was just no Note that year.

01:21:07   They started refurbishing them, putting smaller batteries in them, but they stopped selling

01:21:11   that product and then just got it right the next year.

01:21:13   I don't think that they have that luxury here.

01:21:16   I think they need to get this right.

01:21:17   This product needs to come out for them to prove the point that they were trying to make

01:21:21   in the first place.

01:21:24   now you know, AirPower and this first version of the fold are now holding their little plastic

01:21:32   hands in the great product graveyard in the sky.

01:21:36   Yep, the hall of failures.

01:21:38   Yeah, it's so sad. But yeah, we'll see.

01:21:43   I want to talk a little bit about cameras with you before we finish out today's episode,

01:21:47   but before we do let me thank our friends over at Smile for their support of this show.

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01:23:09   for

01:23:22   and relay FM. So there was a Ming-Chi Kuo report about the cameras coming to the

01:23:29   2019 iPhones. It's saying that the front-facing camera is going to be

01:23:33   upgraded to a 12 megapixel camera up from 7 which is brilliant and that there

01:23:38   will now be a five element lens component which used to be four elements.

01:23:42   I'm sure I'm just I don't know what this means but I'm just gonna guess more

01:23:45   elements is good. Yeah let's do five elements!

01:23:50   Reference acknowledged. I want there to be a better camera on the front

01:23:57   of my phone for all the great selfies that I take. Apple will be adding a third

01:24:01   camera to both both OLED models the 5.8 and 6.5 inch iPhone so basically the

01:24:06   XS and XS Max which we're assuming is gonna be the 11 and this will be a

01:24:10   brand new super wide 12 megapixel lens. Now the report on 9to5 Max says that both the

01:24:16   super wide and the front facing camera will be coated in black so they blend in better

01:24:20   with the surrounding bezel. I'm confused about this.

01:24:25   Where's the ultra wide lens going? Is it going on the back or is it going on the front?

01:24:32   I think it's going on the back. This is what I thought but like, so okay,

01:24:37   Why is it important?

01:24:38   Like are they gonna make, like are they gonna be able to hide it in the camera bump?

01:24:42   Like if they make the camera bump bigger, what's the problem with having a third lens

01:24:46   show up?

01:24:47   Why do they need to hide it with this black coating?

01:24:49   I don't know because maybe it looks creepy?

01:24:52   I don't know.

01:24:53   Yeah, there's that, yeah, it does look weird.

01:24:55   I don't like seeing all the holes in the phone.

01:24:57   And like, yeah, it's what's it what's the phenomenon?

01:25:00   Yeah, it's like trip to something something, which is a thing that I have.

01:25:03   So I can't search for something.

01:25:07   If I search for it, then I'll see all of the images.

01:25:09   - Oh yeah, I'm the same.

01:25:11   - It freaks me out so much.

01:25:12   It's unnatural holes in things is basically the thing.

01:25:15   Freaks me out, so you're gonna have to do your own Googling.

01:25:19   So this is great, right?

01:25:20   I'm excited about this.

01:25:23   So I wanted to just talk real briefly

01:25:24   about what camera enhancements we actually wanna see.

01:25:27   So I'll mention the ultra wide.

01:25:28   I want an ultra wide selfie camera

01:25:30   and I want an ultra wide regular camera.

01:25:32   That's what I want.

01:25:33   I want ultra wide on everything.

01:25:34   I want the ability to get more people in a selfie, and I also want the ability to get

01:25:43   a big landscape if I want it.

01:25:44   I don't want just a regular or I don't want it everywhere.

01:25:47   I agree, actually.

01:25:49   Especially for the group selfies.

01:25:51   That'd be nice.

01:25:52   Yeah, I am, and I see that you have this in your notes, I am especially intrigued by the

01:26:01   crazy optical zoom of the Huawei P30. This is all over TV commercials in Italy, I assume

01:26:09   everywhere else as well. Except in America, where I can't be stopped.

01:26:13   Except in America. You know, back in Europe we are okay with Huawei. Yes, it looks, I

01:26:20   mean the commercials of course, way oversell the feature. There's one of them, I don't

01:26:26   I don't know if it's international or not, but there's a couple on a balcony, very nice apartment,

01:26:31   they're on the balcony outside looking at the sky and then they zoom in on the moon and they have this

01:26:36   CGI effect where the actual moon becomes big enough so that it's basically in front of their eyes.

01:26:44   Which is of course you're not gonna get and they say like make objects 50 times bigger or stuff like that.

01:26:52   I don't know if it's technically 50 times bigger or not, but it looks impressive.

01:26:57   Yeah, in case you don't know what this this how well, how well,

01:27:00   Huawei P30 can do, it's kind of two things.

01:27:05   It can do five times optical zoom and 50 times digital zoom.

01:27:09   And it's very impressive.

01:27:12   I'll put a link to an MKBHD video, of course, in the show notes where he shows it off

01:27:16   as he calls it, a creeper cam.

01:27:18   It's very impressive.

01:27:18   And the way that they do it is even more impressive.

01:27:21   It is a periscope system with a bunch of mirrors that go down the body of the phone.

01:27:26   It's wild the way that they do this.

01:27:29   It's like a submarine.

01:27:30   It's a submarine, yeah. It's got a submarine camera inside.

01:27:33   I think it's incredible.

01:27:36   This is like some real serious smartphone camera advancement.

01:27:42   This is serious stuff, right?

01:27:45   They have actually built a completely different way to put a camera in a smartphone,

01:27:50   which is why it's cool, right? I expect to see this type of feature in more places now because

01:27:55   this is how you make, this is how you advance smartphone cameras, right? Like,

01:27:59   these are the things that you start to do if you want to start replacing all cameras, is like,

01:28:05   things like this, you know? You're never going to get there, but you get closer all the time,

01:28:08   and a five times optical zoom in a smartphone is incredible. I mean, like, people are calling this

01:28:13   right now, like, the P30 is the camera, which is wild that something's been able to, like,

01:28:18   in some people's minds start to knock the pixel, right?

01:28:21   But like, people are going crazy.

01:28:23   Just for this camera unit in general, like everything that they've done with it.

01:28:26   The regular camera is like 40 megapixels.

01:28:28   I know that megapixels don't mean everything, but they've thrown some serious hardware into it

01:28:33   and they've backed it up with some innovations.

01:28:35   It's a very cool looking thing.

01:28:36   And I want that.

01:28:39   I want a five times optical zoom.

01:28:41   Like, I like my two times optical zoom.

01:28:42   I would like more of the zooms, please.

01:28:44   Five is better than two.

01:28:46   That is what they tell me.

01:28:47   Also, you know, if we're talking about I want a good night mode, apparently their night

01:28:52   mode is like the best night mode too. Like their night mode is like killer. Even again,

01:28:58   better than this was Vlad at the Verge. He did a video like showing off the night mode

01:29:03   comparisons and like the Huawei P30's nighttime shooting is better than Night Sight, even

01:29:12   though Huawei also has their own version of Night Sight. So even without that software

01:29:16   thing turned on, it's still better at low-light photos.

01:29:20   It's crazy, right, that Huawei has been able to do this in just... because until a few

01:29:23   years ago you wouldn't think of Huawei as a good camera phone company, right?

01:29:28   Well, I don't really think you thought of them as anything more than just like a cheap

01:29:32   phone company.

01:29:33   Cheap iPhone copycat, maybe, at some point.

01:29:36   Yeah.

01:29:37   Well, I mean, their software is still an absolute rip of iOS, which is so frustrating to see

01:29:42   like you have this incredible hardware that you are like really innovating on

01:29:47   do something with the software like make it its own thing like they from

01:29:52   iconography to everything they rip off iOS still which is so annoying it's too

01:29:57   bad and it's also too bad that you know people just don't care about this stuff

01:30:01   people say oh it's just like the iPhone and it doesn't cost you know 1500 euros

01:30:06   I really love that they put all these like colors and finishes on the backs of

01:30:10   the phones like they have these like purple and blue rainbowy or a death like

01:30:14   it's just different right like it just looks different yeah I think it's cool I

01:30:19   I would I am very keen for some new stuff in the cameras anyway like just I

01:30:26   like more you know do you feel like the iPhones camera has gotten a little

01:30:32   boring over the past couple of years I mean I know that you are a smart HDR

01:30:37   I love it. I think it's gotten better. Okay, I mean so I'm really happy with the Smart HDR stuff

01:30:44   but I want more cameras in the same way that I wanted a second camera when second cameras

01:30:52   started being a thing right before they're on the iPhone because at first it was like well why would

01:30:57   you have two cameras like do you remember the LG 3D phone? You take 3D photos? Do you remember that?

01:31:02   this is a long time ago. I also remember the Amazon phone with a bunch of cameras.

01:31:08   Yeah exactly so like at first it was like more than one camera was like well this is dumb and

01:31:13   then when people started putting three and four cameras on phones it's like well this is dumb but

01:31:18   now it's like oh okay this is this is useful now like putting an ultra wide lens on a phone there

01:31:25   is some utility to that you can get a different type of photo so now I now want that where before

01:31:30   I didn't so now I'm like alright give me more cameras I want I want more cameras

01:31:35   give me more cameras if you're gonna give me a camera bump put all the

01:31:37   cameras in it just cover them with black coating so it doesn't make me freak out

01:31:41   and then I'll take them all please yeah maybe Tim Cook has that like

01:31:47   trypophobia so that's why they do it you know like that's why I think I actually

01:31:53   can see a req as a trypophobia type of person like it doesn't give off that

01:31:58   vibe that it would have this kind of phobia but I think it's totally Eddie

01:32:02   with trypophobia I think I can see it. So me you and Eddie were in a special

01:32:08   club of people freaked out by holes in things. You saw that Nokia phone right

01:32:13   with the five cameras? Yep. Can't look at that thing. Nope. Alright if you want to catch our

01:32:20   show notes for today go to relay.fm/connect2/240

01:32:24   We're very excited that Steven should be back next week. I hope he's back next week. I miss him

01:32:30   Don't tell him that should be back should be back. Hopefully we'll see

01:32:34   Federico max stories dotnet there was still a bunch of stuff last week that went up for the 10th anniversary

01:32:40   So people should go and read a lot of those things if they haven't already

01:32:43   You can find Federico online is at the teachy vi ti CCI on the social networks and I am at I Myke I am yke

01:32:51   Thanks to FreshBooks, Bombas and TextExpander for their support of this show.

01:32:56   I'm looking forward to handing over the hosting duties back to Steven

01:33:01   next week.

01:33:02   You know, I like being the host every now and then but it's nice to be able to just sit back and let the episode

01:33:08   kind of just happen to you. But anyway, this show is part of Relay FM.

01:33:11   You can go to relay.fm/shows to find this show and many more and

01:33:14   we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye Federico.

01:33:18   Arrivederci.