Hello and welcome to MacPower Users. I'm Stephen Robles, joined by my friend and yours, David Sparks. How's it going, David? It is going fantastic, mister Robles. you Wonderful. Well, I'm very excited because I get to bring a a new guest, first time guest ever on Mac Power Users, creator, co founder of Things, currently the CEO, Werner Yannick. How you doing, Werner? Good, thank you for having me. Thanks so much for joining. Where are you joining us from? You're in Germany right now? in Germany from Stuttgart, which is also where the headquarters are of the company. Yeah, that's in the southern part. So you don't have to look it up. And it's where Porsche comes from. So maybe you know it from that. Porsche and things. That's what it's famous for. That's right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Well, I met Werner at W W D C earlier this year. It was wonderful to meet you at a little little developer gathering. And David, you said you met Werner as well? Yeah, years ago we met ~ at one of the Apple things. I don't remember which one it was. Mm-hmm. Very cool. Very cool. But I I've been an admirer of things for many years. In fact, things is so things started in two thousand seven. Is that when the app started? Hard to believe. That's right, yeah. That's when development started. We're almost twenty years. ~ Now was it ma it was Mac First, correct? The things for the Mac at first? Yeah, that's right. Well, it's... What yeah, I know that of course, Everything was Mac for Stephen. of course. Yeah, it's actually quite a funny story because we started developing for the Mac first. The iPhone wasn't even announced back then. And while we were developing for the Mac, the big iPhone event came and ~ that was in the very same year, right? Like in the middle of 2007. ~ And... We didn't have our version ready. Like by the end of 2007, we had an alpha release going. But then they announced the iPhone SDK. And that was a big moment for us. Because instead of finishing the Mac app, we actually started developing the iPhone app. And that was the first one we sold, even though we started developing on the Mac first. Okay, so that's a little bit like the Apple situation where they were kind of working on the tablet and then that technology, Mm-hmm. the multi touch, and then the phone became the thing and Jobs was like, No, we gotta do the phone. That's interesting. Yeah. That's interesting. I mean, I feel like task management back then was a wasteland in Apple ecosystem. There was like nothing. ~ I used to use an app called IGTD. I don't know, Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, I do. Verner, if you remember that one. ~ it was like an indie developer and it was okay and like, you know, and then there was Kinkeless and then, you know, there's all these things going around, but very Mm-hmm. quickly, like when things omnifocus and some of the other like big apps Mm-hmm. arrive. We we suddenly had great options and that was really, Mm-hmm. really awesome. Yeah, it was quite an interesting time back then. Like, I think the most people thought of when you would say managing to-dos at a computer was using, you know, in iCal, there was this little sidebar where you could put, like, three to-dos there, and that was about it. Yeah. Yeah. It was And, So what yeah, sorry. what inspired you to to do? I mean, so at the landscape at the time of Mac apps, I don't know if I I actually don't know. What I wasn't a Mac user so much at this time, ~ but what was the landscape like? What made you decide like we need to do a t a task app? Yeah, I mean, it was scratching our own itch. This was very much ~ something we wanted ourselves. I'm sure you remember the Getting Things Done book was all at the top of all the charts back then. So I would say there was certainly a growing appreciation for personal task management in the general public. ~ And it's quite funny that there was just no software on the Mac or not even on other platforms really that made this possible. And so we thought, let's try to do the best we can to bring personal task management to the Mac. And it's funny you mentioned IGDD. A ver Vernon? What brought you I'm sorry. Just one comment, the guy who did IGDD, Bartek Bargiel actually joined us in 2009. No kidding. Yeah, and Yeah. we transitioned all the users, we brought a nice importer, and he's still working here today. In fact, he's the lead Mac coder. No kidding. I didn't know that. Well, that was Wow. my original like task app on the Mac, the first good one. I remember that yellow interface. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Man, I still remember that. ~ Werner, what what got you into the Apple ecosystem? that's funny. Like, ~ I guess you could say I came pretty late. ~ I was already studying at the university and up until then I had PCs. Maybe what's important to know is that in Germany, owning a Mac back then was very much an outlier. Like that's not something people typically did. The Mac had way more. Not not as bad as in Germany. Honestly, it was here too. It was here too. I I remember like in I I remember like two thousand five, I'd be in an airport and somebody would just walk up to me and say, you got a Mac. That's cool. Let me show Mm-hmm. you mine. I mean that that was the people did that back then. Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay. So maybe Yeah. it was not that different. But from my perspective, certainly it felt different. And a friend of mine at university showed me the Mac. He had like this nice, ~ what was it called? The one that looks like the desk lamp. ~ Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The the Pixar arm almost. Yeah, I forgot the name of it. The Pixar Mac, yeah. Yeah, yeah. ~ ~ And it was just a thing of beauty. I fell in love with that and I actually studied abroad for a year at UCSD. ~ And when I got there, I got my first Mac, ~ the PowerBook G4 back then. ~ Yes. That was just phenomenal. Like I couldn't stop loving this thing. ~ Quicksilver installed on it back then. ~ And you know, the Omnia apps were super cool and I just loved it. It's as I'm so glad you mentioned your love of the beauty of that Mac because when I always think about quintessential apps on Apple's platforms that have whimsy and beautiful design, I always think of things because it just feels like that's like the gold standard of a third party developer making an app that feels as whimsical as Apple does. And I'm curious from your your team perspective, you know, does that come from you? Does your team which Is about twelve people now, you say? Is it like twelve people on your team? Mm-hmm. Eleven. Mm-hmm. Eleven people. Is it like a collaborative team effort over the years when it has come to design and little animation touches, or is there some select fuse? Does it come from you that that kind of whimsical design feeling comes from? So I think It's a mixture of all of what you said. So let me expand on it. Maybe Certainly it is the culture at our company ~ and that must start from the top. Otherwise, you couldn't establish such a culture and ~ Both me and our designer like we have a dedicated designer is also the co-founder Christian ~ He ~ has just great taste great Direction. Yeah has a very good vision and everything we discuss a between the two of us. But nothing works without a great team. And ~ over the years, I guess we have hired people who also have an eye for these kinds of things, for good design, and not just an eye for it, but the willingness to put in the effort to get there. Because you know, it's very hard. Sometimes it takes a lot of iterations. We think a design is good, we try to implement it. It's not good, we have to throw it. way we have to rework it. This can be very frustrating ~ for developers also if they're not on board. But gladly I would say the entire team is on board and by now whenever we design something there is like brutal feedback from inside the company from everyone Mm. and then we do iterations and so forth. So very much a team effort. How does that I'm I'm that feedback, I'm so curious. one of my favorite books is Creativity Inc., or the book about Pixar. And they talk Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Sure. about trust and candor being so Mm-hmm. important to the internal culture of a team because you Mm-hmm. can't really be honest without having trust, where people can know that they're not being attacked. It's the ideas that are being evaluated, and also the freedom to be candid about how you think about these designs. How is that? culture been developed in cultured code, making you guys making things. Is that something that when you hire someone, you just say like this is how we communicate? And and how internally, like is that feedback, does it feel harsh? Do people are are they accustomed to it? How do you guys balance that? It's hard to tell you how exactly it came to be this way. I don't know what the factors are. Certainly I myself try to be as open to criticism as possible, right? Like this is an active effort because if somebody tells you it's like, I think this is not good. you know, after you've done two design sessions with the designer and we like it, yeah? And then we get the feedback. It's sometimes hard. Like you have to really work and reason yourself through it and so forth. So ~ it doesn't come super easy, but by now I think that is the culture we have. It's hard to pinpoint where exactly it came from. ~ Well, and honestly, if you've got a culture where the boss can be criticized for a design or an idea, I think that's a great way to make everybody feel comfortable receiving criticism. That's true. That's very true. And then also what helps, of course, is we have very low fluctuation in who's actually working here. I told you before, Bartek has been with us for, I don't even know how many years, 2009 ages. And we have similarly long other people. And once you work together as a team, there's a lot of trust that builds up over time. And then that allows ~ honesty without the other side feeling attacked, right? Like you assume it comes from a good place, which is everyone tries to do the best product in the end. I wanna preface on one more thing. Was there can you remember a time that maybe you felt really strongly about a design or UI decision and your team disagreed and it ended up going the other way where you didn't get your idea but your team actually and then, you know, did it to paint out is it just some kind of situation like that where there's a disagreement? How did you work through it? Do you remember anything like that? That would be great if I could remember something. There certainly were things like that. Well we can come back to it i if it comes out, Yeah. but I would love to know. Like I don't know if you pulled a Steve Jobs move where you threw an iPad on the table and you said, Make it work or something like that. I just you see Okay, see, Boot faster! you say you're coming across very soft spoken right now, but I I'm just curious if in some of those meetings you're throwing stuff Yeah. I I think I think he threw on the table. a box with the things app in it in a an aquarium to see if there were any bubbles coming out That's exactly that's it's gotta be airtight. of it. Yeah. He said, Guys, do it better. No, I I'd like to return to the whimsy topic a little Mm-hmm. Mm. bit 'cause I honestly think like Steven said, you guys are the gold standard for ~ an app that gets the whimsy right. Because I also love whimsy, but there's also a point where it's too much and it like feels like an interference, like it gets in the way. But I like the apps that have Whimsy. That's the reason I fell in love with Apple to begin with. And Mm-hmm. and I feel like Apple's kind of lost its way with Whimsy. But you guys you guys do get the balance right. And how do you figure that out? Like when someone proposes a feature that adds just a tiny bit of whimsy, where do you how do you set the dial? So maybe you have to help me out a little bit what whimsy means ~ to a non-native speaker. Yeah. I'll I'll tell you I'll I'll give you two examples because in more in Yeah. more power users, we're gonna talk a little bit about our own app development, me and David, and why Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. my respect for developers like you guys just increases exponentially every time I try to make one silly change through AI. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But little things like in I haven't looking at the Things app right now, when I click the plus button, the way Mm-hmm. the new task kind of card, just the way it gently expands. There's a slight shadow, and so it's the task is white, but the background is a slightly ~ darker kind of grayish blue. Just that little whimsy of when I click Mm-hmm. the plus button, that feeling of the window opening. And even when I click a task to be done. I actually tried building this into my own app and and just could not get it to feel like things. It Mm-hmm. just feels so good to check a task off Mm-hmm. in the Things app. That's the kind of whimsy I think we're talking about. Okay, I understand. Yeah, well, that is very important to us. And I think, like, whimsy sounds a bit funny to my ears. I'm not sure if it's, if it's funny, but we do think that all of these things serve a purpose. So we have spent a lot of time ~ making this feel good. ~ Cause there's something about, like, if you understand the thing you're interacting with, it feels simple to you as a human. And we, as the top most goal, when we set out to build things, this was one of the big goals to make the feel as if it's not there, as if you don't have to think about the app, because you're supposed to manage your life in there. And your life is already complex enough, like everything is just coming at you. And this app should be a place of peace and simplicity. And so, ~ you know, how do you transition from a to-do that is collapsed, that is small, it just shows the title, to show all the details? Well, we wanted it to feel the most natural way possible. And then that required spending quite some time on this very animation. Like this was, you know, what others would call an unreasonable amount of time spent on this thing. And many iterations, you can't believe, like for the animations. We built our own animation framework because the default curves that were provided by core animation were not cutting it. We wanted to have nicer Mm. curves. Back then they didn't have springs, so we built our own. In the Wow. meantime, they exist. But then not only that, they're composed together. things happen at different speeds when you expand the Todo. The expansion itself is at a certain curve. ~ The shadow appearing is at a different one, and then we fine-tuned them and so forth. ~ So yeah, there's a lot ~ of work that went into that. See that that right there, that level of detail that just building your own animation language. I just want to share this is my things app. There's only one task in here. But like as you were saying, just clicking the plus icon, the beautiful way it slides down, double clicking a task and it slides down like that. It all of it like you can tell. I I would say you guys did not spend too much time on it. I think You whatever it took to get here is why things just is so is so special. Well, thank you. I mean, we certainly don't think it's too much time, I think. But if you're coming at it with a different perspective, you would say it's unreasonable. And but that is the culture here. You know, speaking of culture, I'm I'm curious. You've been doing this for almost two decades. And you Mm-hmm. know, a lot of apps, especially nowadays, they either go the venture capitalist investment route, which sometimes allows you to grow faster, ship more features, Mm-hmm. but then there's trade offs for that. You probably have more voices speaking into the design. And you guys are still independent, eleven people on the team. Did you have opportunities over the years to maybe shift that and take investment? And did you say no or How have you guys thought about that part of the business? Hmm. Yeah, we certainly got contacted a lot. Like once you're on the radar, once Yeah. you're in the App Store charts, ~ the emails keep on coming and they still do up to this day. ~ Of course, when the big ones wrote in, know, big VC firms, I did have to call just out of curiosity, to be honest. Sure, ~ sure. But I quickly realized that this is not a good fit for us. Like what we're trying to do ~ requires us to be able to work at our own pace, to be able to say no to things that we don't think are worthwhile, ~ to not be on this speed pressure. that is put on you with investments already thinking at an exit. This is all not what we wanted to do when we set out to do it. And I guess as we are working on this product, it became more and more clear that this is not my goal in life. That's not what I want. I want to build something great that I can be proud of, that is well crafted. know, through craftsmanship, all of these values are Hmm. way more important. That's so good. Werner, so we're living in this weird time where suddenly AI brains are getting applied to software and in Mm-hmm. a lot of ways. And ~ one of the things we definitely want to talk to you today is about the Siri AI and things. Mm-hmm. And ~ at this point, we're still kind of in the development cycle. Siri AI isn't out for the public yet, but I know you guys are working on it. Tell us how it's going. It's going well. ~ We're far along. It's almost ready from our side. Looking forward to the OS release. ~ Running it on the beta, some things work already very well, like creating new to-dos. This works the best it has ever worked. So, you know, we've started supporting this a long time ago, back when it was called SiriKit, and you could integrate with ~ it, and you could say, hey, ~ remind me to buy milk in things. You always had to say in things. And that worked pretty well over the years. Some of our users use that as a task. entry method, but I would say it was flaky enough that you couldn't rely on it 100 % of the time. And so then it's hard to pick up that habit. Like it would misunderstand things or Yeah, sure. If it doesn't work and Yeah. wouldn't get the title right and so forth. So that's why we are super excited about this year, because I think it's going to get quite the upgrade in understanding you correctly. It just doesn't take many failures with a voice ~ interface for people to give Exactly. Yeah. That's when up on it. It's gotta be really reliable. And ~ you know, when We were heading into WWDC. We were all questioning how is Apple gonna do this? You know, we knew Mm-hmm. Siri was gonna get better. A lot of people are arguing, well, it's gonna be they're gonna adopt MCP, you know, model context protocol, Mm-hmm. and then you can just pull your app in with an MCP. But they Mm-hmm. kind of did something different, right? They made kind of in essence their own protocol using Siri Mm-hmm. AI. And one of the questions in my mind is like, How hard is that to develop? I mean, for those of us that are enthusiasts and we want Siri AI to succeed, ~ what's the lift for developers to actually implement it? What's been your experience? I mean, for us, it's not that hard to build because it's yet another input method from the outside, right? Like we already support Apple script and the Siri kit I mentioned before, and right, there's many ways how you can interact with the things data. And this is number five, know, method number five. So it's not that much work. ~ However, ~ the path Apple has chosen is to say, well, they are gonna find the schema is what they call it of what the reminders space is about. They say look a reminder or a to-do has the certain features it can have a title it can have a note and it can have a due date and you as an app developer are supposed to now implement this feature set basically and we did except things has two dates not just one Yeah. So we have the start date when you want to do a certain to do, and then we have a deadline field also, which lets you record that. And there's no way currently to map this to the Siri model, right? So we had to pick one of the dates and support that. And ~ Yeah, that's tough. Yeah. it's tough. for us, we chose the start date because you want to be able to say, hey, I want to do this tomorrow. I want to postpone it for next week. So it's an easy choice from that point of view, but there are limitations. ~ But like we would be super happy if this use case works super reliable at launch then that's perfect for our users. I think this will be a big feature. And you know in the future Apple could, this is speculative, ~ allow us to define our own schemas to say, hey, here's what we understand, which is something you could do with an MCP. But there's no reason they couldn't support this in inside of the intense world inside the shortcuts world also. So I think it's going to be interesting to see how they evolve it. And it you know, they always start conservative with things like this, so I could see Yeah. that. And ~ I'm I'd be curious actually now that you mention it, to think like what are the parameters available to different categories of apps, like if it's a notes app or if it's a calendar app, like like how far is Apple allowing developers to go ~ with data access? Well, mean, what Apple has basically done is they looked at their own apps and then they Yeah. mapped whatever they have as features into these schemas. Well, a and that's great, but the apple laps, That's the first shot. Exactly. yeah. ~ That's why people get third party apps. So what what will when Siri AI is on people's phones and they have things, will what will they be able to do that they couldn't before with Siri AI specifically? So I think the biggest feature would be if this is reliably working. They could have done it before, but now they can do it, but reliably. That is worth way more than any other features you could get. ~ And from the creation of tasks perspective, it looks pretty good at the moment. Like it understands much more than before. In fact, you can even stop saying in things. So it learns over time that you are a things user and you can just say, remind me to do X. ~ and then it will pick things for you. ~ we've seen this working in, in some of the tests we did. Hopefully this is actually the experience people have, once it's out. So all of this is great. And then of course there are new things like being able to append notes to the to do. You can ~ easily move it into a list. can in things we have headings. ~ This is currently not working in the betas Apple has shipped, but in principle you can create headings ~ inside those lists and move tasks in there. So there's already a lot of power there and I assume they will fix this until the golden master. hopefully. So it's quite powerful. Yeah, I've I've talked to several developer friends who've said the same thing that their implementation of Siri AI was not that difficult. Especially if like things you've already been using App Intense and shortcut Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. support that there's a lot of, you know, ways to cross that over. That's true. I mean, we did have to build it completely from scratch for Siri AI, you know, the interface Yeah. with it. It's not like we were able to reuse what we did for shortcuts before. ~ But that's okay. Like there's, it's not a huge amount of work. I mean, it kept us busy over the summer, as you can imagine, and still does, Yeah. but it's fine. The amount of work is very reasonable. Now for for Siri AI, being able to speak naturally and it interpret what you say is kind of one of the big features there. And I'm curious with the things app, I know a friend of ~ my co host on primary tech, Jason, he was asking, and I've heard other people ask, natural language input for tasks. Have you ever considered putting that just right in the app when you create something new? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, we have It's something that we think is interesting currently. It's not in the app ~ There are some ideas we have there of how to maybe do it differently than Then a few other examples I'm thinking of but this is not yet in there. Yeah Okay. All right. But but if you could talk to Siri AI, would it interpret a pretty, you know, natural thing like it said hey, I need to take out the trash tomorrow at eight Mm-hmm. or or something similar and like it could just put it in things with that natural language. So can Siri AI kind of be that bridge, possibly? ~ Certainly. I mean that if you're dictating one to do basically with lots of information that already works pretty well now I would say. Yeah. I I call it voice ~ and text. You know, it's like the in the old way you had to say the words in a certain certain order. You had to say in things Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. at the end and like you had to do all and so th the user had to be trained like a monkey, exactly the right words, you know. Exactly. And like if you if you messed it up just a little bit while you're saying it, Yeah, yeah, that's right. then it just didn't work. And ~ Over. so do we solve that problem with Siri AI? Yeah, And it put a lot of stress on you also, because then it's like, ~ now it's like I have performance anxiety. I have to say the right words in the right. Yes, Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So is it it it seems better at that? Are you also able to ask it to pull like tell you about your stuff in things, like your task in the things app and it'll give you reports? Yeah, so that's the other side, right? Like one is the action ~ aspect, creating new things, modifying things. The other thing is retrieving information. And for that, we need to ~ tell Spotlight ~ about all the data you have in the app. And this is something we have not yet, not done so far. So this is the second thing we're working on and it will ship ~ once the new OS ships. So you basically give... ~ Spotlight index the information from for what is inside the app. We will be able to make this So you can turn it off if you don't want that but for people who do we will send all of this to to Spotlight and then Siri can access it. That's the idea anyway And then you can ask it. Apple made a pretty big deal. ~ sorry. Hey Yeah, sorry. No, go ahead Hey. Apple made a pretty big deal at the ~ WBC about this new spotlight index system Mm-hmm. they have. You know, they're preloading it on phones now before everything goes public Mm-hmm. so people have a a better experience. ~ from the development standpoint, what's been your experience with the new spotlight? So we don't know how the experience is with the new one, because we haven't used the old one. So I can't contrast them. ~ For the things we are sending it, the titles of the to-dos, for example, you can now search for them. ~ it seems to work OK. So far. The tests we've done but we haven't done this extensively yet. So I don't know how smart it's gonna be when it maybe needs to follow Through your model, you know, like if you tell it this is the project find a similar project or something like if it's a more complex Request that you make not clear Do you think it'll be as just a specific example, let's say I have a task in things for tomorrow and it's meet David for lunch, Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. and I have an address in the note of the task. If I Mm-hmm. ask Siri AI, hey, where am I going for lunch tomorrow, d will it be able to see my task in things, see the address in the note and be able to tell me? ~ Good question. Because that's something it it seems to be able to do right now. Can it do that? Yeah, good question is specifically for the notes. ~ We currently see that it doesn't find it on iOS, but Mm. on the Mac it does. So I don't know. Like this is all beta times. I suspect it's all coming. So it's not something that you're you're so you're trying to build that Yeah, sure. yeah. Yes. Yeah. in so it does see it, but you're saying right now it's just kinda buggy. Okay. Yeah. Which is, you know, there's still some time. Well, my my sincere desire, 'cause that that Apple's native apps are doing stuff like that. That's the big point of the demo, is that all of you third party developers get the same goodies, you know, that you should have the same ability to do that stuff. So maybe they're just not there yet, but I I sure hope when this ships that that that Mm. works because Siri AI success or failure is gonna really hinge on third party developers being able to get all the the goodness out of it as well. Mm-hmm. Yeah, we're certainly very ~ keen on supporting all of this very well, because we think it's a great use case. You know there's a little a related topic to this, Werner. And it's something I'm just increasingly seeing. I'm teaching a course on AI right now and You ~ we do these weekly meetups and people are like building their own apps now. You know, that suddenly people who are not developers can scratch their own itch and ~ Mm-hmm. you know, they'll they'll make an app that does something that just you know, just fixes a unique problem for them. Mm-hmm. And and I feel like in the in the old days with the Apple II computer came out, it didn't have any software for it. And somebody asked You Wozniak, hey, how come there's no software? And he says, Well, I figured everybody would just write their own apps, you know. And that's what Steve Wozniak would say. But you know, most of us couldn't do that. but now suddenly we That's funny. live in an age where people do that. Steve Steven here has has is making his own Kanban app. You know, so people are doing ~ I've seen. that. And ~ I feel like for productivity app developers, that's gotta be a little bit of a shot across the bow for you. And like, you know, how do you evolve an application, a productivity app, in this age where people are now making their own? Yeah, so I think it's great that Yeah. Yeah. people can do this now. ~ There's a ~ very large barrier of entry if you ever wanted to try out developing your own app, right? And that barrier has been massively lowered so that really almost, I mean, not almost everyone, but a lot of people can try it where previously they didn't. And that is a great thing. ~ because then maybe from that there's a path that you can now go and develop, know, expand it, make it more serious. I don't see it ~ as a danger for us at all, because... You know, our experience making an app like things. This is not something you do if you don't have Yeah. the dedication and the will to keep, keep at it and make it better. And, you know, there's so much more that goes into developing an app than just the code. And I would say that even the code itself, there's only so far you can do go with the current models. Like there's, you can do demos very quickly. You can even do apps. like, but once they reach a certain size and complexity, ~ it's not easy to expand beyond that point. So Yeah. I I don't know if they have the phrase in German, a loaded question, but that that was what I asked you was a loaded question. Okay. Okay. Cause I I think you're right. I I think this is a huge opportunity for people like Mm-hmm. you because ~ for someone like me, I'd have no interest in developing my own task manager app. I I got things to do, right? You know? ~ but what I would love is for ~ an AI engine of my choice to be able to help me get more out of my task manager. you know, to take advantage of all the work you've done on a beautiful, whimsical app, but also have Mm-hmm. give it a brain that's under my control. And and I think that the big opportunity for for productivity apps is to tie into that stuff. ~ and it seems Fully agreed. like you guys are doing that in addition to what you're doing with Siri AI. Tell us about that Mm-hmm. a bit. Yeah, definitely. So, I mean, we always try to open up things to other ways to interact with it, right? Like from the beginning, Apple script, we shipped Apple script support. And then when shortcuts came with the intents, we supported a wide variety of intents from day one. ~ So we love to be able to interface with outside systems and AI is another such outside system. And it happens that what we will ship now first is the Siri AI. That's very important because it's on a clear deadline. But we are very interested in supporting MCP for things as well. So we've already been looking at that. ~ So that you can plug in your AI assistant if you want, right. And it Exactly. can read the data and everything. Yes. This is fantastic. And then you can and you can get more you get more inputs there. You can get the start date and the deadline date. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you can you can ~ and you know getting an efficient ~ MCP I think is key at this point. Mm-hmm. ~ And I I know I'm on kind of a the I'm on the front edge of that, but I'm I just see people every day. And I've always felt like ~ as a user Like for me, I've always been interested in Apple script and ~ just scripting in general because I want to take the hard work developers are doing and I want to glue them together in ways unique to me. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I think the more ways you give the user that now more than ever, ~ I think it's important. So I'm glad you guys are doing that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So what's your experience with that so far? Have you how far down have you gone ~ in looking at C P and and you know? yeah, yeah, pretty far. We have a prototype internally. ~ But as I told you, like Siri AI was more important to get done now. Sure. Sh yeah. So that was a bit on a pause, but ~ we will continue very soon with that. Right. I will say too, just kind of throwing back to what you someone building their own app with AI will be capable of, and we'll maybe touch on this into more power users later, but yeah, trying to build my own task app, it was so clear the limitations because Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. you know I could take it s a certain amount and I was able to get some features, but like you're we talked about earlier, just the little design touches that you and your team have been able to build into things, it's just not possible with AI. But also like rolling your own animation early on your language. A quick question related, like with sync. I'm trying Mm-hmm. to do iCloud Sync in my app, and it has been a nightmare just trying to Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. get that to work. And I had codecs running forever. We'll get to it in a little bit. But like you rolled your own sync engine, ~ I believe, right? You don't use iCloud Sync, correct? Yeah, Yes, that's right. use your own. What why did you choose to do that as opposed to use iCloud? Why did you choose to build your own rather than iCloud Sync Yeah, why on earth? So first of all, I can answer it in a simple way. ~ It didn't exist back when we ~ built this. ~ So that's the easy, it's the cop out to your question. ~ I think the better answer is we would do it again, even today. ~ Right, right. And ~ this is some... This is a realization that has only grown over the time we've been developing the app. ~ I view it that, you know, it's this old build, this old picture that you have of building a tower. And that's sort of what you try to do with software. And you do need a solid foundation. If the foundation is not solid, everything will crumble that you're trying on top. And that starts with the base foundation being the model itself and the ability to sync. And in this area, ~ we have built ~ a syncing mechanism that is very mathematical in nature. So you can almost, I'm not almost, you can make proofs that it's correct if you want to. ~ And we sort of intuit them. ~ We don't write them down formally. But when we're working on this area of the code, it's very much a mathematical endeavor where correctness is like we strive for 100 % correctness there. And then also in the layer where we work with the model. And owning this piece of technology ourselves, we can be certain that it works. And that's what we've done and what we love, because then you can start building on top of it. And to this day, users write in and they just rave about the Sync being excellent and that they sadly don't have quite the same experience in with other apps. So we love this. And because you asked about AI specifically, I think this is an area where current AI are just not good at. Like ~ the code they produce works, but there's no guarantee you have. you know, how well it works. It's almost certainly not thought through well, because there is nobody thinking. Yeah, like, There's no brain actually. Yeah. there is no formulation of a concept first that Mm. you then manifest in code, and then ~ you adhere to that concept strictly and stringently to make sure that it actually ~ survives Mm. and so forth. None of that you can get with current AIs. ~ I I I could be wrong, but I feel like you just articulated kind of base level what the difference is between a human developer and the an AI machine. And while the AI can do certain things, but like you're saying, there is a a code, there's like a core part of the human Mm-hmm. developer speaking into the app that is irreplaceable. And I I just love that. That was great. Yeah. I mean I I feel like AI development is great if you've got a itch you and you really need scratch and there's no way to do it. Mm-hmm. But I think for the big the big tools, go with a developer, you know, go with somebody. Yeah. Werner, one question I'd ask you is you make a productivity app, but what what are the other productivity apps that you use? Mm-hmm. Okay, that's a good question. So I like mind note for example, and I'm you guys know it. Yeah, I love that app. Yeah. Yeah. that's great I I used a Launcher currently I'm using The thing with the head Alfred yeah Alfred yeah. We just talked about Alfred and Raycast last year. Alfred, okay, he's an Alfred guy, Yeah But okay. I'm trying out launch bar soon because one of our team members is using that a lot. Yeah, La Launch Bar is a So, yep European developer and ~ we didn't Mm. give that one enough love last week. It's a great app. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I tried it already. It's fantastic. And I think he's even one of the first launchers. I don't know. I don't know much about Yeah. Yeah. the history here yet. So yeah, that's what I use. ~ I use OmniGraffle. I like that a lot. How do you decide where I mean, because you make your own app, how do you decide where to put a task or something? Like do you ever decide like this goes in things? Or do you say, no, this goes in my node or somewhere else? Like what is your mental model for where you put stuff in? Do you use reminders for anything? They just throw stuff in Apple Reminders sometimes. I don't I mean I used it as an import I used it I don't Okay. as an import tool because it it's easier to dictate reminders and we have a reminders import and so that's how I have my work around Right. Yeah. That that may go away in a few months though, so far but Exactly exactly looking for you. Yeah. forward to that. Yeah And sorry, what was the other question? Do I where do I put stuff? How do you pick? Yeah. Do you Yeah, so for me like 95 % of what I do at a computer is inside of, well, has a representation inside of things. So almost every endeavor starts by creating a new project and things and starting to think about what I want to do, taking notes there, ~ advancing it further and so forth. So the mine... ~ ta talk about your things structure a little bit. Like how do you structure your like projects, you know, what what Mm-hmm. is your the architecture of your things install? Yeah, so I really try to stick to this idea that there's one project for everything I do. ~ It gives me... There's a hundred ways you can use things and that's sort of the point. So I don't want to ~ say what I'm doing is exactly what you should be doing. But for me, creating a new project ~ gives me the space to think about it. Of course, if it's just a small thing, then never mind. But then inside that project, it's usually a very organic evolution that happens. So I even start jotting down notes, even in the project notes field at the top at first. And then as it progresses, I make to-dos out of that. I start to create headings, ~ long notes that I start taking, sometimes get split up and archived and so forth. So there's a lot of ~ back and forth. as I work on this project. It's not like I'm writing it all down in the beginning and then just work through it. That's never what happens. Now now one thing things does not have is collaboration though. And so Mm-hmm. what do you use with your team to collaborate with tasks and projects? So there's very specific collaboration tools that we use. ~ For code we use GitHub, as many people do. ~ And then internally in the team we use Slack, which covers a lot of the use cases. We have a very... I would say disciplined ~ Slack usage where everything is a thread and there's not too much noise and the team size is pretty small. So I am, for example, reading ~ everything that is written on a given day in Slack and many others do as well. And that is a great way to communicate within the team. By now we're almost fully remote. We started out here locally in Stuttgart, but... over time that has transitioned. So it's a full remote setup. And these tools are great. Now. And no, So you don't have another project management app like for task or anything? no, no, no, we don't. So how do you what but how then do you the team like, all right, so this person is currently working on the you know, the Syria AI integration or whatever. Where does Mm-hmm. that division of labor and how it's assigned live for you guys? Well, mostly I would say it's in Slack. There's a channel Okay. then for a given feature that we're working on. And that's pretty nice because you can have also design discussions there. The team can read about it as it's happening. They can chime in. I told you before Sure. about the criticism. It's like, guys, I think this is not a good idea. Ha ha Yeah. ~ So that is certainly a lot of where this lives. ~ And then the other aspect is we try to ~ give people a lot of independence. So for example, the Siri AI ~ is mostly worked on by two people at the moment and one guy is doing the spotlight. ~ integration. The other guy does the Siri AI integration. And within that, there's not that much coordination effort needed. Like they have a lot of freedom to move this project ahead by themselves, basically. Have you ever thought about building collaboration into things so you guys could use it that Yes. way? Yes, we have. And, well, it's not in the app yet. ~ yeah, Sure, yeah, we all know that. We we we got that part. exactly. And, ~ and, ~ okay. ~ it would be a great feature. ~ it's just, ~ Yeah. in the prioritization of what we're working on as a small team, ~ it has not made the cut yet. Yeah. You've been in enough ~ Apple ~ briefings to to know how Apple answers stuff. It's not currently a feature. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Sure. Okay. Not currently in the app. Yeah, but they do own their own sink engine. I'm just gonna make an observation, so That's what I'm saying. So Yeah. Mm I already got an email address associated, you know? hmm. Exactly. Yeah. The ~ the ~ one of the things that always impresses me, Werner, is the European indie app movement. You already mentioned MindNode launch bar things. Mm-hmm. there's a bunch of stuff going on in Ukraine. ~ tell us a bit about that. I think ~ American listeners probably aren't as aware of how rich Mm-hmm. that that development environment is. Mm-hmm. That is my perception also. In fact, quite a lot of people write in telling us, I am so surprised that Finks comes from Germany. I wouldn't have thought that. I mean, we say it on the website if you go to about, but other than that, maybe it's hard to find out. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. ~ There's a lot of apps ~ coming from here. ~ I love to see it. What can I tell you? Do any do any The the it go ahead, Steve. of do any of the DMA or other laws that are passed over there ever touch you the business where you have to kinda work around it or have to think about what decisions we have to make for the app in case 'cause Serie AI is not going to be in the EU. And so, Mm-hmm. I mean that. you know, features like that, how do you just say, well, we're just going to do it anyways because most of our market is is US or how do you think about that? Yeah, yeah, certainly. It's about 50%. We off the market is the US for us. And then the rest of the world is the rest. So it makes a lot of sense. Also, I am positive, I think they will work it out. Apple and the EU, mean. So I suspect it will come. We'll see. Yeah. I'd like to think so, man. They need to sit down together and sort these things out. Yeah. But the but my my question really was just it seems like there's you guys support each other too. It's like a nice community. Like when I Hmm. go to Apple Events, I notice a lot of the European developers already have relationships with each other. And ~ do you guys have like a formal organization over there? Do you guys do your own meetups? How's that work? Yeah, there some meetups every once in a while, which is this year. ~ The guys from Ulysses ~ had a meetup organized by themselves. Yeah. Another great European based app, That's yeah. right. Yeah. And in Leipzig, I'm not sure how you say in English. ~ I guess it's Leipzig. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. ~ Was a great time. Yeah, we hung out and exchanged. ~ But I'm just, mean, I'm just as happy to go to WTC, I must say, and meet all the other people. It's like, I'm not somehow feeling more close to the people here. Like meeting fellow developers. is a great thing. And I was sad when WDC in person stopped happening, because that was always a highlight. ~ And somehow I didn't catch on that there was so much buzz going around these new WDCs ~ that they started, because there's a lot happening, right? And last year was my first WDC post-COVID, basically. And I loved it. So Yeah. W I mean in the old days I'll continue doing that. when it was in San Francisco and San Jose they there were conferences going on in the neighborhood, you know. That's So it it really was more of a circus back then. But but but it's it's getting there. just have one more question too on the other features. We mentioned collaboration. What are some of the other big feature requests that you guys hear and how do you sort them? That you're automatically like, nope, not doing that. ~ 'cause I know just from launching a little app a couple of weeks ago, the the Mm-hmm. requests is just deluge. Just people want, you know, all kinds of things. And some of them are great suggestions, like time tracking. And it's like, yeah, that would be Cool, I guess, but also there's other apps for that. And so how do you hear some of these requests like things for Windows or Android? And do you just immediately dismiss which ones do you consider? How do you filter all? I mean things for Windows and Android is maybe a bit specific because that means an entire new product versus maybe Yeah. features within the app as it is Maybe to speak to the latter first ~ I think the way we we do it is ~ We've been at it for enough time now that there's seldom a feature request that surprises us. So usually we've Sure. heard it before, but ~ over the years, what we do is when we hear a feature request, we try to understand it as best as possible. Like some people who write in, we sometimes send them back. It's like, Hey, what do you mean exactly? What was your problem you try to solve and so forth. And ~ then giving the limited resources that we have. It's a question of which ones do you attack? ~ And like I would say, we train our neural network here in the brain by inputting into it these feature requests. And we, you know, we have lists as well where we keep track of them, but mostly I think it happens in our brains where we get a feeling for What is the direction that most feature requests point towards? And Mm. do we like this direction of evolving the app? Or is that not really where we want it to see going and so forth? Yeah. So this is the process. And then there crystallizes the next thing we want to work on where we say, all right, this is really, this fits both the direction we want the app to go in. It does cover certain feature requests we've received. this is what we do now. And then we try to do the best job at that. So a combination of customer demand plus your own interest in Mm-hmm. the way the app should evolve. Mm-hmm. And it's funny you said like an intuition, again, just separating, you know, the human developer versus a machine developer. Mm-hmm. I don't know, I don't know if that intuition can be come from an LLM. You know what I mean? And that's just like you're saying, you i input all these things. but when it comes to feature requests, I don't know if you would want to can reveal this. What is a feature you want specifically that you would love to see in things but just haven't been able to put in there yet? You Putting you on the spot. I mean, we're working on them. ones that I... Yeah, Yeah, I mean when it's Stephen, Okay, okay, all right. Yeah, when it's your app, you the the speatures you want get in. yeah, yeah. That's that's ~ no, we do put stuff in that is also... like we just, tomorrow we will release an update where repeating tasks get way more flexible. I happen to be not that much of a repeating task user myself, but we have lots of people in the team and lots of our users are very heavy users and there were just a few things that we had to get much better, like completing repeating tasks early, stuff like that. so this is coming. Okay. well I'm curious too. we're gonna David's gonna get into the app store stuff in a second. You know, things is not a subscription right now. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that is very different from most apps that you see in the app store. And Mm-hmm. so I'm curious what you know it continues like how have you guys thought about that? The one time purchase for subscription, maybe that'll change in the near future, who knows? But like what has been the thinking behind that? We have the dinosaur business model by now. I give my app a one time purchase, I've seen, I've seen, yeah, you joined the dinosaur club. but it's like three dollars. Thank you, thank you. Thanks. Yeah, so what can I tell you? It worked for us for a long time and there's no rush. We from changing any of that for us. It's a you know, highly successful to this day when you go into the App Store top pay charts ~ so Yeah. There's no strong pressure to move now having said that we do get people who write in ~ who tell us, I would like to try your app, but ~ I have to pay upfront 50 bucks for the Mac and 10 bucks for the iPhone. That's a 60 buck investment. Now we do have a trial for the Mac, but it's only two weeks. And maybe that's not really much enough time to see if a personal productivity system works for you. So I'm sure that with the current business model, leaving some users, we're locking them out basically. ~ So it's not that we're in any way dogmatic about this. ~ It worked for us so far, it is successful, but we're certainly looking at options. Yeah y y you know, Werner, you guys were one of the first apps. I think you were there on opening day, weren't you, in the app store for the iPhone Mm-hmm. when it first launched. So you've been there for the whole journey. ~ Indeed. how's the app store doing in your experience? ~ good. Yeah, I mean it's your I mean I Ha ha. think that's a fair answer. I mean you guys have built a successful business on it, you know. Indeed. mean, we built a successful business even before it, I would say. ~ Yeah. Like even though we shipped the iPhone app first, and that was the first cash that we earned. ~ The Mac app was released half a year later and there was no Mac app store. And that was, you know, for revenue wise, the Mac app brought in way more revenue in the beginning. So It's not that we think the App Store was a necessity for the success, but ~ it's a great tool. I personally, Apple keeps stressing this. It's so easy to pay money in the App Store. Like there's no simpler way to pay for something. And that is worth a lot, ~ very clearly. A and the international markets, like you don't just sell it in Germany, Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. That's right. you sell it in ~ most countries and that that So solves that problem for you. I'm I'm curious though in you know in recent years app store ads have been a thing and a lot Mm-hmm. of companies do that. I just searched for things in the app store on my iPhone and Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. the first result is tick tick and then Mm-hmm. that's a paid ad. The second Mm-hmm. result is things three, and then the next result is another ad. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so it's clear that other productivity apps will and I've seen this if you search for Overcast. You'll see an ad for something else before you see overcast. Yeah, yeah. And have I don't know if you guys have done ads before, but do you guys ever consider like, maybe we need to pay for ads to be that first search result? Or is just it doesn't matter because over time you guys have been doing well? How do you guys consider that part? Mm hmm. I think we're in a lucky spot there. People when they search for things, you know, they're not searching for to do app like Yeah. it doesn't really matter if you're in spot one or two. So we don't feel the pressure to advertise there. And I don't mind it so much. I know there's been a lot of negativity. I mean, I don't like that they're showing two ads now. One maybe should have been enough. ~ Right. But it's okay. And we do advertising in the app store as well for some keywords. ~ There's this button where Apple tries to figure out successful ad placements for you. And I assume a lot of these ads are working in that way. ~ It's fine. I think it's okay. Do you how much do you consider marketing outside of the app store? Do you guys have Mm-hmm. kind of a marketing budget you do stuff that ongoing or is it just Mm-hmm. organic discovery? How do you guys do that? I mean, we, we occasionally do things like sponsoring a podcast ~ or trying other forms of ad placements. ~ But my experience has been over the years that there's almost never any signal I get from, from these investments. Like I couldn't tell you if this was worth it or not. ~ And that's a bit hard. Even in the app store, you get a lot of metrics. ~ But even there, it's a bit hard. to know exactly if it was worth it in the end ~ for various reasons. ~ Yeah, so. With with a one with a one time purchase though, you know, there's a total addressable market. And Mm-hmm. once everybody who wants a task app besides reminders has bought it, it's been bought. I mean, you g do you guys still see growth year over year or do you not really consider that as a thing and maybe the next version upgrade as a one time purchase will be the time you get the growth? Like how do you guys gauge that over time? ~ So the total addressable market is limited. But even with the success we've had over all this time, ~ we have still sold, you know, way less than a percent of what we could, of the people we could reach. Right. So we're far from any ceiling of that kind. And ~ Mm. For us, the year over year growth is not the metric that we're interested in. I want things to be successful financially so that we can support the company and we can continue doing what we love doing, basically. And I mentioned before, the VC mindset doesn't quite fit well for us. Well, that's one reason. Like if I would tell this to a VC guy, the conversation is over. Yeah, I I love that though. Honestly. It's like w we live in this world where everybody's like, it's not even year over year, it's quarter over quarter. And you get on this treadmill where you've got to like turn whatever dials necessary just to show a a a positive number. That's not the way to make a great app. Mm-hmm. It's not really the way to make a great anything. So I I I applaud you for that. ~ Verner, if somebody is listening to the show, we often have a lot of ~ budding developers listening to our show. They always key in on the developer shows. ~ can you give a little bit of advice for somebody out there who's who's thinking about getting into development? You know, in this day and age, what what would you tell somebody that wants to get started with this stuff? mean, probably there's not a better time to do it than now. Of course, the app store is quite crowded and will get more crowded as more ~ people start trying it. But still, like the hurdles you would have faced in the past are much lower now to get you going. And ~ you will have a much more fun time, I think, ~ with your first steps. It's just... ~ Nothing is easy. Like you really need to want to do this. And like you want to have a goal that you achieve and keep at it to achieve it. ~ I think that's the biggest point. What skills do they need in addition to being able to develop? You know? I I think there's more to it than just being able to write an X code. Sure. ~ I mean, in the productivity space, which is what I can talk to, ~ building an app for yourself for your own needs gives you a great advantage because you can introspect what you would like this to be in what direction Yeah. it goes. I Steven had that experience recently, right? ~ And what we have I mean, we've been lucky to be very successful, but we really, how did we do it? Well, we built the thing we wanted to use ourselves. That's the age old advice you hear everywhere, but it's so true. ~ That is the biggest driver, I think, for a new product. And so, ~ yeah, you need to have taste ~ and listening to yourself what you want the product to be. How do you develop that taste? You know, someone's trying to not only find their own voice, but they want to be able to see and look at great apps. They need to look at things first. We'll establish that. But then what what what does someone do to they Go buy it now. go? What does someone do then haha to develop the taste after that? Like what did you do? Like what what do you think informed your taste over the years? super hard question to answer. It's super hard to introspect this on yourself, right? But I can tell you we've certainly been influenced like we we saw Apple's apps back then, right? And they were fantastic. The iLife apps back in the day, you know, were just marvels of software. That's how we viewed them. And then I don't know if you remember back then there was this delicious apps, you know, with delicious library and so forth, Delicious library, yeah. Yeah. right? And that whole movement certainly had an impact on us. Like we saw it and it's like, you can, you know, there's a certain craftsmanship there that you can aspire to and you pick your, you know, your, what you want to achieve and then you're trying your best at it. Well, a and you've already mentioned Quicksilver in your early days. I did. Yeah, exactly. I feel like that that is very much things I can feel the influence of those apps and things. Mm. When you say Delicious Library, I'm like, Yeah, I can see that because it's got that level of whimsy to use that word again. And ~ you guys should be proud of what you've done. we want to hear more about kind of what you do outside of the task space, maybe what apps, services you've discovered recently, stuff you're using on your Mac and your iPhone. So just to get you thinking about that. But we talked about the App Store. A lot of developers choose to sell their apps independently on their website and in the App Store. Pay Spot3 just did this recently, so you can get it via subscription in the App Store. or one time outside of it. Obviously you don't Mm-hmm. have to deal with Apple's, you know, 30% or 15% cut if you do that. but you know, you also do the iPhone app. So how come you've decided not to do it outside the App Store, at least for the Mac app? Hmm. I mean, we started outside of the App Store. We had Sure. our own store. And then when did the Mac App Store start? I think 2012, was it? I don't remember. Something like that. It's a few years after the iPhone, yeah. Yeah, so when they started, for quite some time, we had both... Sales channels both through the Mac App Store and on our website and the users have spoken very clearly Almost all of the sales when I mean a very large percentage went through the Mac App Store It's just so convenient and myself as a user I do the same thing If Yeah. it's if it's available and so at some point we only had I think how much was it 20 % of sales left through our own channel and 80 % through the Mac App store just organically that's what happened at which point we pulled the plug of the of our own sales just to simplify the story for users because we otherwise you get confusing people being confused like they don't think they need to download it from the Mac App Store but they had paid on your website and all of this complexity so we got rid of it and ~ worked fine with us. Of course, we would be happy to pay Apple less percent, don't get me wrong. ~ Well then ~ well yeah. Yeah, Pe people are working on that, Werner. ~ Yeah. yeah, yeah. Well my my last question about things, and then we'll hear maybe about some other stuff you're using. Things three is what's in the app store right now. Are we gonna see a things four anytime soon, maybe ish? That's what happens if you call the product things three, it's the version number it begs begs the question ~ Exactly It begs the question. It does. exactly. fact, you know like we were at some point we were at version 3.9 and then people were like well What's gonna happen after 3.9? 9 is gonna be 4.9 What's gonna happen, Werner? 4.0, but I can tell you there's more version numbers after 9. So we're now at Yeah, it's gonna go three point eleven, right? Where exactly? Ha ha. Straight to 11. No, Okay, so we're not we're not gonna get any breaking news out of you on this podcast. I mean, so Is that what you're saying? I mean, not to joke too much, but we're currently at version 3.23. OK. Yeah, I s I see that, yeah. And ~ so there's, there's method to our madness. ~ As I told you before, like it's still highly successful and we love shipping updates for it. ~ Of course there's going to be other things for, but ~ you know, it's important to us to get features out to people that are great. And we just shipped repeating tasks, improvements, Siri AI will be version 3.24, you know. So we're in no rush to get the version four. And honestly, I Yep. really respect that about you guys because I feel like things does get substantive updates and you don't do the trick of the old days where you hold them back for the big new one that you're gonna sell again. You know, that used to be a thing. I mean, we are holding some back. Yeah. okay. But but we're getting substantive stuff. ~ So it's not like we're not, yeah. To be clear. But we try to do both. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. we try to do both, exactly. Well, I will buy whenever new four comes out or whatever model. I'll I love things and ~ sitting right here. And even if I've yeah even after I built my own app, ~ things is just it's special. And I think, you know, you talked about intuition and all the things that make I think human development. It feels like things has a soul. As strange as that sounds, when you use an app Hmm. like Things, you're like this, you can feel the work that you're and your team have put into this app and it's beautiful. So thank you ~ for all that work that you've That's great to hear. done. Thank you. V Verner, we always like to end these interviews ~ with you sharing ~ a few of your favorite apps and services. I know you've already talked about some of your f favorite productivity apps, but you Mm-hmm. got anything in your menu bar or any other apps that are bringing you joy and delight these days that the listeners may wanna check out? So I have one recommendation which is not good to make these days. ~ It's a quirky one. The All right. app is called Zoom with three O's Okay. and it's got a version two and it doesn't exist anymore. So I'm sorry. I no. bought the license in, I don't know, 2010 or something, but I haven't done the research. maybe there's a similar ones that you can get. So I'm going to tell you what it does, which I think is just fantastic. You know, there's like these window management tools on the Mac that let you partition the windows. I think they're holding it wrong. ~ And Ha ha. zoom is the correct answer, which is what it does is you can hit the command key and the shift key. And while you do so, your mouse cursor now moves the window around. Yeah, so without you clicking or anything, and it doesn't need to be in the title bar, it's just wherever you hover over a window, you hit command shift and now with just moving your mouse, you move the window. And if you hit option shift, now it resizes the window with the same gesture. And there's never been a more fluid... window management ~ experience that you ever had. Like, trust me, try to find an app that does this. I hope they exist out there. If not, maybe somebody can vibe code it. Yeah, I'll say Rob Lesl vibe coded over the weekend. Yeah. Yeah. Got an idea. Got an idea. For me, that has been one of the most pleasurable things on my Mac for a long time. All right. Well well share one with us that we can get. I know. Or on your i or on your iPhone. You know, we talked a lot about Mac and I'm sure you use things on iPhone and all that kind of stuff. But what what are the apps on your iPhone That's right. that are kind of either on your home screen or in your doc or that's kind of critical when you're working on the go? ~ Good question. Or for fun. Maybe are you a th if you're a threes fan or an Altos Odyssey, Mmm. you know? Yeah, I mean I did enjoy the Monument Valley games a lot. Okay. Yeah, yeah. That's great. Yeah, that was good. On the iPad, I guess you could try The Witness. That's a favorite game of mine. And okay. then productivity-wise, I mean I already mentioned before, By Note is excellent. ~ Little Snitch is a great app I like. ~ Okay, Little Snitch, tell me about that one. Because I I go back Yeah. and forth on it because it it gets naggy. I know that they've in the most more recent Yeah. versions, they've kind of turned that down. But the idea behind Yeah. Little Stitch, Ste Stephen, you ever have used that app? Okay, I have not, no, I'm looking it up. so it monitors your outgoing traffic. Yep. Yep. So like if some if some app is phoning home or doing something Mm-hmm. that it shouldn't be doing, Little Snitch tells you, hey, this app is calling out to the internet and you know presumably sending some kind of data from your computer. Mm-hmm. And ~ so Werner, I every time I install it, I feel like I become I just start clicking yes to everything. I just don't yeah. That's right. Yeah. So I have it in auto mode where it Yeah. does allow everything. So I use it more as a network monitor than ~ actually making decisions about whether I allow it or not. ~ And for that, I like it. you know, that's probably what I need to do. Yeah. So then you can Okay. go back afterwards and just see, well, what is calling out? Okay. What do you use to do you ever go back and try to access a Mac remotely, either from your iPad or your iPhone? Do you use tail scale or screens or anything like that for VNCing into your Macs? No You fe you feel like you g you give me a vibe of like a minimalist, Werner, that you're just like, I'm not mo I'm not remoting in, I'm not using a ton of apps. Are you just kinda like you try to do minimal everything? But for minimalness sake, I guess I'm just Sure. trying to solve problems I have. And if I don't have them, then no solution needs to be found. Well, I'm I'm envious of your lack of problems, Werner. Well, I mean, I I know exactly what's going on 'cause I talk to a lot of app developers. They're not using all of the apps because they're in X code making the app, you know, that's Hmm. Sure. that's what they do with their time. Very good. Okay. Well, ~ I need to get you well, we both want to get your thoughts maybe on some AI LLMs and coding and my horrific experience of trying to debug my own app. So we're gonna go record more power users. Wanna Mm-hmm. get your thoughts on that, Werner. But thank you so much for being on the show. We're gonna put a link of Thank you for having me. of course and we're gonna put a link to things in the show notes, of course. Of you've probably heard of it, but just in case you haven't, definitely get Mm-hmm. it. And ~ thanks to our sponsors, one password, backblaze, scribe and notion, and we'll see you next week.