00:00:00 ◼ ► Welcome back to State of the Workflow. On this episode, I'm welcoming John Gruber to the show.
00:00:05 ◼ ► John is the writer behind Daring Fireball, a very influential blog that covers technology but
00:00:10 ◼ ► mostly focused on Apple. John has been writing at Daring Fireball since 2002, and in the last 23 years
00:00:17 ◼ ► has become very influential both to Apple themselves but also to the community around them.
00:00:22 ◼ ► This is because of the quality and thoughtfulness of the work he produces. John is not afraid of
00:00:27 ◼ ► sharing his opinions on any subject, and this can make waves. In this episode, I want to focus on
00:00:32 ◼ ► how John thinks about his work at Daring Fireball and also how he does it. Let's get on with the show.
00:00:37 ◼ ► All right, John, I want to get started by asking, what device in your life is the most important to
00:00:44 ◼ ► you? My MacBook Pro, without question. You know, I hoped you were going to say that, because on the
00:00:50 ◼ ► last episode, I spoke to Austin Evans and he picked an iPhone, and I had people say to me, everyone's
00:00:56 ◼ ► just going to pick an iPhone. And I thought, I'm going to have John on, and I know he's going to
00:01:03 ◼ ► MacBook Pro maxed out. I think that came out in 2021, and I bought it pretty much right after it
00:01:11 ◼ ► came out, and I got one to review and was like, yeah, this is what I was waiting for. I use it every
00:01:16 ◼ ► day. I don't know if it's the longest I've ever owned a MacBook. I guess not, because when I was
00:01:21 ◼ ► younger, budgetary concerns would have me stretch them out longer. Or going back further, there was
00:01:27 ◼ ► time, like in the early years at Daring Fireball, I had a desktop computer. And when it came out,
00:01:34 ◼ ► an 11-inch MacBook Air that I used for travel that I loved, but would not have wanted to use as my
00:01:41 ◼ ► sole machine hooked up to a display. But I am in a weird position that very few people are,
00:01:47 ◼ ► and I love it. But I get to review new computers every couple months. And so I've reviewed and used
00:01:54 ◼ ► the other new MacBook Pros, the M2, M3, M4. And the M4, last fall, I was like, ah, I should upgrade.
00:02:03 ◼ ► And it was the matte display, nanotexture, which is amazing. And I have the nanotexture studio display
00:02:11 ◼ ► in my office. And in my office, I've written about this at Daring Fireball, the way the sun comes
00:02:16 ◼ ► mainly in the fall and spring, beams of sunlight just hit where my display is. And with this nanotexture,
00:02:24 ◼ ► the studio display, I honest to God, I don't even notice sometimes I have to like hold my hand up,
00:02:28 ◼ ► like Indiana Jones trying to trigger that trap and Raiders of the Lost Ark. And I'm like, oh, my God,
00:02:33 ◼ ► there's a full beam of sunlight on my display. And I can't even tell. And I tested the MacBook with it.
00:02:40 ◼ ► And it's pretty much the same. Maybe it's not quite as good, but it's almost as good. And I was using it
00:02:45 ◼ ► in all sorts of sunny spots in my house. And I love the actual black aluminum finish, as opposed to the
00:02:53 ◼ ► sort of just slightly grayer than silver space gray of my old M1. But then I realized like 95 percentage of
00:03:02 ◼ ► my time I'm at my desk, like I don't use it as a laptop. And that would be the reason to get the
00:03:08 ◼ ► nanotexture. And this is it. After like six weeks of using an Apple M4 with nanotexture review unit,
00:03:18 ◼ ► I went back to my personal M1 Max MacBook Pro from 2021. And every time I've done that in my whole
00:03:28 ◼ ► career of reviewing products, even when it's like a two year old product, when I go back to the old one,
00:03:33 ◼ ► I'm like, oh, this feels slow. That's what makes the new thing feel fast is going back. I went back to my
00:03:40 ◼ ► four year old M1 MacBook Pro and I did not feel any difference at all in my computing life.
00:03:47 ◼ ► No, for people like us, these computers now are just too powerful. You know, there's just so much headroom
00:03:54 ◼ ► that we're not using at all. Like I have a M4 Mac mini and I forget I have a Mac mini and I think to
00:04:01 ◼ ► myself, I have a Mac studio. I don't have a Mac studio. I don't have one of those, but my M4 Mac
00:04:07 ◼ ► mini is as powerful for me as a Mac studio would be for what I do with it. Money runs through my
00:04:13 ◼ ► fingers like water. I love spending money and I wanted that M4. I was a hundred percent sure by the end of
00:04:22 ◼ ► my review that I was going to buy one and figure out a good use for my old M1. And when I went back to
00:04:27 ◼ ► the M1, I hadn't even used it for like a month because like everything was on the review unit
00:04:31 ◼ ► and let it re-sync and catch up on Dropbox and whatever else it needed to do. And when I realized I
00:04:37 ◼ ► could not tell any difference at all, nothing, I was like, I can't justify this yet. But anyway, that's my
00:04:43 ◼ ► main computer. And I would be annoyed if I had to give up my iPhone, but I, in some ways I might become
00:04:50 ◼ ► more productive. I might dig around less on my phone in the morning while I'm drinking coffee and get down
00:04:57 ◼ ► to my office and a few minutes earlier, if the phone were worse, I wouldn't lose much productivity if I
00:05:03 ◼ ► had to switch to an Android or even if by court order, I had to switch to a dumb phone or something.
00:05:08 ◼ ► But my actual work would suffer tremendously if I were using anything other than a Mac.
00:05:19 ◼ ► Because that is ultimately for you and your relationship with computers. It's how you use
00:05:30 ◼ ► Yeah. And even for certain things that aren't work related, I'm trying to think of a reason.
00:05:40 ◼ ► And, you know, for things like comparison shopping, it's so much better. Every time I start doing it on
00:05:48 ◼ ► the phone, it's the same way with work, where if I'm in the morning drinking coffee and I think,
00:05:52 ◼ ► I should get down to my office. Instead of, like, making a list of things, oh, I should link to that
00:05:57 ◼ ► today. If I were at my desk, I'd be linking to it from Daring. I wouldn't be making a to-do item to
00:06:05 ◼ ► And even for personal things, like just comparison shopping, like we have a deck and we'd never
00:06:10 ◼ ► really finished it and we're nearing completion of a long roof deck renovation and we want to get
00:06:17 ◼ ► an outdoor TV. The only thing that's better than shopping for a regular TV is there's way fewer
00:06:22 ◼ ► options. The thing that's worse is they're incredibly expensive compared to indoor TVs.
00:06:28 ◼ ► But for doing something like that, doing it on a desktop with a big display is so much more efficient.
00:06:35 ◼ ► It's just faster. Me as a visual person being able to spread out and see more of a comparison
00:06:42 ◼ ► chart at once. I had ChatGPT do like a deep research thing for me and part of the output of ChatGPT's
00:06:51 ◼ ► thing was a very handy comparison table. But the table they made was so wide that it literally doesn't
00:06:57 ◼ ► quite fit on my studio display in a full screen ChatGPT window. It's slightly because it has so
00:07:04 ◼ ► many columns. Right. And it's the last column where they have like buying links and the URLs
00:07:08 ◼ ► sort of stretch. But it's just nice to be able to see most of that. And it's like, well, I do have
00:07:13 ◼ ► a 27 inch thing in front of me. Why not use it for graphical presentation? It's so much more efficient
00:07:20 ◼ ► for that. So there are certain personal life computer type things that are just better on a Mac.
00:07:26 ◼ ► So for the main part of this episode, what I want to do with you is to dig into and understand your
00:07:32 ◼ ► workflow for writing and publishing to Daring Fireball. So I want to look at specifically how a
00:07:38 ◼ ► big article comes together, like what are the devices you're using for that, the apps you're using for
00:07:42 ◼ ► that. So if we take, for example, the, I would say somewhat infamous article now, something is rotten
00:07:48 ◼ ► in the state of Cupertino as like a, as a framework, right? Like a really big article that I'm assuming
00:07:53 ◼ ► take you a long time to write. And I also assume it's probably pretty well known amongst our audience
00:07:58 ◼ ► at this point, because that article seemed to spread pretty wide was the impression that I got.
00:08:02 ◼ ► And so I wanted to kind of take a look at this as a frame. So when you have an idea for an article
00:08:09 ◼ ► like this, one of your big articles, where does the idea go to begin? Like, is there a place that
00:08:15 ◼ ► you're writing down, you have like a thought in the shower, or you just have an idea and you want
00:08:21 ◼ ► It's complicated because I follow a quote unquote system that is probably the antithesis of whatever
00:08:36 ◼ ► Right. Because as I understand it, I remember when that became a sensation, like probably around 2009,
00:08:43 ◼ ► as I recall, I looked into it. And that's never going to work for me for various reasons.
00:08:49 ◼ ► It doesn't work for me either. It does not. It's not in its entirety. Like there are components
00:08:53 ◼ ► of the getting things done system that have now spread everywhere. But the actual whole system
00:09:01 ◼ ► Yeah. But I could see why it works for some people. And I think that this whole capture of ideas or
00:09:09 ◼ ► things to do, there's a reason why there's no Microsoft Excel of that genre, right? Like there's a very short
00:09:18 ◼ ► list of apps people use for spreadsheet type things. And for to do's capturing ideas, it's almost hard to
00:09:26 ◼ ► draw a border around the category because it's like, well, that's more of a note tab and that's more of a
00:09:32 ◼ ► thing. But the precept of getting things done that resonated with me was having like one true place to put
00:09:38 ◼ ► your things, right? Or your ideas, like one true place to capture things. And I was like, oh, that sounds
00:09:43 ◼ ► smart. And I follow the opposite of that where I've got like a diaspora of places. If there's one true one,
00:09:52 ◼ ► know, everywhere I go, I carry a pocket notebook, there's a field notes right here. And
00:09:58 ◼ ► more often than not, I might outline more of an article with a pen in a field notes, I certainly wouldn't write
00:10:06 ◼ ► an article, like I don't write longhand, but I can outline with a pen. But sometimes just a couple of ideas, just a page
00:10:15 ◼ ► or two in a tiny little field notes of ideas is enough, or even just a half page is enough, like, ah, I could
00:10:24 ◼ ► Where my stuff is the most spread, and I've never found a good solution is where to send bookmarks. And I've sort of
00:10:32 ◼ ► recently settled on a little shortcuts made system I have that I call Totmark. I should write about it on Daring
00:10:47 ◼ ► It's a shortcut that sends the current Safari title and URL to the first dot in the app Tot, which is a
00:10:56 ◼ ► little notes app that only allows you to have seven notes, which is an interesting constraint. And so note
00:11:03 ◼ ► one dot one and Tot is my list of bookmarks that are just title, return URL, and a couple of blank lines
00:11:11 ◼ ► between them. And then if I if I want to make a couple of other notes about it, it's just plain text. Tot is
00:11:18 ◼ ► just a plain text editor, I will just go to Tot after running the shortcut and jot down if I had thoughts, but it's
00:11:25 ◼ ► totally freeform. There's no structure, there's no fields, it's just a pure little text file. And so you know, if there
00:11:32 ◼ ► are like URLs, something that I want to start an article from, they're often in there, I tend to ignore
00:11:38 ◼ ► them. I have a folder in Apple notes, called fireballs, where there are ideas for articles to write.
00:11:47 ◼ ► So I wonder how long they're going back of like articles that you have ideas for that are unwritten.
00:11:55 ◼ ► But that doesn't mean that they're all unwritten. Because if I write one, I don't necessarily delete it.
00:12:01 ◼ ► Sure. Is that how you think of your posts? Do you think of them as fireballs? Is that like a
00:12:12 ◼ ► Right. So I would say that's the combination. The tot ones are more for my shorter posts,
00:12:18 ◼ ► the link list where I'm linking to one thing. And sometimes I'll send something there that I know
00:12:23 ◼ ► it's I'm not going to link to this from Daring Fireball, but it's something I want to remember.
00:12:30 ◼ ► And I'll just send it there anyway. And I've had dozens of systems and places and things that I've
00:12:38 ◼ ► used over the years for bookmarking. I just abandoned them. You know, like the prototypical bad father who
00:12:45 ◼ ► just goes out for a pack of cigarettes and never comes back and starts a new family a couple states
00:12:50 ◼ ► over. Right. Like I never go back and like export from an old system and import into a new system.
00:12:58 ◼ ► So like my delicious account is still I don't even know if they're around, but I have a pinboard
00:13:03 ◼ ► account, which is the online thing that's sort of a clone of delicious. I think I've got thousands
00:13:08 ◼ ► of bookmarks there, but I haven't used it in years. And I like knowing that they're there. In some ways,
00:13:13 ◼ ► it's like, well, if I haven't needed to look them up in years, why would I want to export them? But
00:13:18 ◼ ► that triumvirate currently of taught with all of them just in one dot in the front and a scrolling
00:13:25 ◼ ► list. And then every night at three in the morning, I have a timed shortcut that adds yesterday's date
00:13:33 ◼ ► to the top of that dot. OK, so I can scroll down and see when I added that. I just did this the other
00:13:39 ◼ ► day where I'd back in May. This is something I've only ever looked at and never said about
00:13:44 ◼ ► tot marked that wired story. Elon Musk's lawyers say he, quote, does not use a computer. And I wanted
00:13:50 ◼ ► to link to it, but I never got around to it. But then it came up again the other day. And I was like,
00:13:54 ◼ ► I knew where it was. I taught it. I don't know. I bookmarked it in tot. And I went over, searched for
00:14:03 ◼ ► musk or something and then found it. But then the date was right there, too. So right there in my
00:14:09 ◼ ► tot so I could see when it was. But that combination, paper, notebook, a folder in Apple notes for
00:14:17 ◼ ► something I want to type. But then otherwise, I just need to get started. I need to open a window
00:14:22 ◼ ► Do you ever have a sense when you get started on an article how long it might be? Like, do you have any
00:14:28 ◼ ► kind of sense of your own, like, you have an idea how many words is it going to take for me to get
00:14:36 ◼ ► It's a great question. I have a vague sense of it. But it doesn't manifest as like an integer, like
00:14:45 ◼ ► 4,000. The other thing is that I'm not quite sure what 4,000 words even means. Like, I've been doing
00:14:53 ◼ ► this a long time. And I know that it's kind of a lot. It's more like when you look at something and
00:15:00 ◼ ► think about whether you're going to be able to pick it up. Like, I buy 20-ounce bottles of fizzy
00:15:05 ◼ ► water that come in a case of 24. That's kind of heavy. Like, I kind of know what that's going to
00:15:11 ◼ ► feel like to pick it up. I could not tell you how many pounds or kilograms that is. I just sort of have
00:15:20 ◼ ► You know that feeling in your body, like what that's going to feel like on your arm to grab
00:15:25 ◼ ► And so I have a sense like that in my mind of how, what an article is going to take. And I'm,
00:15:33 ◼ ► maybe I'm getting better at it after all these years, but I'm still often very wrong. And when
00:15:40 ◼ ► I'm very wrong, it's always because it's much longer than I anticipated. My product reviews often wind up
00:15:46 ◼ ► like that. And I understand that from recording podcasts, right? Like there are some times where
00:15:51 ◼ ► I'll have a topic, I'm like, is this a 15 minute topic? And we're 45 minutes into that topic. Like
00:15:55 ◼ ► that happens often because sometimes you don't know where your brain's going to go. Even if you think
00:16:01 ◼ ► you have an idea of where you want to end up, like the way in which you may kind of spiral out from that.
00:16:05 ◼ ► When you have a sense that an article is going to be bigger, does that change your approach
00:16:20 ◼ ► Right. Because it is sort of like putting off jumping into the ocean or the pool when you know
00:16:27 ◼ ► the water is cold. And it's like, well, maybe I'll sit here and shoot the breeze for a couple more
00:16:33 ◼ ► minutes before I actually do it. Because I have to brace myself because I can simultaneously feel the
00:16:39 ◼ ► need to want to have written it, but I don't want to start writing it. But it doesn't make me do more
00:16:45 ◼ ► outlining for the most part. And ultimately, the actual article often becomes the outline where
00:16:53 ◼ ► I'll have a start and it's the actual opening or what I think is going to be the opening paragraph,
00:16:59 ◼ ► the lead of the article. But if I think of ideas that I'm not ready to write, I haven't gotten to the
00:17:05 ◼ ► point to write at yet. I'll just go to the bottom and just sort of dash off things to get to.
00:17:11 ◼ ► And you'll catch up with yourself eventually, right? Like eventually you're going to get down
00:17:17 ◼ ► Right. I am a horrible procrastinator in so many ways. It's a huge deficiency in my personality and
00:17:25 ◼ ► mind. And it's been like that ever since I can remember. But amongst procrastinators of all sorts,
00:17:32 ◼ ► probably the most common thing I've seen written about it is that what happens is you're putting off
00:17:38 ◼ ► A and then when B comes up and B is important, then you do A to put off doing B. The other thing is
00:17:47 ◼ ► a general sense of do the thing. Don't prepare to do the thing. Just do it. It just needs to sit down
00:17:55 ◼ ► and start writing. And anything that feels like I'm working on the article, if I'm working on the article at
00:18:00 ◼ ► all, I might as well just start writing it. When you do write like this, my assumption would be that
00:18:06 ◼ ► you're not like, I'm going to sit down at nine and I'll be done at five. Or like, I'm going to sit down
00:18:12 ◼ ► at nine, five comes around and I'm going to get up. Like from the way that you're talking, it seems like
00:18:16 ◼ ► you'll sit down when you want to start and you'll stay there. Yeah, I think so. And it's very much a flow
00:18:23 ◼ ► state thing. And I write earlier than I used to now that I'm older. I think I was 29 when I started during
00:18:32 ◼ ► Fireball. I wrote a lot very late or even middle of the night. When I was like college and in my 20s, I really
00:18:41 ◼ ► felt my biological clock was almost nocturnal naturally. And in college, I did tons of my writing
00:18:49 ◼ ► like after midnight. And my son was born in 2004. I started Daring Fireball in 2002. But I did tons
00:18:59 ◼ ► of writing when he was like a baby. And I was the parent who happily volunteered for, oh, if the baby's
00:19:08 ◼ ► up in the middle of the night, I'll take this, you sleep just because it suited my sleep cycle. You know,
00:19:13 ◼ ► I've told this story before, but my son was born in January 2004. Markdown, I announced as a public
00:19:20 ◼ ► beta in March 2004. But I'd been working on it since I think it was like October or September 2003.
00:19:27 ◼ ► So I launched Markdown like almost simultaneously with the birth of my son. But one reason that was
00:19:34 ◼ ► possible is huge chunks of the end of it and all the documentation. I remember writing in the middle of
00:19:39 ◼ ► the night with him on my lap. And I was writing the website and documentation and finishing up the
00:19:47 ◼ ► last changes to the syntax and my implementation in Perl with him on my lap at like four in the morning.
00:19:55 ◼ ► I can absolutely empathize with this. So we, you know, we had a first order nearly six months ago now.
00:20:09 ◼ ► this is something I can do very easily from any device that I have with me. But because I also do
00:20:16 ◼ ► very much enjoy the, I'll just sit with her for a couple of hours, like no problem here, you know?
00:20:22 ◼ ► Yeah, it was great. But I've realized, and now I'm in my early 50s, realized in my 40s that
00:20:52 ◼ ► Yeah, yeah. There and there is one that I'll catch myself making. I don't really read as I go.
00:20:58 ◼ ► But if I go back and catch myself making one, and if you ever spot a homonym typo on Daring Fireball,
00:21:10 ◼ ► I mean, I do make typos, but homonym typos in particular, it's just a sign of tiredness.
00:21:16 ◼ ► And I have a terrible habit of, like you said, like, do I get up at five and say I'm done? No.
00:21:22 ◼ ► Like once I'm in the flow, I want to keep going. But what happens, I'll notice, when I'm in the flow,
00:21:29 ◼ ► I know that I'm making progress. But I absolutely positively lose track of time terribly. I mean,
00:21:35 ◼ ► that's part of the joy of getting in the flow for me. But as it relates to like being on time for dinner,
00:21:43 ◼ ► or any other real life obligations, it's not helpful. But I will notice often, you know,
00:21:53 ◼ ► maybe it's eight, nine at night. Last time I looked at my watch was 730. Now it's nine o'clock,
00:21:59 ◼ ► and I'm still on the same paragraph. I should have stopped at 730. But I don't realize that. And 90
00:22:06 ◼ ► minutes go by. And I don't know it's 90 minutes where I just sat there. And I think if somebody had
00:22:13 ◼ ► Do you agonize over word choice? Like, is that something that you get stuck up on? Or do you deal
00:22:21 ◼ ► I have always, I mean, literally, since childhood, always tried to write my final draft, right off the
00:22:31 ◼ ► bat, especially the longer the article, the more editing I do for myself. But I can't bring myself to
00:22:39 ◼ ► write other than thinking that I'm just going to start typing with the first word and get to the
00:22:47 ◼ ► final word and just hit publish. Like, the canonical ideal for me would be to not even proofread
00:22:55 ◼ ► and just write what I think it's going to be and hit return. So I, at every step, every single word of
00:23:12 ◼ ► I can't imagine how else I would do it. I think back to the newspaper and magazine era. And there are
00:23:20 ◼ ► ways that my writing obviously would be improved with somebody, especially somebody who I really trust
00:23:26 ◼ ► has a good year to run everything through. But for the most part, like when I have ever written for
00:23:34 ◼ ► anybody else, I'm more frustrated by their editing. You know, like when I wrote occasional back page
00:23:50 ◼ ► Right. And they had rules that kind of irritate. I understood them, but like that there had to be a
00:23:56 ◼ ► block quote that was pulled out. You know, there's a headline, there's the author's picture,
00:24:01 ◼ ► and then there had to be a block quote, you know, something pulled from the middle to give like a
00:24:07 ◼ ► flavor of the article, you know, which I understand. And I like when I'm reading magazines,
00:24:11 ◼ ► but there were times where it's like, I really hate cutting more words out of this. Can't we just
00:24:18 ◼ ► we have to have one. So yes, I do my own editing. I don't enjoy it, but I don't know what else to do.
00:24:24 ◼ ► And I'm trying to find typos, of course, and just silly mistakes, but for article articles,
00:24:40 ◼ ► It's something I picked up at college when I was at the student newspaper at Drexel that we just had
00:24:47 ◼ ► an unending stream of red pens, the Bic ballpoints, which I wouldn't use in a million years today.
00:24:54 ◼ ► But all articles back then, we've always were printed. It was like a procedure. We'd hand them
00:24:59 ◼ ► off to several editors. The editors would put their initials on them. And it does age me in some ways.
00:25:04 ◼ ► I don't think my son has ever printed an article or essay that he was going to hand in. But I find
00:25:11 ◼ ► the context switching of that to be the most important part. And it's amazing to me, like when
00:25:17 ◼ ► you miss the word to like going to the market, and you might in the flow to type going the market,
00:25:25 ◼ ► I'll leave out a little word while typing to keep up with my thoughts. And I can reread that sentence
00:25:31 ◼ ► on my screen over and over again. And my brain just fills in the word. And a lot of times,
00:25:44 ◼ ► Yeah, it's my way. I like the physicality of it. And I actually keep those when I print out
00:25:51 ◼ ► long articles and edit them. It's a very hefty stack of paper that resonates with me. Like,
00:26:00 ◼ ► hey, that's a body of work right there. And that's only my long articles, right? You know,
00:26:04 ◼ ► when everything you produce is ends up just being ones and zeros, you know, even on podcasts,
00:26:10 ◼ ► you could measure our podcast careers in hours, right? It pretty easily. And I'm sure for both of
00:26:23 ◼ ► Well, every episode is like a two or three CD set, right? Like, isn't what we're looking at here?
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00:28:52 ◼ ► Squarespace for their support of this show and all of Relay. Do you ever send drafts of your articles
00:29:02 ◼ ► Yes, but extremely rarely. So rarely that I can't remember the last time that I did it.
00:29:09 ◼ ► Because that's the thing a lot of people do. I wonder, because I'm assuming lots of people share
00:29:14 ◼ ► them with you, like in your friend group. Do you feel like you don't want to water down your idea?
00:29:29 ◼ ► There's a couple of factors there. A, if there was somebody in particular whose thoughts on a
00:29:35 ◼ ► particular issue, and that's why I wouldn't say that I've never done it, then I will get their
00:29:45 ◼ ► Yeah, like am I way off on this? Like if I were writing about LLMs where I don't feel like I know
00:29:51 ◼ ► I might send it to somebody who I know knows it way better. Or if I'm speculating about what
00:29:57 ◼ ► something was like inside Apple, I might send it to a former Apple employee who I know was there
00:30:03 ◼ ► and ask about that section. But I just don't do it that often. One reason is I just hate to impose
00:30:08 ◼ ► on other people. It's just a natural thing. It kind of hurts me every single time I invite anybody to be
00:30:14 ◼ ► on the talk show because I don't know what people think, but I feel like, oh my God, here I am asking
00:30:19 ◼ ► for two and a half hours of somebody's time and putting the pressure on them of high listenership
00:30:25 ◼ ► in our little sphere of the media world. But then I think ultimately it is that I've never liked
00:30:35 ◼ ► sharing my things until I feel like they're done. Like I don't like showing in progress work
00:30:42 ◼ ► of any kind. Even when I was a kid, I just didn't like doing it. And then when I feel like I have
00:30:51 ◼ ► finished it to my satisfaction, like, yeah, there, this feels done. And I've done an editing pass.
00:30:58 ◼ ► If I feel like it's good enough, I'm just going to publish it. Like, why would I ask anybody else's
00:31:03 ◼ ► opinion? I trust my own judgment on, hey, this is okay. So strongly that I'm like, well, what am I
00:31:11 ◼ ► waiting for? I have this urge to publish it. Like, I feel like it's done. I want it out there. You know,
00:31:17 ◼ ► this is one of those things that is so great about the racket I've set up for myself and the web and
00:31:25 ◼ ► owning my own thing and being the one who gets to say when it's ready to go that I don't have to wait.
00:31:31 ◼ ► I talked to Patrick McGee, the Financial Times reporter who wrote the bestselling and highly
00:31:36 ◼ ► regarded Apple in China book that came out a few months ago. He finished that book in like October
00:31:42 ◼ ► or September, and it didn't come out until like early May. You've got to slot into the publisher,
00:31:48 ◼ ► right? Like whenever they have that space and they want to do it for you, then that's when you're going
00:31:51 ◼ ► to go. That would drive me crazy. It really would. It would just drive me absolutely nuts,
00:31:58 ◼ ► that interstice between finishing. And I know it would take time after finishing a book-length
00:32:04 ◼ ► manuscript for editing to be done. But like the way the publishing world works, it's so long. And it
00:32:10 ◼ ► was the same way with magazines. Like the lead time on Macworld magazine was so long, that period would
00:32:17 ◼ ► I guess similarly, you know, it was often a joke that you make and I think the others make about you
00:32:22 ◼ ► is that there'll be an embargo time for an iPhone review and you may be a few hours late because it's
00:32:27 ◼ ► like you kind of will work to your own time to get across what you need to get across and you won't
00:32:37 ◼ ► Yeah. Deadlines are very, very problematic for me. They really just are. I mean, that Douglas Adams,
00:32:43 ◼ ► I love deadlines, particularly the swooshing sound they make as they race over my head,
00:32:48 ◼ ► whatever. I'm butchering his wonderful quote, but the sentiment, I'm like, yeah, that's me.
00:32:53 ◼ ► It seems like a shtick, but it's a bad combination of my innate procrastination where I start those
00:32:58 ◼ ► reviews too late combined with, I'm not going to publish it until I think it's done, but also
00:33:05 ◼ ► combined with, I think, too tight period that we get to review these products. I don't want to
00:33:13 ◼ ► completely absolve myself of the personal failure of the procrastination angle, which really is sort
00:33:21 ◼ ► of a matter of willpower and knowing yourself. And come on, I'm 52. I should know myself by now. I
00:33:27 ◼ ► should know when I need to start writing a review that I want to come out Tuesday morning.
00:33:32 ◼ ► But if I only got the device last Wednesday, how early can I start writing? And combine that with
00:33:40 ◼ ► the other thing I mentioned on the show already, which is that when I start writing, I feel like I'm
00:33:46 ◼ ► writing the real thing. You know, I could do like benchmarks if I'm going to do benchmarks of speed or
00:33:57 ◼ ► but at some point I kind of need to have, how do I want to start this? What's the framework? What's
00:34:03 ◼ ► the narrative? What's the angle on this review? Because I guess that's what makes it a little bit
00:34:08 ◼ ► different for you, I think, with your reviews. And it's why people, including me, like them so much is
00:34:20 ◼ ► Where a kind of more nuts and bolts tech website can just kind of review the function of the device
00:34:28 ◼ ► where you're trying to find a story to tell. And that is harder because there's, I mean, for many years,
00:34:36 ◼ ► there aren't so many stories. And so like, you've got to really tease out what is interesting to you to
00:34:41 ◼ ► write about, I assume. Yeah. And you had asked earlier about, do I know how long things are going
00:34:47 ◼ ► to be? The reviews are usually the ones where my estimates are usually the, often the most far off.
00:34:54 ◼ ► It's almost a running gag now on dithering where if it's an episode before the embargo, like the part of
00:35:02 ◼ ► the embargo is you're not supposed to publicly say you have the device. So it's not on the episode of
00:35:07 ◼ ► dithering, but I'll be talking to Ben, you know, either in our little pre-show or post-show,
00:35:11 ◼ ► he'll say like, how's the review going? I'll say, I, you know, this one is so iterative over the last
00:35:17 ◼ ► one. I don't think it's going to take very long. The M2 iPad air, I don't know. And it's like the M1,
00:35:23 ◼ ► but it's a little faster, you know, I'll surprise myself and find an angle, like a rich vein of a story
00:35:32 ◼ ► and boom, there's 3000 words. And it took a long time. And it comes down to an important point that
00:35:39 ◼ ► I believe defines all of my work or at least my writing work, but it does define why I will never,
00:35:45 ◼ ► ever, ever not see myself as a writer who podcasts and not a writer slash podcaster. I am a writer and
00:35:54 ◼ ► so much better at it. And it frustrates me to no end that I cannot podcast. I can't speak extemporaneously
00:36:00 ◼ ► with anywhere near what I perceive as the fluency and coherency of my writing, but it's that writing
00:36:08 ◼ ► is thinking and to truly have thought about something. I need to write it. I need to write
00:36:16 ◼ ► it in full sentences in a narrative sense. And only then have I truly known that I've thought about it.
00:36:24 ◼ ► And it's because there's often just like little yada, yada, yadas. I know the beginning in the end,
00:36:31 ◼ ► and I kind of, I got it. And it's like, yeah, it's this, then this, then this, and then that.
00:36:36 ◼ ► But then sometimes one of those, this is in the middle is like, well, wait to really consider this.
00:36:42 ◼ ► This is going to take like a couple thousand words just for a thing. I will come to a different
00:36:47 ◼ ► conclusion than I set out to write. Once I start writing it, I realize, huh, maybe I'm wrong about
00:36:54 ◼ ► this. And then I kind of have to backtrack and almost rewrite the article. But it's only by writing
00:37:14 ◼ ► mistakes and typos that people have internalized that it's sort of rude to point out that somebody's
00:37:20 ◼ ► made a mistake. Whereas I desperately want to hear about them and often tell people say, I'll bet
00:37:25 ◼ ► 10 people have told you this, but you must be missing a word here in this sentence. And I always say,
00:37:31 ◼ ► I'd rather hear about the same mistake 10 times than not hear about it at all, because all 10 people
00:37:37 ◼ ► assumed there must be 10 other people who wrote it. And so there's a handful of super copy editors
00:37:45 ◼ ► who read my site. Chris Pepper, who reads several other blogs in our sphere and must read at a
00:37:53 ◼ ► phenomenal words per minute rate. But he's got to be number one. But there's a handful of other friends
00:37:58 ◼ ► who sent hundreds, maybe thousands of typos. And they tend to be fans of the site. I don't know if
00:38:06 ◼ ► they have notifications set up, but they also tend to send them quickly after publishing. And so I should
00:38:12 ◼ ► pay attention to those things. So I try to, I'm not like repulsed by the, like with, with the podcast,
00:38:19 ◼ ► I don't do my own audio edit. I can't listen to myself. I've listened to very few hours of the talk
00:38:25 ◼ ► show over the decades I've been doing it. And if I had to edit it myself, I don't know, the show would
00:38:33 ◼ ► probably end. But the writing I can live with, I feel good about. So I don't mind it. The problems are
00:38:38 ◼ ► like, if I have like a thing to go to, you know, like, I know, me and the family, we're going to
00:38:44 ◼ ► leave at noon, and be out of the house all afternoon. And it's like, I want to finish this up in the
00:38:50 ◼ ► morning. And it's like, I'm racing, I know, we've got to be in the car by noon. And it's like, I got
00:38:55 ◼ ► it's like 1145. I got it. I'm done. Publish, go to the bathroom, get something to drink, load up the
00:39:01 ◼ ► car and go and then find out on my phone at three that there's a glaring mistake. It's like, ah,
00:39:28 ◼ ► know. But no, I try to pay attention. And the more interesting the article is, the more I'm
00:39:38 ◼ ► You don't think about that? Like you'll post them to Blue Sky Mastodon and just leave it? Or
00:39:44 ◼ ► Again, it's because I want to own my own technical stack. I know there's a dozen services that you
00:39:50 ◼ ► could just point the RSS feed at the service and give it the credentials for your social media and
00:39:56 ◼ ► it'll post them for you. But I wrote my own many years ago for Twitter because I wanted control over
00:40:04 ◼ ► I set mine up so that it doesn't post articles. I think it's five or 10 minutes so that if I accidentally
00:40:12 ◼ ► publish something, I can take it down and I know it won't already be tweeted out there. And I have
00:40:16 ◼ ► like a five or 10 minute period to fix mistakes before it gets tweeted out. But then there are other
00:40:22 ◼ ► things that my script does, like when Twitter had 140 character limit. Every once in a while,
00:40:28 ◼ ► I like to use an ostentatiously long headline, which often far exceeds 140. In fact, I've had some that
00:40:36 ◼ ► exceed the 280 of the new Twitter. I wanted to write my own truncation algorithm. Like how do I
00:40:43 ◼ ► truncate the headline to fit? But then the Twitter API broke. So the at daring and I, you know, X is
00:40:50 ◼ ► garbage so many ways, but that broke when under Elon two years ago, when they changed certain APIs,
00:40:59 ◼ ► the API I was using broke. So my script currently only really works for Mastodon. I don't post to
00:41:05 ◼ ► threads or blue sky automatically. When I write a good article that are something I think is good,
00:41:10 ◼ ► I will paste it to blue sky and threads, but that's about it. I don't know how else I even would
00:41:16 ◼ ► promote it. For example, one thing that I should, I guess, do more promotion of there's like my annual
00:41:22 ◼ ► live episode of the talk show. I guess people who are good at YouTube know how to promote it and they
00:41:31 ◼ ► make clips and post those to tick tock and stuff like that. I don't do that. We did more of that last
00:41:38 ◼ ► year than ever. And it wasn't me. It was my friends at sandwich who do the production and the editing
00:41:44 ◼ ► made a bunch of tall social media clips and I posted them to a couple of places. Did it make
00:41:51 ◼ ► a difference? I don't think so. It's what people say you should do. I don't know. I mean, you know,
00:41:57 ◼ ► YouTubers that I know, they have success from it, but you're still at the mercy of the algorithm. I
00:42:02 ◼ ► think just publishing the occasional one doesn't do it immediately. Yeah. And it is sort of the privilege
00:42:08 ◼ ► of being well-known or as known as I am in the sphere that I'm writing for that I feel like I
00:42:15 ◼ ► don't have to promote it. The people who I'm trying to reach already know where I am and they either like
00:42:21 ◼ ► my stuff and subscribe to the RSS feed or whatever, or they don't know who I am and they don't want to.
00:42:29 ◼ ► And I know that what I write, if it's good enough and if it resonates, it'll get picked up
00:42:34 ◼ ► at other places and they'll do the promotion for me. So obviously in saying that, I think rightly,
00:42:41 ◼ ► you're aware of your impact or your influence. You know that the things that you say carry weight.
00:42:49 ◼ ► And like, if we go back to the article that we're set out at the beginning, this is one of those ones
00:42:55 ◼ ► that probably will be an all-timer for you. Something is rotten in the state of Cupertino.
00:42:58 ◼ ► It made an impact. I mean, how much impact can we know? It's hard to know. Maybe you have a better
00:43:04 ◼ ► sense of it than most. Maybe I'm sure you've heard things that people have spoken to. Do you ever,
00:43:09 ◼ ► and maybe even looking at this article, when you're writing things, do you ever contemplate the impact
00:43:19 ◼ ► It's difficult. I think I'm naturally humble. I'm not religious, but, you know, I was brought up Catholic
00:43:25 ◼ ► and it's sort of, some of that is from that upbringing. My parents, especially my dad, I think
00:43:33 ◼ ► encouraged success, but also humility. That there's a certain combination of being a gracious winner
00:43:41 ◼ ► when you're playing sports and a gracious loser as well. And I am more aware of it. To be honest,
00:43:48 ◼ ► though, because of that, I probably underestimate my influence. And I think that is, though, to my
00:43:54 ◼ ► benefit. My favorite example of it isn't about the companies or the products I cover, but it was a
00:44:02 ◼ ► shtick that I ran for many years, the Jackass of the Week. It felt like it was a good title for somebody
00:44:11 ◼ ► who wrote an article or expressed an opinion that I think fairly could be described as being a jackass.
00:44:18 ◼ ► And I think that was part of what people like about my writing and about Daring Fireball, that instead
00:44:25 ◼ ► of saying, oh, I think that this person, you know, being very polite and deferential, and I disagree
00:44:29 ◼ ► subtly with this point. I think they like the fact that I would just say, this guy's being a jackass by
00:44:34 ◼ ► saying Tim Cook should be fired in 2013, you know, like two years into his term. I think they like that.
00:44:41 ◼ ► And I would like it as a reader. But what I realized, somebody pointed out at some point,
00:44:45 ◼ ► it wasn't the person. It was somebody who I think I only mentioned once on the site. But somebody wrote
00:44:50 ◼ ► me an email and said that so-and-so, if you Google this person's name, the first hit is my article,
00:45:03 ◼ ► Yeah, that's not right. Like, I wish I could remember the specific thing. I think I don't remember it
00:45:09 ◼ ► because my psyche is like, oh, that's kind of awful. But it was a moment I remember. I don't remember
00:45:16 ◼ ► the person, but I remember the moment and I sort of dropped the shtick at that point. And I might have
00:45:21 ◼ ► gone back and even edited that article to give it a different title. I think I did. But I stopped for the
00:45:27 ◼ ► most part. I only ever dredged that up again in the last 10 years, maybe in truly egregious cases.
00:45:35 ◼ ► When I started the shtick, a Daring Fireball article would never, ever have been the top hit for
00:45:41 ◼ ► somebody's name, no matter who they were. But then I realized, oh man, a lot of times my stuff does come
00:45:46 ◼ ► up first. But I try, and I do think it's part of why I have some longevity at this, is that once I get
00:45:54 ◼ ► going, I don't feel like what I'm doing now in 2025, is that different than what I was doing 20 years ago in
00:46:03 ◼ ► 2005. And I don't feel while I'm writing that my influence is greater now than then, even though it is. In my
00:46:12 ◼ ► mind, I'm doing the exact same thing to the exact same audience for the exact same reasons. And if it has more
00:46:18 ◼ ► influence now, so be it. But I just try to be fair. But there are cases like that, where I won't do
00:46:24 ◼ ► that. I have to tone it down a little. When it comes to like the something rotten piece, I underestimated
00:46:30 ◼ ► how influential that piece was. I knew it was a tidy little argument, even though it's 4000 words. And it
00:46:37 ◼ ► felt very satisfying. And I was like, this is something. But it was more of a thing than I anticipated.
00:46:45 ◼ ► And that's good, I think, because I think if I had anticipated the magnitude of how it would resonate,
00:46:59 ◼ ► Yeah. And I have an ability to stay out of my head about it and to not think about it. I don't know that
00:47:05 ◼ ► they read everything I write, but I certainly know that almost everybody or everybody at Apple reads what
00:47:10 ◼ ► I write or whatever other companies I'm writing about. And I have this ability to just sort of
00:47:15 ◼ ► tone it out and pretend like I'm not going to see Jaws at WWDC in June, and he's going to talk to me
00:47:22 ◼ ► about it. I can tell you the first time I really realized that the first time was WWDC 2007.
00:47:34 ◼ ► January 2007 is the iPhone is introduced. The end of June 2007 is when the iPhone is coming
00:47:40 ◼ ► out. WWDC was like mid June. So it's a year before the App Store. And it's also weeks before the iPhone's
00:47:49 ◼ ► even out. And it's months before the Steve Jobs announcement, like, okay, fine, we'll make it an
00:47:55 ◼ ► SDK for native third party apps. But at WWDC, the developer conference where we were all thinking like,
00:48:01 ◼ ► will they announce an SDK? And Scott Forstall said they had a sweet solution for outside developers to
00:48:09 ◼ ► write apps for the phone. And it was Safari, right, make a web app in Safari. And they had a couple of
00:48:16 ◼ ► resources to download to make web apps that kind of sort of looked like generic native iOS 1.0 apps,
00:48:26 ◼ ► which actually weren't even like the good apps, right? None of the good apps really looked like that
00:48:30 ◼ ► settings did. You know, you could make an app that looked like settings or contacts at the time.
00:48:35 ◼ ► I, in my thoughts and observations on the keynote, wrote, I called that a quote, sandwich. And people
00:48:44 ◼ ► remember that to this day, right? Because it was sort of a setup, right? Like, hey, we've got a sweet
00:48:50 ◼ ► solution for you. And everybody got really excited. And it was really a terrible answer.
00:48:54 ◼ ► I mean, luckily, you chose two words that also alliterated the same, which I think is helpful for it sticking
00:49:02 ◼ ► It's 2007. These are still early years of Daring Fireball. I did have a press pass for the keynote.
00:49:09 ◼ ► But when WWDC was an in-person conference, the media passes for the keynote were always bad,
00:49:17 ◼ ► a certain color. There was a separate line for us to get in. We weren't part of that line of attendees that
00:49:24 ◼ ► would snake around Moscone or the San Jose Convention Center in later years. And then we'd
00:49:31 ◼ ► have seats and a section in the big keynote hall for the morning, the big keynote. And then they would
00:49:37 ◼ ► flush everybody out of Moscone. And there was no way as a member of the media to stay even for the
00:49:45 ◼ ► State of the Union that happens after the lunch. So I had a press pass. And then, you know, the press pass
00:49:51 ◼ ► might also, depending if you get invitations, you might get those briefings after the keynote.
00:49:56 ◼ ► But then, you know, by lunchtime, everybody with a media pass is out and you don't get back in.
00:50:08 ◼ ► So I, for a few years in that era, 2006, 7, 8, I don't know which years, but I had friends at Apple who at the way the Apple badges worked for Apple employees who would be coming in and out throughout the week is they didn't have their names on their badge.
00:50:30 ◼ ► And sometimes people who work at Apple, you know, it's sort of a big deal to get up from Cupertino to San Francisco.
00:50:36 ◼ ► And the way it works, you're an Apple engineer and you might think, hey, Tuesday, I'm going to try to swing up to Moscone and see some sessions or something like that.
00:50:48 ◼ ► So they just have a pile of those Apple or they used to have a pile of those badges and a friend just let me have one.
00:51:00 ◼ ► And what I would do, because it was conveniently only printed on one side, is I'd wear the lanyard so that the badge was backwards.
00:51:09 ◼ ► And so it just sort of looked blank, but I could flash it at the guards to get into Moscone and to go up the escalator.
00:51:15 ◼ ► But I was there the rest of the week for a few years, usually, or I forget, maybe there were other ways I sort of scanned my way in before I started paying for a proper pass that would last the week, which I did as soon as I could afford it.
00:51:38 ◼ ► And I was on the third floor and I think it was lunchtime and there was a break and everybody's going to the escalators.
00:51:45 ◼ ► And right behind me was Phil Schiller and Ron Okamoto, who used to run developer relations with each other.
00:52:08 ◼ ► And so I turned around and I said to Phil, I had just held out my hand and said, hey, I'm John Gruber.
00:52:38 ◼ ► But and again, people didn't know what I looked like at the time because I don't have my photo on the site.
00:52:42 ◼ ► And in that era, people would often be like, wow, you don't look anything like what I expected.
00:52:46 ◼ ► So there's a very good chance that Phil did have no idea what I looked like at the time.
00:52:51 ◼ ► But he not only knew my name, but threw the s*** sandwich line at me in a gracious Phil Schiller way.
00:52:58 ◼ ► And then we had a delightful, not just how you doing, but like a nice little 10 minute conversation off the record right there about I even remember it was mostly about the enterprise stuff that they announced at WWDC for the iPhone,
00:53:13 ◼ ► which at the time surprised me that they were already, before the device was even out, announcing ways to integrate with the stuff from the BlackBerry world.
00:53:28 ◼ ► That's a very long way of saying I am aware that I get read to the top levels at Apple, but I hopefully write by pretending that they don't.
00:53:37 ◼ ► It probably helped that that first interaction went the way that it did, that you said something quite aggressive, I guess, for lack of a better word.
00:53:54 ◼ ► That may have helped in your then, okay, I'm free to say what I want, and it's not going to necessarily change the way in which the people I'm talking about consider me.
00:54:06 ◼ ► Yeah, maybe, but even if it hadn't, it wouldn't have changed what I did because I was never seeking access.
00:54:12 ◼ ► It was great that I started getting the media passes to the keynote at the time, and it felt like a thrill.
00:54:20 ◼ ► I know it was friends at Macworld who sort of put me in touch initially in 2005 or 6, whenever I first sort of reached out to Apple PR to see if I could get a media credential.
00:54:31 ◼ ► And that was at a time where an independent thing like Daring Fireball, a blog, or whatever you want to call it, were not very often media credentialed.
00:54:39 ◼ ► But they were so new, of course, somebody had to be in the first group and sort of blaze the trail.
00:54:49 ◼ ► And they still clearly had a justified preference for the old school print media of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, and Time Magazine.
00:55:07 ◼ ► And that can even be like, we just want YouTubers right now for this event or whatever it might end up being.
00:55:13 ◼ ► Yeah, but there's something rotten piece and, you know, the way it's turned out with WWDC and everything is, you know, exemplifies it.
00:55:25 ◼ ► It's nice that I get additional things like the post-event briefings with executives and product marketing people for the things.
00:55:41 ◼ ► And I have always been very conscious of that and have always, like, it's not like a sudden realization in 2025 because I wrote a scathing article in March or whatever you want to describe it.
00:56:00 ◼ ► That, you know, it would be great to have some kind of official press relationship with Apple or anybody else.
00:56:19 ◼ ► And so many people, for years, when they thought I wasn't being hard enough on Apple, that they would accuse me of soft peddling because I want to protect my annual WWDC onstage interview with Apple executives.
00:56:34 ◼ ► I generally don't acknowledge stuff like that or it's pointless to argue with people like that.
00:56:39 ◼ ► But if I try to refute it, I would just say that one show a year hardly makes me any more money than a regular episode of the podcast after I've paid out all the stuff.
00:56:58 ◼ ► So if they ever just want to totally cut me off, it shouldn't really affect what I write on the site at all.
00:57:11 ◼ ► If you're looking to make changes to your personal fitness, getting started can feel like an uphill struggle.
00:57:16 ◼ ► That is why I'm pleased to let you know that FitBod is an easy and affordable way to build a fitness plan that is just for you.
00:57:22 ◼ ► FitBod does so much work to customize things to suit you perfectly because everybody has their own path when it comes to personal fitness.
00:57:29 ◼ ► And with the way that FitBod works, you kind of feel like you have someone in your corner.
00:57:33 ◼ ► You have your own trainer, the FitBod, who's helping you make the changes that you want to achieve the goals that you're looking for in a really fun and engaging way.
00:57:46 ◼ ► It will adapt as you improve so every workout remains challenging, but also pushes you to make the progress that you're looking for.
00:57:52 ◼ ► Because you will see the best results when a workout program is tailored to your body, your experience, your environment and goals and adapts and grows with you.
00:57:59 ◼ ► FitBod stores all of this information, then tracks your muscle recovery so you avoid burnout and keep up your momentum.
00:58:04 ◼ ► They also make sure that you're going to be learning new exercises the right way thanks to their demonstration videos.
00:58:10 ◼ ► They have over a thousand of them in the app and this is one of my very favorite things about FitBod because when I'm shown a new exercise, which I often am because they're giving me new things to try for my balance of my body,
00:58:20 ◼ ► I get to see videos on how to perform it, it gives me the confidence that I need to execute that exercise.
00:58:25 ◼ ► Your muscles improve when they work together, so overworking some while underworking others can negatively impact your results.
00:58:32 ◼ ► That is why FitBod tracks your muscle fatigue and recovery to design a well-balanced workout routine.
00:58:37 ◼ ► And you're also not going to get bored because the app is always mixing up with new exercises, rep schemes, supersets and circuits.
00:58:43 ◼ ► They have progress tracking charts, weekly reports and sharing cards so you can keep track of your achievements and share them with your friends.
00:58:49 ◼ ► And it also integrates with other apps you use like Strava, Fitbit and Apple Health and your smartwatch, whether it's Apple Watch or Wear OS.
00:58:56 ◼ ► Personalized training of this quality can be expensive, but FitBod is just $15.99 a month or $95.99 a year.
00:59:03 ◼ ► But you can get yourself a huge 25% off your membership by signing up today at FitBod.me slash Cortex.
00:59:26 ◼ ► Like if people disagree with you, whether it can be a small amount or a large amount of your audience or whether people are emailing you nasty things.
00:59:41 ◼ ► The main way it's changed is that to me the peak of interacting with readers was when Twitter was at its best, like maybe 2010 to 2015.
00:59:55 ◼ ► And I don't want to say I'd argue with people, but I had more regular back and forths with people who disagree with me, whether on a detail or whether you're 180 degrees wrong.
01:00:19 ◼ ► There's a slogan, it's at one of my favorite restaurants, a steakhouse here in Philadelphia, but there's locations across America, Del Frisco's.
01:01:07 ◼ ► And I've said this over the years, like one of my philosophies is I try to make as few mistakes as possible.
01:01:13 ◼ ► But I want to learn and understand the mistakes I do make and then correct them or write a follow up that acknowledges the mistake and that that's the closest anybody could actually get to being correct all the time is try to be correct from the start and be open minded and try to listen to accusations or arguments that you're incorrect.
01:01:44 ◼ ► I could look it up, but I think it was like in 2004, but it just was under the premise.
01:01:51 ◼ ► And I think it's a very interesting conversation point because I think there's a lot of people, a lot of smart people who their honest answer would have to be.
01:02:04 ◼ ► Well, then, well, if you haven't changed your mind on anything in quite a while, do you think you're right about everything?
01:02:08 ◼ ► And then, you know, I think most people who aren't sociopaths would say, no, I'm sure I'm not right about everything.
01:02:24 ◼ ► And I have a thick skin, so I don't mind reading when I get feedback, emails from readers that are sometimes very angry.
01:02:37 ◼ ► It's definitely, you know, it is a definite change where prior to the EU beginning to regulate, especially the DMA, has really changed the tone, you know, of emails that I get from readers from the EU.
01:03:04 ◼ ► Yeah, it's really interesting in hindsight the way that it sort of heightened everybody, sharpened everybody.
01:03:26 ◼ ► But writing in some places about companies requiring employees to come back to work and to be collaborative, there was just a large number of people who'd never had the opportunity before to work remotely and work at home.
01:03:41 ◼ ► And people who, during the long period of COVID, especially here in the States where it's this big open country and the real estate is so super expensive in the whole California Bay Area.
01:03:51 ◼ ► And people who, like, move to buy a real big, nice house in Texas or somewhere where real estate is incredibly cheap compared to there and then being told, no, you have to come back here.
01:04:03 ◼ ► And my stance that would – yes, but in-person collaboration is a real thing and some companies and teams really thrive on that.
01:04:11 ◼ ► And some people felt so super emotional about the attachment that everybody should have the right to work remotely and then throwing at me, but you just work at your home for 20 years all by yourself.
01:04:37 ◼ ► The combination of thick skin lets me ignore the ones that I think, nah, this is your problem, not mine.
01:04:43 ◼ ► But also, I have – hopefully I have an open enough mind where I change my mind based on that feedback.
01:04:54 ◼ ► So when you're sitting down to write, we've established that you're writing in front of a studio display the majority of the time, and your laptop is closed?
01:05:13 ◼ ► My second one connected to an ADB to USB-C adapter from a small one-person show called Tinker Boy.
01:05:23 ◼ ► Just anybody who wants to use an old ADB keyboard or mouse, just Google Tinker Boy ADB USB and buy that.
01:05:31 ◼ ► Jason just told me this week he's got some old Apple keyboard that the Tinker Boy is perfect.
01:05:37 ◼ ► I use a crazy cheap, like, $19 ThinkPad mouse that I bought as a gag, but it's actually very comfortable.
01:05:54 ◼ ► John Syracuse has spoken at length about this, but there's, like, two fundamental ways to grip a mouse.
01:06:08 ◼ ► I mouse with my left hand, even though I'm right-handed, because back in the 90s, I started getting some RSI problems in my right shoulder and right wrist.
01:06:17 ◼ ► And I think I've always been just ever so slightly ambidextrous, even though I'm right-handed.
01:06:23 ◼ ► Like, I used to play basketball fairly seriously as an amateur, and I could shoot with my left hand better than a lot of people could shoot with their dominant hand.
01:06:32 ◼ ► And so I think it was easier for me to switch to left-handed mousing than it would be for most people.
01:06:37 ◼ ► I also have a Magic trackpad that I keep on the right side, which I don't use much, but I use it for a couple of things where the gestures don't work with a simple generic mouse with a scroll wheel.
01:06:51 ◼ ► And every once in a while, I've got, like, a drawer full of mechanical keyboards I've tried over the years.
01:07:00 ◼ ► And I've sort of, even though the keyboard world continues to grow and thrive, and it's a lot of fun, and I kind of pay attention to it, and there's better options now than ever.
01:07:10 ◼ ► I've learned that all I ever do is, you know, spend $100 or $200 or more on a keyboard, and then I use it for a couple of days, and then I go back to the Apple Extended Keyboard 2.
01:07:19 ◼ ► These days, there's probably something that would feel like that, but I don't think you should ever change.
01:07:36 ◼ ► I know I've got at least one more that's new in box, and I have at least three spares, but the other one that's new in box is important to me.
01:07:45 ◼ ► I kind of am grossed out by using one that anybody had ever used, even if you clean it.
01:07:53 ◼ ► And I also have my original one, which I won in a wager in college playing John Madden football on Sega Genesis.
01:08:09 ◼ ► It was an ADB keyboard, but it didn't use the Alps switches, and it was a terrible-feeling keyboard.
01:08:17 ◼ ► I didn't have strong opinions about keyboards at the time, but I kind of knew it wasn't great.
01:08:22 ◼ ► And what I should have bought in 1991 was the SE30, which came with the Apple Extended Keyboard 2.
01:08:28 ◼ ► But I bought the LC because I wanted a color screen, because I thought I'd want to play games.
01:08:41 ◼ ► I was so into the Apple II world, and I realized that the future was more like the Mac with a GUI, and that the Apple II had sort of run its course in the 80s.
01:08:53 ◼ ► The SE30 was more expensive than the LC, and it was all very expensive for my parents to buy me whatever.
01:09:01 ◼ ► I had this terrible keyboard, and in my sophomore year, I was in a group of friends, and we played very serious John Madden football on Sega Genesis.
01:09:13 ◼ ► I put up money, and this guy Bill put up his – he had the SE30 with the Apple Extended Keyboard 2.
01:09:34 ◼ ► So I won that keyboard in 1992 in college, and then it was my keyboard at home until 2006 or 2007, I think, when the E key broke.
01:10:10 ◼ ► So the worst that would happen is I'd give it to someone to fix, and they'd break it even worse.
01:10:17 ◼ ► And I know in my heart that that first one has a slightly better feel than the one I've been using now for 19 years.
01:10:35 ◼ ► There's no hard and fast rule, like when do I switch from just doing it all in MarsEdit to BBEdit.
01:10:41 ◼ ► You know, if it's something I know is going to be long from the start, I'll just start it in BBEdit and do a Command-N in BBEdit.
01:10:47 ◼ ► More often, though, it's something where it's like, huh, this is getting longer than I thought.
01:10:53 ◼ ► Or I want to change something, and I want to use BBEdit to find and replace, something like that.
01:10:58 ◼ ► Something where I really want to do it, you know, BBEdit is just a better text editor than MarsEdit.
01:11:07 ◼ ► I think since before Jowkit took over from Brent 20-some years ago, it supports the open in BBEdit protocol.
01:11:29 ◼ ► And while it's open in BBEdit, the MarsEdit window blocks with a dialog box so I can't get confused and make changes in MarsEdit, something like that.
01:12:19 ◼ ► SIA finds the true root cause 94% of the time and can even generate merge-ready pull requests plus optional tests to prevent regressions.
01:12:28 ◼ ► The bottom line is you ship faster, your team isn't drowning in bug alerts, and instead of grinding through logs, your developers are back to building the product.
01:12:36 ◼ ► As a user of apps and a lover of good experiences, smooth performance is really important to me.
01:12:48 ◼ ► So having a tool for a developer that can reduce and eliminate these issues is fantastic, especially when it's done so smartly.
01:13:22 ◼ ► The good news is new users get three months free of the team plan, which covers 150,000 errors.
01:13:34 ◼ ► That is S-E-N-T-R-Y dot I-O and use the code Cortex or just click the link in the show notes.
01:14:21 ◼ ► So you've, at some point in settings, you have unchecked the ability for an account or two
01:14:38 ◼ ► And that doesn't count a whole bunch of emails that I declared email bankruptcy from at least
01:15:18 ◼ ► Like when the physical mail comes through, I don't know, over there, do you guys get as
01:16:07 ◼ ► I'm sure it's actually one of the fireballs in Apple Notes in that pile of unwritten articles.
01:16:28 ◼ ► But it's like I have a smart mailbox in Apple Mail that I've been using like ever since I switched from Mailsmith back in 2007,
01:16:35 ◼ ► which I know is when I switched because I had to switch because Mailsmith, the now defunct email client from the makers of BBEdit, Barebone Software, only did POP.
01:16:48 ◼ ► And I wanted to switch to IMAP because the iPhone was the first time I'd be using two devices to access my email.
01:17:10 ◼ ► And there are long, long stretches where my seven-day inbox is at zero unreads by the end of the day.
01:17:26 ◼ ► Because there's going to be some days that just go into that 7,900 and then never see it again.
01:17:36 ◼ ► You know, and it doesn't bother me because all the other badges kind of bother me because they're like one, two, or three, or some app with a badge that says 18 is something I can take care of.
01:17:51 ◼ ► You can look it up on my website, but that is a dictionary app that is made by Will Haynes, a developer who also, he used to write a Twitter account called DF Style Guide, where he would point out curiosities in my usage, and Craig Hockenberry.
01:18:16 ◼ ► But it's a dictionary app that uses the built-in system dictionary in iOS, which is also the same system dictionary in Mac.
01:18:28 ◼ ► And in addition to showing you the definitions through the built-in dictionary interface, it also keeps a history of every word you look up and syncs that via iCloud to any other instances of Kotoba.
01:18:48 ◼ ► Will, I think he's back in Australia now, but Will speaks fluent Japanese and has lived in Japan, and he named it.
01:18:54 ◼ ► But the reason you've never heard of it or others haven't heard of it, even though I've written about it, is that we're not allowed to put it in the app store.
01:19:02 ◼ ► We've tried a few times, but there is an app store rule, a guideline against using the system dictionary to make a dictionary app.
01:19:14 ◼ ► Well, and I've never had it explained, and I've never tried to go high enough in the chain of sources I have to find out what the source is.
01:19:23 ◼ ► My guess, it's the licensing deal they have with the American Heritage, or one or more of the dictionary providers.
01:19:32 ◼ ► Even though, on the Mac, dating back to Next, there is a built-in dictionary app that does what Kotoba does, except without the syncing of the words you've looked up.
01:19:53 ◼ ► I select the word, go to share on the selection, and pick Kotoba, which I use so often, it's like second or third, like after airdrop.
01:20:03 ◼ ► And then, instead of switching to Kotoba, it just opens a panel in place in the window, shows you the definition, you hit done, you're done.
01:20:25 ◼ ► And so anybody with the technical facilities to download a project from GitHub and compile it for themselves can do it.
01:20:50 ◼ ► It's just like you make a list of movies and shows you want to watch, and then you can check them off as you watch them.
01:20:58 ◼ ► It's funny because I have Call Sheet on my home screen too, but there's a lot of overlap between them because Sequel offers some of what Call Sheet does.
01:21:07 ◼ ► Call Sheet is Casey Liss's app that shows the movie databases list of actors and directors and writers of TV shows and movies.
01:21:17 ◼ ► But Call Sheet, because it's first and foremost about showing you the info about a show or movie, is better for that.
01:21:25 ◼ ► And Sequel is more of a tracker and a notice of when new episodes are coming out and stuff.
01:21:31 ◼ ► But I use them both, and I like having them on my home screen because at night when I'm watching TV with my wife, now that I can do it, I'm just an inveterate.
01:21:44 ◼ ► I look it up more because, like him, I used to use the IMDB app and hated it, and so I tried to use it as little as possible.
01:22:06 ◼ ► I'm deeply intrigued by the app, and I really like it, but it's such an interesting idea because it exists in between social media and, like, a proper RSS reader like Net Newswire, which I also have on my home screen.
01:22:21 ◼ ► And I guess my thinking of the way I should be using it is as, like, the nicotine gum that people chew to try to stop smoking.
01:22:39 ◼ ► And I think that would have been more useful for me a few years ago at some tailpoint in the Twitter era where I felt like I was wasting time on Twitter, and I wouldn't waste so much time, but I'd find out about things.
01:23:01 ◼ ► Tapestry would be better for that without finding yourself, oh, how'd that hour go by, right?
01:23:06 ◼ ► Like, it's because there's no algorithm, but I'd keep it there because I think I should be using it more.
01:23:12 ◼ ► You know, and you could see the yellow dot that I'm on the test flight, but I just don't use it as much as I thought I would.
01:23:17 ◼ ► We all have aspirational apps, you know, it's just like if I was a different person, I would use this app more.
01:23:23 ◼ ► Right. Somehow I still find myself in Net Newswire more than Tapestry, but they overlap with each other, you know.
01:23:48 ◼ ► And I think that the centrality of Twitter to Twitter-like posting was ultimately bad for a lot of us in terms of our productivity.
01:23:58 ◼ ► I think it was bad for our interaction with others overall, and I think it was bad for its centrality to the sort of media, the new breaking news world.
01:24:11 ◼ ► And now that it's spread across multiple things, instead of taking more time because I have to check more things, I spend less time because none of them have the centrality of it.
01:24:22 ◼ ► And I think that's good overall because I spend less time dicking around on social media.
01:24:27 ◼ ► But the one place where I get the most back and forth that still is conversational and more like the sort of unofficial comment section of Daring Fireball is Mastodon.
01:24:48 ◼ ► The dock on the iOS is so traditional, I don't know that they're ever going to get rid of it.
01:24:52 ◼ ► But it seems like that's a special hallowed place because it kind of is because it's there on every one of your home screens.
01:25:00 ◼ ► It's more out of habit that ivory is still there because when I spent tons of time on Twitter and Tweety was there and then eventually TweetBot, it was justified by usage.
01:25:11 ◼ ► With ivory, it's probably not justified by usage, but also I can't think of any other app higher than that that really ought to take over that spot in the dock.
01:25:23 ◼ ► Well, it's funny because things was one of the ones where I didn't want to send you the screenshot because it had like today items as a badge and it said 13, which is way too many.
01:25:42 ◼ ► Well, but it's like the procrastination thing I told you, like all of a sudden I was procrastinating on sending you a screenshot of my home screen because I wanted to get rid of some of those badges.
01:26:12 ◼ ► Like are you mostly just putting things into one or two spots and doing what you need to do?
01:26:22 ◼ ► I have things on the home screen, but I've never found a to-do app that really works for the way my mind works.
01:26:34 ◼ ► You know, it's probably one of those apps that at some point maybe I'll put something else there.
01:26:40 ◼ ► I've tried to get more into reminders and I'll probably do that again every couple of years.
01:26:58 ◼ ► If it's something I really needed to do in the next today or the next couple of days, I write it down in the field notes.
01:27:03 ◼ ► And it's better for my brain to be not on the phone looking at what I need to do today.
01:27:10 ◼ ► You know, I'm sure you agree, you know, with a lot of the stationary stuff that you've designed and sell,
01:27:21 ◼ ► in front of you, for me at least, it just lights up a slightly different part of my brain that keeps me grounded in the real world and gets me out of the alternate world that I'm in.
01:27:37 ◼ ► But as we've been talking, I've been writing notes down on a notebook for like different things.
01:27:41 ◼ ► Like I want to remember this, I want to ask you in a minute, and I'll sit down and write it on my notebook instead.
01:27:51 ◼ ► But at some point, I wrote something about the Mac and why it's such a special platform for me.
01:27:55 ◼ ► And to me, it is always, ever since I first got one in the 90s, and I got that LC at college, it was like within a few days of owning it, I was like, oh, oh, I've really been missing out.
01:28:17 ◼ ► It was like an independent study programming course that the computer teacher at my high school offered.
01:28:29 ◼ ► And this other kid with me, Zach, she was like, which one of you, does either one of you want to use the Mac?
01:28:41 ◼ ► I realized all of a sudden, like after a week into owning a Macintosh, that, oh, I made a terrible mistake.
01:28:49 ◼ ► And if I would have asserted myself, Zach, the other kid in the class, would have said, oh, sure, I'll take one of the Apple IIs.
01:28:59 ◼ ► Like, I get it now in a way that I'd used the Mac in high school, but it just didn't click for me.
01:29:16 ◼ ► And it's how I lose track of time when I'm working or obsessed with something on the Mac.
01:29:22 ◼ ► And putting my stuff, my agenda for the day or the next two days on paper in a notebook that I can leave open desk side is a way to get me out of that place and keep me sort of put my mind back in the real world around me.
01:29:42 ◼ ► Basically, every day I try to turn the page and I put the date at the top and it's a two-page spread for the day.
01:29:49 ◼ ► And, you know, like over the weekend, I might just go from Friday to Monday with one two-page because I'm not adding stuff.
01:29:55 ◼ ► And if there's stuff from the previous day that I haven't done, you know, I'll try to turn back and see if I'll do them or get to them.
01:30:03 ◼ ► And if it's two or three days older and I haven't gotten to it, it's like, eh, forget about it.
01:30:08 ◼ ► So my notebooks, hundreds, you know, I'm up to this current one I'm carrying is number 119.
01:30:37 ◼ ► And, you know, I'd had a couple beers and I felt my back right pocket where it goes and my notebook wasn't there.
01:30:43 ◼ ► And 40 minutes later, Manton Reese came up to me and said, hey, I don't know, you know, you lost this.
01:30:54 ◼ ► He just found it on the sidewalk in between like a restaurant and a bar and gave it back to me.
01:31:00 ◼ ► I've got 118 of these and they're filled with undone to-dos that I've just turned the page past.
01:31:06 ◼ ► But it's an interesting, you know, alternative to the badges that keep growing in number where if I keep turning the page and I'm really only looking at today, and I know that all those undone to-dos, they're there on paper back there.
01:31:20 ◼ ► They're there if I want to flip back and think, what was that thing I wanted to do a couple weeks ago?
01:31:37 ◼ ► I want to thank you all for listening again to this episode of Cortex and the State of the Workflow series.
01:31:50 ◼ ► On Mortex this episode, I talked to John a little bit about the business of Daring Fireball and how that works.
01:31:59 ◼ ► Go to getmortex.com and you can sign up for Mortex, and in the future, you won't get any ads.