I like that you said it right and then corrected yourself, now you have to correct yourself back again.
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I'm your host, John Chidjy, and today I'm joined by Mike Hurley.
How are you doing, Mike?
Very well, my friend.
How are you?
I am exceptionally good because, yeah, we're talking again.
It's been a little while and I'm so thrilled to have you back on the show.
Thank you for making the time.
Pleasure.
One of the things I was talking with Jason Snell a little while ago about optimal interfaces
and part of the journey that I've been on back and forth and now landing somewhere in
in the middle, starting off obviously with desktop
and machines moving then to laptops
because they're more flexible.
And then of course, with the advent of tablets,
particularly the iPad, I had a brief flirtation
with a Microsoft Surface, I said brief,
and it didn't last that long.
And technically I didn't pay for it, work paid for it,
but anyhow, nevermind.
And now back to the Mac again.
So I'm always seem to be endlessly searching
for the best device.
And one of the things that I've been grappling with
for quite some time is the whole concept.
And I suppose part of the conclusion of episode 93
was looking at can any one single device
actually give you everything that you need?
I think the short answer is probably no.
If you had to pick one, that's where it gets difficult.
But I remember a tradie once said to me a long time ago,
right tool for the job.
Yeah, meaning you don't use a flathead screwdriver
in a Phillips head screw,
unless you want a bad result, I guess.
So what I'd like to sort of like tease out
little bit today is just some more of the threads of that and the strengths and weaknesses
of each of those and I suppose more the practical applications of, well, literally the applications
that we use, as in like you and I use.
And in order to actually start at the beginning, I suppose, I want to sort of start by just
running through the list of the devices that you use, just day to day that you use for
doing what you do.
Yeah, on a daily basis, I will be using my iPhone 11 Pro Max.
I would typically be using my 12.9 inch iPad Pro and my iMac Pro as well.
I have two other devices that get used in travel, right?
So that would be the 11 inch iPad Pro.
I don't travel with the larger iPad Pro.
And I also have a MacBook Pro, a 13 inch MacBook Pro that I would take
if I'm recording on the road.
but on a daily basis, it is a mix between iPhone, iPad,
and Mac, depending on what I'm doing.
- Okay, fair enough.
Well, that's a pretty decent list there.
Mine, for my smartphone, I'm using an iPhone X.
I'm sorry, I always, nevermind.
- You know, I like that you'd said it right
and then corrected yourself,
and now you have to correct yourself back again.
- You're right, I absolutely corrected myself back to front.
Oh my goodness, nevermind.
I just want to mention Apple Watch Series 5.
Just bought in late November.
So I'm going to throw that one out there.
Are you wearing an Apple Watch by the way?
Just curious.
- Not daily.
- I do have the Series 5 and I like it,
but it's in my watch rotation now.
- Oh, okay.
Fair enough then.
I pretend to do a watch rotation by changing bands
and swiping the screen, but I-
- That's a good way to do it.
Gives you a bit more personalization.
- I do enjoy it.
but the thing is I also, I've been actually looking after,
looking, lusting after a Longines watch, mechanical watch,
but I just, I don't know, it doesn't have notifications.
So I haven't pulled the trigger on that yet.
Anyway, right, so beyond that, iPad Pro 12.9 inch,
which is the second gen with the original Apple Pencil.
And my workhorse machine is my 13 inch,
2018 MacBook Pro, quad core i7.
And one of the key points of that is that I do run
as a desktop most of its time,
plugging into a couple of 28 inch 4K displays.
Well, when I'm at home and when I'm at work,
well, to 23 inch, nowhere near 4K displays
because IT is IT, but oh well, what can you do?
So that's sort of the,
so that's the list of things that we use.
And I sort of, I guess I was thinking about
how did we get to where we are?
So like when we think about way back in the past,
we had a desktop PC, that's all we had.
There were no laptops.
There was nothing, no mobility, there's no nothing.
But we wanted to,
how could we get the desktop machine to do more for us?
First thing is we want to take it with us.
So we're not tied to a desk.
So that drove the development of laptops, okay?
We had phones and we had mobile phones,
but we didn't have any of the computational capabilities
just a dumb phone.
Like I think we, that's everyone calls them dumb phones now,
not smartphones.
but we wanted to be able to make phone calls
and video calls and so on.
We don't always have a phone handy,
so we can always get the computer to do that.
So we, you know,
we used some computers to develop that ability
and then you can use it to organize photos,
TV shows, movies, home automation, all of it.
So at that point,
the desktop PC sort of evolved into laptops
and that's been around for the longest amount of time
and it's the most evolved.
But now going along from that,
we've also had dumb phones
evolving the same kind of direction.
And then of course,
that's rubbed off into tablets
and some of it's rubbed off into smartwatches as well.
Those smartwatches are probably the least mature
of all the different product lines.
And as they each sort of like extend a little bit more
about what they're capable of,
it now creates a completely different problem,
which is now which is the best device
for what I need to do right now.
I guess if people had infinite money,
they could just buy and use every device there was
and just pick the best one for the job.
And that's great for some people,
but I think the problem is that for most people,
that just doesn't work.
I mean, it's either financially prohibitive
or they don't all fit in your pocket.
So that's where the challenge comes.
So what is, if there's one device, what would it be?
And to circle them back to that again.
So if you're really honest,
if you could pick just one device and only one,
what would you have from all the lists of the things
that we just listed?
- Oh God, you know,
I knew you were gonna ask me that question.
And in my head, I answered all three of them, right?
Like individually, it's like, oh, I would choose this one.
No, I would choose this one.
So here's the predicament, right?
Now, I figure my iPad is the closest between the two, right?
Of like a phone and that,
like, 'cause it has all of the apps that I want
and connectivity with the power
or with getting towards the power of a desktop machine
and it's got more flexibility.
And like, if I wanted to record podcasts and edit them,
I could do that.
Like it would be more tricky,
but I could do all of that on an iPad
in a way that would be really difficult to do on a phone.
Right?
But then if I think of myself, realistically,
if what I'm thinking about is I need to continue
my working life, the Mac is the most important in that
because it's the, well, it depends what work
I'm thinking about.
If it's running my business, the iPad is what I need.
If it's making the shows, then the Mac is what I need.
But realistically, who can survive in the modern world
without a phone these days, right?
Like it's becoming more and more and more difficult
no matter where you live in the world
to get by without a smartphone, right?
Which is why there is like pushes like Google
with like Android Go, which is to run on like cheaper devices
so they can be sold into more developing parts of the world.
So I guess if I could only have one,
it would probably be the phone, I think.
I think that's where I'd have to go.
- I love your work, Mike.
- That's exactly my answer as well.
- 'Cause it's so difficult though, right?
Because then it's like,
well then what does that do to my working life?
If I think about just like being in modern society,
the smartphone is what I need.
- Yeah, exactly.
And having gone through this process
and thinking about this as well
and doing the prep for this episode,
I mean, I come up with exactly the same answer.
And for pretty much the reasons that you stated,
the truth is, yes, you could actually record
and edit a podcast on a phone.
people have done it, but I don't think they do it and enjoy the experience.
It is like, yeah, is it? It's like, it's like a logic question, right? Like, is it technically possible?
Yes. Will I be able to produce something of the same quality that I can currently produce?
Probably not. Can I do it in anywhere near the same time? No, because I'm used to the tools that I have, right?
And I would, so, so it, yes, technically possible, like in a, in an apocalypse-like scenario, could do it,
but it would be unlikely to work.
- Okay, so we'll now step out
of our technological apocalypse
and move forward to where now
to allow to have a second one.
So you can now have a second device.
You've got your smartphone in your hand
and your iPhone 11 Pro Max extra size, massive phone,
which is awesome.
If you're in a pinch, you can use it to beat somebody,
which is cool as well.
So that's another feature.
But anyhow, so now you can take a second device.
What would the second device be?
And I think you've kind of answered this already,
but I'll let you say anyhow.
- Yeah, see, I need to be realistic at this point.
All right, I prefer iOS as an operating system to macOS.
It's just how I am.
It works better the way that I think the apps are all there
in the way that I want them.
But if I'm going to only have two devices,
I'm going to pick one iOS device and one macOS device.
I'm gonna go for the Mac Pro at that point. I'll go for a Mac Pro I guess, but that's not...
If we're talking about defense in apocalypse scenarios, that's good. Maybe I could strap
some wheels on it and roll down the road. But I would go for a Mac in that point, because
it will then... I will then at least get pretty much everything I want from iOS and everything
I need from Mac OS. Not necessarily in the device form factors that I want,
But I feel like at that point, I have to be realistic if I'm making those decisions.
Absolutely. And those are some nice wheels on that Mac Pro, I'm just saying.
I'm sure that they would work very well for me.
I've often thought with the Mac Pro on the wheels that if you do have wet wheels and how much airflow
that thing can do, you might want to tether it to something under the desk so it doesn't blow
itself away down the whole corridor. Yeah, if you're on like hardwood floor,
maybe, maybe move around a little bit. Yeah, I'm just, I think that's a valid concern.
But anyhow, all right.
So I actually, this is, I'm not gonna say
this might get tedious or boring
if we end up having exactly the same answers,
but unfortunately at this point, yes,
we are more or less the same answer as well.
I think that iOS and Mac is,
I need the desktop environment.
And this is the, I'm gonna be very careful
to characterize it as an environment
because clearly you can have the iMac Pro,
which is sort of arguably the most powerful current Mac
that's available that you can buy on a desktop.
And then of course you could also get a MacBook Pro.
So for my case, the 13 inch MacBook Pro,
so I had to choose, I only had enough budget at this point
for me to get a laptop or a desktop.
So I got a much more powerful laptop,
which I then used to impersonate a desktop.
And I realized that's not ideal necessarily
for my performance per dollar expenditure,
but it gives me the dual benefit of being able to unplug it
and use it in a work setting in the office,
as well as in a home setting.
So I think that's fair.
And the reality is that when you're sort of thinking
about this, for me, Mac OS also,
there's a lot of driver for things like screen real estate.
And so it's not just the apps and the environment,
but the apps in the environment are far more mature.
There's more flexibility and choice of what you can do.
That's sacrificed at the risk of complexity.
And I think you nailed it before about iOS
just being far more, it's just far easier
and more intuitive to use.
and that is very, very attractive.
So I absolutely get that.
And I was gonna say originally like laptops
and desktops are better for mass data entry.
And the problem with that is that
since for the last few years now,
you can get smart keyboards, which of course,
well, have no lag or should have no lag.
So long as I don't keep getting that annoying error message
saying this accessory is not supported by this device.
Anyhow, so there's that,
but smart keyboards are still pretty good
in terms of mass data entry.
So I don't think that's an advantage that laptops
and desktops have any more over an iPad Pro, for example.
- No, there are great keyboard options.
Like I use the Bridge keyboards.
- Yeah, they're nice too.
- And it effectively turns the,
it just feels like a laptop at that point.
Like I don't, the keyboards really,
I mean, I prefer it to the smart keyboard,
but the smart keyboard is great
because it's easily available.
It doesn't need power.
Like it's, you know, it's a great product, but yeah,
I agree, like as soon as the keyboard options became viable,
I mean, there was always an attempt to make good keyboards for iPads, right?
Like, remember, do you remember the stand one that Apple had for the original?
Yeah, I had one.
You could like, there's like a little keyboard stand and it had like a magic,
it had like one of the magic keyboards like attached to it.
You could put the iPad in it. It was super weird.
Yeah, yeah.
But I feel like since the iPad Pro's invention,
there have been multiple good avenues for keyboards.
And I think that that made it, it's made a big difference for a lot of people,
like a lot of people.
I would not be as heavy an iPad user as I am
if there wasn't a good keyboard available.
Like if they hadn't created the smart keyboard
or there hadn't been really good third-party options.
- Yeah, I completely agree.
And I think that it's been as big a shift forward
in usability for an iPad as the Apple Pencil.
And the keyboard stand that you mentioned,
I actually had one of those and it wasn't too bad
except for the fact that you were stuck in portrait mode
and I don't know how many people want to use an iPad
in portrait mode when they're typing on a keyboard.
It just never really made sense.
- And I feel Apple know this, right?
Like every iPad now can support a smart keyboard
and an Apple pencil, like all of them,
even just the basic regular iPad supports those products.
Like, okay, say the iPad mini is the outlier,
but the iPad mini is a kind of a product unto itself,
but of the regular iPads, they all support those now.
So I think Apple is as aware as everybody else
that like to make the iPad work in people's minds,
you need to show it with a keyboard.
Like people want keyboards.
That's what they're used to, it's what's comfortable.
- Yeah, absolutely right.
And so I see that as a huge advantage in the tablet space.
And one of the big, I guess,
there's several driving factors, I think,
for the tablets that make them so attractive.
And we're sort of talking about our third device
at this point, which is, you know, it's not, I suppose,
not so much about size, the weight and the battery life,
the integrated 3G and LTE,
but all of those things are all positives.
Absolutely for sure, yes, they are,
but it's more the fact that it's direct touch input
and the fact that you can get a very accurate stylus,
AKA an Apple pencil,
with the keyboard problem long solved,
I think, for it as a tablet.
And there's just no way of really doing that
on the Mac desktop environment.
So you don't have that direct touch interaction
and you don't have the Apple Pencil or the stylus.
Now, how big a deal that is to you or not
depends obviously on the use case,
but I find a lot of the attraction
with the tablet being the direct touch
and the precision of having something like an Apple Pencil
when I need that sort of thing on a tablet,
that's something you can't do on a Mac.
Unless of course you wanna invest in a Cintiq tablet,
which is kind of pricey and very specialized,
doesn't really drive the operating system exactly,
just certain applications.
and then that's another thing.
All right, so you have two devices.
Seems like it's a smartphone and a desktop,
but some people might've leaned towards the tablet
and that's okay.
But if you could afford three devices,
then probably you'd get one of each, I would suggest.
- Yeah.
- Which is what I've got and what you've got.
(laughs)
So on the desktop front,
I think I sort of touched on the whole
desktop laptop thing.
I think it's okay.
people will actually have a desktop and a laptop. And I, I'm
just going back through that list. And I tried to make a
mental note of it. Because you've got you've got to the iMac
Pro and you don't have you don't have a laptop. I don't think did
you say?
No, I have a MacBook Pro. I have one of the I think it's the
original MacBook Pro when the the touch bar was introduced,
but I have the non touch bar version. Does that make sense?
It's like the 2015 or whatever.
It's an OG MacBook Pro.
And I use it, honestly, four times a year.
But those times when I use it,
they are very, very important times.
So it's like recording podcasts during WWDC week,
which is arguably my most important time of the year.
So I need to have a laptop available for those times.
And that's what I'm rocking a MacBook Pro for.
I want to get a MacBook Air
because that's all I need,
but I'm waiting for keyboard change before I do that.
- Yeah. And that's fair enough.
My MacBook Pro, this is the 2018 model, so 13 inch,
and it's still got the, it's got the third,
it's Apple's third attempt
at the interesting keyboard mechanism.
And whilst I personally haven't had problems,
if I could have waited a year and two months ago
when I bought it, I would have waited.
But unfortunately I needed a laptop
and you just, you get what they have available at the time.
And besides which the 13 inch model
still hasn't had the refreshed keys in it anyhow.
So yeah, so I guess, yeah,
we'll be waiting a bit longer before we do that,
but that's okay.
So, all right.
So on the application side,
I sort of briefly touched on the problem I had before,
which was Mac applications.
The problem with them in air quotes problem
is that they tend to be because of the fact
they've been around for longer, generally speaking,
they're less focused.
and that is to say they're heavier and more bloated,
well, to some people, depending upon what they wanna do,
and generally will have a higher learning curve
than newer software.
And a lot of the newer software recently
has been written and developed for iOS.
And that's because they're outselling Macs.
The refresh cycle on iOS devices, particularly the phones,
and their purchasing model via carriers,
and in some countries where Apple
have got the whole rental program thing,
not here, but oh well,
means there's a more regular purchasing cycle.
And then of course that drives new models, new iOS features,
that drives more uptake and more investment.
And hence, ultimately you get more software development,
which is what we see.
That means that iOS apps typically tend to be more focused
and more design and development
is put into them recently.
So you're seeing more evolution in iOS
than you're seeing incremental evolution in macOS.
So that's on the application side.
And this is where things get a little bit more interesting.
And that is, I'd like to then sort of like talk through
some of the things that we use specific use cases now.
And we touched on one briefly before,
might be worth fleshing that a little bit more though,
which is the whole podcast editing thing.
So for each of these on the two different platforms
and like a touch platform, like an iPad Pro,
I would suggest, or maybe a smartphone depending
and on a Mac.
And so just to quickly recap on podcast editing then.
So have you ever done podcast editing on an iPad?
I have tinkered around with the app Ferrite, which Jason Snell uses, you know, to actually
edit The Incomparable. Like, that is what he edits The Incomparable on now. I think
no matter where he is, like, that's what he uses. And I can see how I could learn this
software. Like, I can see that. And I've tinkered with it, I've played with it, I've done some
stuff with it, and it's great. But I have not yet put the time in to do it significantly,
I know it's possible to do because I know someone who publishes a very popular show
and it's not, you know, I never tune into the incomparable and be like, "Oh, this sounds
wrong." No, like Jason has and has also worked with the developer, right, to like make it
the right tool. So yeah, I think it's pretty good, but I have not yet really dove into
it. But I know it's possible.
- Okay, so in terms of editing then on the Mac,
what software do you use on the Mac?
- I use a combination of things.
I use Adobe Audition for pre-production.
It has a really good noise leveling tool that I use.
I can't remember their actual name for it,
but it basically just levels out the audio
and matches it to a specific volume loudness.
It just works very well for me.
It takes out a lot of things that I used to do with compression and stuff like that.
So I really like it for that. It's worth it.
Then I use Logic Pro, Apple's Logic Pro 10 or whatever it is, to actually do the editing.
And then I use Marco Armit's Forecast to do the final mix to MP3 in any chapter work and stuff like that,
to write the MP3 tags. Those are the tools that I mostly use.
course, I have a bunch of other audio apps that I will use,
right. So like the recording is done in a combination of core
recorder and audio hijack. I use efficient by Roger Meeber, if I
need to grab some audio quick, like I have a bunch of like,
little utilities, but the main ones are for like for the
editing or audition logic and forecast. And this is the thing
for me, like I produce a lot of shows on a weekly basis, I
spend a lot of time doing this stuff. And the workflow on the
Mac, I have nailed down. And I'm not really interested in
disrupting that because it will disrupt everything else, which
is why I've never really played around with the iPad stuff too
much, because it's like, I have no idea when I would actually be
able to do it, you know.
So one of the things that I'm, so I've, I've played with both
ferrite and logic, and I'll sort of walk through my workflow in a
second but do you find that when you're working in logic that you predominantly
use a combination of the keyboard and the mouse or one or the other that you'd
you stick with or any any preferences for how you interact with it? So I use
them I use multiple tools for this I use a Wacom Intuos Pro pen tablet that is
the way that I actually operate the iMac most of the time anyway because I find
more comfortable around like arm strain and stuff like that.
And the Intuos has a bunch of programmable buttons.
So I actually do a vast majority of my editing just using the pen tablets.
The pen tablet supports the mouse.
And then I have a bunch of buttons for like selecting all and cutting a play head
and stuff like that, like I've customized them.
But I also mix it up and use the like the the Wacom with the keyboard
and I use the keyboard shortcuts.
And I also have a magic trackpad, which I use for like scrolling around the timeline and stuff like that.
And this is mostly for me, it's just a way to be able to vary my input method, because most of my editing now,
it takes multiple hours to do the edits that I'm doing.
So I need to be careful with ergonomics.
And I found for me, having a variety of tools at my disposal keeps keeps the ergonomics pretty sound.
Okay, that's, I just want to say that's exceptionally cool. I, I, hmm, do you have you had problems with RSI? Or is it like, like, yeah, pains that you had?
Yeah, which is why I started down this path of finding different tools. And then what I settled on right now, I actually, knock on wood, I have not had any significant RSI problems this year. And I think it's because I've I've learned a lot about
how to operate my own body.
If that makes sense?
- Yeah, yeah, it makes sense.
- Like a simple thing for me that I've found out,
I'm usually more susceptible to getting RSI
as the weather gets colder.
- Okay.
- So I now have a heater in my office
that I use to keep the office warmer
and it keeps it at bay.
So, you know, I know that this is a big topic for you, right?
- Yeah.
- 'Cause you had the big John Siracusa episode, right?
episode, right? - Yes, we did, yeah.
- Is that RSI stuff?
- Yep, episode 15, that's right.
- Yeah, so I know it's like a thing
that comes up on the show a lot,
but yeah, I've felt it a little bit here and there.
- Yeah, sorry, forgive me.
It is something that I have gone through myself as well,
and I find that the rotation of input method
is what resolves it for me.
I'm not sure that Brisbane gets as cold as where you are,
so maybe having a heater in my room,
mind you, it's the middle of summer at the moment, so.
- I think it's different for different people.
Like I don't only get these problems in winter.
I've just noticed that I am more susceptible
to them in winter.
But I think it really, it's like,
you've really got to like work out what's best for you.
And what's best for me is to not use any input method
of any kind for too long.
Like I have to rotate.
- Yes, absolutely.
And that's the key.
And one of the things that I,
every now and then I bring it up with my wife,
I say, I need to get one of those converting,
standing sitting desk things because we have them in the office and they're brilliant.
So I'll like alternate between standing and sitting desks essentially when I go into the
office, but at home I've got a fixed height desk and I'm not necessarily suggesting I'm
going to get a treadmill desk. I think that's probably a bridge too far specifically for
me, but that's okay. I'm glad that works for some people. But being able to vary my seating
position and seating height actually is another great way of preventing any RSI from starting.
And for me, again, it's been probably a year and a half at least since my last cordon episode,
if you will, of RSI on my right arm.
Yeah, I'm on a good streak.
Yeah, that's a good record.
Yes.
Okay, so thanks for that.
Let's just circle back then to the podcast editing that I do.
So I'll start the other way around on the Mac.
So yes, I still have Logic and I have used it and did use it for several, quite a few
years actually, three or four years.
And I predominantly did my interaction through the mouse, a couple of keyboard shortcuts,
but predominantly through the mouse.
And I was editing on that regularly enough.
That is to say, when I was at that point, I think I was doing pragmatic once a week
and so on.
So that was, it was regular enough, I guess, probably not to the volume that you do editing
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Then I discovered Ferrite on the iPad
and it was actually suggested,
it was, I found out about it through Jason Snell,
interestingly enough,
And it's been a tool that has grown on me very quickly.
And one of the things I like about using ferrite
is that I'll actually use it as old as it sounds.
Well, maybe it doesn't sound old,
but I use the keyboard as well as touch.
And I don't tend to use the Apple pencil, but.
- Yeah, no, I actually really requested
more keyboard shortcuts from the developer.
And they very kindly did something
that I didn't even know could be possible, but they did it.
So, Woojee Juice, who make ferrite,
They have keyboard shortcut sets.
So you can change your keyboard shortcuts
to default to a program you're already used to.
So there is a choice to add logic keyboard shortcuts
instead, so you can switch over the keyboard shortcuts
so they operate like logic does,
which is great for like muscle memory stuff,
depending on where you're coming from.
- Oh, for sure.
I've been using Ferrite for multiple years
and I didn't even know that they had support for that.
Ah, wow.
- 'Cause this is one of those apps,
which as it should has a million settings.
Yeah, it's what you want in a pro app.
- Yeah, exactly.
And it's, but the good thing about the depth
of those selections is as they are,
they're specific, they're very relevant
to a broad array of use cases,
but it's still very honed for that one application,
which is, you know, editing a podcast.
I don't know if ferrites necessarily design specific,
is gonna be as good for doing something
like a 12 string orchestra sort of thing.
I guess you probably could use it for that
if you were trying to compose on it or something,
I don't know, or edit that.
But I mean, to be honest,
it was really developed more for what we do, I think,
whereas Logic's far more flexible
in what you can do with it.
But anyway, so yes, I use Ferrite for everything.
So this show has been edited,
if future tense will be edited in Ferrite,
and pretty much every episode of a podcast
I've edited for the last nearly three and a half,
well, maybe three years has been in Ferrite.
And much with your workflow as with mine,
I find now that going back to logic
is sort of messes up my workflow considerably.
So I remember how to use it, I know how to use it.
And for noise reduction on my iPad,
I use an audio unit plugin called Bruce Free.
Again, I think that's how you pronounce it.
I'm probably mangling it, but nevermind.
And this particular one also does the noise reduction.
It does a pretty good job so long as everything
you're editing is less than 100 minutes in length.
That's another story.
Anyhow, yes, if it's over that break it down
into 100 minute chunks, sorry,
99 minute and 59 second chunks.
Sorry, nevermind.
All right, so I find that the flexibility
of being able to do the editing on the iPad is great.
It's lightweight, I can take it with me.
It's got decent battery life and so on and so forth.
And if I'm gonna be editing in Logic,
I'd do it on a desk environment
rather than try to do it in a laptop environment
because that would completely throw my workflow at that.
Okay, so that's the first one
that we both do a reasonable amount of.
So let's think about what devices we then use
and applications for something more mundane.
And I say mundane, I mean,
I'm sure everybody uses a word processing app of some kind.
So whether that's Pages or Microsoft Word.
So if you were doing editing on one of those,
which would be the device you would go to?
- Always iPad Pro.
- Wow, okay.
Quick answer, very good.
- Yeah, see for me really,
the Mac is only used for audio work.
Everything else I'm doing for work stuff on my iPad.
- Okay, fair enough.
So for me, I'm a big believer in flexibility
of screen real estate.
And screen real estate and pixels is king.
And when I'm doing most of the stuff that I'm doing
for my J-O-B job, as I say,
requires that screen real estate.
So I need to have multiple documents up for reference,
comparison, sometimes copying, pasting text,
not plagiarizing between documents and such,
unless it's my own stuff,
I technically can't plagiarize your own work, I guess.
Anyway, point is I need that screen real estate.
And for me, that's always been the issue
with using the iPad for those sorts of documentation.
However, having said that, there are still cases
where I will be doing something like an independent memo
or something like that, or a very short document
that doesn't require that screen real estate.
And I have on occasion then used the iPad Pro for that.
And to be honest, it does a perfectly good job.
It's a perfectly passable job,
but I always find myself like looking at the edges
of the screen, wishing I had a little bit more space.
All right, I think you could probably bundle together
things like spreadsheets, PowerPoint, keynote applications
and so on and so forth under this similar kind of a bucket.
And based on your previous answer,
I'm assuming it's the same kind of answer.
- Yeah, yeah, it's always gonna be on the iPad.
- Okay, so for me, the funny thing for me though,
is that I actually find with spreadsheets,
PowerPoint and keynote, I will do them on the desktop,
but I need screen real estate less generally
when I'm working on those, some spreadsheets maybe,
and I lean more towards the iPad.
But it's, I guess one of the things I do love
about the world we're in right now
is that we have that choice.
Because when the iPad first came out and iOS was available,
there was this whole thing with Microsoft
where we weren't sure that we were ever gonna get
proper desktop class citizens, I guess you could say,
on iOS and now we have them and they're brilliant.
And do you use, have you used Office at all on the iPad?
- Yeah, I use, yeah, I've used both Word
and Excel, there we go.
I don't, I will typically gravitate
toward pages and numbers,
but sometimes depending on who you're working with
and the documents that they require,
Word and Excel are needed.
And so I've used them.
And I think they're really good on iOS,
but I just, over time,
have just gravitated toward numbers and pages,
but I do use both.
- Oh, for sure, I understand.
And I'm in one of those situations
where my office is Windows, Microsoft, more or less,
although recently they just started to accept Max more,
which is great.
The truth is that Office 365 is the backbone
of the organization.
And so, as it is for a lot of organizations.
So, I've had to use them and being able to use them
on an iPad and watching the improvements
that Microsoft have made to the applications
over the last four or five years has been truly impressive.
They've gone from being,
we will never develop anything on a Mac
because it's not running Windows,
to we will now embrace the major platforms
and we are actually gonna seriously put time, effort
and energy into doing it really well, which is great.
So having that flexibility to jump between the iPad
and the Mac working on a spreadsheet is very, very useful.
So it allows you to use the best of both.
That said, I still prefer numbers on an iPad.
I think it just works better.
Just silly little things like dragging columns
and rows around is something that's very much more difficult
on Office Excel for the iPad.
Anyhow, all right.
It's about as exciting as Excel ever got, so we'll move on.
Social media is something that we both deal with,
I think, interact with, you know what I mean?
It's hard not to say deal with, anyhow.
So just broadly, 'cause it's obviously,
And maybe it's a different answer for some of these between smartphones and tablets potentially,
but just to reel off the list, the ones I'm interacting with, which would be the Fediverse,
otherwise known as Mastodon, Pleroma, Misci, and all those different ones, but I think
Activity Pub.
Then of course, our old faithful Twitter, Facebook, Instagram sometimes.
And I'm going to get in and say, first of all, I almost entirely use those on a smartphone
because of portability, I think, more than anything.
So my main social networks would be Instagram and Twitter and I will, you know, for obvious reasons, mostly use Instagram on my iPhone.
The web app is pretty good and sometimes I will check stuff but it's very rare that I would actually be doing anything of note.
And then Twitter is, it varies between the iPad and the iPhone for the majority of time.
It kind of just depends where I am and what I'm doing.
Like if I'm on the move, I'll be using my iPhone,
but if I'm at home, I'll be using the iPad.
And I use the official Twitter client now.
I've moved to that.
It works perfectly fine for me and has over time,
actually reduced the amount of time I'm spending on Twitter
because the app isn't as good.
So, you know, that's actually a nice little benefit
that I've found in the official app.
- Yeah, I have this,
I keep the official app installed on my phone for Twitter.
because it passes through more information
if I want to see it,
whereas other ones don't get that forwarded
onto them anymore.
The API had the legs cut out from under it.
Yeah, which is kind of unfortunate, but in any case.
So yeah, I do actually, in fairness,
sometimes do use interact on the desktop,
but that's more of a question of convenience,
not having to physically pick up the phone
if I'm at my desk, but yeah.
In my J-O-B job work environment,
all of that's firewalled to death.
So you don't get notifications for, yeah, of course, right?
You know, so it's not like you get a heck of a lot
through on the desktop anyway.
So you predominantly look at your phone.
So any, I just try to think about any other classes
of application.
And I was thinking specifically,
'cause obviously there's other areas we could talk
about things like, you know, watching movies
and so on and so forth.
But I guess it's kind of less interesting to me
at this point, I was thinking about more
of like interaction stuff.
Any other key things that you could use on a Mac
or on a tablet, for example,
and a preference for one or the other that come to mind?
I'm just curious.
- Do we cover email?
- No, we didn't.
It's a good one.
- Yeah, email for me, it's everywhere.
It's like, it doesn't matter for me so much of email
because I don't really go to email very much.
Email comes to me, right?
So I will mostly handle email wherever I am,
whenever the thing comes to me and I'm gonna reply to.
I have notifications on for email
and that's typically just how I do it.
When I worked in my office job,
I actually just checked email a few times a day.
So I would go in and check email a couple of times a day.
But with what I do now,
I much prefer to just have to deal with email
whenever I see something I need to deal with.
So in that sense, I do email from everything
and I'm using the app Spark and that works for me
and it's basically the same application everywhere.
So it doesn't really feel very different.
- Okay, now fair enough.
I dabbled with Spark there for a while
and I'm trying to remember why I went away from it.
It was, I think it was one of those service side
cache credentials and things maybe.
I was going through a bit of a privacy bent at the time.
I think, yeah.
has that. I actually am not the biggest fan of the application itself, but I'm a big fan
of their team services. It works really well for me.
Okay. I never actually delved into that too much. So, well, it sounds interesting.
It's very particular, right? Like if you don't have a team, a small team or like that you
have control over in regards to what services could be used, right? Then it seems unlike,
I can't imagine people being able to,
they're working for a big company
and convince everyone to go to Spark.
It doesn't work.
But because I run my own small business,
I can say, "Oh no, for our team email,
we're going to use this,
and that's what we will use
because that's what I need."
So it's like a different environment.
And I think that's probably the difficulty
of running a service like that.
It's not like a,
they're not this huge enterprise company,
like a Slack or whatever.
So I don't really know what the future of a service
is like that, but I know for me right now, it's working great.
- Interesting. Okay, cool.
So for me, I have two different apps
that I use for my email.
I've got Microsoft Outlook,
which I more or less exclusively use for my JIB job for work.
And I use that to essentially put it in a bucket and say,
you work email, sit over there
and I'll open you when I wanna open you,
which is eight till five, Monday to Friday,
generally speaking.
And if someone calls me on the phone on the weekend
or after hours and says, "Hey, I sent you an email,"
which is always hilarious,
someone calling you and saying, "Hey, I sent you an email,"
but nevermind.
So that's something I'll do almost exclusively
on the desktop environment.
And that's mainly because I'm using my laptop
when I'm working.
Whereas on an iPad and an iPhone,
I will do that when I'm out and about if I have to,
if I'm out and about during the day,
but it's a separate app again.
And I just use the built-in mail app for everything else.
As much as I have a love-hate relationship with it,
it kind of mostly usually does the job and it's good enough.
And again, I'll email,
I tend to try and email as much as I can on the desktop
because I prefer the keyboard.
If I only have my iPad with me, I will use the iPad,
of course, but generally speaking,
I'll, 'cause email being an asynchronous thing,
typically I'll wait until I'm in a more suitable environment
with the best keyboard and the nicest screens and everything and, you know, whatever, whatever,
just makes it easier. So, anyhow, all right, cool. So, there's email. Any others that come to mind?
I don't think so. I think we've covered the vast majority of the,
honestly, the types of work that I do.
Okay, fair enough. So, I guess then just looking to sort of like wrapping up a little bit on this
is that I was thinking about if you've got, if it's a portability debate, then once your
performance or the performance of your portable device exceeds the requirements for any given
task, then the portability or not of it doesn't matter anymore because it's essentially fully
performant for whatever you might need. So as we evolve forward, imagine in future a perfectly
light, fully performant, unbreakable, yeah, well, I can dream, an unbreakable tablet. So you drop it
from three feet off the ground and it's totally fine. So it's like, it doesn't matter anymore.
You can't make the argument, well, you know, I don't want to use a tablet because it's too easy
to break or, you know, it's not as performant as something like an iMac Pro. There will come a time
when its performance will far exceed, if it doesn't already, for some Macs, desktop Macs
actually come to think of it.
And such, that's not a problem.
It's all about the interface.
It's like, what's the best interface?
And then of course you can go the other way and say,
well, imagine it's a desktop PC or a Mac
and it's connected to multiple massive screens.
And maybe the screens are worth $10,000
because it's only money.
It's an XDR display, you know, and so on with a nice stand.
Nevermind.
But the idea is you've got a massive array
of screen real estate, best keyboard, best mouse,
best track pad, arguably most of those exist already.
So it's now down to the interface.
And what does it, which is the optimal interface
for the application that you're using?
And if you are able to have a device of each type,
then that's great.
And understanding which device you should go to
and having the flexibility to choose.
I think that the time we live in is amazing
because we are rapidly reaching that point
where you could use a smartphone for everything.
You could use an iPad Pro for everything
or even a MacBook Pro or an iMac Pro for pretty much anything
and having that flexibility is great.
And if you can manage to have multiple devices,
then you can fine tune to a point where
you are using the best application
and the best device for what you need, which is awesome.
- Yeah, I think so.
Which I mean, it's a great time to be a computer user, right?
- Yeah, exactly, exactly.
I think it's fantastic.
And I just, every now and then I walk outside
and I forget to take my phone, but that's okay
I've got my Apple Watch on and it's got LTE and I can still send and receive messages and phone
calls and it's just incredible and I love it and I think that the future is only going to have more
options not less and then you could argue that now it's creating more of a dilemma but how do
you choose? All right so if you want to talk more about this you can reach me on the Fediverse at
chigi@engineered.space. You can find Pragmatic at engineered.network or you can follow engineered
underscore net on Twitter to see show specific announcements. If you're enjoying Pragmatic and
and want to support the show, you can via Patreon at patreon.com/johncigi or one word
with a thank you to all of our patrons and a special thank you to our silver producers,
Carsten Hansen, John Whitlow, Joseph Antonio and Kevin Koch and an extra special thank
you to our gold producer known only as R. Patron rewards include a named thank you on
the website, a named thank you at the end of episodes, access to raw detailed show notes
as well as ad-free high quality releases of every episode.
So if you'd like to contribute something, anything at all, there's lots of great rewards
and beyond that it's all really, really appreciated.
Of course, there's other ways of helping the show like favoring the episode in your podcast
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Some podcast players let you share audio clips too of episodes, so if you have a favorite
segment feel free to share that as well.
All these things help others to discover the show and can make a huge difference.
I'd personally like to thank ManyTricks for sponsoring the Engineered Network.
If you're looking for some Mac software that can do many tricks, remember specifically
visit this URL, manytricksalloneword.com/pragmatic for more information about their amazingly
useful apps.
So, if you would like to get in touch with Mike, what's the best way for them to get
in touch with you, Mike?
I'm pretty much on all social networks.
It's imike, I-M-Y-K-E.
Awesome.
Well, that's easy.
So, once again, a special thank you to our patrons, a big thank you to everyone for listening
and as always, thanks once again for coming back on the show, Mike.
It's been a blast.
Pleasure.
Thank you for having me.
Anytime.
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