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Connected

5: Nothing Was Sacred

 

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:07 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to episode five of Connected on Relay FM.

00:00:11 ◼   ► Today is Wednesday, September 17th.

00:00:13 ◼   ► This episode is brought to you by Squarespace,

00:00:16 ◼   ► Smile Software's PDF/Pen Scan Plus,

00:00:18 ◼   ► and ICONic, the world's greatest book on app or product design.

00:00:22 ◼   ► I'm your host, Steven Hackett, and I'm joined this week by Mr. Federico Vittucci.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Hey, Steven, how are you doing?

00:00:28 ◼   ► I'm doing well. It's uh, it's just us. Yeah, because our friend Myke is in Italy and he decided to not visit me

00:00:36 ◼   ► He's in my same country, but for some reason he doesn't want to see me

00:00:40 ◼   ► so

00:00:42 ◼   ► Is he is he far away from you? Yeah. No, I get yeah, he's like in another

00:00:48 ◼   ► Completely different part of Italy different part like several hours apart

00:00:52 ◼   ► And I totally understand because the the part that is in right now is much better than where I live

00:00:58 ◼   ► And I saw the photos and the updates that he's sending us.

00:01:05 ◼   ► He's having a good time.

00:01:07 ◼   ► And the weather seems to be nice where he is right now.

00:01:11 ◼   ► So I'm kind of jealous, you know, because I actually never been to Sicily where Myke

00:01:16 ◼   ► is.

00:01:18 ◼   ► You should just go crash his vacation.

00:01:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:22 ◼   ► Maybe on the day that IOS 8 comes out, you know, it seems like a good idea to

00:01:27 ◼   ► to just leave my house and go to see Myke.

00:01:32 ◼   ► You've already broke it.

00:01:33 ◼   ► You broke the illusion of what day we're actually recording.

00:01:35 ◼   ► So we're actually recording on Monday the 15th but we're pretending it's Wednesday

00:01:41 ◼   ► and that iOS 8 is already out so we can talk about all these things.

00:01:46 ◼   ► Myke and I didn't plan this very well although I will say that my baby was due this week

00:01:50 ◼   ► before Myke booked his vacation but we wanted to record a couple of days early in case it

00:01:56 ◼   ► was only only Federico was available.

00:01:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:59 ◼   ► That's probably I have a monologue about, are you a safety absent in the app store?

00:02:03 ◼   ► Just me running into a microphone.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:06 ◼   ► You're like, I don't know how to, I don't know where the sponsor reads are.

00:02:09 ◼   ► I don't just, I just put this in me through on Twitter.

00:02:11 ◼   ► The show's out.

00:02:12 ◼   ► Just going to do it live and see what happens.

00:02:14 ◼   ► Just do it live.

00:02:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:15 ◼   ► So, um, uh, I'm glad you're here.

00:02:19 ◼   ► You're the best person to talk to you about all this, but we have a little bit of

00:02:22 ◼   ► follow-up first.

00:02:23 ◼   ► Yes.

00:02:24 ◼   ► So over the last week or so, lots of questions and kind of more conversations obviously have

00:02:32 ◼   ► happened around the Apple Watch.

00:02:35 ◼   ► We sort of glossed over some of this, so I kind of wanted just to raise these.

00:02:40 ◼   ► We still have questions about things like battery life.

00:02:44 ◼   ► Pogue says it's water resistant, which Apple sort of hinted at but really didn't say.

00:02:51 ◼   ► We had a question on Twitter of do people think it will get warm?

00:02:54 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:02:55 ◼   ► What do you think about that one?

00:02:56 ◼   ► Do you think it would be weird if it got warm?

00:02:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I thought about that.

00:02:58 ◼   ► That would be strange because I'm used to like a watch is something that is usually

00:03:03 ◼   ► cold, right?

00:03:05 ◼   ► I mean I guess it gets warmer as you wear a watch.

00:03:10 ◼   ► Yeah, but it's not warmer than you are.

00:03:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:13 ◼   ► It's not warmer than the ambient temperature.

00:03:14 ◼   ► That'd be weird.

00:03:16 ◼   ► I mean because we don't even know what the battery looks like on this watch, right?

00:03:21 ◼   ► You have no idea about the inside.

00:03:23 ◼   ► It's like four hours.

00:03:24 ◼   ► That would be awful.

00:03:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:27 ◼   ► It's like – I don't know.

00:03:28 ◼   ► It's strange to think about it and especially because they have these sensors on your wrist.

00:03:33 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:03:35 ◼   ► For the water-resistant part, I guess that it's different from – because waterproof

00:03:41 ◼   ► is one thing and water-resistant is another.

00:03:43 ◼   ► Right.

00:03:44 ◼   ► So –

00:03:45 ◼   ► And most watches will be water-resistant to a certain level.

00:03:49 ◼   ► you know, once you're past that the, the water pressures, you know, the pressure is too great.

00:03:54 ◼   ► And, um, yeah, I would hope at the very least that it's water resistant, you know, not, I don't want

00:03:59 ◼   ► to go swimming with it, but you know, if you go for a run and get caught in the rain, you don't

00:04:02 ◼   ► want your $400 watch to die. Yeah. I was talking about this with a friend the other, the other

00:04:07 ◼   ► night. And he asked me, so what happens if I go for a run and it starts raining and Apple says

00:04:14 ◼   ► that the Apple watch is water resistant, but it gets some damage. And then I go to the Apple store

00:04:19 ◼   ► and I gotta tell the Apple Store employees that it's not my fault that I didn't like

00:04:26 ◼   ► swim with my watch, I just went running.

00:04:28 ◼   ► Like how do I prove that it was just raining?

00:04:31 ◼   ► And that's an interesting question because when this thing goes on sale, there are different

00:04:37 ◼   ► mechanics for for you know selling a watch than selling an iPhone or a Mac inside the

00:04:46 ◼   ► Apple store.

00:04:50 ◼   ► You want to go try it on you know like this thing can't be tethered to a big wooden table

00:04:54 ◼   ► like an iPhone is.

00:04:55 ◼   ► I don't remember what pocket I've listened to a lot of shows over the last couple days

00:04:59 ◼   ► and someone was like I want to I want to put the 5.5 inch phone in my pocket but I know

00:05:05 ◼   ► it's gonna be like tethered to the Apple Store desk, you know because of their security

00:05:10 ◼   ► Restrictions and you know like you're jamming in your pocket. You're gonna get tased by the security guy

00:05:14 ◼   ► But buying a watch is for a lot of people

00:05:18 ◼   ► You know, it's a you know to use apples or it is an intimate experience you go to the store you try it on

00:05:22 ◼   ► If it's a nice watch you might take somebody with you right like yeah, I bought my watch online

00:05:28 ◼   ► I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted, but I still like sent the link to my wife and I was like

00:05:32 ◼   ► Hey, what do you think about this?

00:05:33 ◼   ► You know, it's not like buying a buying an iMac like who cares?

00:05:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:37 ◼   ► I mean, in some, in some stores, there's also like mirrors to, to see like how the watch,

00:05:44 ◼   ► you know, fits you with your overall style.

00:05:47 ◼   ► And so can you imagine like people checking themselves out in the mirror inside an Apple

00:05:51 ◼   ► store?

00:05:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:53 ◼   ► That'd be really strange.

00:05:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:55 ◼   ► But they, you know, there was a talk when they, when they, you know, they've been hiring

00:05:59 ◼   ► all these fashion people and that's come up of even their new Apple's new Lexie

00:06:04 ◼   ► new vice president of retail she has a bit of a fashion background. Am I making that

00:06:10 ◼   ► up? Is that right? No, she used to be like the CEO of Burberry. That's right. So it

00:06:18 ◼   ► is you know it is interesting they've been building this you know building this up over

00:06:24 ◼   ► the last little while and curious to see what happens.

00:06:30 ◼   ► I was also thinking about, you know, we saw like 64 apps for the Apple Watch and Apple

00:06:38 ◼   ► said that there's going to be this new piece of technology called WatchKit to let developers

00:06:43 ◼   ► create apps for the watch.

00:06:46 ◼   ► And the problem is that they didn't give other details about this WatchKit SDK.

00:06:53 ◼   ► We didn't even know if it's an actual SDK because on the Apple website, I saw a screenshot

00:06:59 ◼   ► from a lot of people that basically shared this little message that said third-party

00:07:06 ◼   ► apps for the Apple Watch are coming out later next year.

00:07:10 ◼   ► So that would be after WWDC 2015.

00:07:13 ◼   ► >> Right.

00:07:14 ◼   ► So it could launch without third-party apps potentially.

00:07:19 ◼   ► >> And maybe –

00:07:20 ◼   ► >> Which is weird.

00:07:21 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:07:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:23 ◼   ► Apple has announced this watch with all these apps and then the watch comes out without

00:07:28 ◼   ► the apps?

00:07:29 ◼   ► That would be strange.

00:07:30 ◼   ► Maybe there's going to be like initial partners or something and maybe Apple announces a full

00:07:35 ◼   ► SDK at WWDC next year.

00:07:37 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:07:38 ◼   ► We'll see.

00:07:39 ◼   ► We'll be there.

00:07:40 ◼   ► You should come this year or next year.

00:07:42 ◼   ► Yeah, next year.

00:07:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:44 ◼   ► There was also a link that I wanted to include in the show, which people, Steven, can find

00:07:51 ◼   ► where?

00:07:53 ◼   ► the internet.

00:07:54 ◼   ► >> Yeah, on the web.

00:07:55 ◼   ► >> On the internet.

00:07:56 ◼   ► Relay.fm/connected/five.

00:07:57 ◼   ► >> That's right.

00:08:00 ◼   ► So there was a link by Greg Pierce, the drafts and terminology developer at Agile Tortoise.

00:08:08 ◼   ► And he was arguing that it may be possible that watch kit based apps are going to be

00:08:16 ◼   ► like extensions.

00:08:18 ◼   ► IOS 8, there are bundles, they are sold inside an app, on the iPhone and iPad app store.

00:08:27 ◼   ► And he speculates that maybe watch apps are going to be extensions of an app that you're

00:08:33 ◼   ► buying on your phone, and then it basically gets transferred to the watch.

00:08:38 ◼   ► I don't know, it's a possibility, and we don't know much right now.

00:08:41 ◼   ► So this is...

00:08:42 ◼   ► I mean, at some point you would think code is running directly on the watch, but what's

00:08:47 ◼   ► that relationship if it is an extension is that reside on the watch it can't do

00:08:51 ◼   ► anything without the app being present like there's a lot of questions for me

00:08:56 ◼   ► at least around what does this thing look like what does it do when the iPhone

00:08:59 ◼   ► is not present and you know I would say over the last week Federico my opinion

00:09:05 ◼   ► of the watch has cooled a little bit and I think a lot of it I keep coming back

00:09:10 ◼   ► to of like this is a 1.0 I'm normally not that guy like I bought an iPad on

00:09:15 ◼   ► launch day, but I can't help but think of like,

00:09:19 ◼   ► see this watch and like, there are a lot of great things

00:09:22 ◼   ► about it, there's a whole lot of questions,

00:09:25 ◼   ► and if Apple doesn't have good answers for these questions

00:09:27 ◼   ► right now, I would hope that those questions do have

00:09:30 ◼   ► good answers two, three, five years from now.

00:09:33 ◼   ► And so, you know, Apple always plays a long game,

00:09:36 ◼   ► but I do wonder if that's gonna hurt them in this case,

00:09:39 ◼   ► because we've seen with the iPhone very clearly

00:09:41 ◼   ► that if you wait a little while, you get what you want,

00:09:43 ◼   ► I don't know if that's going to be a factor here or not.

00:09:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess it depends on how much you value the 12 months that you spend with an Apple

00:09:52 ◼   ► device.

00:09:53 ◼   ► I mean, because obviously if you waited like two or three years, you would have skipped

00:09:58 ◼   ► the original iPhone, the iPhone 3G and the 3GS and you would have gotten directly the

00:10:03 ◼   ► iPhone 4, which was a much better phone.

00:10:05 ◼   ► But then again, you wouldn't have enjoyed the iPhone for three years.

00:10:09 ◼   ► So obviously the, I keep calling it the Apple watch.

00:10:13 ◼   ► The Apple Watch 3 is going to be much better, I mean if this product is successful for Apple,

00:10:18 ◼   ► it's going to be much better than the Apple Watch 1, but you gotta wait three years for

00:10:23 ◼   ► that.

00:10:24 ◼   ► I hope they named them with numbers, but I hope they use Roman numerals.

00:10:28 ◼   ► I kinda, I can kinda see that happening, right?

00:10:31 ◼   ► Like it's like fancy.

00:10:32 ◼   ► I rewatched, you know, the keynote for last week's show and it hit me again like how sort

00:10:38 ◼   ► of over the top, not the Johnny Ive video but like the 90 second like showing the watch

00:10:44 ◼   ► for the first time.

00:10:45 ◼   ► It's like there's literally like the sun coming over the earth as if you're in the

00:10:49 ◼   ► space station.

00:10:50 ◼   ► I want to know the song of that video.

00:10:51 ◼   ► I spent like the other night 30 minutes looking for that song on Shazam and you know all the

00:10:56 ◼   ► other what's-her-name, Sunhound, and I ran a search on Twitter and I saw other people

00:11:03 ◼   ► asking the same question because it's really good music.

00:11:07 ◼   ► likes to control the hardware, the software, and the music services. Is it a U2 song? No one listened to that.

00:11:13 ◼   ► That should be in our follow-up as well. So did you see this where

00:11:19 ◼   ► there's a new article, I'll put in our chat, Federico, there's a new article in

00:11:24 ◼   ► the K-Bass, as you might imagine,

00:11:28 ◼   ► my friend.

00:11:30 ◼   ► Remove iTunes gift album Songs of Innocence from iTunes Music Library.

00:11:34 ◼   ► Apple has a special website that

00:11:36 ◼   ► If you go to and sign in with your account, you can remove the new YouTube album from your from your library

00:11:43 ◼   ► This is crazy. So I've been following just not too carefully

00:11:48 ◼   ► so Apple was getting given away for free the new YouTube YouTube album until someday in October and

00:11:55 ◼   ► Why are people upset

00:11:59 ◼   ► Because people hate you too, you know, I don't

00:12:02 ◼   ► So is the album automatically given to you?

00:12:07 ◼   ► Yeah it's in my iTunes library right now.

00:12:10 ◼   ► Have you clicked download on iTunes?

00:12:12 ◼   ► No, no so I use iTunes match so you know I think even if you don't use iTunes match

00:12:18 ◼   ► it shows up as available but not downloaded so you have to go and actually download it.

00:12:21 ◼   ► Oh I have the album too you're right.

00:12:24 ◼   ► But yeah it's nice right?

00:12:28 ◼   ► The thing is like I don't like I don't really care for you two

00:12:32 ◼   ► but I don't hate them so much that I'm going to like blast this out of my music library like I

00:12:38 ◼   ► Have other you two stuff in there that don't listen to you. It's fine

00:12:42 ◼   ► And people are upset because Apple put a YouTube

00:12:46 ◼   ► YouTube album for free in their iTunes libraries. Yeah, it's like Bono came into your house and stole your family

00:12:54 ◼   ► Yeah, no, it's not like that. It's not that at all Federico. Yeah

00:12:58 ◼   ► Yeah, this is strange.

00:13:00 ◼   ► It is weird.

00:13:02 ◼   ► But if you have it and you want to get rid of it, go click that link in the show notes

00:13:05 ◼   ► and you can banish YouTube from your life, from your life, from existence.

00:13:11 ◼   ► Steven, I had one last point that I forgot to mention about the watch and watch kit.

00:13:20 ◼   ► If the theory of Apple Watch apps being like extensions, they're bundled inside iPhone

00:13:27 ◼   ► apps is true, I think that Apple should consider giving developers ways to monetize extensions

00:13:34 ◼   ► and widgets through in-app purchases because right now, as far as I know, there is no official

00:13:42 ◼   ► way to block extensions and widgets and keyboards through in-app purchases because a lot of

00:13:50 ◼   ► developers would like to let customers unlock these features as extras, basically as paid

00:13:57 ◼   ► content.

00:13:58 ◼   ► And right now, I don't think there's an official way that Apple likes.

00:14:03 ◼   ► And if the theory of WatchKit being based on the same system is true, next year developers

00:14:10 ◼   ► will find themselves in the situation of, you know, we have an iPhone app and then we're

00:14:15 ◼   ► going to bundle all these extra features for free.

00:14:18 ◼   ► So we have an extension, we have a widget, we have a keyboard, and we have a watch app.

00:14:23 ◼   ► And I think that Apple should allow developers to easily monetize this kind of extra functionality.

00:14:31 ◼   ► So as I said, this is all speculation.

00:14:34 ◼   ► But it's a point that I wanted to bring up because maybe next year we can find a link

00:14:38 ◼   ► to this episode again and say that we had a prediction.

00:14:44 ◼   ► That's right.

00:14:45 ◼   ► Year-long follow-up.

00:14:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:47 ◼   ► So, we haven't followed up with this.

00:14:51 ◼   ► I know Myke ordered a 6 Plus, a 64 gig Space Gray.

00:14:57 ◼   ► I ordered the 6.

00:15:00 ◼   ► You still can't order, right?

00:15:01 ◼   ► Yeah, I cannot order.

00:15:04 ◼   ► There was a press release from Apple about the pre-orders.

00:15:13 ◼   ► bought over 4 million iPhones in 24 hours and they confirmed the official Italian release

00:15:19 ◼   ► date on September 26th.

00:15:22 ◼   ► But I'm still not sure about which model to get because since last episode, I kind

00:15:27 ◼   ► of changed my mind because I saw all the paper models to kind of see the size of the iPhone

00:15:37 ◼   ► 6 Plus.

00:15:38 ◼   ► >> meaning you bought some ink for your printer?

00:15:42 ◼   ► I kept touching my MacBook screen with my hand to get an idea.

00:15:46 ◼   ► No, actually this time, because I saw a photo on Twitter about the iPhone 6 Plus being as

00:15:50 ◼   ► big as the PS Vita, I tried to put the PS Vita on my cheek and see, you know, how silly

00:15:57 ◼   ► would I look.

00:15:58 ◼   ► And it was indeed pretty huge.

00:16:00 ◼   ► So I think I'm going to go with the iPhone 6 after all.

00:16:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I spent some time this weekend.

00:16:07 ◼   ► It was a HTC phone that was right at 5.5 inches

00:16:11 ◼   ► that my brother-in-law bought.

00:16:13 ◼   ► And it is, it's big.

00:16:14 ◼   ► And I actually was wearing jeans,

00:16:16 ◼   ► and I put it in my pocket, and I was like,

00:16:18 ◼   ► "I'm not sure, and I'm not wearing girly jeans,

00:16:21 ◼   ► "but this is big."

00:16:23 ◼   ► I definitely can't imagine my pockets were any smaller

00:16:25 ◼   ► that this would work.

00:16:27 ◼   ► And it really didn't work.

00:16:28 ◼   ► It was very at the very top of the pocket,

00:16:30 ◼   ► and I felt weird sitting down.

00:16:33 ◼   ► I think it would definitely be something

00:16:34 ◼   ► that some people will like,

00:16:36 ◼   ► I feel confident that I made the right choice.

00:16:39 ◼   ► And I will know on Friday because it's a super first world problem, but I live in a city

00:16:45 ◼   ► where FedEx is based.

00:16:47 ◼   ► And so Apple ships things from Memphis.

00:16:49 ◼   ► And so my phone, like I never saw the China anchorage, the whole thing, it was shipped

00:16:58 ◼   ► from Memphis and now it has a status of holding for release for the 19th.

00:17:04 ◼   ► So I could drive across town and get my phone, but they won't let me in.

00:17:08 ◼   ► It's hard.

00:17:09 ◼   ► It's hard.

00:17:10 ◼   ► What I noticed about the iPhone 6 and the 6 Plus is the people's reactions to the announcement.

00:17:17 ◼   ► A couple of friends of mine asked me about, "Is Apple doing this too?"

00:17:24 ◼   ► Because Samsung is being so successful with huge phones.

00:17:29 ◼   ► And I don't have a good answer for that because I mean, Tim Cook said that with the larger

00:17:34 ◼   ► screens, they can entice more people to switch from Android to iOS.

00:17:42 ◼   ► And that's kind of obvious when you think about it.

00:17:48 ◼   ► Even if you watch the keynote, there was no practical examples of why a bigger screen

00:17:55 ◼   ► is better.

00:17:57 ◼   ► I mean there were numbers, there were a lot more pixels on the screen, this is a great

00:18:03 ◼   ► display and we can have better colors, but they simply said that it's a larger screen,

00:18:10 ◼   ► they didn't have a fancy video showing why a bigger screen is better in everyday life.

00:18:18 ◼   ► They tend to assume that bigger is better and even the Apple website, like the tagline

00:18:24 ◼   ► for the iPhone 6 is bigger than bigger. I don't even know what that is. Apple is simply

00:18:32 ◼   ► going for the bigger screen because that's what people want and I think my friends have

00:18:39 ◼   ► a point when they say they're doing this because Samsung. That's the reason.

00:18:46 ◼   ► because that's what Apple's marketing said before Phil Schiller.

00:18:50 ◼   ► Because Samsung, yeah.

00:18:51 ◼   ► Did you see this?

00:18:53 ◼   ► If you go to the Apple iPhone 6 page and you go to displays, so there's a, apparently

00:19:03 ◼   ► these things have two modes where you can toggle in between standard view or zoom view

00:19:10 ◼   ► which is the same, like on the home screen it's the same number of icons but they're

00:19:15 ◼   ► all bigger so the space between them which I think is really interesting.

00:19:20 ◼   ► I would want standard so I can see more emails on one screen but zoom view I assume would

00:19:25 ◼   ► let me have the same number of emails but in a that I used to have it in a bigger format.

00:19:30 ◼   ► I think that's a I think it's a really nice feature.

00:19:33 ◼   ► I think a lot of people are going to want a bigger phone assuming the text will be bigger

00:19:38 ◼   ► and that's not true it's that you get more on the screen but having a setting to say

00:19:42 ◼   ► you know what I do want to show more on the display bigger I think that's a big win.

00:19:47 ◼   ► So what happens if you if you enable the zoom mode and then you use light dynamic type all

00:19:54 ◼   ► the way to the right do you end up with like one word on the screen at a time?

00:19:59 ◼   ► I mean maybe there there's a huge I mean probably not that exaggerated but from accessibility

00:20:04 ◼   ► standpoint that's a that's a big deal.

00:20:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:07 ◼   ► I guess it kind of confirms that with the new iOS 7 design, it's much easier for apps

00:20:18 ◼   ► to scale to different sizes because many of them are not using photorealistic textures

00:20:26 ◼   ► and graphics.

00:20:28 ◼   ► Most of them are just vector-based applications from a graphical standpoint, at least, that

00:20:34 ◼   ► don't even use icons, and by icons I mean graphic files anymore.

00:20:38 ◼   ► And it's much easier for these apps which are color-based,

00:20:42 ◼   ► they don't have many graphical resources,

00:20:44 ◼   ► to scale across different screen sizes and even layouts.

00:20:49 ◼   ► And this is also a point that I wanted to mention with the iOS 8 extensions later.

00:20:55 ◼   ► But I think that from this point of view, the redesign of last year

00:21:00 ◼   ► is a big win in terms of enabling apps to change to different sizes and devices and

00:21:08 ◼   ► orientations more easily.

00:21:11 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely.

00:21:14 ◼   ► Drawing graphic-heavy textures is hard, but if all your things are text or even like Marco

00:21:19 ◼   ► is doing mostly programmatic drawing, so he actually is not using icons, but he's creating

00:21:25 ◼   ► the icon in code, that's a lot more flexible.

00:21:29 ◼   ► And you know, if you can use something like a vector as opposed to like this, like PNG

00:21:33 ◼   ► of like stitch leather, you can do a lot more, uh, more easily.

00:21:38 ◼   ► And I think, you know, I think you're absolutely right.

00:21:40 ◼   ► Some of the stuff they're doing now would not have been possible in any easy way with

00:21:45 ◼   ► the, the old design of iOS.

00:21:48 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:21:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

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00:23:35 ◼   ► and all of Relay FM. I had this great idea Federico that we would talk about

00:23:40 ◼   ► about the Tim Cook interview on Charlie Rose.

00:23:45 ◼   ► And then today you were like, oh, I can't watch it

00:23:47 ◼   ► because my link was on Hulu.

00:23:49 ◼   ► Part one has been recorded, part two will be released,

00:23:55 ◼   ► but after we record, but before the show comes out,

00:23:57 ◼   ► so we can't really talk about part two today.

00:24:00 ◼   ► But since you didn't see it,

00:24:01 ◼   ► I just wanted to like blast through this

00:24:03 ◼   ► and kind of see if you had any thoughts on it.

00:24:07 ◼   ► - Sure.

00:24:09 ◼   ► Any time you see Tim Cook, or really any CEO,

00:24:12 ◼   ► or any executive be interviewed,

00:24:14 ◼   ► there's always like that marketing speak that happens,

00:24:16 ◼   ► and so a lot of Tim's early answers to things

00:24:20 ◼   ► are like straight out from the keynote, right?

00:24:22 ◼   ► Like, okay, you're just repeating your line,

00:24:25 ◼   ► but as the interview went on,

00:24:27 ◼   ► it really became really interesting,

00:24:29 ◼   ► and one of the first things he said that was interesting

00:24:32 ◼   ► was with IBM, you know, Apple's partnership with them,

00:24:36 ◼   ► and he says, "Apple is changing how people work

00:24:38 ◼   ► after transforming the consumer space,

00:24:42 ◼   ► which I hadn't really thought about that way.

00:24:45 ◼   ► Apple definitely has transformed consumer electronics,

00:24:47 ◼   ► but now they're getting about changing the way people work.

00:24:51 ◼   ► Of course, getting the iPad into enterprise.

00:24:55 ◼   ► Federico, obviously I thought about you

00:24:57 ◼   ► because you famously do a lot of work on your iPad Mini.

00:25:01 ◼   ► I mean, you run a successful website

00:25:02 ◼   ► and do podcasts from it.

00:25:07 ◼   ► When Apple says that, does that get you excited about the future?

00:25:09 ◼   ► Does that make me an enterprise?

00:25:11 ◼   ► That's a real question.

00:25:12 ◼   ► I think you are an enterprise, yes.

00:25:15 ◼   ► No, that's a great point.

00:25:19 ◼   ► Definitely Apple has changed the way that the consumer space, so many different behaviors

00:25:27 ◼   ► and so many different habits we have today that you don't need to go back 20 years ago

00:25:34 ◼   ► to see a different lifestyle and ways to interact with technology.

00:25:41 ◼   ► Just need to go back seven years ago and even six years ago because the iPhone was only

00:25:45 ◼   ► available in the US.

00:25:48 ◼   ► So many things are different today and not just the way that people communicate, but

00:25:52 ◼   ► the way that people take photos or listen to music.

00:25:55 ◼   ► And the potential for changing the way that people work in an office environment, that's

00:26:01 ◼   ► huge because millions, and I wouldn't say billions because I'm not sure, but millions

00:26:08 ◼   ► of people are still working with old Windows PCs and they hate their work PC.

00:26:16 ◼   ► In fact, they are trying to bring their own devices to the office space because they profoundly

00:26:23 ◼   ► despise the hardware and software that's been given to them.

00:26:28 ◼   ► So the potential there is huge.

00:26:30 ◼   ► I'm curious to see about, I almost had forgotten about this IBM announcement.

00:26:34 ◼   ► Honestly, I'm curious to see what Apple does.

00:26:39 ◼   ► If it's about software, if it's about, there's rumors about a bigger iPad, so maybe that

00:26:45 ◼   ► could be it, specialized hardware for the enterprise.

00:26:49 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:26:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:51 ◼   ► And they've talked to them about that, how IBM can look at a whole verticals of, we can

00:26:57 ◼   ► look at banking from the teller all the way up to the executive and like make

00:27:01 ◼   ► apps and services to fit all those needs.

00:27:04 ◼   ► Um, but what you said about the consumerization is really interesting.

00:27:10 ◼   ► And obviously the Beats acquisition comes up and, you know, Cook says it's about

00:27:17 ◼   ► talent, you know, the headphone brand needed international support.

00:27:20 ◼   ► Um, but he said what really made it for them on the Beats audio app was the human

00:27:25 ◼   ► empowered curation, which is exactly what you had said months ago was the difference.

00:27:30 ◼   ► And I mean, so Tim Cook said this, but if you close your eyes, like it could come from

00:27:34 ◼   ► Federico Vitezius.

00:27:37 ◼   ► Beats made me feel different.

00:27:38 ◼   ► The sequence of songs you listen to affects the way you feel.

00:27:43 ◼   ► Like that, you know, there's been sort of some joking about, or not really joking, but

00:27:51 ◼   ► Like the, the idea of like music being the heart of Apple and then like the

00:27:54 ◼   ► weird Bono thing we just talked about.

00:27:56 ◼   ► And like, you hear that quote and it's like, yeah, like that's still true in

00:28:00 ◼   ► Cupertino that, you know, that Cook like listened to this playlist and you know,

00:28:03 ◼   ► I'm assuming that this is a real story, but that he had this experience with this

00:28:09 ◼   ► music and that like set off a chain reaction that ended up in like Dr.

00:28:12 ◼   ► Dre working for Tim Cook, you know?

00:28:15 ◼   ► Um,

00:28:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, because when there were rumors about Apple buying Beats, if most people had

00:28:25 ◼   ► paid attention to Beats Music, it would have been obvious, frankly, that it was the music

00:28:32 ◼   ► streaming service that Apple was looking for.

00:28:34 ◼   ► But it's just that people, you know, especially in the tech press, they like to make fun of

00:28:38 ◼   ► Beats because it was the, you know, the headphone company with the rapper and that kind of stuff.

00:28:43 ◼   ► But the Beats Music product was really, really strong.

00:28:48 ◼   ► And now it makes perfect sense, people say.

00:28:50 ◼   ► But a few months ago they were making jokes about Dr. Dre and that kind of stuff.

00:28:57 ◼   ► It does make me wonder how long we see until Beats becomes a little more built into something.

00:29:03 ◼   ► And I don't think they're going to get rid of Beats Audio and take the guts of it and

00:29:07 ◼   ► put it in iTunes Radio.

00:29:08 ◼   ► But Apple has two streaming services.

00:29:11 ◼   ► They've iTunes Radio, which is much more like Pandora,

00:29:15 ◼   ► and then Beats, and maybe it's a regulatory thing

00:29:19 ◼   ► that I don't know, but it seems like you gotta do something

00:29:24 ◼   ► with that besides have Eddie Q joke about buying a set

00:29:29 ◼   ► of Beats headphones during his Apple Pay demo.

00:29:32 ◼   ► At some point, Beats has to move closer into the fold,

00:29:36 ◼   ► and I think when that starts happening,

00:29:39 ◼   ► it's gonna get really interesting

00:29:41 ◼   ► to see what Apple does.

00:29:43 ◼   ► Clearly the iTunes brand has equity, but it's aging.

00:29:47 ◼   ► And I would say every day that passes,

00:29:50 ◼   ► people sort of like scoff at iTunes more and more

00:29:53 ◼   ► just as a brand.

00:29:55 ◼   ► Beats does not have that problem.

00:29:56 ◼   ► Beats has a very strong brand.

00:29:57 ◼   ► And so what does Apple do with those two things?

00:30:00 ◼   ► And if they don't do it right, it could be really weird.

00:30:04 ◼   ► So I just, when that starts happening,

00:30:07 ◼   ► I'm gonna be really interested to see where it ends up.

00:30:10 ◼   ► I mean you gotta wonder why iTunes radio is still limited to the US and Canada.

00:30:15 ◼   ► There's gotta be a reason.

00:30:16 ◼   ► I mean it's been more than a year now and I think that iTunes radio is the one that

00:30:21 ◼   ► will go away and there will be a radio feature in Beats Music.

00:30:26 ◼   ► I think it's more likely.

00:30:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:29 ◼   ► It's weird to me that iTunes radio is in the music app on iOS.

00:30:33 ◼   ► It's like, here's all of my music, and then one tab has basically Apple Pandora.

00:30:41 ◼   ► Just kind of scanning this.

00:30:45 ◼   ► One thing he, so they talk about competition, and Tim basically says that Google is their

00:30:51 ◼   ► competition, and that they quote enable Samsung and others.

00:30:55 ◼   ► And he's pretty dismissive of Amazon and the Fire phone, as you might expect.

00:30:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I saw the quote about Amazon made a phone and you don't see that in a lot of places.

00:31:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:06 ◼   ► It's like, dang.

00:31:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:08 ◼   ► I just saw the quote and that was awesome.

00:31:10 ◼   ► Yeah, it was really good.

00:31:13 ◼   ► He did talks about when Steve Jobs hired him and I really hadn't heard much about this.

00:31:19 ◼   ► I knew that he was at Compaq before, but again, going back to this consumer technology thing,

00:31:27 ◼   ► Really Tim says, you know, Steve laid out his vision

00:31:30 ◼   ► about going into the consumer market

00:31:32 ◼   ► when everybody else was leaving it.

00:31:34 ◼   ► This is like 1998.

00:31:36 ◼   ► This is, you know, they interviewed before the iMac

00:31:39 ◼   ► was introduced, so like Jobs apparently told Tim Cook

00:31:42 ◼   ► about the iMac and that's what did it.

00:31:43 ◼   ► It was like consumer technology can make an impact.

00:31:47 ◼   ► Even though everyone else is doing the enterprise,

00:31:50 ◼   ► he felt like Apple, like Jobs' plan to go after consumers

00:31:54 ◼   ► in the home market made sense.

00:31:56 ◼   ► And of course, you know, like in hindsight,

00:31:59 ◼   ► like has any executive ever made such a good decision

00:32:02 ◼   ► as Tim Cook deciding to join a dying Apple in 1997?

00:32:06 ◼   ► Which I'm sure was crazy.

00:32:08 ◼   ► He even says, he was like,

00:32:09 ◼   ► "No one in my life told me this was a good idea."

00:32:11 ◼   ► And I did it anyways.

00:32:13 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:32:14 ◼   ► I think that must have been crazy.

00:32:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I guess like you call your parents,

00:32:19 ◼   ► you're like, "Yeah, like I got a new job."

00:32:21 ◼   ► "Oh, where is it?

00:32:22 ◼   ► "An Apple."

00:32:23 ◼   ► Isn't Apple like 90 days from bankruptcy?

00:32:26 ◼   ► I guess it'd be like if today I called my parents all excited and I told them, "Hey,

00:32:32 ◼   ► I'm joining Blackberry."

00:32:33 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:32:36 ◼   ► The same feeling.

00:32:37 ◼   ► That'd be weird.

00:32:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:40 ◼   ► Good luck with that.

00:32:41 ◼   ► They probably won't let you podcast about Apple anymore.

00:32:45 ◼   ► Probably.

00:32:46 ◼   ► I think that's, I mean, I have a lot more notes, but I think those are to me at least

00:32:50 ◼   ► sort of the high points on the Tim Cook interview.

00:32:54 ◼   ► The part one will be in the show notes, part two will be out by the time you listen to

00:32:58 ◼   ► this.

00:32:59 ◼   ► I think it's great.

00:33:00 ◼   ► I think it's a more open apple.

00:33:02 ◼   ► Even though this thing felt very guarded at times, he makes a joke that the products we're

00:33:09 ◼   ► working on haven't even been rumored yet, which is sort of funny.

00:33:13 ◼   ► What could it be?

00:33:14 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:33:15 ◼   ► Like an Apple car?

00:33:16 ◼   ► What if we rumor about it first?

00:33:17 ◼   ► I hope it's not a car.

00:33:19 ◼   ► I don't think it's a car.

00:33:22 ◼   ► I hope it's a, it's a fashion line.

00:33:24 ◼   ► Like like a t-shirt, the apple trousers, the apple shoes, like the apple necklace.

00:33:32 ◼   ► So you can go around and you look like an apple mannequin.

00:33:35 ◼   ► Jackpot.

00:33:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:38 ◼   ► There's a, uh, down the street from my office, there's a, an office building

00:33:43 ◼   ► where the first floor has been emptied out.

00:33:45 ◼   ► It used to be a clothing store though.

00:33:47 ◼   ► And now it's just full of like naked, bright, like bright, like white mannequins

00:33:55 ◼   ► that are just like lined up against the back wall.

00:33:57 ◼   ► So like you drive by and you kind of see it out of the corner of your eye and you

00:34:01 ◼   ► kind of jump like there's watching and waiting for Tim Cook to dress them.

00:34:06 ◼   ► I guess.

00:34:07 ◼   ► Yes.

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00:35:59 ◼   ► So our plan is to kind of walk through some of the high level features and things that

00:36:04 ◼   ► we have enjoyed, the developers are doing with it. So with some betas and some apps

00:36:10 ◼   ► that are out today.

00:36:12 ◼   ► - Some?

00:36:13 ◼   ► - All of them.

00:36:15 ◼   ► Yeah, you sent me a screenshot of your list of app reviews

00:36:18 ◼   ► and it's sketchy.

00:36:20 ◼   ► A lot of these app reviews are published now

00:36:22 ◼   ► and will be in the show notes.

00:36:25 ◼   ► But I will say before we jump in,

00:36:27 ◼   ► the more I've spent time with it,

00:36:29 ◼   ► I've been running iOS 8 for maybe a month now,

00:36:33 ◼   ► and the more I've spent time with it,

00:36:35 ◼   ► the more I'm impressed with the fact

00:36:38 ◼   ► that Apple went really back to the basics with this,

00:36:41 ◼   ► that they looked at, you know,

00:36:44 ◼   ► these limitations that I would say lifts

00:36:46 ◼   ► are the very limitations that defined

00:36:48 ◼   ► the iOS experience for a long time.

00:36:51 ◼   ► And it really seems like very few things

00:36:54 ◼   ► were considered sacred,

00:36:56 ◼   ► that now, like, you don't have to, like,

00:36:58 ◼   ► hack around the edges with URL schemes.

00:37:01 ◼   ► You can just go in, like, use an extension,

00:37:03 ◼   ► and it's supported by Apple and smiled upon,

00:37:06 ◼   ► and it breaks apps out of these siloed boxes they've always been in.

00:37:10 ◼   ► Now they're still secure in their sort of data silos,

00:37:13 ◼   ► but in working with this every day,

00:37:16 ◼   ► iOS 8 feels a lot more powerful than its predecessors.

00:37:21 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's not just about the URL schemes

00:37:25 ◼   ► and the workflows and the scripts.

00:37:27 ◼   ► So many other areas of the OS have been completely reimagined.

00:37:32 ◼   ► I'm thinking of having image editing extensions in the Photos app.

00:37:38 ◼   ► You don't have to create duplicate photos anymore, you don't have to open in to take

00:37:44 ◼   ► a photo and open it into another app and maybe apply a filter and some cropping into that

00:37:49 ◼   ► app and then save it back to the camera.

00:37:52 ◼   ► You can just go to the Photos app and run a photo extension and you can just edit there

00:37:57 ◼   ► with the custom interface.

00:37:58 ◼   ► know there's a camera plus update that added, aside from manual controls, a photo extension

00:38:07 ◼   ► to enjoy the camera plus filters into the Photos app. And then there's the keyboards

00:38:12 ◼   ► and there's the document providers. It's just so many, like you said, nothing was sacred for Apple

00:38:20 ◼   ► because they've been changing all the stuff that we used to say, yeah iOS is very limited in this

00:38:28 ◼   ► aspect they have been changed and for me it's been difficult to

00:38:36 ◼   ► consider iOS 8 in all of its aspects and features because more

00:38:43 ◼   ► than ever I think that iOS 8 depends on third-party apps so if you don't

00:38:49 ◼   ► have access to third-party apps during the beta process of iOS 8 it's very

00:38:56 ◼   ► difficult to understand the potential and the practical benefits of these

00:39:00 ◼   ► features because yes you can go to the Apple website and you can read the

00:39:05 ◼   ► documents but an actual app that you can use gives another

00:39:10 ◼   ► completely different picture so on the one hand I needed to have access to

00:39:18 ◼   ► real apps to understand the potential of iOS 8 because on the other hand there

00:39:24 ◼   ► was Apple that didn't provide any examples of this stuff and this is a nice contrast

00:39:32 ◼   ► between the stuff that third-party developers are doing on iOS 8 and the fact that Apple

00:39:37 ◼   ► doesn't even have an extension for mail.

00:39:41 ◼   ► You cannot attach a document into a mail message from iCloud Drive and at least in the beta

00:39:49 ◼   ► there was no... you know Apple didn't say "hey here's a beta of pages, there's an extension, go test this"

00:39:56 ◼   ► there was no example from Apple, probably because they wanted developers to experiment

00:40:02 ◼   ► and the result is that we're seeing today all these third-party apps they're coming out with

00:40:06 ◼   ► extensions, with widgets, with document providers, with keyboards, it's a lot of stuff honestly

00:40:12 ◼   ► and it's basically I would say the second age of the App Store, because these apps

00:40:18 ◼   ► are bringing major changes to the way that people work with iOS devices.

00:40:23 ◼   ► It's not just about productivity and taxators and you and me Stephen, we write on an iPad

00:40:32 ◼   ► and we do this kind of stuff. We do research, we read an article in Instapaper. It's much more than

00:40:38 ◼   ► that. It'll be interesting to see two or three months from now, are we going to get tired of

00:40:46 ◼   ► extensions because everybody's doing an extension are we going to get tired of

00:40:51 ◼   ► widgets because we're full of widgets and we don't know what to do with widgets anymore.

00:40:55 ◼   ► Right now this is all very new and it's new for me that I've been, you know, I've been

00:41:03 ◼   ► for Mac stories I've been trying a bunch of apps and still today feels so new and weird because

00:41:11 ◼   ► this is not the iOS that I used to know. Yeah, yeah I could definitely see how at

00:41:15 ◼   ► At some point, it could be tiring, especially depending on how Apple's system of managing

00:41:24 ◼   ► extensions and widgets scales.

00:41:28 ◼   ► In the notification center, you can go and you can tap to add a widget or you can remove

00:41:33 ◼   ► it and it goes back into that list below of possible things you can add.

00:41:39 ◼   ► If every app I have has a widget, that list is going to get crazy.

00:41:46 ◼   ► But that's nothing new for iOS either.

00:41:48 ◼   ► There's a lot of places in iOS's history where Apple has a design convention and the

00:41:55 ◼   ► world comes in, goes crazy with it, and their design convention breaks because they thought

00:42:00 ◼   ► about two dozen things instead of eight dozen things.

00:42:05 ◼   ► I think it just comes down to being conscious about all the apps that you have

00:42:11 ◼   ► because the home screen has the same problem.

00:42:13 ◼   ► You can download 200 apps and you don't know what to do with them anymore.

00:42:18 ◼   ► And this is a point that I brought up in my ISA review today.

00:42:23 ◼   ► I've been trying to be extremely careful with the widgets that I use

00:42:30 ◼   ► Because if I have to scroll the Today View in Notification Center to find a widget, it

00:42:36 ◼   ► kind of defeats the point, right?

00:42:38 ◼   ► Because widgets are meant to just be there and you open the view quickly and you just

00:42:43 ◼   ► dismiss it.

00:42:44 ◼   ► If you have to scroll and find your widget, you might as well just open an app with Spotlight.

00:42:50 ◼   ► Totally.

00:42:51 ◼   ► So, talking about widgets, I think there's some really good examples.

00:42:55 ◼   ► favorites is OmniFocus 2 where they they insert a list of your tasks due for

00:43:05 ◼   ► today so apples reminders app has already done this right if you have something due

00:43:09 ◼   ► and reminders it shows there you get a circle you tap the circle it gets marked

00:43:13 ◼   ► as complete. Same thing now for OmniFocus 2 it's not configurable at this point

00:43:20 ◼   ► it's just tasks due today but I'm actually okay with that. For someone who

00:43:25 ◼   ► uses OmniFocus 2 basically every working minute of the day it feels like. A really nice way

00:43:32 ◼   ► to get in and mark some stuff off real quickly and that's part of their I think 2.3 update

00:43:38 ◼   ► or 2.3.1 or something. That's a really good example of like I bet a bunch of to-do managers

00:43:45 ◼   ► do that thing where I have a list of tasks, I check them off and I'm done.

00:43:50 ◼   ► I've been waiting for because now I use Todoist and they still don't have an iS8 beta version

00:44:00 ◼   ► or app on the App Store but I'm definitely looking forward to being able to complete

00:44:05 ◼   ► my to-dos from a widget.

00:44:08 ◼   ► I've been using and liking a lot the Evernote widget which has shortcuts to create new notes

00:44:17 ◼   ► or reminders or a list.

00:44:19 ◼   ► And it's nice because there's five buttons on the screen

00:44:23 ◼   ► and each button takes you to a specific area of the app.

00:44:28 ◼   ► Like if you tap the text button,

00:44:31 ◼   ► it takes you to the creation screen

00:44:34 ◼   ► for a new regular text note.

00:44:37 ◼   ► If you tap the reminder, it takes you into the Evernote app

00:44:40 ◼   ► and into the reminder creation mode and so forth.

00:44:44 ◼   ► And I've also--

00:44:46 ◼   ► - Which is nice, 'cause like my complaint about Evernote

00:44:48 ◼   ► is like, it's slow to get in and make a note.

00:44:50 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:44:51 ◼   ► - And now I can just pull it down, hit a button and I'm in.

00:44:52 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:44:53 ◼   ► I've also been using this widget from an app

00:44:56 ◼   ► that's called ETA, that's E-T-A,

00:44:59 ◼   ► I guess it's a Semitic Time of Arrival.

00:45:02 ◼   ► And it's a travel app for the iPhone

00:45:07 ◼   ► that gives you travel times for your favorite locations.

00:45:12 ◼   ► So you can configure a bunch of favorites in the app.

00:45:16 ◼   ► and then the top three favorite locations are displayed as a widget in the notification

00:45:20 ◼   ► center and the widget shows you the travel time for that location and if you tap the

00:45:27 ◼   ► location you can open directions into Apple or Google Maps.

00:45:32 ◼   ► That's really nice.

00:45:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:34 ◼   ► Apple does a little bit of that now if I have an address on my next event it will say, "Hey,

00:45:40 ◼   ► it's going to take you 14 minutes to drive to Acme company."

00:45:43 ◼   ► But it's also predictive.

00:45:45 ◼   ► And so I bet, I mean, right now it's 5.20 PM my time.

00:45:50 ◼   ► And if I pull down, yeah, it says, you know, driving home could take about 18 minutes or

00:45:56 ◼   ► whatever.

00:45:57 ◼   ► And so it's, that's a really good example of like a third party saying what Apple does

00:46:01 ◼   ► and making it better, like standing on their shoulders.

00:46:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:05 ◼   ► With Google Maps.

00:46:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:08 ◼   ► Maps is fine.

00:46:09 ◼   ► Uh, yeah, Tim apologized again for Apple maps in that, uh, interview.

00:46:14 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:46:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:16 ◼   ► He was like, yeah.

00:46:16 ◼   ► He's like, we screwed up.

00:46:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:18 ◼   ► Pretty much.

00:46:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:19 ◼   ► It doesn't know about your house anymore.

00:46:20 ◼   ► Right.

00:46:21 ◼   ► Have we talked about that?

00:46:22 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:46:22 ◼   ► They still haven't fixed it.

00:46:24 ◼   ► That's awesome.

00:46:26 ◼   ► And, um, I, uh, I don't know if you've been using it, but there's the day one.

00:46:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:33 ◼   ► That is you graphs and like, um, reminders from the past, but for, with photos.

00:46:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I like that. It's not one that I think is going to be in my normal rotation, but

00:46:45 ◼   ► it's a really nice view of your day one data. I kind of wish it wasn't just in a widget,

00:46:53 ◼   ► but…

00:46:54 ◼   ► Yeah. So one of my points in my article was that this is called the today view of Notification

00:47:00 ◼   ► Center, but many of these widgets and many more in the next few weeks, they are not really

00:47:06 ◼   ► about today, right? They're just shortcuts or glanceable information. They're not related

00:47:13 ◼   ► to the current day or they don't depend on time. I mean, Evernote lets you create notes.

00:47:19 ◼   ► It's just a bunch of icons. So I think that next year, Apple is going to change the today

00:47:25 ◼   ► name because it doesn't really make sense that there's today and then all these widgets.

00:47:31 ◼   ► or not about the calendar or what you gotta do today.

00:47:35 ◼   ► It's basically the dashboard only better.

00:47:39 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:47:40 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:47:41 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:47:42 ◼   ► - Poor dashboard.

00:47:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, because the point is that you can bring

00:47:45 ◼   ► this up in any app and it's always there, right?

00:47:49 ◼   ► Because it's the notification interface that you always use

00:47:54 ◼   ► and you can bring up the today view on the home screen

00:47:57 ◼   ► in an app.

00:47:58 ◼   ► I mean, you can open the multitasking view

00:48:01 ◼   ► and bring up the widgets.

00:48:03 ◼   ► And it's also better because it's,

00:48:05 ◼   ► they're integrated with the apps that you use.

00:48:10 ◼   ► On the dashboard, you install,

00:48:12 ◼   ► on OS X, you install these widgets,

00:48:14 ◼   ► but they're not really connected to the apps that you use.

00:48:18 ◼   ► Right, they're like little utilities that are there.

00:48:22 ◼   ► - Exactly. - On iOS,

00:48:23 ◼   ► these are extensions of apps.

00:48:26 ◼   ► So if you tap them, if you interact with them,

00:48:29 ◼   ► you can change data or you can do stuff with their primary app and that's a huge difference.

00:48:36 ◼   ► Yeah, well it's even weirder on OS X Yosemite which of course isn't out yet but on OS X

00:48:44 ◼   ► now you have today and notifications like you do on iOS 8 but then you also still have

00:48:50 ◼   ► the dashboard and so it's clearly this little corner of like utility shortcut type things

00:48:58 ◼   ► is still in flux and I agree the name is weird and I think that they will sort of bring all

00:49:04 ◼   ► this back into the fold at some point. Like I'm shocked that Dashboard is still around

00:49:08 ◼   ► in OS X and that's coming from somebody who uses it on a pretty regular basis.

00:49:12 ◼   ► I think that their new name will just be Dashboard. Like the day view will be Dashboard and the

00:49:17 ◼   ► old Dashboard, your friend Steven will go away. I'm sorry but that's just...

00:49:22 ◼   ► Maybe they'll call it iPod Classic. Dashboard Classic.

00:49:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, so, yeah, I think you're right.

00:49:28 ◼   ► There's sort of a wide range of usage here.

00:49:31 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:49:31 ◼   ► - But what's nice is this really makes iOS 8

00:49:34 ◼   ► feel much more customized.

00:49:36 ◼   ► Like, you know, like I use OmniFocus and Evernote heavily,

00:49:40 ◼   ► and so those are my top two.

00:49:41 ◼   ► And suddenly that area of my phone

00:49:43 ◼   ► is not just things coming from other people,

00:49:45 ◼   ► but it's things that I've put there as well.

00:49:47 ◼   ► And I bet I at least, and a lot of other people,

00:49:50 ◼   ► will use Notifications Center a lot more

00:49:52 ◼   ► now that it's gained this functionality.

00:49:54 ◼   ► Yeah, for me the result of widgets has been that a lot of shortcuts and actions that I

00:50:00 ◼   ► used to keep in Launcher Engine Pro or in drafts, they're gone because I can just use

00:50:06 ◼   ► a notification center now.

00:50:08 ◼   ► And I think that the action/app launcher kind of widget is going to be one of the most popular

00:50:17 ◼   ► types of widgets.

00:50:19 ◼   ► And for instance there's this new app called Workflow which is like automator for iOS.

00:50:25 ◼   ► It's pretty amazing.

00:50:27 ◼   ► And they have this widget that lets you launch and run workflows from the today view.

00:50:35 ◼   ► And using this app and the widget I was able to drop a lot of URL scheme based or Python

00:50:44 ◼   ► based workflows that I had because combined all these aspects, the widget and this new

00:50:52 ◼   ► app which is amazing and lets you build workflows visually, all together they're much better

00:50:58 ◼   ► than editing manually a URL scheme and writing a script just to take a bunch of photos and

00:51:06 ◼   ► upload them to the cloud.

00:51:07 ◼   ► Now I can just use a native photo picker and just use an extension and upload my photos

00:51:14 ◼   ► and I don't have to write a single line of code and I can show other people how to do

00:51:18 ◼   ► it and it's just, it has an interface.

00:51:22 ◼   ► So it's kind of sad because a lot of great stuff came out of the classic iOS automation

00:51:31 ◼   ► scene but these new technologies are just so much better.

00:51:36 ◼   ► Did you say scene?

00:51:38 ◼   ► I'm not sure.

00:51:39 ◼   ► Scene, yeah.

00:51:40 ◼   ► Like four people in your scene.

00:51:41 ◼   ► No, it's not true.

00:51:42 ◼   ► It's at least a hundred people.

00:51:43 ◼   ► - Lovely, okay.

00:51:44 ◼   ► So it's, but you're right, I mean this stuff brings

00:51:47 ◼   ► the things that were locked away in editorial

00:51:50 ◼   ► or in Pythonista, it brings them to the masses,

00:51:53 ◼   ► like in a way that is really exciting.

00:51:56 ◼   ► And a lot of that's in the action and share sheet stuff

00:52:02 ◼   ► where I don't have to like copy and paste between apps

00:52:06 ◼   ► or rely on a workflow that I can just be in one app

00:52:11 ◼   ► and use a little part of another one

00:52:12 ◼   ► there where I am. And to me, the Action to Share stuff almost feels more futuristic even in the

00:52:19 ◼   ► widgets. - Yeah, definitely. Especially when you try something like the 1Password extension.

00:52:26 ◼   ► - Oh, I love that so much. - Yeah, the Evernote share sheet that lets you create a note in any

00:52:33 ◼   ► app that knows what kind of content you want to save. So if you're in Safari, it saves a webpage.

00:52:39 ◼   ► if you're in the Photos app it saves the photo because the extensions know the kind of input

00:52:44 ◼   ► that gets passed to the extension and you don't have to do anything you just hit the share button

00:52:49 ◼   ► and you're done. The one passer one is really interesting. If you guys haven't spent time with

00:52:55 ◼   ► it you have an extension in Mobile Safari and if you have a phone that's Touch ID equipped

00:53:02 ◼   ► you put your thumb on it and it unlocks your one password keychain

00:53:07 ◼   ► within mobile Safari, right? So you don't have to like go out to the 1Password browser. You can do it

00:53:12 ◼   ► all right within Safari, which is cool. Yeah. And if you're a third party developer.

00:53:18 ◼   ► Poor Chrome. I know. Oh, Chrome is using a native share sheet on iOS 8, I think.

00:53:25 ◼   ► Yeah. I saw our deceased co-host talking about that on Twitter.

00:53:30 ◼   ► Yeah. If you're a third party developer, you can do more stuff with the 1Password extension.

00:53:37 ◼   ► There's an SDK that you can use to unlock more features. Basically, every app that I tested

00:53:45 ◼   ► had support for the 1Password extension because iCloud Keychain is cool.

00:53:51 ◼   ► But you know, it's not as full featured as 1Password. Although I got to say that a nice

00:53:59 ◼   ► feature of iCloud Kitchen that is available right now in iOS 8 is that basically if an

00:54:05 ◼   ► app has an online service or an online component and if you have an account for that app, on

00:54:13 ◼   ► iOS 8 the app can look into your iCloud Kitchen and if it finds a login for its service already

00:54:21 ◼   ► into your Kitchen it says do you want to import your saved password from Safari and use it?

00:54:27 ◼   ► That's really nice.

00:54:28 ◼   ► - That is really, I had not come across that.

00:54:30 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:54:30 ◼   ► - That's awesome.

00:54:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's really nice.

00:54:32 ◼   ► I came across that for screens,

00:54:35 ◼   ► the VNC app from Adobe and the new delivery status,

00:54:40 ◼   ► which I don't know if it's out already.

00:54:42 ◼   ► They look into your iCloud kitchen for the screens connect

00:54:47 ◼   ► and the June cloud accounts.

00:54:49 ◼   ► And if they find a safe password in Safari,

00:54:52 ◼   ► they ask you to import the password in the app,

00:54:54 ◼   ► which is awesome.

00:54:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, deliveries is still telling me

00:54:57 ◼   ► that my iPhone is not here yet.

00:54:59 ◼   ► - What is it? - Sadness.

00:55:00 ◼   ► - What is it?

00:55:01 ◼   ► - It's in Memphis.

00:55:02 ◼   ► It ships from here.

00:55:03 ◼   ► Just waiting.

00:55:04 ◼   ► Yeah, the action stuff, the share stuff is really,

00:55:10 ◼   ► really cool.

00:55:12 ◼   ► - And the share stuff is going to be amazing

00:55:15 ◼   ► for people who use Pinboard, the bookmarking service,

00:55:19 ◼   ► because every Pinboard app is going to have a share

00:55:22 ◼   ► extension and it makes life so much easier.

00:55:25 ◼   ► if you like to save bookmarks on Pinboard,

00:55:28 ◼   ► because before it used to be that you either

00:55:30 ◼   ► use the bookmarklet on iOS, which kind of sucks, right?

00:55:34 ◼   ► Or you had to create these kind of workflows

00:55:37 ◼   ► with Python or URL schemes.

00:55:41 ◼   ► Now, all these Pinboard apps that I tested

00:55:45 ◼   ► and they're up today on the App Store,

00:55:46 ◼   ► there's Pinner with version three,

00:55:50 ◼   ► and there's another one called Pinpoint,

00:55:52 ◼   ► and there's an update to PinSwift coming out in a couple of weeks.

00:55:57 ◼   ► Everybody's doing share extensions and they let you

00:56:01 ◼   ► save bookmarks to PinBoard directly from Safari or any other app.

00:56:06 ◼   ► It's funny, I have

00:56:07 ◼   ► as do you, a collection of bookmarklets in Safari

00:56:11 ◼   ► send things to various places and like

00:56:13 ◼   ► I still need those for OS X, but I don't need them for iOS anymore.

00:56:18 ◼   ► Which is just a little sad. I'm kind of worried because

00:56:21 ◼   ► In these past two months, I saw developers obviously focusing on iOS 8 betas and widgets

00:56:28 ◼   ► and all that kind of stuff.

00:56:30 ◼   ► I don't have a single Yosemite beta for a new OS X app, which is kind of concerning.

00:56:37 ◼   ► They'll circle, but they've got another month.

00:56:39 ◼   ► Yeah, let's see.

00:56:40 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:56:41 ◼   ► That's all it takes, all right?

00:56:42 ◼   ► If you say so.

00:56:43 ◼   ► Slap some paint on it.

00:56:47 ◼   ► The storage stuff is interesting too.

00:56:49 ◼   ► Of course transmit for iOS is a huge victory for those of us who use s3 on a daily basis. Yeah

00:56:56 ◼   ► lucky or FTP in general

00:56:59 ◼   ► But transmits only possible or you know partially possible because of the stuff with storage providers and iCloud Drive

00:57:06 ◼   ► which is

00:57:08 ◼   ► Like talking about things that break iOS 8 or iOS conventions

00:57:13 ◼   ► I think the storage stuff is right on the top of that list

00:57:18 ◼   ► >> Yeah. It's a major change because iCloud exists

00:57:25 ◼   ► and you have your documents in iCloud.

00:57:27 ◼   ► But actually your documents are into an app's iCloud container.

00:57:33 ◼   ► If you're on the Mac, there's a bunch of

00:57:35 ◼   ► different ways that you can access those documents.

00:57:38 ◼   ► One is the official way,

00:57:39 ◼   ► the other is the hacker's way.

00:57:41 ◼   ► >> Yeah, the weird folders in your user library.

00:57:44 ◼   ► >> Now you have this single location that's called

00:57:46 ◼   ► iCloud Drive that looks like Dropbox, but it's not Dropbox.

00:57:49 ◼   ► It's more like iCloud with pretty icons, but you can also create folders if you want, and

00:57:54 ◼   ► you can move documents around.

00:57:56 ◼   ► And by the way, you don't have to use iCloud Drive.

00:57:58 ◼   ► You can just hit a button and you change your storage provider.

00:58:01 ◼   ► That's super strange for an iOS user who's been using iOS for like seven years.

00:58:08 ◼   ► And the transmit...

00:58:09 ◼   ► Well, it puts iCloud at the same playing level as anyone else.

00:58:14 ◼   ► And other providers.

00:58:15 ◼   ► because you can switch at any time.

00:58:18 ◼   ► So in Transmit's case, you just change the storage location

00:58:23 ◼   ► and you're browsing an FTP server

00:58:25 ◼   ► or an S3, what are they called, buckets.

00:58:30 ◼   ► - Bucket.

00:58:31 ◼   ► - And you can just, you know,

00:58:34 ◼   ► you can do whatever you want with documents.

00:58:36 ◼   ► You can even open a document from Transmit

00:58:39 ◼   ► into another app.

00:58:41 ◼   ► You change the document and the changes are saved back

00:58:44 ◼   ► to transmit and into your server or bucket.

00:58:46 ◼   ► - Like a real computer.

00:58:47 ◼   ► - Like a real computer, right?

00:58:49 ◼   ► And instead it's an iPhone or an iPad.

00:58:51 ◼   ► So you cannot make fun of me anymore.

00:58:53 ◼   ► You cannot make fun of me anymore.

00:58:54 ◼   ► That's the best part of extensions.

00:58:56 ◼   ► - Not about this.

00:58:57 ◼   ► No, I mean, that's the thing.

00:59:00 ◼   ► Like if I started a text document in Byword

00:59:03 ◼   ► and it was in Byword's iCloud container

00:59:06 ◼   ► and I want to open it somewhere else,

00:59:07 ◼   ► it's like, well, too bad.

00:59:09 ◼   ► Like it belongs to Byword.

00:59:11 ◼   ► And that whole thing started to go away last year with Mavericks and Iowa 7 with

00:59:16 ◼   ► tags.

00:59:16 ◼   ► We could use tags to sort of see each other's documents a little bit, but I

00:59:20 ◼   ► mean, this really turns iCloud into a much more flexible system.

00:59:26 ◼   ► Like I'm still going to use Dropbox for lots and lots of things.

00:59:30 ◼   ► Um, but I think iCloud drive will slowly be creeping in more and more, especially

00:59:35 ◼   ► in an app like Byword where it's sort of like, I just create a thing and it knows

00:59:38 ◼   ► about iCloud and everything's just fine.

00:59:40 ◼   ► But I for one am excited about the flexibility of that and to be able to

00:59:46 ◼   ► swap in your own provider in place of iCloud is huge. I hope Dropbox is there.

00:59:51 ◼   ► I hope that you know these other providers have things. There's a OneNote from

00:59:56 ◼   ► Microsoft and what's the business you want? Box? Box. Yeah. Yeah. So that's lots

01:00:04 ◼   ► of good things going on there and I think the storage especially will that

01:00:09 ◼   ► corner of this will grow over time and that to me it's sort of the most it's

01:00:14 ◼   ► the hardest thing to wrap my hands around of like what's actually possible

01:00:18 ◼   ► but I think that it will it will get just more and more powerful as time goes

01:00:22 ◼   ► on. So we're talking about keyboards but first I would like to talk about Iconic which is

01:00:32 ◼   ► a great book this episode of Connected is brought to you by this photographic

01:00:38 ◼   ► tribute to Apple in design.

01:00:41 ◼   ► Iconic is a beautiful coffee table sized book that tells the story of Apple's most beautiful

01:00:46 ◼   ► desktops, portables, prototypes, iPods, devices, and packaging.

01:00:51 ◼   ► This book is chock full of stunning and unique photography.

01:00:56 ◼   ► It began back in 2009 when the author Jonathan wanted to start to photograph and catalog

01:01:04 ◼   ► his incredible and mammoth collection of Apple products.

01:01:07 ◼   ► It took four years, 150,000 photos whittled down into a 350 page book.

01:01:18 ◼   ► To go along with these images, there's a collection of essays by guys like Lauren

01:01:22 ◼   ► Bricter, Daniel Kottke, Jim Dalrymple and Steve Wozniak.

01:01:27 ◼   ► Now actually, I bought a copy of this book like I think when it first came out.

01:01:31 ◼   ► Oh, you have a copy too.

01:01:33 ◼   ► Yeah, it's amazing.

01:01:34 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:01:35 ◼   ► So you've been flipping through it, what kind of caught your eye in this thing?

01:01:40 ◼   ► Well the photos and the amount of effort that went into documenting Apple's history is just

01:01:46 ◼   ► incredible and it feels like when you go to a museum and you have these books in front

01:01:57 ◼   ► of objects and it's that kind of quality.

01:02:01 ◼   ► It's like this is an object that collects all the history of Apple with these beautiful

01:02:09 ◼   ► photos and attention to the materials used in a product.

01:02:14 ◼   ► And I can imagine honestly the amount of work that we need to produce in this.

01:02:22 ◼   ► Besides, the book itself is beautiful because it looks great.

01:02:26 ◼   ► The quality of the paper is great, but the photos is like an Apple museum in your home.

01:02:34 ◼   ► And I'm a big fan of the iconic.

01:02:39 ◼   ► Those of us with Apple collections in our home, this book is still impressive.

01:02:45 ◼   ► So there's a couple really easy, great ways to get this book.

01:02:49 ◼   ► If you want to get the classic edition you can actually go straight to Amazon, it's on

01:02:53 ◼   ► Amazon now or the book depository and buy from there.

01:02:57 ◼   ► But if you're interested in the classic plus or special edition head over to iconicbook.com/relayfm

01:03:03 ◼   ► where you get 20% off.

01:03:06 ◼   ► If you are a lover of Apple or design or have someone you're close to who is into this stuff,

01:03:13 ◼   ► definitely go check this out.

01:03:15 ◼   ► It really is one of the favorite things in my bookshelf.

01:03:17 ◼   ► been true for a long time well before

01:03:19 ◼   ► relay FM was a thing. So check it out

01:03:22 ◼   ► iconicbook.com/relayfm where you get

01:03:25 ◼   ► 20% off. So thank you so much to

01:03:27 ◼   ► Iconic and their support of connected

01:03:30 ◼   ► and all of Relay FM. So keyboards. I didn't

01:03:36 ◼   ► ever think this would happen. Like if you

01:03:38 ◼   ► had told me two years ago, "Okay you're

01:03:40 ◼   ► going to get extensions and widgets in iOS."

01:03:42 ◼   ► I'd be like, "Cool that's great." I never

01:03:45 ◼   ► would have thought that custom keyboards

01:03:46 ◼   ► would make it to Apple's operating system.

01:03:50 ◼   ► And they're here.

01:03:51 ◼   ► And there's lots of them.

01:03:52 ◼   ► And they're all awesome.

01:03:53 ◼   ► Most of them are awesome.

01:03:54 ◼   ► Have you made a Stevens keyboard?

01:03:56 ◼   ► Because everybody's doing keyboards.

01:03:58 ◼   ► I know.

01:03:59 ◼   ► I need to make one with the bubble text that I do on Twitter sometimes.

01:04:01 ◼   ► Yes, please do.

01:04:02 ◼   ► I will give you so much money, Steven, for that.

01:04:05 ◼   ► Oh yeah, let me just learn how to program.

01:04:08 ◼   ► So TextExpander is probably my favorite.

01:04:10 ◼   ► I'll just say it.

01:04:12 ◼   ► Because I do lots of jokes in TextExpander and now I can see those on my iPhone.

01:04:15 ◼   ► Okay, so can I do a special edition teachy tip just for this episode?

01:04:19 ◼   ► Oh, yes.

01:04:20 ◼   ► Okay, so listen, listen to this is a nice one, Steven.

01:04:24 ◼   ► So if you have the Texas Plunder keyboard for iOS 8 and you use email like any other

01:04:31 ◼   ► human being on this planet, but if you're the kind of person who likes to use your own

01:04:36 ◼   ► IMAP email with your own server, you don't want to use Gmail because it's Google and

01:04:42 ◼   ► and you don't wanna use iCloud because it's iCloud,

01:04:45 ◼   ► you wanna use IMAP, right?

01:04:46 ◼   ► And every time you need to set up an IMAP account

01:04:49 ◼   ► in the settings app, you gotta fill the server information

01:04:54 ◼   ► in the setup process.

01:04:57 ◼   ► So what I did was that I finally, after six years of iOS,

01:05:02 ◼   ► I set up a text spender snippet

01:05:05 ◼   ► for my email post information.

01:05:09 ◼   ► Now, when I go to the settings app

01:05:11 ◼   ► And when I add my accounts,

01:05:14 ◼   ► I can just switch to the Texas Panda keyboard.

01:05:16 ◼   ► I, you know, typed a little snippet

01:05:21 ◼   ► and it gets expanded to the full server address,

01:05:25 ◼   ► which is boring to type because it, you know,

01:05:27 ◼   ► it's a bunch of different letters.

01:05:28 ◼   ► - And it's tedious, right?

01:05:30 ◼   ► It's like periods and letters and numbers.

01:05:33 ◼   ► - So you can, you don't have to switch back and forth

01:05:35 ◼   ► between, I don't know, one password and, you know,

01:05:38 ◼   ► the settings app to copy and paste that information.

01:05:40 ◼   ► just use the text on the keyboard, make a snippet and make setting up email accounts

01:05:45 ◼   ► less annoying and less like an animal because now you're on iOS 8.

01:05:52 ◼   ► That's brilliant Federico.

01:05:53 ◼   ► I've definitely done that a hundred times.

01:05:59 ◼   ► SwiftKey is another one.

01:06:00 ◼   ► SwiftKey has been around, right?

01:06:02 ◼   ► This is the one that was in a couple of note-taking apps but now is a keyboard and it's got some

01:06:09 ◼   ► smart prediction stuff but of course it has the swiping which is the big thing.

01:06:15 ◼   ► >> Yeah, the Zwift key flow just for the iPhone.

01:06:18 ◼   ► I'll tell you, it's pretty weird, right?

01:06:22 ◼   ► Because this is new to me.

01:06:25 ◼   ► Unlike our new Italian friend, I never used Android so I have no idea what gesture swiping

01:06:35 ◼   ► to type is like.

01:06:39 ◼   ► This is new to me but the most impressive feature of ZwiftKey for me is that in the

01:06:44 ◼   ► same keyboard you can type in two languages.

01:06:48 ◼   ► So of course I'm typing in Italian and in English.

01:06:51 ◼   ► And ZwiftKey is pretty amazing at recognizing the language that you're writing in.

01:06:58 ◼   ► So I've been testing this keyboard for messages, for tweeting, for writing blog posts in a

01:07:06 ◼   ► editorial on my iPhone and iPad and it's pretty great actually because the

01:07:11 ◼   ► predictions, I found them to be much better than QuickType. The keyboard can

01:07:17 ◼   ► learn from your writing style if you give ZwiftKey read access to your

01:07:24 ◼   ► Twitter account, to your Facebook and there's also Evernote but I didn't want

01:07:29 ◼   ► to give access to my Evernote because it's full of notes that I didn't write

01:07:32 ◼   ► myself. So of course on Twitter, the Zwiftkey keyboard finds my English tweets and on Facebook

01:07:37 ◼   ► it finds my Italian stupid stuff.

01:07:39 ◼   ► Yeah, your Facebook, I don't understand what's happening on your Facebook.

01:07:43 ◼   ► It's learning from me and on many different occasions I found Zwiftkey to, you know, it

01:07:49 ◼   ► was giving me words and suggestions for stuff that I knew I wrote previously elsewhere and

01:07:56 ◼   ► that was pretty amazing.

01:07:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I haven't found, so what is Apple's called again?

01:08:02 ◼   ► I'm sorry.

01:08:03 ◼   ► Quick type.

01:08:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I have not found it to be learning anything.

01:08:07 ◼   ► That's exactly what I wrote in my article.

01:08:08 ◼   ► Yeah, like Apple says, and maybe it was in beta, maybe it wasn't hooked up or something,

01:08:14 ◼   ► but Apple's like, "It learns your tone because you might send an iMessage to your

01:08:21 ◼   ► Federico friend different than you send an email to your mic friend.

01:08:25 ◼   ► supposed to learn contextually the sort of tone of voice and words you might use.

01:08:29 ◼   ► I have not found that to be the case.

01:08:31 ◼   ► However, I found a great game.

01:08:33 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

01:08:34 ◼   ► So this is my, this is my, I know what's coming.

01:08:37 ◼   ► This is my tip.

01:08:38 ◼   ► Okay.

01:08:39 ◼   ► It probably destroys your quick type data, but send a text to somebody only using the

01:08:45 ◼   ► words that Apple suggests are next.

01:08:48 ◼   ► And to really make it great, only use like the middle one.

01:08:50 ◼   ► It's like it never, it falls apart so quickly because it's just gibberish.

01:08:55 ◼   ► It's awesome.

01:08:56 ◼   ► Just the middle one?

01:08:57 ◼   ► I've been playing with just the middle one with like my brother and some friends and

01:09:01 ◼   ► they think I'm drunk, but it's pretty great.

01:09:04 ◼   ► I have used the swiping keyboard, actually it's called Swipe over on Android and it's

01:09:13 ◼   ► pretty great once you get used to like not typing.

01:09:18 ◼   ► It's definitely weird, but once you get the hang of it, you can actually be really fast.

01:09:25 ◼   ► And so I'm looking forward to getting back into that.

01:09:27 ◼   ► I haven't used Android in several years full time, but I'm looking forward to this kind

01:09:33 ◼   ► of making its way to iOS.

01:09:36 ◼   ► So I'm just trying to use your tip.

01:09:39 ◼   ► Oh no.

01:09:40 ◼   ► The fact I can get it right away with the best of the day before I get a follow back

01:09:45 ◼   ► on my way home.

01:09:48 ◼   ► - Follow back on your way home.

01:09:49 ◼   ► It's pretty good.

01:09:51 ◼   ► It's fun.

01:09:51 ◼   ► You're probably destroying anything

01:09:52 ◼   ► that's learned about you, but who cares.

01:09:54 ◼   ► - I'm about to send you this message, by the way.

01:09:56 ◼   ► - All right.

01:09:57 ◼   ► That'd be exciting.

01:09:59 ◼   ► - So I've been trying this other keyboard called Gifmoji,

01:10:03 ◼   ► which sounds like a weird Casey Lee's nightmare,

01:10:07 ◼   ► but it's actually a real keyboard for iOS 8,

01:10:10 ◼   ► and it's basically a keyboard that lets you,

01:10:13 ◼   ► this is difficult to explain. There's three tabs in this keyboard. The first tab is emoji but they

01:10:22 ◼   ► are animated emoji. So it's like the smiley face, you can see that there's an

01:10:29 ◼   ► animated face smiling and there's the face with the kiss and there's little hearts growing

01:10:34 ◼   ► bigger and bigger, that kind of stuff.

01:10:36 ◼   ► The second tab is these ASCII artwork that people use for little characters.

01:10:48 ◼   ► And the third tab is regular GIFs organized in sections.

01:10:53 ◼   ► So there's like winning GIFs and there's like set face GIFs, there's a face palm GIFs.

01:11:00 ◼   ► It's pretty awesome because in a single keyboard, I can have these three different types of

01:11:07 ◼   ► stupid internet-style messaging.

01:11:10 ◼   ► And yeah, it's pretty great.

01:11:14 ◼   ► And the only problem with this keyboard and with other keyboards too is that it takes

01:11:18 ◼   ► a while to load.

01:11:20 ◼   ► And so if you have many keyboards on your device, like right now I have seven keyboards.

01:11:27 ◼   ► Every time I switch to one of these keyboards, there's a brief waiting period, like one second.

01:11:36 ◼   ► And the button's not always in the same place.

01:11:38 ◼   ► Like if you notice on Apple's own regular keyboard and their emoji keyboard, the button

01:11:42 ◼   ► to switch between keyboards is in a different place.

01:11:44 ◼   ► You're like, "What?

01:11:45 ◼   ► What?

01:11:46 ◼   ► What you doing there?

01:11:47 ◼   ► That should be the same place on all of them."

01:11:49 ◼   ► So you know what happens when you install too many keyboards?

01:11:53 ◼   ► Your phone just explodes?

01:11:54 ◼   ► No, you have to scroll the list.

01:11:56 ◼   ► Oh my god.

01:11:57 ◼   ► Ok, so basically this is also one of the other points that I wanted to bring up.

01:12:01 ◼   ► To switch between keyboards, in the Apple keyboard you can tap and hold the globe icon

01:12:07 ◼   ► to bring up a popover, right?

01:12:09 ◼   ► A list of your keyboards.

01:12:12 ◼   ► This popover is not supported by third party keyboards.

01:12:16 ◼   ► You cannot tap and hold the globe icon to have a list so you can swipe on the list and

01:12:21 ◼   ► switch quickly.

01:12:22 ◼   ► You can just tap and rotate across keyboards.

01:12:26 ◼   ► However, in this popover if it gets too long you gotta scroll, but to scroll you don't

01:12:32 ◼   ► have to take your finger off the screen because otherwise you choose a keyboard.

01:12:36 ◼   ► So you have to move your finger to the bottom or the top and just guess that it's going

01:12:42 ◼   ► to scroll and also the predictive setting, it's at the top of the keyboard list and to

01:12:50 ◼   ► To activate it, you gotta just select that toggle and release.

01:12:57 ◼   ► The interaction in this screen is really weird, and it makes me wish that Apple had a better

01:13:03 ◼   ► keyboard settings area, because the globe icon is really confusing.

01:13:09 ◼   ► I hope that in the next version of iOS, they're going to let developers display the little

01:13:14 ◼   ► pop-up to switch between keyboards, because it's much better than just tapping the globe

01:13:18 ◼   ► multiple times to switch and switch and switch.

01:13:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:13:21 ◼   ► I think as an example, they built something that people are going to use in a more robust

01:13:26 ◼   ► way than they planned.

01:13:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:13:28 ◼   ► But there's all sorts of things like custom keyboards can't do, like secure text input,

01:13:33 ◼   ► which I get.

01:13:34 ◼   ► Like I don't want the guy who made GIFmoji keyboards to necessarily know my passwords,

01:13:39 ◼   ► but I would like to be able to opt into that.

01:13:41 ◼   ► He's a really nice guy, by the way.

01:13:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:13:44 ◼   ► Yeah, that wasn't personal.

01:13:45 ◼   ► which is where my cursor was in the Google Doc.

01:13:49 ◼   ► So it's just a little weird that Apple's keyboards

01:13:53 ◼   ► can do a lot of stuff and other ones don't.

01:13:55 ◼   ► And when I say weird, that makes sense

01:13:58 ◼   ► that's a very Apple thing to do,

01:13:59 ◼   ► but from a user perspective it's a little jarring.

01:14:02 ◼   ► Like, oh, I gotta go back to this one to do that,

01:14:04 ◼   ► or I gotta be over here to do this.

01:14:07 ◼   ► I really foresee myself only having two or three

01:14:10 ◼   ► of these things long term.

01:14:11 ◼   ► Like, it's fun to play with them today,

01:14:13 ◼   ► But in a year, I'm only going to have two or three, I think,

01:14:16 ◼   ► that I rely on because of the limitations Apple's put

01:14:21 ◼   ► in place.

01:14:22 ◼   ► Yeah, for me, it has been more difficult

01:14:26 ◼   ► to get used to complete keyboard replacements

01:14:31 ◼   ► than using utility-focused keyboards,

01:14:35 ◼   ► such as Texas Panda or the GIFMoji thing.

01:14:40 ◼   ► Because this is quite strange, because a keyboard

01:14:43 ◼   ► that just wants to replace the Apple keyboard as a higher learning curve because I gotta

01:14:49 ◼   ► use that every day. And after seven years of the default keyboard it's really difficult

01:14:56 ◼   ► for me to get used to it.

01:14:57 ◼   ► Yeah, because like, I mean, even the text expander one, like I'm in it only to fire

01:15:01 ◼   ► a snippet and then I find it more comfortable to use the Apple one.

01:15:06 ◼   ► Yeah, there's this new clipboard manager for iOS 8 that's not available today, that's going

01:15:14 ◼   ► to come out in the next few weeks, it's called Clips and by the same guys that made this

01:15:20 ◼   ► patch, Email Client for iPhone, this one is amazing and I'm using it all the time.

01:15:27 ◼   ► Basically it's like the clipboard feature of apps like Launch Bar or Outflat on the

01:15:32 ◼   ► Mac on iOS 8 and so I can copy stuff, I can save multiple items into this clipboard

01:15:40 ◼   ► manager and then when I want to paste all these items in a row I can just

01:15:45 ◼   ► switch to their custom keyboard and you know just paste everything. It's going to

01:15:50 ◼   ► be amazing honestly. I'm kind of sad that I didn't, I couldn't publish a review today.

01:15:58 ◼   ► Yeah, that sort of thing too. We made the joke that this makes iOS like a real computer, but

01:16:03 ◼   ► I have a clipboard manager and I use Alfred for that. And it saves my rear end more than I want

01:16:10 ◼   ► to admit. Well, obviously there's going to be limitations on iOS still because it's not like

01:16:19 ◼   ► OS X yet. But it's interesting to think about Apple slowly opening up iOS, but doing that in

01:16:27 ◼   ► in a way that is still more secure than the Mac.

01:16:32 ◼   ► And maybe there's, of course there's pros and cons

01:16:36 ◼   ► about that, but I kind of like this new Apple, you know,

01:16:41 ◼   ► doing these new things, but still they're secure.

01:16:44 ◼   ► And like for keyboards, you gotta grant access

01:16:47 ◼   ► to the web features.

01:16:50 ◼   ► Otherwise keyboards cannot communicate with the cloud.

01:16:54 ◼   ► And, or I don't know, like for, for this clipboard stuff,

01:16:59 ◼   ► apps are still not capable of monitoring what you type

01:17:04 ◼   ► and copy all the time.

01:17:05 ◼   ► And so I do like that Apple is bringing, you know,

01:17:10 ◼   ► this kind of new integrations to iOS,

01:17:13 ◼   ► but still in a way that's different from OS X,

01:17:15 ◼   ► because it looks like they have learned

01:17:18 ◼   ► from their previous experiences with power users on the Mac.

01:17:22 ◼   ► And now we can do more things on iOS which makes me happy and it makes me wonder, can

01:17:31 ◼   ► we start talking about iOS 9 today?

01:17:34 ◼   ► Yeah, let's just start that rumor mill now.

01:17:39 ◼   ► It's interesting because a couple years ago, I started with 10.7 Lion, the iOSification

01:17:47 ◼   ► of OS X, and that definitely has happened,

01:17:50 ◼   ► but it's been more features than sort of

01:17:54 ◼   ► like underlying structure.

01:17:57 ◼   ► And we see that iOS, I think, in the last,

01:18:00 ◼   ► definitely now, but even the last couple of years,

01:18:02 ◼   ► has moved much closer to the Mac,

01:18:04 ◼   ► and the Mac has moved towards iOS.

01:18:07 ◼   ► And as an old guy, I think that's great.

01:18:11 ◼   ► But I agree, this is like new stuff,

01:18:12 ◼   ► it's new territory, but Apple's going about it

01:18:15 ◼   ► in a way that respects users' privacy and it continues to make the platform as secure

01:18:20 ◼   ► as possible.

01:18:22 ◼   ► And I think all this stuff is great and I'm excited to see what developers do.

01:18:27 ◼   ► Like as much fun as today is, like in six months or in a year, the stuff that developers

01:18:34 ◼   ► will be able to do is really encouraging.

01:18:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it's been so refreshing to see all these new apps during this summer, right?

01:18:50 ◼   ► And the results on the App Store today.

01:18:53 ◼   ► And today there's probably a lot of excitement, a lot of excitement and people are curious

01:18:59 ◼   ► to try all these new apps because it feels like the early days of the App Store again

01:19:04 ◼   ► because everything's new and everything's great.

01:19:07 ◼   ► But I want to see, after the holidays,

01:19:11 ◼   ► after the new iPads and after another Apple event,

01:19:15 ◼   ► and after Yosemite, how in everyday life,

01:19:19 ◼   ► these new features are going to play out for regular people.

01:19:25 ◼   ► Because are normal people going to know about Share and Action extensions?

01:19:30 ◼   ► are they going to know about? You can edit a photo for Instagram with the

01:19:36 ◼   ► Instagram filters without actually opening Instagram. You can switch

01:19:42 ◼   ► your document providers and you can load files from Dropbox or OneNote in any app.

01:19:48 ◼   ► Are people going to know about this? I think that a huge part of this will be the new

01:19:55 ◼   ► tips app from Apple on iOS 8 that sends you notifications to learn how to use

01:20:03 ◼   ► your devices and how to get more out of iOS on an iPhone and iPad. I think that Apple has some

01:20:09 ◼   ► explaining to do to regular folks. They need to tell people how to be more productive on iOS,

01:20:19 ◼   ► because so many times my friends tell me, "Oh, you know, all the things you can do," and they

01:20:25 ◼   ► they look at my screen, right? All the things you can do when you know how to

01:20:29 ◼   ► use an iPhone because most people just go to the apps store and use Facebook and

01:20:33 ◼   ► Instagram and Safari and Mail maybe or Messages, you know, the basic apps but

01:20:37 ◼   ► people want to know about, they want to know how they can do more because they're

01:20:42 ◼   ► jealous of the people that can use an iPad or an iPhone for serious tasks and

01:20:47 ◼   ► now that this stuff is possible, not with scripts or workflows or, you know,

01:20:51 ◼   ► URL schemes and other incomprehensible stuff for normal people. Now that this is possible,

01:20:58 ◼   ► I think that Apple should tell users "hey, you can do this now, today with iOS 8 and you should

01:21:05 ◼   ► upgrade because you can do this and this and that" and it's going to be interesting to see, you know,

01:21:11 ◼   ► if the new features in iOS 8 can take developers until WWDC or if the limitations that we mentioned

01:21:20 ◼   ► today are going to be a problem after the initial excitement is over and developers

01:21:25 ◼   ► are going to start complaining again.

01:21:27 ◼   ► It's also curious to think about iOS 8.1 which is supposed to come out before iOS 9 of course

01:21:36 ◼   ► but also either this fall with the new iPads or early next year and if Apple is really

01:21:42 ◼   ► doing a new multitasking mode for the iPad. If you combine that with extensions and with document

01:21:50 ◼   ► providers and with iCloud drive, the iPad could be profoundly transformed as a device, as a portable

01:21:57 ◼   ► computer. And it's funny to think about that, like you said, Sivend, there used to be people who were

01:22:03 ◼   ► saying OS X is becoming like iOS and imagine if Launchpad becomes the new finder and when

01:22:12 ◼   ► you boot a Mac the only thing you see is a grid of icons and now iOS is becoming more

01:22:20 ◼   ► like the Mac but still in a new way.

01:22:23 ◼   ► It's an interesting turn of events.

01:22:25 ◼   ► Yeah, but you still can't send your heartbeat to anyone yet so call me when we can do that.

01:22:33 ◼   ► So I think that's it for today.

01:22:36 ◼   ► Got anything else?

01:22:38 ◼   ► What up?

01:22:39 ◼   ► I wish, as I say this, I hope I'm still alive.

01:22:46 ◼   ► What else?

01:22:47 ◼   ► I think it's been really fun to try out these iOS apps.

01:22:51 ◼   ► I think there's lots more coming because I know developers who couldn't submit their

01:22:56 ◼   ► apps due to bugs and iTunes connect problems and other crashes, the memory problems with

01:23:06 ◼   ► the iOS 8 GM. So there's a lot of new apps that haven't been released today, but they

01:23:11 ◼   ► are coming soon with amazing new features. And yeah, I look forward to reducing the amount

01:23:19 ◼   ► of coffee that I drink every day.

01:23:21 ◼   ► fine you don't shit the shaking is fine

01:23:23 ◼   ► it's fine if you want to find the show

01:23:27 ◼   ► notes for this week's episode you can

01:23:29 ◼   ► find them online at relay.fm/connected/5

01:23:33 ◼   ► our dearly departed co-host is iMyke on

01:23:37 ◼   ► Twitter i-m-y-k-e Federico writes at

01:23:41 ◼   ► maxstories.net and you can find him

01:23:44 ◼   ► tweeting at vittici v-i-t-i-c-c-i you can

01:23:47 ◼   ► find me at 512pixels.net and at

01:23:50 ◼   ► @ismh on Twitter. Until next time, goodbye.

01:23:55 ◼   ► Arrivederci.

01:23:56 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]