Connected

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

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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

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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

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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

00:18:05 ◼   ► about about screens. This episode of Connected is brought to you by screens

00:18:09 ◼   ► which is a beautiful powerful screen sharing client for OS X and iOS that

00:18:15 ◼   ► lets you connect back to your computer from the comfort of your living room, the

00:18:18 ◼   ► corner coffee shop, or anywhere in the world. It's really simple and easy to use.

00:18:22 ◼   ► I've used screens for years. It's so just it works so much better than what

00:18:27 ◼   ► OS X does by default. You can send and receive images, URLs, plain text, rich text,

00:18:32 ◼   ► and so much more with the remote max via clipboard sharing so I can copy

00:18:35 ◼   ► something here and paste it on the live streaming server for relay and it all

00:18:40 ◼   ► just works really seamlessly. You can connect as a registered user or as a

00:18:44 ◼   ► guest to a max you can help out a friend or relative without the need of their

00:18:47 ◼   ► user credentials which is really nice. It makes everyone feel more secure and if

00:18:52 ◼   ► you're if you disconnect from a computer you can even send on disconnect actions

00:18:57 ◼   ► like logging out, trigger, a hot corner, etc. Screens also supports multiple

00:19:01 ◼   ► displays allowing you to access what you need no matter what display it's on. A lot of these

00:19:06 ◼   ► tools are just limited to the primary display but you know with with a lot of people having

00:19:10 ◼   ► more complicated setup screens adapts that very easily. It's available on the iOS and

00:19:15 ◼   ► Mac App Stores like I said I've used this for years I use it to manage the relay FM

00:19:20 ◼   ► the Mac mini server we have a Mac mini colo we have a Mac mini hooked up to our television

00:19:25 ◼   ► at home I remote into that from the office and do things to take care of issues and it's

00:19:29 ◼   ► all just really straightforward. The best part is Screens is on sale this week

00:19:33 ◼   ► 30% off the regular price. On iOS it's usually 20 bucks, this week is $14.99

00:19:39 ◼   ► and on the Mac just $20.99. The sale ends May 10th so go to the App Store now or

00:19:45 ◼   ► go to screensapp.com to find out more. Thank you so much to Screens for

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.