[00:00:10.270] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:10.710] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:11.250] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:13.210] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:15.740] - Gordon
And welcome back to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses in the last seven days, or in this case, 14 days, because we weren't with you last week. Sorry about that. I hope you didn't miss us too much. But we are back this week with a brand new episode. First of all, news. Pardon me. I've got a couple of bits of news.
[00:00:43.060] - Taylor
Okay.
[00:00:43.860] - Gordon
So a long while ago, there was a problem with Epic, who are the producers of Fortnite, and they decided they didn't like Apple taking a cut from their takings on iOS devices so that's iPhone and iPads. And so they tried to put in their own way of payment to bypass Apple's. This then led to a court case. And Epic basically said that the reason that they were doing it is because there was no other way for them to get Fortnite onto the platform without going through Apple, and therefore, it was an abuse of their power and their position. This week, interestingly, Epic have partnered with Xbox, and Xbox - I don't know what the service is called. Is it Xbox Live?
[00:01:44.780] - Taylor
Maybe.
[00:01:45.370] - Gordon
Xbox Stream? I'm not sure what it's called, but you can basically go to a website and you can stream games directly over the internet through this service. So you can do it in a browser. And Epic have joined forces with them. So you can now play Fortnite again on iOS devices. And what's really interesting is, I think they've just shot themselves in the foot because they've basically shown that actually there is a way for them to be on the platform without going through Apple's App Store, which was their major issue originally. So that's a very interesting development. We shall see if that actually gets picked up and if that's an argument that Apple use, because I don't believe the court case has completed yet. And similar news is that Google Play, which is the Android version of the App Store that Apple have, have said that everybody who goes through the Play Store needs to make sure that any in-app purchases or purchases are done through their Google Pay, which is exactly what Apple have always done. And there are lots of companies saying, "no, we don't want to. It's not right. You can't force us." But of course they can force them because it's their platform and they get to make the rules. The difference with Android is that you can side load or you can go through a different store, although the Play Store is the most popular one and it's the one that most people trust, as well. So I think that Google are going to get a very similar problem that Apple are getting, but I think Apple are going to come out on top, and that will then obviously mean that Google will also come out on top; but very interesting news. Do you have any news or information?
[00:03:47.920] - Taylor
No, nothing from me this week.
[00:03:49.800] - Gordon
Okay. So let's get straight on with our topics. Do you want to go first?
[00:03:54.980] - Taylor
Okay. So my topic this week is kind of just going back and having a look at my purchase, which was the MacBook that I bought.
[00:04:05.070] - Gordon
That's right. We said we would check in with you in May to see how it was going.
[00:04:09.410] - Taylor
So, yeah, it's been great. I've absolutely loved it. The speed is obviously really, really nice to have. And the extra screen space, I think was well needed. And kind of going back to a smaller screen does feel very, very small. And I think you have those issues when you worked on a small screen it's fine, but as soon as you go up, it's hard to go back to a small screen. And yeah, I've just loved the size of it. I think it's perfect. It's just bigger enough that I can still get a lot of work done, but not too big that I feel that it's overly...
[00:04:52.350] - Gordon
Cumbersome.
[00:04:53.030] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly. So it kind of fits my lap very nicely, if I'm in bed or on the sofa or whatever. And yes, it's been great.
[00:05:03.160] - Gordon
I love how you put in bed on the laptop. That's when you're working away. But being comfortable is it?
[00:05:08.700] - Taylor
Exactly. Or watching Netflix or whatever?
[00:05:11.290] - Gordon
The joys of programming.
[00:05:12.590] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:05:15.970] - Gordon
So, a couple of things with your new laptop. One is that you can run iOS apps or some iOS apps on Apple Silicon, which is what they're using now for their laptops. Have you tried this yet?
[00:05:30.310] - Taylor
So that wasn't new for this laptop because I had it on the old laptop as well. I haven't really found that I've needed it or wanted to use it, really. I find that a lot of iOS apps, the reason they work on iOS is because they're mainly touch based, and so they just don't really work or translate over to a Mac app because you don't get that same experience of being able to swipe. I think the trackpad, I think Apple can do something similar with the trackpad. So for example, if you want to, they have a feature for PDFs where if you want to add a signature, you can do that and you can either scan it or upload, or you can use the trackpad. And instead of having to push down, you can actually just kind of like move your mouse on it.
[00:06:19.670] - Gordon
So you're drawing your name.
[00:06:21.230] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:06:21.494] - Gordon
Your signature.
[00:06:21.530] - Taylor
And it's more like a trackpad where you, or just a screen like an iOS screen or just any sort of device screen. And it's quite nice to use. So, I mean, if they can bring that kind of functionality into it, then yes, I think it could be. It could work well, but I've never really found the use case. I think the biggest thing in recent Mac updates have been shortcuts that they brought over to the Mac, which were originally iOS shortcuts, and everyone was wanting them for the Mac because they're just so so powerful and you can do a lot. It's kind of like Zapier, but you have kind of control of your entire system, your device. So you can get your battery status when you open specific apps or things like that. You can run and trigger automations and things which no other app or external system can do because they don't have the physical device data to work with. So that's been one of the biggest things that I've liked about the newest kind of Apple OS release.
[00:07:30.680] - Gordon
See, my prediction is that I think the iOS apps are going to morph into a bigger universal binary, so that you'll end up with an application, one application that will run on an iPhone, it will run on an iPad, but it will also run on a Mac, and it will take into account which device you're using it on, and change accordingly. Which means that for developers, they've got one code base to update. Because if you've got an app like, for example, Evernote. Evernote is on iOS, it's on iPad, that's one app, and it's got its own app on Mac, which is a different app completely. And they've also got a web app as well, so you can use it on the web. But if they were able to combine the Mac and the iOS applications all into one application that would run on all devices, then they've got one code base. Feature wise, they'll be able to keep the features up on all devices at the same time, release them all. I think that's where it's going to go.
[00:08:39.740] - Taylor
Yeah, that could be good.
[00:08:40.770] - Gordon
I think that could be really useful then. And then the sort of the App Store, the iOS App Store and the Mac App Store will combine in certain ways so that you can have the same app in each store, or probably it will just become one store. It will just become the App Store. But I think that's where that's going. And that's quite exciting, I think.
[00:09:02.340] - Taylor
Yeah, I think it could be really interesting.
[00:09:03.870] - Gordon
Especially if you can use it on the watch as well, because the watch is another, you get apps for watches as well. So that's all part of the iOS app at the moment. So they've shown they can already do that. It depends if the apps start to get too big when you download them, because you're downloading all the code for everything. But be interesting to see. Any downsides to your purchase?
[00:09:29.530] - Taylor
I don't think so. I think it weighs a tiny bit more, which you do feel. It's not major, but you still do feel that it's heavier both when you're holding in your hand and when it's on your back in your backpack. And sometimes when you're at a place that you don't have much room, it can be a bit bulkier and a bit more cumbersome where it takes up more table space than you might like. Or part of it is hanging off the edge of the table, which isn't a big issue. But you obviously prefer to have more space. But sometimes you jut don't have that luxury of having more space and it's also a lot deeper. So if you're like at a place that's got like bar stools and coffee shops that have stand up sections with kind of bar stools and a bar desk shelf type thing, you do get less room to write and put your wrist because it is deeper. And so obviously you take up more space on the table. And that's one thing. And the other thing is the charger. I found some places it doesn't fit, like in this kind of desk bar place. I had one where the MacBook Pro charger wouldn't fit into the plug because where the head of the plug was the bottom of it because it's a 140 Watt charger, which is a very powerful and big brick, it was too high, so it didn't actually plug into the wall.
[00:11:04.150] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:11:04.150] - Taylor
And kind of the desk. So that was kind of annoying. But apart from that, it's been great.
[00:11:10.340] - Gordon
So just being careful which plugs you look for.
[00:11:14.030] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:11:14.030] - Gordon
Very good. Anything else you want to say on your new toy?
[00:11:19.130] - Taylor
Not really. I got another charger for my laptop, so you have to buy them in two sections. You buy the cable, which is the MagSafe into USBC, and then you buy the brick, which is 140 Watts. It's quite expensive, which I wasn't a big fan of, but it saves me a lot of time because I don't have to keep unplugging it from my desk and put it into my bag and vice versa. And it's very big potential of forgetting it, which I've done a couple of times where I've forgotten it and left it at home.
[00:11:50.760] - Gordon
Plus if one breaks, you've got a backup now. But you're right, they are expensive, but they do the job very well and they do last, so that's why. Very good.
[00:12:03.250] - Taylor
So that's it from me this week.
[00:12:04.870] - Gordon
So my topic this week is a new way to write blogs. Now this is something that I actually was talking to my friend Paul about on Wednesday and it's something that just came to me and I haven't actually tried it yet. So this is the idea. Using the software that you can use online that do AI writing. So there's lots of different ones out there that do something similar. I've got several. I've got at least three that I can think of where you basically put in a title, you put in a description of what the article that you're going to write is about, and then the AI will go and write something. And it's called 'long form' because it's a blog post and it's quite long. They work reasonably well. I mean, it's not better than a human. It's very good if you want to get some ideas and you're not quite sure what you're going to say at the beginning of it, it gives you a lot of ideas and points that you might want to make. You do need to go back and sort of edit it and change it a bit. And then there's one particular service I use called 'Jasper,' which will look back on what it's already written, or what you've edited, and then continue writing. So it adds more content afterwards, which is very good. That is a really good way to start a blog post. You could also use the AI writing to just create bullet points for you. So that it'll just come... It's very intelligent, artificial intelligence where it will go over the web and it will use its machine learning to work out what's connected to what. And it makes reasonably good guesses as to what the subject matter is that you're talking about. Once you've done that, using two different services that I already have, but you don't have to, you can use other ways of doing this. I was thinking it would be really nice to have a blog that was a video. Because for me it's a lot easier and quicker for me to sit down in front of a camera and just talk for five minutes about the subject that I want to talk about, especially if I've got bullet points or I've got AI that's already written certain things for me. And once I've done that, I'm able to give emotion across using the video, which you can't do as easily when it's written. And so having a blog post as a video that you embed into your site in the blog area, I think will work really well, except when it comes to search engine optimization and making sure that Google will rank you for the content because it doesn't listen to videos, it can't currently transcribe what's already in a video and just take that content and go, "right this is interesting. This is really good. We'll put it in our search index, so if anybody wants to know about this, we'll send them to you." So the third step would be to transcribe the video. Now, there are places that do that. I have a service called 'Happy Scribe,' which we use for "This Week With," and it's very good. And I have multiple hours every month that we don't use. When I purchased it, it was a lifetime deal and I bought a bigger amount than I thought I was going to need on a monthly basis because we had a backlog of "This Week Withs" that we wanted to get done reasonably quickly. It still took six months, but I mean, that's reasonably quick compared to how long it would have taken if I'd bought a lower package. So being able to run blog post videos through it, getting a transcription - it does then need to be edited again, because sometimes it makes mistakes. But then I can take that transcription and instead of using it as a transcription like we do with "This Week With," and if you haven't seen them, go to the website, go to an episode, click on 'Transcript' and you'll see what I mean, because it has all the time codes in there and the speakers. But you don't need to do that. You could actually just export it as text. So it's just flowing text, which then looks very similar to a standard blog post. So you can then edit out any errs or ums which it will pick up and put in for you. You can just delete those, do a 'search and replace,' and then you can paste all of the text output underneath your video as a blog. So that should people want to read it or they prefer to read it, then they can do. If they're visual people, I'm a visual person. I much prefer to watch a film than read a book. And I know what you're going to say, the books are always better, and this is normally the case. I agree. But for me, I learn quicker and absorb things quicker if I'm looking at something or listening to something as opposed to reading something. So for those people who are like me, they can watch a video. And by doing it, having a video, I can do a lot of things I can't do in a normal blog post. This all came about because I'm doing a talk next week about software tools for children's entertainers. It's at a convention for children's entertainers, which I'll tell you all about next week. And I'm doing a talk on software tools. And I was trying to figure out the best way to sort of do mini reviews of software. And one of the services we use, in fact, if you're watching us live right now, you'll be seeing 'Restream,' which is another service we use to make sure that our video goes to different places at the same time. So it goes to Facebook and it goes to YouTube simultaneously. And by using that, they have a studio facility where you can actually record the output from your camera on the computer and screen share. And they've got really nice, you can do this on OBS as well very easily. It's just I'm using Restream because that's what I happened to look at the other day and saw that it had this facility which was quite nice, and it's got all the embedded animations already in there. So it's nice and easy. And it would take me ten minutes to get myself set up ready to go, screen share to show a particular software and what it actually does while talking and having my face at the side. And then I can upload that to Facebook or I can put it onto a blog. I can do the transcription so it's got all the searchable information. And I just think for me, this is a really good way of doing blog posts. Because the main issue with having a blog on your website, or on Facebook, or wherever you do your blogs, is unless you do it regularly, it's not worth doing. Because the reason for doing it normally is for the search engines and having updated content so that they can come back and re-index what you've added. And it helps with your search engine rankings. But if your last blog post was two years ago, just take it off. It's just not worth having on there. It really isn't. You ideally want to blog at least once a week, once a fortnight at the very least. If you can do it more than that, so much the better. But it does take time. And that's why I was looking for a way that I thought I would be able to do blog posts quickly. So I'm going to try it with this new Facebook group, which is the "Software Tools for Entertainers" group that I've just set up. We keeping you for some reason?
[00:20:41.020] - Taylor
No.
[00:20:41.290] - Gordon
Are you looking at your watch there?
[00:20:42.470] - Taylor
My watch is dead.
[00:20:43.780] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:20:47.650] - Taylor
I was wondering why it wasn't turning on.
[00:20:47.650] - Gordon
So, yeah, I'm going to give it a go with that and see how it goes. And then if I find that it's a lot quicker than just sitting down and writing and going and finding screenshots and finding images and so on. I think I still want a cover image no matter what, I still want a cover image. I don't want the video to be the cover image because I think that gives visual interest to encourage people to actually come along and watch, or read your blog post. But if that works well, then I can probably sit down and do maybe four or five at a time, which is potentially a month's worth. And if I can do that in an afternoon, one afternoon in a month, I can do four or five of these. That I think is worth doing. And I think that's a good way to get your opinions and your content out there quickly and easily. So I shall report back to you and let you know how it goes. If you have the ability to test this out as well, then please do and leave comments below. We want to read about them and find out how you got on and whether it was a time saver for you or not.
[00:22:02.950] - Taylor
Yeah. I mean, going back to what you were saying about how you prefer to watch something, I much prefer to read something. I'd rather click onto your website, skim through your text and leave your website as soon as possible once I realize it's not what you've got. I find that there's a lot of videos that have a lot of, I don't know what you call them, just...
[00:22:23.810] - Gordon
Filler.
[00:22:24.370] - Taylor
Yeah. Just added content that is...
[00:22:28.270] - Gordon
30 second countdowns at the beginning of the video.
[00:22:31.110] - Taylor
Not that! It's the...
[00:22:33.130] - Gordon
If you're watching on Facebook, you know what I mean?
[00:22:35.770] - Taylor
They just talk and talk in the beginning. And it's like I just want to get to see if you're doing what I'm interested in, what I'm trying to find out. If I'm having to go through 30 seconds of introduction, then 30 seconds of you explaining how to do something before you've even got to what the actual topic is about, I'm not going to sit through that. Whereas I can very quickly skim through your blog post or text and see, okay, you've got that, you don't have that. I'm gone or I'm here.
[00:23:07.570] - Gordon
I mean, this is a little bit different because this isn't a blog. So what you're saying could easily apply to "This Week With," but this is specifically a show. It's an audio show or video show. So yes, we do have an intro. Yes, we do talk at the beginning with the news, and then we do get to our topics. We also though, have the transcripts available for you. So you could do what Taylor is saying. And the other thing is there are services out there and websites that will actually precis, is that the right word? It will basically give you an overview of what the text is saying, so that you can very quickly digest the main content or the main points, I guess, in text very quickly.
[00:23:50.570] - Taylor
This is mainly for tutorials and stuff like that. And people that are giving reviews, tutorials, and they just waffle on talking about absolute nonsense for 30 seconds to a minute before they even start.
[00:24:01.480] - Gordon
I think it also depends on what you're expecting as well. For example, if it was a review video, a review of, a review, gosh, that's really difficult to say... A review blog.
[00:24:12.970] - Taylor
If you know what you're going to find, then yes, it's annoying. And if you're going there to actually sit down and find, say you go there and go, I want to know if this does this, then yes, you probably want just text because you can then go and just scan and go, "okay, it does that. Yes."
[00:24:28.460] - Gordon
But if you don't quite understand how something works and you want to know if it's right for you, then sitting and watching a ten minute video is not actually a great deal of time out of your life if it's going to stop, you buying something that's not right for you.
[00:24:42.300] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:24:43.070] - Gordon
It depends what you're looking for.
[00:24:44.400] - Taylor
It also depends on if it's someone that you know, like on YouTube, you're more likely to watch someone and have the intro stuff because you're watching it because of them, rather than watching the video because you're trying to find out how to do something. I think they're the kind of differences really.
[00:24:58.880] - Gordon
And that is a topic for another week. Becoming a person that's known and trusted. We have spoken a bit about that in the past, but what you've just said is something we should come back to definitely.
[00:25:14.770] - Taylor
Okay.
[00:25:15.360] - Gordon
That's everything from me. Have you got any other points you want to make?
[00:25:18.210] - Taylor
No, that's everything from me this week.
[00:25:19.790] - Gordon
So that is us done. Thank you very much for joining us. As always, you can find us on Facebook and on YouTube. Please like, share, and subscribe. We'd like to get it out to as many people as possible.
[00:25:33.330] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes and see our transcripts as well.
[00:25:40.470] - Gordon
Yes. So until next week we will be live at 1pm on Friday, if you want to catch us live. We will see you then. Until then, my name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:25:53.640] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:25:56.780] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:25:57.450] - Taylor
Bye
