Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:07 ◼   ► From relay FM, this is Connected, episode number 41.

00:00:12 ◼   ► This week's episode is brought to you by Hover, simplified domain management,

00:00:16 ◼   ► PDF/Pen, ScanPlus from Smile, the app for mobile scanning and OCR, and OmniFocus, now on the Apple Watch.

00:00:24 ◼   ► My name is Myke Curley and I'm joined as always by the editor-in-chief of Mac Stories

00:00:28 ◼   ► and co-host of mine on virtual relay FM the one and only mr. Federico Fattici

00:00:33 ◼   ► hello Myke how you doing buddy I'm doing well how are you I'm very well I'm happy

00:00:38 ◼   ► to return the author to this show the author of all K base and 512 pixels mrs.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Stephen Hackett hey guys it's good to be back I missed I missed being with you and

00:00:48 ◼   ► our special time last week you were sorely missed how did the kidnapping go

00:00:53 ◼   ► Stephen I mean I guess as far as kidnappings went pretty well there was

00:00:57 ◼   ► - There was no violence really, it was just a lot of hugs

00:01:00 ◼   ► and they gave me a Sprite, it was very nice.

00:01:03 ◼   ► - A Sprite, that's very kind of them.

00:01:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, well you know, I was like,

00:01:08 ◼   ► oh what do you want to drink?

00:01:09 ◼   ► It's like I don't drink, so here's a Sprite, I don't know.

00:01:11 ◼   ► It was fine, I'm glad to be back, like I said.

00:01:13 ◼   ► I missed our special time and I am relieved to take,

00:01:18 ◼   ► I'm relieved to know that follow up can go on without me,

00:01:21 ◼   ► I should say, but I am, I welcome the burden back.

00:01:25 ◼   ► I think we'll just jump right in.

00:01:27 ◼   ► - Please, please.

00:01:28 ◼   ► - Okay, so we have a lot of follow up this week.

00:01:30 ◼   ► We're gonna start in the world of Apple Bands.

00:01:32 ◼   ► We spoke about the third party watch band

00:01:36 ◼   ► that Apple announced a couple weeks ago.

00:01:39 ◼   ► And several people wrote in about this,

00:01:41 ◼   ► you know, with ideas of like

00:01:42 ◼   ► what they would want to see in bands.

00:01:44 ◼   ► You know, some people want some more options

00:01:46 ◼   ► that are athletic, maybe things that Velcro,

00:01:47 ◼   ► so they're easy to get on and off one handed.

00:01:49 ◼   ► Lots of ideas, lots of good ideas.

00:01:53 ◼   ► one listener wrote in and the name is tricky.

00:01:58 ◼   ► Federico, you try.

00:01:59 ◼   ► - Let's see, Joachim.

00:02:03 ◼   ► - That's exactly how I would have said it, Joachim.

00:02:06 ◼   ► - Cool. - Yeah.

00:02:07 ◼   ► - Good, good.

00:02:08 ◼   ► So the idea is that the band program may signify

00:02:15 ◼   ► that Apple is actually going to stay with this design,

00:02:18 ◼   ► at least for a couple of years.

00:02:19 ◼   ► So remember when the, before the watch came out

00:02:21 ◼   ► And even now people were like, oh, if they change the design

00:02:26 ◼   ► or change the case thickness, the lugs won't fit

00:02:28 ◼   ► and your bands won't be any good.

00:02:29 ◼   ► You know, you buy all these bands,

00:02:31 ◼   ► they're only good for a year.

00:02:32 ◼   ► And I tend to agree with this line of thinking

00:02:34 ◼   ► that the Apple Watch band program may show

00:02:36 ◼   ► that Apple's gonna stay with this design

00:02:38 ◼   ► for a couple of years, at least, you know,

00:02:41 ◼   ► where if you go out and buy a really expensive band,

00:02:44 ◼   ► you don't want it to be dead in 12 months

00:02:48 ◼   ► or 18 months or something like that.

00:02:49 ◼   ► But, you know, there'll be some longevity there.

00:02:51 ◼   ► And I think that's good. I think that's important.

00:02:53 ◼   ► You know, even Apple's bands range, you know, from, you know,

00:02:57 ◼   ► relatively inexpensive to quite expensive.

00:02:58 ◼   ► You go to that link bracelet and it's hundreds of dollars.

00:03:01 ◼   ► And so I think it would be nice to, you know,

00:03:04 ◼   ► have this thing stick around for a couple of years.

00:03:06 ◼   ► I know you guys spoke about it last week, but

00:03:10 ◼   ► do you guys just have one band for your watches?

00:03:13 ◼   ► Is that correct?

00:03:14 ◼   ► Yeah. So far I only have the sport band. Yeah.

00:03:17 ◼   ► I went into an Apple store this weekend

00:03:21 ◼   ► to see if they had any bands in stock and they they did tell me that they had

00:03:26 ◼   ► had some but like just a couple but they are starting to come in and they told me

00:03:32 ◼   ► that for whatever they know that they're gonna have a lot more in like two weeks

00:03:35 ◼   ► like they're trickling in right now but in about two weeks time they're gonna

00:03:39 ◼   ► start getting lots and lots in like the moment just sports but they're gonna start

00:03:42 ◼   ► getting more and more so I mean that kind of seems to match what we're seeing

00:03:46 ◼   ► I guess around in regards to the to this point about the Apple watch design and

00:03:53 ◼   ► the bands I think the the bands the lug sizes will probably remain the same but

00:03:58 ◼   ► I think there's still a lot of leeway for design changes around the lugs right

00:04:03 ◼   ► you know I don't think I don't think you're saying this Steven but I think

00:04:08 ◼   ► you could you can make a lot of changes to the way this device looks and have

00:04:11 ◼   ► the original straps still fit? I think so too. If you want to worry about Apple Watch bands and

00:04:20 ◼   ► compatibility in the future, like the closest parallel that I can run is would be the

00:04:26 ◼   ► the dock connector on the iPhone. And if you use the dock connector and so the therapy in old one

00:04:34 ◼   ► and the new Lightning connector. As the examples, Apple needed to replace the old connector

00:04:42 ◼   ► for two reasons. One, it was too thick for new iPhones and two, they wanted to bring

00:04:49 ◼   ► new features in terms of reversibility and faster performance, that kind of stuff. So

00:04:55 ◼   ► Unless, now that I'm using these examples to consider Apple Watch bands, unless the

00:05:03 ◼   ► lugs need to get dramatically thinner and Apple wants to bring new features to the way

00:05:10 ◼   ► that the bands are attached to the watch, I don't see the design of the attachment changing

00:05:15 ◼   ► anytime soon, frankly.

00:05:18 ◼   ► You can have plenty of changes from a visual perspective, but the connector itself, I don't

00:05:23 ◼   ► see why Apple would want to change that in two or three years unless they had this major

00:05:28 ◼   ► breakthrough in terms of thinness for the watch, which is another topic that we could

00:05:33 ◼   ► talk about.

00:05:34 ◼   ► I don't think that a watch that is too thin would be as cool as a medium-sized watch or

00:05:42 ◼   ► if they come up with some crazy idea for what a band can do when it's connected to the watch.

00:05:50 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:05:51 ◼   ► even iPhone cases though if you compare watches to cases you get a couple of

00:05:56 ◼   ► years on them in you know on the average because they don't tend to really change

00:06:00 ◼   ► the the iPhone shell design too much right they were used outside that

00:06:07 ◼   ► outside design for ever since the first phone you know the first one was a

00:06:10 ◼   ► one-off but ever since then it's been every every other year they they keep

00:06:15 ◼   ► the physical design so side by side unless you're a nerd you would never

00:06:18 ◼   ► the difference between the two. There is an argument to be made about durability of some

00:06:24 ◼   ► Apple Watch bands. Like I wonder if in two years my sport band will look as good as it is today,

00:06:30 ◼   ► you know, because it touches your skin, you know, sweat and, you know, water, all kinds of

00:06:35 ◼   ► possible damage that it's exposed to. I wonder if you even want to keep the same, you know, band for

00:06:44 ◼   ► for more than two years. I don't know. I don't know. It's a...

00:06:48 ◼   ► So you guys just have one band each. I have bought a couple. So mine came with the black sport band.

00:06:54 ◼   ► I ordered a white sport band basically the same time and that's actually what I'm wearing most of the time.

00:06:59 ◼   ► And I really like the way it looks with the stainless steel. But I've also ordered the classic leather buckle.

00:07:03 ◼   ► And it came in last week. And what I worry about, like from the perspective that you just brought up Federico,

00:07:09 ◼   ► Federico of longevity and durability

00:07:11 ◼   ► The the sport ones, you know

00:07:13 ◼   ► if you take your watch off and slide it out the sport band the the part that slides into the the channel is

00:07:18 ◼   ► rubber itself and it has these little these little nubs that they grab on where the

00:07:23 ◼   ► classic leather buckle out of the other nice ones and Milanese loop and some others have a

00:07:28 ◼   ► Stainless steel lug that slides into the channel that feels much more solid and much more robust in the sport one

00:07:35 ◼   ► So I wonder that if you know if I change these bands out every once in a while

00:07:39 ◼   ► Oh the sport one is gonna wear out where they don't they don't

00:07:41 ◼   ► Connect as firmly or they don't feel as secure in the way that they attach

00:07:46 ◼   ► Where the stainless steel and obviously wouldn't do that because that that metal is not gonna get worn down over time

00:07:50 ◼   ► No, no, I do wonder, you know, I think if you're buying the sport band, I think it's probably wise to go into it

00:07:57 ◼   ► You know kind of knowing that it might not last as long as something, you know more expensive

00:08:01 ◼   ► But it is it is nice to change them out with a stainless steel

00:08:04 ◼   ► I don't have to worry about matching you know the lugs like like Federico you your dark aluminum support watch

00:08:10 ◼   ► I would never put a band on with steel lugs because that's the way that I'm wired

00:08:15 ◼   ► I want to be able to live with myself but um

00:08:17 ◼   ► The the steel one gives you some flexibility and so it is fun to change them out like like Sunday

00:08:23 ◼   ► You know we're went to church with the family. I didn't want to wear like the white sport band because it is flat

00:08:28 ◼   ► More people have noticed the Apple watch when I wear the white band than with the others

00:08:32 ◼   ► I think because it's just a white watch and is brighter and you notice it more

00:08:36 ◼   ► And so I swapped it out for the classic leather buckle, which looks really great Marco Arman's got one

00:08:40 ◼   ► You know, he said that it's very comfortable. I totally agree with that

00:08:42 ◼   ► It's a it's a great band and it's just nice to like dress it up or dress it down or you know

00:08:48 ◼   ► I kind of like the white one because it's a little unusual looking and it's a lot of fun

00:08:51 ◼   ► and so I think you know getting back to the follow-up point of

00:08:55 ◼   ► this third-party

00:08:58 ◼   ► Program is gonna be really interesting to watch what comes out and I think it'll be a lot of fun to

00:09:02 ◼   ► See what their parties do with it and to have options right just to be able to look at outside of what Apple's offerings

00:09:09 ◼   ► are

00:09:11 ◼   ► So up next we have a link from Conrad Hackett on Twitter who I'm not related to just a coincidence

00:09:19 ◼   ► So if a you should totally follow Conrad's Twitter account because it is basically just

00:09:29 ◼   ► Tweets of research. So he's a Pew research demograph

00:09:32 ◼   ► demographer

00:09:35 ◼   ► Steven and Conrad would make for a fun science show. Oh, yeah, it's a big

00:09:42 ◼   ► So basically it's just tweets of like random facts and figures throughout the day and I just I love it

00:09:48 ◼   ► And and just the other day

00:09:51 ◼   ► Had a tweet yesterday had a tweet

00:09:53 ◼   ► Drive on the left side of the road blue drive on the right side of the road red

00:09:57 ◼   ► so it's a world map and you can see that the vast majority of the of the world of

00:10:01 ◼   ► humankind as a pot as a species of

00:10:05 ◼   ► breathing organisms drives on the correct side of the road, which is the right side and then there's some people who

00:10:10 ◼   ► Seem to be crazy who live in these in these left side of the road countries. We spoke about that a couple weeks ago and

00:10:17 ◼   ► While I may be in the vast minority for putting month and then date when I write

00:10:25 ◼   ► Write the date. So today is o5 - 26 not 26 - o5

00:10:29 ◼   ► I will claim victory in the side of the road that I Drive on and I think that's um

00:10:34 ◼   ► I think that's a unique perspective that only our international tech podcast can can bring it's good. It's good stuff

00:10:40 ◼   ► So I'm gonna tell you guys a story real quick

00:10:43 ◼   ► So I saw this tweet from Conrad hack and I said, oh my gosh

00:10:47 ◼   ► Like I feel so good and then I went to check my email and Ken

00:10:51 ◼   ► Didn't ruin my day, but he brought me down a notch Ken humbled me

00:10:55 ◼   ► He links to a similar

00:10:58 ◼   ► graphic of right side versus left side driving and then he says and by the way regardless of which side of the road you drive

00:11:03 ◼   ► On if you're driving a standard car for that country

00:11:06 ◼   ► The driver is always positioned in the middle of the road next to the center line. So my hypothesis of

00:11:12 ◼   ► Well the way that that we drive in the way that the people drive and say the UK, you know

00:11:18 ◼   ► There's safety differences because you are

00:11:21 ◼   ► If you're if you're on a head-on collision, you're further away from the center

00:11:25 ◼   ► And of course, I'm a dummy and you know forgot or didn't register that

00:11:29 ◼   ► If Myke gets in a car and you know, I keep in the steering wheels on a different side

00:11:33 ◼   ► Yeah, so it was a it was a lot of it was an emotional roller coaster putting this follow-up together

00:11:39 ◼   ► I think I need to lie down but um, why don't you let me take over for a moment then? No

00:11:44 ◼   ► Okay, because I know what's next

00:11:47 ◼   ► So some this was sent in to us by Jason Paul on Twitter

00:11:50 ◼   ► And it's but I don't know how I hadn't come across this before it is incredible. It is a blog

00:11:56 ◼   ► by a latest like a website and blog by a lady called Michelle Vandy or Vandy and

00:12:02 ◼   ► She designs she is a designer and she does her design with her nose on a magic trackpad

00:12:08 ◼   ► And it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen and her artwork is incredible

00:12:13 ◼   ► And actually I've seen this this pop up more and more this week actually it's like people seem to be picking it up now

00:12:19 ◼   ► It's like an interesting thing because nose tapping is a real revolution

00:12:23 ◼   ► I don't know if you guys are familiar with that, but it is an actual revolution now

00:12:26 ◼   ► And her work is incredible and it's fun to see her setup as she has like a magic trackpad

00:12:33 ◼   ► attached to a tripod with velcro

00:12:36 ◼   ► and I really like like the header image where she's using her nose to draw something and

00:12:41 ◼   ► Like you can see the back of a Mac and then she's showing her hands and her website is called look no hands

00:12:45 ◼   ► Not me which and I love it. I'm so happy that this has become part of my life

00:12:50 ◼   ► It's it's a great URL and you should definitely go watch. I just was mesmerized

00:12:55 ◼   ► You know Micah unlike you I you're much more video driven

00:12:59 ◼   ► I want to read and so there are a lot of times if I start watching a video

00:13:02 ◼   ► I just sort of skip through it and I was just mesmerized by the work that she's doing and the way that she's doing it

00:13:08 ◼   ► And she's really good reasons for it

00:13:09 ◼   ► is not just out of craziness but sort of out of a necessity and I think it's I

00:13:14 ◼   ► think it's I think it's wonderful and and now we come to the time where I have

00:13:18 ◼   ► to confess to you my brothers that I've sent I I have I have nose tapped and I

00:13:28 ◼   ► have no swiped within the last 48 hours this is the best you could have ever

00:13:36 ◼   ► - You people are crazy.

00:13:38 ◼   ► - So here's what happened.

00:13:42 ◼   ► Again, it's story time with Uncle Steven today

00:13:44 ◼   ► in the follow up.

00:13:45 ◼   ► I was on a bike ride yesterday,

00:13:47 ◼   ► and so I had the workout app set to bike.

00:13:50 ◼   ► I had it open ended, and you know,

00:13:52 ◼   ► you can flip your wrist over, and you can see,

00:13:54 ◼   ► you know, I had it set to how many miles I had gone,

00:13:56 ◼   ► 'cause it was a fixed course.

00:13:58 ◼   ► I knew how long the bike ride would be,

00:13:59 ◼   ► and I wanted to know kind of, hey, am I 25% or am I 40%?

00:14:03 ◼   ► You know, kind of where am I?

00:14:05 ◼   ► And at one point I turned my wrist over

00:14:08 ◼   ► and it didn't wake up because that's the thing

00:14:10 ◼   ► the Apple Watch does.

00:14:12 ◼   ► And I didn't want to take my hand and cross it.

00:14:17 ◼   ► So if you're riding, if you're on a bicycle

00:14:20 ◼   ► and you're riding quickly, you don't want to cross hands.

00:14:22 ◼   ► So you don't want to bring your left hand

00:14:24 ◼   ► over to the right side 'cause something happens,

00:14:26 ◼   ► you want your hands to be on either side.

00:14:28 ◼   ► And it's very easy to get confused quickly

00:14:29 ◼   ► if your hands are crossed or near each other.

00:14:31 ◼   ► And so without, honestly without thinking,

00:14:35 ◼   ► without Myke's face popping in my head.

00:14:37 ◼   ► I brought the watch to my nose and tapped it

00:14:41 ◼   ► and woke it up and it was actually on the wrong screen

00:14:44 ◼   ► so I swiped over and saw the Miles again.

00:14:46 ◼   ► And then I looked around and realized

00:14:49 ◼   ► that at least one person had seen me do it

00:14:51 ◼   ► that I was riding with and sort of gave me this weird look.

00:14:53 ◼   ► - A thumbs up they gave you 'cause they were so proud of you.

00:14:55 ◼   ► - No, it was more of a sort of what are you doing also

00:15:00 ◼   ► is that the Apple Watch type look on their face.

00:15:04 ◼   ► So I'm not joining the ranks of the nose-tapping revolution,

00:15:08 ◼   ► but I have, I did my toe in a little bit, so.

00:15:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, look, I even tried.

00:15:17 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense.

00:15:18 ◼   ► If you, I don't know.

00:15:20 ◼   ► - It makes sense. - Maybe the problem is--

00:15:21 ◼   ► - If your hands are full, it makes sense.

00:15:23 ◼   ► - If your hands are full,

00:15:25 ◼   ► maybe you shouldn't use an Apple Watch.

00:15:27 ◼   ► - What?

00:15:28 ◼   ► Better to go. - If you're so busy

00:15:30 ◼   ► that your hands are full,

00:15:31 ◼   ► Just look at the watch and resume your manual watch activity when you have your hands free.

00:15:37 ◼   ► Otherwise, why don't you use anything with your nose?

00:15:40 ◼   ► Why don't you use any object in your house with your nose?

00:15:43 ◼   ► I do. These days I just nose tap everything.

00:15:46 ◼   ► I just walk around.

00:15:46 ◼   ► So you just click buttons with your nose, you turn on the microwave with your nose.

00:15:53 ◼   ► OK. Well, you must be some kind of weird human being.

00:15:57 ◼   ► Hey, you may call me weird,

00:16:00 ◼   ► But you've seen the amount of people that are doing this.

00:16:03 ◼   ► That's not so dangerous for your nose to touch all the stuff.

00:16:06 ◼   ► I don't really.

00:16:07 ◼   ► Noses aren't supposed to touch stuff.

00:16:09 ◼   ► They're supposed to smell stuff.

00:16:11 ◼   ► I only use my nose in my Apple Watch.

00:16:13 ◼   ► But I don't think it's weird because many people are doing it.

00:16:16 ◼   ► You and I are outnumbered on this show.

00:16:18 ◼   ► Many people are doing it because you launched a trend.

00:16:22 ◼   ► Not because it's a good thing to do.

00:16:26 ◼   ► It's like a club, you know?

00:16:29 ◼   ► It's not a proper implementation of the nose.

00:16:32 ◼   ► Wow.

00:16:33 ◼   ► Open a radar.

00:16:35 ◼   ► We have some exciting news Federico from you.

00:16:38 ◼   ► So what did you receive in the mail this week?

00:16:42 ◼   ► The connected t-shirt.

00:16:44 ◼   ► I'm wearing it right now, in fact.

00:16:47 ◼   ► I'm recording with our t-shirt.

00:16:49 ◼   ► It's like an inception of wearable devices.

00:16:53 ◼   ► In this case a shirt.

00:16:55 ◼   ► And it looks great.

00:16:57 ◼   ► Great quality.

00:16:58 ◼   ► I do like the sentence in the front.

00:17:01 ◼   ► I think it really makes for a good t-shirt.

00:17:06 ◼   ► So congratulations to the designer of the t-shirt, I guess.

00:17:11 ◼   ► Mr. Frank Talos.

00:17:12 ◼   ► Yes, he's awesome.

00:17:14 ◼   ► He/she, I don't know.

00:17:16 ◼   ► A person who exists and never met this person.

00:17:22 ◼   ► Could be an alien for me.

00:17:23 ◼   ► He is an enigma.

00:17:25 ◼   ► That's true.

00:17:27 ◼   ► My favorite part about this tweet, besides your handsome photo here, is your replies

00:17:32 ◼   ► are basically split between how handsome you are and how badly you need a haircut, which

00:17:36 ◼   ► I find...

00:17:37 ◼   ► Do I?

00:17:38 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:17:39 ◼   ► Really funny.

00:17:40 ◼   ► No!

00:17:41 ◼   ► Well, it was right after a shower, you know?

00:17:42 ◼   ► No, my hair used to be that long.

00:17:43 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:17:44 ◼   ► But it just sort of cracked me up when I loaded this in a new tab just now, just looking through

00:17:50 ◼   ► your replies.

00:17:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:52 ◼   ► There's some people who always tell me that I need a haircut.

00:17:54 ◼   ► I guess I'm at the point where not even my dad tells me that I need a haircut so

00:17:59 ◼   ► I think I'm good. It's like how people were compelled to tell me I need to cut

00:18:03 ◼   ► my beard. Yeah that was weird right? Why would they tell you that? Why are people so

00:18:10 ◼   ► compelled to tell you to go to the to get a trim? I don't know. It's silly and in

00:18:17 ◼   ► Federico I think that you have more than earned the right to wear your hair

00:18:20 ◼   ► however you want to so. Thank you. I think if you show up one day with a

00:18:23 ◼   ► a bright red mohawk, I think it's fine.

00:18:27 ◼   ► Although your headphones might have trouble going on over that.

00:18:30 ◼   ► Probably.

00:18:32 ◼   ► So do you want to take us home on the follow-up about your watch and some fitness thoughts?

00:18:36 ◼   ► Yeah, just a quick follow-up that may sound dumb on the surface, but I think that there's

00:18:42 ◼   ► actually a theme or at least a small topic to discuss.

00:18:47 ◼   ► So it's basically something that I did today.

00:18:50 ◼   ► So this morning I wanted to try something new and I wanted to try to do my daily workout

00:18:57 ◼   ► on the indoor bike in the morning, right after breakfast instead of the afternoon, right

00:19:03 ◼   ► after lunch.

00:19:05 ◼   ► So my idea was that because these days I'm busy and I need to save as much time as possible,

00:19:11 ◼   ► I would try to wake up earlier and have breakfast and then go have my workout.

00:19:17 ◼   ► So I felt exhausted in the morning, it was like 30 minutes after I woke up and I'm not

00:19:22 ◼   ► used to that kind of exercise in the morning.

00:19:26 ◼   ► By the way, my morning would be like noon for people in Italy, so my concept of morning

00:19:33 ◼   ► is basically based on the US time zone.

00:19:36 ◼   ► Anyway, it was terrible because I wasn't used to doing workouts in the morning and I had

00:19:41 ◼   ► to stop after 15 minutes, basically, instead of 30 minutes.

00:19:48 ◼   ► So my exercise ring on the watch was half full or empty, if you're a negative person,

00:19:57 ◼   ► I guess.

00:19:58 ◼   ► And that was really bothering me today.

00:20:02 ◼   ► I was just a couple of hours away from recording the show tonight after dinner, and there were

00:20:09 ◼   ► those seven minutes because then this afternoon I walked a little and there were seven minutes

00:20:17 ◼   ► of empty exercise staring at me in the green circle on the watch and I was very much bothered

00:20:24 ◼   ► by those missing minutes. So because Myke knows I have a kind of big balcony in my house

00:20:33 ◼   ► So I set the watch to an open outdoor walk workout and I walked alone on my balcony for

00:20:42 ◼   ► seven minutes until I filled the green circle.

00:20:47 ◼   ► So if you happen to be one of my neighbors from the other buildings and you were watching

00:20:53 ◼   ► a person walking on the balcony, very intensively, for seven minutes, that was me.

00:20:58 ◼   ► And I'm not crazy, I was just, well I guess I'm crazy by some standards.

00:21:02 ◼   ► I was just trying to fill my exercise rings.

00:21:05 ◼   ► The topic, the serious topic here, is how the watch is kinda pushing me to...

00:21:11 ◼   ► Like with these circles, right?

00:21:12 ◼   ► And I think that Marco brought about this this week.

00:21:16 ◼   ► For visual people like me and I guess Marco, having that kind of encouragement and visualization

00:21:25 ◼   ► helps me kind of get my activity done, like G-A-D, sort of like GTD for fitness people,

00:21:36 ◼   ► maybe.

00:21:37 ◼   ► It's like, I need to get this done today.

00:21:39 ◼   ► I need to walk more.

00:21:40 ◼   ► I need to exercise and I need to fill those minutes.

00:21:43 ◼   ► And I know that maybe if you ask a physician or maybe like any kind of fitness expert,

00:21:48 ◼   ► they will tell you, well, it doesn't really matter, you know, the circles and the interface

00:21:52 ◼   ► and whatever.

00:21:53 ◼   ► But to a person who doesn't know, like, "Is it okay if maybe I have a 15-minute workout

00:21:58 ◼   ► today instead of a 30-minute one?"

00:22:01 ◼   ► To somebody who's not an expert, that kind of interface and that kind of design pushes

00:22:06 ◼   ► me to do more, and it bothers me when it's empty, so I guess that it's working.

00:22:13 ◼   ► It is weird.

00:22:14 ◼   ► I was walking on my balcony alone.

00:22:18 ◼   ► My girlfriend was making fun of me.

00:22:20 ◼   ► She told me I was crazy.

00:22:21 ◼   ► She's probably right.

00:22:23 ◼   ► But still, I got my reward on the watch.

00:22:26 ◼   ► I'm not yet going to the lengths of walking on the balcony.

00:22:32 ◼   ► But I am finding myself thinking about the activity rings more than I expected I would

00:22:39 ◼   ► have done.

00:22:40 ◼   ► I love it when I fill them.

00:22:42 ◼   ► And I do make conscious decisions.

00:22:43 ◼   ► Like today, I went to lunch with Dan Murrin and Matt Alexander and it's very obvious they're

00:22:48 ◼   ► both in London right now, which is very nice.

00:22:52 ◼   ► I could have cut my journey time down into London by 10 minutes by taking a

00:23:00 ◼   ► tube or I could have had a 25 minute walk instead and I was like that will

00:23:05 ◼   ► probably do quite well for the exercise ring I'm gonna go for the walk so I did

00:23:09 ◼   ► and it helped so I'm making those kinds of decisions which I like I like that

00:23:13 ◼   ► I'm doing that yeah I totally agree I've definitely my experience have been the

00:23:19 ◼   ► same as y'all where it's something I think about something that I want to

00:23:23 ◼   ► achieve and you know for me it's it's interesting the move and the stay in

00:23:27 ◼   ► one are really easy for me to do because I'm I'm out about a lot during the day

00:23:31 ◼   ► going to meetings and seeing clients and we have an open office so I'm just

00:23:34 ◼   ► walking around the office and it's that exercise one that is harder to get

00:23:38 ◼   ► because it measures elevated heart rate and yes that doesn't always happen

00:23:42 ◼   ► walking around the office and so there's ever been a couple evenings it was like hey

00:23:45 ◼   ► I'm gonna you know I'm gonna go walk around or maybe I'm gonna walk

00:23:48 ◼   ► you know the long way to the parking garage to get my car or

00:23:52 ◼   ► Definitely gonna take stairs now so the elevator to the office so

00:23:55 ◼   ► It is funny. You know it like like you said it was easy to write that off and some people still are but I think it

00:24:02 ◼   ► Is you know clearly?

00:24:04 ◼   ► something that

00:24:06 ◼   ► At least the three of us and other people wanna you know want to meet that goal

00:24:10 ◼   ► And I think that's great, and it's I don't know about you guys

00:24:12 ◼   ► But I don't I don't feel like that the watch is pushy with it like sometimes the stand thing is a little annoying like like yesterday

00:24:17 ◼   ► I was I got home and and just kind of working on the couch for a little while

00:24:21 ◼   ► And it's like hey you need to stand up like wow I'm in the middle of this

00:24:23 ◼   ► I'm going to ignore you

00:24:25 ◼   ► But other than that I just feel like it's a it's just a nice like subtle reminder to get up and do something and

00:24:30 ◼   ► While not badgering you to death about it. Yeah, so I see people getting upset about the stand

00:24:35 ◼   ► Goal thing like the reminder. It doesn't bother me at all

00:24:39 ◼   ► I like that it's there and I can very easily ignore it about getting angry at it, you know

00:24:43 ◼   ► Well people also get upset that they die eventually

00:24:45 ◼   ► So, you know that is true. I might as well stand up a little more

00:24:50 ◼   ► I don't think that ultimately solves the problem of death

00:24:54 ◼   ► What you know anything helps and so I'm standing up more. I don't wanna you know, I already

00:25:02 ◼   ► Already used one of my chances. So I'm standing up

00:25:08 ◼   ► Should we take our first break?

00:25:09 ◼   ► Yes.

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00:28:19 ◼   ► most happening guys yet something something we have some Q&A that we want

00:28:27 ◼   ► to do today couple of couple of Q&A tweets I saw you collected up for us

00:28:31 ◼   ► Stephen yes so so up first from cost us yes I don't know why I always try to

00:28:40 ◼   ► enter these things and I can't pronounce names do you guys wear your watches in

00:28:45 ◼   ► the shower no I'm not a rubber scoble no under no circumstances agreed I I don't

00:28:53 ◼   ► for a couple reasons a it just apples is not to you so I don't and I there's

00:28:59 ◼   ► nothing in the world that I would need to alert me when I'm in the shower like

00:29:04 ◼   ► nothing it you know just what what could be important to interrupt shower I don't

00:29:10 ◼   ► now. Yeah I also take off my watch when I'm doing dishes. I just don't want to risk it,

00:29:18 ◼   ► you know? I mean I got this expensive gadget all the way from Germany and you know it's

00:29:23 ◼   ► been an adventure to get it here and now I should take a shower and do dishes with the

00:29:28 ◼   ► watch? No way. I want to play it safe. I do, I will tweet about this how it feels really

00:29:35 ◼   ► weird but I do rinse it off so like after a bike ride or working in the yard

00:29:40 ◼   ► or something I will you know take it off and rinse it just just with water and

00:29:45 ◼   ► then dry it now Apple says that's fine now Apple says things like soap you

00:29:49 ◼   ► shouldn't do so so for that reason I don't I don't do it I don't wear it

00:29:52 ◼   ► when I when I wash the dishes either but I definitely have rinsed it off because

00:29:57 ◼   ► you know it gets it gets sweaty and kind of gross and I like to keep it clean so

00:30:01 ◼   ► You've got to keep it clean. I just... I'm not... like my girlfriend, she takes hers

00:30:09 ◼   ► off if she's even like washing her hands. She's just a little bit

00:30:13 ◼   ► concerned about it. And I say it's fine and I don't worry about things like that. I

00:30:16 ◼   ► don't worry about getting a little bit wet but like I didn't... I know you know

00:30:20 ◼   ► I've heard people say like they could you could maybe swim with it. I'm not

00:30:23 ◼   ► doing that and I'm... I just... I'm not gonna take it in the shower. I'm not gonna take

00:30:27 ◼   ► in the bathtub like I can take it off for a few minutes and I'm fine I would

00:30:31 ◼   ► just prefer not to go down that road I know Jason showers a bit on and that is

00:30:37 ◼   ► crazy to me it's just crazy to me. Up next Justin he has a link and he

00:30:46 ◼   ► says basically how do you guys name your devices so my method is very

00:30:55 ◼   ► very basic I basically just put my Twitter handle ismh in front of the

00:31:00 ◼   ► device name so ismh6+ or ismh air 2 it's not great but it's really just so I

00:31:09 ◼   ► can I can spot one of my devices on the network like it like at work or

00:31:12 ◼   ► something so what about what about the two of you?

00:31:16 ◼   ► It is one of those things that I don't have an opinion about I just keep the

00:31:23 ◼   ► default name? I used to, up until a little while ago, I would name all of my devices

00:31:30 ◼   ► in a series. So like at one point they were all Avengers characters, another

00:31:35 ◼   ► point they were all characters from Scott Pilgrim, and I would like give them

00:31:39 ◼   ► names depending on the like the products characteristics, you know. Like I think

00:31:43 ◼   ► like my MacBook Pro was like the Incredible Hulk because it was the

00:31:48 ◼   ► biggest, the most powerful, that kind of thing. But then it kind of got to the

00:31:51 ◼   ► point where I just for some reason I got one device and did I think it was when I

00:31:56 ◼   ► got the 6+ I just didn't give it a name and then and now I just don't do it at

00:31:59 ◼   ► all it's just a lot to keep up on I don't even know what my products are

00:32:02 ◼   ► called like I have no idea what I've named them all like they're just

00:32:06 ◼   ► whatever they are but but I get the naming thing I get why people do it but

00:32:13 ◼   ► but yeah I don't do it. Stephen do you name anything like hard drives or like

00:32:16 ◼   ► storage devices and stuff like that? Usually not my my NAS at home and the

00:32:25 ◼   ► Mac Mini at home have names that sort of relate to each other but I'm definitely

00:32:30 ◼   ► not as hardcore as some people. I've got a buddy of mine who's named

00:32:34 ◼   ► computers after artists or after planets in the Star Wars system like really into

00:32:38 ◼   ► it and again I get that but it's like it's another layer of things you have to

00:32:42 ◼   ► remember so you know mine is really just a way for me to say hey this is mine I

00:32:45 ◼   ► I can find it easily but still using the product name to keep it not completely abstracted

00:32:52 ◼   ► away.

00:32:53 ◼   ► But it's fun.

00:32:54 ◼   ► It's fun that you get to do it.

00:32:55 ◼   ► If you don't know how to do it on the Mac, it's in sharing system preferences and on

00:32:59 ◼   ► iOS it's under general about and you can change your device name.

00:33:03 ◼   ► And I think you do it in iTunes as well if you still use a cable to sync your device

00:33:06 ◼   ► like a gentleman.

00:33:08 ◼   ► I guess I would care more if I use the Mac because maybe you see the device name pop

00:33:14 ◼   ► up on on stand more than you do on iOS so it makes sense for you guys to to

00:33:19 ◼   ► care about this yeah I think that's definitely something I was you don't

00:33:25 ◼   ► ever really see it so so we got one more should mention that these tweets know

00:33:33 ◼   ► these questions have all come in on the Twitter via the connected QA hashtag if

00:33:38 ◼   ► that's something that you would like to get involved with you can feel free to

00:33:42 ◼   ► to do that and we pick them out every now and then to read it. I find it is

00:33:47 ◼   ► nice for interaction. I'm all about the listener interaction these days and this

00:33:52 ◼   ► is one way that keeps it nice and fresh.

00:33:56 ◼   ► I think so. I think it's a lot of fun.

00:33:59 ◼   ► So the last question is from someone whose name on Twitter is a period, so that's exciting.

00:34:08 ◼   ► From all the places you have visited on earth what was your favorite and how

00:34:11 ◼   ► long can you survive disconnected? I like that he specified or she specified on

00:34:17 ◼   ► earth. Well you know I can't yeah I like to tell you about that trip but I can't

00:34:23 ◼   ► yeah. What about you Federico? Okay so I'm totally the obvious one I'm gonna say

00:34:31 ◼   ► a place in Italy first time that I went was three years ago in the Amalfi Coast

00:34:37 ◼   ► and the entire Amalfi Coast is just beautiful but there was one place in

00:34:42 ◼   ► particular which is called Ravelo which is this little town, very small town,

00:34:49 ◼   ► that just on the top of the Amalfi Coast so you see the entire coast from

00:34:55 ◼   ► this town and there's a specific spot in this town where there's

00:34:59 ◼   ► like an open balcony, people go there to take pictures and you just you stand

00:35:05 ◼   ► there and you look down and you see the entire coast like kilometers and

00:35:09 ◼   ► kilometers of coast. It looks fake for for how much it's beautiful and I still

00:35:17 ◼   ► take a look at the pictures that I that I that I that I took there just to

00:35:22 ◼   ► remind myself of how beautiful that place was and it's I know that it's

00:35:26 ◼   ► obvious because I'm in Italy and this place is in Italy but it was the first

00:35:30 ◼   ► time that I visited these geomorphicals and this town three years ago and it made an impression

00:35:37 ◼   ► of me on me and yeah, it's a go to the geomorphicals and go to Ravello, it's beautiful.

00:35:44 ◼   ► I'm adding that to my travel dream journal as we speak.

00:35:50 ◼   ► Do you keep one of those?

00:35:52 ◼   ► No but I can start one.

00:35:56 ◼   ► What about you Michael?

00:35:58 ◼   ► So I was thinking about this, I mean I really enjoyed my time in Palermo last year, but

00:36:06 ◼   ► I think I just enjoyed it because it was a really nice relaxing holiday as opposed to

00:36:10 ◼   ► it necessarily being one of the best places that I've ever been to, but I did enjoy it

00:36:14 ◼   ► a lot and will very much go back there.

00:36:17 ◼   ► But I think probably the place that has left the biggest impact on me would probably be

00:36:23 ◼   ► Portland, Oregon.

00:36:25 ◼   ► I enjoyed it very very much when I was there and I look forward very much to going back

00:36:30 ◼   ► again in September.

00:36:31 ◼   ► I'm hoping to attend XOXO again.

00:36:35 ◼   ► I really really love Portland a lot.

00:36:37 ◼   ► It has a lot of what I like in a place.

00:36:39 ◼   ► It has good food and good people and it's got a nice cool vibe to it which I quite enjoy.

00:36:45 ◼   ► And I don't really last long being disconnected.

00:36:51 ◼   ► I kind of tend... what I do... I don't really like to completely disconnect. I like to

00:36:56 ◼   ► just significantly pare back what I do online. So I, you know, I have my phone or

00:37:03 ◼   ► whatever with me and I'll keep it on and... but I'll like cut things out and I'll

00:37:08 ◼   ► cut the amount of time that I spend online. But I don't... I don't like to fully

00:37:12 ◼   ► disconnect myself. It just doesn't... I think... I think I would be too distracted

00:37:19 ◼   ► by the anxiety of something going wrong that I need to fix, then if I

00:37:26 ◼   ► just knew that I could be grabbed if it was needed, I feel better

00:37:30 ◼   ► that way I think. Yeah I think that's where I line up as far as

00:37:36 ◼   ► the disconnecting. You know, like, "Hey I'm not gonna do anything

00:37:40 ◼   ► active but if a VIP or somebody emails me or texts me

00:37:45 ◼   ► deal with it but not like going out spending time online like actively if that difference

00:37:51 ◼   ► makes any sense. Yeah well I didn't, sorry, I didn't reply to this question. I've been

00:37:59 ◼   ► forced to stay off the internet for weeks in the past and it was awful and like I don't know if

00:38:08 ◼   ► it's some sort of like drug in a way that I need to get my daily dose of internet and

00:38:17 ◼   ► Twitter and news, could be, but in the past when I went without being on the internet

00:38:24 ◼   ► and replying to email and checking tweets, it was kind of terrible because it made me

00:38:29 ◼   ► feel like in another age.

00:38:33 ◼   ► So I feel like asking how long can you be without the internet would be like asking

00:38:38 ◼   ► to someone who drives how long can you stay without a car.

00:38:43 ◼   ► And you can stay without a car if you're being forced to but it would really suck.

00:38:50 ◼   ► And that was my experience with not having the internet like three years ago.

00:38:56 ◼   ► It was kind of awful but I survived.

00:38:58 ◼   ► I mean I'm alive.

00:39:00 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:39:01 ◼   ► I guess maybe for a couple of days.

00:39:04 ◼   ► Like there was a couple of years ago, I wanted to kind of detox from Twitter.

00:39:09 ◼   ► And I stayed off RSS and Twitter for like a week.

00:39:13 ◼   ► But I came back crawling.

00:39:15 ◼   ► Because I guess the internet is part of myself and my life at this point.

00:39:21 ◼   ► And it would be, I wouldn't say like taking oxygen out of me because that would be too dramatic and too much.

00:39:27 ◼   ► But, you know, it's a highly used utility that I can survive without, but I would kind

00:39:38 ◼   ► of feel not miserable, but very much stuck in another era.

00:39:43 ◼   ► Yeah, it would suck.

00:39:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:48 ◼   ► I was just going to wrap up by saying, by place, I spent some time in the Czech Republic

00:39:54 ◼   ► in college, or in between high school and college, I think,

00:39:59 ◼   ► and spent some time in the city of Prague,

00:40:01 ◼   ► which is beautiful.

00:40:02 ◼   ► This question is tricky because I'm sure there are places

00:40:06 ◼   ► better than the places we have picked,

00:40:07 ◼   ► but the beauty of it is places we have been.

00:40:10 ◼   ► And Prague was just amazing in many different ways,

00:40:14 ◼   ► and I would definitely love to go back

00:40:16 ◼   ► to that part of the world at some point.

00:40:18 ◼   ► It's a really interesting part of the world.

00:40:20 ◼   ► And it's a good question.

00:40:23 ◼   ► all good questions this week. And like Myke said, #ConnectedQA on Twitter. You can really

00:40:32 ◼   ► ask us anything, as the kids say.

00:40:34 ◼   ► Can ask anything that you want, but it doesn't mean we'll answer.

00:40:37 ◼   ► So can I have a real-time #ConnectedQA for a question that I've been thinking about for

00:40:44 ◼   ► a few days? Of course, I didn't tweet it because it would be weird for me to tweet. Can I just

00:40:51 ◼   ► ask you guys?

00:40:52 ◼   ► Yeah, so do you know if Dark Sky, Myke this is probably something that you know, supports

00:41:03 ◼   ► notifications for weather alerts in Italy or in Europe?

00:41:07 ◼   ► It does for me in London, yeah I can get rain alerts and stuff like that.

00:41:12 ◼   ► Can you get those on the watch?

00:41:15 ◼   ► Yes.

00:41:16 ◼   ► So basically when it starts raining you get a notification.

00:41:21 ◼   ► If I wanted to, I actually don't have the rain one set up anymore because it used to

00:41:25 ◼   ► just happen in real time and it made me sad.

00:41:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean you live in London and it's just like always vibrating, just endlessly.

00:41:32 ◼   ► It's always raining.

00:41:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I gotta check it out because there's, you know, lots of people love Dark Sky.

00:41:40 ◼   ► I wanna love it too, it just doesn't wanna love me back.

00:41:43 ◼   ► Oh I love Dark Sky, that's the weather app that I use and it's mainly because I like

00:41:48 ◼   ► some of the things that it does but it's rain stuff is excellent and you know we

00:41:53 ◼   ► have a rain thing here so it's nice to know.

00:41:56 ◼   ► Do you? Really?

00:41:57 ◼   ► Uh-huh. Happens once every couple of years.

00:42:00 ◼   ► That's why you want to live in Portland. It's like the same weather.

00:42:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:42:05 ◼   ► I see what you've done.

00:42:07 ◼   ► Can we move on? I'm sorry, Myke.

00:42:12 ◼   ► No, it's good. It's good. That was a good question because it's good for people to know that.

00:42:17 ◼   ► because I recommend that.

00:42:19 ◼   ► When I talked about the weather last time, people got upset

00:42:23 ◼   ► because I told you guys about looking out of the window

00:42:28 ◼   ► and we got people saying "I don't have a window"

00:42:30 ◼   ► and it was kind of a bummer for me, so I don't, you know.

00:42:34 ◼   ► I forgot about that. That was a lot of fun.

00:42:36 ◼   ► Yeah. No, it really wasn't. I don't know.

00:42:40 ◼   ► So, yeah, Dark Sky. I'll check it out again. Thank you.

00:42:43 ◼   ► I don't know what's wrong with you Federico Viticci, you can just look out of the window.

00:42:46 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:42:47 ◼   ► But he doesn't have a window!

00:42:51 ◼   ► This week's episode of Connected is also brought to you by OmniFocus.

00:42:56 ◼   ► I flat out love OmniFocus.

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00:45:38 ◼   ► Thank you so much to the OmniGroup for supporting this show and helping us out here at relay.fm.

00:45:44 ◼   ► So the next time you two think I'm crazy, I'm gonna send you this bit of Spotify news

00:45:52 ◼   ► as confirmation of the fact that sometimes I may be crazy, but other times I'm not so

00:45:59 ◼   ► stupid.

00:46:00 ◼   ► The thing is, when you started that off, I was expecting you to go "the next time you

00:46:05 ◼   ► think I'm crazy, you can see this and you know I'm right" but it ended up being like

00:46:08 ◼   ► "sometimes I'm still a little bit crazy and sometimes I'm still a little bit stupid, but

00:46:12 ◼   ► this shows me that sometimes I'm kind of not".

00:46:16 ◼   ► I don't like to brag, and I'm a honest guy, sometimes I'm stupid, sometimes I'm not. I

00:46:22 ◼   ► feel like more people should be open about their stupidness, or stupidity, whatever it's

00:46:27 ◼   ► called I don't know. Anyway, did you know that there was a Spotify event last week

00:46:35 ◼   ► and did you know that you can now sync music to your running tempo? Did you know?

00:46:42 ◼   ► I saw that and it made me think of the old Nike+ iPod integration where you

00:46:50 ◼   ► could have like a power song so if you were going up a hill or needed like a

00:46:53 ◼   ► boost you'd be like "power song" and it would play your favorite I don't know

00:46:57 ◼   ► One Direction tune. Yeah because that's what the kids listen to right? I don't know.

00:47:05 ◼   ► Literally the first band name that popped in your mind was One Direction.

00:47:13 ◼   ► I was thinking about that it was in my mind because Stephen Hawkins had

00:47:18 ◼   ► that question and answer was like maybe there's a universe where One

00:47:21 ◼   ► direction didn't break up and there was lots of hilarious things about that but

00:47:26 ◼   ► so what you're saying is if I'm running a certain pace it can pick music to

00:47:30 ◼   ► match my pace so I'm running slow because I'm slow if I'm running fast

00:47:33 ◼   ► throw ups and Norwegian death metal how does it do that though do I need to tell

00:47:38 ◼   ► it like how does it know how so it's not kind of it's not clear because of course

00:47:43 ◼   ► Spotify cannot doesn't have an Apple watch app and they cannot even even if

00:47:48 ◼   ► they did, they couldn't access the heart rate sensor in this version of the WatchKit developer

00:47:56 ◼   ► tools. So the last time we spoke about music on the Apple Watch, I'm bringing this up because

00:48:02 ◼   ► I mentioned that it would be cool if Apple's music app could look into your heart rate when you're

00:48:09 ◼   ► doing, you know, running, walking or doing any kind of exercise and match music to your beat,

00:48:15 ◼   ► basically. And Spotify announced this new Spotify running, it's called a new feature, a new listening

00:48:22 ◼   ► mode, I guess. And it's not clear exactly what kind of technology they're using because this is

00:48:28 ◼   ► only on the iPhone. So it could be GPS and the accelerometer, so that's my best guess. They're

00:48:37 ◼   ► using a combination of the two to kind of guess how fast you're going. You can also manually

00:48:45 ◼   ► tweak the BPM that is displayed on screen, but otherwise Spotify tries to detect a new BPM

00:48:52 ◼   ► every X minutes and they try to match songs to basically how fast you're running. And it's a

00:49:01 ◼   ► It's a good idea, I think.

00:49:04 ◼   ► I'm not sure about its limitations on the iPhone.

00:49:08 ◼   ► It would make more sense with a full Apple Watch SDK or any other wearable device that

00:49:13 ◼   ► offers a heart rate sensor that lets you look into your actual heart rate instead of trying

00:49:20 ◼   ► to guess your speed by using the GPS and accelerometer.

00:49:24 ◼   ► But it proves that there's potential to the idea of, you know, let's use all these fitness

00:49:32 ◼   ► and health features to change the behavior of apps that are not related to fitness, like

00:49:37 ◼   ► Spotify.

00:49:38 ◼   ► It's a music app.

00:49:40 ◼   ► What's the deal with fitness?

00:49:41 ◼   ► Well, it turns out that because a lot of people are using Spotify to listen to music while

00:49:45 ◼   ► they're working out, you know, doing exercise and running, it could be a good idea to try

00:49:49 ◼   ► to put them better in the mood, to kind of encourage them with music that is matched

00:49:56 ◼   ► to their speed. So it's a nice idea. I still don't have the feature on my Spotify account.

00:50:03 ◼   ► It's apparently available to users, I just don't see it, so probably it's rolling out

00:50:09 ◼   ► globally, I don't know. Myke, do you have the feature in your Spotify?

00:50:14 ◼   ► >> I'm taking a look right now.

00:50:17 ◼   ► Because if you do, you need to go running right now in London in the middle of the night.

00:50:25 ◼   ► Not gonna do that, buddy.

00:50:26 ◼   ► But I don't have it.

00:50:27 ◼   ► I don't have it.

00:50:28 ◼   ► Because apparently it pops up in the sidebar and it's like "Hey, would you like to try

00:50:32 ◼   ► out something new?"

00:50:36 ◼   ► Can you try to go to the settings?

00:50:37 ◼   ► Because I saw some people go to the settings and get a message to try the new running mode.

00:50:42 ◼   ► And I'm thinking if it's not the accelerometer, they could be using the motion stuff on an

00:50:49 ◼   ► iPhone.

00:50:50 ◼   ► The M7?

00:50:51 ◼   ► Yeah, the M8 I think it's called on the latest iPhone.

00:50:55 ◼   ► Yeah, the motion coprocessor or whatever.

00:50:59 ◼   ► And they could detect if you're running, I'm not sure if you can detect the speed of running

00:51:05 ◼   ► in the settings, right?

00:51:06 ◼   ► I went into the settings, didn't see anything, went back out to the main menu and it said

00:51:10 ◼   ► running on the side.

00:51:12 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:51:13 ◼   ► Tips with Tichi, Spotify edition.

00:51:17 ◼   ► Because they have, I thought this was the case, they have some music that's specifically

00:51:20 ◼   ► been made to benefit from this, like TSO did a bunch of stuff, where the BPM can change

00:51:25 ◼   ► and the tempo can change, so it can adapt to the way that you run.

00:51:30 ◼   ► Yeah okay, there we go, look at that.

00:51:32 ◼   ► I'll have to ship my iPhone to you Federico because I don't run, I don't like running.

00:51:37 ◼   ► I think that this is limited to certain countries right now, I think, is the way that they're

00:51:42 ◼   ► doing it.

00:51:43 ◼   ► And they're rolling it out slowly as these things tend to happen.

00:51:48 ◼   ► But it's very interesting.

00:51:49 ◼   ► I think that it's a smart thing to do.

00:51:52 ◼   ► This wasn't the thing that I was most interested by at that event though, which was, as you

00:51:59 ◼   ► can imagine for me, was Spotify is adding podcasts to their playlist functionality.

00:52:07 ◼   ► What do you think of having not just audio podcasts but also video content they're doing?

00:52:13 ◼   ► They're doing some partnerships also with some exclusive content which they love to

00:52:18 ◼   ► have exclusive stuff in their brand.

00:52:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I think video is kind of like, no that's not what people are.

00:52:23 ◼   ► Kind of weird.

00:52:24 ◼   ► That's not, you know, you are streaming, you're music streaming and audio streaming I can

00:52:29 ◼   ► get on board with, like any type of audio.

00:52:32 ◼   ► But don't try to be a video app as well, that's something totally different.

00:52:35 ◼   ► leave that to YouTube because you're not gonna win there. You can't beat YouTube.

00:52:41 ◼   ► You could create a compelling all types of audio platform, right? Because that

00:52:46 ◼   ► that space is not one. Like SoundCloud's doing an interest in playing it but it's

00:52:52 ◼   ► not over yet. YouTube it's over, right? At least for a for quite a while YouTube's

00:52:58 ◼   ► got that tied up and Spotify having exclusive content from some comedy TV

00:53:02 ◼   ► shows is not going to make isn't it will not make for a compelling video play

00:53:06 ◼   ► they even need to do a lot more or just not blow up but I think the podcast stuff

00:53:12 ◼   ► is really interesting and we've had a few people ask but you know just to make

00:53:17 ◼   ► it clear all of the podcasts are currently on Spotify are there because

00:53:21 ◼   ► Spotify asked them there is no method I've looked it up there is no way to get

00:53:27 ◼   ► anything included. They have no terms, they have nothing. This is very much a "we will

00:53:34 ◼   ► ask you" at the moment. But maybe in the future, who knows? Depending on what their terms look

00:53:39 ◼   ► like, we may want to put our shows there. But I think it's interesting. Again, I haven't

00:53:47 ◼   ► seen what the podcast function looks like, because that I can't see right now. I don't

00:53:54 ◼   ► know where you would even find that. I don't think they have a specific section even.

00:53:58 ◼   ► Oh you need to go running first.

00:54:00 ◼   ► I don't think that that's true.

00:54:01 ◼   ► I'm searching for this American life. No it's not, it's not there. So I don't know, again,

00:54:09 ◼   ► I don't know how that works, maybe that's coming as well, who knows, it's basically impossible to tell.

00:54:14 ◼   ► But this is something that's interesting to me but I don't think that Spotify are really doing

00:54:22 ◼   ► enough to make them a real player here yet. Maybe that's something that comes later.

00:54:29 ◼   ► But they didn't really seem to say of any specific features or any functionality that they're going

00:54:35 ◼   ► to do. It's kind of just like, "Oh, you'll be listening to a mix and then sometimes a

00:54:39 ◼   ► two-hour tech podcast will pop up in the middle." It's like, "Okay, that's not really, again,

00:54:45 ◼   ► what we're looking for." I understand what they're trying to do with that. They're trying to make

00:54:48 ◼   ► radio. They're trying to make radio, that's what they're trying to do. It reminds me of Silicon

00:54:52 ◼   ► Valley. I put radio on the internet! Oh you watch it season two? Yeah. Oh it's so good.

00:54:57 ◼   ► It's very, in my opinion it's better than season one. But yeah, that's another story for another

00:55:01 ◼   ► day. But like that's all it is and I don't think they're doing enough there. But this is just the

00:55:07 ◼   ► start. Like I expect them to build this up and I think if you're gonna try it, the best way to try

00:55:13 ◼   ► it is to curate some selected partners that you can work with to try and improve your offering.

00:55:16 ◼   ► but Spotify doing this makes sense to me. I don't know if you guys think about that.

00:55:21 ◼   ► I mean I guess my question is as someone who doesn't use streaming services, which is well

00:55:29 ◼   ► established on our show, it from the outside it feels like okay why like are you trying to

00:55:36 ◼   ► to go from like the place I go for music to the place I go for all like entertainment on my

00:55:44 ◼   ► my computer and like if so this is a very weird way it seems like a very

00:55:48 ◼   ► weird way to go about it like if you want to be like my podcast client on my

00:55:54 ◼   ► Mac then like you should let me add podcasts you should let people like us

00:55:57 ◼   ► who own a network to partner with you and it I don't know maybe it's just an

00:56:02 ◼   ► early step and maybe there's another shoe to drop but it feels like it's sort

00:56:07 ◼   ► of like half done and I don't really know why it's half done.

00:56:10 ◼   ► So, I have a thought that I've kind of been thinking about for a while and it pertains

00:56:18 ◼   ► maybe in a way to Spotify also.

00:56:21 ◼   ► And so I've been noticing, like, I wouldn't say a trend, maybe a common pattern in some

00:56:27 ◼   ► companies, especially in the past year.

00:56:30 ◼   ► And there's quite a few companies who are consolidating all, you know, multiple technologies

00:56:38 ◼   ► in a single place.

00:56:40 ◼   ► So take a look, and this happens with video streaming, take a look at YouTube and they're

00:56:45 ◼   ► doing traditional video stuff but they're also doing live streaming and they're also

00:56:51 ◼   ► kinda trying to take on Twitch, you know, for streaming video games and they're trying

00:56:56 ◼   ► to bundle all these features together.

00:56:59 ◼   ► And there's Spotify, it's trying to bring music and podcasts and now video together

00:57:06 ◼   ► in the same kind of silo, in the same Vrunce ecosystem, because it's just a Spotify service,

00:57:11 ◼   ► it's a big, big service. So they're trying to bring all these features together. And

00:57:15 ◼   ► this is also happening with media sites. Take a look just now, for example, at Vox Media,

00:57:21 ◼   ► they acquired Rekode, the website from Walt Mossberg and Carlos Wisher, and all these

00:57:27 ◼   ► big conglomerations, all these big companies that are trying to put everything together

00:57:32 ◼   ► in a single basket. Whether it's music or video or media content that you read and watch

00:57:38 ◼   ► on the internet. And I don't know how I feel about that. Because on the other hand, there's

00:57:44 ◼   ► companies like Google and Apple, they have different apps and services and solutions.

00:57:51 ◼   ► So Apple has the Apple ecosystem, but they have the podcast app, they have the iTunes

00:57:58 ◼   ► store and then they're gonna have music streaming and Google, Google has a lot of properties

00:58:06 ◼   ► but they also have, you know, Google Music and they don't have podcasts I think.

00:58:12 ◼   ► But basically it's like a contrast between these big companies, they have ecosystems

00:58:18 ◼   ► and these other companies are trying to make big services with tons of features and I don't

00:58:23 ◼   ► know what that contrast means, I just think it's kind of weird as a user to have on one

00:58:31 ◼   ► hand huge ecosystems, on the other hand there used to be a bunch of different websites and

00:58:38 ◼   ► services and apps and now all these maybe smaller companies because they are not ecosystems,

00:58:44 ◼   ► they're trying to bundle together all this stuff and it can be confusing.

00:58:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I think there's this interesting thing where some companies are unbundling, like

00:58:58 ◼   ► Facebook, and then some companies are bundling.

00:59:02 ◼   ► There's no trend right now.

00:59:04 ◼   ► It's like if there's anything media related, actually, they seem to be just...

00:59:07 ◼   ► Everyone's just trying to pull it all in, we'll take it all.

00:59:10 ◼   ► But if it's an app like this, like a social network, they're all about, "Let's just break

00:59:14 ◼   ► it up into tiny thousand pieces."

00:59:16 ◼   ► Twitter's doing the same, right?

00:59:17 ◼   ► we're gonna talk about a bit more about that kind of thing with them in a minute

00:59:20 ◼   ► but there is like everybody's just kind of like if you're in media you want all

00:59:26 ◼   ► of the media and yeah I don't know I did want to say it before we before we did

00:59:32 ◼   ► move on about this I'm feeling myself just going back to Spotify now Beats

00:59:37 ◼   ► music is just annoying me too much I use Spotify exclusively on the desktop now

00:59:41 ◼   ► because I can't deal with with the Beats Music web player anymore it's driving me

00:59:47 ◼   ► crazy and then that's also pushing me towards the iOS app but you know I'm not

00:59:54 ◼   ► gonna make any decisions for at least a couple of weeks right because we might

00:59:57 ◼   ► end up seeing something but Beats is too buggy and I know it's

01:00:02 ◼   ► because I don't think it's being actively worked on and that's

01:00:05 ◼   ► frustrating me so Spotify is and the app works fine and I'm enjoying using it again.

01:00:11 ◼   ► Yeah I have my Spotify subscription all paid up until next

01:00:19 ◼   ► month so good timing for you know waiting for Apple.

01:00:23 ◼   ► Perfect, that is pretty perfect. Right should we talk about, we'll take a break but when we

01:00:29 ◼   ► come back I want to talk about Roma, I saw her in the now Vox Media

01:00:34 ◼   ► own recode about Twitter and Flipboard which seems very interesting and kind of peculiar.

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01:03:26 ◼   ► So I saw on recode that apparently twitter are in talks to buy flipboard.

01:03:36 ◼   ► This doesn't seem like something that's completely outlandish because it kind of seems to mesh

01:03:43 ◼   ► with what twitter are doing right now.

01:03:46 ◼   ► They are a media company in essence and they are trying to collect everything.

01:03:51 ◼   ► But then they also want to keep it all nice and separate like they do with Periscope and

01:03:55 ◼   ► Vine and that kind of thing.

01:03:56 ◼   ► But they want to have their collection.

01:03:58 ◼   ► So my first question, I don't.

01:04:00 ◼   ► Do either of you use Flipboard anymore?

01:04:02 ◼   ► No.

01:04:03 ◼   ► No.

01:04:04 ◼   ► No, but I get lots of traffic from Flipboard.

01:04:06 ◼   ► So there must be someone using Flipboard.

01:04:08 ◼   ► So what is that?

01:04:09 ◼   ► Is that people setting it up themselves?

01:04:10 ◼   ► They're using RSS?

01:04:11 ◼   ► Is Max Stories on Flipboard?

01:04:13 ◼   ► I don't even know.

01:04:14 ◼   ► I don't know if that makes sense.

01:04:15 ◼   ► I have a, what do they call them, custom publications.

01:04:20 ◼   ► Like I, Mac Stories on Flipboard gets a really fancy, nice layout and we do revenue sharing

01:04:29 ◼   ► for ads with Flipboard.

01:04:31 ◼   ► And it's actually quite a good program.

01:04:33 ◼   ► We get, you know, a nice kickback from readers on Flipboard and they don't see the sponsorships

01:04:40 ◼   ► but they get this nice layout and if they choose to, for some reason, maybe they wanna,

01:04:47 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe they wanna see an animated gallery, one of those animated charts that

01:04:52 ◼   ► we do or maybe they wanna take a look at a script, you know, they wanna have the full

01:04:58 ◼   ► site features, they can jump back to the original website inside Flipboard and that's where

01:05:04 ◼   ► I see the traffic from Flipboard.

01:05:07 ◼   ► It's quite a good program.

01:05:09 ◼   ► The layout on Flipboard is very nice, I just don't use it because I personally prefer to

01:05:15 ◼   ► use RSS and Twitter, and I think I'm fine.

01:05:20 ◼   ► But there's lots of people who use it to follow magazines from other people, to follow specific

01:05:27 ◼   ► sections like recipes or being healthy.

01:05:31 ◼   ► It's very popular, I think.

01:05:33 ◼   ► So is that what they do now then?

01:05:34 ◼   ► Is that like a big part of Flipboard, is like these custom publications?

01:05:38 ◼   ► Because I don't even know what they're doing these days.

01:05:42 ◼   ► They do a bunch of stuff, like with big or relatively big websites.

01:05:49 ◼   ► They do this kind of "hey, do you want to have a custom design, do you want to implement

01:05:53 ◼   ► ads on Flipboard and stuff?"

01:05:55 ◼   ► They also are quite big on the magazine functionality, so it's like a social network kind of as a

01:06:03 ◼   ► user.

01:06:04 ◼   ► You can curate your own magazines which is basically like a collection of links and those

01:06:10 ◼   ► links turn into nice articles on Flipboard because they get the nice typography, the

01:06:15 ◼   ► nice image previews and you can curate a bunch of magazines.

01:06:20 ◼   ► I actually used to have a video game magazine that people could subscribe to to see the

01:06:26 ◼   ► links of video game articles and reviews that I was reading.

01:06:30 ◼   ► So it's like a sort of fancy bookmark system that is public and people can follow and that

01:06:37 ◼   ► has been a big focus for the company in the past year.

01:06:41 ◼   ► And now they're also on the Apple Watch for some reason.

01:06:45 ◼   ► You can also download Flipboard for the Apple Watch and I don't understand how it works

01:06:49 ◼   ► because it kind of shows me news that I don't care about but if I open the app I see interesting

01:06:56 ◼   ► highlights so I don't know how the watch app works.

01:07:00 ◼   ► But yes, Myke, there are tons of websites with custom designs and there are, I don't

01:07:06 ◼   ► know how many users do in magazines, they have statistics I think on their blog, and

01:07:12 ◼   ► they also, I think last year, they made this big splash with using some kind of custom

01:07:19 ◼   ► web technology to write the Flipboard web app, and I think John Gruber also linked to

01:07:25 ◼   ► the HTML stuff, or not.

01:07:28 ◼   ► I don't remember if it was some kind of advanced HTML5 or not,

01:07:33 ◼   ► that Freeboard was doing to have high performance on the web.

01:07:38 ◼   ► They've been doing, especially on the technology side,

01:07:41 ◼   ► I think they've been doing really interesting stuff.

01:07:44 ◼   ► And I think personally that's why Twitter

01:07:46 ◼   ► may be looking at the company.

01:07:49 ◼   ► Especially, I mean, to me, it is kind of obvious why.

01:07:54 ◼   ► Just look at the timing.

01:07:56 ◼   ► Just after Facebook launches Instant Articles, Twitter is rumored to be having talks with

01:08:03 ◼   ► Flipboard, which is kind of like Instant Articles, because it is closely tied to your Twitter

01:08:10 ◼   ► account.

01:08:11 ◼   ► It is by far the best way to pull links from a social account, is to use Twitter with Flipboard,

01:08:18 ◼   ► and they turn those links into nicely formatted articles that have better performance on a

01:08:25 ◼   ► mobile device than opening an inline web view.

01:08:29 ◼   ► So it's kind of obvious to me why they may consider this stuff.

01:08:34 ◼   ► Especially, again, also if Twitter wants to kind of increase the way that they present

01:08:41 ◼   ► themselves to users as a way to discover what's interesting to you.

01:08:47 ◼   ► Twitter rolled out a redesign of their homepage with a focus on like you can come to Twitter

01:08:54 ◼   ► and find interesting stuff, whether it's politics or sports or technology, video games, music

01:08:59 ◼   ► and Flipboard, you know, the magazines, the highlights, the social accounts, they seem

01:09:04 ◼   ► to be in line with the "let's find interesting stuff" on Twitter.

01:09:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I agree.

01:09:13 ◼   ► I think, you know, we're talking about Spotify, like adding things on to its core service

01:09:19 ◼   ► to like expand its footprint and I could see them you can see Twitter wanting to

01:09:24 ◼   ► bring more content you know natively to their their applications and their

01:09:29 ◼   ► website and from that perspective it makes sense. Let me ask you this Federico

01:09:35 ◼   ► I do not have the same agreement with Flipboard that you do I mean a lot of

01:09:38 ◼   ► people read 512 and Flipboard but it's through adding RSS or searching it's

01:09:42 ◼   ► not like this custom layout that you do. If Twitter were to buy them like what

01:09:47 ◼   ► What would Twitter have to do to keep you around or what could Twitter do to make you

01:09:52 ◼   ► want to break that agreement and move on?

01:09:56 ◼   ► Well, I don't know.

01:10:00 ◼   ► I guess, I mean, I already have a custom design.

01:10:05 ◼   ► So unless they start injecting weird stuff into my articles, which by the way anyone

01:10:14 ◼   ► could do as long as you pull my RSS feed which is a full text RSS and you try to reformat

01:10:19 ◼   ► it and you want to put ads in the middle of my text, anyone can do that.

01:10:25 ◼   ► I just have an agreement with Flipboard to do this program for publishers and they also

01:10:30 ◼   ► give me nice statistics on the number of readers and flips, it's what they call the views,

01:10:35 ◼   ► called flips.

01:10:37 ◼   ► So I don't know what Twitter could possibly do to make me say "hey this is too creepy

01:10:43 ◼   ► at this point or maybe it's not worth it. Because I mean, if they really want to, anyone

01:10:50 ◼   ► can already read my articles from IRS without visiting my site. But my advantage I guess,

01:10:59 ◼   ► my decision to base my business model not on page views anymore but on sponsorships

01:11:07 ◼   ► and talking about apps, that doesn't affect me at all.

01:11:13 ◼   ► So no matter the device you want to read, as long as you read me, I'm fine.

01:11:21 ◼   ► That's actually quite good for me because it frees me from having to worry about the

01:11:26 ◼   ► kind of stuff that you mentioned, having to worry about Twitter changing the program.

01:11:30 ◼   ► "Hey, what if people don't come to my site anymore?"

01:11:33 ◼   ► That's fine as long as they read me, but you know.

01:11:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I think it's fair,

01:11:39 ◼   ► and I think it will be interesting.

01:11:41 ◼   ► I think it does make sense from the content perspective.

01:11:44 ◼   ► I don't think they need Flipboard for their web technology,

01:11:47 ◼   ► but we'll see where that goes.

01:11:50 ◼   ► I mean, it's interesting.

01:11:52 ◼   ► Thought we could wrap up this week

01:11:56 ◼   ► talking about Johnny Ive a little bit.

01:11:57 ◼   ► So there was an article in The Telegraph yesterday,

01:12:01 ◼   ► which was a holiday, a memorial day here in the States.

01:12:05 ◼   ► Written by Stephen Fry, kind of a part,

01:12:09 ◼   ► day in the life of Johnny Ive a little bit,

01:12:12 ◼   ► which we've seen a lot of, talking about his roles

01:12:15 ◼   ► and his responsibilities, and then sort of breaking the news

01:12:19 ◼   ► that he is now Apple's chief design officer.

01:12:23 ◼   ► That was confirmed via a company-wide memo

01:12:28 ◼   ► that 9to5 leaked or had leaked to them.

01:12:30 ◼   ► And then also in the show notes we have an article from Ben Thompson about his thoughts

01:12:36 ◼   ► on it.

01:12:37 ◼   ► It is really worth a read, a really great article from Ben.

01:12:42 ◼   ► I didn't know what you guys thought about this.

01:12:44 ◼   ► I mean, on one hand, people are saying, "Hey, that's great.

01:12:48 ◼   ► Clearly it's a title that's well deserved."

01:12:52 ◼   ► And a lot of people, including myself, my immediate thought was, "Oh, well, this is

01:12:55 ◼   ► like you know Apple securing their future with him by saying hey you know

01:13:00 ◼   ► you can be a chief officer I'm sure it comes with a lot more money a lot more

01:13:04 ◼   ► power we want you to be here a long time but but Ben's take and not to ruin his

01:13:08 ◼   ► article you should definitely go read it is that maybe that's not the case maybe

01:13:12 ◼   ► this is sort of the beginning of the end because in the article Stephen Fry you

01:13:18 ◼   ► know he names some lieutenants and says you know they're taking over day-to-day

01:13:23 ◼   ► day management stuff of these big projects and Johnny Ive's gonna be able

01:13:26 ◼   ► to kind of be free to do these these bigger picture things. I just I don't

01:13:30 ◼   ► know do you guys think this is good news bad news and different news? Well I'm I

01:13:37 ◼   ► guess what is it called? Johnny is kind of like Schrodinger's cat. He's both

01:13:43 ◼   ► simultaneously promoted and he's living Apple. If you read Twitter people are

01:13:52 ◼   ► freaking out because it's being promoted and that's in theory a good thing

01:13:57 ◼   ► because you can hand off you know day-to-day operations to people so you

01:14:02 ◼   ► get to sit in a chair travel more and you still have quite you know a say on

01:14:09 ◼   ► what people do but also apparently there's a theory that people who get

01:14:15 ◼   ► promoted it's like the beginning of the end and in a way maybe I can understand that.

01:14:24 ◼   ► It's like first you start by handing off you know responsibilities and day-to-day operations to

01:14:31 ◼   ► people and you get a promotion but it's kind of like a way to say yeah I'm you know backing off

01:14:37 ◼   ► and then you know in a couple of years I'm gonna retire and do whatever I want with all my millions

01:14:43 ◼   ► of dollars in the bank. So if you want my opinion, Stephen, I do. I don't know.

01:14:51 ◼   ► Like, how am I supposed to have an opinion on what it means? Like, it's always fun to speculate,

01:15:04 ◼   ► you know, on Apple and this kind of stuff. You know, iOS, OS X, new MacBooks. But that's a level

01:15:10 ◼   ► a lot of speculation that maybe can take us somewhere. But in this case we have no chance

01:15:18 ◼   ► of knowing or even possibly understanding all the motivations behind this. So what's

01:15:28 ◼   ► What's the other? I'm just citing all these paradoxes and facts from life today.

01:15:39 ◼   ► The Occam's razor? In this case I would go with the simplest explanation.

01:15:45 ◼   ► Maybe Apple just wanted to promote Johnny Ive and they wanted to also highlight these

01:15:52 ◼   ► two new managers. Because apparently they've done a good job in the past few years.

01:15:57 ◼   ► So they wanted to tell the world that there's new design talent at Apple, like Alan Dye

01:16:03 ◼   ► and Robert, I don't know his last name, Haworth, I think.

01:16:10 ◼   ► Maybe that's the point, to just promote Johnny, make him live a better life, you know?

01:16:16 ◼   ► He can travel more, he can go watch the soccer in the UK if he wants.

01:16:24 ◼   ► And there's new people who do good design at Apple.

01:16:27 ◼   ► Maybe that's the simplest explanation.

01:16:28 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:16:30 ◼   ► But in this case I'm going to go with the simple option because otherwise you get caught

01:16:34 ◼   ► up in all the speculation and only Tim Cook knows the truth.

01:16:37 ◼   ► So maybe Tim Cook should tip-tack me and tell us what he thinks.

01:16:41 ◼   ► Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth in that.

01:16:47 ◼   ► These two designers, their names have popped up and all the press running up to the watch.

01:16:53 ◼   ► And you know Apple suffered in the days after Steve Jobs passing and really the first couple

01:17:03 ◼   ► years of Tim Cook running the thing of like can Apple survive without Steve Jobs?

01:17:08 ◼   ► Is Apple the same the same company with the new CEO and all that stuff right?

01:17:13 ◼   ► We talked about a lot of it over the years here.

01:17:16 ◼   ► And I can't help but wonder if the move here is to show, "Hey, look, there are more people

01:17:25 ◼   ► here than just I've."

01:17:27 ◼   ► The person I had from reading those other articles was that he was just really worn

01:17:32 ◼   ► out and really just overworked.

01:17:36 ◼   ► And maybe this is a way for Apple to say, "Hey, we appreciate you, and we can take things

01:17:42 ◼   ► off your shoulders and let you do what you do best.

01:17:47 ◼   ► And help alleviate that thought of like, well, if you know, say that Johnny Ivey is on his

01:17:50 ◼   ► way out, I don't know if he is or not.

01:17:53 ◼   ► I tend to think that he's not at least in the short term.

01:17:57 ◼   ► But when that day comes, Apple is trying to get out ahead of it and say, you know what,

01:18:00 ◼   ► like, we have really good people here, we can continue to do what we do without him.

01:18:04 ◼   ► Yes, it is a loss.

01:18:05 ◼   ► Yes, when Steve Jobs died, it's a huge loss to the company.

01:18:10 ◼   ► Apple is okay and an apple will survive this too and and maybe they're trying to get out in front of that somehow and I think

01:18:16 ◼   ► That makes like a lot of sense in like Tim Cook's pragmatic Apple. I

01:18:20 ◼   ► Mean I agree I think it's all

01:18:24 ◼   ► All of the reasons that people are staying for why this could happen like I think it's all of them

01:18:30 ◼   ► like

01:18:32 ◼   ► You know, he's been promoted because he's worked really hard over the last few years, correct?

01:18:37 ◼   ► He's been promoted because they actually do need to split UI and industrial design, correct.

01:18:43 ◼   ► He's been promoted because he's going to leave Apple one day. That is also correct. Like he cannot be there forever.

01:18:50 ◼   ► He cannot be alive forever.

01:18:52 ◼   ► Like all of it is true. You're like the opera of opinions.

01:18:58 ◼   ► Well, you know...

01:18:59 ◼   ► You get an agreement and you get an agreement and you can...

01:19:02 ◼   ► But it's just like this decision. This is a decision that you make

01:19:05 ◼   ► because of multiple reasons. And there is no one reason for doing something like this unless

01:19:12 ◼   ► something's gonna happen in like a month's time. Like he leaves in a month's time. Which is not

01:19:17 ◼   ► gonna happen. Because Johnny Ive either retires or he sets up his own design agency. Like that's it.

01:19:28 ◼   ► No one can hire him. You can't hire Johnny Ive because he already has the best job in the world.

01:19:35 ◼   ► Maybe he goes to Broadway with Scott.

01:19:38 ◼   ► Maybe he does that.

01:19:38 ◼   ► Just saying.

01:19:40 ◼   ► But do you know what I mean? Like he is either gonna, you know,

01:19:42 ◼   ► there's this idea that he's always gonna go live in England now.

01:19:46 ◼   ► Yeah, he probably will spend quite a bit more time in England now because he doesn't need to

01:19:52 ◼   ► be chained to a desk in San Francisco anymore. Like, but that again, it doesn't mean that now

01:19:57 ◼   ► like the iPhone is gonna be triangular. Like, but there are so many things that accompany

01:20:04 ◼   ► of Apple's size has to do and what they showed with Steve Jobs is that they can

01:20:11 ◼   ► definitely continue but they just need to do that again with Johnny Ive and the

01:20:14 ◼   ► best way to do that is to start early. So now they are trying to push some

01:20:18 ◼   ► designers up they're making sure these divisions can run on their own again

01:20:22 ◼   ► which is interesting to me though right that they kind of brought them together

01:20:26 ◼   ► and split them apart again. They clearly just wanted Forst to run out.

01:20:31 ◼   ► like that was all it was. Get him out.

01:20:33 ◼   ► You can make the argument for bundling and unbundling also for companies, and Apple in this case.

01:20:41 ◼   ► It's all about bundles today, we're just bundling it all up.

01:20:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:45 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, it's kind of just like I see something like this and I'm like, I see all of these potential reasons

01:20:53 ◼   ► and it's like, they all are equally true in my opinion. They all just seem like they all make sense

01:20:59 ◼   ► They are all things that will eventually happen. So yes, you need to prepare for all of them.

01:21:03 ◼   ► That is good succession planning right there. That's what it is. This is succession planning

01:21:08 ◼   ► in one way or another. And you know, Johnny Ive doesn't need to continue to design every single

01:21:14 ◼   ► Apple product because he probably doesn't. And this, I think this is a smart move. I think it's

01:21:20 ◼   ► something that clearly Apple needs to do. And considering you have Johnny Ive, make Johnny

01:21:26 ◼   ► I've as happy as you can make him. That's the smart thing to do and if this makes him happy just do it

01:21:31 ◼   ► So yes, the cat is both alive and dead only in this case Johnny is the cat and thankfully Johnny is not in a box

01:21:41 ◼   ► That really got twisted up there buddy

01:21:45 ◼   ► The cat is both retired and working full-time. That's what the cat is doing. Yes

01:21:52 ◼   ► Right. So is that about it for this week?

01:21:56 ◼   ► I think so. Awesome. So if you want to catch our show notes for this week then you can go online

01:22:02 ◼   ► and do that as well as being in your podcast app of choice of course you can head over

01:22:06 ◼   ► to relay.fm/connected/41. If you want to find us all online you can do that in a myriad of ways.

01:22:12 ◼   ► You can find Stephen at 512pixels.net you can also find him at ismh. You can find Federico

01:22:19 ◼   ► go at maxstories.net and he is @vitiicci and I am @imike. You can find me and this show

01:22:27 ◼   ► relay.fm. I have a bunch of shows, I'm on quite a few of them and we have more. We have

01:22:33 ◼   ► lots of stuff. If you have a podcast that you would like to listen to, I hope that it's

01:22:37 ◼   ► at Relay because we have lots of them and they're all very very good. I like them all.

01:22:42 ◼   ► Especially the ones that I'm on and some, you know, also the ones that I'm not. Thanks

01:22:47 ◼   ► again to our sponsors this week. I don't know where I was going with that. Hover, OmniFocus

01:22:52 ◼   ► and smile with PDF-Pen-Scan Plus. They have been very kind in helping make today's episode

01:23:00 ◼   ► happen. And I would like to thank you, the listener, for listening and we'll be back

01:23:05 ◼   ► next time. Until then, say goodbye gentlemen. Adios.

01:23:10 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]