Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:06 ◼   ► From RelayFN, this is Connected, episode 232, and today's show is brought to you by Eero,

00:00:12 ◼   ► Lunar Display and Squarespace.

00:00:14 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley, I'm back in the hosting chair today, just so I can have the

00:00:18 ◼   ► honour of introducing Federico Vittucci.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Hi Federico.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Hi Myke, it's good to be first again into the introduction.

00:00:24 ◼   ► We have overthrown the shackles of Stephen Hackett.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Hackett shackles and we're back in charge.

00:00:33 ◼   ► Once again he's been fired, his contract with Real FM has been terminated and he's out somewhere

00:00:39 ◼   ► in America on a road trip.

00:00:41 ◼   ► He's never coming back so it was a good show with you Steven.

00:00:45 ◼   ► It's gonna be even better with Myke and I alone without your overpowering tyranny.

00:00:52 ◼   ► No more.

00:00:54 ◼   ► No more tyranny.

00:00:56 ◼   ► So we will, we're going to move away from no follow up.

00:00:59 ◼   ► We're going straight into topics today.

00:01:01 ◼   ► Just hashtag content all the way.

00:01:02 ◼   ► And we're going to start off.

00:01:04 ◼   ► I actually just want to read some quotes to you Federico.

00:01:06 ◼   ► Is that okay?

00:01:08 ◼   ► That's that's fine.

00:01:09 ◼   ► Yes.

00:01:10 ◼   ► So I'm going to read you a quote from a MacRumors article about USB 3.0 and 3.1 being rebranded.

00:01:16 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:01:17 ◼   ► All right.

00:01:18 ◼   ► So I'm just going to read this.

00:01:19 ◼   ► If you can, it's going to be a mouthful, but good luck.

00:01:22 ◼   ► So appreciate dear listeners.

00:01:24 ◼   ► You're not going to be able to follow this.

00:01:26 ◼   ► That's kind of the point. So USB 3.0 and 3.1 are being rebranded. This is from the quote

00:01:31 ◼   ► from MacRumors. This is no fault of MacRumors by the way that this is so confusing.

00:01:37 ◼   ► Going forward USB 3.1 Gen 1 with transfer speeds up to 5GB/s which used to be called

00:01:43 ◼   ► USB 3.0 prior to a separate rebranding will be called USB 3.2 Gen 1, while USB 3.1 Gen

00:01:51 ◼   ► which has transfer speeds of up to 10GB/s, will now be called USB 3.2 Gen2.

00:01:58 ◼   ► USB 3.2 Gen1 with transfer speeds of up to 5GB/s is also now called SuperSpeed USB.

00:02:05 ◼   ► USB 3.2 Gen2 with transfer speeds of up to 10GB/s is also now called SuperSpeed USB 10GB/s.

00:02:13 ◼   ► The USB 3.2 Gen2x2 specification with transfer speeds of up to 20GB/s is now called SuperSpeed USB 20GB/s.

00:02:20 ◼   ► USB 20 gigabytes per second.

00:02:22 ◼   ► What is going on?

00:02:23 ◼   ► What is this?

00:02:26 ◼   ► - Everything is USB 3.2 now, basically.

00:02:29 ◼   ► So even your computer from 2012 is now USB 3.2 compliant.

00:02:34 ◼   ► And you know, the thing that really gets to me,

00:02:40 ◼   ► I mean, fine, you wanna retroactively upgrade everything

00:02:44 ◼   ► to USB 3.2, whatever.

00:02:46 ◼   ► The USB consortium, whatever it's called,

00:02:49 ◼   ► implementers forum. They are well known for messing up the spec labels every few years.

00:02:55 ◼   ► This is what they do, I don't know why they like to do this so much, but it's been going

00:02:59 ◼   ► on since the USB 1 days. So this is a perfect USB Consortium playbook that they're following.

00:03:05 ◼   ► But why do you have to call it USB 3.2 Gen 2 per 2? How do you say that? 2x2?

00:03:14 ◼   ► I would say two by two because that's what the X typically means.

00:03:18 ◼   ► But why?

00:03:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know why.

00:03:20 ◼   ► The thing that frustrates me the most about this is why are they calling USB

00:03:24 ◼   ► 3.0 3.2 now? It doesn't make any sense.

00:03:27 ◼   ► And also, I think the thing that maybe annoys me more is they called it

00:03:31 ◼   ► SuperSpeed USB, right?

00:03:33 ◼   ► Why didn't they just come up with a distinct brand name for each of the

00:03:37 ◼   ► generations?

00:03:38 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:03:39 ◼   ► Right? Like SuperSpeed, HyperSpeed, Megaspeed.

00:03:42 ◼   ► And then we could all understand.

00:03:44 ◼   ► Pokemon! Whatever it is, right? Like whatever it's gonna be. But like, calling everything 3.2 Gen 1, and the fact that there already was, like 3.1 Gen 2 is now 3.2 Gen 2.

00:03:58 ◼   ► That doesn't make any sense, why? Also, these nicknames, they are changing, because before, the 5 gigabit per second was called SuperSpeed, and the USB 3.1 Gen 2 was called SuperSpeed Plus.

00:04:12 ◼   ► Now they're also changing the nicknames.

00:04:15 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:04:17 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense.

00:04:19 ◼   ► They should do... 'cause the Wi-Fi...

00:04:21 ◼   ► The Wi-Fi standards, they went through this recently, right?

00:04:24 ◼   ► Where they actually started to make sense of their names a little bit.

00:04:27 ◼   ► - Is that right? - Yeah, with Wi-Fi 6.

00:04:29 ◼   ► Yeah, they adopted Wi-Fi 6 instead of saying...

00:04:32 ◼   ► - N or G or B or R. - I think it was AX.

00:04:36 ◼   ► I think the latest generation was 802.11 AX.

00:04:40 ◼   ► I just said, you know what? This has gotten out of hand.

00:04:43 ◼   ► We're just going to call it Wi-Fi six.

00:04:44 ◼   ► And that's a beautiful move.

00:04:46 ◼   ► It makes perfect sense.

00:04:47 ◼   ► Like, I don't want to go to my mom and be like,

00:04:49 ◼   ► you got to buy a new modem for, you know, for better Wi-Fi.

00:04:53 ◼   ► You should seek out a 802.11ax.

00:04:57 ◼   ► She's just going to stare at me and do nothing.

00:04:59 ◼   ► Instead, I can just say buy one that says on the box, Wi-Fi six.

00:05:04 ◼   ► And then the number just goes up.

00:05:06 ◼   ► And like so what they've also done is applied numbers

00:05:08 ◼   ► one through five backwards in time just to make things clear.

00:05:12 ◼   ► And like that's what the USB consortium needs to do.

00:05:15 ◼   ► Like this reminds me of Intel, like when Intel used to have like

00:05:19 ◼   ► six numbers to work out what their processes were.

00:05:23 ◼   ► And then they changed that to like the core duo thing.

00:05:27 ◼   ► Like they moved it to there because it became they started to get hurt.

00:05:32 ◼   ► Basically, I think like AMD, this is years ago, this is like 15 years ago.

00:05:35 ◼   ► And one of the reasons it was believed AMD was starting to take them over

00:05:38 ◼   ► because people couldn't understand what chips they were buying anymore because the naming

00:05:42 ◼   ► came became too difficult and now like their names now is starting to veer back towards that

00:05:47 ◼   ► direction a little bit with like what are they even called like the i7 and i5 but at least

00:05:52 ◼   ► you can work out that seven's more than five because like when back in those days before

00:05:58 ◼   ► the core stuff bigger number didn't necessarily mean more powerful chip it was just like whatever

00:06:04 ◼   ► like the numbers like they've got their own system and they're just gonna work out it reminds me of

00:06:07 ◼   ► TV brand naming, right? Where it's just like 16 characters and that's like somehow a TV brand.

00:06:14 ◼   ► Or like my Sony headphones, which are impossible to pronounce. Like if the USB consortium was in

00:06:20 ◼   ► charge of naming processors, they wouldn't call it the Core i7, they would say the Core i5+2.

00:06:25 ◼   ► That's what they would do. Super speed. But seriously, what concerns me about this piece of news is that

00:06:35 ◼   ► Okay, now all of these devices are, they support USB 3.2. So in the case of the 2018 iPad Pro,

00:06:43 ◼   ► this means that technically it graduates from supporting USB 3.1 Gen 2 at the highest transfer

00:06:51 ◼   ► rate to USB 3.2 Gen 2, so 10 gigabit per second. I bet that some people when they will read the news

00:07:02 ◼   ► that the iPad Pro is compatible with USB 3.2,

00:07:06 ◼   ► they will search for what's the fastest USB 3.2 cable I can find

00:07:10 ◼   ► for data transfers, you know, especially if the iPad Pro gains

00:07:13 ◼   ► official USB support.

00:07:16 ◼   ► They will search for those cables and they, I mean,

00:07:19 ◼   ► the cable will be retro-compatible, so that's not a problem,

00:07:22 ◼   ► but they will not get their money's worth out of the purchase

00:07:25 ◼   ► because the iPad Pro will not be able to push 20 gigabit per second.

00:07:29 ◼   ► Well, everybody knows you want the gold-plated cables anyway.

00:07:32 ◼   ► Yeah, sure.

00:07:33 ◼   ► Everything moves faster with the gold play.

00:07:36 ◼   ► Yeah, that's true.

00:07:37 ◼   ► So anyway, this is just confusing.

00:07:41 ◼   ► The people who work at the USB-IF, I think it's also beautiful that they're called the

00:07:46 ◼   ► USB Implementers Forum.

00:07:47 ◼   ► The USB-IF, if only they knew how normal people operate and now human beings like to talk.

00:07:56 ◼   ► I feel there would be some progress there, but no.

00:07:58 ◼   ► So USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 is now the highest standard.

00:08:03 ◼   ► There are no devices I think at the moment, no tablets or I don't think the Macbooks even

00:08:09 ◼   ► support this, the 20 gigabit per second transfer rate via USB.

00:08:15 ◼   ► We'll see I guess that new Apple display maybe, and the Mac Pro maybe 2019, they will support

00:08:22 ◼   ► this spec but we'll see.

00:08:25 ◼   ► I also before we move on today wanted to mention just a quick rumor from Mark Gorman

00:08:30 ◼   ► Reporting a Bloomberg that Apple are performing internal testing on a version of the Apple watch with an integrated sleep tracking ability

00:08:39 ◼   ► Gorman says that it will be added to the Apple watch by

00:08:42 ◼   ► 2020 my assumption means that this that means this year, but he's like hedging it a bit

00:08:49 ◼   ► I don't know why you would say by 2020

00:08:51 ◼   ► It's like when he says, when he uses those expressions like "at the latest" or "at the earliest"

00:08:59 ◼   ► Yeah

00:08:59 ◼   ► Like to try and find ways to not pin down a specific deadline

00:09:03 ◼   ► because it was beaten by that in the past before

00:09:06 ◼   ► So I would be surprised if it's not, you know, the Watch Series 5?

00:09:13 ◼   ► Is that 5?

00:09:14 ◼   ► Yeah, we're in 4 now

00:09:15 ◼   ► Coming in theory this year

00:09:16 ◼   ► Series 5 and WatchOS 6 though

00:09:19 ◼   ► Yeah

00:09:19 ◼   ► So one more version, yeah

00:09:21 ◼   ► I think it's gonna be a late 2019 thing.

00:09:24 ◼   ► And that's gonna be great because there was somebody

00:09:27 ◼   ► on Twitter, I think it was David Smith probably,

00:09:30 ◼   ► arguing in favor of Apple doing their own solution

00:09:34 ◼   ► for sleep tracking because yes, a bunch of apps,

00:09:36 ◼   ► including David Smith's own, exist to sort of have

00:09:40 ◼   ► sleep tracking on the watch right now.

00:09:42 ◼   ► But those apps, they have to use all these workarounds

00:09:47 ◼   ► you know, that looking to the activity data

00:09:51 ◼   ► pushed from the Apple Watch to the iPhone's health app

00:09:54 ◼   ► to sort of try and guess when you were sleeping.

00:09:57 ◼   ► But if Apple were to do a native feature,

00:09:59 ◼   ► they could use all kinds of private APIs

00:10:02 ◼   ► and low-level integrations in the chips

00:10:05 ◼   ► and in the sensors of the watch to be more precise

00:10:07 ◼   ► and more battery efficient.

00:10:09 ◼   ► So this is gonna be great.

00:10:11 ◼   ► - Which will probably still be good for people

00:10:13 ◼   ► like Underscore because while he won't be doing

00:10:16 ◼   ► the tracking of the sleep, he could pull the data from health and visualise it, right?

00:10:22 ◼   ► My expectation here, and the way that I think they're going to do this, so obviously the

00:10:27 ◼   ► battery life needs to be good and better, like they're going to have to get better battery

00:10:32 ◼   ► life to be consistent with battery life to have a feature like this, but one of the big

00:10:36 ◼   ► differences is people take their watches off at night a lot of the time and they charge

00:10:42 ◼   ► So I think that if I was going to completely wishcast this whole situation, I bet the next

00:10:48 ◼   ► watch is Qi.

00:10:50 ◼   ► They moved to Qi.

00:10:52 ◼   ► One of the reasons I think they're going to move to Qi is like for Samsung's doing with

00:10:55 ◼   ► the S10 and the new watches.

00:10:57 ◼   ► Because you know the iPhone might have this bilateral charging right where you can charge

00:11:01 ◼   ► devices on the phone.

00:11:03 ◼   ► So the Apple Watch isn't Qi charged so you wouldn't be able to charge the watch from

00:11:08 ◼   ► the phone.

00:11:10 ◼   ► So I reckon they're going to make the watch Qi charging so you can charge it off the phone.

00:11:14 ◼   ► It's like another thing of like, oh, you can just give a top up if you need it from your

00:11:17 ◼   ► iPhone.

00:11:18 ◼   ► But the other thing I think that, you know, that somehow I don't know if this is the case,

00:11:23 ◼   ► but like I imagine them being like, oh, you just wear it all night.

00:11:26 ◼   ► And then in the morning you just take your watch off when you take a shower and you put

00:11:30 ◼   ► it on your air power mat.

00:11:32 ◼   ► And because it's Qi charging, it now will charge faster than before.

00:11:36 ◼   ► So you could charge it more quickly and then you won't notice any difference with the fact

00:11:41 ◼   ► that you've taken the watch off or that you've had it on all night.

00:11:43 ◼   ► Like it will be able to charge more quickly to like 80% or whatever.

00:11:47 ◼   ► That's kind of my imagination of how they're going to pitch this whole thing because I

00:11:53 ◼   ► can't imagine multiple day battery life, especially if you're doing the sleep tracking.

00:11:58 ◼   ► So they need to find like a way to make the charging stuff less inconvenient or just like

00:12:06 ◼   ► or make it more convenient, right?

00:12:07 ◼   ► And the charging from the iPhone and or it just being Qi enabled would make that a lot

00:12:12 ◼   ► easier for people.

00:12:15 ◼   ► That's a good theory.

00:12:16 ◼   ► I think it would be in character.

00:12:18 ◼   ► I think about what seems super strange to me if Apple added the bilateral charging purely

00:12:23 ◼   ► for AirPods.

00:12:27 ◼   ► So I think as well, like I said this before, right, that like my feeling remains that I

00:12:36 ◼   ► think AirPower, I'm still not convinced that it's going to come out and I think it's going

00:12:40 ◼   ► to be Qi only.

00:12:41 ◼   ► But still!

00:12:42 ◼   ► Okay, I'm not convinced it's going to come out within the timelines that the rumors currently

00:12:45 ◼   ► state of like within the first half of the year because I think they're just going to

00:12:49 ◼   ► go to Qi only.

00:12:50 ◼   ► I think having to have also the proprietary Apple Watch charging stuff in the same pads

00:12:55 ◼   ► is one of the reasons that they've struggled with this because it's a lot of coils if you're going

00:12:59 ◼   ► to allow this stuff to be placed wherever you want on the mat right because you need both charging

00:13:05 ◼   ► technologies in the same place multiple in multiple places throughout the mat right so

00:13:10 ◼   ► imagine you need three coils in the mat where you need six right because you've got to have three

00:13:16 ◼   ► for chi and three for the apple watch if you're just going to allow complete random placement

00:13:20 ◼   ► along the mat so i think this is probably one of the things that's made it tricky because that's

00:13:24 ◼   ► a lot of stuff going on there and a lot of power management and a lot of heat management

00:13:29 ◼   ► in a device like that, so I think that might be where they're struggling.

00:13:32 ◼   ► And I reckon the Apple Watch is going to go to Qi anyway because it just makes sense for

00:13:35 ◼   ► it to do that ultimately.

00:13:37 ◼   ► So that's what I reckon is going to happen.

00:13:40 ◼   ► And I also think that if they're going to push for the battery to be charged up more

00:13:44 ◼   ► or whatever, make it easier, now should be the time for an always-on display as well.

00:13:49 ◼   ► I think that would make sense.

00:13:50 ◼   ► It would be sad if AirPower is not coming out in the first half of the year.

00:13:54 ◼   ► They could do it, but they could say it just doesn't charge the Apple Watch, it's Qi devices

00:13:58 ◼   ► only.

00:13:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:00 ◼   ► Which would kind of suck, but...

00:14:01 ◼   ► Yeah, especially because they promised, like, the whole idea was AirPower is going to charge

00:14:06 ◼   ► all of your Apple devices at once.

00:14:09 ◼   ► But then if they do move to Qi for the Apple Watch, which I think they have other reasons

00:14:13 ◼   ► to do it, then they've wasted a lot of work with the AirPower.

00:14:18 ◼   ► I guess that on stage they could say it doesn't work with the Apple Watch yet, wink wink.

00:14:22 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe.

00:14:23 ◼   ► I don't know. I'm a little bit conflicted on this obviously. The Apple stuff just seems

00:14:29 ◼   ► so strange to me anyway. But I also just think it makes so much sense for them to try and

00:14:34 ◼   ► move the Apple Watch to Qi charging. But it's if they could do it. I don't know what it

00:14:38 ◼   ► takes. I don't know if they're able to get Qi coils in those products anyway. Samsung

00:14:43 ◼   ► did it. So I assume Apple can do it too.

00:14:45 ◼   ► Yeah. We'll see.

00:14:47 ◼   ► Alright, talking about what Samsung have been up to, we're going to talk about a specific

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00:16:25 ◼   ► So I was super surprised when I went to Steven's house recently because, and I bring this up

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00:17:27 ◼   ► Relay FM.

00:17:28 ◼   ► And the feature we're going to talk about is Bixby, right?

00:17:32 ◼   ► Bixby, everyone's favorite digital assistant.

00:17:36 ◼   ► - Yes, so no, it's not Bixby.

00:17:39 ◼   ► We're gonna talk about the ultrasonic fingerprint sensor

00:17:42 ◼   ► that is embedded in the display of the Galaxy S10 and S10+.

00:17:46 ◼   ► And I wanted to talk about this

00:17:50 ◼   ► because I think it's a fascinating piece of technology,

00:17:54 ◼   ► like technically speaking,

00:17:56 ◼   ► but also in the context of Touch ID

00:17:58 ◼   ► being gone from the iPhone

00:18:00 ◼   ► and sort of what we think about what Samsung has done

00:18:02 ◼   ► if we miss Touch ID. So quick recap, this in this sensor underneath the display

00:18:11 ◼   ► is different from other implementations that we've seen in other smartphones

00:18:15 ◼   ► like the OnePlus 6T if I'm not mistaken or the Honor something. There's one of the Honor phones,

00:18:23 ◼   ► there's like the Vivo phone. So we spoke about different in-display fingerprint

00:18:28 ◼   ► sensors. A little while ago in episode 182, but they're a different technology.

00:18:33 ◼   ► Yeah, they were based essentially on taking a 2D picture of your finger.

00:18:38 ◼   ► Usually they work by shining a light inside the display so that the

00:18:43 ◼   ► sensor can take a picture of your fingerprint and unlock the phone.

00:18:47 ◼   ► These new ultrasonic fingerprint sensors, they are based on Qualcomm's technology.

00:18:52 ◼   ► they basically work by, they use sound waves to read your fingerprint, so the

00:18:59 ◼   ► sensor, it's called the 3D sonic sensor, it bounces sound waves of your skin and

00:19:07 ◼   ► it constructs on the fly a 3D image of your, of the ridges and valleys of your

00:19:15 ◼   ► fingerprint and this ultrasonic reader basically the advantage over the

00:19:22 ◼   ► other implementation that takes a picture is able to work even if objects

00:19:28 ◼   ► or like water or sweat or you know little particles of dirt are obstructing

00:19:35 ◼   ► they are you know placed on your skin so it doesn't it's it shouldn't be an issue

00:19:40 ◼   ► if like you just walked out of the shower or if your hands you know if you

00:19:44 ◼   ► just worked out for example so you have sweat on your hands that shouldn't be a

00:19:47 ◼   ► problem. And what makes it interesting, I think, is the fact that you're still gonna have like a

00:19:58 ◼   ► fixed spot on the screen where you need to place your finger. So it's not like you can place your

00:20:05 ◼   ► finger anywhere on the display. There's going to be like an area where you will see on the display

00:20:11 ◼   ► like a graphic of a fingerprint and you need to place your finger down and the phone will unlock.

00:20:16 ◼   ► So before the announcement, I was sort of concerned that, just like mostly everybody else who has an iPhone and sort of watches the Samsung event,

00:20:25 ◼   ► events with, you know, just to make fun of them or just to be overly, to be overly critic of anything that Samsung does.

00:20:34 ◼   ► I watch it out of genuine excitement, personally.

00:20:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:37 ◼   ► But I get your point.

00:20:39 ◼   ► I think a lot of people in the Apple community, they watch them to make silly jokes on Twitter.

00:20:46 ◼   ► Honestly, I think, and I've had this opinion for the past few years, I think Samsung, they make

00:20:54 ◼   ► some pretty awesome phones. Like, they are pretty to look at. There was a period of time where what

00:21:00 ◼   ► would happen was Apple would release a phone, this happened for a long time, and then Samsung would

00:21:04 ◼   ► release their phone and it would match Apple in a lot of departments, right?

00:21:10 ◼   ► Because Samsung have two major phone releases every year. They do the S line

00:21:15 ◼   ► in March and then the note line in like October. But what's happening now is, and

00:21:21 ◼   ► I think it's happened this time in a few areas, Apple release a phone in September

00:21:26 ◼   ► and then Samsung leapfrog them in March. Which is the way it should be because

00:21:30 ◼   ► they have more time or like it's on a different time frame so they should be

00:21:35 ◼   ► able to put out a device that has new and interesting features and all of the

00:21:39 ◼   ► videos all of the articles right now are talking about like a few key areas where

00:21:44 ◼   ► the Samsung phone is incredible I'm looking forward to the full reviews from

00:21:48 ◼   ► everybody but like the S10 looks amazing.

00:21:51 ◼   ► Yes so I think personally that the S10+ it looks better than my

00:22:00 ◼   ► iPhone XS Max. So you prefer the cut out to the notch? I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do.

00:22:30 ◼   ► left are smaller. Yeah. So and yeah, I know like the cutouts there or whatever, but like

00:22:36 ◼   ► the notch is a huge cutout. They're all cutouts. Like, you know, it's their cutouts because

00:22:40 ◼   ► this is how it's going to be. But I think one of the other things is right, like, and

00:22:44 ◼   ► the reason that we like this is the iPhone 10 design is not new anymore. This is new.

00:22:49 ◼   ► I've never seen a phone like that before. That's exciting. Yeah, exactly. It is. And

00:22:54 ◼   ► now I know that, you know, you're listening to this episode and you're going to pause

00:22:59 ◼   ► and you're going to tweet at us saying, but the notch is bigger because it's got

00:23:02 ◼   ► the true dead sensors.

00:23:04 ◼   ► And this is why we wanted to talk about the fingerprint sensor.

00:23:07 ◼   ► Yeah, we know why the notch is there.

00:23:09 ◼   ► Face ID is amazing.

00:23:10 ◼   ► But like, here's the question.

00:23:12 ◼   ► Is face ID? Is it though?

00:23:14 ◼   ► Better. That's also my question.

00:23:16 ◼   ► No, but like, it's cool, right?

00:23:17 ◼   ► Like the facial recognition software that unlocks your phone is awesome.

00:23:21 ◼   ► It's futuristic and it works for most people.

00:23:25 ◼   ► Pause right there. OK, pause right there. OK.

00:23:28 ◼   ► I, in the past couple of months, I think a bunch of my friends, they've gotten iPhones for Christmas.

00:23:34 ◼   ► And also more, just more people who are not my friends. Even today we were at the doctor's office

00:23:39 ◼   ► with Sylvia and I noticed the doctor now has an iPhone 10s max and face ID was failing on their phone.

00:23:46 ◼   ► And in the past couple of months I've gotten so many complaints from my friends and other people

00:23:51 ◼   ► saying "but man that face ID never works huh?" and I'm like "have I misjudged face ID because I tend

00:24:00 ◼   ► to use it in you know in optimal conditions maybe or maybe I'm more forgiving of those problems?"

00:24:07 ◼   ► because a lot of people that I know they absolutely do not like it and the common theme is

00:24:16 ◼   ► but are they gonna bring Touch ID back eventually?

00:24:18 ◼   ► Like are they gonna offer both?

00:24:21 ◼   ► And so I think it's fascinating because yes,

00:24:23 ◼   ► personally I don't have these problems with Face ID

00:24:27 ◼   ► that for example Silvia has or my friends have,

00:24:31 ◼   ► but it's like, it's a complaint that keeps coming up

00:24:35 ◼   ► with people I know in real life.

00:24:37 ◼   ► And so I think it's fascinating that you have Apple

00:24:40 ◼   ► going down this Face ID route,

00:24:41 ◼   ► they don't care about Touch ID anymore,

00:24:43 ◼   ► and you have all these other companies.

00:24:45 ◼   ► Like I showed the Samsung video to Sylvia to show her this new in-display fingerprint sensor.

00:24:50 ◼   ► She was like, "Yes, I want that, but not on a Samsung phone."

00:24:53 ◼   ► I think I have a theory about the people's take on it.

00:24:57 ◼   ► I think it depends how they're coming into the interaction.

00:25:00 ◼   ► So me and you, and a lot of people that listen to the show,

00:25:04 ◼   ► were excited by Face ID when we first saw it.

00:25:06 ◼   ► Because this is the type of stuff we care about, is like crazy new technology.

00:25:10 ◼   ► But I think most people like Touch ID and just think that Face ID won't work for them so well.

00:25:17 ◼   ► So we probably have the same success failure rate, but our bias is different.

00:25:22 ◼   ► So when I see it failing, I'm less likely to notice it because I'm not really annoyed about it in the first place.

00:25:27 ◼   ► But if you're someone who doesn't want it to change, you like what you had or you think it's not going to work for you,

00:25:33 ◼   ► you're more likely to recognize and be frustrated by every time that it doesn't.

00:25:38 ◼   ► And so that's why I think that it's like these,

00:25:41 ◼   ► I think both of these are perfectly valid by the way.

00:25:43 ◼   ► Like if you liked touch ID and it worked for you

00:25:46 ◼   ► and now face ID doesn't work for you in the same way,

00:25:50 ◼   ► then you are perfectly valid to be annoyed by it.

00:25:53 ◼   ► I have watched a bunch of videos now about the S10.

00:26:00 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:26:01 ◼   ► - I would prefer the ultrasonic fingerprint sensor

00:26:04 ◼   ► to face ID on my iPhone.

00:26:06 ◼   ► On my iPad, I want Face ID, but on my iPhone,

00:26:10 ◼   ► I want the fingerprint sensor.

00:26:12 ◼   ► - I want both.

00:26:13 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, okay.

00:26:14 ◼   ► But you know, it's just like,

00:26:16 ◼   ► I'm not imagining that scenario.

00:26:18 ◼   ► We can get to the both scenario in a bit,

00:26:20 ◼   ► but like if we're just gonna choose.

00:26:22 ◼   ► And the reason I want it,

00:26:24 ◼   ► there are a bunch of scenarios where

00:26:27 ◼   ► Face ID doesn't work as well as Touch ID.

00:26:31 ◼   ► So Apple Pay being one of them,

00:26:34 ◼   ► because I always have to have my phone to my face.

00:26:36 ◼   ► And in the UK, we use Apple Pay to go through turnstiles for trains.

00:26:40 ◼   ► And I'm always finding myself being held up.

00:26:42 ◼   ► And this never happened to me before because I didn't need to look at the display.

00:26:47 ◼   ► And I know that, as you were saying, it's like it's not the full display,

00:26:50 ◼   ► but the place in which you would be using your fingerprint on the S10.

00:26:56 ◼   ► It's like a place that you understand, you know where it is.

00:26:59 ◼   ► It's where your thumb goes.

00:27:00 ◼   ► It's what you're used to.

00:27:01 ◼   ► And it's big enough, really.

00:27:02 ◼   ► It's yeah, it's big enough.

00:27:04 ◼   ► So, you know, stuff like that.

00:27:05 ◼   ► Any way any buying apps in the app store stuff is always annoying, right?

00:27:11 ◼   ► Like doing the double click and then doing the face.

00:27:13 ◼   ► I don't like having to do that.

00:27:14 ◼   ► Maybe you're lying down in bed, you know, you want to download a game.

00:27:17 ◼   ► And yeah, yeah.

00:27:18 ◼   ► The fact that it only does work in one orientation on the iPhone

00:27:22 ◼   ► is really annoying.

00:27:23 ◼   ► But for my iPad, because my iPad tends to be further away from me,

00:27:28 ◼   ► it works in all orientations. It's better.

00:27:29 ◼   ► And maybe if Face ID gets to all orientations on the iPhone

00:27:33 ◼   ► and stuff like that, it may alleviate some of my concerns because then maybe it will

00:27:38 ◼   ► have a better viewing angle in general so I won't have as many problems with Apple Pay

00:27:42 ◼   ► and stuff like that. But I look at this Samsung thing and it's like, "Oh, well, there's a

00:27:47 ◼   ► thing here. Not only does that look cool, it looks faster because it doesn't look slower

00:27:52 ◼   ► than the old fingerprint sensor and the fingerprint sensors definitely feel slower than the FaceID

00:27:58 ◼   ► does." And I think I really like that.

00:28:01 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. And it really, it was just nice to be able to unlock your phone without looking at it.

00:28:09 ◼   ► Like, you know, there's some things that I can do on my phone just out of muscle memory. For example,

00:28:14 ◼   ► I can unlock swipe left. I know I'm in the widget and then I can just tap and run a shortcut. This

00:28:19 ◼   ► is something that I do all the time to shuffle a playlist on Apple Music, but now I need to look at

00:28:24 ◼   ► my phone because otherwise you want to unlock. Like I was watching the MKBHD

00:28:31 ◼   ► video about it that came out this morning. Yeah he did a really really

00:28:34 ◼   ► great video about the display and he did some amazing testing on the fingerprint sensor.

00:28:40 ◼   ► Yeah so he tested the sensor with some water, so he had like a bottle of

00:28:46 ◼   ► water and he tried to try with a wet finger to see if it worked and sure

00:28:51 ◼   ► enough it did. Then he tried with screen protectors and so the plastic screen

00:28:56 ◼   ► protector was not a problem for the fingerprint sensor of the S10 but the

00:29:00 ◼   ► glass screen protector which by the way Samsung does not sell so he tried an

00:29:05 ◼   ► iPhone one. But apparently they are either making them or they're gonna be

00:29:08 ◼   ► making ones which have a hole in the middle which is just hilarious to me.

00:29:12 ◼   ► Yeah, so the glass one if it covers the all the fingerprint sensor it's not

00:29:17 ◼   ► gonna work but otherwise he looked damn impressive like it was fast it was

00:29:23 ◼   ► accurate it worked with water it worked with plastic on top of the sensor. I also really liked

00:29:29 ◼   ► how he was showing how you don't even need to apply any pressure or leave your

00:29:34 ◼   ► like it's just super fast it's like super super fast and I find that

00:29:38 ◼   ► impressive because this is new technology which is better than the old

00:29:41 ◼   ► technology which is I know that sounds weird but like when you when you make

00:29:44 ◼   ► these weird leaps like face ID got a bit clunkier than touch ID because it was new. Well these

00:29:49 ◼   ► are ultrasonic fingerprint sensors, it may as well be new technology to the optical ones

00:29:54 ◼   ► that were before because it's so wildly different or like the way that it was being done on

00:29:58 ◼   ► the iPhone or when they were on the back of phones or whatever. But like this is just

00:30:03 ◼   ► a real interesting leap in technology because it allows you to have a fingerprint sensor

00:30:08 ◼   ► on a phone in a good area for a fingerprint sensor right like I like fingerprint sensors

00:30:14 ◼   ► on the back but I also like them on the front like it's like you know that they both have their

00:30:18 ◼   ► advantages but this is a technology that then also allows them to continue pushing the screen tech in

00:30:24 ◼   ► weird and interesting ways and having to have the fingerprint sensor doesn't mean that they can't do

00:30:30 ◼   ► interesting stuff with the screen and that's what Apple had to do right like Apple made the decision

00:30:35 ◼   ► like one way or another that like for them to get the screen the way they wanted they had to go with

00:30:41 ◼   ► a different form of recognition for like security stuff so they removed

00:30:46 ◼   ► Touch ID to put face ID and it allowed them to go edge to edge.

00:30:51 ◼   ► But you know I mean there could be a recency bias of like this is the new

00:30:55 ◼   ► technology but I do look at it and I'm like oh man I'm very jealous I want that

00:31:00 ◼   ► feature. The problem is I don't I don't see Apple walking back from

00:31:07 ◼   ► face 80 and say no we're gonna do fingerprints again. So here's a question on that right

00:31:12 ◼   ► because this is what I thought and a while ago somebody tweeted this to me and it was

00:31:16 ◼   ► an incredible observation and I wish I remembered the person's name but if you're out there

00:31:19 ◼   ► thank you. I hadn't thought of this before and again it's because I'm from a different

00:31:24 ◼   ► I'm in a different part of the world but in Asia lots of people wear face masks like like

00:31:30 ◼   ► surgical masks right because it's like cultural and conditions like that that's kind of the

00:31:35 ◼   ► the way that a lot of people spend, walk around, right?

00:31:38 ◼   ► They have things covering their faces.

00:31:41 ◼   ► Face ID cannot work there.

00:31:43 ◼   ► So that is a real problem for a huge part of Apple's market.

00:31:48 ◼   ► And I see something like that and I'm like,

00:31:50 ◼   ► oh man, if I lived in Japan, I wouldn't buy the new iPhone.

00:31:55 ◼   ► I wouldn't want that because it would be so annoying, right?

00:32:00 ◼   ► Like if every time you're out of the house,

00:32:03 ◼   ► you can't use Face ID or you have to take the mask off,

00:32:06 ◼   ► which means there was no point wearing it

00:32:09 ◼   ► in the first place, right?

00:32:11 ◼   ► Like, so I look at something like that and I'm like, ah.

00:32:15 ◼   ► So then I think, well, maybe they would do something.

00:32:17 ◼   ► 'Cause the normal thinking is like, oh no,

00:32:21 ◼   ► Apple don't go back, right?

00:32:23 ◼   ► Because any Touch ID is going back.

00:32:25 ◼   ► It doesn't matter what that technology is,

00:32:27 ◼   ► it's going back. - Maybe it's not

00:32:28 ◼   ► called Touch ID anymore.

00:32:30 ◼   ► It's a new thing.

00:32:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, but if it's, I mean,

00:32:32 ◼   ► only we know it's called Touch ID, everybody else knows it's the fingerprint sensor.

00:32:35 ◼   ► If they ever start doing fingerprint sensors again, it will look like they're going back,

00:32:40 ◼   ► and I usually would say like, "What would they tell the story?"

00:32:44 ◼   ► I just don't need, like...

00:32:45 ◼   ► So that is why I think they should be doing both.

00:32:48 ◼   ► I think it could, it's more likely to happen for that reasoning, if this is a thing that

00:32:52 ◼   ► is a problem for them.

00:32:53 ◼   ► I could see the argument of, "We want to offer more choice, and we figured out a way to make

00:32:58 ◼   ► it works seamlessly and it's secure with the secure enclave and whatever, like I could

00:33:03 ◼   ► see offering more options as a way to not make it look like Apple made a bad decision,

00:33:11 ◼   ► because there are benefits to Face ID, like you're wearing gloves or, you know, I don't

00:33:19 ◼   ► know, because with the ultrasonic, the sweat and water and dirt and grease and lotion,

00:33:23 ◼   ► it's not an argument anymore.

00:33:24 ◼   ► I mean, when it works, I do still consider it to be a nicer experience to just pick up my phone and it be unlocked rather than me needing to perform an action.

00:33:32 ◼   ► But it's more like, I think from an idealistic point of view, yes you're right.

00:33:39 ◼   ► And I think maybe when we were reviewing the new phones two years ago, maybe we lacked this perspective.

00:33:46 ◼   ► I think in everyday usage

00:33:48 ◼   ► like that is

00:33:51 ◼   ► Not often as true though like the the perfect dream of I pick up my phone and it's already unlocked like I could either

00:33:58 ◼   ► It either doesn't work or I always see the animation anyway. It still doesn't feel as fast as touch ID

00:34:05 ◼   ► I still have to swipe up to get to the home screen

00:34:07 ◼   ► So yeah, I'm still doing something and my thumb is then going where it would have been to just press the home button

00:34:12 ◼   ► Anyway, so like yeah, it's nice

00:34:14 ◼   ► I still do really like face ID. I'm not changing course on this. I really like it

00:34:19 ◼   ► but it's not perfect and

00:34:22 ◼   ► I

00:34:25 ◼   ► Don't think I ever really found mice. I didn't have any problems with fingerprint authentication. I had none right so I

00:34:32 ◼   ► Don't know. I don't know

00:34:34 ◼   ► I think this is really I think this is tricky and I don't know if I know what the way forward is

00:34:39 ◼   ► but I think it's super cool that Samsung's doing this because

00:34:42 ◼   ► It is also allowing them to make their phones look more interested and cool because they don't have a notch

00:34:48 ◼   ► At least they have a notch in the folding phone, but that's like a whole other big thing for another time

00:34:53 ◼   ► But there's no notch in their s line

00:34:55 ◼   ► They can do these weird cool camera cutouts

00:34:58 ◼   ► Which I think looks super interesting and even more futuristic right because it's like this is something that I've never seen before

00:35:03 ◼   ► and

00:35:07 ◼   ► They don't have to look

00:35:09 ◼   ► They to their customers. I don't know if they're like super or not because they do facial recognition stuff

00:35:15 ◼   ► It's not a secure but like people that think ah, I really want facial recognition

00:35:20 ◼   ► Well, you can it still checks that box, right?

00:35:23 ◼   ► Like they still have a version of it because Samsung's had it for years

00:35:27 ◼   ► But it's just been bad and it was easily fooled because it's using

00:35:30 ◼   ► Like it's mapping your face with a camera as opposed to all the sensors that Apple uses

00:35:37 ◼   ► But then they're also like not only are they not changing things up for their users

00:35:42 ◼   ► They are offering an alternative for people that are frustrated with facial recognition. Yeah, I don't know and I I feel like I really want

00:35:49 ◼   ► both face ID and touch ID in the same phone and

00:35:52 ◼   ► I'm super jealous of this S10

00:35:56 ◼   ► I wish it could be like a phone that I just try for a week and then return

00:35:59 ◼   ► but I don't wanna and don't wanna go through the entire process and I'm just

00:36:04 ◼   ► I wish that this is more of a general wish that does not pertain to the fingerprints necessarily

00:36:11 ◼   ► But I just wish that more people on Twitter and the people that I follow at least would be more a little more

00:36:16 ◼   ► accepting of other companies trying different things because I think it's cool and

00:36:21 ◼   ► You know some folks that I follow often lack that kind of perspective

00:36:26 ◼   ► They only believe that what Apple does is right and everything else is wrong

00:36:29 ◼   ► Also, I think it's super cool that they've integrated Instagram into the camera app

00:36:33 ◼   ► so you can just go straight to stories from your camera.

00:36:35 ◼   ► I know.

00:36:36 ◼   ► And they have the wide angle lens as well which looks super awesome.

00:36:41 ◼   ► That I want as well and those photos, they look punchy to me, those colors, I like them

00:36:49 ◼   ► a lot.

00:36:50 ◼   ► You don't need to modify them to make them look pretty.

00:36:53 ◼   ► But it's a personal preference.

00:36:56 ◼   ► Samsung's always been like that though.

00:36:57 ◼   ► they've always had like super high saturation on their photos.

00:37:02 ◼   ► And like,

00:37:03 ◼   ► it's been a thing that like I've always liked the pictures that come from

00:37:06 ◼   ► Samsung phones, but I know that, I know that they've,

00:37:08 ◼   ► they're faking it a little bit.

00:37:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:12 ◼   ► I'll put a link in the show notes to a tweet from Jeff,

00:37:15 ◼   ► Luke Fowler, um, who took a picture using all three lenses.

00:37:19 ◼   ► So you can see how good it looks and also get an idea of the, uh, uh,

00:37:23 ◼   ► of the three cameras.

00:37:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:26 ◼   ► Are you gonna buy an S10 mic?

00:37:30 ◼   ► No.

00:37:31 ◼   ► Okay.

00:37:32 ◼   ► Because I have a lot of money to save up to buy the phone and phone.

00:37:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:37 ◼   ► Really?

00:37:38 ◼   ► Are you buying that?

00:37:40 ◼   ► I'm seriously considering it, yeah.

00:37:44 ◼   ► When is it launching again?

00:37:45 ◼   ► April.

00:37:46 ◼   ► End of April.

00:37:49 ◼   ► I know it sounds ridiculous because it's like £2000 and I 100% reserve the right to return

00:37:54 ◼   ► it. But it's like in our pursuit of trying to understand technology, I kind of wanna,

00:38:02 ◼   ► I wanna be able to understand it and then also be the guy in our circles is the only

00:38:07 ◼   ► person who actually has one. So I will have something to say on it, you know? I don't

00:38:14 ◼   ► know. I'm considering it. What I would really love is for someone from Samsung to send one

00:38:20 ◼   ► to me but the likelihood of that occurring is about 0% chance because they're gonna give

00:38:27 ◼   ► those even if I was ever to get in front of somebody at Samsung they would never send

00:38:31 ◼   ► me one of those.

00:38:32 ◼   ► I don't think it's impossible.

00:38:34 ◼   ► Not that phone.

00:38:37 ◼   ► That's gonna go to like MKBHD and like The Verge.

00:38:43 ◼   ► This is like two people because apparently like there was like an article on The Verge

00:38:47 ◼   ► about this they're like barely gonna make any of them and they're gonna do

00:38:52 ◼   ► this like super weird almost Apple watch edition like buying process and they've

00:39:01 ◼   ► talking about like they want to make sure that everyone has like an element

00:39:04 ◼   ► of sales aftercare if they need it like this is a super weird phone but that's

00:39:10 ◼   ► also kind of why I'm excited about it I'm really excited by these folding phones

00:39:13 ◼   ► and I would like to be able to try and understand what a folding phone means

00:39:18 ◼   ► sooner rather than later like what it means to use something like that.

00:39:24 ◼   ► And the Huawei Mate X is launching sometime in the middle of the year.

00:39:32 ◼   ► Okay, okay.

00:39:33 ◼   ► But I think that Samsung have made the right decision on folding in rather than folding around.

00:39:39 ◼   ► With the additional external display?

00:39:42 ◼   ► Yeah, and whilst this one is super ugly, I think once Samsung get it to a point where they can have

00:39:47 ◼   ► a regular phone's display on the front and then a folded display on the inside, I think that will be

00:39:51 ◼   ► that's it. Because I just don't, I cannot foresee a situation in which an all plastic covered screen,

00:40:00 ◼   ► all your phone is screen, right? And you're just like putting your phone down in places,

00:40:05 ◼   ► that thing is going to be destroyed, right? Because it's all plastic, you can't put a case on it,

00:40:11 ◼   ► they're going to get scratched to hell. But with Samsung, this plastic part, the scratchable

00:40:16 ◼   ► part is on the inside. So you just close it up and it's protected. So that's why I think

00:40:22 ◼   ► that Samsung are on to the right form factor. But we'll see. I'm interested also to see

00:40:27 ◼   ► what ends up winning out.

00:40:29 ◼   ► Okay, we'll follow up on the Galaxy Fold purchase process.

00:40:34 ◼   ► Maybe, maybe. I might end up changing my mind on it, we'll see. Today's episode is also

00:40:39 ◼   ► brought to you by our friends over at Luna Display. Having extra space and working from

00:40:43 ◼   ► your Mac is really useful. It can make tiresome tasks more enjoyable by removing the tab switch

00:40:48 ◼   ► in frustration or switching between spaces and also allows you to extend your working

00:40:52 ◼   ► desktop a bit, allows you to spread stuff out, make sure that you've, you know, everything

00:40:57 ◼   ► sparking joy for you when you're using your Mac. iPads have amazing displays as well,

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00:41:06 ◼   ► will let you do that and let you extend your Mac's display to your iPad with a tiny little

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00:41:15 ◼   ► image quality, reliable performance and wireless flexibility. If you don't have access to WiFi,

00:41:20 ◼   ► you can just use USB. So like I imagine the idea of somebody like traveling and they've

00:41:25 ◼   ► got their laptop, they've got their iPad, they're usually used to a big desktop display.

00:41:29 ◼   ► Well now you don't have to like to compromise, you can just plug your iPad into your laptop

00:41:34 ◼   ► even without a wifi connection and you can use your lunar display powered ipad to have

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00:41:43 ◼   ► Luna acts as a complete extension to your mac, it will support external keyboards, apple

00:41:48 ◼   ► pencil, touch interactions and the new liquid video engine brings significantly reduced

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00:41:55 ◼   ► I absolutely love my lunar display, you really should get one of these.

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00:42:29 ◼   ► That's Lunadisplay.com and promo code connected at checkout to get 10% off.

00:42:34 ◼   ► Our thanks to Lunadisplay for their support of this show and Relay FM.

00:42:41 ◼   ► We're both using Evernote again, so let's talk about that.

00:42:46 ◼   ► Okay, so this is something that I wrote a couple of weeks ago in the Club Max Stories

00:42:55 ◼   ► newsletter, Max Stories Weekly, it's gonna be I think on the website as well for everybody

00:43:00 ◼   ► to read eventually, probably this week.

00:43:04 ◼   ► So my journey to Evernote, it did not start with my intention of using Evernote again,

00:43:12 ◼   ► something that I just stumbled upon accidentally, I suppose.

00:43:16 ◼   ► I did not set out to try Evernote again.

00:43:20 ◼   ► It just sort of happened when I realized it was what I needed,

00:43:23 ◼   ► which I think is sort of also kind of your journey.

00:43:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I realized I was going to use Evernote again

00:43:29 ◼   ► whilst talking about it on an episode of Cortex

00:43:32 ◼   ► where we were kind of making fun of it.

00:43:34 ◼   ► And then I actually realized for a project that I needed a new like

00:43:37 ◼   ► app like this for and I was trying out some of your recommendations,

00:43:41 ◼   ► which we're probably going to touch on in a minute,

00:43:43 ◼   ► but the one I actually needed was Evernote.

00:43:45 ◼   ► And I've been using Evernote for a bit,

00:43:47 ◼   ► and I've spoke about that a couple of times

00:43:49 ◼   ► on Cortex as well recently.

00:43:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, and those are really good episodes

00:43:54 ◼   ► that I recommend listening.

00:43:55 ◼   ► So my process was, for the past year,

00:44:00 ◼   ► I've been using Keepit on iOS and macOS

00:44:03 ◼   ► to organize my research material,

00:44:05 ◼   ► to have an archive of PDF documents

00:44:08 ◼   ► that I keep for reference,

00:44:10 ◼   ► and to save notes about articles that I'm working on

00:44:14 ◼   ► and just a more permanent place than Apple Notes.

00:44:18 ◼   ► For Apple Notes, I save quick bits of links and pictures, stuff like that,

00:44:25 ◼   ► but in Keepit, I used to have my more serious work-related archive.

00:44:30 ◼   ► This started with one of the iOS reviews, right?

00:44:32 ◼   ► As a lot of technological changes happened for you.

00:44:34 ◼   ► It started last spring when I was preparing for...

00:44:38 ◼   ► Before going to WWDC, I was sort of taking a look at my process and I realized I need to have a better system

00:44:45 ◼   ► before I'm gonna start working on the iOS 12 review in June.

00:44:49 ◼   ► And I did some research and I think around April or May 2018, I settled on Keepit.

00:44:55 ◼   ► So I went to WWDC and right there I started saving all of my stuff in Keepit.

00:45:00 ◼   ► And the idea was I needed to have a reference manager with the ability to create saved searches and to have tags.

00:45:11 ◼   ► And Kipit was the best option on iOS.

00:45:13 ◼   ► But over the past few months I've found myself annoyed at the fact that every time I wanted to save some...

00:45:22 ◼   ► I do a lot of appending text or files to existing notes.

00:45:27 ◼   ► This is something that the Apple Notes app is really good at because it lets you append from the share extension, but in Keepit

00:45:34 ◼   ► this

00:45:36 ◼   ► was not supported before the latest version of the app. So my switch to Evernote happened before Keepit was updated to version

00:45:43 ◼   ► 1.6, but it still does not fix my problems. I was gonna mention in a minute

00:45:47 ◼   ► But anyway, every time I wanted to append a file or some rich text to Keepit

00:45:53 ◼   ► I needed to launch the app and I made some shortcuts to simplify the process

00:45:58 ◼   ► but it was still involving the whole dance of leave Safari, open keep it and go

00:46:04 ◼   ► back to Safari, you know that kind of stuff based on X callback automation and

00:46:09 ◼   ► I realized you know it would be really nice if I could have rich text and all

00:46:17 ◼   ► kinds of media, from PDF attachments to web archive attachments to audio and

00:46:24 ◼   ► even video, and append this stuff to the same note without ever having to leave

00:46:31 ◼   ► shortcuts. So to be able to do this all from Safari and from the shortcuts

00:46:36 ◼   ► extension inside Safari or Safari View Controller. And I realized, you know, maybe

00:46:43 ◼   ► I should just... this is exactly what Evernote does because Evernote has an open web API and that API

00:46:50 ◼   ► is integrated with shortcuts because you can log into your Evernote account from the shortcuts app

00:46:57 ◼   ► and all of the Evernote actions that the shortcuts has, they do not require you to open

00:47:03 ◼   ► manually, like to launch the Evernote app, they just happen through the web, they just happen

00:47:08 ◼   ► through your Evernote account and I hadn't considered the Evernote actions before but the

00:47:17 ◼   ► moment that I tried them again in Shortcuts I realized you know this is such a much better

00:47:21 ◼   ► experience than having to launch an app and then go back to what I was previously doing.

00:47:27 ◼   ► And Shortcuts has actions to create notes and when you create notes you can just pass anything

00:47:34 ◼   ► to the Evernote action. It can be text or rich text, it can be some HTML, it can be a PDF, it can

00:47:40 ◼   ► be a web archive, it can be anything. And you can specify the title of the note, you can specify tags

00:47:45 ◼   ► and even the notebook. But there's also an action to append and it works the same way, you just need

00:47:51 ◼   ► to say to this existing note put this text or this file at the bottom and it just happens in a couple

00:47:58 ◼   ► of seconds and you never leave the shortcuts extension. And I started playing with this and

00:48:06 ◼   ► I downloaded Evernote on iOS and I should say Ryan wrote an article on Mac Stories about how Evernote

00:48:13 ◼   ► is surprisingly better than it used to be on iOS. They slimmed down a lot of the interactions,

00:48:20 ◼   ► they got rid of a bunch of craft that was problematic before. It's still not perfect and

00:48:25 ◼   ► and there's still a bunch of things that drive me crazy, but Evernote on iOS is better than

00:48:30 ◼   ► it used to be.

00:48:31 ◼   ► Like, it's got keyboard shortcuts, it's got Siri shortcuts, it's got a dark mode even,

00:48:37 ◼   ► and it fully supports multitasking of course.

00:48:40 ◼   ► It's not a terrible app anymore, even though feature parity with the Mac version is still

00:48:46 ◼   ► a huge problem for me.

00:48:47 ◼   ► But yeah, basically I started playing around with this and I realized I can have saved

00:48:52 ◼   ► searches in Evernote, I can use tags and I can put together all of these shortcuts.

00:48:57 ◼   ► I basically took all of my Apple Notes and keep it shortcuts, switched the actions at the end

00:49:05 ◼   ► with Evernote actions, the native ones that happen through the Evernote account, and now those

00:49:12 ◼   ► shortcuts, instead of taking like 10 seconds to execute because I need to leave Safari or I need

00:49:18 ◼   ► to leave files and open keep it and then go back. They just happen in two

00:49:23 ◼   ► seconds and I'm done and everything is in Evernote. And I've been using this

00:49:28 ◼   ► system for three weeks almost and it's actually quite beautiful. It works

00:49:35 ◼   ► really well and I can append, for example, I can append the clipboard to a note

00:49:40 ◼   ► just by talking to Siri and I don't even need to see what happens. It just saves

00:49:45 ◼   ► my clipboard from an iPhone to a note. It's called the Evernote Scratchpad.

00:49:50 ◼   ► This is a simple shortcut that I have and it's really handy. And also a final point,

00:49:56 ◼   ► because Evernote has an API, it has Zapier integration. So what I have put

00:50:02 ◼   ► together is something that I've always dreamed of. I no longer need to use a Mac

00:50:07 ◼   ► to paste actual rich text into Google Docs or my podcast show notes. I made a

00:50:13 ◼   ► shortcut that sends basically a ping to Zapier, to a recipe or whatever it's

00:50:22 ◼   ► called on my Zapier account. And this request just says "connected" or "remaster"

00:50:29 ◼   ► or "app stories". And depending on what it says, Zapier takes what is in the

00:50:35 ◼   ► Evernote note belonging to that show. So I have a notebook called

00:50:40 ◼   ► podcasts in Evernote and into this notebook there are three notes

00:50:45 ◼   ► for, they're called connected show notes, App Stories show notes and remastered

00:50:50 ◼   ► show notes and my Zapier recipe takes the rich text of each note depending on

00:50:56 ◼   ► which one I need and appends it as rich text including hyperlinks and

00:51:02 ◼   ► highlighted text and bullet lists to the Google document for the show. It happens

00:51:10 ◼   ► in five seconds and I get a pushover notification at the end when the rich text has been appended

00:51:16 ◼   ► to Google Docs.

00:51:17 ◼   ► It is glorious and I no longer need to lose my formatting or having to use my Mac to do

00:51:22 ◼   ► this.

00:51:23 ◼   ► So one of the extra benefits of Evernote.

00:51:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, for me, my requirements, I don't think, are as much as yours.

00:51:32 ◼   ► So like I'm working on a project called Cortex Brand, which is like a, me and CGP Grey are

00:51:39 ◼   ► working on a company that makes stuff.

00:51:43 ◼   ► It's kind of all we really have right now.

00:51:44 ◼   ► - Can I do it?

00:51:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, go.

00:51:46 ◼   ► - Cortexbrand.com.

00:51:47 ◼   ► - Thank you very much.

00:51:49 ◼   ► So right now it's merch, but we have some ideas

00:51:52 ◼   ► and we're working through some stuff.

00:51:54 ◼   ► Stuff that people like us, nerds like us.

00:51:56 ◼   ► So the idea is I wanted to be able to keep

00:52:00 ◼   ► a bunch of website links for stuff that inspires me,

00:52:04 ◼   ► like PDFs, notes, we have lists and stuff,

00:52:08 ◼   ► and some sketches and all kinds of stuff.

00:52:11 ◼   ► And I started looking around

00:52:12 ◼   ► and I started keeping them in Apple Notes,

00:52:14 ◼   ► but it was becoming too difficult for me

00:52:16 ◼   ► to find everything that I needed.

00:52:18 ◼   ► And it was also getting all, you know,

00:52:21 ◼   ► like it's full of, I use Apple Notes for everything.

00:52:23 ◼   ► And I was unhappy with it being not as simple

00:52:27 ◼   ► as I wanted to be able to just look at everything in one go.

00:52:30 ◼   ► So I wanted to find like a separate place for this

00:52:32 ◼   ► so I could keep it all kind of like sequestered away

00:52:35 ◼   ► from all the other work that I did.

00:52:36 ◼   ► 'cause it's kind of like a side project.

00:52:38 ◼   ► It's like also all the email associated to Cortex brand

00:52:42 ◼   ► goes into Outlook where I use Spark.

00:52:44 ◼   ► So it's like just keeping everything separate

00:52:46 ◼   ► from my usual day to day,

00:52:47 ◼   ► so I don't start getting stuff all mixed up.

00:52:50 ◼   ► So I was trying out a bunch of apps

00:52:52 ◼   ► and I didn't like what I was working with.

00:52:55 ◼   ► Keep It didn't work for me

00:52:57 ◼   ► 'cause I like to write in outlines

00:52:58 ◼   ► and that just doesn't seem to want to work

00:53:00 ◼   ► in the way that I wanted.

00:53:02 ◼   ► There's just like the indents just weren't working

00:53:05 ◼   ► with the keyboard. - Yep.

00:53:06 ◼   ► that's just inexcusable to me.

00:53:08 ◼   ► If you have bullets, if you allow for bullet lists

00:53:10 ◼   ► in your app, the tab key and shift tab should work

00:53:14 ◼   ► for indenting and out-denting.

00:53:17 ◼   ► Or as Apple calls it, indent left and indent right.

00:53:19 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:53:22 ◼   ► That's what it says in notes if you do the little,

00:53:24 ◼   ► you get the little tooltip thing pop up.

00:53:26 ◼   ► - Something that does not exist in the English language.

00:53:28 ◼   ► - Well, does now.

00:53:30 ◼   ► So like I wanted a tool that was basically format agnostic.

00:53:33 ◼   ► Like it would suck in whatever I would give it

00:53:35 ◼   ► And that is what Evernote is brilliant at, you know?

00:53:38 ◼   ► And I wanted something that was available on all platforms

00:53:43 ◼   ► and potentially for collaboration as well.

00:53:46 ◼   ► And this ticks all the boxes.

00:53:49 ◼   ► Like with you, Evernote is not perfect,

00:53:51 ◼   ► but I use it infrequently enough

00:53:55 ◼   ► that its frustrations don't compound for me.

00:53:58 ◼   ► Every now and then,

00:54:01 ◼   ► it's like the UI kinda just flashes a little bit,

00:54:03 ◼   ► or like the page is flashing.

00:54:04 ◼   ► I'm like, what are you doing?

00:54:06 ◼   ► Why is that happening?

00:54:07 ◼   ► And it's like little things like that.

00:54:08 ◼   ► If I was using Evernote as my notes app,

00:54:11 ◼   ► like I used to today, it would drive me mad.

00:54:13 ◼   ► But just as like a kind of what it was always intended to be

00:54:17 ◼   ► like this kind of like outboard brain thing, right?

00:54:20 ◼   ► It's just like, I could just put stuff in there

00:54:21 ◼   ► and it works, that's perfect for me.

00:54:23 ◼   ► It lets me write in outline formats really easily,

00:54:26 ◼   ► which I like.

00:54:27 ◼   ► And the app feels a lot simpler than it used to be.

00:54:31 ◼   ► And you noted this in your Club Max Stories article,

00:54:36 ◼   ► that they are basically committed

00:54:38 ◼   ► to making the product better.

00:54:42 ◼   ► They have a new CEO who's committed

00:54:43 ◼   ► to making the product better

00:54:45 ◼   ► in a bunch of different ways this year,

00:54:46 ◼   ► which is also something just worth keeping an eye on.

00:54:50 ◼   ► But I think that so far, Evernote is in a better state

00:54:54 ◼   ► than when I left it last.

00:54:56 ◼   ► And for the type of project that I wanna do, it works.

00:54:59 ◼   ► Would I want to move my notes.app to Evernote?

00:55:03 ◼   ► No, I would certainly not want to do that.

00:55:05 ◼   ► Like what you're doing with the show notes stuff is cool,

00:55:08 ◼   ► but I couldn't work with my show notes that way.

00:55:11 ◼   ► Like I use notes and it works great for me.

00:55:14 ◼   ► - So what happened there is,

00:55:17 ◼   ► I actually moved everything to Evernote,

00:55:20 ◼   ► both KeepIt and Apple Notes.

00:55:22 ◼   ► So right now in Apple Notes, I just have my shared notes

00:55:26 ◼   ► because I really like how it works

00:55:28 ◼   ► to share with other people.

00:55:29 ◼   ► but I no longer keep anything in the notes app.

00:55:32 ◼   ► So everything is in Evernote.

00:55:33 ◼   ► - Is it all going in Evernote?

00:55:34 ◼   ► - I just, I went all in, I wanna see what happens.

00:55:36 ◼   ► - I mean, that is the best way to test the system like that.

00:55:39 ◼   ► But like I wasn't looking for something

00:55:42 ◼   ► out of frustration at Apple Notes.

00:55:43 ◼   ► Like Apple Notes will do basically all of the stuff

00:55:46 ◼   ► that I want that I'm using Evernote for,

00:55:49 ◼   ► but I just wanted a separate place

00:55:53 ◼   ► because the notes were starting to get unruly

00:55:56 ◼   ► and I don't use the folder stuff in Apple Notes

00:55:59 ◼   ► and I don't really want to either, because then if I start putting some stuff in folders,

00:56:03 ◼   ► I kind of have to put everything in folders.

00:56:04 ◼   ► And I think like when you use folders, it reduces the preview lines.

00:56:07 ◼   ► I also didn't like that when you start using folders, what it does to the general user

00:56:11 ◼   ► interface of notes, I don't like that.

00:56:12 ◼   ► It's everything starts to get all these icons all over the place and say, no, this is not

00:56:17 ◼   ► for me. But Evernote is working perfectly for what I need it to, which I cannot believe

00:56:23 ◼   ► is a phrase I'm using in 2019.

00:56:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I think what pushed me to also leave Apple Notes was the fact that in the latest shortcuts beta,

00:56:35 ◼   ► they added some new Apple Notes actions. Like you can append to a specific Apple Note with a shortcut action,

00:56:44 ◼   ► but they only support plain text, and I was very annoyed at that limitation because if...

00:56:52 ◼   ► I wanted to be able to append files or rich text and so it was really the Evernote integration in shortcuts.

00:56:59 ◼   ► I think it was the factor that pushed me to sort of throw everything into Evernote.

00:57:05 ◼   ► But just for reference if anybody from Evernote is listening, I have a list of complaints.

00:57:11 ◼   ► Again, they were originally published in the Clapmax Stories newsletter.

00:57:14 ◼   ► They're gonna be on the website because this is a column that I want as many people as possible to read.

00:57:20 ◼   ► But as a quick summary, the iOS app should have feature parity with the Mac.

00:57:25 ◼   ► I don't think in 2019 it makes sense to treat the iOS version of a product as the

00:57:33 ◼   ► smaller or

00:57:35 ◼   ► companion version. Like, come on, we have iPad Pro.

00:57:38 ◼   ► At least they seem to know this because it's like a thing that they specifically called out, right?

00:57:43 ◼   ► That they want to have all of their apps be the same.

00:57:45 ◼   ► This is like a blog post they wrote in January for their 2019 kind of goals as a company.

00:57:49 ◼   ► The fact that they're being open about that fact at least gives me some hope that they're

00:57:54 ◼   ► going to make sure that they get the iOS app to where they want it to be.

00:57:59 ◼   ► Or they make the Mac app worse.

00:58:00 ◼   ► Who knows which way they're around they're going to deal with it.

00:58:03 ◼   ► So a few examples, you cannot build saved searches with a visual tool on iOS.

00:58:11 ◼   ► You need to use the advanced search syntax, which is ugly.

00:58:16 ◼   ► the Mac they have a visual tool which is nice to create safe searches.

00:58:22 ◼   ► This is a general complaint but you still cannot have individual views per notebook.

00:58:30 ◼   ► So once you choose a type of view it applies to all of the notebooks in Evernote.

00:58:35 ◼   ► You cannot say "oh I want this notebook to have snippet view and I want this other notebook

00:58:39 ◼   ► to have grid view".

00:58:40 ◼   ► Does that work on the Mac?

00:58:41 ◼   ► No.

00:58:42 ◼   ► Individual views?

00:58:43 ◼   ► No.

00:58:44 ◼   ► It's just a thing you want?

00:58:45 ◼   ► The Mac has the ability to do advanced sorting of a notebook, so you can do, for example, I want to see latest to oldest but in the reverse order, for example.

00:58:58 ◼   ► These options are not available on iOS. The keyboard shortcuts on the iPad are... there are some of them, but it could be so much better.

00:59:07 ◼   ► selection is very small and the clipper, the Evernote clipper for desktop computers is

00:59:13 ◼   ► basically non-existent on iOS.

00:59:15 ◼   ► They have a share extension but it does not have nearly the same amount of options as

00:59:21 ◼   ► the clipper as for Safari or Google Chrome on the Mac.

00:59:26 ◼   ► The text editor, I should say, is better than I remembered and it's actually, I think, the

00:59:32 ◼   ► best rich text editor with support for bullet lists and indenting and

00:59:38 ◼   ► outdenting that I've seen with the smart keyboard on the iPad Pro. I was very

00:59:42 ◼   ► surprised at this honestly. Works really well. So yeah I guess we'll follow up on

00:59:51 ◼   ► Evernote before WWDC again. I want to see what happens in terms of like will I

00:59:56 ◼   ► stick to it? Also there's Keep It 1.6 just came out but it's got some new

01:00:01 ◼   ► series shortcuts to append the clipboard to a note but it's still not as flexible

01:00:08 ◼   ► as Evernote because you basically if you want to append data to a note you gotta

01:00:13 ◼   ► create individual series shortcuts for that note. It's not like

01:00:19 ◼   ► in Evernote you can just set up a shortcut and say with the

01:00:23 ◼   ► visual tool you can say append to this note because it's got like customizable

01:00:27 ◼   ► parameters. Keepit is just using of course series shortcuts because once

01:00:30 ◼   ► Once again, Apple should allow developers to actually do native shortcuts actions, but

01:00:36 ◼   ► right now they are limited to Siri shortcuts.

01:00:38 ◼   ► So we'll see how it goes.

01:00:40 ◼   ► It cannot be understated how good and how deep the support for shortcuts is with Evernote.

01:00:47 ◼   ► They have done an incredible job.

01:00:49 ◼   ► You can delete notes, you can get links to individual Evernote notes, and not only that,

01:00:56 ◼   ► you can choose to get the shareable link or the local, you know,

01:01:02 ◼   ► Evernote URL scheme. Totally a teaching story.

01:01:05 ◼   ► I made a shortcut to append tattoo ideas to an Evernote note.

01:01:12 ◼   ► I was searching for pictures of black roses and, like, to give my guy,

01:01:18 ◼   ► my tattoo guy, some examples for reference.

01:01:20 ◼   ► So I made a shortcut to simplify the process that the shortcut would just take

01:01:24 ◼   ► picture from the clipboard and append it to a note in Evernote. And when I was done, I just

01:01:31 ◼   ► used another shortcut that I put together that lets me easily get a link to an Evernote note from

01:01:40 ◼   ► the shortcuts app and I created a shareable link for that note and I sent it to my tattoo guy on

01:01:47 ◼   ► WhatsApp as a link. So it got access to my examples in my Evernote account using shortcuts.

01:01:55 ◼   ► So yeah, that was very cool. It's a very Federica situation there.

01:01:59 ◼   ► The unique blend of tattoos and automation. That's my life in 2019.

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01:04:00 ◼   ► So we're going to do something a little bit different to finish up today's

01:04:03 ◼   ► episode, which is an idea that you had, which I thought, I don't know if I have

01:04:07 ◼   ► an idea for this. And then immediately had an idea about 10 minutes later.

01:04:10 ◼   ► So the idea that you pitched to me here was what is an app that you would like

01:04:16 ◼   ► to exist that doesn't exist right now?

01:04:19 ◼   ► And I I've thought of something super boring, but it's something that I would

01:04:25 ◼   ► really like, and it's an app that would integrate more tightly a task manager

01:04:31 ◼   ► and a calendar.

01:04:33 ◼   ► OK, please explain this to me.

01:04:34 ◼   ► For me, tasks and calendar entries

01:04:39 ◼   ► are very closely tied together, not for everything,

01:04:42 ◼   ► but for a lot of things in my life, they go hand in hand.

01:04:46 ◼   ► So here's something, right?

01:04:49 ◼   ► When I get a task like

01:04:52 ◼   ► when I get a calendar event, say like record connected,

01:04:55 ◼   ► there are a bunch of tasks that can happen before and after

01:05:01 ◼   ► that I shouldn't have to have set up. So for example, every time I record connected, the

01:05:07 ◼   ► morning of the show I want to have a task pop up to say "hey, you need to do your prep"

01:05:15 ◼   ► and then in the case of today's episode, an hour later, two hours after it ends, publish

01:05:21 ◼   ► the show or edit the show, right? So my thinking was, imagine when you set up a recurring calendar

01:05:28 ◼   ► event that you could also have fields in the entry which are like what are the tasks you

01:05:33 ◼   ► would like to be attached to this recurring event. So every time that recurring event

01:05:38 ◼   ► triggers it also adds in a bunch of tasks. So like for example whenever I record an episode

01:05:46 ◼   ► of Cortex I have a, I do this in things because whatever everyone needs multiple apps, I use

01:05:56 ◼   ► Please, not today. I have a Siri shortcut and then I can have this big list of tasks

01:06:02 ◼   ► with all these different headings. Some happen on the day I'm editing, some is after, some

01:06:09 ◼   ► is a couple of days later to make sure that I've got the whole process taken care of.

01:06:13 ◼   ► But really, I have to now set a recurring task in Todoist, which reminds me to set the

01:06:21 ◼   ► Siri shortcut, which will trigger the thing in things. But really, it would be great if

01:06:28 ◼   ► just, and I know you can do all this stuff with automation, but I don't want that, right?

01:06:33 ◼   ► Because I have more stuff that I want to do here, by the way, like this is just one part

01:06:37 ◼   ► of this application, that like I can do it all in iOS, right? So then like, when I'm

01:06:40 ◼   ► setting up these new recurring events or any event, so like, for example, if I was setting

01:06:46 ◼   ► up an event for a plane trip, right? Like I'm going on a trip. I could set a task to

01:06:52 ◼   ► be like pack suitcase that would just appear the day before and like that's just a normal

01:06:57 ◼   ► thing. But then you could use machine learning. So I could say to the app every time a flight

01:07:03 ◼   ► goes in and a pack suitcase task two days before. And also like I was thinking you could

01:07:10 ◼   ► could also analyze words that I'm using and suggest due times based on events that I typically

01:07:17 ◼   ► have in my calendar.

01:07:18 ◼   ► So for example, if I'm like record blank, it knows like that's a podcast, it knows it's

01:07:24 ◼   ► going to take me a couple of hours.

01:07:27 ◼   ► Maybe you could make some suggestions about where this event could go, looking at what

01:07:32 ◼   ► my calendar events look like, but also say like, oh, if you're putting a record, would

01:07:38 ◼   ► also like to add an editing task at this time? Because then also every time I add a task

01:07:44 ◼   ► to my to-do list, just in general, so let's say I go in and I want to add a task in to

01:07:48 ◼   ► prepare for something, the due times could all be understood based upon like, what other

01:07:54 ◼   ► events are in my calendar? When could I actually do this? Because I'm supposed to be recording

01:07:59 ◼   ► three shows in a day, right? So like, integrating tasks and events could be like a fun little

01:08:05 ◼   ► I also thought that you could have like events could have projects also related to them and

01:08:12 ◼   ► projects of your tasks and your events could be the same. So like if I ever go to like my record

01:08:19 ◼   ► podcast project, I will see all of the tasks and all of the events in one view. So like I can get

01:08:25 ◼   ► like at any point one view of all of my tasks and all of my events in the same place and I can have

01:08:32 ◼   ► have everything categorized. I also thought automatically time track everything because

01:08:37 ◼   ► why not. So that's my app. It's called 123 Event Task Calendar Manager. And we'll get

01:08:44 ◼   ► to it in a minute why I have no plans to make it or have someone make it for me. That's

01:08:48 ◼   ► like a secondary part of this. But that's what I would like. I would like an app that

01:08:52 ◼   ► integrates my tasks and my calendar events together.

01:08:56 ◼   ► Okay, yeah, okay, so my idea is much simpler than that.

01:09:01 ◼   ► I want an app that replaces a task I asked my girlfriend to perform.

01:09:06 ◼   ► Do not laugh, I'm totally serious.

01:09:09 ◼   ► I want to have an app that basically...

01:09:16 ◼   ► It's like a dictionary app with a built-in quiz mode.

01:09:21 ◼   ► So, right now, I...

01:09:25 ◼   ► So, as a non-native English person, I save a lot of words when I'm reading.

01:09:32 ◼   ► And right now my favorite dictionary app is Lookup, which has this collections feature that lets me save, for example, verbs in their own folder,

01:09:44 ◼   ► and, you know, adjectives in their own folder and adverbs and all that kind of stuff.

01:09:48 ◼   ► So I have multiple collections for different types of words that I discover when reading.

01:09:53 ◼   ► But then, and I've been doing this for years with different apps,

01:09:57 ◼   ► every once in a while I ask Silvia to go through my list of saved words

01:10:02 ◼   ► and ask me about their meaning,

01:10:04 ◼   ► to see if I've memorised those words and if I remember what they mean.

01:10:08 ◼   ► I think even for non-native English speakers,

01:10:11 ◼   ► If you take the time to learn a word of the day, it's only useful if you can remember the word.

01:10:17 ◼   ► Exactly, exactly. Most of these word of the day apps, they would send you a notification

01:10:24 ◼   ► and you read the meaning and you're like "oh yeah, that's pretty cool" and then you forget about it.

01:10:28 ◼   ► Who remembers it? You didn't know it in the first place, so why is this reading at one time?

01:10:32 ◼   ► I'm sure that every now and then one of them will resonate and you'll be like "oh yeah,

01:10:36 ◼   ► I will remember that because I've been looking for a word like this".

01:10:39 ◼   ► Yeah, so and I've been doing this for years, you know, either when we're driving or when we have, I don't know, five minutes and Sylvia's doing nothing

01:10:47 ◼   ► I would be like, "Hey, you want to quiz me on the words that I've saved?"

01:10:51 ◼   ► But it would be so much better. I mean, I would still sort of ask her to do it, but it should be

01:10:57 ◼   ► frictionless. Like right now, especially in Lookup, she needs to open a collection and

01:11:04 ◼   ► Select an individual word and then navigate to a separate screen to see what it means.

01:11:09 ◼   ► Instead I would like to have a dictionary app that lets me save words in collection.

01:11:14 ◼   ► And this could be a new app or it could be, ideally, it should be a specific mode of Lookup because I really like Lookup.

01:11:19 ◼   ► There should be a Quiz/Flashcard mode that would basically take a collection and create like a specific game view or like a practice mode or again like Flashcard mode

01:11:33 ◼   ► that strips out all of the UI and just gives you a card with the word that you want to ask about

01:11:43 ◼   ► and the primary meaning of that word.

01:11:46 ◼   ► And that's it.

01:11:48 ◼   ► You can swipe through all of these flashcards, all of these multiple questions,

01:11:54 ◼   ► and there don't need to be points.

01:11:56 ◼   ► I mean, there could be points if you really want to, if you really want to monitor progress

01:12:00 ◼   ► and sort of gamify the entire thing, but for me it would be enough just to have like a

01:12:06 ◼   ► presentation mode, but it's for words and definitions, and it's sort of structured like

01:12:12 ◼   ► a flashcard type of deal. There are some apps to do this on the App Store, but they're not really

01:12:19 ◼   ► optimized for this kind of usage. They're more like the generic flashcard apps that you can sort

01:12:27 ◼   ► of make work for dictionaries, but I really want this to be a feature of my main dictionary app.

01:12:33 ◼   ► And maybe, you know, there could be like, like I was thinking, there could be optional settings

01:12:42 ◼   ► that you could turn on, like Wikipedia integration if you want to quiz me about topics instead of

01:12:47 ◼   ► words, or there could be like the ability to show multiple meanings, like some words, you know,

01:12:52 ◼   ► they have multiple meanings and it could be nice to to be able to guess both. But yeah, I want to

01:12:59 ◼   ► be able to save my list of words as I've always had. Now in Lookup I even get to save them in separate

01:13:05 ◼   ► collections which is great, but when I need to practice my memorization of those words I would

01:13:11 ◼   ► like to have this separate mode.

01:13:13 ◼   ► All right, so we both have these ideas for apps that we want, so why don't we just like make them or hire someone to make them?

01:13:21 ◼   ► Well, the primary reason is just I just don't have the time.

01:13:29 ◼   ► I'm doing already so many things and so many projects going on that it's not as making

01:13:35 ◼   ► apps, making an app for it is not as easy as it was in 2008.

01:13:40 ◼   ► It's just asking somebody like the entire process of planning and finding a person and

01:13:47 ◼   ► budgeting how much money you want to invest in this and thinking of the business model

01:13:51 ◼   ► and doing support later, if you can reach the end of the project and release the app on the App Store.

01:13:57 ◼   ► It's a whole separate career and I already have a career, I already have a job, I actually have

01:14:03 ◼   ► multiple jobs because I write and I talk on podcasts. So if I were to add "App Developer" or "App

01:14:12 ◼   ► Director" - gosh that's an ugly and stupid word - but if I were to do that I would basically stop

01:14:19 ◼   ► spending time with my girlfriend and my dogs and my friends so I prefer to keep

01:14:24 ◼   ► doing my job and just wish for things to happen eventually you know. Yep like this

01:14:30 ◼   ► is the thing that I've heard a lot when you know when with the Cortex brand

01:14:35 ◼   ► stuff we've asked for people to who make stuff that could be interesting that

01:14:40 ◼   ► would like think that they could make something that we me and Grey would be

01:14:43 ◼   ► interested in to reach out and I've heard from a lot of people that make

01:14:46 ◼   ► software and I have no desire to make software one for that reason two like

01:14:53 ◼   ► this is part of like us creating a business and I am unsure about the

01:15:00 ◼   ► long-term viability of any type of software product it is very hard to make

01:15:06 ◼   ► money in apps not impossible but it's difficult you know this is something

01:15:11 ◼   ► that we talk about this all the time and I don't know if I want to invest time, money and attention

01:15:18 ◼   ► into something that I am not necessarily confident would be a thing that could end up making money

01:15:27 ◼   ► in the long run considering the amount of time and attention I have to put in it which is not a ton.

01:15:33 ◼   ► There's other stuff that I can do and that we will do that I know more about and would take less

01:15:40 ◼   ► time to make profit right if it's a business that we're building here that's

01:15:47 ◼   ► pretty important especially because I have no desire in like building a

01:15:52 ◼   ► company to try and get it bought by someone and doing all that and getting

01:15:55 ◼   ► VC and like I don't want to do anything like that the other thing is I have

01:15:59 ◼   ► pretty high standards for what I consider to be quality software and

01:16:03 ◼   ► and getting that right is very difficult to do. So I'm not confident in my ability to get it right

01:16:12 ◼   ► for me or for other people even. I lead that kind of stuff to the experts but...

01:16:17 ◼   ► Yeah and also I guess my problem is that I know myself and if I like I wouldn't be able to direct

01:16:28 ◼   ► something that if something is not right

01:16:36 ◼   ► or up to my standards or my taste

01:16:40 ◼   ► I was not able to fix myself

01:16:42 ◼   ► which means I would need to learn

01:16:43 ◼   ► programming

01:16:46 ◼   ► because I know myself and I wouldn't like

01:16:50 ◼   ► going to developer or designer and saying

01:16:53 ◼   ► you need to do this in another way. I

01:16:56 ◼   ► would want to be able to directly fix it

01:16:56 ◼   ► like I do for articles on Mac stories, for example. I don't just give general guidelines, I actually

01:17:02 ◼   ► provide edits or suggestions for how to actually improve an article. And the idea of "I'm just this

01:17:10 ◼   ► guy with an idea, I just know how I work, just know how I'm built, and so I know that I would end up

01:17:18 ◼   ► learning Swift and the basics of programming, and again, I cannot afford to do that because I don't

01:17:23 ◼   ► have the time and because my job is something else. So I actually like that I can throw ideas

01:17:30 ◼   ► into the wind and hoping that somebody picks them up and makes them. So this is why I wanted to talk

01:17:36 ◼   ► about this on the show because maybe somebody's gonna develop, hold on, 123 Event Task Calendar

01:17:42 ◼   ► Manager or what's the name of my app? Am I allowed to use the 123 brand? - Yeah, of course.

01:17:52 ◼   ► uh one two three word quiz is is what i'm going for one two three word quiz

01:17:58 ◼   ► it's good but it's just like it's a it's a time and attention thing

01:18:03 ◼   ► like can't and won't do everything but there's still stuff that i would like

01:18:07 ◼   ► you know yeah you can you can you can again you can wish for things um like i you know we were

01:18:15 ◼   ► talking earlier about stuff we'd like to see we're not gonna make high phones we're not gonna make

01:18:18 ◼   ► smartphones but I know that there's things I would like different in them. But I'm not gonna make those.

01:18:23 ◼   ► So I think that brings it to the end of the episode Federico.

01:18:28 ◼   ► Now I just wanted to note that before we wrap up that Steven told me his wish is for a better

01:18:35 ◼   ► Remember the Milk client. Just an icon, just a new icon. His whole software play is just a new icon.

01:18:42 ◼   ► He's currently protesting outside of Remember the Milk's head office.

01:18:48 ◼   ► That's why it's not on the show this week.

01:18:50 ◼   ► And then he's going to move over to Todoist and ask them to just give him sorting options on iOS.

01:18:54 ◼   ► That's all he wants. That's all he wants.

01:18:56 ◼   ► You can find our show notes today over at relay.fm/connect/232

01:19:01 ◼   ► thanks to Eero, Luna Display, and Squarespace for their support.

01:19:05 ◼   ► You can find Federico at MacStories.net, AppStories.net as well.

01:19:09 ◼   ► Congratulations on your 100th episode of AppStories.

01:19:12 ◼   ► You can find him, he's @vittici, V-I-T-I-C-C-I, on Twitter and Instagram.

01:19:17 ◼   ► I am I Myke I am Y ke on Twitter and Instagram. Steven is ism H on Twitter and I cannot remember what his Instagram is

01:19:25 ◼   ► Because he lost ism H. It's like Steven and a hacker. I think

01:19:30 ◼   ► Probably but don't search ism H. I was really upset in once please don't do that

01:19:36 ◼   ► We'll be back next time and Steven will be back and he's gonna wrestle control from the of the show back away from us

01:19:45 ◼   ► Until then, say goodbye Federico.

01:19:48 ◼   ► Arrivederci.

01:19:49 ◼   ► Ciao, adios.

01:19:50 ◼   ► I just said both.

01:19:52 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]