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Connected

33: The RoboCop of Apple Watches

 

00:00:00   From Relay FM this is Connected episode 33. Today is Tuesday March 31st 2015.

00:00:09   Connected is brought to you by these awesome sponsors.

00:00:12   Lynda.com where you can instantly stream thousands of courses created by industry experts.

00:00:17   Screens which is a great family of applications that allows you to access your computers from wherever you are.

00:00:23   And Wealthfront the automated investment service that makes it easy to invest your money the right way.

00:00:28   I'm not Myke Hurley, but I'm your co-host Stephen Hackett, and I'm joined across the world

00:00:34   Standing at six foot one hailing from Rome, Italy. Mr. Federico Vatici. Hey, Stephen. Hey

00:00:41   It's uh, it's like deep in basketball season here

00:00:45   So I thought I'd go for like a height and where you're from like they do for basketball games

00:00:49   the problem is I don't know how tall our guest is who is

00:00:53   Just just a one state away from me

00:00:56   I'm gonna say that David is six foot tall and

00:00:59   Hails from the the town of underscore set that's close. That's pretty close. It's pretty close. How you doing David? I'm doing well

00:01:08   Thanks for having me on guys. Yeah, we're glad to glad to have you so so Myke's at the at the all conference

00:01:13   He's not dead. We're not gonna make that joke today probably

00:01:16   He's at a conference. So

00:01:18   David you were very gracious to step in and we have a lot of things to talk about today

00:01:25   So I'd say that we're just gonna jump jump right in and and Federico the follow-up is basically all your fault this week

00:01:32   What did I do your?

00:01:34   Wireless needing to turn the wireless off at night

00:01:37   Has spawned more email than almost anything we've talked about and the two years we've done a show together like it just

00:01:45   It won't stop so

00:01:48   Lots of emails came in we're gonna talk about a few of them

00:01:54   The first one is from listener diggery and diggery suggests a second wireless network to have Wi-Fi separate from the DSL

00:02:02   Router so you can put the wiimote in between so basically you could leave the internet on all the time

00:02:07   so that we the

00:02:09   The wiimote switch can talk to the internet so you can turn it off and on over LTE

00:02:13   And then the wireless would be downstream of that so you could turn the wireless on and off but leave the internet always on

00:02:19   which is a

00:02:21   Just complicated enough to really make sure I'm following

00:02:24   Okay, what am I supposed to do here so is your is the wireless coming out of the same yes, okay

00:02:33   So what you would do is you would buy like an airport extreme or something. Oh, I need to buy stuff

00:02:37   yeah, well, I mean Myke could buy for you and

00:02:39   you put you plug that into the we mo right and

00:02:43   So the the the we mo cut goes on and off so like if you imagine the we mo being the bridge, right?

00:02:50   So the bridge goes up, it closes, and the wireless doesn't work anymore.

00:02:54   But the Wiimote is still attached on the other end to internet.

00:02:57   It's pretty brilliant.

00:02:58   I like that it has a lot of moving pieces.

00:02:59   It's a little Rube Goldberg, but I think it's pretty clever.

00:03:04   I will say, though, Ted's suggestion is much simpler.

00:03:08   Federico, do you want to describe this Amazon link for our listeners?

00:03:13   Yes.

00:03:14   I first opened this link last night, and I couldn't quite figure out what was going on.

00:03:20   So this is an extension cord with a footswitch.

00:03:25   And basically there's like an American cable, because I can turn from the plug, and there's

00:03:32   like a little capsule in the middle and you're supposed to press this little switch with

00:03:38   your foot and I'm guessing that it cuts off the power.

00:03:43   And now I'm not sure, am I supposed to keep this under my bed and then when I wanna turn

00:03:50   off my wi-fi i just press this uh foot switch before sleeping my thought was you put it under

00:03:56   your pillow and so when your head hits the pillow and it probably won't cause any fires when you

00:04:00   sleep i think that's the way to do it or maybe just you know maybe i can just activate it with

00:04:06   my hand keep it on my nightstand and when i go to sleep i just you know and the wi-fi goes off

00:04:13   I don't know. It's an idea.

00:04:15   It is an idea.

00:04:16   It's an idea. It's another idea.

00:04:18   It's another idea.

00:04:19   We also received, Steven, a suggestion for an app to use.

00:04:23   A lot of people I know, you may have emailed you correctly because I always tell people

00:04:30   to send emails to Steven, which is the right way to send feedback.

00:04:34   So there's a Netgear app for iOS.

00:04:38   I didn't know this.

00:04:41   and it looks horrible. It's pretty bad. It is the kind of Netgear app that you would expect

00:04:47   for Stull to design. It's not even taller, it's like iPhone 4 size still. There's black bars in

00:04:54   the screenshot on top and the bottom and there's a bunch of, I'm guessing icons,

00:05:05   looks like icons from windows and you can access parental controls, wireless settings, guest access,

00:05:12   my media, which i'm not sure what you're supposed to do with this, and there's folders, you can

00:05:19   browse your media server. Thanks for the recommendation. I mean there's also the

00:05:26   rotation lock in the status bar and one thing that really bothers me is that the battery

00:05:32   goes, you know, if you take a look at the screenshot, you could tell that this guy was

00:05:37   going through, you know, a serious process because the battery goes 35%, 36%, 37%, 38%.

00:05:44   So it took a lot of screenshots, this person.

00:05:48   Yeah.

00:05:49   The screenshots are also from iOS 6?

00:05:53   Because it doesn't have the dots in the top left?

00:05:55   Oh yeah.

00:05:56   Doesn't have the dots?

00:05:57   Look how weird those lines look now.

00:05:59   I actually really hated the dots when Iowa 7 came out, but now I've come to appreciate

00:06:03   them looking back on the screenshot.

00:06:05   Do people say like, "I have three dots"?

00:06:08   Because I still hear people saying, "Of course in Italian, I still have three bars."

00:06:13   I hear the same.

00:06:14   They still call them bars, but it's dots.

00:06:16   Right.

00:06:17   I hear the same thing.

00:06:18   It's something that's really tearing society apart, I think.

00:06:22   So the next bit of feedback, I actually put a dropper link in the show notes, basically

00:06:28   just copying Dan's email for the world to read, so sorry Dan. But he basically

00:06:33   wrote this email saying that you could script this sort of stuff, which of

00:06:37   course, Federico is right up your alley. I didn't really kind of get what he was,

00:06:42   you know, I didn't pick up what he was laying down here, but do you have some

00:06:46   ideas on how you could somehow script your Wi-Fi to turn on and turn off at night?

00:06:49   Yeah, I could use Python to basically interact with my local Wi-Fi IP address.

00:06:56   There's a couple of modules on Pythonista that you could install or maybe even have

00:07:03   already in the app.

00:07:06   I guess I could put together some workarounds to mess around with my wifi.

00:07:13   I just don't want to because I know that I would break things somehow and I would

00:07:21   rather just have a local timer.

00:07:23   Again, just give me a local timer on the Wiimote.

00:07:27   I'm sort of giving up on turning off my Wi-Fi,

00:07:31   so I needed to explain my girlfriend problem.

00:07:34   And so again, thanks for all the feedback,

00:07:38   but I'm just giving up because there's no--

00:07:42   the kind of solution that I want is not possible right now

00:07:44   with the Wiimote, which by the way, I'm still

00:07:48   using with my espresso machine.

00:07:50   And today, I was just driving home,

00:07:52   And I was, uh, I was at a, you know, uh, in my car and I just press the, the wemo

00:07:58   icon and like the button to turn on the switch.

00:08:02   And when I walked into my apartment, uh, I just went into the kitchen, made some

00:08:08   espresso and it was, I mean, it's always amazing when I walk into my, my home

00:08:13   house and you know, the espresso machine is ready, right?

00:08:16   Cool.

00:08:17   A robot, the wifi.

00:08:19   Yeah.

00:08:20   The wifi I'm giving up on the wifi.

00:08:22   I think that's probably probably for the best. So we also spoke about teletext

00:08:30   and Ned points us to I guess it's "Mintel" is that how you pronounce that

00:08:35   Federico or David? "Mintel" it's like Intel with mint.

00:08:39   That's what I thought but it's French so maybe it's... Oh maybe it's "Mintel"

00:08:43   I'm not sure how I can do it. I never studied French. David do you know French?

00:08:51   Nope, just manage but only that barely. Yeah, that's that's why I am so this was a

00:08:56   Another online service available through telephone lines and it was primarily

00:09:03   Pro it's not a mean tell it's Minitel Minitel

00:09:10   So basically it required a terminal. So there's a Wikipedia page like look at this hardware. This thing is

00:09:17   Not good-looking. I mean it's it's I want one but it's not good-looking

00:09:21   But so it's pretty cool you should check out the Wikipedia article

00:09:26   Federico if someone wanted to find this link and the other links we've discussed where would they where would they go?

00:09:32   But they can go to page 33 of their teletext

00:09:36   Done just press 3 3 on the on the two-year

00:09:40   Yeah, the glorious interface of the teletext yeah or

00:09:47   if you're you know a little more old-fashioned you could go to relay.fm/connected/33

00:09:53   Awesome, so we have an announcement before we move out of follow-up we have

00:10:00   connector shirts for sale over on Teespring and it plays on the joke of

00:10:07   I've been beta testing things for a couple weeks, glorious artwork by our

00:10:11   friend ForgottenTowel who does all the artwork here at Relay, all the show art

00:10:15   and the web design and all that stuff comes out of out of his brain and he was

00:10:19   very kind to do a shirt for us. You should definitely go check it out. You've got

00:10:24   until April 12th to order so another 12 days or so from recording. We'll be

00:10:30   reminding you again we would definitely love if you guys would check that out it

00:10:34   helps us helps us do our thing and you get to look super handsome or super

00:10:40   beautiful all at the same time. It's a win-win as they say guys. Yeah yeah

00:10:45   if you don't buy a t-shirt you will never receive new episodes again. Wow!

00:10:50   It's in your best interest to buy t-shirts. I can't enforce that. But

00:10:56   you will look good. Some really nice colors, men's and women's cut, so I definitely go

00:11:00   check them out. Guys we should take a break. Okay. And thank our friends at

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00:12:44   So guys, Uncle Tim's been in the news, I would say, the last couple days.

00:12:51   Did you guys see this article in Fortune about him as kind of like a mini profile?

00:12:57   Yeah, the one about him giving away all his money before he dies.

00:13:04   Yeah, basically.

00:13:07   quite awesome. I didn't know he had a nephew because this is the article when they say

00:13:15   he's giving away all his wealth and also paying for his nephew's tuition college, right?

00:13:21   Yeah, which is, I kind of like the contrast there. Like, "Oh, I'm putting my nephew through

00:13:26   college and then I'm going to give all the rest of my money away."

00:13:29   Yeah.

00:13:30   I mean...

00:13:31   As though, of course, that it's a pretty expensive college if that's a significant amount compared.

00:13:35   Yeah, yeah. He's like, "I'm gonna go to a state technical school." No, I'd imagine his nephew's going someplace expensive.

00:13:41   But the article's really interesting too. They obviously talk about that, and that's sort of the big subject.

00:13:46   But they also talk about, sort of compare and contrast Tim Cook and Steve Jobs.

00:13:51   And we're gonna talk, I think, next week about the "Becoming Steve Jobs" book.

00:13:54   But the Fortune writer really tried to, like, paint this picture of, you know, Jobs is always moving forward,

00:14:02   Cook's apples sometimes lose things behind and then they have like a quote from Tim saying if you don't break away with the past

00:14:08   you can never move forward and

00:14:10   I thought was really interesting to like compare and contrast the two leaders and not clearly they're very different right like

00:14:16   Tim is out there in the world in a way that Steve Jobs wasn't and didn't want to be

00:14:21   but but I for one really

00:14:25   like

00:14:27   If if you didn't like Tim Cook before this article and you'd like there's no way you can't like not like him now

00:14:32   Right, like he's just he's awesome. I

00:14:35   Totally agree, but there's people who don't like him which is

00:14:39   Interesting, you know because there's people who say is mixing the business with his own beliefs, you know with his own ideas about

00:14:47   Politics and religion and there's people especially I'm guessing especially in America

00:14:53   Who don't like this, you know way of doing things and instead from my again

00:15:00   I'm just guessing that things are different but from my European perspective. I think this guy is doing, you know

00:15:06   Really great stuff because he's leading

00:15:09   One of the biggest if not the biggest company in the world and he's using this kind of position, you know

00:15:16   these influence to

00:15:18   You know to make meaningful changes that are not just you know bug fixes and performance improvements

00:15:23   it's actually stuff that matters. Again, like you said, it's awesome.

00:15:29   So you're referring also to this Washington Post op-ed that

00:15:37   Tim Cook wrote about some legislation that's gone on here that can

00:15:43   open the door for discrimination based on sexual orientation and some

00:15:48   other things. So he basically is saying like, "This is dangerous." And I definitely agree

00:15:55   with him and there's definitely conflict, I think, in parts of the country about this.

00:16:00   It's insane. Oh yeah. Again, not the politics show, but it's insane.

00:16:06   Yeah. And I'm always struck when I read things that Tim Cook writes, and clearly they're

00:16:13   edited and polished or whatnot, but it's so concise and so well-written. Like his letter

00:16:17   where he came out, I guess that was the end of last year, and then this essay in the Washington

00:16:22   Post, just really well written, really well said. And I don't know about the two of you,

00:16:29   but I definitely read Tim Cook and I hear him in his voice. Do you guys do that?

00:16:32   Yes. Yes. And I also see his face at this point.

00:16:36   Wow. Yeah, because I know what he's like. So I

00:16:41   just pictured the guy talking to me reading his...

00:16:44   I definitely did that in the "Becoming Steve Jobs" book. At the end, Tim Cook has some quotes,

00:16:50   and I definitely read them in my head in his voice. And it's, of course, easy for me because

00:16:56   he is originally from Georgia or Alabama somewhere, not far from me. So it's not hard for me to

00:17:03   imagine a southern accent. Yeah, sometimes he does say words like you do. I noticed this.

00:17:12   I'm not sure what the terminology is, but he has some kind of, you know, the vocals

00:17:17   at the end of some words, they're like different from, you know, standard English or American

00:17:23   English, I guess.

00:17:25   Otherwise Myke, if I'm calling it standard.

00:17:28   Although I will say Myke sounds more American than ever.

00:17:31   And sometimes...

00:17:32   But Myke used to sound more American.

00:17:35   Well, Myke, he's alive.

00:17:39   sometimes says things like me and like then I feel really guilty about that

00:17:43   like oh no it's like he and I as you might imagine talk a lot off the air

00:17:47   some weeks as much or more than we talk on the air together so it's I definitely

00:17:52   have that influence on him and that's no good for anyone really. So we're

00:17:58   gonna get into the into the watch stuff but before we do that I want to talk

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00:19:49   sponsoring this week's episode of Connected. I love tools that work well

00:19:55   you know it's just so great to have them on board.

00:19:59   So, Underscore, you agreed a couple days ago to come on,

00:20:04   and my thought was we could talk about Apple Watch apps

00:20:08   beginning to show up, so like Evernote and a bunch of others

00:20:11   had an update and says, "Hey, this includes support

00:20:15   for Apple Watch."

00:20:16   And then today, right, like an hour ago, Apple said,

00:20:21   "Developers, you can submit your Watch apps."

00:20:25   So hey, I'm a little confused between those two things.

00:20:28   I guess people were submitting just the iOS parts and not the watch code but

00:20:33   anyways we have lots of questions for you but I kind of wanted to start

00:20:39   sort of broadly there's this website that I'm sure you guys have seen called

00:20:45   WatchAware and developers are submitting apps to this or

00:20:50   this site is going out and finding them and coming up with basically a laundry

00:20:56   list of watch apps.

00:20:57   Have you guys looked through this?

00:20:59   Like do you have any thoughts on kind of what people are doing before we get into what Underscore

00:21:03   is doing?

00:21:04   Well, I think at least initially now, again, this is the reason why we have David today,

00:21:11   but initially we're going to see based on these interactive demos and screenshots on

00:21:16   this website, we're going to see a lot of similar apps, meaning that most of these apps,

00:21:22   use standard interface elements and they all have the same basic structure and layouts.

00:21:32   And I think it makes sense and it's obvious because developers are still learning.

00:21:38   Nobody knows what using a watch every day is like.

00:21:41   And the simulator of course is no replacement for an actual watch.

00:21:46   So most developers are playing it safe and going with the Apple guidelines and making

00:21:51   apps that respect these guidelines.

00:21:55   And my main, I wouldn't say concern, but curiosity would be to see, are these apps actually going

00:22:06   to be useful on a daily basis?

00:22:09   Because there's many limitations in WatchKit, which again I want to ask David about.

00:22:17   But looking at these demos, I don't want to say that all these apps are going to be useless.

00:22:27   But I'm curious if there's going to be too much similarity between apps, too little differentiation

00:22:34   maybe.

00:22:35   David.

00:22:36   Yes.

00:22:37   Let me ask you.

00:22:38   In building, so you have this awesome series on your blog called As I Learn Watch Kit.

00:22:45   And in building, I don't know how many, like 20 or 30 watch apps, you have a full catalog

00:22:52   of watch apps basically.

00:22:54   In building watch apps, has it been a struggle for you to find ways to be original, to take

00:23:03   an iPhone app and to, you know, cut it down to an essential group of features that make

00:23:09   sense on a watch.

00:23:12   I think there are two kinds of originality that are probably worth talking about separately.

00:23:19   So the visual and sort of aesthetic similarities between watch kit apps are in some ways coming

00:23:27   from the way that WatchKit itself is structured and how constrained it is and how geared towards

00:23:35   building.

00:23:36   There's only a certain number of UI elements that you can use, period, for building your

00:23:42   applications and we're all building with those same tools.

00:23:45   And sort of like, Apple gave us six crayons and those are the only crayons we can use

00:23:50   to draw our pictures and so a lot of our pictures are going to have similarities to them.

00:23:55   And so in that side, that side is a bit trickier to get out of.

00:24:00   I think the distinctiveness that you can get in terms of functionality, I think that's

00:24:07   much easier in the sense because every app has a different purpose and a different usefulness.

00:24:14   And while there are certain types of apps that I think lend themselves very strongly

00:24:20   to being on the watch, things where it makes sense to have something that you only look

00:24:25   at for a few seconds or that is made more useful by being kind of always available to

00:24:30   you.

00:24:31   Like there's only so many things that that falls into but at least from my experience

00:24:37   I think that there's a lot of you know every almost every app that I have has when I know

00:24:43   if I think about it and try and boil it down there is some experience that would be made

00:24:47   better by being by residing on a watch and the hard part is just finding that thing and

00:24:53   And working, you know, which is tricky obviously because we don't have them yet, but trying

00:24:57   to think through what would I want to be able to access all the time?

00:25:02   What would be the experience that is made better by doing that?

00:25:07   And I'm sure we're going to find that we're going to have a bunch of apps that, you know,

00:25:12   get launched on day one, and I'm sure some of mine will fall into this category, that

00:25:16   in reality don't end up being as useful as our developer imaginations think they might

00:25:21   be, and then we'll go through a process over the next few months of, you know,

00:25:25   refining that, changing that, and, you know, honing in on what is actually going

00:25:30   to be useful. But that's, I think, the process by which we're sort of trying to

00:25:34   work out how each developer is just having to sort of find their own

00:25:38   home in the watch landscape. Right, I mean, and back in a second, about the

00:25:45   visual consistency make part of that is is good I think if you think back to

00:25:52   the original iPhone you know Apple's bundled apps before the the App Store

00:25:56   there was a there was a shared design language yes there were outliers but a

00:26:01   lot of things you know looked and felt the same way I think that helped sort of

00:26:06   guide the users like hey I haven't used this particular app before but I know

00:26:09   what this button this type of button does I think there's a value to that

00:26:13   with the watch and you know maybe maybe it's watch kit holding holding people

00:26:19   back and maybe the SDK comes out there be you know more options

00:26:23   available to developers in terms of visual design. I think the other part of

00:26:27   is too there was a there was a post by Craig Hockenberry the other day about

00:26:32   the the actual display of the the watch itself being an OLED display which which

00:26:43   basically you know they've done that with the blacks are really deep and you

00:26:46   know all the pictures you see in the watch and the the black screen it's kind

00:26:50   of hard to tell where the LCD ends and the glass begins and much more sort of

00:26:54   fluid experience from you know component to component but there are trade-offs

00:27:00   there I would definitely recommend this article but you know you look at these

00:27:04   screenshots and everything is very you know based you know black background

00:27:09   white text and use your color for the information. There's going to be

00:27:14   shrinks to that. I think people who go real far outside of that, I wonder how

00:27:19   well they would do if everyone else kind of stays within the same

00:27:22   language. And I think what you said, there's also a significant part that is

00:27:27   the training advantage or like there's a it's a different platform and while

00:27:35   While people are used to doing things on iOS, when we had the iPad, it's a new device or

00:27:39   a new platform.

00:27:41   Everything you learned on iOS applied directly to that experience, whereas Apple and developers

00:27:49   kind of have to teach people how to use it.

00:27:53   There is certainly an advantage to there's only so many ways and so many structures that

00:27:56   developers have for building apps.

00:27:59   Once you learn those, you'll know what to look for and you'll know what little cues

00:28:03   on the screen mean, what it means when you have four dots at the bottom of the screen,

00:28:08   or what it means when you push on something and a bunch of buttons appear.

00:28:14   That's probably just a helpful thing in terms of trying to get people used to a completely

00:28:19   new way of interacting.

00:28:22   So maybe a couple of years down the road they can start removing borders from buttons.

00:28:27   Exactly.

00:28:28   Yeah.

00:28:29   You take the training wheels off.

00:28:31   David, what do you think of all these apps getting approved on the App Store before launch

00:28:39   and now Apple starting to open up some submissions for WatchKit apps today?

00:28:45   What do you think of this timeframe before the actual release date?

00:28:50   I think there's certainly a risk that Apple takes in doing that, insofar as obviously

00:28:58   Very few people have spent significant amounts of time with the Apple Watch outside of Apple.

00:29:03   And so a lot of us are just guessing.

00:29:05   A lot of us are, and I've spent a tremendous amount of time over the last few months working

00:29:10   in the Apple Watch simulator and trying as best as I can to get used to it.

00:29:16   But there's certainly a risk in terms of, I don't really know what it's going to be

00:29:19   like to wear an Apple Watch day in and day out.

00:29:21   But I think Apple was exactly right in terms of making sure that there is a rich, vibrant

00:29:28   App Store to whatever degree they can get it on launch day.

00:29:34   I guess in many ways getting ready for April 10th when the pre-orders and try-on and all

00:29:39   that process starts, that they're able to show a variety of different experiences and

00:29:46   a variety of different apps to people.

00:29:48   And reviewers and people like that are going to be able to have a full experience because

00:29:54   I think the watch, in a way that is probably more significant than your iPhone, the apps

00:30:02   that you use and the apps that are useful to you to be on your watch is going to be

00:30:07   very personal and very unique to you.

00:30:12   In the way that we all take pictures of our home screens and share them, there's a lot

00:30:16   of overlap, I think, between those.

00:30:17   Whereas I think the watch will probably have a bit more distinctiveness to it because what's

00:30:23   useful to you and what is probably going to be very personal and very related to the life

00:30:28   you lead and the things you do.

00:30:31   And so having the more that they can do to have from the beginning a compa...

00:30:36   Being able to show people a compelling experience is helpful.

00:30:41   If all they had were travel-related apps, if all they had were airlines and hotels,

00:30:45   well, if you don't travel, that's not very compelling and interesting to you.

00:30:50   And so the more they can expand that out, I think makes sense.

00:30:53   And this process that they're going through now of having the initial batch, I think,

00:30:57   of the chosen few who were able to go through the process early, and then a few hours ago

00:31:04   they opened it up to the rest of us to start submitting our apps, I think it makes sense.

00:31:10   And hopefully, I imagine they're expecting that we're going to, in a few weeks, in that

00:31:20   big run-up, there'll be a lot of apps and I'm sure they'll brag about it, you know.

00:31:24   They love saying they still do it with the iPad and I'm sure they'll do it with the watch

00:31:28   of, you know, "Hey, we have..."

00:31:30   I don't even know what the number is going to be.

00:31:32   "We have 10,000 watch apps available on day one.

00:31:35   We have 5,000.

00:31:36   We have 100,000."

00:31:37   I mean, the scale of the app store is insane, so it's hard to predict how many there'll actually

00:31:41   be, but I'm sure it's a number that's going to be big and they're going to be proud of

00:31:46   that.

00:31:48   Do you think there's any downside to having all these apps directly at launch?

00:31:55   Do you think people can get confused or do you think it's better for the platform to

00:31:59   have all this choice right away?

00:32:04   There's certainly some risk of that and I think there's also certainly a risk of...

00:32:10   Because those...

00:32:11   It would be bad for Apple if people downloaded new apps.

00:32:17   They're like, "Oh, I got my new watch.

00:32:20   I open it up.

00:32:21   I open up my iPhone, browse to the watch section out of the App Store.

00:32:25   I get a bunch of apps."

00:32:27   And turns out, those apps aren't very good.

00:32:31   That can hurt their initial impression of the watch in a way that could be damaging

00:32:39   to their experience.

00:32:40   Now, and it's in a way that's outside of their control.

00:32:42   Like with the iPhone, when it launched, the advantage Apple had is for the first year,

00:32:48   I guess, or plus or minus, everyone's experience on the iPhone was entirely curated and guided

00:32:57   by Apple.

00:32:58   It was only their apps and that was the way it was.

00:33:01   And so they could make sure that that was a quality experience.

00:33:04   And so I think there's an even higher bar that I would hope in some ways they're going

00:33:12   have to apply, the risk that they're trying to mitigate is that people are going to get

00:33:17   watch apps, if they're not very good, they can associate that with a watch and say "oh,

00:33:22   the watch isn't actually as useful as I thought it would be" when it's really just the apps

00:33:26   that they're using on it aren't quite at the level that they need to be and probably will

00:33:29   be down the road.

00:33:32   What about the indie developers point of view?

00:33:34   Is it going to be more difficult to stand out on day one on the App Store because of

00:33:39   all these options?

00:33:40   >> I honestly, it's hard to know.

00:33:44   I think the thing that was very encouraging to me on that score is that Apple showed in

00:33:49   the keynote and we can see now in 8.2 that the Apple Watch app on every iPhone running

00:33:56   8.2 or greater, there's a tab that is the App Store.

00:34:01   And as best as I can understand, only apps that have been updated to support the Apple

00:34:07   Watch are going to show up there.

00:34:10   And so for someone like me who looks at the App Store in general with 1.3, 1.4 million

00:34:18   apps in it, to imagine a world where my apps are competing with probably just a few thousand

00:34:26   to start with, whether that's 5,000, 10,000, 100,000, I don't really know, but there's

00:34:33   probably only going to be a few thousand in there, that's delightful.

00:34:38   Like when I saw that during the keynote, the Spring Forward event, that was amazing to

00:34:44   me because that gives me a great opportunity to shine because I'm competing with such a

00:34:51   smaller pool and it sort of reminds me in some ways of the old days of the App Store

00:34:54   where if someone goes to that area and opens up a category, there may only be a handful

00:35:02   of apps or if they search for something in it, there's only going to be a handful of

00:35:05   apps and so being discovered in that is much more likely and so that part of me

00:35:11   is excited about it and I want to be there on day one you have a bunch of

00:35:14   apps that are going to be ready to be out there to kind of see where that goes

00:35:19   yeah the the parallel to the sort of early days of the of the iOS App Store

00:35:25   definitely comes to mind and I can't help but think that like we're making

00:35:31   fun of the Netgear app at the top of the show like I'd like that so they are

00:35:35   never gonna have a watch interface, although, Federica, if you get a new Wi-Fi

00:35:38   off on your watch, that's gonna open a whole new world of email for me. Never say

00:35:41   never. I know, but I think, you know, for the the type of user who's gonna have a

00:35:47   watch on day one, I think there's a real opportunity that, you know, say that I use

00:35:52   product A, but product B has a watch app and I have a watch, then there might be

00:35:57   enough people to start switching between apps, and I think there's this real

00:36:02   possibility for disruption in like some like app categories that have been

00:36:06   pretty buttoned up for a while. So I think any developer worth their

00:36:10   salt I think is definitely you know doing what we're taking time out of your

00:36:15   day you know what you'd be doing David to get there on day one in that small

00:36:19   pool and yeah I can't help but think that that could be a pretty interesting

00:36:25   you know break point in the history of the App Store you know having these

00:36:29   things siphoned off into their own little silos is something new for Apple.

00:36:33   So I'm excited to see where that ends up.

00:36:37   And I think it's just it's a rare there are very very increasingly few

00:36:42   opportunities like that you know more for the independent software developer

00:36:45   side of things where it's you know the thing that I have in going in my favor

00:36:50   that a lot of a bigger a bigger software company doesn't is the fact that I can

00:36:54   do whatever I want and I don't need approval I don't need you know like a

00:36:59   a big process to do that.

00:37:00   And so once I decided a couple of weeks, a couple of months ago that like, you know,

00:37:04   I'm going to make lots of watch apps, I'm going to focus on it, it's going to be kind

00:37:07   of my full time focus for between, from when watch kit was announced until now, I'm able

00:37:13   to really focus on that and make it happen in a way that, you know, you could imagine

00:37:17   that there will be some, you know, a variety of my competitors who are more slow moving

00:37:21   because they don't, they can't just, you know, they have to take a more wait and see approach.

00:37:26   They're like, well, are we gonna put all this effort

00:37:28   into building a watch app?

00:37:29   And then if Apple doesn't sell a lot of watches,

00:37:32   then it's not gonna work,

00:37:33   or there's that kind of bureaucracy about it.

00:37:34   And so I'm hopeful, fingers crossed,

00:37:37   that there's gonna be a bit of a first mover advantage

00:37:39   in that way, but who knows, time will tell.

00:37:42   - Yeah, let's take a quick break

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00:39:07   Yeah, also drink responsibly.

00:39:09   It's true.

00:39:11   That's also really good advice.

00:39:12   So good.

00:39:13   Man, this is just, we're helping people here on Connected.

00:39:17   So David, you know, you're talking about before the break, you know, you sort of made this

00:39:20   this deliberate decision to spend time on watch apps because you're a one-man band,

00:39:27   you get to do that.

00:39:30   And so what have you been learning about WatchKit itself?

00:39:36   We talked a little bit about maybe visual consistency, but what should users be expecting

00:39:40   as far as types of functionality out of these apps?

00:39:45   So at a first glance, it's probably useful to say that there's three kinds of watch kit

00:39:51   apps that developers can make at this point.

00:39:55   They can make essentially rich or interactive notifications.

00:40:00   So you get a notification on your phone, it shows up on your watch, and you can interact

00:40:03   with it.

00:40:04   Maybe the simple sort of canonical example is you get a meeting invitation and you can

00:40:08   accept or decline it.

00:40:09   And so it's interactive rather than just telling you something, you can do something with it.

00:40:14   The second kind are glances, which are little read-only widgets that are available if you

00:40:23   swipe up from the clock face on the watch.

00:40:28   And these are entirely static in terms of they're not interactive.

00:40:32   Their purpose is just to display useful information to the user in a way that's sort of in some

00:40:38   ways not unlike today widgets on the iPhone, especially today widgets that aren't the big

00:40:46   launcher, or these things that caused all that controversy in the first place.

00:40:51   Things that are just showing you data, they kind of fit into that venue.

00:40:56   And then lastly, there are sort of watch kit apps, which are actual apps you would launch

00:41:01   from your watch's home screen.

00:41:04   And these are apps that you can do a bit more with, that you can make interactive, that

00:41:09   the user can have a longer engagement with.

00:41:13   And the thing that's probably important to keep in mind is all of these apps run, or

00:41:19   at least Glintz's and Watch Git apps, run on your iPhone.

00:41:25   And all of the logic, all of the programming, and all that heavy work is done on your phone

00:41:32   and is being just sort of shipped up to the watch for display.

00:41:35   So you can't, there is at this point no watch kit, no third-party watch apps that will run

00:41:42   without a connected iPhone close by.

00:41:46   And as a result, there's a lot of limitations that come from that in terms of what I was

00:41:50   talking about, the UI consistency and things there.

00:41:53   Apple is very, I think very intelligently, but very strongly pared down what is possible,

00:42:00   the types of things that you can do, the types of interactions that you can create, because

00:42:05   everything you hit a button on your watch, that button press is being sent over Bluetooth

00:42:09   to your phone, your phone is responding to it, doing whatever it needs to do, and then

00:42:13   it sends back to the watch, "Hey, as a result of that, you need to update the UI this way."

00:42:18   Which is a very disjointed process compared to on an iPhone, where obviously you tap the

00:42:24   screen and all of the processing and everything is done entirely locally.

00:42:29   And so it's a very streamlined process that isn't rich and graphical and fluid in any

00:42:36   sort of interactive way.

00:42:38   Gotcha.

00:42:39   What's interesting to me about those three types, like you look at that website we mentioned

00:42:45   earlier with all the apps and even look at what you're doing, that's not as limiting

00:42:49   as it seems.

00:42:51   From the outside, and maybe your experience is different, but it seems to me at least

00:42:57   that I don't know how many users would really realize that it was so limited.

00:43:03   Because there is there is flexibility within those constraints.

00:43:06   Yes, definitely.

00:43:08   I mean, when I was first speculating, after the watch was announced, but before watch

00:43:13   get was announced, when I was sort of speculating about what I thought they would allow us to

00:43:16   do, I thought we would be much more limited than we are currently.

00:43:21   We can build pretty interesting applications that can do actual work for the user starting

00:43:30   on day one before anyone's ever bought a watch.

00:43:34   And so that's pretty cool.

00:43:35   And I think there are certainly some odd cases.

00:43:38   The weird things like if you leave your phone in one room and you walk away and you try

00:43:42   and use the app, it's not going to work.

00:43:45   But beyond those kind of odd edge cases, the fact that it's running on your phone and it

00:43:52   has this kind of very streamlined lifecycle that it can have is in some ways just an implementation

00:43:57   detail.

00:43:58   And most users probably won't know that or at least care about that.

00:44:02   But I think you're certainly right in that there's not a lot of things that I want to

00:44:07   do that I can't.

00:44:09   There are a lot of things that I want to do that would be better with a native app, that

00:44:13   you could have, you know, would be more fluid and more performant and have few weird, you

00:44:18   know, sort of performance characteristics.

00:44:20   But at its core, other than things that are offline, sort of in their nature, like say

00:44:27   you wanted to be in a play a podcast from your watch, that you that kind of thing you

00:44:31   can't do now, who is now you have to do that kind of thing based on your phone.

00:44:35   But beyond those kinds of offline capabilities, there's really not much that you can't do

00:44:39   fundamentally.

00:44:42   Are there any software features that third party developers cannot access?

00:44:50   Can you access the heart rate sensor?

00:44:53   Can you access the haptic feedback in third party apps or are those limited to just Apple

00:45:00   software?

00:45:02   Probably the best way to think about it, and A, well firstly you can't access those types

00:45:06   of things.

00:45:07   Really the best way to think about it is a watch kit app is really an iPhone app that

00:45:13   happens to have a view that's being projected onto the watch.

00:45:19   And so there's really no local access or interactivity or things.

00:45:25   You can't make it the haptics thing, you can't play sounds from the watch, you can't play...

00:45:31   I mean, it's unless, yeah, like in WatchKit, everything is done from the phone.

00:45:38   And you just have touch on the watch.

00:45:40   Yeah, yeah.

00:45:41   The only point that I get is when, like, I have interactivity when someone taps something,

00:45:46   basically.

00:45:48   And that's really all the interaction I have.

00:45:51   And so a lot of things that you're doing, like, you can still make that work.

00:45:55   There's a lot of powerful things you can do from your phone.

00:45:58   But nothing that's actually just watch specific is going to be available at least to start

00:46:03   with.

00:46:04   Do you think WatchKit and this initial wave of watch apps is the right move from Apple

00:46:11   or should have they waited for a native SDK?

00:46:15   Do you think it is right to give developers the tools to make limited apps in a way and

00:46:22   then later update those apps with better features and technologies?

00:46:27   Or maybe, I don't know, I guess we'll know with time, but as a developer, what's your

00:46:32   point of view on these limitations right now?

00:46:35   I mean, I think it's better than the sweet solution we had for the iPhone.

00:46:42   Okay.

00:46:43   Which is, I think, the reality that I'm encouraged by.

00:46:48   Like I could, obviously, I always want everything as soon as I can.

00:46:53   If I could make native apps for the Apple Watch, I would have been doing it.

00:46:57   I would have been all in on building native apps.

00:47:00   So I'll take whatever I can get.

00:47:02   But I'm very glad that they didn't take an approach that was incredibly limited and incredibly

00:47:08   constrained.

00:47:09   And I think it's ultimately a strategic move by Apple because they're trying everything

00:47:14   they can to, you know, they're essentially inventing a new, or they're trying to forge

00:47:22   out into a brand new platform, in a brand new way, in a brand new user base.

00:47:26   And so they're needing to make that as compelling as they can.

00:47:30   And one of the ways that they can do that is by having third-party apps.

00:47:33   And so I think they're trying as far as they can to make rich, compelling third-party apps

00:47:38   available from the beginning.

00:47:41   And there's certainly pros and cons in that.

00:47:46   The way they're doing it is incredibly elegant in so far as it's incredibly battery respectful.

00:47:56   I'm not running any code on the watch.

00:47:59   I don't have the ability to do something that's going to run down the user's battery in many

00:48:07   ways.

00:48:08   All I can do is display this text, show this picture.

00:48:11   There's things that I can do that may in the long term have slightly, if the user's using

00:48:15   the watch all the time and working with my apps, it's going to use their battery, but

00:48:19   it avoids this whole realm of possibilities that truly native applications could bring

00:48:26   with it.

00:48:27   I think that's really clever and really elegant that they're finding this interesting way

00:48:31   to have a balance between locking it down totally and saying, "No, no, no.

00:48:36   Only Apple apps are going to be here."

00:48:40   the other extreme of saying, you know, anybody can make anything.

00:48:43   This kind of balanced middle ground is, I think, very clever and very elegant and accomplishes

00:48:50   most of the goals and the advantages that they'd be wanting without a lot of the downside

00:48:55   and a lot of the problems that either other extreme would include.

00:49:00   And what have the cons been during your development time?

00:49:04   I mean, I think the biggest challenges are because we have...

00:49:12   There are so many things that I just take for granted on work developing for the iPhone.

00:49:17   Like doing an animation on the iPhone.

00:49:21   The iPhone, almost every iPhone app, just out of the box, can do so many richly animated

00:49:26   and lively and engaging experiences that on the watch are really hard to do, just because

00:49:34   of the way that they're structured and the way that they're running in this strange disconnected

00:49:39   thing where the watch talks to the phone, the phone talks to the watch.

00:49:42   And so you don't have the ability to make things quite as fluid in the way that you're

00:49:47   used to.

00:49:48   And so the challenges that I've had is to try and still make compelling, interesting

00:49:53   applications in that context has been much more difficult.

00:49:58   And I'll run into things where it's like, "Oh, wouldn't it be great if I could do this?"

00:50:02   Or it's like, if only I could access more than just when the user pushes a button, what

00:50:07   happens when they push their finger down?

00:50:09   Or those types of things.

00:50:11   Not having access to that is a bit constraining.

00:50:15   And it's in some ways nice because it focuses the mind and it means that we have to do things

00:50:20   and find creative solutions to the problems we're solving.

00:50:23   We can't just do the easy stuff.

00:50:27   But I think the biggest difficulty has just been trying to make apps that have that interest

00:50:32   and have that degree of polish is a bit more difficult, I think, at least at this point.

00:50:39   Yeah, but I think a good example of some of that polish, you have a post up on your site

00:50:45   about Podometer++, and you're talking about different ways that you could display the

00:50:52   user's, you know, their goal and where they are in your step counting application.

00:50:58   And I really find the second animation you have, the bars kind of come in from the bottom

00:51:04   and they're very playful.

00:51:06   A, it's crazy to me reading this, how you're doing it, that it's all getting pushed as

00:51:13   a series of images basically from a phone.

00:51:18   But I think that level of playfulness and just little polished touches are going to

00:51:25   as important as they are on iOS, I think they're going to be so much more

00:51:27   important on the watch because it's so small because you know you're only using

00:51:32   it for a couple of seconds at a time and so it kind of it's kind of like each

00:51:36   each view each interaction really counts much more I think than on an iOS app.

00:51:43   Sort of you know how has it been you know kind of working on those

00:51:47   limitations and something like animation or you know being able to polish

00:51:50   something with a simpler set of tools than you have on the phone.

00:51:55   >> Yeah, there's definitely a strange mentality that you have to get into, I found, when you're

00:52:04   working on watch apps.

00:52:06   Because for most apps, your goal is to minimize the time that the user will be looking at

00:52:13   your app, or at least making it so that the app is immediately useful in a way that if

00:52:21   they only opened the app for a second or two, it would still have been a meaningful interaction

00:52:27   in some ways.

00:52:29   And that, I think, is an interesting challenge from a design perspective, because you have

00:52:35   to...

00:52:36   You can't be lazy in a way that you can often get away with.

00:52:40   If you're developing an app for say a 6+, you have a tremendous amount of information

00:52:45   that you can just throw on the screen and let the user have to wade their way through

00:52:51   it.

00:52:52   Or you can just throw lots of buttons on the screen and they can find what they want to

00:52:56   use.

00:52:57   You have such a tiny amount of space and you have such a tiny amount of the user's attention

00:53:01   because the expectation and the way all of the Apple's guidelines around this tend to

00:53:06   be driving you towards is that your users are expected to only interact with your application

00:53:13   for seconds at a time.

00:53:16   And so it's really complicated to make sure that you're able to really make that impact

00:53:21   in that short amount of time.

00:53:23   And you've boiled down the utility of what you're doing to those just bare essentials

00:53:29   that are still useful.

00:53:32   It's still actually solving a problem or meeting a need, but it's doing it in a way that only

00:53:39   takes two seconds.

00:53:41   And that certainly is a different mindset that you have to get into.

00:53:45   And it's especially kind of odd in some ways coming from over the last summer where all

00:53:51   the phones got bigger and bigger.

00:53:53   And so suddenly I was trying to deal with the problem of like, "What do I do with all

00:53:56   this extra space?"

00:53:57   Now you're instead going the complete opposite direction and saying, "What do you do when

00:54:01   when you have a display that is maybe a quarter

00:54:06   of the original, of like an iPhone 4 screen

00:54:09   or something like that.

00:54:10   It's a really small amount of data

00:54:12   that you have to work with.

00:54:13   - Right, and kind of the flip side is,

00:54:17   I think when I think about how I might use it,

00:54:20   it's when I'm walking, when I'm doing something else

00:54:22   with my hands, something comes in,

00:54:24   and I don't wanna have to wait

00:54:26   for someone's cute animation to finish.

00:54:28   So I think that balance is gonna be something that

00:54:32   I think a lot of developers are gonna have to tweak

00:54:34   as time goes on, as expectations shift around that use case.

00:54:38   And maybe it is that we're gonna be using these

00:54:41   for five or 10 seconds as opposed to two or three seconds

00:54:44   the way we think now.

00:54:45   So I think it'll be,

00:54:46   I think there'll be an evolution there maybe

00:54:49   as people kind of settle into usage habits.

00:54:57   So kinda to head towards wrapping up,

00:55:00   David, what specifically are you working on

00:55:04   that you would like to share?

00:55:06   I know you've written a lot about this.

00:55:07   What kinda, out of your library of apps,

00:55:09   has you excited about the watch?

00:55:12   - Sure, so I have a watch kit update

00:55:18   for most of my major apps.

00:55:22   So I have, for my recipe organizer, my recipe book,

00:55:26   I have a thing for managing your grocery list from your wrist, which seemed the most compelling

00:55:31   thing for me to be able to just imagine walking through a store, and you can check things

00:55:36   off and add things to a list just from your wrist.

00:55:40   I have some audio-based things.

00:55:42   I have a podcast client and an audiobook client, and for them it's about being able to navigate

00:55:46   around either what you're listening to in terms of skipping ahead, skipping back, or

00:55:51   switching to something else all without having to get your phone out.

00:55:55   Or I have a feed reader, feed wrangler, which for there it's trying to be able to quickly

00:56:00   browse headlines and articles and just doing that in a context where you can just pick

00:56:07   up, raise your wrist, flip up the glance and see what's going on.

00:56:12   And with pedometer it's taking your current step count data and moving it onto your wrist

00:56:19   and displaying it in a way that is just even easier to see and to see where you are and

00:56:24   to see how active you've been.

00:56:26   In some ways it was easier for my existing apps to just kind of look at them and say,

00:56:32   how would this be better on a watch?

00:56:34   And then for a bunch of other apps, things that I'm not quite at the point of announcing

00:56:38   yet, there are other apps that I've been working on that are just trying to think through things

00:56:43   that I think would be cool and just starting from the ground up and building new apps for

00:56:47   that.

00:56:48   And you know we've talked a lot about the last couple weeks about the watch,

00:56:54   you know, specifically you know which one we're looking at purchasing, kind of how

00:56:58   our friends and family view it. You know as you've been working on this, what's

00:57:02   the feedback been like from people? You know, do friends and family kind of

00:57:07   kind of look at you and then you know and look at the watch and sort of you

00:57:10   know shake their head or are people generally excited about it that you've

00:57:14   come across.

00:57:16   I think the most interesting thing that I've run into when I talk to friends and family,

00:57:23   people who aren't in the iOS development world, is that everybody's interest in the watch

00:57:31   is different, and they have very different motivations and reasons for why they think

00:57:37   it would be cool.

00:57:40   For some people it's about fitness, for some people it's about messaging, for some people

00:57:44   it's about notifications, for some people it's about business stuff and calendaring

00:57:49   and for travel.

00:57:52   Everyone I've talked to seems to have a very unique picture of when they imagine what having

00:58:00   -- and I tend to describe it as squeezing down an iPhone and putting it on your wrist,

00:58:07   which is only sort of right, but it's much more easy to explain it that way than to really

00:58:12   get into what it is, everyone puts a different thing onto it.

00:58:16   I know my wife is most excited about the fitness stuff.

00:58:20   She wears a jawbone up band, but there's a lot of things about it that drive her crazy,

00:58:25   and she'd love to have something that can track her workouts and to have a more integrated

00:58:32   version of it that she can wear all the time that's fashionable enough to do in that way.

00:58:37   But that's different than other people I know, who when they think about it, they're like,

00:58:41   I just I like they you know they see the this all the silly

00:58:44   You know connectivity and messaging types of things where you know you can draw pictures to each other or tap

00:58:50   You know tap your loved one on the wrist, and that's what's compelling to them and what's interesting about that is

00:58:54   I don't I really think it is

00:58:57   Everyone's going to be different and everyone has a different reason for why they might want one and so in some ways

00:59:02   That's kind of a I'm sure Apple has a you know has it were cut out in terms of it's harder to have a

00:59:09   compelling narrative about that, a straightforward narrative anyway, of like

00:59:12   you need an Apple Watch because of X, because that's going to be different for

00:59:17   everybody, and the thing that's going to resonate with them is going to be

00:59:20   different. And so they're having to find, you know, you can see it even in

00:59:24   their marketing, like they're going in all these different directions to try

00:59:28   and make sure that people understand like, "Oh, it can do this, and it can do this,

00:59:30   and it can do this," and you can find whichever one of those fits for you.

00:59:34   Right, and you know even thinking back, you know, Apple had this back in 2007 a

00:59:41   series of advertisements, you know, there were TV ads here in the States and it

00:59:46   was, you know, maybe 30 seconds of just the mail application, right? So you just

00:59:49   saw an iPhone and then like floating dismembered hand doing email or in maps

00:59:54   or in Safari making a phone call. You know, we've even talked about it here

01:00:01   where that idea that the marketing seems really scattershot,

01:00:05   you know, it's worrisome to some people,

01:00:06   but the more I think about it and the longer this goes on,

01:00:09   it really is like the original iPhone,

01:00:12   where they had to explain that, you know,

01:00:14   this isn't like just a regular phone with an iPod taped to it,

01:00:17   it does all these other things.

01:00:19   And some people are gonna be really excited about email,

01:00:21   some people are gonna be really excited about Safari.

01:00:24   And they had to tell that story sort of in a pattern,

01:00:27   like blending all these things together with the phone.

01:00:30   And now it's only more complicated because we all know how smartphones work, right?

01:00:34   So they have to explain, like you said, it's like squeezing an iPhone down, but it's really

01:00:38   not like that at all.

01:00:39   And it does all these different things.

01:00:41   I'm not nearly as worried about the marketing or Apple's narrative around it as I was before

01:00:46   the spring event.

01:00:47   And even in the couple weeks since, I feel like they're doing what they need to do and

01:00:53   that that's okay.

01:00:54   That there are people who are going to be really interested in it for very different

01:00:57   reasons.

01:00:58   And I think long term that's great because they can hit all those audiences and that's

01:01:03   a bigger usage base for developers, obviously a bigger customer base for Apple is good as

01:01:08   well.

01:01:09   But yeah, I think that's really well said.

01:01:14   What's your reason, David, to get a watch besides making apps?

01:01:20   The things that I'm most excited about and looking forward to I think are...

01:01:25   and it's probably fair to say take a step back and say as soon as they

01:01:28   announced the Apple Watch I went and got a bunch of different wearable type of

01:01:33   things and then but the thing that's closest to an Apple Watch that I got was

01:01:36   a Microsoft band which you know is a reasonable device but nothing special

01:01:43   and the things that I found that were most compelling to me were the

01:01:47   messaging side of things so like being able to be to never miss a notification

01:01:52   You know, if a notification comes in, like I have very few notifications turned on on

01:01:56   my phone.

01:01:57   Like if my phone buzzes, it's because one of my servers exploded or because, you know,

01:02:02   someone I care about is trying to get a hold of me.

01:02:04   And so I loved that I finally, like the feeling of not having to worry about missing those

01:02:10   was just really reassuring and I think it helped me to use my phone less because I didn't

01:02:16   constantly pick it up and just, you know, wake the screen to see if there was any missed

01:02:20   notifications.

01:02:23   And so that kind of thing that a watch can do in a way that's way more deep and rich

01:02:28   than anything, you know, a Microsoft band or a Pebble or anything can do because it's

01:02:32   built into the core OS.

01:02:35   Like that side of things I think is very compelling to me.

01:02:39   And then I'm excited about, since I've started wearing all these bands, like the fitness

01:02:43   tracking side of it is very compelling to me.

01:02:45   I enjoy having like a picture of what I'm doing when I work out, seeing my heart rate,

01:02:50   seeing how hard I worked out, in the middle of a workout, looking down and seeing like,

01:02:54   am I really working out or I just feel like I'm working out, and those kinds of things.

01:02:58   And so those two things are what I'm looking forward to most.

01:03:03   You have a model picked out?

01:03:05   Well, I can cheat a little bit because I'm a developer.

01:03:09   It's like, I'm just going to, I'm buying one of each size.

01:03:15   Not of each model, but of each size.

01:03:19   And then I'm probably just going to get the ones that look best to me is the I'll probably

01:03:23   get a black sport in the 38 and the 42.

01:03:29   I mean that's the funny thing too being a developer is I will probably own several dozen

01:03:37   Apple watches over the course of the next few years.

01:03:41   And so it's easy for me to say I'm probably just going to get the sport because it's a

01:03:46   a little bit less, but that little bit of difference will add up over the years.

01:03:50   At this point, I think, it's like I own a dozen iPhones.

01:03:54   And it's like a lot of times for an iPhone, I get smaller capacities than I would otherwise

01:04:01   because I know I'm only going to use it for a year and then I'll get a new one.

01:04:05   And so I don't have quite the same problem of having years and years of photos building

01:04:09   up or those kinds of things.

01:04:11   And so I'm just going to get a pair of sports.

01:04:13   At this point I expect to pre-order them as soon as I can, if I have to wait up to 3 in

01:04:18   the morning to do that, or however they manage pre-orders, and then just see them and go

01:04:24   from there.

01:04:25   Yeah, maybe in a few years you'll have your entire arm full of watches.

01:04:31   It'll be like the Robocop of Apple Watch users.

01:04:34   Exactly.

01:04:35   You just keep wearing watches on your entire arm.

01:04:39   I mean, yeah, it makes sense, I guess, from a developer's perspective to have, you know,

01:04:45   better access to as many units as possible.

01:04:48   I was kind of wishing you would say you're getting all the edition models.

01:04:53   I'm wishing you all the success on the App Store, David, that you'll be able to buy edition

01:04:58   test units.

01:04:59   Well, let's put it this way.

01:05:00   If my watch apps do just wildly well, then I'll be able to afford an edition and I can

01:05:10   go in and use my watch money to buy a watch.

01:05:13   Apple can just complete the cycle there.

01:05:15   The money they give me just goes right back into them.

01:05:17   When they say it's a gold rush, that kind of thing, the goal is actually to get gold

01:05:24   at the end of it.

01:05:26   Wow.

01:05:27   Well, David, thank you so much for coming on today.

01:05:33   Where could people find you on the internet?

01:05:35   Sure, I'm @_davidsmith on Twitter and you can find me, I have a blog at david-smith.org,

01:05:43   which has a bunch of writing including all of my Watch Kids series.

01:05:46   Awesome.

01:05:47   So thank you everyone for listening.

01:05:50   If you want to find show notes this week, you can point your browser to relay.fm/connected/30.

01:05:56   You can find Federico Vatici at the the glorious maxstories.net and

01:06:03   Vatici on Twitter. You can find me at 512pixels.net and ISMH on Twitter.

01:06:09   Until next time, say goodbye gentlemen. Arrivederci. Goodbye.