Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode 233.

00:00:13 ◼   ► It's made possible this week by our sponsors,

00:00:15 ◼   ► ExpressVPN, Hover, and Luna Display.

00:00:19 ◼   ► I'm your host, Steven Hackett, and it is an odd episode,

00:00:21 ◼   ► so I am joined first by Myke Curley.

00:00:24 ◼   ► - The oddest co-host, hello.

00:00:27 ◼   ► - And Federico Vittucci.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Hello guys, how are you?

00:00:31 ◼   ► Great.

00:00:32 ◼   ► Yeah, good.

00:00:33 ◼   ► It's a fine week.

00:00:36 ◼   ► I think it's a fine week.

00:00:38 ◼   ► Welcome back, Steven.

00:00:40 ◼   ► Welcome back.

00:00:40 ◼   ► Thanks for covering me last week, I appreciate that.

00:00:43 ◼   ► I enjoyed listening to the show.

00:00:45 ◼   ► As always, you guys just run wild with the format, but.

00:00:49 ◼   ► There is no format when we record,

00:00:52 ◼   ► when just me and Federico record, there's no format.

00:00:54 ◼   ► Well, is it really connected then?

00:00:56 ◼   ► We are.

00:00:57 ◼   ► Yes.

00:00:58 ◼   ► free souls free of your um loving guidance no more like a crushing hand of the empire

00:01:10 ◼   ► that puts a limit to our imagination and creativity i know you didn't mean to but you kind of made a

00:01:17 ◼   ► star wars reference well but i know you didn't you've accidentally made a star wars reference

00:01:22 ◼   ► He was talking about the first empire, I think. The Roman Empire.

00:01:25 ◼   ► Yes. Maybe for all these years I wanted you to think that I am no Star Wars expert.

00:01:31 ◼   ► Oh my god. Maybe it was all pretense, maybe it was all part of my character.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Can you give me just any more Star Wars facts to prove your Star Wars knowledge?

00:01:38 ◼   ► I can give you some facts, in fact. Quit googling, stop typing.

00:01:41 ◼   ► I can tell you... No, look, look, well, how can I prove to you that my hands are not typing

00:01:49 ◼   ► anything. So I'm just gonna do something with my hands.

00:01:51 ◼   ► Clap constantly.

00:01:52 ◼   ► Okay, so, so I can tell you that in the first version of Star Wars, in the tavern scene,

00:02:01 ◼   ► Han Solo, I think there was this controversy that the other guy shot first, but then George

00:02:11 ◼   ► Lucas in the DVD sort of changed that. Or I can't, look, I'm still not googling.

00:02:18 ◼   ► I can tell you, for example, of course I do know that Darth Vader is Luke's father.

00:02:24 ◼   ► Um, also I know that in the last movie, um, the, what's the name, Luke Skywalker.

00:02:32 ◼   ► Spoilers, I guess.

00:02:33 ◼   ► Spoilers for Star Wars?

00:02:35 ◼   ► Drinks some kind of alien milk.

00:02:37 ◼   ► I know because I've seen the memes, and um, also-

00:02:41 ◼   ► I don't think you've disproved anything.

00:02:43 ◼   ► All you've been talking about is just like the most memed stuff.

00:02:47 ◼   ► Harrison Ford, what's the character's name, Han Solo?

00:02:52 ◼   ► In the previous movie, so that would be the one that came back a few years ago, he dies

00:02:57 ◼   ► because his son...

00:02:58 ◼   ► You need to stop now.

00:02:59 ◼   ► This is so many spoilers now.

00:03:01 ◼   ► His son, who is the actor with the creepy face, he pushes him off a ledge or something.

00:03:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:08 ◼   ► What are we going to do about just the rampant spoilers that occur during this?

00:03:12 ◼   ► If you were spoiled by Star Wars, by this podcast, that's your problem, not mine.

00:03:15 ◼   ► They've all been out for a long time.

00:03:17 ◼   ► Do not care. Do not email me.

00:03:19 ◼   ► Okay. So, anyway, I just wanted to prove a point that I do know some Star Wars information.

00:03:25 ◼   ► A point proven. You're an expert.

00:03:27 ◼   ► Okay, thank you.

00:03:28 ◼   ► A clapping expert.

00:03:29 ◼   ► My hands are sore.

00:03:30 ◼   ► I'm sure they are.

00:03:31 ◼   ► We have some follow up that Federico's dream app may be on its way.

00:03:37 ◼   ► So, congratulations to everyone for shipping.

00:03:40 ◼   ► Yeah, the Lookup team is listening to my wishes, apparently, into my dreams.

00:03:47 ◼   ► They are working on a quiz mode for Lookup.

00:03:50 ◼   ► It was supposed to be part of Lookup 5, but then they kind of wanted to focus on the new

00:03:54 ◼   ► design, on the sync in between the iPhone and the iPad.

00:03:58 ◼   ► I also got some recommendations from people on Twitter before I saw this tweet that Lookup

00:04:04 ◼   ► is going to still work on the quiz mode, on the games mode.

00:04:09 ◼   ► people recommended I use Quizlet, which is this app/platform that also has an API, and

00:04:17 ◼   ► the idea would be it lets you create quizzes and games for any kind of dataset that you

00:04:22 ◼   ► want to use. So in theory, I could put together some shortcuts, or, you know, to put together

00:04:30 ◼   ► my own games based on dictionary definitions, but it seems like a lot of work, and honestly,

00:04:37 ◼   ► For something that I'm just going to use myself, I feel like I'm just going to wait for Lookup

00:04:43 ◼   ► to add a native feature.

00:04:44 ◼   ► Because building your own quiz is the same problem that you were having before, right?

00:04:48 ◼   ► Because it's got to be like, the data has to be the words you've learned, so it requires

00:04:53 ◼   ► you to be entering them, but you could have just put those into a spreadsheet and had

00:04:56 ◼   ► Silvio ask you them.

00:04:59 ◼   ► Having it integrated into the app that you're learning from is the most important part.

00:05:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:06 ◼   ► So I'm just gonna wait for, you know,

00:05:11 ◼   ► look up to get this feature and be native.

00:05:15 ◼   ► I don't know if other dictionary apps

00:05:17 ◼   ► will be shipping this feature first,

00:05:20 ◼   ► now that we talked about it,

00:05:21 ◼   ► maybe we've inspired some developers.

00:05:23 ◼   ► I mean, the more the merrier, as always.

00:05:26 ◼   ► Also, I should mention before we get more tweets.

00:05:28 ◼   ► The, what's the, you know, those,

00:05:31 ◼   ► the dictionary people that have a funny Twitter account,

00:05:34 ◼   ► - The Merriam Webster. - The Merriam Webster.

00:05:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:37 ◼   ► They do have a games mode in the iOS app,

00:05:42 ◼   ► but they're not customizable games.

00:05:45 ◼   ► They're just games that they offer.

00:05:47 ◼   ► You cannot load up your own favorite words or definitions.

00:05:50 ◼   ► So they do offer games based on words.

00:05:52 ◼   ► They have word games and also traditional quizzes,

00:05:55 ◼   ► but they choose the games and they make the games.

00:05:58 ◼   ► You cannot personalize them.

00:06:00 ◼   ► - I also wanna do a little bit of a follow out.

00:06:03 ◼   ► Myke and I were in Chicago over the weekend and we did a live episode of Mac Power Users.

00:06:09 ◼   ► The first live episode of MPU since Mac World Expo, so it's been a little while.

00:06:14 ◼   ► So what, 2013?

00:06:16 ◼   ► Or 2003?

00:06:18 ◼   ► 2013.

00:06:20 ◼   ► 2003.

00:06:22 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:06:24 ◼   ► Mac Power Users has been going for a very long time.

00:06:26 ◼   ► 1962 is when it started actually.

00:06:28 ◼   ► Believe it or not.

00:06:30 ◼   ► So yeah, super excited about that.

00:06:32 ◼   ► David and I had Myke and Rosemary Orchard from the Automators podcast on as guests

00:06:38 ◼   ► and I think it came out pretty nicely so thanks to everyone who came out or

00:06:42 ◼   ► volunteered or said something nice it was a lot of fun. You're welcome. Thanks

00:06:47 ◼   ► Myke. No problem. Thanks Myke. You said thanks to everyone and it came out so I just I took

00:06:53 ◼   ► that as a personal thinking. And thank the families of course you should also

00:06:57 ◼   ► thank the families because their families allowed them to travel and

00:07:00 ◼   ► and their employers. - Some families attended.

00:07:02 ◼   ► - You know, because maybe some people

00:07:04 ◼   ► took their day off at work.

00:07:05 ◼   ► So also thanks to all the employers of our listeners

00:07:09 ◼   ► who allow them to come to our shows.

00:07:11 ◼   ► So, it's an important disclaimer, I think.

00:07:14 ◼   ► - We have a couple of tiny topics.

00:07:17 ◼   ► I wanted to talk briefly about this story

00:07:20 ◼   ► that Apple is allowing iPhones with third-party batteries

00:07:25 ◼   ► to be repaired now.

00:07:27 ◼   ► So in the past, if you had an iPhone and you took it to the guy at the kiosk at the mall

00:07:33 ◼   ► and had him crack open your iPhone and put a battery in it, then you would run into trouble

00:07:41 ◼   ► getting service for that phone at the Genius Bar or through Apple's Authorized Service

00:07:46 ◼   ► Provider Network, which left some people in a bad position.

00:07:51 ◼   ► You'd get a battery replace and then something like you have a failure on the phone or you

00:07:54 ◼   ► break a screen or something with the store to take care of it, they would

00:07:58 ◼   ► basically turn you away. So now it seems like Apple has

00:08:02 ◼   ► changed this if the repair is unrelated to the battery. So if you get a

00:08:08 ◼   ► one, two, three, my first battery put in this, Apple's not gonna do anything with

00:08:11 ◼   ► that. But if you have another failure like the display or the logic board,

00:08:16 ◼   ► something like that, the audio system, then they would take care of those

00:08:20 ◼   ► issues you still you know with like the normal fees and everything which I think

00:08:25 ◼   ► is like a nice move you know for a while and still in some ways Apple used iPhone

00:08:30 ◼   ► repair as a way to like lock out other companies from making money on their

00:08:36 ◼   ► customers or depending on how you look at it as punishment to those customers

00:08:40 ◼   ► and I think sites like iFixit are a little fanatical about this sort of

00:08:45 ◼   ► thing and maybe go too far into it but I do think this is a good move for Apple

00:08:50 ◼   ► and its customers, especially when you pair this with Apple's own battery replacement

00:08:55 ◼   ► program, now people know if you put a battery in your iPhone, you can get better performance

00:09:01 ◼   ► out of it.

00:09:02 ◼   ► And I would imagine that even though Apple replaced a whole bunch of batteries, that

00:09:06 ◼   ► that's good for all these other like third party vendors as well, because people may

00:09:11 ◼   ► just want a battery put in and not want to do it at the Apple Store.

00:09:13 ◼   ► So that's pretty, it's pretty good.

00:09:16 ◼   ► It's good news, I think.

00:09:17 ◼   ► I don't know if I would recommend doing a third-party battery

00:09:20 ◼   ► I would always recommend putting a first-party part in it going to the Apple Store

00:09:24 ◼   ► Even if it's a little bit more because you know that where that part's coming from

00:09:28 ◼   ► It's going to come with Apple service warranty on it and all that stuff

00:09:31 ◼   ► But if you do go to a third party, you have a little more peace of mind now

00:09:36 ◼   ► It does feel like some kind of response also to the fact that maybe some people

00:09:42 ◼   ► tried to get a battery replaced at the Apple store but couldn't and so they went to a shop and an

00:09:47 ◼   ► Apple sort of doesn't when you say it as much Steven Apple doesn't want to punish them

00:09:52 ◼   ► I wonder if it's a just a also a consequence of the fact that Apple tried to accommodate more people into their stores

00:09:59 ◼   ► But they couldn't and so they thought maybe we shouldn't punish them because we didn't have you know

00:10:05 ◼   ► because maybe they gave up on trying at the Apple store and they went to an

00:10:08 ◼   ► Third-party shop. I think it's a good idea. I think it's it's it's a good move

00:10:12 ◼   ► I hadn't thought of it that way. I was wondering why they would do this, but maybe that was the case.

00:10:15 ◼   ► Like Apple told their customers that the batteries weren't great, right?

00:10:19 ◼   ► And so it was increased people's requirement or desire or feeling to get the battery replaced.

00:10:25 ◼   ► But couldn't service everybody themselves.

00:10:27 ◼   ► So they've kind of had to kind of relax their rules a little bit. That would make sense.

00:10:33 ◼   ► Maybe they were getting like an

00:10:35 ◼   ► increased amount of inquiries like this, right?

00:10:38 ◼   ► after it happened where like people needed to go back to the Apple store and they had a

00:10:42 ◼   ► Battery and was rejected or something. Maybe that was why because I'm wondering why did it do this?

00:10:46 ◼   ► Maybe they saw more data that indicated that more people were doing third-party battery replacement

00:10:52 ◼   ► And just as a quick aside

00:10:54 ◼   ► There is a whole world that I would like to explore at some point of these

00:10:58 ◼   ► third-party shops they you know that they promise to

00:11:03 ◼   ► Fix iPhones and I've seen many in Rome. Some of them are franchises

00:11:08 ◼   ► so you can see multiple locations for the same type of shop.

00:11:12 ◼   ► And they're usually called iFix or Fix Something or iRepair,

00:11:18 ◼   ► you know, that type of name.

00:11:20 ◼   ► And I've heard stories from friends who have gone to these stores,

00:11:25 ◼   ► again, because they tried at the Genius Bar.

00:11:27 ◼   ► They saw that it was basically impossible to book an appointment,

00:11:31 ◼   ► and so they went to these stores and they were cheaper

00:11:34 ◼   ► and they were serviced more quickly.

00:11:36 ◼   ► But Avert's story is like, oh, just, for example, a couple of friends, they told me that this shop

00:11:42 ◼   ► asked them to leave their phone

00:11:45 ◼   ► unattended while they were performing an iTunes backup.

00:11:51 ◼   ► And now, I don't know if this is a conspiracy theory or like some kind of urban legend, but Avert's story is

00:11:58 ◼   ► not directly, but from like a secondhand

00:12:01 ◼   ► type of, you know, story told by a friend of a friend,

00:12:06 ◼   ► of somebody receiving sort of blackmail messages after a few months for pictures that were

00:12:15 ◼   ► stored on an iPhone that was backed up, unencrypted, at one of these third-party stores.

00:12:21 ◼   ► I think we've got serial season 4 on our hands here.

00:12:25 ◼   ► So do not, I would strongly advise against leaving iPhones, you know, performing iTunes

00:12:34 ◼   ► backup via USB to the computer of a third-party store without encryption on. This is super

00:12:42 ◼   ► creepy. And again, I don't know, like, I don't have it on good authority because it didn't

00:12:46 ◼   ► happen to me, it didn't happen to a close friend, it happened to somebody whose friend

00:12:51 ◼   ► with a friend of mine. So, but it wouldn't surprise me because of course, I mean, even

00:12:57 ◼   ► Even my mom, for example, went to one of these stores and they have some questionable advice,

00:13:05 ◼   ► to say the least, like "Oh, we're going to charge you a 25 euro fee for..."

00:13:10 ◼   ► Like they call it a "clean-up task", which basically comes like, you know...

00:13:15 ◼   ► It costs $25 to close all the apps.

00:13:18 ◼   ► It's basically fake medicine, what they do in some cases for some shops.

00:13:25 ◼   ► And this is not, I'm not saying that all third-party repair shops are bad.

00:13:31 ◼   ► In fact, there was an article a while back, I don't remember the website, I think we linked

00:13:35 ◼   ► it on Mac stories.

00:13:36 ◼   ► It was probably from The Ringer, if I'm not mistaken.

00:13:39 ◼   ► Like these family-run businesses that they've been serving Mac users for decades now, they're

00:13:44 ◼   ► serving iPhone and iPad users, and those are excellent shops, if you can find them.

00:13:49 ◼   ► I remember there was a profile that we linked, they were talking about this shop in Portland,

00:13:54 ◼   ► For example, they've been assisting Mac users for decades.

00:13:58 ◼   ► So that's pretty awesome.

00:14:00 ◼   ► But I'm talking about all this modern crop

00:14:03 ◼   ► of iPhone repair shops that they employ,

00:14:06 ◼   ► again, questionable techniques and questionable advice.

00:14:09 ◼   ► And they charge you a fee for doing something

00:14:12 ◼   ► that you could easily fix just by Googling,

00:14:14 ◼   ► doing some basic reboot your phone, for example.

00:14:18 ◼   ► I don't know. - I actually like that

00:14:20 ◼   ► how these companies stay in business, right?

00:14:22 ◼   ► because they charge more per visit

00:14:27 ◼   ► because the Apple store otherwise

00:14:29 ◼   ► is picking up the majority of the business.

00:14:31 ◼   ► Well, thank you for that.

00:14:33 ◼   ► - Sure. - Conspiracy theory.

00:14:34 ◼   ► I'm very intrigued to look into this more.

00:14:36 ◼   ► I just wanted to note one last thing

00:14:38 ◼   ► that I saw over the last couple of days.

00:14:41 ◼   ► There's a new Apple News icon in iOS 12.2 Beta 4,

00:14:46 ◼   ► which definitely seems to indicate

00:14:50 ◼   ► that there's going to be an update,

00:14:53 ◼   ► and it would also indicate that it's going

00:14:55 ◼   ► to be sooner rather than later.

00:14:56 ◼   ► So that update-- and when I say that, I mean the service.

00:14:59 ◼   ► The modeling service, they're going

00:15:01 ◼   ► to add the magazine streaming service thing in it

00:15:04 ◼   ► because they're changing the branding.

00:15:06 ◼   ► Why else would they do that?

00:15:07 ◼   ► And surely they would do it after.

00:15:09 ◼   ► So all signs--

00:15:10 ◼   ► You'd think if they were going to change

00:15:12 ◼   ► the branding for a paid service, they'd

00:15:14 ◼   ► make the icon better, not worse.

00:15:15 ◼   ► It is an interesting design, isn't it?

00:15:19 ◼   ► I don't even know.

00:15:20 ◼   ► I've been looking at it for like an hour today trying to work out how to describe it on the show and I just I

00:15:26 ◼   ► I'm not sure I can it it's supposed to be like an I

00:15:31 ◼   ► Don't know what it's supposed to be

00:15:34 ◼   ► Supposed to be an N right? Yeah, like the negative space is supposed to be an N kind of but it's bulgy in weird ways and

00:15:41 ◼   ► It's like candy shrimp. I think I saw

00:15:44 ◼   ► Was it that I saw I think it was Ben Mayo saying about this

00:15:49 ◼   ► Maybe it's just time to get rid of the round rack from iOS icon design,

00:15:55 ◼   ► because everyone is just putting their icons in white squares now, including Apple.

00:16:01 ◼   ► So maybe it's time to stop forcing the rounded rectangle icon size

00:16:06 ◼   ► and maybe just start enforcing dimensions.

00:16:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, like Android does. - So you can have any shape.

00:16:11 ◼   ► Yeah, like Android, so you can have any shape,

00:16:13 ◼   ► but it has to be this size by this size.

00:16:15 ◼   ► I think we've maybe entered that time.

00:16:18 ◼   ► If you tilt your head, you can sort of see a squished

00:16:22 ◼   ► border in the middle of the icon.

00:16:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I could see that.

00:16:26 ◼   ► - I think it's a good idea to, again, I've been talking,

00:16:33 ◼   ► I think, on App Stories about the idea of,

00:16:35 ◼   ► we need more personalization on iOS.

00:16:38 ◼   ► Like, I wanna be able to change more,

00:16:41 ◼   ► especially of the home screen,

00:16:42 ◼   ► and I think getting rid of the fixed icon shape,

00:16:47 ◼   ► I don't think it would be a tragedy.

00:16:49 ◼   ► I mean, we already have--

00:16:49 ◼   ► - I think it looks great on Android.

00:16:51 ◼   ► Honestly, like, they look great

00:16:53 ◼   ► because you see more of your wallpaper, for one, right?

00:16:56 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:16:57 ◼   ► - And it allows different shapes

00:16:59 ◼   ► and things can be a little bit more fun.

00:17:01 ◼   ► Like, most of the issues that people have

00:17:03 ◼   ► with the Slack logo today is the color.

00:17:06 ◼   ► Like, it was either that it was purple before

00:17:08 ◼   ► or that it's white now because it's like,

00:17:10 ◼   ► the icon's not that great, but the app icon's even worse.

00:17:14 ◼   ► Well, this way, you wouldn't have to deal with that.

00:17:17 ◼   ► You just have the little pinwheel and you'd be happy.

00:17:19 ◼   ► I'm also putting in the show notes a link to this blog post from years ago about the,

00:17:27 ◼   ► what was it called, newsstand.

00:17:29 ◼   ► Remember that?

00:17:30 ◼   ► Like magazine apps and stuff on your iOS device?

00:17:32 ◼   ► And how iOS 6 was like a bookcase and then iOS 7 had like all these like magazine and

00:17:36 ◼   ► newspaper covers?

00:17:38 ◼   ► Both of these are better than the news icon.

00:17:40 ◼   ► I would take either one of these.

00:17:42 ◼   ► The iOS 6 one was super fun, right? Because it was the only folder that existed on iOS,

00:17:47 ◼   ► and it was empty, but it would fill up with the magazines that you subscribed to.

00:17:51 ◼   ► It was brilliant. And then you tapped into it, and instead of like the...

00:17:55 ◼   ► When folders showed up elsewhere, they had like linen or dots or something.

00:17:58 ◼   ► This looked like a bookcase.

00:18:00 ◼   ► Bookcase. This... Look at this. It's like, yeah, all right. That was like... Especially when you

00:18:07 ◼   ► compare it to how it was then changed in iOS 7 which is below, that's like one

00:18:11 ◼   ► that's one clear way where you can be like oh yeah iOS 7 design was definitely

00:18:16 ◼   ► worse than iOS 6 design. Yeah, New Stand looks real bad in iOS 7. Yeah it just looks very bad. Anyways I'll

00:18:23 ◼   ► take either one honestly over this tragedy but oh well. Alright we have a

00:18:29 ◼   ► bunch of stuff to talk about but first I want to tell you about our first sponsor

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00:20:40 ◼   ► So it has been about six months since iOS 12 shipped.

00:20:44 ◼   ► So it shipped in September, we're now in March.

00:20:47 ◼   ► But you know it's been a little bit longer that most of us have had this on our devices.

00:20:51 ◼   ► But it's been out for about six months now for everybody.

00:20:54 ◼   ► So I thought, especially as we are all thinking ahead to WWDC, maybe we should give a little

00:21:01 ◼   ► review of iOS 12 six months later and talk about...

00:21:06 ◼   ► What I did was I went to Apple's iOS 12 page and I pulled off all of the big headings,

00:21:11 ◼   ► so like assuming that they're the major features of the release, and I thought we could go

00:21:15 ◼   ► through each one of them and talk about how and if we're using the features that were

00:21:21 ◼   ► listed and were provided by Apple as kind of the big features for the release.

00:21:25 ◼   ► So I know the first one and the biggest one was performance.

00:21:30 ◼   ► So Federico, in your opinion, how does iOS 12,

00:21:34 ◼   ► how has it like stuck with the performance

00:21:37 ◼   ► over the last kind of six to nine months that you've been using it?

00:21:41 ◼   ► I think they mostly kept their promise.

00:21:45 ◼   ► I do believe that iOS 12 is the most stable

00:21:50 ◼   ► release that we've seen, especially in recent years, I don't mean to say that it's perfect.

00:21:59 ◼   ► I still occasionally have to, and we all do this, right, I have to reboot my devices every

00:22:07 ◼   ► few days.

00:22:08 ◼   ► I get slowdowns with notifications especially, like you're pulling a notification and it

00:22:14 ◼   ► takes too long to open up, that kind of stuff.

00:22:18 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:22:20 ◼   ► So while I think that overall it works better, it's faster, you know, opening the share sheet

00:22:26 ◼   ► is faster, typing, the performance of the keyboard is in fact faster than it used to

00:22:31 ◼   ► be, there are fewer weird graphical glitches, I don't see those random springboard crashes

00:22:40 ◼   ► anymore, but every few days I still have to reboot my devices.

00:22:44 ◼   ► My only real negative note, I should mention those iCloud issues that I had a while back

00:22:53 ◼   ► and how they were magically fixed at some point.

00:22:58 ◼   ► But if you remember a few episodes ago, we talked about how my reminders exploded and

00:23:03 ◼   ► how slowly but surely those issues sort of propagated to all of my iCloud account, like

00:23:12 ◼   ► my Safari bookmarks were not syncing anymore, reading lists was not syncing anymore, and

00:23:17 ◼   ► then one day everything was fine.

00:23:20 ◼   ► Which again, I don't know how to explain this because I believe that my radar is still open,

00:23:26 ◼   ► but all my issues are gone.

00:23:27 ◼   ► So I also need to mention how, for the past couple of months I think at this point, maybe

00:23:33 ◼   ► a month, maybe a month and a half, I have been keeping Sync, iCloud Sync in the shortcuts

00:23:41 ◼   ► app disabled on all of my devices, because every time I turn on iCloud sync, shortcuts crashes

00:23:48 ◼   ► at launch. So I know that the shortcuts team is aware of this problem, I've been submitting

00:23:54 ◼   ► bug reports, I hope it will be fixed during this beta cycle, but I don't know. But yeah,

00:24:01 ◼   ► for the past couple of months I have been unable to sync my shortcuts with the shortcuts app

00:24:07 ◼   ► between devices, which means I have to, you know, I end up with duplicates or I have to create

00:24:13 ◼   ► one shortcut on one device and then airdrop it to another device, it's a whole mess.

00:24:18 ◼   ► Yeah, imagine putting together, you know, an archive of hundreds of shortcuts this way.

00:24:24 ◼   ► But anyway, so those are would be my two real negative notes. The occasional reboot, I think

00:24:32 ◼   ► it's, I think it's just common practice and I think it's good practice with any kind of computer,

00:24:37 ◼   ► just you know every maybe even once a week just you know give it a little bit of a kick and then

00:24:43 ◼   ► restart it. You know it's usually a good thing to do unless it's a home server in that case you want

00:24:48 ◼   ► to keep it running as long as possible. For me you know I'm in line with what you guys are saying

00:24:56 ◼   ► the occasional glitch here and there. I will say I have several family members using like

00:25:01 ◼   ► iPhone six iPhone success, you know, age devices. And so I kind

00:25:06 ◼   ► of checked in with them. I was like, Hey, how's your phone

00:25:09 ◼   ► doing? And I didn't get any complaints back. So I mean,

00:25:12 ◼   ► that's not a super scientific survey. But it does seem like

00:25:15 ◼   ► they're promised that hey, this is going to be better on older

00:25:17 ◼   ► devices is true. You know, it's, they've got to combat the thing

00:25:22 ◼   ► where people say, Oh, I updated and my phone got slower. And in

00:25:25 ◼   ► a way, iOS 12 sort of says, Yeah, that used to be true. And

00:25:30 ◼   ► And I think they're trying to make that right, which is really good.

00:25:34 ◼   ► And so I think from this perspective, iOS 12 has lived up to the promises that it was

00:25:40 ◼   ► designed to do.

00:25:41 ◼   ► Well, I do have one counterpoint to this.

00:25:44 ◼   ► A lot of us were asking for better performance and stability in 2018 because 2017 to 2018

00:25:52 ◼   ► saw a bunch of weird, random, and kind of terrible bugs in iOS.

00:25:58 ◼   ► Group FaceTime.

00:25:59 ◼   ► Oh yeah, it's a disaster.

00:26:01 ◼   ► Right? So, you know, there were stability issues, that was one, but then, like, you know,

00:26:06 ◼   ► but we were also saying, because you had like the root bug, you had all of the autocorrect bugs,

00:26:11 ◼   ► there was like a lot of stuff that Apple had to issue these big fixes for.

00:26:15 ◼   ► There are other ones as well, there was an iOS one of some kind that I don't, I just can't record it off my head,

00:26:20 ◼   ► but that was like part of it, like your software quality needs to be better,

00:26:24 ◼   ► so we don't have to keep going through all of this like where I think all the

00:26:27 ◼   ► the battery one was part of it right like the stuff that was

00:26:30 ◼   ► happening with batteries was like you're not disclosing what's going on here like

00:26:33 ◼   ► it's causing problems for people all that kind of stuff so leading up into

00:26:37 ◼   ► WWDC it was like right well everyone wants to see a better stability and

00:26:42 ◼   ► performance in the operating system we got that but then just a couple of

00:26:46 ◼   ► months ago there was this huge group FaceTime bug and then you know we all

00:26:51 ◼   ► know what happened from there. So it's definitely not completely out of the

00:26:57 ◼   ► realm of possibility for them even when focusing on performance stability to

00:27:00 ◼   ► have crazy bugs in it but I think it's just worth bringing up as like a way to

00:27:03 ◼   ► bridge these two points because FaceTime is the next point we're gonna talk about

00:27:06 ◼   ► but it's a thing that still happened. But irrespective of the issue I have used

00:27:12 ◼   ► group FaceTime once. Have you guys used it more than that?

00:27:17 ◼   ► I use it with you guys. One time. We did it one time. For my review. And then, well I

00:27:25 ◼   ► guess, look, I don't have any brothers or sisters. I basically don't talk with my dad.

00:27:33 ◼   ► I have the occasional FaceTime call with my mom, but I don't have any extended family.

00:27:41 ◼   ► I watch Sylvia do the occasional group FaceTime because, you know, her sister is living abroad

00:27:48 ◼   ► and they want to FaceTime with her mom. So I am a spectator to group FaceTime, not a

00:27:55 ◼   ► participant.

00:27:56 ◼   ► I don't think that there's anything wrong with the feature. I just don't use it. Like,

00:28:01 ◼   ► it hasn't given me a need to use it over Skype. Right? So Skype is what we're using right

00:28:07 ◼   ► now. Like the time that I would use group FaceTime is times like this, like what we're

00:28:12 ◼   ► doing right now, because they're the only group conversations that I have. But for as

00:28:18 ◼   ► much as people can complain about it, Skype is pretty much rock solid. Like it's just

00:28:23 ◼   ► a it's a bad app, but the service itself is pretty solid. So I have no requirement or

00:28:29 ◼   ► desire to really change it. Especially, you know, like if I was thinking about it, I was

00:28:36 ◼   ► put off by the fact that it was also severely delayed as well right like it

00:28:40 ◼   ► didn't actually come out in June so that's and then I was like at that point

00:28:45 ◼   ► I was just excited about it just keep using Skype Stephen you have a family

00:28:49 ◼   ► though you have kids and kids mean that like there typically are more FaceTime

00:28:56 ◼   ► calls it seems to be like a thing right no more children you have more FaceTime

00:28:59 ◼   ► calls you have do you do you use FaceTime for that stuff we do not group

00:29:06 ◼   ► FaceTime. It's just me calling my wife's number on her iPad or phone or something that they're

00:29:12 ◼   ► picking up. And that's fine. It's the same as it's always been. Group FaceTime just hasn't been a big

00:29:19 ◼   ► need of mine. And I don't particularly care for the UI. I think the floating box heads things

00:29:27 ◼   ► is weird. And when we've done it, at least it can heat your phone up pretty quick, even if you're not

00:29:32 ◼   ► using all the crazy effects they added but I'm glad they've added group face

00:29:36 ◼   ► time like it was sort of ridiculous that it was only one-to-one for so long but

00:29:41 ◼   ► at least for like my life that's not a huge use case. And then of course they

00:29:48 ◼   ► changed the UI along with it which still doesn't feel completely right to me.

00:29:53 ◼   ► Mm-hmm yeah they fixed the flip camera button yeah by putting it back which is

00:29:59 ◼   ► good. The fix was the old way, so this is often the case. I mean it's not terrible,

00:30:07 ◼   ► really. I do wonder, I would be curious to see, statistically speaking, how many people

00:30:14 ◼   ► use all those fancy effects. And, you know, they did some real engineering work, Apple,

00:30:20 ◼   ► you know, in the... When you use the effects camera, both in iMessage and in FaceTime,

00:30:26 ◼   ► can see how stickers now in iOS 12 in FaceTime, they support face tracking. So you can attach

00:30:34 ◼   ► a sticker to your face and the sticker will dynamically resize and scale and follow your

00:30:39 ◼   ► face using a combination of depth and basically just face tracking APIs. It's very technically

00:30:47 ◼   ► advanced. I wonder if not even 1% of the total FaceTime audience uses that feature. So it's

00:30:54 ◼   ► very fascinating to see how when a lot of engineering work goes into a feature that

00:31:00 ◼   ► on average when you consider all of the FaceTime users around the world, maybe less than 1

00:31:06 ◼   ► million people use. I think it's fascinating because for any other developer saying, "Well,

00:31:10 ◼   ► less than 1 million people use my app," that would be quite the milestone. But for Apple

00:31:14 ◼   ► to say, "Less than 1 million people use this feature," it's like, "Well, that's a disappointment."

00:31:19 ◼   ► So I think it's kind of fun.

00:31:22 ◼   ► I was quite surprised when looking through this list to see that Mimoji only came out

00:31:28 ◼   ► last year. I feel like it's been around for longer and like maybe I've just in my brain

00:31:32 ◼   ► now completely melded Animoji and Memoji together.

00:31:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

00:31:38 ◼   ► But it was just funny. I was like, oh, OK, Memoji was last year. It is a feature that

00:31:44 ◼   ► gets sporadic use from me. I still use Bitmoji multiple times a day, every single day. Steven,

00:31:50 ◼   ► the way, uses Bitmoji now. I knew it was gonna happen. He's come over to the fold, because

00:31:56 ◼   ► he loves it just like me now. Bitmoji is still great because it provides you with all of

00:32:01 ◼   ► the scenarios, like it's easy to pick something, rather than with Memoji you would have to

00:32:06 ◼   ► speak it every time because it's just a floating head as opposed to like having things around

00:32:11 ◼   ► it that you're interacting with.

00:32:14 ◼   ► Are you, as they say Steven, a youth now?

00:32:19 ◼   ► comment. Okay. He's recaptured his youth via the use of emoji. Do either of you have anything

00:32:27 ◼   ► at all to say about me emoji? Nope. I think it's fun. I use it because my mum likes them.

00:32:39 ◼   ► -And Sylvia. -Oh, that's a great reason.

00:32:40 ◼   ► Sylvia actually had a very...

00:32:42 ◼   ► See, I can be a good son sometimes.

00:32:45 ◼   ► Sylvia found a very cool use of Memoji.

00:32:49 ◼   ► She made Memoji of Ginger and Zelda.

00:32:54 ◼   ► And they are...

00:32:56 ◼   ► I mean, of course, they are human Memoji

00:32:58 ◼   ► because you cannot make dog...

00:32:59 ◼   ► -Custom dog Memoji. -I was a little bit confused about that.

00:33:01 ◼   ► But, like, she...

00:33:03 ◼   ► Like, the color of the hair, like, Zelda, for example,

00:33:06 ◼   ► she created this girl Memoji and she's blonde but she has a beard because Zelda has a beard.

00:33:14 ◼   ► Oh my god.

00:33:15 ◼   ► Yeah it's very funny, it's very funny.

00:33:18 ◼   ► So that's sometimes she sends them to me and I think it's fun but I send mine to mom because

00:33:26 ◼   ► she thinks they're cute and she has an old iPhone so she cannot create them and every

00:33:30 ◼   ► time she's like "oh I want to have Memoji as well" and I'm gonna buy it in an hour eventually

00:33:34 ◼   ► but she's got to deserve it first.

00:33:37 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:33:38 ◼   ► I feel so bad for your mom.

00:33:42 ◼   ► I just, I really do.

00:33:44 ◼   ► She's not a victim.

00:33:46 ◼   ► She's really not.

00:33:49 ◼   ► One of the things that happened with Messages as well as Memoji was some changes to the

00:33:55 ◼   ► camera.

00:33:56 ◼   ► So the camera in Messages got a bunch of effects.

00:33:59 ◼   ► it goes like you could add stickers and stuff to your to your images and some other like

00:34:04 ◼   ► filters and stuff like that which was fine that works fine enough um i did prefer when it used to

00:34:10 ◼   ► just open up the little uh camera in the little compose window right so it's just like a tiny

00:34:16 ◼   ► little thing you tap what i also used to love about that is it didn't save that image to your camera

00:34:21 ◼   ► roll which since i was 12 it does so i i used to like that those images didn't get saved to the

00:34:28 ◼   ► camera roll because then I have to like clear a bunch of stuff out that is pointless from my

00:34:32 ◼   ► my photos. But the other thing that happened, the worst thing that happened,

00:34:36 ◼   ► is the the Photos iMessage app. Yeah, one of my biggest complaints in this topic

00:34:47 ◼   ► is about this the Photos app in the Messages app. I have sort of gotten used to it in that...

00:34:56 ◼   ► I've never gotten used to it. I hit the wrong button all the time.

00:35:00 ◼   ► Like, I've tried, but I still very, very frequently hit the camera button when I mean to hit the photos app button.

00:35:07 ◼   ► Interesting. Okay, so...

00:35:09 ◼   ► I've gotten used to it on the iPhone. I use it. I think it's fine.

00:35:13 ◼   ► I think there's something to the idea of you tap a button and you instantly see your photos.

00:35:19 ◼   ► Like, the principle, I think it's good. The idea is solid. It makes sense.

00:35:25 ◼   ► My problem is that I cannot use this app on my iPad, on my iPad Pro, on the 12.9" iPad Pro.

00:35:34 ◼   ► Because since September, so it was fine during the beta, since the public release of iOS 12,

00:35:41 ◼   ► and of course I have updated to other releases, now I'm on the beta, but this has always been

00:35:47 ◼   ► true both on betas and stable releases, this app doesn't work on my iPad. As soon as I tap it,

00:35:55 ◼   ► it says... let me see... I'm gonna try and send you a photo... tap... it goes blank and

00:36:03 ◼   ► it says nothing. Sometimes it says "unable to load" or something like it

00:36:08 ◼   ► goes just blank and shows me nothing. It doesn't work. So every time I want to

00:36:13 ◼   ► send a photo from my iPad Pro and I work from my iPad Pro it's my main computer

00:36:17 ◼   ► so you know I take a screenshot I want to send it to you guys or you know I

00:36:20 ◼   ► I want to send it to John or something.

00:36:22 ◼   ► - Is there like an album-- - It just doesn't work.

00:36:23 ◼   ► - That you have on that device only

00:36:26 ◼   ► that you might have had during the beta period

00:36:27 ◼   ► that might have some corrupted data in it or something?

00:36:30 ◼   ► - No, no.

00:36:32 ◼   ► - 'Cause I'm trying to work out, right,

00:36:33 ◼   ► like why is it just on that one device?

00:36:35 ◼   ► Like there is something going on with your photo library

00:36:37 ◼   ► just on that iPad.

00:36:38 ◼   ► - There's always something going on with my iPad.

00:36:41 ◼   ► - That's true, that's true.

00:36:43 ◼   ► You have done some horrific things

00:36:45 ◼   ► to your iOS devices over the last 12 months.

00:36:46 ◼   ► - Look, it's not my fault if Apple goes on stage

00:36:49 ◼   ► at a photo session and says you can now download 2GB TIFF photos and zoom into them from the

00:36:59 ◼   ► photos app because now thanks to what's it called, the HIC file format, now you can zoom

00:37:06 ◼   ► into the regions of a huge photo. So last year I downloaded a 2GB TIFF photo from the

00:37:13 ◼   ► NASA website and the performance is good but I think at that point everything started to

00:37:17 ◼   ► go wrong with my iCloud. It was in the dead of base64. I actually remember texting Steven

00:37:25 ◼   ► asking "Hey, where can I find pictures of the Hubble telescope in TIFF format?" And

00:37:31 ◼   ► so in a way, really when you think about it, Steven is responsible. So...

00:37:37 ◼   ► Uh... Mmm... Kinda.

00:37:39 ◼   ► Doesn't feel right to me.

00:37:41 ◼   ► Do you still have those images on your iPad?

00:37:44 ◼   ► It is possible. However, I'm unable to find them.

00:37:46 ◼   ► Oh. Wait, can't you just type in "space"?

00:37:50 ◼   ► Well, let's see what happens.

00:37:53 ◼   ► What happens when you search the word "space"?

00:37:55 ◼   ► Space.

00:37:58 ◼   ► The final frontier.

00:37:59 ◼   ► No results. It is not. Maybe universe?

00:38:03 ◼   ► No, it says university. Maybe sky?

00:38:07 ◼   ► Sky is a suggestion. Sky.

00:38:11 ◼   ► Search NASA or Hubble? Maybe it's in the metadata of the image.

00:38:15 ◼   ► the image. Oh no, no it's not there. Who knows them? No, they're not here. You've broken it.

00:38:24 ◼   ► About 3,000 results. You just have to throw that into the sea. It thinks that the sea is the sky,

00:38:30 ◼   ► which is funny, but the pictures of the Hubble telescope, they're not here. There's a bunch of

00:38:38 ◼   ► of wallpapers. There's a photo of you, Myke. That's good. Yeah, thinks you're the sky.

00:38:44 ◼   ► I am like the sky, I guess. Maybe you are for somebody. I don't know.

00:38:50 ◼   ► Yeah, the telescope is not here. So, anyway, what was the point? Yes, the app is crashing

00:38:56 ◼   ► on my iPad. It does not work. So, this is a... Are we assigning votes or points? I don't

00:39:02 ◼   ► No, this is a negative negative from me.

00:39:05 ◼   ► Not a not a good not a good change.

00:39:08 ◼   ► Negative negative.

00:39:09 ◼   ► That's a really good point.

00:39:10 ◼   ► Scoring.

00:39:11 ◼   ► ARKit 2 was introduced in iOS 12.

00:39:15 ◼   ► Do you guys remember the AR objects file type?

00:39:18 ◼   ► Oh, what was the name?

00:39:27 ◼   ► USDZ?

00:39:28 ◼   ► It sounds like a currency, but mixed with the wrapper.

00:39:31 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:39:32 ◼   ► Have you ever come into contact with one of these, either as I quote from Apple's website,

00:39:38 ◼   ► "shared with you in messages or mail"?

00:39:40 ◼   ► I mean, if you know me, you know that all my friends send me AR kit files day in and

00:39:45 ◼   ► day out.

00:39:46 ◼   ► Do they?

00:39:47 ◼   ► This is what we do.

00:39:48 ◼   ► Yeah, all my Italian friends were all about their AR.

00:39:50 ◼   ► It's, you know, no, never, honestly.

00:39:54 ◼   ► I came into contact with a USDZ file at some point a few months ago.

00:40:00 ◼   ► I was looking around the Shopify website to get some information on their fees, and I

00:40:10 ◼   ► found on their company blog that they were adopting USDZ support in Safari, and there

00:40:16 ◼   ► was a demo that I linked on MacStories for the Shopify webstore supporting previews in

00:40:23 ◼   ► USDZ and ARK2.

00:40:25 ◼   ► And that was pretty cool, but that was my only real-life sort of encounter, if you can

00:40:30 ◼   ► call the Shopify website real-life.

00:40:34 ◼   ► But no, really, I've never seen my friends or anybody I know share this file with anybody.

00:40:44 ◼   ► Never.

00:40:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not really sure if this is a thing that hasn't taken off or if it's a thing that

00:40:54 ◼   ► take time to implement, right? That maybe it was never expected to be around now. Or maybe

00:41:00 ◼   ► it is but we just don't see it? Like I don't really know what the deal is but

00:41:05 ◼   ► it doesn't really seem like that's something that I see a lot of. But to be honest though,

00:41:11 ◼   ► I don't really interact with AR stuff very often. I did actually use the IKEA app a couple of weeks

00:41:19 ◼   ► ago because we were looking to get a new piece of furniture and I it was actually

00:41:24 ◼   ► pretty useful because I was able to put the furniture in the room and

00:41:28 ◼   ► immediately realized that we didn't want that piece of furniture in the room

00:41:31 ◼   ► because it would have just been it would have fit but would have been too big if

00:41:35 ◼   ► that makes sense right like it would just like would have fit in the space we

00:41:37 ◼   ► would have just occupied too much space that's cool so that was useful right

00:41:42 ◼   ► because otherwise we could have done which is like what we did do when we

00:41:46 ◼   ► bought the house was we bought some furniture, not fully understanding how big it was going

00:41:50 ◼   ► to be, right? That like, it fits, but it's like, oh, this was maybe bigger than we wanted.

00:41:56 ◼   ► So I could use it for that. But like, that might be honestly the genuinely only useful

00:42:01 ◼   ► application of AR I've ever interacted with. Because I don't even really use the measuring

00:42:07 ◼   ► apps to be honest.

00:42:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I've only used a couple like useful AR apps. And this, this, this is maybe a topic

00:42:14 ◼   ► for another time, but like I get sort of nervous when Apple, just like Tim Cook, is like, "Yes,

00:42:19 ◼   ► like AR is our future and we're doing all these amazing things and I just can't help

00:42:23 ◼   ► but think that no one actually cares and that they're doing, they're building all of this

00:42:28 ◼   ► and it's just a big waste of time and energy."

00:42:30 ◼   ► I think nobody cares right now.

00:42:33 ◼   ► I think people don't care about AR on their phones.

00:42:38 ◼   ► I think that nobody's ever going to care about that.

00:42:41 ◼   ► I think people won't care about AR until it's literally on our faces.

00:42:45 ◼   ► That's the only way to get people to care about it.

00:42:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I just wonder that even then, if that's too big of a jump, that I'm never going to

00:42:51 ◼   ► buy it for my face because I never cared about it when it was in my pocket.

00:42:55 ◼   ► You know what I'm saying?

00:42:56 ◼   ► That could be the case.

00:42:57 ◼   ► I just get uneasy thinking about that, like all that energy going into it.

00:43:01 ◼   ► But there are clearly some uses for it.

00:43:03 ◼   ► You mentioned IKEA.

00:43:04 ◼   ► I've used the Warby Parker app, and it's really cool.

00:43:07 ◼   ► And there are a few others, but this idea that like, we're just going to send AR files

00:43:12 ◼   ► around, I know something that's taken off.

00:43:15 ◼   ► Now, there's a big component to this.

00:43:17 ◼   ► You know, Google Glass, for instance, is actually still around it is, you can't buy it as a

00:43:22 ◼   ► consumer.

00:43:23 ◼   ► But it and other things like HoloLens and some other these like products show up in

00:43:27 ◼   ► industry.

00:43:28 ◼   ► So they show up in manufacturing, and a bunch of other types of jobs like that, where they're

00:43:33 ◼   ► used for training and, you know, like additional information to someone's is working. And like

00:43:41 ◼   ► that use is way more interesting to me than some of the things Apple has shown off. And

00:43:48 ◼   ► maybe it's because I don't like games or I'm not a teacher. And so I'm not using them like

00:43:53 ◼   ► educational setting. But I kind of think Apple is like, talking a big game about something

00:43:59 ◼   ► that's not a big game. I don't know. That's been on my mind for

00:44:02 ◼   ► It's not really a big consumer thing right now.

00:44:04 ◼   ► Yeah. Right. Like I was reminded I was listening to a show a couple of weeks ago

00:44:09 ◼   ► and then kind of referencing the Apple TV.

00:44:11 ◼   ► It's like a similar thing, right?

00:44:12 ◼   ► Like nobody's shopping on their Apple TV.

00:44:15 ◼   ► But like that was a big deal.

00:44:17 ◼   ► You know, at least Apple positioned it as such.

00:44:19 ◼   ► They can't control what takes off, but they did also back away from those TV apps.

00:44:25 ◼   ► Right. And they don't talk about that anymore.

00:44:27 ◼   ► But as you say, you rightly point out, they are not backing away

00:44:30 ◼   ► from talking about the importance of air.

00:44:31 ◼   ► No, Tim loves talking about it.

00:44:34 ◼   ► Every chance you get--

00:44:35 ◼   ► every keynote, right?

00:44:36 ◼   ► They basically stopped the iPhone XS keynote

00:44:39 ◼   ► and did an AR thing.

00:44:40 ◼   ► It's like, what are we doing?

00:44:42 ◼   ► They did the iPad too.

00:44:43 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely.

00:44:44 ◼   ► They broke the Lego.

00:44:44 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:44:45 ◼   ► They keep doing it.

00:44:46 ◼   ► There were demo tables at the hands-on area of the iPad.

00:44:51 ◼   ► Yeah, because you stole an iPad from the Lego person, didn't you?

00:44:54 ◼   ► Yes, I did.

00:44:57 ◼   ► He wanted to really show me Lego AR.

00:44:59 ◼   ► I was like, I just want to take pictures, man.

00:45:01 ◼   ► It's like whenever I see people in like hands-on areas for different products, I just think

00:45:06 ◼   ► about that poor Lego person who just had an iPad stolen by you.

00:45:10 ◼   ► It's something you think about.

00:45:11 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:45:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:13 ◼   ► When I see stuff like the Samsung press events or whatever, and I see people taking pictures

00:45:18 ◼   ► in hands-on areas, I think about the people that are holding the devices and then it makes

00:45:23 ◼   ► me think of the person that you basically ambushed.

00:45:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I did.

00:45:28 ◼   ► I feel sorry for the guy and I could tell that he really wanted to sell me on

00:45:34 ◼   ► on what he was trying to do. I just wanted to take some photos so I'm sorry

00:45:40 ◼   ► person. Yeah you're trying to get that content out the door you know. Yeah it's

00:45:46 ◼   ► what we all try to do. Alright so we're gonna keep making our way through iOS 12

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00:47:56 ◼   ► their support of this show and Relay FM. All right so let's move on to screen

00:48:02 ◼   ► time. So are you guys using screen time? Like it tells me why I have a report

00:48:09 ◼   ► every week, right? And I look at the report and sometimes I spend some time

00:48:14 ◼   ► time looking at it sometimes I don't really pay that much attention to it but

00:48:17 ◼   ► I just see what the kind of the percentage levels are from the

00:48:19 ◼   ► notification but it's outside of that that's all like I'm not using any of the

00:48:24 ◼   ► app limit stuff or anything like that I did notice when looking at my report a

00:48:29 ◼   ► couple of days ago something I hadn't noticed before I don't know if it was

00:48:31 ◼   ► added recently which is when you you can actually see which apps you're most

00:48:38 ◼   ► frequently using after a device pickup so you know you get like the device

00:48:41 ◼   ► pickups so like oh you have this many device pickups a day there's like a list of the applications

00:48:46 ◼   ► that when you do pick up your device you're most frequently opening first which i thought was was

00:48:52 ◼   ► an interesting thing to see uh like to kind of compare that against notifications and see like

00:48:57 ◼   ► does that all line up that kind of stuff so that was interesting um i kind of wished that there was

00:49:03 ◼   ► some stuff that it did a little bit better like for example when i look at all of my devices

00:49:09 ◼   ► It's combining all of my iMessage notifications together.

00:49:12 ◼   ► And I wished it didn't do that.

00:49:15 ◼   ► Because that's not useful to me.

00:49:19 ◼   ► I think that can be disabled. You can.

00:49:21 ◼   ► We can really do.

00:49:24 ◼   ► Yeah, you can.

00:49:25 ◼   ► There was a toggle that I enabled a few weeks ago, actually,

00:49:28 ◼   ► because I wanted to have data from all devices.

00:49:31 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure I did this myself.

00:49:34 ◼   ► If you go to screen time,

00:49:37 ◼   ► Where is screen time?

00:49:41 ◼   ► Settings. Share across devices

00:49:45 ◼   ► can be disabled. Right, but then that's not gonna give me

00:49:49 ◼   ► that's not what I'm looking for. So I like to have all of my screen time

00:49:53 ◼   ► data for all of my devices combined, right? That's what I like to have.

00:49:57 ◼   ► Oh, okay. Yeah. Right, my point is just like

00:50:01 ◼   ► I see, so for example, over the last seven days

00:50:05 ◼   ► across all my devices I have 3,000 messages notifications but that's not

00:50:12 ◼   ► correct right in my brain the way that I'm thinking of it because really I only

00:50:18 ◼   ► had 1,000 right but it's given me the notifications across three devices so

00:50:24 ◼   ► like that's not helpful to me like some of the notification stuff I know it

00:50:29 ◼   ► doesn't look like a button because iOS but there is a devices button in the

00:50:32 ◼   ► upper right and then you could drill into your individual things. Mine is funny because

00:50:38 ◼   ► it has iPhone XS, iPhone XR, iPhone X, iPhone XS Max all listed. It just hasn't gotten rid

00:50:48 ◼   ► of my old devices.

00:50:50 ◼   ► You actually, I think there is a bug where you can't get rid of some devices. I have

00:50:55 ◼   ► devices that are removed from my iCloud account that still show up.

00:50:58 ◼   ► Yeah, none of these are on my iCloud account.

00:51:01 ◼   ► The whole thing's buggy.

00:51:02 ◼   ► When I opened it initially when y'all were speaking,

00:51:04 ◼   ► it just said, we're collecting data.

00:51:06 ◼   ► Please check back later.

00:51:07 ◼   ► It's like, you've been running for a year.

00:51:09 ◼   ► Like, what are you doing?

00:51:11 ◼   ► Yeah, sometimes I've had that.

00:51:13 ◼   ► It just takes a minute or two to show up.

00:51:15 ◼   ► Sure, sure.

00:51:16 ◼   ► Because it's not the most powerful phone ever made.

00:51:18 ◼   ► Oh, boy.

00:51:18 ◼   ► I'm curious about app limits for y'all.

00:51:22 ◼   ► So this is the feature where I can

00:51:23 ◼   ► say I only want to use Instagram for 30 minutes a day.

00:51:26 ◼   ► only when you use Twitter for 20 minutes a day.

00:51:28 ◼   ► Do y'all have any of those set up?

00:51:31 ◼   ► - No. - No.

00:51:33 ◼   ► But I feel like I should,

00:51:34 ◼   ► but I am also addicted to my phone, so what am I gonna do?

00:51:39 ◼   ► - I used screen time and app limits

00:51:43 ◼   ► when I knew that I needed to change some of my behaviors

00:51:48 ◼   ► last year, after the summer or during the summer.

00:51:54 ◼   ► That's when I deleted the Facebook app from my phone,

00:51:59 ◼   ► and it's still gone.

00:52:00 ◼   ► I'm living the best life without the Facebook app on my phone.

00:52:03 ◼   ► Every once in a while, I open Facebook in Safari,

00:52:06 ◼   ► but it's a terrible web app.

00:52:08 ◼   ► So it pushes me to not use Facebook.

00:52:12 ◼   ► Every once in a while, I log in, accept a few friend requests,

00:52:15 ◼   ► ignore Messenger, because people who really know me and care

00:52:19 ◼   ► about me, they don't write to me on Messenger.

00:52:21 ◼   ► Therefore, people who write to me on Messenger

00:52:23 ◼   ► people that can be ignored. And so, screen time was helpful when I wanted to get rid

00:52:31 ◼   ► of Facebook. It also helped me when I wanted to change some of my behaviors for Twitter.

00:52:37 ◼   ► Like I don't wanna keep Twitter open on my iPad always, constantly, in slide-over or

00:52:44 ◼   ► split-view. I want Twitter to be something that I jump in, you know, a few times during

00:52:51 ◼   ► the day, catch up, see what's going on, and then close Twitter. And then at least once

00:52:56 ◼   ► a day I go through all of my mentions and I respond to people that have asked me something.

00:53:05 ◼   ► And so screen time was helpful when I wanted to make that behavioral change. But then when

00:53:10 ◼   ► it was done and when I realized, you know, this is just now routine for me, it's not

00:53:14 ◼   ► something that I need to keep a close eye on, I disabled screen time and I kept it disabled

00:53:20 ◼   ► because I don't need it anymore. It's like I learned how to ride this bike and now I

00:53:25 ◼   ► don't need those extra wheels anymore. So those wheels are off.

00:53:29 ◼   ► That's a good way of putting it. Yeah.

00:53:33 ◼   ► I think that maybe one day if I'll have another problem, another addiction or another thing

00:53:38 ◼   ► that I want to change about the behavior that I have when I'm using my phone or my iPad,

00:53:45 ◼   ► I will use it again, but I don't have kids and I don't need to keep an eye on these things

00:53:50 ◼   ► anymore so for now everything is off.

00:53:53 ◼   ► And by off I mean the limits and the downtime.

00:53:56 ◼   ► Right.

00:53:57 ◼   ► I have a few of the app limits set up and to be honest with y'all, most days when it

00:54:02 ◼   ► tells me I just blow right through them.

00:54:04 ◼   ► So I have Instagram, Tweetbot, and YouTube.

00:54:07 ◼   ► And sometimes on Instagram and Tweetbot I can actually make it till the evening, but

00:54:12 ◼   ► the YouTube one, which is usually how I spend my lunch break, because one of my news resolutions

00:54:17 ◼   ► are dumb, so it's not a news resolution, but one of my things this year is actually not

00:54:21 ◼   ► eat lunch while I'm working at my desk, which sounds incredible.

00:54:26 ◼   ► And so I've been doing that partially by watching stuff on YouTube at lunch, and I guess I could

00:54:31 ◼   ► be reading a book, maybe that's phase two.

00:54:33 ◼   ► But I do...

00:54:34 ◼   ► No, man, just watch YouTube.

00:54:35 ◼   ► Just watch YouTube.

00:54:36 ◼   ► There's nothing wrong with YouTube.

00:54:37 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:54:38 ◼   ► So I do see those, but usually I blow through them.

00:54:43 ◼   ► I have not done much with downtime.

00:54:47 ◼   ► It's something that I kind of want to explore at some point.

00:54:50 ◼   ► The issue I run into with some of this stuff is my life is just crazy enough where if I

00:54:59 ◼   ► set downtime for a set number of hours in the evening, one or two days a week I have

00:55:04 ◼   ► to work during those hours or something comes up.

00:55:06 ◼   ► I guess I have that fear of it being getting in my way.

00:55:10 ◼   ► But at the very least, when I see those reports every Sunday

00:55:13 ◼   ► when they come up, I do use it as an opportunity

00:55:16 ◼   ► to kind of look at when I'm spending my time on my phone

00:55:19 ◼   ► and iPad and trying to make some decisions about how

00:55:24 ◼   ► I want to spend my time, even if I'm not implementing things

00:55:28 ◼   ► in iOS to make that more feasible.

00:55:32 ◼   ► Weirdly, I didn't feel the need for downtime

00:55:34 ◼   ► I stopped wearing an Apple Watch because I've gotten pretty good at just putting my phone

00:55:39 ◼   ► down.

00:55:40 ◼   ► And no, nothing bugs me because yeah, my phone's down.

00:55:46 ◼   ► And I don't have a watch on.

00:55:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I want to revisit the Apple Watch conversation soon because I have my I feel like my feelings

00:55:52 ◼   ► about it are evolving and I don't know what to do about that.

00:55:56 ◼   ► Anyways, so that's screen time.

00:55:58 ◼   ► The next feature for me is perhaps the most impactful with iOS 12.

00:56:02 ◼   ► And that is it's revised notifications where it is grouping things by application.

00:56:10 ◼   ► You can like turn off or have notifications delivered quietly, which just means it goes

00:56:15 ◼   ► to like the pull down screen and not the lock screen.

00:56:18 ◼   ► I for one, really, really like this.

00:56:21 ◼   ► I like the group notifications.

00:56:24 ◼   ► I am way more likely now to like in notifications for apps because it's so much easier, right?

00:56:32 ◼   ► Like you could always go into settings and find it,

00:56:34 ◼   ► but now if I download a new app

00:56:35 ◼   ► and it sends me a notification

00:56:36 ◼   ► that I feel is not what I want,

00:56:39 ◼   ► I just like blast it from orbit

00:56:41 ◼   ► right there on the lock screen.

00:56:42 ◼   ► - Yes, great.

00:56:43 ◼   ► - I really think they did a good job with this.

00:56:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's the one feature

00:56:48 ◼   ► that Apple absolutely nailed in iOS 12.

00:56:52 ◼   ► I cannot possibly imagine going back to the old,

00:56:55 ◼   ► to the old way to manage notifications.

00:56:58 ◼   ► I think it's very well thought out.

00:57:01 ◼   ► it's clearly something that they spent a lot of time thinking about all the edge cases.

00:57:06 ◼   ► And I think it's also pretty cool how different companies are now adopting the ability to

00:57:11 ◼   ► split notifications in multiple threads.

00:57:15 ◼   ► So like Twitter is doing it, Slack is doing it, I've seen other apps do it.

00:57:19 ◼   ► I think it's very interesting how you can have this new way to triage your different

00:57:24 ◼   ► kinds of notifications, even if they are from the same app.

00:57:29 ◼   ► The other stuff that's new in notifications, I also want to give a shout out to all the

00:57:34 ◼   ► developers that are adopting the rich notifications API, which was improved in iOS 12 because

00:57:42 ◼   ► it now lets you actually interact with any part of the expanded notification card.

00:57:49 ◼   ► A few examples could be Lookup, again, my favorite dictionary app, or JSON, which is

00:57:54 ◼   ► an incredible example by the developer of Scriptable.

00:57:58 ◼   ► one actually embeds a totally custom UI within the notification itself and you can navigate

00:58:06 ◼   ► a file structure essentially inside a notification. It's crazy.

00:58:11 ◼   ► And also... What a great name for an app.

00:58:13 ◼   ► Yeah, I know. It's perfect because it deals with the JSON file format, but it's called

00:58:18 ◼   ► JSON. It's very good. And also I want to call out the provisional authorization for notifications.

00:58:27 ◼   ► This is something that I've seen implemented a few times and every time...

00:58:30 ◼   ► I have never seen this.

00:58:31 ◼   ► Oh really?

00:58:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:33 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:58:34 ◼   ► Okay.

00:58:35 ◼   ► So this is the feature that allows an app to start sending you notifications without

00:58:40 ◼   ► asking you for permission first.

00:58:42 ◼   ► Well, maybe I should say I don't know I've seen this.

00:58:45 ◼   ► Maybe that's a better way of putting it.

00:58:46 ◼   ► Okay.

00:58:47 ◼   ► So the idea would be that instead of showing you the dialog that says app wants to send

00:58:53 ◼   ► At some point you will see "Delivered quietly", so you will not see an alert come up, but

00:59:00 ◼   ► when you swipe down to "Open Notification Center" you will see a notification from an

00:59:04 ◼   ► app that you didn't previously grant notifications access to.

00:59:09 ◼   ► That notification will have a special message at the bottom saying "Do you want to keep

00:59:13 ◼   ► receiving notifications from this app?" and you have two buttons, one that says "Keep"

00:59:19 ◼   ► and the other says "Remove" or just "Deny" or something.

00:59:23 ◼   ► And I've seen that implemented a few times.

00:59:25 ◼   ► And also, slightly related to this is how iOS 12, and I think what Apple calls "Siri

00:59:32 ◼   ► Intelligence", sometimes, and again, this happened to me a couple of times at least,

00:59:38 ◼   ► if iOS or Siri, if they see that you do not interact with a specific notification from

00:59:46 ◼   ► a specific app a few times. If there's a notification that you keep ignoring, iOS 12 will tell you,

00:59:54 ◼   ► "Hey, do you want to stop receiving this notification because we noticed that you never interact

00:59:59 ◼   ► with it?" This also came up for me a couple of times. All of the notification stuff is

01:00:05 ◼   ► really well thought out, from grouping to threading to reach notifications and the authorization,

01:00:10 ◼   ► the intelligence, double thumbs up, which is the highest praise that I can give in this

01:00:16 ◼   ► segment.

01:00:17 ◼   ► That's very good.

01:00:20 ◼   ► As somebody who was very upset and complained for a couple of years about the way that Apple

01:00:26 ◼   ► removed the old grouping, the time-based and app grouping that they used to have, where

01:00:30 ◼   ► it would like group by app but chronologically.

01:00:34 ◼   ► This was in older versions of iOS and they removed it in like iOS 11 or iOS, yeah, I

01:00:39 ◼   ► I think it was 11.

01:00:40 ◼   ► I think that the grouping of notifications in iOS 12

01:00:44 ◼   ► is just so much better.

01:00:45 ◼   ► I think it's really, really wonderful.

01:00:48 ◼   ► I'm a big fan of it, so I'm really pleased that they did it

01:00:51 ◼   ► and I think it's fantastic.

01:00:52 ◼   ► Speaking of which, do not disturb.

01:00:56 ◼   ► I use the expanded control center actions all the time.

01:00:59 ◼   ► So when you pull down from control center, a 3D touch,

01:01:02 ◼   ► and you get like for an hour until this evening

01:01:05 ◼   ► or like for this event time, I do this constantly.

01:01:09 ◼   ► When I'm recording, like I'll just like press it

01:01:12 ◼   ► and then I'll hit the Do Not Disturb

01:01:14 ◼   ► for the calendar event that's currently going on,

01:01:16 ◼   ► or I'll do like the one hours a lot.

01:01:18 ◼   ► Like I use this an awful lot.

01:01:20 ◼   ► So I really, really like this feature.

01:01:22 ◼   ► It's been really good for me.

01:01:24 ◼   ► Three of you, have you used it?

01:01:27 ◼   ► - I do a fair amount all through Control Center.

01:01:32 ◼   ► You know, iOS is supposed to,

01:01:34 ◼   ► I guess look at your calendar and say,

01:01:36 ◼   ► "Oh, hey, you have a meeting.

01:01:37 ◼   ► "Do you want to disturb on until the end of your meeting?"

01:01:40 ◼   ► I see that on an incredibly sporadic basis.

01:01:44 ◼   ► So I don't know what metric it's using

01:01:47 ◼   ► to try to decide if I want that on or not.

01:01:50 ◼   ► But yeah, it's super great being able to go

01:01:52 ◼   ► and just say, "Hey, just be off for a little while."

01:01:56 ◼   ► But I do wish that proactive stuff would be a little more,

01:01:59 ◼   ► I guess a little more consistent

01:02:01 ◼   ► is the word I'm looking for.

01:02:02 ◼   ► It's great when it shows up.

01:02:03 ◼   ► And very often I do want it, but most of the time I just don't even see it.

01:02:08 ◼   ► I don't use it frequently because when I really don't want to be disturbed, it means I'm doing

01:02:14 ◼   ► something and I'm very annoyed by all the notifications that I'm getting.

01:02:22 ◼   ► Therefore I employ this more hardcore, I guess you could call it a physical do not disturb

01:02:31 ◼   ► approach in that I remove the Apple watch from my wrist, I take the iPhone from my pocket

01:02:37 ◼   ► and I ask Sylvia to keep it to keep them in her purse for me.

01:02:42 ◼   ► Wow.

01:02:43 ◼   ► Like I don't I just I cannot deal with this right now.

01:02:45 ◼   ► Please take this watch and this one for me.

01:02:48 ◼   ► I do not want to see them.

01:02:50 ◼   ► So yeah.

01:02:51 ◼   ► Hmm.

01:02:52 ◼   ► I wonder if again, this is a difference of using the watch and phone together and just

01:02:55 ◼   ► using the phone.

01:02:57 ◼   ► Right.

01:02:58 ◼   ► Like if I want that don't distract me, all I have to do is just turn on Do Not Disturb

01:03:02 ◼   ► on my phone and nothing gets through to me.

01:03:04 ◼   ► Like I don't see it because it's all off, right?

01:03:08 ◼   ► But with you, I guess if you're still wearing an Apple Watch, stuff's still getting to you

01:03:13 ◼   ► anyway, right?

01:03:15 ◼   ► Yes, yeah.

01:03:19 ◼   ► You gotta...

01:03:20 ◼   ► At least I always have a hard time configuring, you know, what's it called?

01:03:25 ◼   ► The mirroring of notifications between the iPhone.

01:03:28 ◼   ► It's just a bunch of toggles and I just don't have the time I keep and also, you know

01:03:32 ◼   ► I haven't really this is one of the things that you're gonna hate me for this, but I've been using two Apple watches for like

01:03:39 ◼   ► four months now

01:03:42 ◼   ► Why?

01:03:43 ◼   ► Why it's night watch? I don't want to talk about even put it in follow up. No

01:03:47 ◼   ► Put it in follow up. We're doing this again. Put it in follow up multi watch lifestyle

01:03:52 ◼   ► You're gonna have to talk about it at some point. We're gonna keep asking you until you talk about it

01:03:57 ◼   ► so you don't have to do it today but we're gonna come back to that.

01:04:02 ◼   ► If you did not want us to know, there was an easy way to stop that, you just don't tell

01:04:08 ◼   ► me, right?

01:04:09 ◼   ► If you didn't want me to know that information, that was completely in your control.

01:04:12 ◼   ► There's a part of me that secretly wishes to be added on the show, but also I don't

01:04:18 ◼   ► want to talk about it.

01:04:19 ◼   ► Okay, well it's too late because they're just gonna keep asking you about it now.

01:04:23 ◼   ► If you do a day watch, night watch, that's really hard to say.

01:04:29 ◼   ► I would assume the regular silver aluminum is the day watch and then you use the dark

01:04:33 ◼   ► one at night so it's more stealthy.

01:04:36 ◼   ► In my mind, you have a watch.

01:04:37 ◼   ► That is a good assumption and also it is correct.

01:04:40 ◼   ► Yes!

01:04:41 ◼   ► That's good.

01:04:42 ◼   ► That's all I really want to know.

01:04:45 ◼   ► We don't have to follow up now.

01:04:46 ◼   ► I just wanted to know if that was true.

01:04:47 ◼   ► In my mind it was like, "Oh, it's getting dark.

01:04:49 ◼   ► I need to put on the dark watch."

01:04:50 ◼   ► And you were ready to go.

01:04:51 ◼   ► into like your secret crime-fighting evenings.

01:04:54 ◼   ► - You are way more sophisticated than I am,

01:04:57 ◼   ► but it just, again, it's a whole thing, but yes.

01:05:01 ◼   ► The dark one is the night one,

01:05:04 ◼   ► but not because I had that thought process.

01:05:06 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:05:08 ◼   ► - Do we have a review to use the photo sharing features

01:05:13 ◼   ► that were implemented in iOS 12,

01:05:16 ◼   ► where you get like a selection of photos

01:05:19 ◼   ► and then it has some pictures of people

01:05:20 ◼   ► asks if you want to share them. I use, I guess I'm forced to use the iCloud shared link thing

01:05:31 ◼   ► because whenever I want to send a bunch of pictures over iMessage from photos, I select

01:05:36 ◼   ► them and I hit share and then I select messages and it automatically creates that album thing.

01:05:41 ◼   ► Right, it just does it. There's nothing you can do about it. Yeah. Even, like, yeah. I

01:05:45 ◼   ► could, you know, manually copy them to the clipboard and then open messages and paste.

01:05:50 ◼   ► Well, here's another way you could do it is by using the iMessage app, but you're not

01:05:53 ◼   ► allowed to use that.

01:05:54 ◼   ► Yes, exactly.

01:05:55 ◼   ► Because that's how I do it, right?

01:05:56 ◼   ► Like I open the photo app in iMessages and just select a bunch and it sends them the

01:06:02 ◼   ► old-fashioned way.

01:06:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:06:04 ◼   ► So I guess I do use that thing that creates the album with the preview that you can tap

01:06:10 ◼   ► and it opens inside of Messages and then you can add them to your library.

01:06:14 ◼   ► It's pretty cool.

01:06:15 ◼   ► I have never myself, never seen from other people, and when we tried for testing purposes,

01:06:21 ◼   ► it went really badly. Never used the "Share Back" feature in which people contribute to

01:06:28 ◼   ► a common set. Well, in theory, they should be contributing to a common set of photos,

01:06:33 ◼   ► but in reality, they just send a bunch of unrelated pictures back to one another. We

01:06:38 ◼   ► We tried with Myke and John for the week of WWDC and let's just say that John sent pictures

01:06:49 ◼   ► for two people and Myke's share back included ten more people that were not present in the

01:06:56 ◼   ► original photos.

01:06:57 ◼   ► I think like he shared with me some photos from Chicago and then it requested sending

01:07:03 ◼   ► back some photos from San Jose.

01:07:05 ◼   ► Which is fine.

01:07:06 ◼   ► less than needed. The only stuff I'm using is like the old school shared album, like the iCloud

01:07:13 ◼   ► shared album stuff. Because for that idea of like, you have a bunch of people who are like together

01:07:19 ◼   ► at a location, you know, like maybe on a trip or whatever, and everyone wants to add to one folder,

01:07:24 ◼   ► and then people can just take what images they want. Well that still down the way to do it.

01:07:28 ◼   ► Size, right? I know. But yeah, it does. It does. But like, it's the best way sometimes.

01:07:35 ◼   ► Yeah, oh, you have a lot of people definitely is so I just while we're talking tried I shared some photos with Myke and John Voorhees and

01:07:41 ◼   ► then I click the link and to the browser and you can sign in to iCloud and put them in your library by hit download and

01:07:47 ◼   ► It for all the live photos

01:07:50 ◼   ► I have separate files for the image and the movie of the live file

01:07:54 ◼   ► Like why in the world is that the way that this why does it work that way? It's ridiculous

01:08:00 ◼   ► But at least the images are full res but if you want live photos

01:08:04 ◼   ► too bad

01:08:05 ◼   ► So I suggested sharing back a bunch of photos and it all it is is just a bunch of pictures

01:08:11 ◼   ► Of stuff like photos I took in those locations, but they don't have you guys in them

01:08:18 ◼   ► It's just other pictures. I took in Chicago. I don't know if that's useful. I don't know

01:08:24 ◼   ► I mean at home

01:08:25 ◼   ► My wife and I are still just using airdrop

01:08:27 ◼   ► Instead of all this business because I can I can do exactly what I want and I get full res images

01:08:32 ◼   ► But you're right if you're if it's like 30 people at WBCC

01:08:36 ◼   ► Just take the down res images and be done with it

01:08:39 ◼   ► Like when we were at your wedding there was a huge one like

01:08:41 ◼   ► Tons of maybe we should all have like every time we go on a trip and there's like a big bunch of friends together

01:08:46 ◼   ► We all have like a shared calendar item to get together and just airdrop, right?

01:08:52 ◼   ► Like it's the last thing everybody does before they leave just like ten people standing in a room just like airdropping to each other

01:08:58 ◼   ► Maybe that's the way to do it. I could there's no party

01:09:01 ◼   ► Yeah, drop the air drop beat drop the bass the air bass air drop the bass is terrible. Please move on

01:09:08 ◼   ► Okay, we can keep working on that. We can keep working on it. All right, we're not done yet

01:09:12 ◼   ► This is a very poor first attempt, but okay

01:09:15 ◼   ► All this just makes me upset that we still don't have true

01:09:21 ◼   ► Family sharing and I photo or an iCloud photo library like Google Photos does

01:09:27 ◼   ► that we have to jump through these hoops to share photos if we use iCloud is still like such a

01:09:33 ◼   ► So far behind what others are doing. It just makes me sad

01:09:37 ◼   ► It makes me sad guys. Is anybody gonna come for me? Yeah, there was dramatic silence. You were going for yeah

01:09:43 ◼   ► Display can give you the comfort that you're looking for. Oh, that's that's true

01:09:48 ◼   ► Yeah

01:09:49 ◼   ► We're just waiting on you to do your job Stephen because new display are the makers of the only hardware solution that turns your iPad

01:09:55 ◼   ► into a wireless display for your Mac. And what could make you feel better than

01:10:00 ◼   ► that right? That's true. Are we just doing the back and forth the whole time or like?

01:10:04 ◼   ► No I'm done now I'm like I've given the bridge now into the ad. Okay. And now I'm

01:10:09 ◼   ► leaving. Okay. Lunar display means you'll have a second display that's super

01:10:14 ◼   ► portable with basically zero lag and gorgeous image quality. I've been using

01:10:19 ◼   ► lunar display here in my office for months now and it sort of changed the

01:10:24 ◼   ► way I work especially when I am recording shows I have loon display

01:10:28 ◼   ► plugged in to the back of my iMac Pro and have my iPad pro set up with audio

01:10:33 ◼   ► hijack on it and a couple other things just to be able to keep an eye on things

01:10:38 ◼   ► as I record and I can have my show notes and all the stuff we're talking about in

01:10:41 ◼   ► the chat room up on my main screen like honestly this is how I want to record

01:10:45 ◼   ► shows from now on when I've got to do it just on my laptop on the road I feel sad

01:10:50 ◼   ► Setting up extra screens can be a bit fiddly but Luna Display couldn't be

01:10:55 ◼   ► easier. You just plug in that small bit of hardware into your Mac and you're

01:10:59 ◼   ► good to go and everything works over Wi-Fi. But if you're traveling you don't

01:11:03 ◼   ► have Wi-Fi connection or maybe you're in a hotel where it's Wi-Fi but it's not

01:11:07 ◼   ► really real Wi-Fi. No worries you can just connect over USB. It's super simple

01:11:12 ◼   ► to set up and you're gonna love that extra screen real estate. Luna Display is

01:11:16 ◼   ► complete extension to your Mac. It supports external keyboards as well as

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01:11:30 ◼   ► Video Engine brings significantly reduced latency and a faster screen

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01:12:00 ◼   ► off. Our thanks to Luna display for their support of this show and Relay FM.

01:12:05 ◼   ► So there's a bunch of stuff obviously with iOS 12 for shortcuts and then we

01:12:10 ◼   ► have an extra thing on shortcuts to close out the episode today so before we

01:12:13 ◼   ► get to that I wanted to mention a couple of other things that I do like little

01:12:16 ◼   ► bits that I do really love about iOS 12 the part all the password filling stuff

01:12:21 ◼   ► via the keyboard one password and keychain amazing good and so good

01:12:26 ◼   ► brilliant and the two-factor SMS filling stuff the best thing for me is not just

01:12:31 ◼   ► that it pulls the code in that it also marks the messages read that's it's

01:12:36 ◼   ► incredible that's one of those little features they do it on the Mac too if

01:12:39 ◼   ► you use Safari it's just one of those little features that makes me love Apple

01:12:42 ◼   ► software is like why wouldn't it mark it as red of course that's what it would do

01:12:45 ◼   ► it's yeah so good yeah genius now so if you have little things like that I have

01:12:51 ◼   ► I want to mention Apple news because I'm still using RSS for all of my

01:12:57 ◼   ► traditional subscription subscriptions but everything else from music to some

01:13:03 ◼   ► some video game news to unfortunately some politics I'm also I followed your

01:13:10 ◼   ► advice Myke and I am a Wall Street Journal subscriber. I've been enjoying...

01:13:16 ◼   ► Oh good. Yeah it's been going for the past month.

01:13:18 ◼   ► Such a grown-up. Yeah I guess at some point I needed to have...

01:13:24 ◼   ► I needed to pretend at least that I was an adult in some way. So saying that I subscribed

01:13:30 ◼   ► to the Wall Street Journal... You know when you say that in public it's...

01:13:34 ◼   ► They should send you an enamel pin that you can wear.

01:13:37 ◼   ► No, but when you're talking to somebody and you say, "Oh, I was reading on the Wall Street

01:13:41 ◼   ► Journal," it's like you can tell the people look at you differently, like you suddenly

01:13:45 ◼   ► gained a whole new layer of reputation. Like if you read it on the Wall Street Journal,

01:13:51 ◼   ► it cannot be wrong. So I've been doing that in Apple News. They let you sign in with your

01:13:57 ◼   ► own subscription and it works really well. I like Apple News as a user. I don't like

01:14:04 ◼   ► it as a publisher, so that's sort of a conflict of interest there, but I use it, I like it,

01:14:10 ◼   ► and I, you know, I'm a fan of the Marzipan app on the Mac, even though it's got...

01:14:16 ◼   ► You're a Marzipan.

01:14:17 ◼   ► I am.

01:14:18 ◼   ► Oh, boy.

01:14:19 ◼   ► Is that a nickname that we're now using?

01:14:22 ◼   ► No, no, no it's not!

01:14:24 ◼   ► I am a Marzipan, I should say.

01:14:27 ◼   ► I like it.

01:14:28 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:14:29 ◼   ► Good job, Michael.

01:14:30 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:14:31 ◼   ► One thing that I don't like about it on the Mac is that, to my knowledge, there is no

01:14:36 ◼   ► way to copy a link to the story using the contextual menu, the right-click menu.

01:14:41 ◼   ► There's just no way to copy a link.

01:14:45 ◼   ► But everything else, everything else, as a Marzi fan, I'm just going to keep using this

01:14:53 ◼   ► conversation now, just casually.

01:14:55 ◼   ► I'm going to put it on Mac Stories very sneakily.

01:14:58 ◼   ► I'm trying to think of like what is the opposite, right?

01:15:02 ◼   ► So like what is the name for people that don't like marzipan?

01:15:06 ◼   ► - Hates a fan.

01:15:07 ◼   ► - But that doesn't...

01:15:10 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:15:12 ◼   ► Wait, did you say hates a fan?

01:15:14 ◼   ► 'Cause that's wrong in like two ways.

01:15:17 ◼   ► - Did you say hates a fan?

01:15:19 ◼   ► It's wrong, but it's kind of perfect.

01:15:22 ◼   ► Oh my God.

01:15:26 ◼   ► Because really that means that more than hating Mazapan,

01:15:30 ◼   ► you hate the people that hate Mazapan, like Mazapan more.

01:15:33 ◼   ► Right?

01:15:34 ◼   ► It's just like, I hate those.

01:15:35 ◼   ► Hey, it's going to either destroy the Mac or save it.

01:15:37 ◼   ► There's no middle ground if you ask Twitter.

01:15:39 ◼   ► So you've got to pick a side, man.

01:15:41 ◼   ► Pick a side.

01:15:42 ◼   ► Hey-o.

01:15:43 ◼   ► Let's talk about Siri shortcuts.

01:15:44 ◼   ► Let's start by actually talking not about the shortcuts app,

01:15:47 ◼   ► but the standalone actions.

01:15:49 ◼   ► So I do use a couple of these.

01:15:52 ◼   ► I don't use a ton of them, but there are a couple

01:15:54 ◼   ► that I use every single day.

01:15:56 ◼   ► I use overcast, like to resume in overcast,

01:16:01 ◼   ► just to play the most recent thing in the queue.

01:16:03 ◼   ► And that works for me about 75% of the time, which I think

01:16:06 ◼   ► is a pretty good hit rate.

01:16:07 ◼   ► Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.

01:16:10 ◼   ► Are you really content with 75% hit rate?

01:16:13 ◼   ► For short-- OK, for Siri-related things to shortcuts,

01:16:17 ◼   ► with everything I've tried, a 75% hit rate

01:16:20 ◼   ► is about 10 times better than everything else.

01:16:22 ◼   ► i.e. our spoilers now for a later on discussion,

01:16:26 ◼   ► trying to activate any shortcut stuff from the home pod is just a disaster.

01:16:30 ◼   ► Oh, have you tried from the Apple Watch?

01:16:33 ◼   ► I'll tap you when I'm ready.

01:16:35 ◼   ► OK. Yeah. So you see what I'm saying, right?

01:16:37 ◼   ► Like using Siri to activate any shortcut stuff,

01:16:40 ◼   ► getting a 75 percent hit rate, I think is pretty good.

01:16:43 ◼   ► I'm just curious, do you have a do you have a jar where you keep beans

01:16:47 ◼   ► for a hit rate successful hit rate? Every time.

01:16:51 ◼   ► Okay.

01:16:52 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:16:53 ◼   ► Every single time.

01:16:54 ◼   ► Interesting.

01:16:55 ◼   ► It's a system.

01:16:56 ◼   ► It is, funnily enough, that you knew it was a Bean-based system as well, that it wasn't

01:16:57 ◼   ► like any other way of doing it.

01:16:59 ◼   ► I also use Find My Friends, so I have like just one set up to see where Adina is, like

01:17:03 ◼   ► to see if she's on her way home from work or whatever.

01:17:05 ◼   ► I just ask Siri, "Where is Adina?" and then it just comes over and tells me it's really

01:17:10 ◼   ► useful.

01:17:11 ◼   ► So they're the two that I use.

01:17:13 ◼   ► Stephen, do you use any?

01:17:15 ◼   ► You said the Resume Overcast, do you use any standalone ones?

01:17:18 ◼   ► I've got one that it's based on Federico's morning routine,

01:17:23 ◼   ► so it pulls in weather and my--

01:17:26 ◼   ► - Oh no, no, that's not a standalone.

01:17:27 ◼   ► That's like a straight up shortcut.

01:17:29 ◼   ► - Oh, I'm sorry.

01:17:30 ◼   ► - Just like a series shortcut action.

01:17:34 ◼   ► Like it's just, yeah.

01:17:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause nothing is confusing about the way

01:17:37 ◼   ► shortcuts is labeled or laid out anyway.

01:17:39 ◼   ► - Yep, yep, yep.

01:17:40 ◼   ► - We went over this.

01:17:42 ◼   ► Do I need to explain it again?

01:17:44 ◼   ► - Please don't.

01:17:45 ◼   ► I'm good.

01:17:47 ◼   ► Do you have any standalone Siri shortcut actions?

01:17:50 ◼   ► Not from the shortcuts app, where you also can create shortcuts.

01:17:55 ◼   ► Okay.

01:17:56 ◼   ► It's still better than Workflow and Workflows.

01:17:59 ◼   ► It still is better than that.

01:18:00 ◼   ► Sorry Steven.

01:18:01 ◼   ► Sorry Steven, go ahead.

01:18:02 ◼   ► It is better than that.

01:18:03 ◼   ► I have several for Overcast.

01:18:04 ◼   ► I also have ones for skipping to the next chapter, and I think maybe one more.

01:18:10 ◼   ► But not many past that.

01:18:13 ◼   ► I'm trying to actually look, and I can't find where they are because, again, it's all

01:18:17 ◼   ► It's in settings, Siri, and search.

01:18:20 ◼   ► Oh yeah, that's where you look for shortcuts.

01:18:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I've got a few for, I've got one for day one I set up, but I don't think I've ever actually

01:18:31 ◼   ► used it.

01:18:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I have a bunch that I don't use.

01:18:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:18:36 ◼   ► That I set up thinking I might use them.

01:18:39 ◼   ► Like for example, I have one to stop my toggle timers, but Siri cannot understand that phrasing.

01:18:46 ◼   ► It doesn't matter what I do because the word timer...

01:18:49 ◼   ► What are you using as a phrase?

01:18:50 ◼   ► I have used multiple. I have used stop timers. That doesn't work.

01:18:54 ◼   ► I've used stop toggle. That doesn't work.

01:18:56 ◼   ► So like I have to come up with like a third word which doesn't fix in my brain.

01:19:01 ◼   ► I have my phrases and they work really well.

01:19:04 ◼   ► What are they?

01:19:05 ◼   ► My phrase to stop time tracking is stop time tracking.

01:19:11 ◼   ► And it works really well.

01:19:12 ◼   ► Okay, that's good. Because that didn't jump into my brain. But that because the problem

01:19:17 ◼   ► it doesn't like toggle because it doesn't know what toggle is because it's like, it's

01:19:20 ◼   ► like timers because then it's trying exactly and that because then it's just trying to

01:19:24 ◼   ► like stop a time and it doesn't exist. Yes. Stop time tracking is really good.

01:19:28 ◼   ► I do have several also for carrot weather. So like check the forecast and one for show

01:19:35 ◼   ► me the radar. But again, that's about it. There's I don't have a ton of things in there

01:19:38 ◼   ► that are just serious shortcuts for individual apps.

01:19:42 ◼   ► I do use them a bunch.

01:19:45 ◼   ► So not from the shortcuts app.

01:19:48 ◼   ► OK, so I have the toggle beta that Myke keeps mentioning

01:19:53 ◼   ► and then people tweet at me asking for the app that Myke mentioned.

01:19:56 ◼   ► I use that. I have shortcuts for Carrot.

01:19:59 ◼   ► Somebody asked me in person at the MacPow user live show.

01:20:03 ◼   ► Oh yeah. Wow. This is how it's got me.

01:20:06 ◼   ► That app is still coming.

01:20:08 ◼   ► It is a standalone third party app.

01:20:10 ◼   ► It's like two weeks away.

01:20:14 ◼   ► Everything's two weeks away.

01:20:16 ◼   ► I have a series of shortcuts for Scriptable

01:20:21 ◼   ► to do things like show me specific photos

01:20:24 ◼   ► or documents in Siri, which is otherwise not

01:20:27 ◼   ► possible with the shortcuts app.

01:20:29 ◼   ► So I have shortcuts for Scriptable.

01:20:32 ◼   ► Well, time tracking.

01:20:36 ◼   ► I now have shortcuts to open specific Evernote notes or saved searches, so that's fun.

01:20:44 ◼   ► Shortcuts that I use a lot are to show me lists for good tasks.

01:20:50 ◼   ► So the idea would be in good tasks I have smart lists based on saved searches, essentially.

01:20:56 ◼   ► So now I can see all my writing tasks, for example, in Siri.

01:21:00 ◼   ► And that I use a lot.

01:21:02 ◼   ► Then I suppose all of these are based on the shortcuts app.

01:21:05 ◼   ► I would say Scriptable, Good Task, Carrot Weather, Evernote, and that's about it really.

01:21:14 ◼   ► And now we're cast when I say things like Play Upgrade or Play Cortex, that kind of stuff.

01:21:21 ◼   ► So four or five apps that I use a lot, and the other are city shortcuts that I set up with good

01:21:27 ◼   ► intentions but I never really use and everything else is just based on the Shortcuts app.

01:21:32 ◼   ► Okay, so let's talk about the Shortcuts app itself. I figure we should go to Federico last.

01:21:43 ◼   ► One thing for me, I feel like I use Shortcuts more than Workflow because Shortcuts makes

01:21:53 ◼   ► a lot of stuff easier than workflow could because of its ties to the system.

01:21:57 ◼   ► Like the fact that it can pull in a bunch of system actions and also just do some more

01:22:02 ◼   ► interesting things because it can like turn into the clock or whatever right like it is enabling

01:22:08 ◼   ► me to be able to do more stuff that I can conceive of more easily because I don't think in APIs right

01:22:16 ◼   ► Like, I think in actions I can perform on my iPhone and shortcuts has made that better

01:22:22 ◼   ► because not only are there system actions, there are now also more things I can do with

01:22:27 ◼   ► third party apps than I could do before.

01:22:30 ◼   ► So like if I think to myself, oh, I want to make a note in Evernote or whatever, right?

01:22:34 ◼   ► Like I can do that and it's more easy for me to do that because the Evernote support

01:22:40 ◼   ► with shortcuts is better than the Evernote support with workflow.

01:22:43 ◼   ► So that has been a big benefit to me.

01:22:46 ◼   ► And also stuff like being able to access my time tracking in shortcuts with native actions

01:22:54 ◼   ► rather than having to rely on an API means I'm able to build things for myself more easily

01:23:00 ◼   ► than asking Federico's help, because I can use the actual tools and the building blocks

01:23:06 ◼   ► from the applications that I use rather than needing to rely on APIs.

01:23:11 ◼   ► So it has made it better for me to be able to go from idea to execution more smoothly

01:23:16 ◼   ► than workflow used to.

01:23:18 ◼   ► So it's been a big success for me in that regard.

01:23:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's been really my experience, too.

01:23:25 ◼   ► There were things in the old workflow app that were really frustrating at times or,

01:23:30 ◼   ► you know, would get you 90% of what you wanted and the other 10% was maybe possible, but

01:23:36 ◼   ► not in any way that was immediately accessible.

01:23:40 ◼   ► And I think that Shortcuts has done a good job at surfacing and clarifying a lot of that

01:23:45 ◼   ► stuff, at least for somebody like me.

01:23:47 ◼   ► I know a fair bit about this stuff, but I'm definitely not an expert like Federico is,

01:23:53 ◼   ► but I find it much more approachable and also in a way more forgiving than Workflows was.

01:24:03 ◼   ► If you blow something up in Shortcuts, it feels like at times it's easier to understand

01:24:07 ◼   ► what went wrong and where.

01:24:09 ◼   ► That said, though, I don't think my use has radically changed from the workflow days,

01:24:17 ◼   ► I'm still doing the same type of things I was doing.

01:24:21 ◼   ► It's a lot of, I want this piece of content over there, or I want to take bits of information

01:24:29 ◼   ► from various places and compile them all into a single thing.

01:24:34 ◼   ► I'm not really doing much with like the webhooks or the this at the API level like Federico

01:24:41 ◼   ► is.

01:24:42 ◼   ► But I do know that if I do want to do that stuff, it is easier than ever.

01:24:46 ◼   ► But I just I don't have a big need for a lot of that since iOS is not my primary, my primary

01:24:52 ◼   ► platform.

01:24:55 ◼   ► I don't even know where to begin.

01:24:56 ◼   ► I think, to sum it up quickly, the shortcuts is the single feature that has had the most

01:25:07 ◼   ► impact on the way that I work from iOS in the past few years.

01:25:13 ◼   ► It's been a much bigger change than I was expecting initially.

01:25:16 ◼   ► I thought it's just going to be a new version of Workflow, and it's turning out to be so

01:25:20 ◼   ► much more, and that's because of the deeper integrations that it's got with Siri and with

01:25:25 ◼   ► other Apple devices or just with the new actions that they have or with the stability that

01:25:30 ◼   ► their iCloud bug aside, the fact that it's faster and it works better and it's nicer

01:25:39 ◼   ► and it's more powerful than ever.

01:25:43 ◼   ► And I've been able to integrate shortcuts, so these custom things that I can build with

01:25:50 ◼   ► the HomePod or just with Siri on the iPhone, which I think is a better way to experience

01:25:55 ◼   ► them because it's faster. So now I have, for example, HealthKit shortcuts that I use a

01:26:02 ◼   ► lot because I want to keep track, for example, of hydration, how much water I drink, because

01:26:07 ◼   ► I tend to forget to drink lots of water, whereas I should. And so I have shortcuts to log,

01:26:15 ◼   ► glasses of water that have junk, and it's super easy with shortcuts in Siri. I have

01:26:20 ◼   ► shortcuts to play specific playlists on Apple Music or on Shuffle. We recently bought, Sylvia

01:26:28 ◼   ► and I, this do-it-yourself house alarm system, and it's got IFTTT integration, which means

01:26:38 ◼   ► I can...

01:26:39 ◼   ► When you say do-it-yourself home alarm system, it makes you think of home alarm.

01:26:42 ◼   ► Yes, absolutely.

01:26:43 ◼   ► No, it's a modular thing in that you can assemble the pieces yourself. You can pick and choose

01:26:52 ◼   ► what you want to use.

01:26:53 ◼   ► Oh, right. So like, do you want this type of sensor or that type of sensor and how many

01:26:57 ◼   ► do you want?

01:26:58 ◼   ► Yeah. And it's got IFTTT integration. So I put together web hooks to trigger the house

01:27:07 ◼   ► to engage the alarm, to turn it off when we're back home,

01:27:12 ◼   ► and to also sound the very loud siren in case of emergency.

01:27:17 ◼   ► So I have shortcuts for all of these, and of course I have shortcuts for controlling the HomeKit scenes,

01:27:23 ◼   ► and again, this is a new feature of shortcuts, that are based on HomeBridge.

01:27:27 ◼   ► So I can use shortcuts to control my TV, to control the inputs and all of that.

01:27:32 ◼   ► I have complaints, we talked about this, there's features that I would like to see.

01:27:36 ◼   ► Airplay is a big one, HomePod actions, folders, because I mean seriously, better integration

01:27:45 ◼   ► throughout the system, there's a bunch more and I think we're gonna talk about it.

01:27:48 ◼   ► Do you wanna tell you one quick way that would really help with my HomePod frustration?

01:27:55 ◼   ► Let me say where I want the action to be performed.

01:28:00 ◼   ► What do you mean?

01:28:01 ◼   ► Right?

01:28:02 ◼   ► the times when I trigger a home like if I want to give a shortcut command it will say to me like

01:28:08 ◼   ► you have to complete that on your iPhone and like I knew that right like I knew that was the case

01:28:14 ◼   ► but if I just ask Siri for it the HomePod will always take the request right and try and action

01:28:20 ◼   ► it when what I would like to say is hey ahoy telephone something something on my iPhone and

01:28:28 ◼   ► and just like have my iPhone do it.

01:28:29 ◼   ► Right. Like if the HomePod can't do everything the iPhone can,

01:28:33 ◼   ► the HomePod shouldn't always win.

01:28:36 ◼   ► Right. Yeah.

01:28:37 ◼   ► So like that is that's one reason why I don't use Siri shortcuts

01:28:42 ◼   ► with Siri that much, because I don't like a lot of my most used shortcuts

01:28:48 ◼   ► wouldn't work over the HomePod.

01:28:50 ◼   ► Yeah, totally.

01:28:52 ◼   ► Because they're like opening apps on my iPhone, on my iPad.

01:28:55 ◼   ► So like, how is that's not going to work for me.

01:28:58 ◼   ► But I would like to be able to say like, hey, do this and it do it.

01:29:04 ◼   ► But where I need it to be done rather than trying to do it on a device

01:29:08 ◼   ► that can't perform it, which is just wild to me.

01:29:10 ◼   ► Yeah, the big one for me would be to actually have some kind of user

01:29:15 ◼   ► input and user interaction while running a shortcut.

01:29:19 ◼   ► So I want to be able to, you know, when there's an action that asks for input,

01:29:23 ◼   ► like normally I would type some text, but instead I would like to dictate that text

01:29:29 ◼   ► to Siri, you know, stuff like that, or to choose from multiple options.

01:29:33 ◼   ► So better interactivity, you know, being able to actually say something during the execution

01:29:37 ◼   ► of a shortcut.

01:29:39 ◼   ► There's a lot of things that I would like to see that probably this should be an episode

01:29:42 ◼   ► before WWDC.

01:29:43 ◼   ► So mark my request.

01:29:45 ◼   ► This is an officially filing a request for a future topic on connected shortcuts to what

01:29:52 ◼   ► we want to see or shortcuts three? I don't know. The next version.

01:29:57 ◼   ► So before we wrap up today, considering we just spoke about shortcuts, we definitely

01:30:01 ◼   ► need to touch on something that you put out to the world today Federico, an incredible

01:30:07 ◼   ► resource called the MaxStory Shortcuts Archive, which is something that's been in the works

01:30:12 ◼   ► for a while. And I mean, it's been live on the website, but nobody knew about it because

01:30:18 ◼   ► I've been using it for a bit, which is great. And so I knew it was there, so I knew how

01:30:24 ◼   ► to get to it. But do you want to talk about what this is? Because I would expect that

01:30:30 ◼   ► it is what people think it is, but maybe that would seem unrealistic, right? So do you want

01:30:36 ◼   ► to talk about what it actually is? And because it is quite an unrealistic thing that you

01:30:40 ◼   ► have managed to pull off.

01:30:41 ◼   ► Sure. The Max Stories Shortcuts Archive is a complete collection of all the shortcuts

01:30:47 ◼   ► I ever shared publicly, since Shortcuts was not called Shortcuts, but was called Workflow.

01:30:55 ◼   ► Which is unbelievable. This is just unbelievable.

01:30:57 ◼   ► This first version contains 150 shortcuts organized in 20 categories, and they contain

01:31:06 ◼   ► the very first workflows that I created in 2014, and up to the latest shortcuts that

01:31:13 ◼   ► I created last week for the ShortCats app, but all of them, I went through all of them,

01:31:21 ◼   ► all the archives on MechStories, some of the Club MechStories exclusives, I think five

01:31:28 ◼   ► of them that I'm offering for free as a demo, as well as my tweets, because years ago I

01:31:33 ◼   ► used to make workflows for people in public on Twitter. I went through all of them, I

01:31:39 ◼   ► I redownloaded them and I basically either updated them or recreated them from scratch.

01:31:45 ◼   ► All of the old workflows from 2014 I basically rebuilt from scratch using modern techniques

01:31:52 ◼   ► like magic variables or like new actions that were not available at the time.

01:31:58 ◼   ► And of course the more recent shortcuts, they didn't need that kind of uptick process.

01:32:04 ◼   ► But yes, all of these were downloaded.

01:32:08 ◼   ► In case of the old ones, I went through four, five years of articles on Mac stories, and

01:32:15 ◼   ► I downloaded each one, and updated each one, added comments, added instructions, I polished

01:32:22 ◼   ► them, I updated them, some of them were not working anymore, so it was a whole thing and

01:32:27 ◼   ► it took me four months.

01:32:28 ◼   ► This first version has 150 shortcuts, 20 categories from health to markdown to text, photos, app store.

01:32:36 ◼   ► There's even an Evernote section, because there's a bunch of Evernote shortcuts.

01:32:40 ◼   ► Yeah, and really the biggest challenge was trying to find the time to do this while also making new shortcuts.

01:32:49 ◼   ► So for a while I was splitting my days between going through the old archives and making new shortcuts for either max stories or club max stories.

01:33:00 ◼   ► I want to specify that this does not change the fact that I will still be making exclusive shortcuts for club members,

01:33:08 ◼   ► but I was already making public ones for free. But they were all over the place. They were impossible to find.

01:33:15 ◼   ► So this was a project, the idea was I need to go back through the archives, and it's gonna take me a lot of time,

01:33:25 ◼   ► but then from that point on, once it's done, I will have a foundation, I will have a single place where every single new shortcut will automatically go.

01:33:34 ◼   ► So now that I've fully caught up on updating all my old workflows and shortcuts,

01:33:41 ◼   ► Now, every time you will see a shortcut on a Mac Stories review or article, it will also

01:33:47 ◼   ► be in the archive.

01:33:49 ◼   ► Do you have a shortcut to add these shortcuts to the Shortcuts Archive?

01:33:53 ◼   ► This week's newsletter on Mac Stories Weekly for club members will be all about this series

01:34:00 ◼   ► of shortcuts that I use to put together the archive.

01:34:04 ◼   ► The archive itself, the HTML of the page, is generated from a shortcut.

01:34:09 ◼   ► Holy moly.

01:34:10 ◼   ► Oh my god.

01:34:11 ◼   ► behind the archive is a series...

01:34:13 ◼   ► Are you going to wipe out your iCloud again?

01:34:15 ◼   ► No, no.

01:34:16 ◼   ► This is what you're about to do.

01:34:17 ◼   ► All of those 150 shortcuts, they are text files in iCloud Drive.

01:34:23 ◼   ► They are actual .md text files.

01:34:27 ◼   ► There's a JSON database that weighs 50 kilobytes that has all the instructions, and there's

01:34:36 ◼   ► a shortcut that I basically had to reverse engineer both the iCloud shortcuts API, which

01:34:44 ◼   ► Apple uses on the web to store metadata for publicly shared shortcuts. And I had, with

01:34:50 ◼   ► the help of our friend John Voorhees, he has incredibly talented kids. And one of them

01:34:57 ◼   ► helped me reverse engineer the XML format of the shortcut itself, the shortcuts files.

01:35:05 ◼   ► And so it's a whole thing.

01:35:08 ◼   ► We reverse engineered how actions are stored inside of a shortcut.

01:35:13 ◼   ► So yeah, there's a whole automated process that I've been using since November to put

01:35:17 ◼   ► together this archive.

01:35:19 ◼   ► And it's very geeky and nerdy and I think club members will like it.

01:35:23 ◼   ► It was a huge undertaking.

01:35:26 ◼   ► It took way longer than I was expecting.

01:35:29 ◼   ► But I also did something that I wanted to do for the people, but also for myself.

01:35:35 ◼   ► I wanted to be able to say one day, I can point to this thing and say,

01:35:39 ◼   ► "All of these, I made them over X number of years."

01:35:43 ◼   ► And I'm very happy with the result.

01:35:46 ◼   ► So the shortcuts are shared via iCloud links, right?

01:35:49 ◼   ► Yes, with the native sharing feature.

01:35:53 ◼   ► Does that concern you?

01:35:55 ◼   ► In principle, yes, it does.

01:35:57 ◼   ► But also, I'm very optimistic about the fact that Apple is very aware

01:36:02 ◼   ► of how much people rely on shortcuts and workflows.

01:36:06 ◼   ► This is the same company and the same team that is still redirecting

01:36:10 ◼   ► all the workflow links from 2014.

01:36:13 ◼   ► Right. OK. To iCloud.com.

01:36:16 ◼   ► That's good. I didn't know that was the case, but that's encouraging.

01:36:20 ◼   ► I know that they are doing even custom

01:36:25 ◼   ► backward compatibility stuff for old icons and old colors.

01:36:32 ◼   ► You know, when you assign a shortcut, a color, and an icon,

01:36:36 ◼   ► for those that are not available anymore

01:36:39 ◼   ► in the transition between workflow and shortcuts,

01:36:42 ◼   ► they do some optimizations there to make sure the icons can stick.

01:36:46 ◼   ► So I'm very confident that, you know,

01:36:50 ◼   ► 50 years from now, 100 years from now,

01:36:53 ◼   ► it's very possible that these links will break.

01:36:56 ◼   ► But also, I will be dead. So I think, you know...

01:36:59 ◼   ► - Well, maybe. - Well, in theory.

01:37:01 ◼   ► So it's very possible that I will not care about it.

01:37:05 ◼   ► But--

01:37:06 ◼   ► Nothing shows more to me that there

01:37:10 ◼   ► needs to be new glyph options and shortcuts in this page.

01:37:14 ◼   ► Most of them are similar because those are the icons I like.

01:37:18 ◼   ► It's just like in a specific category,

01:37:20 ◼   ► they're basically all the same.

01:37:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm sorry.

01:37:22 ◼   ► Which is funny.

01:37:23 ◼   ► Even the same colors, which is kind of funny to me.

01:37:25 ◼   ► There's like consistent color schemes.

01:37:28 ◼   ► Yeah, so it's an interesting way of seeing

01:37:30 ◼   ► how your mind works visually.

01:37:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

01:37:32 ◼   ► But yeah, there will be fixes and improvements.

01:37:38 ◼   ► I wanna have an actual search feature

01:37:41 ◼   ► and I think on larger displays,

01:37:44 ◼   ► should be able to show you a grid

01:37:46 ◼   ► of shortcut boxes instead of a column.

01:37:50 ◼   ► So there's a bunch of things I wanna do,

01:37:52 ◼   ► but for now, this is actually,

01:37:54 ◼   ► it's quite nice in that it's the same syntax.

01:37:57 ◼   ► You know, all those widgets, those download boxes, are the same ones that you can see

01:38:02 ◼   ► on MacStories for our articles and reviews, and they are the same widgets that you will

01:38:08 ◼   ► see in my ebooks for iOS 12 reviews.

01:38:11 ◼   ► So it's a whole custom syntax for MacStories that my web developer and Brett, who's in

01:38:17 ◼   ► charge of developing the ebook, they were kind enough to...

01:38:21 ◼   ► They keep up, they understand that I have very specific needs and they listen to me,

01:38:29 ◼   ► they're kind enough to have that kind of patience.

01:38:31 ◼   ► I'm very happy there will be more coming.

01:38:33 ◼   ► I want to get to 200 of course before the end of the year.

01:38:38 ◼   ► So we'll see.

01:38:39 ◼   ► It's just I just need more new material from Apple.

01:38:42 ◼   ► Give me new actions and you shall get new shortcuts.

01:38:47 ◼   ► That is at maxstories.net/shortcuts.

01:38:48 ◼   ► Awesome.

01:38:49 ◼   ► cuts.

01:38:50 ◼   ► Awesome.

01:38:51 ◼   ► Federico, congratulations.

01:38:52 ◼   ► This page is awesome.

01:38:53 ◼   ► I would strongly encourage anyone listening to go check it out.

01:38:57 ◼   ► One thing I love about the way shortcuts are shared is that if it doesn't do exactly what

01:39:02 ◼   ► you want it to do, you can just go in and tweak it, right?

01:39:05 ◼   ► You can use these to build something else even.

01:39:08 ◼   ► That's how I at least have learned so much about shortcuts is seeing what other people

01:39:12 ◼   ► have done and seeing how it works, take it apart.

01:39:15 ◼   ► That's a really cool thing about the way shortcuts is laid out, I think.

01:39:19 ◼   ► I did see Papa Drang say today that I liked what he said.

01:39:23 ◼   ► He said, this is not only a set of pre-built shortcuts,

01:39:25 ◼   ► it's also a source of inspiration for new shortcuts

01:39:28 ◼   ► that you can build based on these.

01:39:29 ◼   ► - Exactly, yeah, it's really well said.

01:39:31 ◼   ► - Which is that's how I learned was by having shortcuts

01:39:34 ◼   ► to Federico built for me, and then I would like

01:39:36 ◼   ► pick them apart and learn that way.

01:39:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's super useful.

01:39:39 ◼   ► - So you can learn the way I did.

01:39:41 ◼   ► - That's right, at the feet of Federico.

01:39:44 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

01:39:45 ◼   ► - If you want to find links to all the stuff

01:39:47 ◼   ► we have spoken about, head over to the website,

01:39:50 ◼   ► relay.fm/connected/233.

01:39:54 ◼   ► While you're there, you can get in touch.

01:39:56 ◼   ► There's an email link there on the sidebar,

01:39:58 ◼   ► or you can find us on Twitter.

01:40:00 ◼   ► Myke is there as I-M-Y-K-E.

01:40:03 ◼   ► Myke, of course, is the host of a whole bunch of shows

01:40:05 ◼   ► here at Relay FM.

01:40:06 ◼   ► Go check those out.

01:40:07 ◼   ► You can find Federico on Twitter @viti_cci,

01:40:11 ◼   ► and he is the editor-in-chief and head shortcut boss

01:40:15 ◼   ► at maxstories.net.

01:40:17 ◼   ► You can find me on Twitter as ismh

01:40:19 ◼   ► and I write 512pixels.net.

01:40:22 ◼   ► Also, I host a YouTube channel by that same name.

01:40:24 ◼   ► I'll have a new video up pretty soon,

01:40:26 ◼   ► next couple days hopefully, so.

01:40:29 ◼   ► Looking forward to sharing that.

01:40:31 ◼   ► I'd like to thank our sponsors this week

01:40:32 ◼   ► for making the show possible.

01:40:33 ◼   ► Express, VPN, Hover, and Luna Display.

01:40:37 ◼   ► And until next week, guys, say goodbye.

01:40:40 ◼   ► - Arrivederci.

01:40:41 ◼   ► - Cheerio.