Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:06 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode 194. Today's show is brought to you by

00:00:12 ◼   ► ButcherBox and PDFPen10 from Smile. My name is Myke Early and I am joined by

00:00:17 ◼   ► Federico Vittucci. Ciao Federico!

00:00:20 ◼   ► Ciao Myke, how are you?

00:00:22 ◼   ► I'm good, it's just the two of us today.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Steven is out on assignment today.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Some kind of secret project is my understanding.

00:00:30 ◼   ► He's always up to something, that guy.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Yeah, you can't trust him.

00:00:35 ◼   ► I think he's jacket shopping for our live show.

00:00:40 ◼   ► He's been buying clothes lately, like fancy clothes.

00:00:43 ◼   ► He's been buying lots of clothes.

00:00:46 ◼   ► Yeah, he is. He's a changed man.

00:00:49 ◼   ► Maybe he's having some kind of midlife crisis.

00:00:51 ◼   ► Maybe he's gonna buy a Ferrari next.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Three-quarter life crisis. He's old, remember.

00:00:55 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:57 ◼   ► - On last week's show, we introduced the life-changing

00:01:03 ◼   ► for all of us, Federico Vatici Ticci Leak Scale.

00:01:08 ◼   ► The Ticci Leak Scale was introduced.

00:01:11 ◼   ► And the wonderful Kate, who is @rhl_ on Twitter,

00:01:16 ◼   ► she drew it up for us in beautiful, just, it's wonderful.

00:01:20 ◼   ► So I'm gonna put it in the show notes

00:01:24 ◼   ► so people can go look at Kate's interpretation

00:01:27 ◼   ► of the tiki scale.

00:01:29 ◼   ► What do you think?

00:01:30 ◼   ► Where does Kate's interpretation of the tiki scale

00:01:33 ◼   ► rank on the tiki scale?

00:01:35 ◼   ► - This is obviously a best I love you level.

00:01:39 ◼   ► It's perfect.

00:01:41 ◼   ► The colors are perfect.

00:01:42 ◼   ► The little icons that indicate the extremes.

00:01:46 ◼   ► So there's nightmare, it's a bat.

00:01:48 ◼   ► Could have been a spider too,

00:01:49 ◼   ► because I don't like spiders, but a bat is also fine.

00:01:52 ◼   ► and there's a blue heart on the right side

00:01:55 ◼   ► where the best comma I love you is placed.

00:01:58 ◼   ► This is the perfect representation of my tchilik scale

00:02:03 ◼   ► or TLS as friends call it, yeah.

00:02:06 ◼   ► - I see.

00:02:07 ◼   ► I, until I saw this, I had forgotten

00:02:10 ◼   ► that inferior minus and good plus existed.

00:02:13 ◼   ► I'd forgotten about those,

00:02:15 ◼   ► but I like those very much on the scale.

00:02:18 ◼   ► I mean, of course, yeah.

00:02:20 ◼   ► So we are happy to announce that the TGLK scale system,

00:02:24 ◼   ► the TLS system has been franchised out

00:02:28 ◼   ► to other parts of our empire.

00:02:30 ◼   ► And you may remember last year we did the Happy-Ometer,

00:02:34 ◼   ► which we're going to be doing a game for WWDC

00:02:36 ◼   ► where on next week's episode,

00:02:38 ◼   ► we're going to talk about some stuff

00:02:40 ◼   ► that if Apple did it WWDC would make us very happy.

00:02:43 ◼   ► They're not predictions

00:02:44 ◼   ► because typically they're things

00:02:45 ◼   ► that we expect they won't do,

00:02:47 ◼   ► but we're just going to see anyway,

00:02:48 ◼   ► because imagine if we could get all of our hopes and dreams from the perfect WWDC.

00:02:53 ◼   ► That is what the Happy-Omata is going to be about.

00:02:55 ◼   ► And we are very excited to announce that the Happy-Omata will be graded on the Tichi Scale now.

00:03:02 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm, yes. - So we will be...

00:03:05 ◼   ► So basically, we will be giving our picks next week,

00:03:08 ◼   ► and then the week after, we will be grading kind of how we felt we achieved our picks on the Tichi Scale,

00:03:15 ◼   ► from Nightmare all the way up to Best I Love You.

00:03:18 ◼   ► The actual scoring parameters for how we get there yet,

00:03:21 ◼   ► we haven't yet decided how we convert numbers

00:03:24 ◼   ► to the TGLK scale, but we'll work it out in the end.

00:03:27 ◼   ► We'll work it out.

00:03:28 ◼   ► - I mean, it's obviously a decimal system.

00:03:30 ◼   ► - Obviously.

00:03:31 ◼   ► - The TGLK scale is like a unit of measure

00:03:35 ◼   ► and now other products in the relay empire

00:03:37 ◼   ► can use this system.

00:03:39 ◼   ► It's like the metric system, basically.

00:03:42 ◼   ► - So I feel like we need a rebranding

00:03:44 ◼   ► maybe to just the TGLK scale.

00:03:46 ◼   ► The tch scale, it's shorter, it's the tts,

00:03:51 ◼   ► the tch scale with the,

00:03:52 ◼   ► - The tch scale.

00:03:53 ◼   ► - Should we drop the, the from the,

00:03:56 ◼   ► or are we gonna keep this? - So it just become

00:03:58 ◼   ► tch scale, ts.

00:03:59 ◼   ► - I don't know, should we?

00:04:01 ◼   ► tch scale or the tch scale?

00:04:03 ◼   ► - We just call it ts.

00:04:04 ◼   ► - Ts, ts, that's.

00:04:07 ◼   ► (both laughing)

00:04:09 ◼   ► - We're gonna be ranking this on ts.

00:04:12 ◼   ► There we go, we found it.

00:04:14 ◼   ► We found it, that's it.

00:04:16 ◼   ► It's just TS, tchiscale, as it's known.

00:04:20 ◼   ► So look forward to the happyometer,

00:04:24 ◼   ► which we'll be grading on starting next week.

00:04:27 ◼   ► And of course, this is a surprise to nobody,

00:04:30 ◼   ► but Apple has confirmed the WWDC keynote

00:04:33 ◼   ► for June 4 at 10 a.m. Pacific.

00:04:37 ◼   ► Yeah, I know it was a surprise to you.

00:04:39 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:04:41 ◼   ► I booked the wrong flight.

00:04:43 ◼   ► I'm arriving on the fifth.

00:04:45 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:04:45 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:04:46 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:04:48 ◼   ► And I just happened to be in town.

00:04:49 ◼   ► Oh, that's convenient.

00:04:51 ◼   ► - What a surprise.

00:04:52 ◼   ► So it is happening as expected.

00:04:54 ◼   ► Federico will be in the audience with his lovely badge.

00:04:59 ◼   ► And yeah, so I'm looking forward to next week's episode.

00:05:02 ◼   ► And then obviously the episode afterward,

00:05:04 ◼   ► we're gonna be in front of a lovely audience of people.

00:05:07 ◼   ► So I'm very excited about that.

00:05:08 ◼   ► I bought a jacket.

00:05:09 ◼   ► I bought a jacket and I'm still on the show.

00:05:12 ◼   ► Steven's buying a jacket and he had to leave.

00:05:14 ◼   ► It's a big thing. Stephen's hosting this year, so his jacket needs to be really good, so I understand why he's taking a week off work to get that sorted.

00:05:22 ◼   ► And I'm still not wearing a jacket, so I'll be the guy with the shirt, no jacket. It's too formal, too adult for me.

00:05:31 ◼   ► I understand. I understand.

00:05:33 ◼   ► So last week on the show we spoke about the 12 South... what is it called? Air... fly?

00:05:39 ◼   ► Air fly.

00:05:40 ◼   ► I just pulled that out of my brain, I feel very proud of myself.

00:05:45 ◼   ► And then you went ahead and bought one of them.

00:05:47 ◼   ► Yes, I bought one and it arrived yesterday but I only had the time to play with it today.

00:05:54 ◼   ► So it's basically the same size of the Belkin Rockstar, if you remember the dongle that

00:05:58 ◼   ► Belkin introduced last year to...

00:06:02 ◼   ► No, I don't think so.

00:06:05 ◼   ► I think that...

00:06:06 ◼   ► Maybe, maybe.

00:06:07 ◼   ► maybe. It's a little rectangle that you plug into the iPhone, the Balcon Rockstar. And

00:06:13 ◼   ► the AirFly is a little rectangle that you plug into devices with a headphone jack. So

00:06:19 ◼   ► the box comes with this dongle and two cables. One is the headphone to headphone, so basically

00:06:27 ◼   ► two male headphone jack plugs and one USB to USB mini for charging the AirFly. The logo

00:06:40 ◼   ► of the AirFly is in the front and it's actually a button that you can press. You press the

00:06:46 ◼   ► button and a little light starts spinning on the AirFly. Now what you do is, of course

00:06:52 ◼   ► there's no screen, so you cannot do the Bluetooth pairing with a user interface.

00:06:59 ◼   ► And what you do is you take whatever wireless headphones you want to use, whether it's the

00:07:05 ◼   ► AirPods or in my case I tried with the B&O E8 earbuds.

00:07:10 ◼   ► They're kind of like AirPods but worse and black and cheap.

00:07:16 ◼   ► I don't know why I still have them.

00:07:19 ◼   ► you just bring them close to the AirFly, you start the pairing process, and they just pair together automatically,

00:07:29 ◼   ► without having to confirm anything with the screen, because there is no screen in the middle.

00:07:35 ◼   ► So they just connect to each other, and it took like a couple of seconds, so after that I plugged the headphone jack into the AirFly,

00:07:44 ◼   ► fly, then into my Nintendo Switch. So there's like this dangling adapter coming out of my

00:07:51 ◼   ► Nintendo Switch, and I put on the wireless earbuds, and I could hear system audio from

00:07:57 ◼   ► my Nintendo Switch through the AirFly going to my earbuds. And that was it. So it took

00:08:05 ◼   ► like 10 seconds in total. And I was really happy about that, because now I can use wireless

00:08:09 ◼   ► headphones when I'm playing video games with my Nintendo.

00:08:13 ◼   ► Did you feel like the latency was good enough?

00:08:15 ◼   ► Oh yeah, like definitely less than a second.

00:08:20 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure there's actually...

00:08:22 ◼   ► I don't want to say there's no latency.

00:08:24 ◼   ► There must be some latency but it's not like... it wasn't an issue.

00:08:28 ◼   ► It wasn't something that I noticed.

00:08:29 ◼   ► So I was playing Donkey Kong and like the sound of jumping and the sound of smashing

00:08:35 ◼   ► your hands on the ground.

00:08:37 ◼   ► Like I couldn't tell that there was latency in the middle.

00:08:39 ◼   ► So I thought it was fine.

00:08:41 ◼   ► Okay, well that's good. I will, I want to try this out when we see each other soon and

00:08:48 ◼   ► then maybe I will think about something like this. I mean, I keep in my Nintendo Switch

00:08:53 ◼   ► case, I just keep an old pair of the regular AirPods, right? The AirPods, earbuds. What

00:09:00 ◼   ► are they? EarPods? EarPods, right?

00:09:02 ◼   ► EarPods.

00:09:03 ◼   ► EarPods? Were they called EarPods? Yes, I think they were.

00:09:06 ◼   ► They're pods for your ears.

00:09:08 ◼   ► I keep the pods on my ears, I keep just the old 3.5mm ones before they move to lightning.

00:09:15 ◼   ► I just have a set of those just in there in case they need it.

00:09:18 ◼   ► But I always have over-ear headphones with a regular 3.5mm jack in my bag anyway when

00:09:23 ◼   ► I'm traveling because that's just what I will use when I travel.

00:09:26 ◼   ► I only ever use over-ear headphones when I'm recording and when I'm traveling, like when

00:09:30 ◼   ► I'm on an airplane.

00:09:32 ◼   ► So I always have something but you know, at least it will be good to know that if I want

00:09:36 ◼   ► to move to an all Bluetooth lifestyle I can do that because currently Nintendo does not

00:09:41 ◼   ► support Bluetooth audio from the Nintendo Switch.

00:09:46 ◼   ► Whilst we're talking about this while we're on this I saw yesterday Belkin is selling

00:09:53 ◼   ► a $30 lightning to 3.5mm headphone cable which is so expensive but I guess could be useful

00:10:02 ◼   ► to some people like I guess you could use it for headphones. So if you had a pair of

00:10:06 ◼   ► headphones that you wanted to be able to plug directly into your iPhone, you could use this

00:10:11 ◼   ► right because you could plug the 3.5 into the headphone and then the if your headphone

00:10:16 ◼   ► has a removable headphone cable, and then you could plug it into your iPhone or you

00:10:21 ◼   ► I guess you could use it for like car stereo systems and just regular stereo systems. So

00:10:26 ◼   ► it's good that these cables do exist if you have a legitimate need for them, but $30 is

00:10:31 ◼   ► really expensive for just a cable for audio. Yeah and I don't understand

00:10:38 ◼   ► why this product was introduced now. Oh Apple have just allowed for this to

00:10:43 ◼   ► occur is what is my understanding from reading the story on The Verge that like

00:10:47 ◼   ► this is a very recent change to the MFI standard that's allowing companies to

00:10:53 ◼   ► make these. Alright then it makes sense and now Belkin is owned by Foxconn is

00:10:59 ◼   ► Is that correct?

00:11:00 ◼   ► Oh god yeah I forgot that!

00:11:02 ◼   ► Or at least that's a thing that could happen right?

00:11:05 ◼   ► I don't know if it's past regulatory stuff or whatever.

00:11:10 ◼   ► But yeah I totally forgotten about that.

00:11:12 ◼   ► Oh man yeah.

00:11:13 ◼   ► I mean not again, I don't really think it matters specifically but it's interesting

00:11:21 ◼   ► to note that.

00:11:22 ◼   ► I just find that to be just a continually strange thing that's occurring.

00:11:27 ◼   ► All right, should we take our first break?

00:11:29 ◼   ► Then we've got a big story to talk about

00:11:31 ◼   ► that you've written today.

00:11:32 ◼   ► - Okay, yes.

00:11:33 ◼   ► - All right, today's show is brought to you

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00:12:21 ◼   ► use

00:12:37 ◼   ► printed. I feel so sad when I work with companies and I send them something that I've put together

00:12:43 ◼   ► in PDF pen that they need to sign and then they send me back something that's been scanned.

00:12:48 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh man, I feel for you." When I get a contract from you, all I do is open

00:12:53 ◼   ► it in PDF pen, sign it with my Apple pencil or with my Wacom tablet and send it back to

00:12:57 ◼   ► you. I know the amount of hassle you had to go through. You had to print it, grab a pen,

00:13:04 ◼   ► everything down scan it attack turn it into a PDF attach it to an email and

00:13:07 ◼   ► send it's like it's so much more time to have to do that to kind of go through

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00:13:33 ◼   ► You can be cool just like me has to be your new tagline.

00:13:36 ◼   ► You can be cool just like me?

00:13:38 ◼   ► Yeah okay, I can work with that.

00:13:42 ◼   ► So you published a really big article today called Second Life and it's not about the

00:13:48 ◼   ► failed MMO game.

00:13:50 ◼   ► No, it's not about that.

00:13:52 ◼   ► You've not been jumping in and flying around in whatever that place was called.

00:13:58 ◼   ► Well that was really sad.

00:13:59 ◼   ► That was a very sad video game.

00:14:01 ◼   ► So what is this article all about?

00:14:07 ◼   ► Well, I think a bunch of people were able to piece it together that I was up to something this year.

00:14:16 ◼   ► Because I've been doing things that normally I wasn't doing before.

00:14:21 ◼   ► And I think we discussed this when we did the analog episode.

00:14:29 ◼   ► Was that in December or maybe early January?

00:14:31 ◼   ► I think it was early January.

00:14:33 ◼   ► And I told you that my plan for this year was to work on myself.

00:14:37 ◼   ► And then also a bunch of other projects for Mac Stories and stuff.

00:14:41 ◼   ► But I told you that I wanted to concentrate on just me.

00:14:46 ◼   ► And that was the result of a series of long conversations that I had with my girlfriend,

00:14:56 ◼   ► with my friends, with a bunch of people close to me. Because last year, and I talked about

00:15:02 ◼   ► this, I wrote about this, I hinted at this in a bunch of different places. Last year

00:15:07 ◼   ► was a really stressful year for me. I wasn't able, in a way it was maybe the culmination

00:15:14 ◼   ► of a series of mistakes that I made in the past couple of years and it resulted in levels

00:15:25 ◼   ► of stress and anxiety and just being unable to enjoy my job or just normal life like I

00:15:34 ◼   ► used to before. And I reached the tipping point, I think, after I came back from Chicago,

00:15:42 ◼   ► So I went to Chicago in October for the release notes conference.

00:15:45 ◼   ► And in between that and December, so the holidays, I realized, you know, it's absurd that I'm

00:15:53 ◼   ► constantly stressed and that I'm having all these thoughts about like, am I good enough

00:16:01 ◼   ► at my job?

00:16:02 ◼   ► Do people even like what I do?

00:16:05 ◼   ► I was constantly like obsessed, you know, with just being behind, not doing enough,

00:16:12 ◼   ► or just not being good enough. All those negative thoughts and what made me upset wasn't necessarily,

00:16:22 ◼   ► you know, being stressed. It was the fact that I was aware, like I was deeply aware

00:16:28 ◼   ► of the fact that I was the cause of these problems

00:16:34 ◼   ► and my negligence in taking better care of myself from any point of view,

00:16:41 ◼   ► from the physical point of view, from the mental point of view,

00:16:44 ◼   ► those problems were the result of ignoring signs

00:16:51 ◼   ► that my brain and my body had been giving me for a couple of years.

00:16:55 ◼   ► and I was ignoring them and I was just completely focused on working.

00:17:00 ◼   ► Just, I need to work, I need to do more, I need to launch this project,

00:17:03 ◼   ► I need to do this, I need to do that.

00:17:07 ◼   ► And I just drowned myself in work.

00:17:11 ◼   ► And in all that, there was also the awareness of,

00:17:18 ◼   ► I'm the cause of these problems and I don't know how to get out of this.

00:17:24 ◼   ► But also there was the fact that I felt bad because I wasn't appreciating the life that I was given

00:17:35 ◼   ► after beating cancer and going through treatments and having my first negative diagnosis,

00:17:44 ◼   ► which means that I was cancer-free. I felt bad because I was thinking like,

00:17:50 ◼   ► people die for this stuff and I didn't die but yet what am I even doing here?

00:17:57 ◼   ► So yeah it was a bunch of thoughts and of course, you know, there was no... we should have put a

00:18:06 ◼   ► disclaimer I suppose at the beginning of this segment. We're gonna talk about real stuff here.

00:18:12 ◼   ► Yeah this is... we put all the jacket jokes up front.

00:18:16 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. So, to go back to the story, it began as a pause. I needed to take a pause from

00:18:28 ◼   ► work and I needed to think about what it is that I actually want. And the holidays,

00:18:39 ◼   ► the Christmas break, was a nice opportunity for me to just say, "I want to take a step back and

00:18:45 ◼   ► and I want to understand what I want.

00:18:48 ◼   ► And the more I thought about it, the more I realized

00:18:51 ◼   ► what I want is to have a better me in 2018.

00:18:56 ◼   ► And so I, you know, people make fun of New Year's resolutions,

00:19:02 ◼   ► but I made some, and I decided that I would, you know,

00:19:07 ◼   ► I would do whatever possible,

00:19:10 ◼   ► anything that I could do to improve my well-being from the psychological point of view and from

00:19:19 ◼   ► the physical point of view, I decided to do a bunch, to make a commitment to a bunch of

00:19:30 ◼   ► changes in my life. And the story that I published today is the result of those six months of

00:19:38 ◼   ► trying to follow, you know, with discipline and with commitment, trying to follow that plan that I

00:19:44 ◼   ► I don't even want to say outlined because it makes it sound like there was a document and

00:19:50 ◼   ► I made a list of things. It was just a series of conversations. So yeah.

00:19:55 ◼   ► All right so there's some we can maybe get into some details of the things that you've done but

00:20:02 ◼   ► I have a bunch of questions for you but I also don't want to rehash this article because I think

00:20:07 ◼   ► people should read it because it's very good, it's very powerful and I think that me and you talking

00:20:13 ◼   ► right now will not do justice to the things that you've done. I mean so like in broad strokes the

00:20:19 ◼   ► things that you've done is you are exercising every day, you are tracking things including

00:20:24 ◼   ► meditating every day and being thankful and expressing thanks, you're eating better and

00:20:31 ◼   ► and you're trying to not let work take over your life, right?

00:20:36 ◼   ► Is that like in broad strokes

00:20:37 ◼   ► the big changes you've made?

00:20:39 ◼   ► - Yes, that is a good description, yes.

00:20:42 ◼   ► - 'Cause I don't wanna go into all of the details

00:20:44 ◼   ► 'cause I really think people should read the article,

00:20:46 ◼   ► but I have a bunch of questions for you,

00:20:49 ◼   ► having been thinking about this too

00:20:51 ◼   ► and just hearing you kind of talk then,

00:20:53 ◼   ► that maybe we'll touch on a few of those things,

00:20:55 ◼   ► but I think that's kind of the context

00:20:58 ◼   ► is like Federico has made some conscious decisions

00:21:01 ◼   ► and has been doing this stuff for six months

00:21:03 ◼   ► about getting healthier in all aspects of his life.

00:21:06 ◼   ► So you mentioned at the beginning

00:21:09 ◼   ► when you were talking there about having conversations

00:21:12 ◼   ► with your partner and with your friends.

00:21:16 ◼   ► And I kind of wanted to know,

00:21:18 ◼   ► were those conversations strained conversations?

00:21:22 ◼   ► Like were those conversations people saying to you,

00:21:25 ◼   ► Federico, you need to get your life in order?

00:21:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, especially from my girlfriend

00:21:32 ◼   ► and especially from friends that are really close to me.

00:21:36 ◼   ► They were totally honest in the sense that

00:21:41 ◼   ► sometimes you need another person to tell you

00:21:48 ◼   ► what are you doing?

00:21:49 ◼   ► Don't you realize that, you don't realize your luck

00:21:54 ◼   ► and you don't realize how fortunate you are

00:21:58 ◼   ► that you're still here, essentially,

00:22:03 ◼   ► and you can make a change, and yet you're not.

00:22:08 ◼   ► And so, especially when they're coming from,

00:22:14 ◼   ► even from a couple of friends,

00:22:17 ◼   ► that they told me, "You need to understand

00:22:22 ◼   ► "that if you're not gonna do this,

00:22:27 ◼   ► you will, maybe eventually you will even lost your job in the sense that you will hate what

00:22:35 ◼   ► you do unless you find a better balance. And so yeah, they were not pleasant conversations.

00:22:43 ◼   ► I mean, I think we've all been there to an aspect, you know, at different parts of our lives. I want

00:22:51 ◼   ► I want to understand from you though about work.

00:22:53 ◼   ► Like, what is the change to work?

00:22:56 ◼   ► Like, what, in kind of in broad terms,

00:22:59 ◼   ► what is, what's happening, what's different?

00:23:01 ◼   ► - In a way, nothing and everything is different.

00:23:06 ◼   ► It's, it's more about how I approach work.

00:23:11 ◼   ► Because I'm still doing the same things, right?

00:23:15 ◼   ► Still writing about apps and sometimes personal stuff.

00:23:18 ◼   ► I'm still doing podcasts.

00:23:20 ◼   ► Yes, there's a few things that I'm delegating more.

00:23:24 ◼   ► For example, if you take a look at Mac stories this week,

00:23:26 ◼   ► there's a bunch of app reviews that I didn't write.

00:23:29 ◼   ► So that is not even necessarily a change,

00:23:32 ◼   ► because I was doing that before.

00:23:34 ◼   ► It's more in how I approach being a creator that

00:23:43 ◼   ► works from home.

00:23:46 ◼   ► So for example, in the evening, I

00:23:49 ◼   ► try not to open email anymore. And I don't have notifications for email anymore. And

00:23:56 ◼   ► I, when I'm taking a walk with the dogs or I'm going shopping with Sylvia, I don't check

00:24:03 ◼   ► my phone anymore. It's more about trying to control the, my natural impulse to constantly

00:24:15 ◼   ► be checking for things that relate to work. So, over the years, I, like many other people

00:24:25 ◼   ► that do this kind of stuff, I just got used to always be checking my email, always be

00:24:31 ◼   ► checking my tweets, my mentions, my RSS feeds. And being an independent creator became what

00:24:41 ◼   ► was a great... it's a great fortune because I'm able to do what I love, but it's also

00:24:45 ◼   ► my problem in the sense that any moment is a good moment to think about work. So it's

00:24:52 ◼   ► more about in the change, I guess, it's in the restraint, in trying to force myself,

00:25:01 ◼   ► because I'm naturally driven to always think about work and do something for work, to say

00:25:08 ◼   ► No, you're not supposed to be working now.

00:25:10 ◼   ► And that's been really, really difficult.

00:25:13 ◼   ► Now I'm assuming that a lot of the reasons that you did stuff like having notifications

00:25:20 ◼   ► on and checking your phone was out of a fear of missing something, right?

00:25:26 ◼   ► So in the six months nearly that you've been doing this, have you missed anything?

00:25:31 ◼   ► Have you missed anything that has been critically important?

00:25:34 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:25:35 ◼   ► Alright, then that's it, right?

00:25:38 ◼   ► And I think deep down we all know this, right?

00:25:41 ◼   ► We feel like we have to be plugged in and it turns out that maybe it's not so critical

00:25:46 ◼   ► after all.

00:25:48 ◼   ► This isn't about me and I'm not going to make it about me because I don't want to talk about

00:25:51 ◼   ► this today but I've been making some changes in the way that my phone notifies me and my

00:25:58 ◼   ► devices notify me that I've not yet worked out yet but it's in some similar vein of like

00:26:06 ◼   ► having this feeling like I need to be constantly notified of everything that's going on and

00:26:14 ◼   ► then actually turning it off and just checking does everything burn down if I do this or

00:26:19 ◼   ► does it actually turn out to just be okay. But I'm still working through a lot of that

00:26:23 ◼   ► stuff myself anyway. Do you think that this new approach to life and work is going to

00:26:30 ◼   ► change or affect how you work this summer?

00:26:32 ◼   ► - Oh, that's a good question.

00:26:34 ◼   ► - 'Cause this is the unhealthiest time of the year for you.

00:26:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, I already promised myself

00:26:42 ◼   ► that this year I am not going to be working

00:26:48 ◼   ► on a new design for the review on the site.

00:26:52 ◼   ► - Oh, that's a good idea.

00:26:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, because I thought about this,

00:26:55 ◼   ► like there's no point in changing the design every year.

00:26:58 ◼   ► - No, I was really surprised when you did it last year,

00:27:02 ◼   ► because it felt like the year before,

00:27:04 ◼   ► it was like, well, this is how reviews are gonna look.

00:27:06 ◼   ► And then you were like,

00:27:07 ◼   ► oh, look at all my new design stuff.

00:27:08 ◼   ► And it was a surprise to me at the time,

00:27:10 ◼   ► because I was surprised at how much work

00:27:12 ◼   ► you'd taken on again.

00:27:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:27:15 ◼   ► And I was looking at my,

00:27:16 ◼   ► so over the past few months,

00:27:18 ◼   ► I needed to reference my iOS 11 review multiple times.

00:27:22 ◼   ► And every time I opened the review

00:27:23 ◼   ► and I used the table of contents

00:27:26 ◼   ► and the navigation between chapters,

00:27:28 ◼   ► I thought, you know, this is really convenient.

00:27:30 ◼   ► I don't think I need to change this.

00:27:32 ◼   ► There's a couple of features that I would love to offer,

00:27:34 ◼   ► but I don't wanna do that this year.

00:27:37 ◼   ► I don't wanna put that amount of work,

00:27:39 ◼   ► that workload on me, on our designer,

00:27:42 ◼   ► on our developer again,

00:27:43 ◼   ► and I just wanna focus on writing.

00:27:45 ◼   ► But also, I'm sort of artificially,

00:27:49 ◼   ► well, not artificially,

00:27:51 ◼   ► I committed to a bunch of,

00:27:55 ◼   ► to a project and to a trip outside of Italy

00:28:01 ◼   ► at the beginning of the summer,

00:28:04 ◼   ► which are going to force me in a way

00:28:07 ◼   ► not to work on the review for basically a month.

00:28:11 ◼   ► And that means, and there's nothing I can do about it

00:28:13 ◼   ► because there's a project that we're working on for the site

00:28:16 ◼   ► and there's this vacation that I'm taking with Silvia

00:28:19 ◼   ► and it's happening and there's nothing I can do.

00:28:23 ◼   ► So it means that I will have July and August

00:28:26 ◼   ► to work on the review.

00:28:27 ◼   ► But also I wanna go on other vacations.

00:28:33 ◼   ► So it's going to be sort of like a return

00:28:36 ◼   ► to the old and healthier days of,

00:28:41 ◼   ► you're not gonna be working on a review for three months

00:28:43 ◼   ► because it's gonna produce this massive essay

00:28:48 ◼   ► that some people don't want to read,

00:28:51 ◼   ► and also it's not healthy for you.

00:28:53 ◼   ► And then it sounds likely that iOS 12

00:28:57 ◼   ► is not going to be another iOS 11 type of release.

00:29:01 ◼   ► So it seems like a perfect moment

00:29:03 ◼   ► to scale back my ambitions.

00:29:05 ◼   ► I'm still gonna be doing a long-form review,

00:29:08 ◼   ► and it's still gonna be maybe 30, 40,000-something words,

00:29:13 ◼   ► But I strongly believe that this approach of you,

00:29:18 ◼   ► I work better under pressure anyway,

00:29:24 ◼   ► and I think I'm in a better place.

00:29:27 ◼   ► I think I have a different mindset to approach this stuff.

00:29:33 ◼   ► I know that I'm gonna get it done,

00:29:35 ◼   ► and I feel positive that I'm gonna produce

00:29:37 ◼   ► something that is good.

00:29:38 ◼   ► So I am trying not to obsess over it,

00:29:42 ◼   ► try not to agonize over the thought of,

00:29:45 ◼   ► "Oh my God, there's a new version of iOS coming

00:29:47 ◼   ► and I need to work on the review."

00:29:49 ◼   ► It'll get done.

00:29:50 ◼   ► I don't know how.

00:29:50 ◼   ► I don't know how big it'll be, but it'll happen.

00:29:54 ◼   ► So I'm sorry that I don't have any more specifics for you,

00:29:58 ◼   ► but I think it'll, you know,

00:30:01 ◼   ► it's gonna be okay.

00:30:05 ◼   ► - I mean, when I'm hearing this,

00:30:07 ◼   ► I'm thinking it will be more like your iOS 9 and iOS 10 review than your, well maybe

00:30:16 ◼   ► your iOS 8 and iOS 9 reviewed in your iOS 10 and iOS 11.

00:30:20 ◼   ► >> iOS 9, yeah.

00:30:22 ◼   ► >> Which were like, they were big, but they weren't, let me tell you about every feature.

00:30:26 ◼   ► Right, because the last two, they have been more exhaustive, but it wasn't like they were

00:30:33 ◼   ► short before.

00:30:35 ◼   ► No, and I want to focus more, if possible, on explaining what I think about features

00:30:48 ◼   ► rather than presenting a list of all the features and all the possible details.

00:30:54 ◼   ► And I learned a lot from the iOS 10 and iOS 11 reviews.

00:30:58 ◼   ► I know that if I want to, I can describe APIs in detail,

00:31:03 ◼   ► and I can describe what developers can do

00:31:08 ◼   ► to people in normal English.

00:31:11 ◼   ► I know that I can do that, but also,

00:31:13 ◼   ► I don't wanna be, you know, if you wanna read about APIs,

00:31:17 ◼   ► you should go read the developer documentation.

00:31:20 ◼   ► There's a, I should strike, I think, a better balance

00:31:23 ◼   ► between producing a review for the people.

00:31:26 ◼   ► I would personally like to see you return closer

00:31:30 ◼   ► to the Federico Vittucci scale on this,

00:31:33 ◼   ► not just a scale of review.

00:31:36 ◼   ► I would like to see you go closer back towards Federico

00:31:40 ◼   ► than you have been towards Syracuse.

00:31:42 ◼   ► And Syracuse's reviews, they're incredible,

00:31:45 ◼   ► but they are like reference, a lot of it, right?

00:31:48 ◼   ► And I feel like that you have done an incredible job

00:31:51 ◼   ► of creating effectively reference guides, right?

00:31:54 ◼   ► As well as the review, right?

00:31:55 ◼   ► So there's a lot of thought in there,

00:31:57 ◼   ► but there's also a lot of like,

00:31:58 ◼   ► here is how this thing works.

00:32:01 ◼   ► And I just don't know if you need to do that.

00:32:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I agree.

00:32:06 ◼   ► And like I said, I learned a lot from that process.

00:32:11 ◼   ► And to an extent, it's not even something that I enjoy,

00:32:16 ◼   ► especially following throughout multiple betas

00:32:21 ◼   ► during the summer, like, oh, this API changed,

00:32:24 ◼   ► then I also need to change my view.

00:32:26 ◼   ► It's not something that I enjoy.

00:32:27 ◼   ► I enjoy, I like explaining the effect of technology

00:32:32 ◼   ► on how we use computers and how we use apps.

00:32:38 ◼   ► I don't enjoy explaining code to people.

00:32:41 ◼   ► I can do it, and I think I'm pretty good at it if I want to,

00:32:45 ◼   ► but it's not something I love.

00:32:47 ◼   ► And so I agree with you.

00:32:48 ◼   ► I should go, I should strike a better balance

00:32:51 ◼   ► between having long form, but also staying true

00:32:55 ◼   ► to what I like to write about.

00:32:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm excited about that.

00:33:00 ◼   ► I'm pleased.

00:33:00 ◼   ► I mean, I will enjoy whatever you write,

00:33:05 ◼   ► but like I am happy to skip less, right?

00:33:10 ◼   ► Like I would skip more of these reviews

00:33:13 ◼   ► because it's like, okay, so we're getting

00:33:15 ◼   ► into the business chat API, right?

00:33:18 ◼   ► Well, I actually don't care about that.

00:33:19 ◼   ► How drag and drop works behind the scenes.

00:33:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean I couldn't skip any of it last time.

00:33:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:26 ◼   ► Which would have been awkward for us if I would have just skipped huge chunks of your

00:33:30 ◼   ► review.

00:33:31 ◼   ► I'm not going to be reading this.

00:33:33 ◼   ► And this is the same as how I would read John Siracusa's reviews as well, where it's like

00:33:37 ◼   ► I would read the stuff I was interested in plus all of the analysis, but digging deep

00:33:42 ◼   ► into how X, Y and Z works, if it's not a feature that really affects me, I would just skip

00:33:48 ◼   ► it. That's not what I'm coming to these things for. I'm coming to them for entertainment

00:33:55 ◼   ► and information, not just straight up information. So I'm intrigued to see what that balance

00:34:02 ◼   ► ends up looking like for you this year. But just returning to what's actually in the story

00:34:08 ◼   ► that you've written. It seems like the Apple Watch has been incredibly useful to you throughout

00:34:16 ◼   ► especially the exercise part, but do you think you could have done this without

00:34:20 ◼   ► the Apple Watch? Yes, for sure I could have. Just like, I think there's a good

00:34:29 ◼   ► analogy here, just like I could work with a Mac, you know, instead of an iPad,

00:34:35 ◼   ► instead of my iPhone, I could work out without my Apple Watch. I could use a

00:34:40 ◼   ► Fitbit or I could use, I don't know, whatever it is that people, Garmin or

00:34:44 ◼   ► or something, I could use something else.

00:34:47 ◼   ► But I wouldn't enjoy the process.

00:34:49 ◼   ► But also, I think there's a point in the story

00:34:53 ◼   ► where when I say, you know, the Apple Watch is just a tool.

00:34:57 ◼   ► If you don't want to exercise, or if you're finding excuses

00:35:04 ◼   ► not to exercise, or if you think it's something

00:35:06 ◼   ► that it's not for you, the Apple Watch

00:35:08 ◼   ► is not gonna fix that.

00:35:09 ◼   ► It's not like you put on the Apple Watch

00:35:12 ◼   ► suddenly you want to work out.

00:35:14 ◼   ► There's an initial motivation,

00:35:17 ◼   ► there's the initial, there's the novelty effect of,

00:35:21 ◼   ► oh yeah, I want to close my rings now

00:35:22 ◼   ► and I want to get my badges.

00:35:24 ◼   ► But ultimately it comes down to wanting to exercise

00:35:27 ◼   ► and wanting to improve.

00:35:29 ◼   ► It's like a bug that you need to catch.

00:35:33 ◼   ► It's like, it's a thing that needs to

00:35:37 ◼   ► stay in your brain at all times.

00:35:40 ◼   ► Like, you know, I was never the fitness type person.

00:35:45 ◼   ► And honestly, I'm surprised that I've ended up

00:35:55 ◼   ► in this place of, like, if I don't work out every morning,

00:35:59 ◼   ► it's not that I get upset, but I can feel

00:36:03 ◼   ► that I'm more irritated, that I missed something.

00:36:08 ◼   ► missed something. It's like, I don't know, I can feel that I didn't do something

00:36:16 ◼   ► that is important to me. And I was never like this, right? I was never this type of

00:36:21 ◼   ► this type of kid when I was younger, I was never this type of person. But I

00:36:25 ◼   ► reached the point where I realized, you know, I need to do this because it's

00:36:32 ◼   ► important and I don't wanna, at the same time I don't wanna, I didn't wanna do stuff like

00:36:39 ◼   ► following like an aggressive diet, I didn't wanna be frustrated and funnily enough what

00:36:49 ◼   ► clicked for me was one of the challenges from the activity app that you get with the Apple

00:36:56 ◼   ► watching on the special badges. In February there was the Heart Month

00:37:00 ◼   ► challenge from February 8th to February 14th, that's on Valentine's Day, and I

00:37:09 ◼   ► followed the requirements to unlock the challenge and I got the badge and then I

00:37:15 ◼   ► don't know, it kind of, I never stopped. And yes I could do this without the

00:37:21 ◼   ► Apple Watch and sometimes I work out without my Apple Watch and it's fine, but

00:37:25 ◼   ► But what I like about wearing the watch is that there's this little fun aspect of, you

00:37:33 ◼   ► know, I can share my activity with Kyle's the Grey.

00:37:37 ◼   ► I can, and he's a monster.

00:37:39 ◼   ► Yeah, he's a terrible person to share activity with.

00:37:42 ◼   ► I would just straight up refuse it.

00:37:45 ◼   ► It's actually been like a fantastic motivation for me.

00:37:48 ◼   ► And like, you know, when you do workouts and when you unlock achievements, if you share

00:37:56 ◼   ► the activity with someone else, they can see that you did that and they can send you a

00:38:01 ◼   ► response.

00:38:02 ◼   ► And Kyle, like, he constantly sends me like thumbs up or messages, you know, of encouragement.

00:38:09 ◼   ► He's been really nice and it's, you know, honestly, being able to share the activity

00:38:13 ◼   ► with somebody like him, you know, super athletic guy and, you know, he does a lot of different

00:38:18 ◼   ► types of exercise. It's been a great motivation for me, and it's, you know, so

00:38:23 ◼   ► I'm thankful for that feature because it really works. And ultimately I

00:38:29 ◼   ► think that I could do this without a watch, but there's a little part of my

00:38:36 ◼   ► brain that wants this aspect of you're doing this for you and you're gonna keep

00:38:44 ◼   ► doing this no matter what. If you lose your watch or if your watch breaks

00:38:47 ◼   ► you're still gonna be working out in the morning. But if you can, this is enjoyable, right? Being

00:38:54 ◼   ► able to track and closing the rings and unlocking the badges, it's a little fun thing on the side

00:38:59 ◼   ► that sweetens the deal in a way. This is what gamification is about. I mean, it's become a

00:39:05 ◼   ► dirty word over time, but like the Apple Watch is gamifying health for you because it gives you

00:39:10 ◼   ► badges and awards and it shares stuff with your friends. This is the basics of gamification.

00:39:15 ◼   ► And when done well, it does work. That's why it exists, right? And you have gamified your health.

00:39:22 ◼   ► And that's excellent because that is clearly clicked for you because you are now healthier

00:39:28 ◼   ► than you've been in years. Yeah, but I want to stress though how you need to have motivation

00:39:37 ◼   ► to do this. I think if you don't want to improve, really, if deep down you just want to try the

00:39:47 ◼   ► fancy features of the Apple Watch, it's not a strategy that will work out over time.

00:39:54 ◼   ► The Apple Watch is just a tool on the side. Even though I consider the Apple Watch an essential

00:40:01 ◼   ► device for me at this point because I love what it helps me do every day. It's

00:40:09 ◼   ► working out and exercising and losing weight and you know all this fitness and

00:40:15 ◼   ► health stuff is something that I want and yeah I think you shouldn't use the

00:40:24 ◼   ► Apple Watch as your primary reason to do this. It's something that you need to

00:40:28 ◼   ► to want yourself, then you can use the Apple Watch. It's a balance that I think it's important

00:40:35 ◼   ► to keep in mind.

00:40:37 ◼   ► I have one last question for you before we move on. So you've gone through this journey

00:40:42 ◼   ► and you're kind of well into it now, like it's not really a thing that you're still

00:40:48 ◼   ► kind of working out, like you know what all this means for you. And you're, you know,

00:40:54 ◼   ► I kind of glossed over it, but there is also other parts of the psychological side where

00:40:58 ◼   ► like you're meditating and trying to ground yourself more frequently.

00:41:04 ◼   ► What is more important to you, the physical side or the mental side?

00:41:08 ◼   ► Like what do you take the most time on?

00:41:09 ◼   ► What do you make the most concerted effort with?

00:41:12 ◼   ► I think both of them.

00:41:13 ◼   ► They are two sides of the same...

00:41:19 ◼   ► It's like the two hemispheres of the brain.

00:41:22 ◼   ► cannot, well some people can detach them. Remember the CGP Grey video.

00:41:29 ◼   ► But like, okay so let me pose a hypothetical to you, right? Like something's

00:41:33 ◼   ► happened in a day and you only have a very small window of time left in your

00:41:38 ◼   ► day in which you can complete something and it's either a workout or you can

00:41:42 ◼   ► meditate. In a real strained situation which one do you think that you would

00:41:48 ◼   ► gravitate towards?

00:41:51 ◼   ► That's a really tough question.

00:41:52 ◼   ► I know.

00:41:54 ◼   ► It depends.

00:41:56 ◼   ► So if something happens because somebody upsets me, but it's something trivial, like I don't

00:42:06 ◼   ► know, I get in a fight with somebody while I'm stuck in traffic, something stupid and

00:42:12 ◼   ► silly, I'm gonna be working out.

00:42:14 ◼   ► it calms me down and it relieves stress. But if it's something deeper, like I get in a

00:42:23 ◼   ► fight with a close friend or my girlfriend or if it's something about work, I'm probably

00:42:29 ◼   ► going to be meditating a bunch or taking a walk or talking to someone. I think actually,

00:42:39 ◼   ► Honestly, while the exercise stuff is more fun,

00:42:44 ◼   ► and it's more fun to do, it's more fun to write about,

00:42:49 ◼   ► because I get to talk about the Apple Watch

00:42:50 ◼   ► and sensors and apps, the mental aspect, I think,

00:42:54 ◼   ► was more important for me.

00:42:57 ◼   ► Just realizing all this was way more important for me.

00:43:01 ◼   ► And the...

00:43:05 ◼   ► Like, I'm not exaggerating when I say that I feel like a new person, just in the sense

00:43:15 ◼   ► of how I have this thought.

00:43:21 ◼   ► It's like I keep thinking about it every day.

00:43:25 ◼   ► That my... and this is gonna sound so grandiose and aspirational, but it's what I feel.

00:43:35 ◼   ► I have a mission to bring good stuff into the world, whatever it is.

00:43:41 ◼   ► Whether it's a good time with friends or producing stories that people enjoy or shows that people like to listen to.

00:43:50 ◼   ► My mission is to bring good stuff into this planet.

00:43:55 ◼   ► Because I was given a second chance and this is my way to give back.

00:43:59 ◼   ► And it's, of course, it's a thought, it's something that it's in my mind that I need to nurture and to take care of.

00:44:07 ◼   ► I need to protect this thought, you know, in any way possible.

00:44:11 ◼   ► And so, exercising and, you know, the physical aspect is essential, of course.

00:44:19 ◼   ► but I think that in my case, mental health and my psychological well-being was way more important

00:44:31 ◼   ► to fix whatever I was going through these past couple of years.

00:44:38 ◼   ► Does this answer your question?

00:44:41 ◼   ► It does answer my question.

00:44:43 ◼   ► And I think maybe for you, the way it seems is,

00:44:47 ◼   ► you could only ever get on the road to physical health

00:44:51 ◼   ► once you've started to take better care

00:44:53 ◼   ► of your mental health.

00:44:54 ◼   ► - I think so.

00:44:56 ◼   ► - That those things go together for a lot of people

00:44:58 ◼   ► and it changes for different people,

00:45:00 ◼   ► but it seems like for you, the mental side had to come first

00:45:03 ◼   ► before you could follow up with the physical side.

00:45:06 ◼   ► teaching, I'm so proud of you.

00:45:08 ◼   ► - Thank you.

00:45:10 ◼   ► - You're an inspiration to me.

00:45:12 ◼   ► and I love you very much,

00:45:13 ◼   ► and I think that you've done an incredible thing,

00:45:16 ◼   ► and sharing it with the world is even more so.

00:45:20 ◼   ► So I'm very proud of you.

00:45:22 ◼   ► - I love you too, thank you.

00:45:24 ◼   ► - All right, let's take a break,

00:45:25 ◼   ► and then we'll talk about some apps or some crap, right?

00:45:27 ◼   ► Let's just talk about apps again.

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00:46:35 ◼   ► YouTube channel. Now our jacketed friend Mr. Steven Hackett, he received a box of meat

00:46:41 ◼   ► from ButcherBox. So I requested Steven from the past to provide his thoughts on receiving

00:46:47 ◼   ► the ButcherBox box of meat.

00:46:49 ◼   ► So my family and I got a ButcherBox. It had a whole bunch of stuff in it. We had steaks

00:46:54 ◼   ► and ground beef and chicken and pork chops. I made a steak that night because sometimes

00:47:00 ◼   ► a podcaster wants to feel fancy. The steak was great. The next night we did some of that

00:47:05 ◼   ► ground beef and spaghetti with the kids. My wife did the pork chops. Everything in that

00:47:09 ◼   ► box was good. It was very tasty. It came all frozen so I knew it was safe. It was easy

00:47:17 ◼   ► to thaw out and get going. And it was great. It showed up at the door, right? Didn't have

00:47:21 ◼   ► to go to the grocery store where the butcher shop may have some stuff on one day and some

00:47:25 ◼   ► stuff on the other day. It all came together and was really easy to deal with, easy to

00:47:31 ◼   ► unpack and tasty to cook.

00:47:33 ◼   ► Thank you Stephen from the past. Let me tell you what you can get here.

00:47:37 ◼   ► Right. This is an incredible deal. I'm very excited about this deal from ButcherBox.

00:47:42 ◼   ► You can get some free bacon along with $20 off your first box by going to

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00:47:52 ◼   ► butcherbox.com/connected and the code connected for free bacon and $20 off your first box.

00:47:59 ◼   ► Our thanks to ButcherBox for their support of this show. It's one of my favorite offers

00:48:03 ◼   ► of all time, just free bacon. It's like, yeah, I'll take some free bacon.

00:48:06 ◼   ► I have some free bacon.

00:48:08 ◼   ► All right, Federico, I want to talk to you about Spark too.

00:48:11 ◼   ► Spark is an email application that's been around for many years at this point and has been updated

00:48:18 ◼   ► relatively consistently since, but has been, as we've spoken about before,

00:48:24 ◼   ► it's been missing some features on the iOS that the Mac has had, etc, etc.

00:48:28 ◼   ► but it's made by Reedle, they're like a well-known developer, they've got a bunch of applications

00:48:33 ◼   ► like documents and was it PDF expert they make too, right?

00:48:37 ◼   ► Yeah, that's correct. Yes. So they've just updated Spark to Spark 2 and really Spark 2

00:48:47 ◼   ► is email for teams and we'll get to that in a minute but there are some features for individual

00:48:54 ◼   ► users. If you are just a one-person individual, you receive your personal email through Spark,

00:49:02 ◼   ► what changes can you expect to see in Spark 2? So there's basically two main changes. One of them is

00:49:11 ◼   ► that finally the same integrations will be third-party apps and services that you get on the

00:49:18 ◼   ► Mac. Now you can use them on iOS as well. So you can save your emails to Things or

00:49:24 ◼   ► OmniFocus or Todoist. It works the same way as it does on the Mac. So you can get

00:49:31 ◼   ► a... you can take a message and share to your task manager for example and you

00:49:37 ◼   ► can set some parameters beforehand. So like you can say it set the title of the

00:49:42 ◼   ► task and the date for a reminder and the task will have a link back to the

00:49:47 ◼   ► original message in Spark so that you can even archive the message, then tap the link

00:49:52 ◼   ► from your task manager and you will get to the original message anyway, even if it's

00:49:56 ◼   ► been moved or archived or whatever.

00:49:58 ◼   ► So that's convenient.

00:50:00 ◼   ► And then you can also generate public links to email messages.

00:50:08 ◼   ► So this is not the first, Spark is not the first app to have this feature.

00:50:12 ◼   ► Polymail, which is another business-y type of email app and service for teams, has the

00:50:18 ◼   ► same functionality.

00:50:19 ◼   ► What you can do is, essentially, you can generate a public web page that represents the email

00:50:28 ◼   ► message.

00:50:29 ◼   ► And it's a way to publish an email message on the web and share the link with somebody

00:50:33 ◼   ► else.

00:50:34 ◼   ► So if I get an interesting email about a new app, and Myke is not part of my Mac stories

00:50:40 ◼   ► team in Spark, I can generate, and I don't want to forward the message to Myke, I can

00:50:46 ◼   ► just generate a link to the message and send the link to Myke and Myke will open the message

00:50:50 ◼   ► in Safari or Chrome and he will be able to look at a web copy of the email message.

00:50:58 ◼   ► And I know that, I'm not sure how you feel about this Myke.

00:51:01 ◼   ► I have a quick question for you before I tell you how I feel about it.

00:51:05 ◼   ► The links that are generated for integrations, right?

00:51:08 ◼   ► So you can, like the link that takes you from Todoist

00:51:11 ◼   ► back to Spark, are they public links?

00:51:14 ◼   ► - No, those are traditional URL schemes.

00:51:17 ◼   ► - Okay, so it's all local. - Riddle, spark,

00:51:18 ◼   ► column, slash, slash, yeah.

00:51:20 ◼   ► - Okay, that's good.

00:51:21 ◼   ► - Those are local links, yeah.

00:51:23 ◼   ► - So here's my thing.

00:51:24 ◼   ► The public links thing,

00:51:25 ◼   ► I can see how they could be useful, right?

00:51:27 ◼   ► And my understanding is that they can be easily deleted

00:51:31 ◼   ► and there are some flexible sharing options too, right?

00:51:34 ◼   ► - Yes. - Is that right?

00:51:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, if you pay for the premium stuff,

00:51:40 ◼   ► I mean, you can always delete them.

00:51:41 ◼   ► So that's, of course, a feature that you have for free.

00:51:45 ◼   ► The additional controls are that you can choose

00:51:49 ◼   ► whether just you or just your team

00:51:53 ◼   ► can open a link to that message.

00:51:58 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:51:59 ◼   ► - But otherwise, it's a public link,

00:52:01 ◼   ► So you generate the link and then if you want to remove it from the web, you can delete the link.

00:52:08 ◼   ► So I understand that using apps like Spark and I believe apps like Airmail, I think basically any app that gives push notifications,

00:52:18 ◼   ► I know that there is an element of email being stored or passed through the servers of that company.

00:52:24 ◼   ► Right. Am I right in thinking that? Like if a company wants to provide push notifications, it has to go through them somehow.

00:52:30 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean there has to be some way to tell when you get a new message here.

00:52:37 ◼   ► So I mean I also know, because I'm not a dummy, I know that some of my email is being stored

00:52:44 ◼   ► for a period of time, I don't know the details because whatever, I know that there's stuff

00:52:48 ◼   ► being stored with ReAdore, right?

00:52:52 ◼   ► And you make that choice yourself and I think that you can go in and read the privacy policy

00:52:58 ◼   ► or you can just, as I always say, you make your trade-offs, however you make your trade-offs.

00:53:05 ◼   ► But on the surface, I don't like this public link thing because it makes it too real for

00:53:11 ◼   ► me. I know this sounds ridiculous and I know people are going to hate this, but all I can

00:53:15 ◼   ► do is talk honestly. There's just something about being able to create an email on a website

00:53:24 ◼   ► owned by another company that's like, it makes it feel more real than I want to about where

00:53:31 ◼   ► my email is actually going. Does that make sense?

00:53:34 ◼   ► Yeah, totally. It's maybe a step too far.

00:53:39 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like, I know this is happening, but don't show it to me.

00:53:44 ◼   ► I don't want to know.

00:53:46 ◼   ► Let me forget about the fact that this is happening. And again, I don't believe necessarily

00:53:53 ◼   ► that they're doing anything nefarious and I don't want to put that out there because

00:53:57 ◼   ► if I thought that I wouldn't use their application. But there's still just an element of like

00:54:02 ◼   ► in this world that we live in right now I just don't want to know what you're doing

00:54:07 ◼   ► if you're being okay with it. I know I'm talking very peculiarly here but there's just this

00:54:12 ◼   ► disconnect that I prefer to have sometimes just because it helps me sleep at night, right?

00:54:19 ◼   ► And just...

00:54:20 ◼   ► It's like, I think a good metaphor could be that you, a meal that you enjoy, but maybe

00:54:29 ◼   ► is prepared in some way that you don't want to know.

00:54:32 ◼   ► Yeah, it's the idea of you never want to visit the factory before your food is made.

00:54:37 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:54:38 ◼   ► This is what that is.

00:54:40 ◼   ► Thank you for doing that for me.

00:54:41 ◼   ► That is the perfect way of describing it.

00:54:43 ◼   ► Like, I, sometimes it's just best not to see.

00:54:46 ◼   ► And this just feels like one of those things.

00:54:50 ◼   ► I think one of the biggest disappointments for me with Spark is that there are no visual

00:54:54 ◼   ► changes to the app.

00:54:56 ◼   ► And I say this because I don't like the way that Spark looks.

00:55:02 ◼   ► Email is a professional thing for me.

00:55:04 ◼   ► It's where my work is done mostly.

00:55:07 ◼   ► And Spark doesn't feel professional.

00:55:10 ◼   ► It feels too fun and it doesn't really have any strong customisation options to allow

00:55:18 ◼   ► me to tweak it in any way.

00:55:20 ◼   ► Where apps like Mail and Airmail and Outlook and Edison all look way more professional

00:55:30 ◼   ► where Spark is on a different end and I personally don't think it adds anything by trying to

00:55:35 ◼   ► be more fun in its design.

00:55:38 ◼   ► It has a bunch of things that I really like, there are a lot of buttons and the user experience

00:55:43 ◼   ► is very good in some places, but I'm not a big fan of their user interface, especially

00:55:49 ◼   ► the kind of inbox view.

00:55:52 ◼   ► I don't like this colored bar on the side, especially on the iPad and these floating

00:55:58 ◼   ► windows, I just don't like it.

00:55:59 ◼   ► It's too heavy-handed for me.

00:56:02 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm, yeah, I can see that.

00:56:04 ◼   ► It doesn't have a professional look

00:56:08 ◼   ► in the traditional sense.

00:56:09 ◼   ► You know, it's very colorful, very custom.

00:56:12 ◼   ► Also, at the same time,

00:56:13 ◼   ► like it doesn't follow some iOS UI conventions.

00:56:17 ◼   ► Like it's got its own share sheet and it's a custom one,

00:56:20 ◼   ► and it can look strange in places.

00:56:23 ◼   ► So I think I understand what you're saying.

00:56:26 ◼   ► - But let's talk about what's actually big and new

00:56:29 ◼   ► in this app, which is the Teams stuff.

00:56:31 ◼   ► So this is broken down into three different things, right?

00:56:35 ◼   ► Message sharing, chatting and communicating with teams

00:56:38 ◼   ► and real-time collaboration.

00:56:40 ◼   ► So from what I understand, the message sharing,

00:56:44 ◼   ► you're able to, once you set up a team,

00:56:48 ◼   ► which can be done in a couple of different ways,

00:56:50 ◼   ► you can then take a message,

00:56:54 ◼   ► and so if we're on the same team,

00:56:56 ◼   ► I could look at a message in my inbox,

00:56:59 ◼   ► press a couple of buttons and share it with you, right?

00:57:02 ◼   ► - Right, yes.

00:57:03 ◼   ► - Now, what does that actually mean though?

00:57:06 ◼   ► Like then what happens?

00:57:07 ◼   ► That we both see it in our inboxes?

00:57:09 ◼   ► Like what happens next?

00:57:11 ◼   ► - So what happens is this is a proprietary feature

00:57:16 ◼   ► that is not a traditional email forward.

00:57:20 ◼   ► And what you do is you take a message

00:57:22 ◼   ► that was addressed to you

00:57:24 ◼   ► and was not addressed to the other person.

00:57:27 ◼   ► and you share the message with the other person,

00:57:30 ◼   ► which means it lands in the other person's Spark inbox.

00:57:35 ◼   ► It does not show up in the actual email service inbox.

00:57:41 ◼   ► It's tied to the Spark application.

00:57:46 ◼   ► So if you share a message with me,

00:57:50 ◼   ► I will not see the message in Apple Mail

00:57:52 ◼   ► or Gmail or Fastmail, whatever.

00:57:55 ◼   ► I will only see the message in Spark.

00:57:57 ◼   ► And it's a custom feature built on top of email

00:58:01 ◼   ► that, you know, again, it's something that other services

00:58:06 ◼   ► have done before, I believe.

00:58:08 ◼   ► There's a bunch of similar services called Missive

00:58:10 ◼   ► and Front and Polymail.

00:58:12 ◼   ► But I think Spark, you know, it's more,

00:58:15 ◼   ► you know, it's more popular in our community, in the iOS.

00:58:21 ◼   ► - Has a higher profile.

00:58:22 ◼   ► - Has a higher profile in the Apple community.

00:58:25 ◼   ► Of course, it's a well-known company.

00:58:26 ◼   ► So we're talking about it now.

00:58:28 ◼   ► But yeah, it's a custom thing.

00:58:32 ◼   ► - So like this is another thing where it's like,

00:58:35 ◼   ► okay, you're making it very clear to me at this point

00:58:37 ◼   ► where my email is going, right?

00:58:39 ◼   ► If this only shows up in Spark,

00:58:41 ◼   ► obviously you're getting my email in some way.

00:58:44 ◼   ► But this is where that trade off thing comes into play.

00:58:47 ◼   ► Where it's like, I'm thinking about this and I'm like, huh,

00:58:50 ◼   ► that would be super useful for me.

00:58:52 ◼   ► So I share email especially

00:58:55 ◼   ► with my advertising sales manager, right,

00:58:58 ◼   ► that we have here at Real AFM.

00:59:00 ◼   ► So it's a slight step up from assistant.

00:59:03 ◼   ► She helps me with advertising sales.

00:59:05 ◼   ► That's a big thing that we do now

00:59:07 ◼   ► and we get a lot of people that email us

00:59:09 ◼   ► and I wanna share leads that come in with her

00:59:13 ◼   ► because I don't need to pick them all up anymore

00:59:16 ◼   ► and the way we're currently doing it is I forward it

00:59:18 ◼   ► and then she has to delete a bunch of stuff

00:59:21 ◼   ► and reply.

00:59:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:59:23 ◼   ► So wouldn't it be lovely, and yes it would, if I could just take that email and

00:59:27 ◼   ► just send it to her.

00:59:28 ◼   ► And then she just replies to it and it looks normal.

00:59:30 ◼   ► And that seems like a really good thing.

00:59:35 ◼   ► But it locks us both into Spark everywhere.

00:59:39 ◼   ► And that's where it starts to get a bit tricky.

00:59:42 ◼   ► Where it's like, do I want to be locked in?

00:59:43 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:59:44 ◼   ► Because I've never really liked Spark that much anyway.

00:59:48 ◼   ► So like, but now will I get enough value out of it

00:59:53 ◼   ► that it makes sense for me?

00:59:55 ◼   ► So like, I think we're gonna try it.

00:59:57 ◼   ► I think that's something, I think I wanna give it a go

01:00:00 ◼   ► and see if it's like, well, am I willing to overlook

01:00:02 ◼   ► some of the things I don't like about the application

01:00:05 ◼   ► in exchange for what would be

01:00:06 ◼   ► some just really genuine usefulness?

01:00:09 ◼   ► And then the other part of it is,

01:00:12 ◼   ► we can have a conversation along the side of the email,

01:00:17 ◼   ► which is not part of the email, right?

01:00:19 ◼   ► You can kind of chat to the people

01:00:21 ◼   ► that you share the messages with.

01:00:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, you can also do that.

01:00:24 ◼   ► It's basically like a mini iMessage

01:00:28 ◼   ► built right into the thread view.

01:00:32 ◼   ► So like you can chat with your teammates

01:00:35 ◼   ► without of course the person on the other side

01:00:38 ◼   ► of the conversation knowing that you're chatting.

01:00:41 ◼   ► And it's, you know, initially I thought it's like,

01:00:43 ◼   ► this is insane.

01:00:44 ◼   ► I don't wanna have like a mini Slack into my email.

01:00:47 ◼   ► But then it kinda, I kinda understood why it's there.

01:00:50 ◼   ► It's like if something comes in

01:00:53 ◼   ► and it's addressed to a bunch of people,

01:00:55 ◼   ► I don't have to go on Slack and say,

01:00:58 ◼   ► hey, by the way, did you see the message

01:01:01 ◼   ► that we got from Steven today?

01:01:03 ◼   ► Do you want to respond to that person?

01:01:05 ◼   ► Right into the email, I can say @Ryan,

01:01:08 ◼   ► can you respond to them?

01:01:09 ◼   ► And it's contextual to the place where we're doing email.

01:01:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, it requires less context,

01:01:16 ◼   ► 'cause I'm doing this all the time as well,

01:01:19 ◼   ► where I'm like, did you see that message I just sent you?

01:01:22 ◼   ► Oh, which one of those three that you just sent me

01:01:24 ◼   ► are you referring to?

01:01:25 ◼   ► And it's like, that's where a lot of this frustration

01:01:28 ◼   ► comes in, and it's why this actually does seem

01:01:29 ◼   ► like a useful thing.

01:01:31 ◼   ► So are you notified about these in any way though?

01:01:34 ◼   ► - Yes, but this is one of the downsides

01:01:39 ◼   ► that I mentioned in my story yesterday.

01:01:42 ◼   ► There are no granular notifications.

01:01:45 ◼   ► So as I told you, I keep email notifications disabled.

01:01:50 ◼   ► But in doing that, I also miss notifications for messages,

01:01:55 ◼   ► which is insane because I should be able to tell,

01:01:59 ◼   ► look, don't give me email notifications,

01:02:01 ◼   ► but tell me when my teammates message me

01:02:04 ◼   ► because emails and messages, the chat feature,

01:02:09 ◼   ► those are two separate things.

01:02:10 ◼   ► I know that they come from the same application,

01:02:12 ◼   ► but they are two different messaging protocols.

01:02:15 ◼   ► So I would love to be able to say

01:02:17 ◼   ► no email message notifications,

01:02:19 ◼   ► but yes, messages from my teammates.

01:02:22 ◼   ► And right now that feature is unfortunately

01:02:25 ◼   ► missing from Spark 2.

01:02:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, I hope they add that.

01:02:27 ◼   ► That seems like an obvious one to add to me

01:02:29 ◼   ► because I would maybe want to set up the same, right?

01:02:33 ◼   ► Like there are a lot of benefits

01:02:35 ◼   ► to being able to separate those things

01:02:37 ◼   ► 'cause they are technically different

01:02:38 ◼   ► because you wanna know when your team's talking to you.

01:02:41 ◼   ► You don't necessarily want to know

01:02:43 ◼   ► every time an email comes in.

01:02:45 ◼   ► - Exactly, right? - Yeah.

01:02:46 ◼   ► - And then there's also the real-time collaborative stuff.

01:02:48 ◼   ► How well does this work?

01:02:50 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

01:02:51 ◼   ► - How well does it actually work?

01:02:52 ◼   ► - It works well.

01:02:54 ◼   ► It's slightly slower than Google Docs,

01:02:57 ◼   ► but it's surprisingly solid.

01:03:01 ◼   ► Honestly, I tried it with John.

01:03:05 ◼   ► we composed an email message together and it worked fine.

01:03:09 ◼   ► My problem, not a problem, but just my skepticism maybe,

01:03:13 ◼   ► is that if I ever reach the point

01:03:15 ◼   ► where I need three people to help me

01:03:19 ◼   ► writing an email message,

01:03:20 ◼   ► something has gone terribly wrong with me.

01:03:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:03:24 ◼   ► It means that I've lost my mind

01:03:29 ◼   ► and I don't even know what I'm doing anymore.

01:03:30 ◼   ► - You know what I hadn't thought about until now?

01:03:32 ◼   ► When does that ever happen?

01:03:34 ◼   ► that like multiple people need to be in the Compose view.

01:03:38 ◼   ► - You tell me, Myke, you used to work at a bank

01:03:41 ◼   ► with a bunch of business type people.

01:03:45 ◼   ► Is that a thing that people do?

01:03:46 ◼   ► Let me collaborate on an email with you.

01:03:48 ◼   ► - No, that's, I mean, at most like one person,

01:03:51 ◼   ► but like, I don't know if you need to be doing that

01:03:53 ◼   ► in the Compose view of your email.

01:03:56 ◼   ► I feel like not all four of us need to be typing

01:04:01 ◼   ► at the same time.

01:04:01 ◼   ► So all right, this email needs four paragraphs.

01:04:04 ◼   ► will all work on one of them individually.

01:04:06 ◼   ► You know, I just realized that like this,

01:04:09 ◼   ► that honestly feels like a waste of resources.

01:04:11 ◼   ► Like it's just a whiz bang feature.

01:04:14 ◼   ► Like it looks good in a demo,

01:04:15 ◼   ► but who actually needs that?

01:04:17 ◼   ► Like I take listeners,

01:04:20 ◼   ► if you know of a use case for like three or more people

01:04:23 ◼   ► to be working on an email at the same time,

01:04:26 ◼   ► please let us know what that is.

01:04:28 ◼   ► - If we do this, you Myke are in charge

01:04:31 ◼   ► of my email signatures from now on.

01:04:33 ◼   ► When I compose a message, I want you to take care of my signature.

01:04:36 ◼   ► All right, I'm fine with that.

01:04:38 ◼   ► I have free time, president of special business, the creator, all these things, so many things.

01:04:46 ◼   ► I think one of the biggest changes here for Spark and one of the things that actually

01:04:50 ◼   ► makes me happy about all of this is that they finally have a legitimate business model,

01:04:55 ◼   ► where previously Spark was just, "Oh, it's free," and then maybe one day we'll charge

01:04:59 ◼   ► you for something, and then that day never came.

01:05:02 ◼   ► But now they have a business model where there is a lot of stuff that you get for free.

01:05:08 ◼   ► So it's free for individuals and there's a core team functionality.

01:05:11 ◼   ► What is that?

01:05:12 ◼   ► It means that you can basically use the service for free as long as you have a small team.

01:05:18 ◼   ► So for free you get five gigabytes of chat storage, because you can also attach images

01:05:28 ◼   ► and documents for the whole team.

01:05:31 ◼   ► Whereas if you pay for the premium stuff, you get 10 gigabytes per user.

01:05:36 ◼   ► So there's a big difference.

01:05:39 ◼   ► But then again, are you going to be using this as a Slack alternative?

01:05:42 ◼   ► You're going to be sharing a lot of heavy files here?

01:05:46 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:05:47 ◼   ► It depends on how much you want to chat in your email.

01:05:51 ◼   ► And also, with the core team, you can only collaborate.

01:05:55 ◼   ► Only three people can collaborate on an email message.

01:05:58 ◼   ► So compose your messages wisely because it's only three people.

01:06:04 ◼   ► Take care.

01:06:05 ◼   ► Take care now.

01:06:07 ◼   ► And what else?

01:06:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:06:10 ◼   ► Oh, and these are actually important.

01:06:12 ◼   ► You get no controls over the link sharing.

01:06:16 ◼   ► So it's either public or deleted.

01:06:19 ◼   ► You cannot say just me or just my team.

01:06:21 ◼   ► I feel if you're doing the link sharing for any seriousness, you should pay because I

01:06:26 ◼   ► I think even though there is like a security through obscurity thing, I just think that

01:06:31 ◼   ► it's best to have some control over that.

01:06:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree.

01:06:35 ◼   ► And also you cannot, you don't have the feature called team roles.

01:06:42 ◼   ► So in Spark 2 you can either be the owner of the team, an admin or a member.

01:06:48 ◼   ► And of course if you have a large organization you want to be able to set these levels because

01:06:53 ◼   ► The owner controls everything and has access to the building dashboard, but the admin can

01:06:57 ◼   ► also invite and delete members.

01:07:00 ◼   ► If you have a large team, you probably want to pay for this stuff.

01:07:03 ◼   ► Yeah, okay.

01:07:04 ◼   ► I mean, so I have a question for you.

01:07:10 ◼   ► In your opinion, what is the one most compelling reason, the single most compelling reason

01:07:14 ◼   ► for a team to use Block2?

01:07:17 ◼   ► Honestly, the sharing stuff.

01:07:22 ◼   ► sharing and chat, but with an asterisk. I think sharing is what I always wanted from

01:07:30 ◼   ► a collaborative email perspective. I just want to be able to take an email and place

01:07:36 ◼   ► it in someone else's inbox without doing the forward and with an easy system.

01:07:42 ◼   ► When you do that, can you archive it from your own inbox?

01:07:45 ◼   ► Yes, but it will remain in the shared section of the app, where for some reason messages

01:07:52 ◼   ► are unarchivable from there.

01:07:55 ◼   ► So the shared view is a special view and you see every single message that you ever shared.

01:08:00 ◼   ► You cannot delete them from that view.

01:08:02 ◼   ► That actually seems useful though, because then you can go and just check on stuff that

01:08:08 ◼   ► you've done in the past and then all of your conversations are accessible and stuff like

01:08:12 ◼   ► that.

01:08:13 ◼   ► that makes sense to me that you would keep that there because then the shared,

01:08:17 ◼   ► no one's actually working from shared.

01:08:19 ◼   ► Everyone's working from their own inboxes and then shared just becomes like a

01:08:22 ◼   ► history log. That makes sense to me. Yeah. Do you know,

01:08:27 ◼   ► I think I'm going to try it out. I think it sounds,

01:08:29 ◼   ► I think it sounds like honestly exactly what I've been looking for for a while

01:08:33 ◼   ► in having something to communicate with people like Slack is amazing,

01:08:39 ◼   ► but I still get emailed to and I have to deal with that.

01:08:43 ◼   ► And when you're working with people

01:08:45 ◼   ► where you're sharing jobs with them,

01:08:47 ◼   ► like you're sharing part of a role with them,

01:08:49 ◼   ► which is what I'm doing,

01:08:51 ◼   ► then I think that really you've got to have some way

01:08:57 ◼   ► to communicate about the messages that you're receiving

01:09:00 ◼   ► and being able to do it in the context

01:09:02 ◼   ► of the literal message.

01:09:04 ◼   ► That seems pretty appealing for me.

01:09:06 ◼   ► I think I might try it out.

01:09:08 ◼   ► And you've solved me Federico.

01:09:09 ◼   ► - Well, are you gonna pay for it?

01:09:12 ◼   ► - If I use it, I'm gonna pay for it, yeah.

01:09:13 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:09:14 ◼   ► - I don't need to.

01:09:15 ◼   ► I can actually use all of that stuff, right?

01:09:18 ◼   ► But if I'm gonna use a tool like this for my business,

01:09:21 ◼   ► I'm gonna pay for it.

01:09:22 ◼   ► So I'm gonna try it with what's free, right?

01:09:26 ◼   ► So I can just check it out and see if it works for us.

01:09:28 ◼   ► And if we decide that it works for us,

01:09:30 ◼   ► then I'm gonna convert our account to a pay plan.

01:09:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, we are testing the three people right now.

01:09:39 ◼   ► it's John, Ryan, and I are having like a trial team

01:09:44 ◼   ► experiment with Spark 2,

01:09:46 ◼   ► but I think it's also what I needed.

01:09:48 ◼   ► If only for the sharing and some lightweight chat,

01:09:53 ◼   ► chatting going on inside messages,

01:09:55 ◼   ► just being able to double check and confirm stuff.

01:09:58 ◼   ► Because I love Slack, I pay for Slack,

01:10:01 ◼   ► but the truth is that somebody is not part of my team.

01:10:06 ◼   ► Like email is still the best way

01:10:08 ◼   ► to reach out to someone who's not necessarily your friend or colleague.

01:10:12 ◼   ► And yes, there are integrations that you can build or you can

01:10:17 ◼   ► activate to have your email end up in Slack.

01:10:21 ◼   ► But really, Slack cannot be your email client.

01:10:25 ◼   ► So you're always going to be getting some type of email and you're

01:10:30 ◼   ► always going to be needing to manage email and respond to email.

01:10:33 ◼   ► And Slack isn't built for that.

01:10:35 ◼   ► So if I need to use email because people email me,

01:10:40 ◼   ► then I might as well use something that removes

01:10:44 ◼   ► and just that friction that I find

01:10:49 ◼   ► in collaborating with my team over email.

01:10:52 ◼   ► So at that point, why not give this a try?

01:10:55 ◼   ► And that's what we're gonna do.

01:10:56 ◼   ► So yeah, we'll see how it goes.

01:10:58 ◼   ► - There was another app that got updated this week

01:11:01 ◼   ► that I really wanted to talk to you about Federico,

01:11:03 ◼   ► and that's Castro 3.

01:11:04 ◼   ► Castro is a podcast application.

01:11:09 ◼   ► It's been around for many years now

01:11:12 ◼   ► and it's on their third iteration

01:11:15 ◼   ► and with that has brought about some changes to the app

01:11:17 ◼   ► and a change to their business model.

01:11:20 ◼   ► And I wanted to kind of dig into some of the changes

01:11:22 ◼   ► that are the most interesting to both of us.

01:11:25 ◼   ► One of the things that Castro, everybody was asking for

01:11:29 ◼   ► when Castro 2 was introduced was overcast-like features,

01:11:34 ◼   ► like in being able to move what Marco in Overcast calls voice boost and smart speed.

01:11:39 ◼   ► Right. So the ability to take voices and put some equalizing on them to make them

01:11:44 ◼   ► louder or to make them more consistent and then also to reduce the silence in

01:11:48 ◼   ► speech. So you're not listening to a show at 1.5 X constantly,

01:11:52 ◼   ► but when there's silences,

01:11:53 ◼   ► it's kind of speeds it up and reduces some of those silences.

01:11:56 ◼   ► So you can listen to more shows, right? It's kind of a way to do it.

01:12:00 ◼   ► And I've been using those effects in Overcast since they came out.

01:12:04 ◼   ► And now I think any podcast app in our community

01:12:06 ◼   ► that gets introduced,

01:12:08 ◼   ► that's what everybody wants, those two features.

01:12:10 ◼   ► So Castro has implemented those now.

01:12:15 ◼   ► And I would say that on the whole,

01:12:17 ◼   ► they've done a pretty good job.

01:12:19 ◼   ► From a UI perspective, something I really like

01:12:22 ◼   ► is that you can see how much time you've saved

01:12:25 ◼   ► per episode of a show.

01:12:27 ◼   ► They don't have a way like in Overcast right now

01:12:29 ◼   ► to see how much time you've saved in aggregate.

01:12:31 ◼   ► And I hope they can add that.

01:12:33 ◼   ► But I really like this just so you can see,

01:12:35 ◼   ► oh, I saved like 35 seconds or something.

01:12:37 ◼   ► I think that's kind of,

01:12:39 ◼   ► there's something kind of fun about that

01:12:40 ◼   ► to see that ticking up as the show's going through.

01:12:42 ◼   ► - Yeah. - And I would say that

01:12:43 ◼   ► to my ears, and I have no idea about this,

01:12:47 ◼   ► it feels a little bit more aggressive than Overcast,

01:12:49 ◼   ► but it does the job.

01:12:51 ◼   ► But to be honest, I don't know if it's more aggressive.

01:12:53 ◼   ► Honestly, it just sounds a little different,

01:12:56 ◼   ► and that's how I'm interpreting different to be.

01:13:00 ◼   ► And it's just because I'm used to the way Overcast does it.

01:13:04 ◼   ► Like I have not done any serious analysis to see who is better and how much better each

01:13:10 ◼   ► app is than one another.

01:13:11 ◼   ► It just sounds different and I'm used to Overcast.

01:13:15 ◼   ► So I and I think it sounds a little better, but I can't tell you that for sure.

01:13:20 ◼   ► And I think this is something that's going to be different for different people, but it

01:13:25 ◼   ► 100 percent does the job like 100 percent.

01:13:28 ◼   ► Would you agree with that?

01:13:29 ◼   ► Yeah, actually I do. I think it got a lot better, the "Treme Silence" feature, during the betas.

01:13:36 ◼   ► So it was kind of rough in the first beta of Castro 3. But then I think it's actually really good now.

01:13:43 ◼   ► And it's too bad that you don't have like a single total for the amount of minutes or hours that you

01:13:52 ◼   ► save with "Treme Silence". Overcast has this feature in the settings, so it's only on a per episode basis.

01:13:58 ◼   ► But I agree, if there's a difference with Overcast,

01:14:03 ◼   ► I think of all the apps that implemented the feature,

01:14:08 ◼   ► this is the closest it's ever been

01:14:10 ◼   ► to matching the quality of Overcast.

01:14:13 ◼   ► - They also added chapter support, which I like.

01:14:17 ◼   ► I think they implemented it pretty well.

01:14:19 ◼   ► They did it, I like the design of the way everything looks.

01:14:23 ◼   ► I would say that initially,

01:14:24 ◼   ► it's tricky to work out where the chapters are,

01:14:27 ◼   ► and you have to tap on the chapter's title name

01:14:29 ◼   ► to bring up the list.

01:14:31 ◼   ► But once you've learned that, I like the way it all looks.

01:14:33 ◼   ► I like the way it's presented in the full screen view

01:14:35 ◼   ► and then you can just check what you want.

01:14:38 ◼   ► This is a chapter support and the silent stuff.

01:14:41 ◼   ► And there's things like,

01:14:44 ◼   ► there's a dark mode and per podcast settings.

01:14:47 ◼   ► These are all part of Castro Plus,

01:14:49 ◼   ► which is the paid subscription model,

01:14:51 ◼   ► which I'll get to in a minute.

01:14:52 ◼   ► But if you try the app

01:14:54 ◼   ► and you're not seeing these features, that's why.

01:14:56 ◼   ► I think they have a trial as well so you could try them all out. I like the implementation of it.

01:15:00 ◼   ► I really like that they go with custom artwork because I like to do that sometimes so you can

01:15:05 ◼   ► have custom artwork pop up if you can change the chapter art and stuff like that. And this kind of

01:15:10 ◼   ► leans into just the general design of Castro. It is so beautiful. It is my favorite design of any

01:15:17 ◼   ► iOS podcast app. I love the way this looks. The animations, just the general look and feel of the

01:15:23 ◼   ► the app is so, so nice.

01:15:26 ◼   ► I wished that their dark mode took a vantage

01:15:29 ◼   ► of the OLED screen more,

01:15:31 ◼   ► because that's one of my favorite features of Overcast.

01:15:35 ◼   ► I love just the true black in the dark mode.

01:15:40 ◼   ► And they have it in places like the player bar,

01:15:44 ◼   ► but honestly I would like to see that reversed.

01:15:47 ◼   ► I would like the majority of the UI to be in all black,

01:15:51 ◼   ► but that's just a preference of my own.

01:15:53 ◼   ► But just the general design is so good.

01:15:57 ◼   ► The way they use haptics is so good.

01:16:01 ◼   ► Their drag and drop is wonderful.

01:16:03 ◼   ► Supertop, the company behind this,

01:16:06 ◼   ► they've always done a great job of design

01:16:09 ◼   ► and they were really ahead of the curve

01:16:13 ◼   ► in a lot of ways with the original Castro.

01:16:15 ◼   ► And they have been here too.

01:16:19 ◼   ► when drag and drop came out,

01:16:20 ◼   ► their initial implementation of it was excellent.

01:16:24 ◼   ► And now like there isn't really anything here

01:16:27 ◼   ► where I think they have the ability to be like

01:16:30 ◼   ► groundbreakingly different to anyone else, right?

01:16:33 ◼   ► Like I don't think that there's anything like right now

01:16:35 ◼   ► which would allow them to do that.

01:16:37 ◼   ► But I'm confident that like,

01:16:38 ◼   ► if something is announced at WWDC from a design perspective,

01:16:42 ◼   ► like some new UI interaction or whatever,

01:16:44 ◼   ► they will find an interesting and novel way to implement it

01:16:47 ◼   ► because that's what they do an incredible job at.

01:16:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, I love the way that it looks,

01:16:51 ◼   ► I love the way that it works,

01:16:52 ◼   ► the way that it feels with the haptics.

01:16:54 ◼   ► It's such a beautiful app.

01:16:56 ◼   ► And yeah, with the new stuff, honestly,

01:17:00 ◼   ► I'm using the Apple Podcasts app now

01:17:03 ◼   ► because of the HomePod and Siri.

01:17:05 ◼   ► But if there's ever an audio domain for Siri,

01:17:09 ◼   ► so you can ask the HomePod to use Castro

01:17:12 ◼   ► and ask on the iPhone to use Castri instead of podcasts,

01:17:17 ◼   ► I would seriously consider using this as my full-time app

01:17:21 ◼   ► because it looks so beautiful

01:17:22 ◼   ► and the triage system totally works for my brain.

01:17:26 ◼   ► And the drag and drop on the iPhone is glorious.

01:17:29 ◼   ► So yeah, it's a beautiful piece of software

01:17:31 ◼   ► and the business model makes sense to me

01:17:34 ◼   ► because a podcast client is something

01:17:35 ◼   ► that you use on a regular basis.

01:17:37 ◼   ► And these are good people and you should support them

01:17:40 ◼   ► and you should download and try Kestrel because it's an excellent, excellent update.

01:17:44 ◼   ► Yeah, that triage system was introduced in Kestrel 2 and it's the idea that you have

01:17:50 ◼   ► your inbox, which is all of your shows, all of the kind of like everything that's unheard,

01:17:55 ◼   ► and then you add them to your queue.

01:17:57 ◼   ► So this is the stuff you're actually going to listen to.

01:17:59 ◼   ► I love this so much, like that I implemented this system in Overcast.

01:18:03 ◼   ► So I have two playlists, one is all and one is my queue.

01:18:07 ◼   ► And that's how I do it.

01:18:08 ◼   ► triage what comes in and then add them to my queue and I run it my my I run

01:18:14 ◼   ► overcast that way and I would say that for me right now probably the the main

01:18:20 ◼   ► reason I am not using Castro is they have no iPad app like that I use

01:18:28 ◼   ► overcast on my iPad a lot and I do hope that their new business model will give

01:18:35 ◼   ► them the resources required to allow them to work on an iPad app.

01:18:39 ◼   ► I would like that a lot.

01:18:41 ◼   ► They're new, they're business modeled, it's a paid subscription, you can pay $2.99 per

01:18:47 ◼   ► quarter or $8.99 per year.

01:18:49 ◼   ► I think that that is perfectly reasonable in both cases.

01:18:53 ◼   ► So I would have to play around with this a lot more before I would decide to make the

01:18:57 ◼   ► change because I will tell you, Overcast is in my top three favorite iOS apps of all time.

01:19:05 ◼   ► So like, I wouldn't want to be completely just taken away by the whiz-bang of Castro

01:19:10 ◼   ► that I would move.

01:19:11 ◼   ► Like, it would still take me a lot of time to make that decision.

01:19:15 ◼   ► But basically, I can't and won't make that decision personally until there's an iPad

01:19:20 ◼   ► app.

01:19:21 ◼   ► But I know I'm in a real minority with that.

01:19:23 ◼   ► And this is because I listen to podcasts a lot at home because I am a home worker.

01:19:30 ◼   ► So I usually have my iPad with me and my iPad has better speakers than my iPhone, so I listen

01:19:34 ◼   ► on my iPad. So that makes me in the minority. I think that they have allocated their resources

01:19:39 ◼   ► so far correctly in like ensuring their iPhone app is perfect. But I, you know, I would want

01:19:45 ◼   ► to, I would want to have it on all my devices before I personally consider it. But if you

01:19:49 ◼   ► are someone who only uses an iPhone for your, your, like one, one device or whatever, then

01:19:56 ◼   ► I would, I would recommend looking at, um, Castro and trying out the free trial because

01:20:02 ◼   ► have done an excellent job here and I'm looking forward to seeing how apps like

01:20:08 ◼   ► Overcast and PocketCasts respond to this because I think Castro are making some

01:20:14 ◼   ► waves. Rightly I think they've made maybe a bigger impact to Castro 3 than they

01:20:19 ◼   ► did with Castro 2. I hope. It seems like I'm seeing a lot more about it now anyway

01:20:24 ◼   ► especially because they've added a bunch of features that people wanted. So I

01:20:27 ◼   ► I genuinely hope that this is a good thing for them because Padraig and Oisin, the two

01:20:34 ◼   ► guys behind Supertop are really great guys and I hope that this enables them to continue

01:20:39 ◼   ► developing this app and other projects in the future because they more than deserve

01:20:44 ◼   ► it.

01:20:45 ◼   ► Alright, if you want to catch our show notes for this week head on over to relay.fm/connected/194

01:20:51 ◼   ► I want to thank ButcherBox and PDF Pen 10 from Smile for their support of this show.

01:20:56 ◼   ► You should 100% make sure you have read Federico's incredible article called Second Life.

01:21:02 ◼   ► There is a link in the show notes there, but you can find it at maxstories.net, which is

01:21:06 ◼   ► where Federico's work goes.

01:21:08 ◼   ► Federico is an amazing team of people around him that are producing incredible content.

01:21:13 ◼   ► Like I've linked today to two reviews, Review of Spark and Review of Castro, both written

01:21:20 ◼   ► by people at Max Stories, John and Ryan.

01:21:23 ◼   ► I will say that I think that some of the images in the Castro review are incredibly beautiful.

01:21:31 ◼   ► Really just excellent, excellent image work.

01:21:34 ◼   ► No particular reason why I would say this, but I just think that in general Ryan did

01:21:39 ◼   ► a great job of his screenshots.

01:21:41 ◼   ► Yes, great taste.

01:21:42 ◼   ► Really great, great taste of the screenshots.

01:21:45 ◼   ► I am @imike on Twitter, I-M-Y-K-E.

01:21:49 ◼   ► We will all be back together next week for our very important episode.

01:21:52 ◼   ► Maybe Steven will have decided on what jacket he wants by then, so he'll be back too.

01:21:58 ◼   ► Thanks so much for listening.

01:21:59 ◼   ► Until next time, say goodbye Federico.

01:22:02 ◼   ► Arrivederci.

01:22:03 ◼   ► Tally ho, cheerio, toodle pip or something.

01:22:06 ◼   ► I don't know, what do I say?

01:22:08 ◼   ► Adios.

01:22:09 ◼   ► Cheerio.

01:22:10 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:22:10 ◼   ► (laughs)