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Connected

39: All Fancy and 2.0

 

00:00:00   [Intro Music]

00:00:07   From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode number 39.

00:00:12   Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, build it beautiful, Harry's, an exceptional shave at a fraction of the price, and Blink, better affiliate links.

00:00:21   My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined as always by the editor-in-chief of MacStories.net, Mr Federico Vittucci. Hi Federico.

00:00:29   Hello boss.

00:00:30   Hey buddy.

00:00:31   And I'm also joined on 5/12 day by the editor-in-chief of 512pixels, Mr. Steven Hackett.

00:00:39   Hey guys.

00:00:41   Can you tell the people why it's 5/12 day today?

00:00:44   Because it's May the 12th?

00:00:46   It's like the May the 4th, the 4th of forces jokes, but better.

00:00:51   Because American dates are dumb?

00:00:53   Yeah, they're weird.

00:00:54   No!

00:00:55   Why would you put the date before the month?

00:00:57   Because you say the 12th of May.

00:00:59   No I don't, I say May 12th.

00:01:00   I'm not saying you, but that's the way that we say it.

00:01:03   We say it like that, we don't say May the 12th, we say 12th of May.

00:01:06   Ridiculous.

00:01:07   What's next?

00:01:08   Healthcare for everyone?

00:01:09   Yes.

00:01:10   And also, because when you talk, you just assume that you know what the current month

00:01:16   is, so you just need to say what day it is.

00:01:20   You know that it's May, so you just need to say the day, not the month.

00:01:24   So why would you say May 12th?

00:01:26   No, that does make a lot of sense in conversation.

00:01:29   When you think about it, all our cultural changes actually made a lot of sense.

00:01:33   Hey, I'm all for using the metric system.

00:01:36   You guys drive on the wrong side of the road but –

00:01:38   It's the metric driving system.

00:01:39   That's what you need to employ.

00:01:41   No, Myke.

00:01:42   That's just wrong.

00:01:43   What you do in the UK is just wrong.

00:01:45   I don't know why.

00:01:46   Is there – I'm pretty sure there's like a royal family reason why that's the case.

00:01:52   I'm just going to go out on a limb and say it's more safe.

00:01:55   Why? Why is it not safe? It's not safe because when everybody from like planet earth goes to the UK it's not safe.

00:02:03   Well it's more safe on our roads to drive on the left.

00:02:05   Oh okay.

00:02:06   No if you're in a head-on collision you are closer to the center line. How is that safer?

00:02:11   We will let the follow-up decide.

00:02:14   Yes.

00:02:15   I'm not even 100% sure what you just said to me Steven.

00:02:17   Send Myke a tweet about the driving conditions.

00:02:22   Yes. #MykeWasInvolvedInACarAccident.

00:02:26   That's too long for a hashtag.

00:02:27   You don't want to use that hashtag because then if I am you're gonna feel really bad.

00:02:31   When's the last time you rode in a car?

00:02:33   I don't drive cars but I ride in cars every now and then.

00:02:37   From random people? You just hop into cars?

00:02:40   Like last week I get lots of Ubers.

00:02:43   Oh wow, look at you all fancy and 2.0.

00:02:49   I'm pretty sure that Uber is not Web 2.0.

00:02:52   Yeah, whatever.

00:02:53   That's just what people say these days.

00:02:56   Yeah, they have an E in their name, so they're definitely not Web 2.0.

00:02:59   Web 2.0 would be like UBR.

00:03:02   No, it'd just be BR.

00:03:04   Bruh.

00:03:05   No, that's a line break.

00:03:06   Bruh.

00:03:07   Mad humor.

00:03:09   Okay, so we have just a couple of pieces of follow-up this week.

00:03:12   We do.

00:03:13   It's really one piece of follow-up with two chapters.

00:03:16   Yep.

00:03:17   But it's one book.

00:03:18   So the Amazon Music app, so it's part of Amazon Prime,

00:03:23   you can upload music and stream it and all that sort of

00:03:25   stuff, we've talked about in the past.

00:03:26   Well Dusty writes in to say that that app has lyric support

00:03:30   so you're listening to a song and you can see the lyrics.

00:03:33   And that's great but no one uses Amazon Music so we didn't

00:03:37   know that. - Exactly.

00:03:38   - I tried it when it first sort of surfaced and it was

00:03:41   kind of miserable and I've never been back.

00:03:43   And then we have another piece of follow up saying that

00:03:46   app called Deezer, does this as well.

00:03:52   And have you guys heard of this app?

00:03:53   I had not.

00:03:54   Yeah, it's European.

00:03:58   Deezer, when we did, I think, last year, do you remember the article we did on the state

00:04:04   of ecosystems for music, movies, like the iTunes store, the Amazon store?

00:04:09   Yeah, of course.

00:04:10   And we did the geographical map.

00:04:12   And Deezer at the time was actually I think one of the music services in most countries.

00:04:17   It's very popular in Europe and I think Latin America.

00:04:22   And yes, thanks to Dusty and Razvan for the follow up, because it means that I have at

00:04:29   least two other music services to try.

00:04:33   So I shall make a Deezer account and try Deezer.

00:04:38   I think based on what I got on Twitter, also the same follow-up, these are only shows like

00:04:44   lyrics icon just for Samsungs, so it's kind of weird.

00:04:48   And I still don't know whether the lyrics feature in Amazon Music, is it based on the

00:04:54   whispersing stuff that they do for books?

00:04:58   I think so.

00:04:59   I mean, I think all that sort of stuff is kind of tied together with them.

00:05:02   Yeah, yeah.

00:05:03   I think it was just a couple of highlights of like there are some official first party apps with first party offerings which give

00:05:10   lyric support, right? I think that was what

00:05:13   Because as well, we got this follow-up from a few different people and most people I don't think used the services

00:05:19   They just knew that it was there.

00:05:22   Just know

00:05:23   Yeah, but I want to try especially Amazon music because they do I mean

00:05:28   I'm not sure whether it's even supported in Italy, but they do the drive

00:05:32   uploader thing where you can like upload music. Can you also stream music? I don't

00:05:38   know. I'm an Amazon ego around. Probably. I think they do. I think they have

00:05:44   an instant music catalog like they have an instant video catalog. Have you

00:05:49   played around with the Google one did you say? Did you try all Access? Yeah. I mean

00:05:55   I'm still paying for... actually you know what I did? I got an email to try the

00:06:00   the upcoming YouTube Music Key beta. You know, they're doing the music service kind of stuff

00:06:07   for YouTube where you can save vidas offline and skip the ads, like actually never see

00:06:13   the ads. So they sent me an offer, if I want to pay 7.99 euros each month, instead of 9.99,

00:06:20   I will get YouTube Music Key once it launches on the web and iOS, and in the same package

00:06:28   I get the Google Music All Access.

00:06:33   So I'm paying basically two euros less.

00:06:36   And I have Google Music now and eventually, I suppose, I will get music here on iOS.

00:06:42   Cool.

00:06:43   Okay.

00:06:44   All right, so we have a few topics we want to talk about in the Mac App Store on iOS

00:06:50   9, like our predictions and that following Federico's article.

00:06:55   And Stephen has many opinions and thoughts about the Mac App Store.

00:06:59   But I think before we do that, because we have a couple of nice topics mapped out like

00:07:03   that, we should take our first break for this week's episode.

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00:09:44   Yeah so the the Mac App Store has been in the news a little bit this week. It

00:09:51   started with a blog post by the developer of Redacted for Mac which is

00:09:56   this new little Mac App Store app where you can bring a screenshot into it and

00:10:00   you can you know blur out private information. You can kind of like sketch to some of

00:10:05   the stuff but sketch is terrible in almost every way. Really nice little app.

00:10:09   It's it's I think five bucks for 99 in the in the App Store and it

00:10:14   It you know had a pretty good day

00:10:18   I think a lot of people blogged about it, and it sort of made the the the press rounds

00:10:23   but um there was a blog post about it that really sort of

00:10:28   Sort of set the world on fire a little bit with

00:10:32   The numbers of kind of what's going on in the App Store with purchasing and income made and that sort of thing

00:10:39   Did you guys see this stuff?

00:10:44   Yeah, yeah, I follow Sam on Twitter and I... actually the first point that I want to make,

00:10:53   it's a very simple creativity, it looks useful, especially if you don't need like the full

00:10:57   set of editing capabilities of something like Sketch, you just want something to hide specific

00:11:04   information from an image.

00:11:06   So the app looks fine, looks cool.

00:11:10   But what struck me immediately is that he said in his blog post that he basically didn't

00:11:16   do any marketing, he didn't have any marketing plan for the app.

00:11:20   Just tweeted the release of the app and it ended up somehow on Product Hunt, which is

00:11:25   this website where people share new products every day, which sounds terrible especially

00:11:30   if you have news overdose on a daily basis.

00:11:34   But it's not so terrible actually if you're looking for new stuff.

00:11:37   Anyway, so just with a tweet and a post on Product Hunt, it was in the top 10 of the

00:11:46   Mac App Store.

00:11:48   And the first thought that I had was like, "Oh my God, this guy basically didn't think

00:11:55   about marketing.

00:11:57   What was he expecting in terms of revenue and results from the app?"

00:12:01   Because if you don't have a solid marketing plan, these days with so much competition,

00:12:06   with so many apps, you need to get the word out beforehand.

00:12:10   But the counter argument to my thought was like, "Yeah, but this developer with just

00:12:16   a tweet managed to get in the top 10 of the Mac App Store."

00:12:20   So when you think about it, it's crazy.

00:12:25   But I want to discuss with you, Steven and Myke, what's the problem here?

00:12:31   Is it that developers don't make enough money?

00:12:35   Is it that the algorithm that governs that, you know, the way that the top charts works

00:12:42   in the App Store and the Mac App Store in this case, is it that the problem that we

00:12:47   don't know how sales or revenue count against the top paid?

00:12:53   Or what's the other problem that Apple needs to help indie developers more?

00:12:59   I see these numbers and it's kind of absurd when you think about it that just with a tweet

00:13:05   you're in the top 10, but actually you don't make much money.

00:13:09   Right, so I think what you're saying is actually a problem in and of itself.

00:13:12   What you're saying is it takes no marking and you get to the top.

00:13:15   There's no friction in the simile to make great leaps and bounds in the Mac App Store.

00:13:23   So we should clarify a couple of things.

00:13:25   redacted on the launch day was the number eight top paid app in the US. Not the, you know, there's different lists. There's top paid, there's top grossing, different stuff, but top paid number eight in the US, number one top paid in graphics, with 94 downloads with a $302 in Sam's pocket after Apple's cut. And so we're not talking about about big numbers. He talks about in this

00:13:55   blog post that 37 people tweeted him like guessing how much money he made and

00:14:00   the average is $12,000 like 302 dollars yes is like pretty good return on a

00:14:05   tweet but sort of miserable money overall I can sort of the grand scheme

00:14:09   of things and so there's the issue of and going to get to what I wrote and and

00:14:15   the reaction to that but there seems to be like this almost like this vacuum in

00:14:20   the Mac Mac App Store you can just drop a pebble in it makes these huge waves and

00:14:24   And the fact that $302 is a huge wave in the Mac App Store

00:14:29   is really sort of problematic.

00:14:32   And you know, lots of people,

00:14:34   I mean there's sort of this group of people on Twitter

00:14:36   always talking about the app stores and Apple's policies

00:14:39   and like maybe Apple was tinkering with the top paid

00:14:44   algorithm that day and so maybe this isn't accurate.

00:14:46   But like all we know is what Sam wrote

00:14:48   and we, you know, he's being honest and transparent

00:14:54   about his numbers and so even if the App Store,

00:14:57   like the computer that ranks the top paid room

00:14:59   was gone berserk, I don't think that's really

00:15:02   like a factor we can put into this.

00:15:04   I think it's safe to say that by any number of metrics

00:15:08   the Mac App Store is unhealthy and I think a lot smaller

00:15:13   as far as like sales volume than Apple would like to let on

00:15:18   and maybe that I even thought beforehand.

00:15:21   I mean I was surprised when I read this,

00:15:22   I think a lot of people were. This blog post really made the rounds. I think both of us linked to it.

00:15:27   I saw it on The Loop and a bunch of other sites like

00:15:29   This really hit a nerve with a lot of people because the Mac App Store has been a sort of a sore point in the

00:15:35   community for a lot of reasons. There's obviously things like

00:15:38   sandboxing where developers have this set of rules forced on them that broke a lot of really good apps. I think about our friends at

00:15:45   TechExpander who you know all of a sudden their app, which is completely awesome and viable

00:15:51   Has difficulty operating in this new this new world

00:15:54   So I've heard a little bit about this and and basically what it kind of boils down

00:16:00   To for me is that look the App Store is clearly struggling right developers have have left big name long time

00:16:09   like

00:16:11   powerful Mac applications

00:16:13   Cannot be found in the Mac App Store at best. They're found in the Mac App Store and on

00:16:20   Companies websites you think about the omni group they sell stuff in the App Store

00:16:23   they sell stuff on their own site usually the stuff on their own site is updated more quickly and

00:16:27   maybe has features the other one doesn't and

00:16:29   And so my thought was look Apple

00:16:32   It's time for Apple to invest in and take a long hard look at the Mac App Store

00:16:37   What can it do to solve these issues not only for developers, but for customers as well

00:16:43   You know you if you go to the app the Mac App Store

00:16:45   There's a lot of Apple stuff

00:16:46   And there's a lot of garbage and it's not exactly an encouraging place to be if you're a new Mac user

00:16:52   And I think I believe to do that or they need to seriously consider

00:16:56   like what the future of the Mac App Store is and what I said was they should just shutter the thing which

00:17:01   When your site or when when something you write ends up on Hacker News any sort of

00:17:08   Humor is lost in it to those those readers. I got a lot of really nasty email

00:17:13   About that from hacker news. Yeah, I know man you would not believe some of the email I got this week

00:17:18   But clearly I don't think the answer is to shut down the Mac App Store, right

00:17:25   I'm not advocating that like I'm sorry if you missed what I thought was a clever sentence like too bad

00:17:31   but I do think it's an interesting thing to talk about is if

00:17:34   The if the Mac apps were really is as unhealthy as as blog posts like Sam's make it look

00:17:41   What could Apple do to fix it? What could Apple do to revive it, to make it better

00:17:45   for what is still a very important platform for the company?

00:17:50   Yeah, I agree with you completely. I think the basic problem in this story,

00:17:57   it's not about marketing and reducting the app, which by the way so far I saw a tweet

00:18:03   from the developer today. He has made, you know, especially after the press picked up

00:18:08   on the story, he has made over $4,000 in revenue so far, so not bad for a simple utility.

00:18:16   But anyway, the problem is not reductive, it's not how the top paid charts work, and

00:18:22   there's some weird stuff going on with the top paid and top grossing, and it's basically

00:18:27   just a black box, and we don't know how it works.

00:18:30   But that's not the main problem.

00:18:32   As you say, Steven, I think the problem is that the Mac App Store has been neglected

00:18:36   Apple for a long time. And this is true in many cases, like they do a promotion on the

00:18:43   iOS App Store, they don't do the same promotion on the Mac App Store. They launch a new feature

00:18:48   for the iPhone and iPad App Store, they don't do the same for the Mac. Many times the same

00:18:54   apps are featured for weeks and they basically just threw in a simple new design for Yosemite

00:19:03   but the basic design of the Mac App Store is unchanged from four years ago.

00:19:08   And they just don't seem to care about improving the shopping and customer and developer experience with the Mac App Store.

00:19:19   For example, as a gamer, I wouldn't want to buy a game from the Mac App Store

00:19:24   because simple stuff such as detailed hardware requirements are not listed on the Mac App Store.

00:19:31   So if I want to buy games from the Mac App Store, I cannot see the full list of hardware that is recommended by the developer or necessary to play a game on my Macbook.

00:19:42   And Steam, for example, gives me a much better experience as a gamer.

00:19:47   as a gamer. And as a developer, there's been a lot of

00:19:53   back and forth a few years ago with the sandboxing,

00:19:56   but as we've seen with many high-profile developers

00:20:00   such as Panic and others that have left the Mac App Store,

00:20:05   obviously some stuff is not working and I believe that

00:20:09   for Apple it's maybe a problem of

00:20:12   resources, that they just allocated

00:20:15   too much to the iOS App Store and so they cannot have the same kind of frequency of

00:20:23   innovation and new stuff, promotions, features, redesigns as they do on iOS.

00:20:28   They cannot do that on the Mac App Store, which is sad because there's people making

00:20:33   a living from Mac apps.

00:20:36   So is this fixable?

00:20:37   I think so.

00:20:39   But it needs Apple to kind of, as you said Steven, so I don't understand why people would

00:20:45   send you nasty emails. People are crazy, you shouldn't care. But anyway, they should take

00:20:51   a look at the Mac App Store because next year it will be five years old and it's maybe time

00:20:57   for a change because in four years the only big change that we got was minor redesign

00:21:03   for Yosemite. Except, of course, if you don't count the restrictions that they put on developers

00:21:10   during the Mac App Store existence, which was awful, especially in terms of sandboxing and then iCloud.

00:21:16   Developers had to constantly cope with Apple's changes on the Mac, which can be difficult,

00:21:23   especially if you're used to a specific type of utility and access to the OS, and then suddenly stuff changes.

00:21:31   It was awful, and yeah, I agree with Siva for a change.

00:21:37   I think the worst part about the Mac App Store is sandboxing, right? Because

00:21:44   you know, the developers are used to not having it, as customers we're used to

00:21:48   having apps that don't need to conform to these restrictions and plus, I mean I

00:21:52   know they warned about it but you could put anything on the Mac App

00:21:56   Store, you know, to a point. When it launched at first, sandboxing wasn't a

00:22:02   thing so you could just, you know, a lot of apps had to leave that were there

00:22:06   originally but they put sandboxing and it took it away. And I think that that is

00:22:10   something that you know maybe Apple should... if they want if basically they

00:22:13   want the Mac App Store to work they need to think about removing the sandboxing

00:22:18   rules but that is a whole other thing right because there are very valid

00:22:23   reasons why they put them in place in the first place but that I think is what

00:22:27   is is stopping developers from going all-in on it. You know it's why it's why

00:22:32   a lot of companies continue to sell stuff on their own website as well

00:22:35   because I mean obviously one massive part of it is review as well right

00:22:39   because you know once these people are just used to like developers like you

00:22:43   know the only group like smile like panic they're used to doing things a

00:22:46   certain way and then they have to then conform to a more strict set of rules

00:22:50   that Apple provides it makes it a bit more difficult I think to eat that as a

00:22:55   thing and just do that that's that's that's you know that's a tough pill to

00:22:59   I also think that the ideal customer of a specific niche of Mac software is used to

00:23:11   a certain type of doing business with the developer.

00:23:15   So for companies such as Panic or the Omni Group, their customers are used to the idea

00:23:21   of trials, upgrade pricing, and I can buy the argument that Apple wanted to kind of

00:23:29   change people's minds when it came to how you buy software, how you discover new software.

00:23:36   But at some point, you just need to face reality and understand that the kind of change that

00:23:43   you want to not force upon people but maybe to strongly advertise to people.

00:23:51   Maybe that kind of change is just not going to work for everyone.

00:23:55   And so you see developers such as Panic pull out from the Mac App Store because this stuff

00:24:00   is just not going to work because their customers are used to some type of buying apps over

00:24:06   the years and doing business with the same company, the same developers over decades.

00:24:11   So if you just want to force these developers to kind of change the way of doing business

00:24:16   or to do all sorts of crazy hacks, I remember the Omni Group had put together some way of

00:24:23   doing upgrade pricing with OmniFocus maybe from the Mac App Store and their own website

00:24:29   and basically Apple asked them to shut it down.

00:24:32   So for some companies it's just not going to work.

00:24:35   And the worst part in this story with the Mac App Store is that these are the companies

00:24:40   that are making the best software for the Mac.

00:24:43   These are developers that you would want

00:24:46   on the Mac App Store because of the developers

00:24:48   that make your new features and your new hardware shine

00:24:53   with software that it's crafted with care and by experts.

00:24:57   These are the people that you want to make software

00:24:59   from the Mac App Store.

00:25:00   So why are you driving them away?

00:25:03   For some sort of idealistic change

00:25:05   that in practice is just not gonna work.

00:25:08   And I think it's, I wouldn't say stupid,

00:25:10   but maybe short-sighted.

00:25:11   I want to close this out unless Steven you have anything more that you want to add by talking about what Dan council wrote this week

00:25:18   Yeah, I think it gets into it a little bit

00:25:20   But I think I mean we talked about sandboxing but I think the 30% cut is is a pretty brutal factor

00:25:26   Just lead, you know big name companies that don't need don't need apples platform

00:25:32   Like I wish you don't have a choice but on the Mac if you're big enough like the Omni group

00:25:36   they could just sell stuff to people, you know, they don't need apples the middleman and

00:25:41   So I do wonder if that's a factor as well. But yeah, Dan's blog post is really insightful. So why don't you walk us through that?

00:25:48   So there's a few things that I pulled out of this.

00:25:50   Dan and RealMac, they always in these sort of scenarios provide a good take on stuff.

00:25:56   And you know, he is one to watch, you know, and Nick as well at RealMac.

00:26:01   They write really interesting things and what I liked about this is basically saying that, and a couple of quotes from the article,

00:26:08   However, number eight in the pay charts on the Mac App Store has never really been that great

00:26:12   It's not about being in the top pay charts

00:26:15   It's about being in the top grossing and that seems to be you know, that's the same across all stores

00:26:19   but I think the top grossing chance on the Mac App Store is

00:26:22   Populated by a lot more indie developers than the top grossing on the you know on the iOS App Store, right?

00:26:28   So the key thing is you can see that people are in the top grossing

00:26:33   We are people that you know and he shares and Dan shares actually a bunch of numbers

00:26:37   from RealMac and across all of their products and they share the numbers in the Mac App Store and out of the Mac App Store.

00:26:44   Their daily numbers per app actually tend to be much higher in some cases on any kind of average day

00:26:52   than Sam's because they're sitting in the top grossing and in most instances they're ranking lower than he was.

00:26:58   Because the prices are higher or they're selling in-app purchases and that kind of stuff and they're able to pull it up that way.

00:27:07   And he concludes by saying, "I don't think it's a good idea to rely solely on App Store revenue to run your business.

00:27:14   The App Store is amazing, but you don't want to put all of your eggs in one basket.

00:27:16   For example, RealMac software has a number of other revenue streams that help keep the company running.

00:27:21   These include ads, subscriptions, crowdfunding, and affiliate schemes.

00:27:24   Why would you put the fate of your success in the hands of search and chart ranking algorithms that you have little

00:27:29   understanding and zero control over?"

00:27:32   I mean that kind of that last part is that's just applicable to the App Store in general.

00:27:37   It's not the first person to say it, but you should go and look at this post and put a link in the shirt

00:27:42   because it shows just the numbers, you know, that they bring in on a daily basis.

00:27:46   And this is just an average day for them, right? So you can see, you know, it's

00:27:49   like for example clear for the Mac, it was

00:27:53   number 15 in the chart.

00:27:56   Top grossing was number 35 and it brought in

00:28:01   $4 right so it's very different and you can kind of get a sense there for how different developers approach these things differently

00:28:07   But it's interesting to see a bigger company like real max share their kind of thoughts and numbers and feelings about the Mac App Store

00:28:15   Cool

00:28:18   Right should we get into some iOS 9 stuff?

00:28:21   Yes, I want to just talk about our second sponsor first

00:28:26   And this week's episode is also brought to you by Blink.

00:28:30   Blink is a universal iOS app that works with the iTunes affiliate program. With the affiliate program

00:28:37   you earn 7% of any sale generated by the links that you create. You know, people click on them

00:28:41   they go and look in the App Store and you can add 7% of any sale generated by that can go into your pocket.

00:28:46   And Blink makes creating those links dead simple. Now, usually people think that this stuff is just for like writers and bloggers

00:28:53   but that's not necessarily the case. Blink can be used for anyone who ever links to an

00:28:58   app, music, an album or a song, movie or any other media that's sold through iTunes, the

00:29:04   App Store or iBooks. So like for example maybe you send iBooks store links to your book club

00:29:08   every month for the next book that you're going to read or you have a Tumblr where you

00:29:11   link to your favourite music or movies or you tend to be the kind of person who share

00:29:16   the latest app or game that you discover with your Facebook friends. With Blink you can

00:29:20   make a link to share with just one person or everybody that you follow on

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00:29:27   you can find is it makes things very very simple and you can make a little

00:29:31   money back from affiliate linking and Blink is the best way to help you do it

00:29:35   so you know as I mentioned I mentioned writers and bloggers and I'm gonna ask

00:29:39   Federico in a moment I know that he uses Blink but it's something it's a tool

00:29:42   that people like Federico can use but it kind of is a tool that anybody can use

00:29:45   if you ever share links of any kind of group. To use Blink you can easily

00:29:49   convert existing links into your with into links that have your affiliate

00:29:53   credentials in them so this can include iTunes short links so when sometimes the

00:29:57   iTunes account or whatever they have like app store slash something you can

00:30:01   you can take those links expand them and turn them into a link that you can share

00:30:05   but you can also throw the longer links in and it will put your code on the end

00:30:08   of them or you can go into blink and search across all of the Apple stores at

00:30:12   one time so it will search all of the stores with one you just type in one

00:30:15   word and it'll search them all for you you select which store you want to look

00:30:18   in and then you can take that link and basically put it anywhere. Blink has

00:30:22   support for sharing things however you want they have URL schemes as well and

00:30:26   all that kind of jazz for the teacher crowd out there. My personal favorite

00:30:29   feature of Blink is its extension so this lets you harness the power of Blink

00:30:34   from within any app for example this is something that I do quite a bit I may

00:30:38   see a new game or an app come out on Twitter or I see it on a website on RSS

00:30:42   or something like that I can tap and hold the link and then I can so it pops

00:30:47   up with the share sheet, I can tap the Blink extension. Blink searches it for in the app

00:30:52   store. I see it, I tap a button to share it and I can tweet it out to people. So it's

00:30:55   just a very simple way. I'm in an app and I'm able to bring up the link, bring up Blink,

00:31:00   add my, and it automatically adds my affiliate token to the end and I can share it out with

00:31:04   Twitter or something like that. It's just a few taps and I'm making a little money back.

00:31:08   Super easy. Now Federico, you are a fan and user of Blink, right?

00:31:12   Yes, I do. I do use Blink every day. It's one of my most used apps on my iPhone and

00:31:21   my iPad, especially because with Mac Stories and Mac Stories Deals, which is the account

00:31:27   that we run for highlighting discounts on the App Store, I link to apps on a daily basis,

00:31:35   whether it's an article on Mac Stories, Mac Stories Deals on Twitter, or Mac Stories Weekly,

00:31:41   which is our newsletter.

00:31:46   You can tell that it's been made for people who do this regularly.

00:31:53   You can search, you can copy links in different formats.

00:31:57   My favorite feature is also the extension because it lets me go to the App Store and

00:32:03   copy an affiliate link without having to run a script or a workflow or whatever.

00:32:10   works and also inside the extension I love that I can change without going to

00:32:18   the app settings or without changing what I'm doing in the extension I can

00:32:24   change the campaign codes for the kind of link that I want to generate so

00:32:29   because I have different tracking campaigns on the iTunes affiliate

00:32:34   account I can change from the extension whether I want to use a link for my

00:32:39   personal account or maybe from the Mac stories account or maybe for the

00:32:43   newsletter. We use different campaigns and we want to keep track of those

00:32:47   campaigns so the Blink extension is really well done because it lets you

00:32:50   change the format and the campaign and it lets you share so I can run the Blink

00:32:55   extension then run another extension inside the Blink extension. It's kind of

00:32:59   crazy. I love the app. You should buy it. Trust me. Blink is available in the App

00:33:05   Store now for $4.99. If you want to find it in the store make sure that you search

00:33:09   for Blink better affiliate links because you know App Store search it's it's

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00:33:19   know find I'm sure there is there is an affiliate link on that page as well you

00:33:22   know there's got to be so you can you know you can let John know because John is a

00:33:26   great guy who makes the app and I love the app so much that I even lent my

00:33:30   voice to the App Store promos so you can at least go to the store and watch that

00:33:34   Blink make your links work for you thank you so much to Blink for supporting this

00:33:38   week's episode of Connected. So Federico, you posted a big story that you've been

00:33:45   working on for a bit about your iOS 9 wishes and you know you have you have a

00:33:49   very long list of very complex wishes and some very beautiful things that

00:33:55   you've crafted in there. Beautiful. Beautiful. So I thought we would talk

00:33:59   about them a little bit and go through some stuff and maybe you could highlight

00:34:04   like a few of the key things that you're looking for. But I thought before we do

00:34:09   that if you'd let me list mine because my wishes for iOS 9 are a lot more

00:34:17   simple than yours because I've been sitting for the last couple of

00:34:21   days and I've been trying to think of what do I want iOS 9 to have and I think

00:34:25   that my wishes don't they're not as far-reaching because I can only really

00:34:28   think of like nitpicky things that I want to be ironed out. And I think that

00:34:32   eventually you will be the one who will get the most wishes granted.

00:34:37   Because I wrote this as iOS 9 wishes and I do think that it would be great to have

00:34:44   this stuff this year but I think that maybe I already have my article for iOS

00:34:50   10 ready for next year if I don't get much of this stuff.

00:34:54   So I expect a lot of things to maybe happen next year or maybe in the next couple of years.

00:35:04   But it's just, you know, I wanted to write it this year because you never know.

00:35:08   But yes, I will let you, Myke, of course.

00:35:11   Thank you.

00:35:12   So the key thing for me is better notification handling.

00:35:15   And this comes in a couple of different forms.

00:35:17   And primarily my desire for this comes from the fact that I'm an Apple Watch user.

00:35:21   And it's one of the reasons why I think that one of the tentpole features of iOS 9 will

00:35:27   be an overhaul of Notification Center and the way that works.

00:35:31   Because I think it, you know, people have wanted it for a while but now with the invention

00:35:36   of the Apple Watch it actually gives a credible marketing thing for why you would do it.

00:35:42   You know, it's kind of stuff that I would like to see.

00:35:46   Something that I've always found insane is there's no global settings.

00:35:49   I can't for example turn badges off in all apps. I've always found that

00:35:55   crazy that if I want to make a specific change I have to go into every single

00:35:58   app that may or may not have notification access and click a bunch of

00:36:02   switches. That's just crazy to me. Just say like you know a couple of

00:36:07   simple things no badges or like to set you know the maximum amount of

00:36:11   notifications per app or something that can show on the lock screen or don't

00:36:14   show on the lock screen or do show on the lock screen. Considering those are the

00:36:17   same for everyone, you know, maybe just put it at the bottom or something. Let me

00:36:21   just set all apps in one fell swoop to not show me badges for example.

00:36:26   Because I have like maybe two or three apps that I really...

00:36:31   At least that I can see every day that I like to have badges. I really

00:36:37   don't like to have badges and that's one thing that I would really like to

00:36:40   see better control over. Something that I would really like is more APIs for

00:36:46   notifications to give developers more granular control now over what is sent

00:36:50   where. Like for example, you know I mentioned this with the Apple Watch stuff

00:36:54   how I just want to know on my Apple Watch if I get a DM on Twitter. I don't

00:36:58   want to know about anything else that might happen on Twitter but I don't feel

00:37:01   that way about my phone. I want my phone to get more, I want my phone to get like

00:37:06   mentions from friends but I don't want my watch to have that because sometimes

00:37:10   you know you can get stuck in a tweet canoe, I think they're called, and you're

00:37:14   you're there all day seeing people talking about you. My phone's fine for

00:37:18   that to get that but I don't want my wrist buzzing all the time. So I would like to be

00:37:22   able to go into an app and say like you can send this to here and this to here

00:37:25   and this to here and that kind of thing I think that would be really nice. I'd

00:37:29   like to see more actual notification stuff you know I'd like to see just more

00:37:34   in that vein because that is really great I love how you can interact with

00:37:38   certain apps and I would like it if apps could do more of that without then

00:37:42   having to launch the app to complete an action and also quick replies right is a

00:37:48   big one I want any app that has a messaging function to be able to do

00:37:53   quick replies like my messages has I want to be able to clear all

00:37:57   notifications I have actually on a couple of occasions now squeezed my

00:38:01   iPhone screen really hard to try and get rid of everything like I do on my watch

00:38:05   yep it's funny how that just gets to it took no time at all for me to want that

00:38:11   everywhere. Yep I would really like to be able to do that. So they're my

00:38:15   notifications feelings Federico do you or Steven do you have anything else

00:38:19   about notifications? I still don't have a watch so no. I would only say that if

00:38:26   they're going so on one hand you have nerds who want more granule control

00:38:31   which I do but at the same time you have people saying well it's really finicky

00:38:35   now to go in and do all that stuff and I think your solution of like give me some

00:38:39   universal settings and I can go from there I think that makes a lot of sense

00:38:43   I think it's the right path like the last thing I want is more switches and

00:38:47   buttons and settings on my iPhone but if it were smarter then you know they could

00:38:53   get away with it. Yeah I think with some of the API support you could you could

00:38:56   offload that into the apps right like for example I'm thinking about in

00:38:59   Tweetbot you can go in and say what you want to be notified for right I think

00:39:03   it would be nice if I could just have some buttons that I could just tap like

00:39:06   phone, watch, watch, phone, phone, you know that kind of thing. Because at the moment

00:39:10   like I can go in and say I want to be notified for new followers, favorites,

00:39:15   retweets, like and it can just turn those on or off and they're in the app already

00:39:19   so I would like it if I could say this goes to the phone and this goes to the

00:39:22   watch. That would make me a happy man. Something that I will keep asking

00:39:27   for until I get it and I don't think I'm ever gonna get it is to allow me to pick

00:39:31   third-party apps as defaults. And Federico, I think it's probably my

00:39:36   favorite part of your article because you have clearly put way more thought

00:39:40   into the implications of this than I have. So for anybody that maybe hasn't

00:39:44   read it or whatever, could you sum that up? Like what... because you know in my mind

00:39:48   it's like oh I just go into settings or whatever and say I want this to be my

00:39:52   mail app, this to be my web browser, but you had a really interesting take on

00:39:58   some of the other implications that can be a part of that?

00:40:01   Well in theory, you know, the simple, you know, from a user perspective it should be

00:40:06   like that. You go to the settings and just pick the different default app that

00:40:11   you want to use. So in my article I imagined four types of app that you can

00:40:16   change, that you could change as a default. So the web browser, the calendar

00:40:20   client, the maps application for navigation and directions, and the email

00:40:26   client. So just four types. And so in theory as a user you should just be able to say I

00:40:32   want to use Chrome and I want to use Google Maps then I want to use Mailbox and I don't

00:40:38   know why I want to use Fantastical instead of the Apple stuff. The problem is that or

00:40:44   at least the problem that I see is that on iOS unlike OS X Apple has done a lot of integration

00:40:52   over the years, a lot of making sure that there's a reason why Apple makes these apps

00:40:58   and that they can communicate.

00:41:00   So for example, when you are in Apple Mail on iOS and you get a message that contains

00:41:11   a date or time like, I don't know, tomorrow morning or maybe Thursday at 10 p.m., that

00:41:17   little bit of text gets, it looks like a link, and you can tap it.

00:41:24   And when you tap it, you get an option to create a calendar event for the date contained

00:41:32   in the email message.

00:41:34   When you tap the create event option, you get a calendar interface inside Apple Mail.

00:41:41   So that's one of the integrations that Apple has done with their own email client and calendar

00:41:48   client.

00:41:49   There's like an extension of Apple Calendar that can create a new event of a message from

00:41:55   Apple Mail.

00:41:57   Or for example, you can get, you know, there's integration with Maps and Spotlight, or there's

00:42:04   integration with Spotlight and Safari.

00:42:07   So what happens when you change the default apps for these activities?

00:42:12   So if you change the browser, if you change the calendar, if you change the email client,

00:42:17   is there some sort of consistency with the behavior?

00:42:20   For instance, if I want to use Apple Mail but I want to use Fantastical as my calendar

00:42:24   client and Apple Mail has the same underlined date, you know, the bit of text that is recognized

00:42:31   by iOS as a date.

00:42:33   If I tap it and Fantastical is my default calendar client, do I get a Fantastical whatever

00:42:39   pop-up extension or do I still get the Apple Calendar extension because developers can

00:42:45   plug into that area of iOS.

00:42:48   So there's a bunch of questions that would need to be addressed by Apple in opening up

00:42:54   this choice to users.

00:42:56   And I do believe that it's about time to be able to say, "Thank you Apple for making Safari.

00:43:02   Thank you for making Apple Mail. We do appreciate the effort.

00:43:05   And please continue making improvements.

00:43:07   No, because I'm serious. Because most users don't need to change default apps.

00:43:11   But at this point, with so many hundreds of millions of iOS devices in use,

00:43:16   it's not just me and Myke and Joe Steele and Kyle Seth Gray who want to change the default apps.

00:43:24   It's quite a few million of users who do work on iOS and have just different needs.

00:43:29   And I believe it's quite a segment of users who want to do this stuff.

00:43:35   And most of all, the very basic truth is that you can do this on OS X.

00:43:40   And there's no reason at this point, with all these technologies, you know, the new web views with Safari in iOS 8,

00:43:47   the extensibility framework also in iOS 8,

00:43:51   there's all these underlying technologies and now it's about time to let users change the default.

00:43:57   There's a bit of all these integrations and features that you don't really think about

00:44:04   when you say, "Yeah, whatever, just put a switch and let me use the browser."

00:44:09   That should be the user experience.

00:44:11   But Apple, on its end, I believe they should also address all these minor and not so minor details.

00:44:18   I agree with that.

00:44:20   If I'm used to having fantastic... If I set fantastical as my calendar,

00:44:26   every time I enter a calendar event on iOS, I want to be using fantastical.

00:44:31   No, not to mention... Exactly, not to mention Siri.

00:44:34   When you say create a calendar event, if you set fantastical as your calendar,

00:44:38   and I don't ever... I don't have any data in the Apple calendar,

00:44:42   I don't have my accounts, whatever.

00:44:44   If I say create a new calendar event, what happens?

00:44:47   Because they would also require "Frantastical" to get a Siri API.

00:44:52   There needs to be a Siri API, which is another topic.

00:44:55   All these integrations that you get on iOS,

00:44:58   all this stuff that lives in the settings but also propagates

00:45:03   to other features of iOS, to other apps.

00:45:06   And I could see Apple making the argument for "Yes, you can change the default,

00:45:10   but you get all these other stuff only if you use our own apps."

00:45:14   And it would be a fair compromise, at least initially. I can understand why they would want to say "Yes, of course, you can now open links in Google Chrome, you can now ask for directions using Google Maps, you can use Fantastical, but if you want Spotlight suggestions, if you want proper Siri integration, if you want all these other features, you still gotta use our own apps, because we cannot open these up to developers."

00:45:40   It would make sense, but just let me open links in my default browser, just let me use my other calendar.

00:45:45   It's not so easy, but it should also be this easy.

00:45:49   You know, that's the problem with iOS. It should always be easy, but in reality

00:45:54   it's a bunch of different technologies that you need to account for and it can be tricky.

00:45:59   So I've got a couple of other quicker ones I think as well.

00:46:06   making third-party keyboards usable. It's so bad. I don't use any anymore. It's so bad switching. It's so slow.

00:46:14   It's ridiculous. I want to be able to switch easier.

00:46:20   There's clearly something that developers can't get the same

00:46:25   access to autocorrect or dictionary access because they're just not as good.

00:46:30   None of them are. So there must be something there that maybe they

00:46:35   could get access to but they don't. I don't know what it is but there

00:46:39   definitely is something where the apps are just not as good at auto-correcting

00:46:42   as the Apple keyboard. And I would like that to just be pushed further. If this

00:46:49   is gonna be something that Apple's gonna continue to be serious about then

00:46:53   there needs to be more happening in that space. And that also for me in a

00:46:58   similar vein goes for notification center widgets. Like I'm sick of having

00:47:02   into watch and reload all the time.

00:47:05   There's got to be something there that can be done to improve that as well, you know?

00:47:10   Well, you know, at least in my experience, it doesn't happen so much on the iPad.

00:47:15   But I believe it's because it's got more RAM.

00:47:19   Memory is a problem with the iPhone.

00:47:21   And there's just today a rumor from that analyst, whatever, the guy who is usually correct about

00:47:31   the next iPhone said that the next one, it's gonna have an A9 CPU with 2GB of RAM.

00:47:39   It's possible.

00:47:40   It would be, you know, it would be welcome.

00:47:43   Especially on the 6 Plus, the problem with memory extensions crashing, widgets reloading,

00:47:49   it's all, entire apps reloading, such as Safari on Twitter.

00:47:54   It would be welcome.

00:47:57   This isn't really iOS 9 but I'm just going to say it anyway whilst I'm asking for stuff.

00:48:01   I want Apple Pay.

00:48:03   Just give me that please.

00:48:05   Yes.

00:48:06   I've been keeping an eye on my supermarket.

00:48:09   They do have the contact-less thing going on and I can't wait to go there and be the

00:48:16   guy paying with this iPhone.

00:48:18   With your watch, man.

00:48:19   You'll be paying with your watch.

00:48:21   And with my watch, yes.

00:48:24   If I'm, you know, hopefully crossing my fingers, getting my watch soon.

00:48:28   Yeah, we should have Apple Pay.

00:48:30   Totally.

00:48:31   I agree.

00:48:32   Go Europe.

00:48:34   And I would also like system-wide VIP for more than what it is currently.

00:48:41   Because basically VIP is mail, right?

00:48:44   And then you also have favorites for calling.

00:48:47   Yeah, it's weird.

00:48:48   It's two different things.

00:48:50   both of those features break through different notification barriers, right? So

00:48:54   you can have just notifications on for mail, VIP, and you get those, and on Do Not

00:48:59   Disturb you can have favorites ring through. I would just like that to be one

00:49:02   system that also ties into what's the people in my friends thing on the watch.

00:49:08   So those people are all the same and they get access, they can break through a

00:49:14   bunch of different barriers. So they can break through Do Not Disturb for phone

00:49:17   calls and for messages, as well as for emails. Basically, elevate some people to a point

00:49:24   where they can reach me, no matter what.

00:49:29   Yeah, I agree. Especially the difference between VIP, favorite, like, there needs to be a common

00:49:36   layer of important people. These people matter to me, and no matter where they write or text

00:49:43   or color, FaceTime me, they always need to go through.

00:49:47   So currently we have VIPs, favorites, and friends.

00:49:52   They are three completely different.

00:49:53   What's friends?

00:49:54   That's what's on the watch.

00:49:55   Oh yeah.

00:49:56   And you can't, I know we're not talking about the watch, but annoyingly you can't do any

00:50:00   of the digital touch stuff to people who aren't in your friends ring.

00:50:05   So my, on my watch is a very different group than my favorites on my phone because on the

00:50:09   watch it's basically like everyone who has a watch but you know I don't talk to like

00:50:15   on the phone or in messages day to day.

00:50:17   You know, it's basically our Slack group.

00:50:19   So you know, I can send like,

00:50:21   Matt Alexander's not a VIP in mail,

00:50:23   but I can send him taps,

00:50:24   but if he wasn't in that front list, I couldn't.

00:50:26   Like, I agree, it's just really muddy,

00:50:28   and I think it's 'cause these things

00:50:29   have got added at different times,

00:50:31   and it's time for Apple to unify them somehow.

00:50:34   - So that's kind of the end of my list.

00:50:38   And we have a bunch of listener suggestions

00:50:40   that I wanna talk about.

00:50:43   So unless either of you have anything burning that you want me to cover, we could take our

00:50:48   last break and get to the listener suggestions.

00:50:50   Sure.

00:50:51   That's great.

00:50:52   This week's episode of Connected is also brought to you by our friends over at Squarespace.

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00:53:31   - So we have a bunch of listener suggestions.

00:53:34   So we took to the interwebs and asked people,

00:53:36   asked you guys, what makes sense for Apple to look at

00:53:40   for iOS 9 and we've collected a bunch of these

00:53:44   and I thought we could just go through them.

00:53:46   So Federico, do you wanna tackle this first one?

00:53:49   - Sure.

00:53:51   - You even just didn't want to say the name.

00:53:52   - Yeah. - I know what that's up to.

00:53:55   - So listener Abimath, Abimath, Abimath.

00:54:00   - You did better than I've ever done.

00:54:02   - Yes, listener you know who.

00:54:05   Upgrade pricing, especially on the Mac App Store.

00:54:09   So yeah, we talked about this just a few minutes ago.

00:54:13   Developers have been asking for the ability to say,

00:54:16   I have version 2 of my app currently on the App Store and I'm working on version 3.

00:54:23   I want to offer a discount price, what is called an upgrade pricing, to my existing

00:54:28   customers if I want to migrate to the new version of my app.

00:54:32   That's been discussed many, many times before and clearly Apple is not, you know, they are

00:54:40   listening but we just don't think it's the way to go.

00:54:43   I disagree because especially for some type of Mac software with a different price mechanic,

00:54:50   a different history, there are customers that have been with some companies for decades.

00:54:57   So it's obviously different from the iOS App Store.

00:55:00   Even on the iOS App Store, developers have been finding hacks around the system, especially

00:55:07   with Complete My Bundle with iOS 8 released last year.

00:55:12   Some developers have been using bundles to offer discounts to people, but even this workaround

00:55:18   has turned out to be problematic for some companies.

00:55:21   I saw some tweets from the Omni group and the kind of situation they have going on with

00:55:26   OmniFocus 2 for iPhone and the bundle they offered.

00:55:29   I haven't been following, but the truth is that there's no upgrade pricing on the App Store.

00:55:35   I think it would make sense for some type of Mac software, but again, this is the company

00:55:41   that didn't offer any upgrade pricing for Logic when they switched from the old version

00:55:47   of Logic to Logic 10.

00:55:50   Per 10.

00:55:51   So they don't believe in upgrade pricing.

00:55:54   I don't think that's necessarily right or fair, but I wish they offered it, but just

00:56:04   not happening.

00:56:05   You never know, but I'm sorry.

00:56:08   I'll be back.

00:56:11   has wrote in John who actually makes Blink which makes sense what I'm about to say here

00:56:15   and this was something Federico spoke about so I'm interested to hear your thoughts buddy.

00:56:19   Highlight text or a URL and have that as a place to launch an extension.

00:56:24   And you mentioned about extension points, right?

00:56:28   Yeah.

00:56:29   So extensions was an amazing addition to iOS and it totally changed our use, especially my iPad.

00:56:39   I think it's time to kind of extend the extensions in the sense that right now you can only trigger

00:56:47   extensions from the share sheet, which has downsides, both when it comes to discovering

00:56:54   extensions because a lot of people don't actually know what they do, what they are, how you

00:56:59   can set them up, etc.

00:57:01   And also it has problems when it comes to the inputs.

00:57:05   So this has been for many developers.

00:57:08   Brian from Tumblr, he has a great collection of issues of extensions and kind of triggering

00:57:16   extensions and what exactly gets passed to an extension.

00:57:21   That's been a problem for many, many developers.

00:57:24   And I think it would be appropriate to offer better tools to developers and say, "Okay,

00:57:30   you can offer an extension from the sharesheet, but you can also have your extension when

00:57:34   you copy and when you select text.

00:57:38   And again, Apple has the advantage.

00:57:41   They are already doing this stuff just in certain places.

00:57:46   So on iOS, if you select text in iBooks, you get a share sheet that you can activate from

00:57:54   the selection of text.

00:57:55   So they have a precedent when it comes to text selections and this could be beneficial

00:58:01   to many types of apps.

00:58:03   So for instance, a lot of people don't know, if you're in Safari and you want to share

00:58:09   a selection from the web page, so let's say you're reading a blog post from Steven and

00:58:15   you want to share a quote from Steven, some apps offer extensions that can get the text

00:58:22   selection from Safari.

00:58:24   And this is totally not obvious if you're just saying, "Okay, sure, I tap the share

00:58:28   sheet, the share sheet shares the web page."

00:58:31   That's not true and I believe that having an option to trigger extension from text would

00:58:37   offer a better connection between, "Okay, I select text, then I use the extension."

00:58:44   There's many other points, extension points that I mention in my article.

00:58:50   Having the ability to trigger extensions in mail or text.

00:58:57   It's been so kind of not obvious in the past year to figure out exactly what extensions

00:59:05   support and I think some consistency would be better for iOS 9.

00:59:11   Like to say, okay, as a developer you get access to this and this and this type of data

00:59:16   and you can dynamically adjust what type of data gets passed to an extension.

00:59:20   But in reality they just need more options.

00:59:22   They just need to say, okay, you can have an extension here, you can have an extension

00:59:26   there just you know to break outside of the share sheet because a lot of people

00:59:31   a lot more people would use extensions if only they were available outside of

00:59:35   the share icon.

00:59:37   Yeah. I'm going to combine the Koalas and Lee they're very similar

00:59:45   ideas of I should have watch kit like

00:59:52   glances or complications on

00:59:54   You know on the lock screen. I think that makes a lot of sense. I think it's

00:59:59   Thinking about it on the phone. It sounds more like widgets, you know

01:00:03   Like that's the thing that everybody's wanted forever on iOS and I do wonder if this sort of idea, you know

01:00:09   You can have a little projection of your app, you know outside of it

01:00:12   They can be running and just for glanceable information

01:00:15   You know if that makes sense on something like like the lock screen of the iPhone

01:00:19   I think I could argue that it does I mean have your little activity rings

01:00:24   You know when you when you just turn your phone on and or have just a little little bits of information

01:00:28   I find it really helpful on the watch

01:00:30   You know

01:00:31   I've got several

01:00:32   Complications and it's it's nice because you don't have to go in and a dig dig around you just tap it

01:00:37   It comes on you see what you need to know and then you move on and I for one would like to see that

01:00:42   You know spread to other devices. I don't

01:00:47   I just think that's what my watch is for.

01:00:52   I used to want widgets and stuff like on my iPhone, but I don't now look at my iPhone

01:00:57   for that kind of information, I look at my watch.

01:01:00   And I think it makes more sense to have it on that device than to have it on both devices.

01:01:04   And you pick one and I think the watch is the right place for it.

01:01:08   And also, from a marketing perspective, don't make less of a reason to own a watch.

01:01:16   think that the iPhone, again you go in and grab data from it, that's my thing

01:01:22   that I keep talking about. You go into the iPhone and you find what you want

01:01:25   and that's what that's about but the watch displays stuff to you and so I

01:01:29   think glances and complications are a great essence of what the watch is about

01:01:33   and the phone is about apps and like not arguably notification center widgets

01:01:40   give an element of that type of stuff but again that's I think that even

01:01:44   notifications into widgets are way more complex than glasses and complications.

01:01:50   That's just my feeling. I just think I don't... Now that I have both of these

01:01:54   devices I don't need them to both do the same thing. Federico, going back to

01:02:00   something that you mentioned a moment ago about the iBooks text selection,

01:02:05   James wants that across the entire OS. Now I have no idea what he's talking

01:02:09   about. I don't know what iBooks text selection is.

01:02:12   No, just when you select text in iBooks, Apple has a share button in the copy and paste menu

01:02:22   that lets you share text.

01:02:25   So the difference here, there's two things to mention.

01:02:28   One, developers can still customize the iOS copy and paste menu and have a share button

01:02:36   that opens the share sheet.

01:02:38   For example, Pocket and Instapaper do this.

01:02:42   The other thing to mention is that this is, I think James and I use this example because

01:02:47   it's an Apple app and Apple is not doing the sharesheet activation from the copy and paste

01:02:53   menu in other apps such as Mail or Safari.

01:02:57   But what I also, what I didn't mention a few minutes ago and what I would like to see would

01:03:04   be the ability to trigger specific extensions directly.

01:03:08   So let me skip the share sheet section altogether.

01:03:14   Again on the Mac, when I'm in Safari, there's a 1Password icon that lets me go straight to

01:03:22   1Password.

01:03:23   I don't need to go to share 1Password and then I open 1Password when I want to use the 1Password

01:03:29   extension.

01:03:30   I just click the 1Password icon.

01:03:33   For iOS, because of maybe the technology's first version and maybe also for security

01:03:39   concerns, you need to go through the share sheet.

01:03:43   You need to say, "OK, share.

01:03:45   I want to use the extensions."

01:03:46   Then you need to say, "OK, I want to use this one."

01:03:49   And this, I believe, is because you want to have the user's willingness to use an extension.

01:03:56   For iOS 9, it would be nice to say, "OK, I don't want to go through all this share sheet

01:04:01   stuff every time.

01:04:02   let me open these extensions programmatically, specifically, so if my user wants to have

01:04:09   the one password login or maybe the draft text capture extension, you can go there directly.

01:04:17   So let me skip basically the middleman of the share sheet and let me go to extensions

01:04:22   and to a specific one whenever I want. I understand why Apple wanted to group them all together

01:04:27   in a single place, but maybe it's time to be more flexible.

01:04:34   Leading on from that, @Giaq31 on Twitter was saying having a revised copy and paste menu

01:04:41   and I guess with that adding these extension points, but also a new iPad keyboard with

01:04:46   a way to move the cursor. I think that would be nice to have that everywhere. I've seen

01:04:50   some apps do this where you can swipe your finger across and it moves the cursor. I think

01:04:55   a really nice thing. I still find that frustrating trying to get the cursor to

01:05:00   go exactly where I want it to be. So I would like to tap in a random place and

01:05:04   then just scroll around to find my place would be really nice.

01:05:09   Oz has said, and I think this is really interesting, "I think it's time for

01:05:14   an App Store cleanup. Withdraw old apps like maybe you know last updated in July

01:05:19   2011 apps. You know apps that haven't even got the four inch screen on them

01:05:24   and time to get rid of them. Federico, you think that this might be a

01:05:29   difficult thing to do? Well it's, you know, it is tricky. I don't think I

01:05:38   have the technical knowledge. I mean the app, sorry, can be slow I guess. I don't

01:05:48   I don't know.

01:05:49   I think part of this is to get rid of old rubbish apps that haven't been updated, that

01:05:55   aren't actively developed from search.

01:05:59   I've been thinking about this for a while.

01:06:01   When I say like it's a – the technical problem is that when you are a developer and you sign

01:06:07   a contract with Apple to release your apps on the App Store, I don't know what the terms

01:06:14   are.

01:06:15   If I give you my app and I just want to have the app on the App Store, the contract doesn't

01:06:20   say that I need to update the app.

01:06:22   It just says that I need to keep paying my developer fee.

01:06:24   Sure, but terms can change.

01:06:27   Terms can change, yes.

01:06:28   But what as a customer?

01:06:30   As a developer, I don't know.

01:06:31   But as a customer, the App Store is of course bloated and there's so many apps and when

01:06:38   you want to look for stuff, it's difficult because the search results are also bad.

01:06:45   And besides the search algorithm, which is kind of crazy, there's also all these other

01:06:49   apps, old apps that you come across and you never can find what you're looking for.

01:06:54   But as a user, what if I want to use the old app?

01:06:57   What if I'm some kind of freak that wants to use an app from 2010 for some reason and

01:07:03   And actually, I'm telling you, in some cases, I came across apps that had a specific feature

01:07:09   or that did something that I couldn't find in recent apps.

01:07:13   So what if I need or want an old app?

01:07:16   I should be able to find it.

01:07:18   I should be able to use it.

01:07:19   So I've been thinking about, you know, let's get rid of the old stuff.

01:07:23   And I agree.

01:07:25   The principle is not misaligned also with my interests.

01:07:32   But I also feel like it would set a precedent for Apple that maybe they don't want to deal

01:07:38   with.

01:07:40   Because how do you judge what's old or what's not old?

01:07:44   Well, again, I think a really good way of it is, you know, is an app retina or does

01:07:50   an app support the 4-inch?

01:07:51   Sure, but what if I don't care?

01:07:53   Well, it's not about what...

01:07:55   Okay, I get what you're saying, but there are people that care on either side.

01:07:59   I think at a certain point, Apple does have to do something, I think, because you end

01:08:04   up with just a bunch of old rubbish apps that are eventually just going to start breaking.

01:08:11   Not to mention, Myke, I'm sorry, but not to mention the problem of game and app preservation

01:08:17   that you very much care about.

01:08:20   Yeah, I mean, what if a developer makes a fantastic app in 2010?

01:08:27   I mean, just an example, what if the developer dies and a family member continues paying

01:08:33   the developer fee, do you just want to have that app removed from the App Store?

01:08:37   Yeah, but you're charging for promotion to make me sound mean.

01:08:41   Like, the thing is, this is a business and eventually you end up with an App Store that's

01:08:45   just full of just like...

01:08:47   No, I'm saying maybe have a way to push down these old apps in search results.

01:08:52   I agree that they shouldn't be treated on the same level of modern, updated, you know,

01:08:57   maintained apps.

01:08:59   But remove them outright from the app store, I don't think that's the best way to go.

01:09:04   Okay.

01:09:05   Well, okay.

01:09:06   We might come back to all that.

01:09:08   Yes.

01:09:09   It's an interesting topic in and of itself.

01:09:12   The last one is from Jonathan, who says, "I'd love to be able to mark a calendar event as

01:09:16   Do Not Disturb, then have my phone set accordingly."

01:09:20   - You thought this was genius.

01:09:23   - Yeah, so I could, and Jonathan's bullet point here,

01:09:28   I could have my record connected calendar event

01:09:31   set to a Do Not Disturb event,

01:09:32   and then my phone and watch and everything

01:09:34   go into Do Not Disturb for the length of that event,

01:09:39   which is genius in every way.

01:09:43   - Like, I can't believe that that doesn't,

01:09:45   this is, like everything else, I'm like,

01:09:47   yeah, that would be nice, like, yeah, I would like that,

01:09:48   I would like that, but I read that,

01:09:49   that I was like I can't believe that doesn't already exist I think yeah this

01:09:53   is something that should should happen so why would why would you want this I

01:09:57   guess up meetings podcast you don't go to meetings as someone who spends their

01:10:02   life in meetings I think would be great and I think you know you could even go a

01:10:06   step further and some Android phones do this where you know if you're gonna do

01:10:10   this like go all the way where your phone is even more aware of what's in

01:10:14   in your calendar or even where you are.

01:10:15   So, you know, if I'm, if, you know,

01:10:19   a lot of people, including myself,

01:10:20   I have Do Not Disturb go on my phone automatically

01:10:22   at about 10.30 p.m.

01:10:24   And that's great if I'm at home,

01:10:26   but like last night my wife and I were out

01:10:28   and I didn't wanna do that

01:10:29   because we had someone watching the kids.

01:10:31   And so, you know, look down like, you know, 10.40

01:10:34   and oh, my phone's on Do Not Disturb and turn it off.

01:10:36   It could be great to be able to pair those things

01:10:39   like phone, if you are at this address

01:10:41   and is this time do this thing?

01:10:44   And yes, that's kind of straying back

01:10:47   into maybe the power user territory,

01:10:50   but everyone would find that really nice

01:10:51   is to set some general rules up

01:10:53   and the phone know what to do.

01:10:55   - The only meetings I take are introspective ones.

01:11:01   - You don't want to be disturbed during those,

01:11:03   those personal alone times.

01:11:03   - No, I don't care.

01:11:04   I just block out everything else.

01:11:06   - But it will be useful for podcasting.

01:11:08   - No, no, I agree.

01:11:09   It will be, yes, now I get it, yes.

01:11:11   So, yeah, I think I can...

01:11:14   I do like the idea of a software option triggering a setting on iOS.

01:11:21   I feel like that could be expanded to other stuff.

01:11:24   Uh-oh.

01:11:25   Yes.

01:11:26   I do like the idea of an option setting a global switch on the entire device.

01:11:30   I feel like there's potential there.

01:11:32   So Jonathan, what have you been up to?

01:11:36   This guy, I don't think he's just a listener.

01:11:39   This is too precise as a suggestion.

01:11:42   Who's Jonathan?

01:11:43   What do we know about Jonathan?

01:11:45   Nothing off the top of my head.

01:11:46   I mean, I can try and find some stuff out if you want.

01:11:48   We will investigate you, Jonathan.

01:11:50   That's creepy.

01:11:51   That's terrifying.

01:11:52   All right, so that brings us to the end of this week's episode of Connected.

01:11:56   If you'd like to find the show notes for this week, go to relay.fm/connected/39.

01:12:02   If you'd like to find us online, you can find Federico at maxstories.net and he is @Vittici

01:12:06   Twitter v-i-t-i-c-c-i and Stephen is at 512 pixels dot net and he is at ismh and

01:12:12   I am I Myke I am YKE and I'm the host of many shows here on the lovely relay FM

01:12:17   of which connected is a part and you can find this show and many more over at

01:12:21   relay.fm thank you so much for listening this week thanks again to our sponsors

01:12:28   Harry's Squarespace and Blink and we'll be back next time until then say goodbye

01:12:34   Bye guys.

01:12:35   Arrivederci.

01:12:36   Adios.

01:12:36   Adios.