Leo Dion (host): Welcome to another episode, of EmpowerApps I'm your
host, Leo Dion Today I am joined by Hidde van der Ploeg Hidde Thank
you so much for coming on the show.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Thank you for so much for having me, and
Leo Dion (host): you so much for having a straight face while I say your name.
Thank
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah, it's always funny.
It's always funny how they're gonna announce this time.
Leo Dion (host): I'll let you go ahead and introduce
yourself before we get started.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): So my name is Hilu as you pronounce it, in Dutch.
I am an indie app maker.
I have a big background in design.
I have over 15 years of experience in design now, I
think turned in the developer and all my apps are on watch wear.
So I think that's the main topic we'll be talking about here today.
Leo Dion (host): Yes.
Yes.
If you'd missed it.
Wwdc there was a big, huge announcement about an operating system and of
course I'm not talking about Vision Pro, I'm talking about Watch Os Town.
Yeah, I think we're both pretty excited about the Updates that
come there and big design changes.
I just installed watchOS 10 yesterday
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Oh, it's the beauty.
Leo Dion (host): on the, my Crappy Series five.
So I was telling you before the recording, I have a, I had a
series six and a series seven.
I bought six brand new and that's a 40 millimeter.
And then I bought a series seven used.
Off of eBay.
It's a 44, whatever the bigger size is.
And then last week, my series six decided to just die on me.
Yes.
So like I, and that's the one I probably like more, cuz I
think I like smaller watches.
People have been trying to convince me to get ultra, but we'll see about that.
But.
It just died on me.
Like you put it on the charger and it doesn't turn on.
And I think when I try to turn it on while it's on the charger,
occasionally the Apple logo will flash and then it will go away.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): little false hope.
Leo Dion (host): yeah, it like never puts on, I took it to the Apple
store, she's yeah, this is dead.
You could spend $300 on getting it repaired.
I'm like, yeah.
And she's yeah, I don't think it's worth it.
So yeah, I'm trying to sell it for parts.
We'll see.
But other than the battery getting warm, there's no sign
of life off of that thing, so I.
Spent five like a hundred bucks on the series five here.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): It's a good deal.
Leo Dion (host): pretty scratched up on the bottom, but I don't care
cuz like I said, I'm probably gonna get a series nine or a new watch
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Oh, an ultra.
Leo Dion (host): or an ultra.
As we said in a previous episode, Adrian tried to convince me and if I
get an ultra I'll have to do a marathon.
So we'll see about that.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): You can do hikes since instead.
Leo Dion (host): I could do hikes.
Okay.
Thank you.
But I like, I kinda like the new interface.
It's interesting when you first install it they take you,
they like give you a tutorial,
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): Did you see that?
And it's yeah, the side button doesn't do this anymore.
The crown doesn't do this anymore.
You wanna talk about the new design changes there If
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah, I
Leo Dion (host): you use even the app circles are different.
Yeah, go
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): everything's different.
I think everything's redesigned from the ground up and I think it's
interesting indeed, like they onboard you also with the hello in the same
style as Mac and iOS now, which is cool cuz it straight away feels a lot
more playful and a lot more visual.
And I think that's the main takeaway of this old redesign.
It's like everything is a lot more visual and playful compared to
the more static black backgrounds trying to blend in with a bezel.
I think they finally they appreciate the screen now more and how vibrant it
can be without the cost of battery life.
I hope.
Leo Dion (host): These battery life isn't great right now, but
that's because we're in betas.
So that's probably more of that than anything else.
But as far as what's been, like, what's the biggest thing you're most impressed
with as far as the redesign changes?
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): I think I'm mainly impressed with
like how organic things feel.
It's because I think it, it's also something you start, it, start to
feel a little bit more in, in Iowas, especially in Dynamic Island, like
everything has a bit more spring to it literally actually, because I think
they, they announced this year as well that spring is the new default
animation in SwiftUI and you can actually, you can just feel it from
the get card like, and everything is.
It feels so much smoother because it's nicely animated and I think that is the
first thing I really liked about it.
Leo Dion (host): What what was I gonna say?
W so if you, I assume you've been playing around with the SDK What's
been your biggest revelation in that as far as building apps and watchOS
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Oh
Leo Dion (host): I
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Building as far as building watch
first apps is that the debugging now works so, so much better.
Like I, I gave a talk about watch first, like twice and always one
of the pain points was like, yeah, debugging can sometimes be a bit of
a painful bit of watchOS development.
So simul later used to be your be best friend in that
regard for a lot of things.
But right now, like even if you just go to different room
and back and everything, just.
Works and I was at WWDC I spoke to the watch first team and it just, they
didn't make a big thing of it, but apparently they changed the technology.
They do, they use for the watch connectivity, so normally
it would always go to your phone and that's why it would.
Caused all these problems.
Now, I think only the very first time it goes through your phone establish
the connection and then it creates a peer to peer connection between
your laptop and your watch directly.
And that's, oh, it's such, such a revelation, really.
Leo Dion (host): I used two DTS tickets this year on watchOS development and
getting it working and yeah, once you, like we were talking on Twitter
yesterday and just like once I was able to get developer mode on and once the.
Whatever it is, it's like downloading symbols or something from the watch.
Once that was done, like today, it's been absolutely amazing.
As far as the developer experience, it's like basically developing on the iPhone.
One of the, yeah, one of the big I.
Okay, let me speak English.
One of the big things I think that they're doing this is because
there's a certain device that, as far as I know, might not have
a wire, you can connect to it.
Or if you do have a wire connect to, it'd be super awkward.
So I make sense that they're shifting towards wireless debugging.
Also, if they do get rid of like a port at all, which I mean I assume
they're gonna switch to USB-C
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): I think so.
Do I think you're right there?
Leo Dion (host): I think that's a big reason why it's if you're gonna
develop on the Vision Pro, there's no you have to do it wirelessly,
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah, I think they the deaf kids might have
a different situation going cuz I from what I could tell is that the.
Currently in-house.
They also use like a dev cable connected to the thing, but I'm not, I don't
think they will ship anything with that.
So either through the use BC I don't think the use BC
port that's in the battery is literally only the battery, but
Leo Dion (host): No, I
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): don't know.
I.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Yeah.
So let's go over some of the new stuff in SwiftUI specifically on the watch.
What do you wanna start talking about?
Which part, which piece
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): we have a date picker.
I think
Leo Dion (host): that doesn't convince people to buy an ultra,
I don't know what it does.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): honestly the whole state of union
could be, we added a date picker to, to watchOS And it was a
bit, it felt a bit silly, right?
To have a time piece that didn't have the date figure
available to you as a developer.
Leo Dion (host): That is weird.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah, probably has technical reasons.
I it's great, but I think the ba the main cool things is
the way navigation changed.
So you have the vertical tap view, which is works so smooth
out of the box, you just
Leo Dion (host): yes.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): W some views in there and it's,
it flips like full screen to full screen in a very nice way.
And if your full screen has a list, then it changes that
one tab to a scrollable list.
Leo Dion (host): Scroll view.
Yeah, which is
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): It's so sexy.
I mean it
Leo Dion (host): yeah.
It's really, it's intuitive.
It makes sense.
It uses the real estate on the watch.
Also found interesting.
We have a toolbar now on the watch and like a title bar.
It's it's almost watchOS 10.
It's like we finally take the watch seriously, and now you
can build full blown apps with like navigation and everything.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah.
It always was already my favorite platform to build for because of
express, because of limitations.
Also in sense of limitations of.
Screen real estate, I think is for it's good design practice in general to build
apps with views in mind that do one thing very well and are very glanceable.
Because having Glanceable views means that it's easy to understand for
the use of what is expected of them.
And I think that's why watch Wear was always one of my
favorite platforms to start from.
But now with these tools we have available today, you can
just make that experience so much nicer and so much better.
Leo Dion (host): Let's talk about that a little bit further.
Like as far as designing an app on watchOS what do you think?
So glance ability is a high priority.
What else do you think is like a high priority for
good design on a watchOS app?
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah.
Honestly, focus is the most important thing and keep in mind at all times
that people don't interact with you.
Watch for more than a minute, probably a minute is long because
just simple for the fact that holding your arm up like this position.
For a long time.
It is.
It's just painful, really.
So I think you have to be much more aware of the environment you use
to watch in instead of with iPhone.
It could be on the table where you just browse around and or on the toilet,
whatever, where watch is really, it is even more on the go as an iPhone is.
I think so.
Leo Dion (host): As a watch, you talking about using, putting your arm
like this as a developer, when you're testing your app on device, it's
oh, okay, I can't do this anymore.
Like
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): yeah, you almost
Leo Dion (host): need to sell, Alkin needs to come out with an armrest
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): arm sling.
Yeah, you just break your arm once and then you get an
arm sling from the hospital.
Leo Dion (host): So we
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): This is not health advice by the way.
Don't break your.
Leo Dion (host): So we did tab use.
I'm trying to think what else there was.
Was any of the animation stuff, did you find any of that in SwiftUI Okay.
Yeah.
Talk about that a little bit.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah, so I think the, all the cool part is
like all the news with UI animation, APIs, so the key frame in the phase
animations and stuff are basically all supported in watchers as well, and.
One of the things is cuz I talk during up to see, I talked with the
guy that, that built like the weather app for Watch West and he showed me
the transition of going from a cell to a full screen weather overview.
And he told me that's all just a face animation.
So you could swipe from the side to go back and you could see
the few shape and as you swiped.
And I think that, things like that were impossible to do before this year.
The before what was 10 really?
Leo Dion (host): Is there like concerns about battery life when
you're using animations or especially when you're not an always on display?
I always worry I wanna do more animations than watch it West,
but I feel like I'm being a bad citizen by doing that.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): No.
If anything, now everything's animated, so I think I, I think they
optimized the hell out of animations in the past few years, and I think
that the way they do calculations for animation might have changed.
I'm not sure.
But there's a reason why they went full in on animations and watchOS
10 as well, I think it's just.
The batteries gotten a lot better.
And I think they optimized it somehow, but for the experience it
makes the experience so much nicer, especially because on what you do,
short interactions, you would not animate everything at all times.
But cause if the watch go, the display goes off, all animations
will stop anyway as the refresh rate is so much lower.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah, that makes total sense.
What was I gonna.
Before we keep jumping into the api, maybe you wanna go for some
of your favorite talks from this year and what you think well, like
which ones were the most enriching or you pulled the most info from?
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): From desktop, you mean?
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah, I think the update your watch app
to for watchOS 10 was a good one.
I think it really shows the diff clear difference between what has changed,
because a lot of people also think it, not a lot has changed, right?
But it is a complete overhaul and they do have a complete like grid
system for different types of views.
I was lucky enough to see that early as well.
And they really threw it out of the park there.
So I think in the sense of like they really went from scratch saying
these are the rules for design for watchOS now in the sense as a grid
that, and I think that's something.
watchOS apps never really had, and therefore every, it
was a bit of a free for all.
And therefore, a lot of apps try to do too many things and try to
mimic too much of the iPhone apps.
And I think having this grid in place and also presenting it as a
full on redesign, which it is it's, so I'm expecting a lot of way better
watchword apps in the upcoming years.
Leo Dion (host): What do you think is like something that's missing
from the current set of watch apps now that watchOS 10 brings
so many new things to the table?
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): I honestly, I'm not missing
anything really at this point.
Yeah, I think especially now cause core could be a bit of a, a.
Worrisome child for watchOS to, so to speak.
But I think it could, it's also not the nice was also not the nice
on I was to begin with anyway.
So I think with swift data in place that's quite a lot nicer cuz the
thing with watchers, they do a lot of optimizations for you better life
on when to s sync thingss and stuff.
And I think that is still a bit of a question on when
is happening, what and I.
Almost start to think at this point they don't even know
anymore when it's happening.
But I think it's just trust the system and don't try to make it
do things that it shouldn't do.
I,
Leo Dion (host): What are some other talks that you
were a big fan of this year?
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): To be fair, I think just I mainly watch a lot of
the what's new in, in x type of talks.
And I think one non watch, watch related talk that I really enjoyed is
the design dynamic life activities one.
Cause I think life activities was last year announced during the iPhone
14 pros, so I never really had a proper depth of DC video about it.
And this year they, the design dynamic life activities really gives
some good tips and overall good design tips in general, like how to.
Visually align things with when they're not perfectly circular or the rectangle,
it's like they like just blur it, and then central centralize it visually.
Cuz when you blur it, you can easily see the mass of it instead of being
distracted by the shape of things.
So I think that's a really cool one.
Leo Dion (host): What what's been your overall impression, of
live activities in the dynamic island over the last year?
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): I like them.
I think it's still a bit of a thing that like, it's so niche still
because only I, iPhone 14 Pro has it.
So it's a very, it's the high end market only really, if
you realistically speaking.
It's a is also like it's only exist for half a year now.
There's still a lot of to figuring out and I think.
It's a great tool as when done right.
And I feel like in with the iOS 17 beta already, you notice it's been used a
lot more as well, even by Apple because they probably still needed to figure out
exactly what would make a difference.
Of course the interactivity, widgets and stuff helps with it
gives a bit of interactivity to it.
But I'm excited to see more and more life cool dynamic island
life activities, stuff happening.
Life activities are all device of course, but especially
for the dynamic island.
It needs some cool new sources.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Jumping back to the watch, let's talk a little bit about some of the other new.
Things that came with swift
and watchOS
what's this idea of, maybe you can explain smart stacks
and what that actually means.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah, so smart stacks is basically your
it's basically like the old Siri watch face, but then in every watch
face, cuz it's always accessible.
And the thing they did very cleverly here is it just uses the.
Accessory rectangle widget that you already have in most cases.
But then you can give it a nice bit more colors and bit more vibrancy.
And it basically works similar as your widget stack does on iOS.
Except this is accessible from at all times, from your watch face.
And I think that's really.
Really handy because again, going back to the glance ability, the stack should
know what you need at the moment and it will learn from your behavior as you do.
I think it's very clever because I think the series watch phase,
when it was introduced, it was like, oh, this makes so much sense.
But it was never really easily to propagate things to it.
And I think this after announcing that complications are now widgets.
This is such a clever next step to the evolution of this, I think.
Leo Dion (host): Do you remember time travel?
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Oh, yeah.
Leo Dion (host): So that's like dead finally.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Oh yeah.
Leo Dion (host): but essentially what time travel used to
do they now essentially do that with The smart stacks.
So like you said any face, you just go, you just turn the crown and it shows you
whatever it thinks is the most important thing you probably wanna look at.
And yeah, it's pretty nice.
So you get like the Siri watch face everywhere, almost behind your watch.
Yeah.
So then we got, I'm just looking at the list, source list.
What's a, what's source list?
Do you wanna explain that?
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): shortlist.
Leo Dion (host): So is that oh, is that like where you have a list and you have
navigation and then now you can go back?
I think that's what that means.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): yeah, I'm not sure why it's called source.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Yeah.
So and then we have the whole idea of like background colors.
They use that.
Yeah.
Talk about that a little bit.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah.
So now you have a container background and the container background
even can generate when you do.
A color with a dot gradient on the color in that container background.
It doesn't do the same gradient as it does in the views it
optimized it for the Apple Watch.
For example, in the activities slash workout app, Yeah, an
activity app or fitness apps.
I dunno.
It's a cool different, every time you see the red background going into
gradient to black and a yellow back, that one is just a single color with
dot gradient in the container background and it makes it smooth for you.
So I think that's really nice and I think that's the easiest
way they could make it to, for people to give a few a nice.
Background that, that fits with the os.
I'm starting to experiment a bit.
I want to go a bit further.
I wanna try to animate the background when it's on like very subtly.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): It's, that's still, I'm still fighting
it a bit, I think fighting the API a bit, but I'll send some feedback
points to their way to hope that maybe that is the performance issue.
Maybe it's, maybe I shouldn't, but I'll, I just want to make it even nicer,
Leo Dion (host): did you see my video I posted on Twitter?
The stuff I've been playing around with.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): No, it's good.
Leo Dion (host): Okay.
Yeah.
I've been doing, I've been playing around with like heart twitch
especially, and doing like an animated heartbeat in the background
with a graph on top, animated graph on top and stuff like that.
I've never touched animation but it.
I don't know if you ever were like a flash developer, but it reminds
me of that kind of like the free, the amount of freedom I have to
like, create cool animations and stuff like that is just amazing.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): but
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): It makes it feel alive, doesn't it?
Leo Dion (host): Yeah, it totally makes it feel alive.
Yeah, exactly.
So there's can you, maybe you can help explain, there's different
types of animations now, right?
There's phase animator, key frame animator, what am I missing?
And what's the differences between each of the ones?
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah.
And you also have the new transitions now which are in widgets not in
widgets for watchOS By the way, those, that's also a good thing to know.
All the interactivity and animations are not part of watchOS widgets.
But yeah, so with the phase animation, I haven't played too much with the
key frame, with the phase animations.
You can just give it different phases of the transition almost.
Which you can set up beforehand and to your own needs, and I think you can have
up to a hundred different phases or so.
So that gives quite a flexibility in what a behavior
of your view needs to be.
I haven't spent too much time playing around with it just
yet, but I know that's how they did a lot of the transition
animations in the native apps.
And that, if it, if you can't do it in a hundred steps, then
what are you trying to do?
Really?
Leo Dion (host): Trying to make a full-fledged movie on your watch.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah.
So I think this is one of those APIs that's, Very welcoming for
everyone that wants to make their apps feel a bit more organic.
Because back then UI kit used to have so much, you used to have so
much more control in your animations.
I think that was one of the things people would go back for.
But I like how with fifth ui, they know what's missing obviously.
And they know they need to.
Make things more and more aligned with what UI Kit can do.
But I like that how they, they don't just whack it in there, they
just take their time to think about what would be the SwiftUI way to
do this and what would be like the most simplest way to do this.
And jumping back on that with animations, it gets
complicated quite fast.
Just because animations are complicated, get right.
But one of the main prime examples is that if you use Dot Spring as
an animation, it doesn't ask for damping friction and stuff anymore.
Just ask for duration and bounce, which.
It's just normal human language for the same things.
Leo Dion (host): Yep.
Yeah.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): I think that's just lovely.
Yeah.
Especially if you haven't touched it for a while, then you're like,
oh, what was the fraction again?
What was the damning again?
And now it's just, and now it's just, oh yeah.
Bounciness and duration.
That's it.
Leo Dion (host): We both caught Adam Bell's talk at Swift Heroes.
We were obviously physically there and just like the stuff that he was
doing with vinyl was just like amazing.
But like he had to touch so much court.
Is it core animation or core?
Yeah.
You have to touch so much of that stuff and like doing all the
complicated trigonometry and I get it, like it does build, but man,
just like having to maintain that.
It's just
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah,
Leo Dion (host): likes you're trying to
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): really have to LOF animations.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a really cool stuff that he does with the, with that app, album app.
But But now bringing that to Swifty y is just gonna I think
it's gonna open so many doors to a lot more developers of what
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah.
And you have shaders now as well.
That's cool.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah, you can.
So you can bring in like metal shaders, right?
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah.
But not to watch
Leo Dion (host): done that yet?
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): I've played around, but I'm
terrible at writing shaders, so I'll just hope ChatGPT can write,
ChatGPT can
good shade for.
Leo Dion (host): What's your tragedy PT app on that watch?
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): oh yeah.
It's bt.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah, Petey just ask Petey Hey Petey write me a shader.
Yeah.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): yeah,
Leo Dion (host): have to copy and paste from your watch.
That'll be fun.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): That.
Actually, I've done that
Leo Dion (host): yeah.
There you go.
Petey The metal shader generator for everyone.
Yeah.
What else do you wanna talk about the watch?
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): I think it is what for me, I think is
most interesting is the fact that in the last years get so much more
feature parody with what iOS can do.
Like even introducing nsu big key fell store like just about last year
even though it's a super old api.
But it's funny enough that.
There, there's, I think there's one API from the old Watch connect watch kit
today that a lot of people still use and I think they should not touch it because
it works flawlessly in my perspective.
And that's the watch connectivity one.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): So yeah, of course they could make it maybe a
bit more 50 or whatever, but I think it has something nostalgic to me, like
that's the one old watch kid thing.
That's still there and it still works very flawlessly.
You send, if you want, send something directly to the phone.
Use watch, connectivity api.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah, I built a whole swift package around it that
uses combined so it's easier to hook up to SwiftUI which know where, I
don't know where combined is, but if you're doing anything with SwiftUI
and watch connectivity, you could definitely check out Sundial Kit.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): I'll check it out.
Actually I've not seen it.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Because I found myself wanting to know exactly when a message comes in and plug
it into swifty y in a swifty Yee way.
Yeah.
And the other thing I was just gonna say is like the last three years have been
such a drought as far as watchOS stuff.
Like when I heard rumors that watchOS 10 was gonna be a big overhaul, I was
like, oh, thank God it's been so long.
And we got it.
We got something.
Even though we have like new hardware this year that actually did a big
update to the watch, which was great.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah I think ever since SwiftUI came
along watch show has got a lot nice.
Building for watch show has got a lot nicer.
And I think especially the connection for debugging being
solved now that's a big welcoming.
I think that's something a lot of people ma made a lot of people
stop building for what twos in it.
I only hope they will fix they will update the app store to
ac accommodate watch wear only apps a bit better as well.
But there's always needs to be one wish,
Leo Dion (host): I lost you for a minute there.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Oh, you got me back.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Anything SwiftUI related you want to talk about?
Or anything else about WWDC before we close out?
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): I think this WWDC was in general very nice in
the sense of we had a big new project.
Of course that doesn't happen every year.
Leo Dion (host): And of course you're talking about my brand
new MacBook Air 15 inch.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): yeah, exactly.
No, the cheese grader.
Leo Dion (host): The nearly empty hollow cheese grater with the tiny chip inside.
Yeah.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): But also I think like even the, that
big announcement of Vision Pro overshadowed so much of the other stuff.
Even though are there, it's such a big update, especially
to SwiftUI because of.
Vision Pro as well, probably with the shaders and the more
reality kit integration stuff.
And just the overall Yeah the animation APIs and the new map kit stuff and new
scrollable charts and store kit stuff.
And there's so much still going on and it's been all overshadowed
by this one big product, but man it's such a nice quality of life.
Type of update which ha, which in any year would be enough to be
a normal update as well, but it feels like it is quality of life.
Update.
Leo Dion (host): Has there been a big I got two more questions out of that.
So Vision Pro, what's your plan?
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Secret?
No, just kidding.
I'm currently still in the midst of an overall of my mu music app now
playing, which is basically a like.
Liner notes, but digital so I can, so in short I connect any song or
artist or album to lot of different sources to find the story behind
the song in a very visual way.
And I wanna finish that overall for iPad first to have a solid base for
visionOS because I wanna make that, I feel like that's a really good fit
for visionOS where you could just grab an album and I could recognize.
The album and show like content around it.
And then you could go full immersive and then you get like
videos and photos and colors and snippets and samples and whatnot.
I can find about the song and basically I want to ex explore what immersive
music discovery looks like and
Leo Dion (host): almost it sounds like Amazon x-ray, but for music in a
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah.
Yeah.
It, yeah.
Yes, it is basically that what I have right
Leo Dion (host): I know I'm old enough to know what an album is.
Okay.
Like I know what liner notes, but I'm just saying like digitally it's close.
It seems close to what X-ray
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah.
So I always thought cuz I'm a big music nerd, I could still buy a
lot of music and with this app I already have the content in place.
I just.
F feel like I want to, I almost want to make it my life mission
to make, to bring the fun back into listening to music.
Cause everything's now, everything's just a playlist
or TikTok song from 30 seconds.
And I feel like the, there, the fun of having a physical album and
then discovering about the music.
I think that's something I really want to bring back.
And I think Phish
Leo Dion (host): I love that idea.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): I think Vision Pro is a really good platform
for that actually, because everything is very much about content in this case.
So
Leo Dion (host): Yeah, like it's funny because Adam's whole app was albums
too, and it seems like a thing is like having you, like with your designer
animator folks and I love that too.
I feel like with the, like I use the Apple Music app on the
Mac like 90% of the time and.
Yeah.
It's interesting.
Yeah, I wish there was something better on the Mac out there.
And I know I'm probably 1% of people who just end up using their iPhone
to listen to TikTok, some of us wanna listen to a whole album, like you
said, the whole piece together and get the his story about it without having
to look up Wikipedia all the time.
So yeah, I totally get it.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): What would be your one wish for watchOS still?
Would you still have a wish for Watch us?
watchOS
Leo Dion (host): like as far as like for the OS itself.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah.
Or APIs You would love to see.
Leo Dion (host): That's a good question.
I.
I don't think I have something for watching us.
I feel like it's way too early for me to say, because I'm still deep diving
into swift ey navigation, swift ey toolbar, like all this new stuff.
Like you said, we've got a lot of new design paradigms on how things work.
So going back to what we were talking about, about older APIs, we had talked
about watch connectivity, core data.
At least core data's been moved over, which is nice.
HealthKit HealthKit HealthKit could really use a modern api.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah,
Leo Dion (host): fine.
I don't mind.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): there is, there you can actually now cuz
Core motion got quite some updates actually of all the, a prize that.
They're getting out there where you can now access the heart rate
sensor through core motion as well, not just only healthcare anymore.
So that's quite cool.
Leo Dion (host): But you still do, you still need permissions for that.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Probably.
I don't, I haven't looked into the details yet, but I saw you.
Yeah, I assume so.
Because for Core Motion, you also need permission anyway,
Leo Dion (host): Okay.
I didn't know that.
I've been wanting to dive into Core Motion.
I just haven't had a chance to
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): And they support high frequency stuff
now as well, so you get more, more
Leo Dion (host): Okay.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): which is cool if you wanna train models
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Yeah.
Like just going back, like right now in the, we're what, a week and a half
after wwdc, I'm still like learning new stuff and I feel like the limitation is
my imagination right now, not the api.
And just learning the right, right paradigm for it.
Yeah.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): a good spot to be in.
Leo Dion (host): and it's just, it's a very fun spot to be in.
Like not having so much stress over not being able to deploy
your watch app during development or live previews, not crashing.
Like they've done a really good job.
I'm really impressed with Xcode 15 and what the watch
development experience, so
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah, that's the one thing I mentioned when
I, when you lost me, I think the one thing they could fix is not necessarily
the watch wear team itself, but it's the app store team is like shipping
watchOS only apps is, I don't think they have to change anything there.
And that's quite a pain.
Leo Dion (host): yeah.
So like my story is with any of my old apps that were watchOS only I build a.
I build the most basic iPhone app I can just to get the visibility on the app
store because of that exact experience.
Like at this point yeah, you should build a watchOS app it doesn't
need the iPhone app, but you should probably have an iPhone app just so
you people can actually find you.
Unfortunately, I think that's still the case, like the iPhone.
App store should show watchOS apps
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): it does, but there's,
Leo Dion (host): and be able to install them easily.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah, that's the thing.
Cuz I had a big big F with that when I launched pt, cuz I launched
PT as a watch source only at first.
And then it was 4 99 to purchase.
And then a lot of times people would not have it installed automatically.
So they and the thing is the, if you not aware, like the download
button of a watch is only app.
Once you've purchased it becomes the disabled purchase button.
So you can't.
Do anything.
So I got a lot of one star reviews saying, this is scam
because I paid for the app and it doesn't show up on my WhatsApp.
Yeah, I can't help it.
You need to go to the app store on your Apple Watch in that case.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah, we've had that issue too.
We had a whole tutorial showing how to download a watch and
it's just this is too much.
Yeah.
That's I think the biggest disappointment with
independent watch apps,
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah.
And then even when you then add a io iOS version to the app it takes about
two weeks for the app store to refresh its cash and let you download it still.
Leo Dion (host): that sucks.
Yeah.
That really sucks.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): So let's hope they fix that in the next,
Leo Dion (host): Like they, we had, we actually had it, I'll just say we had
an actual bug that we filed a feedback for where people had downloaded the app,
but they then got like a new iPhone and then they tried to download it again and
it wouldn't let them they actually fixed it finally in one of the dot releases.
But yeah, I feel like there's still some work on the whole app store watch stuff.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah, definitely.
Or app store in general actually.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Yeah.
What before we close out, I'm gonna ask if what's on your
wishlist for the next watch?
I guess that comes out in September, October.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Oh man.
Leo Dion (host): I'm putting you on the spot.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): yeah, I, because, funny enough, last
year I would say an extra button.
But we got that.
So this year I would say maybe use, be able to use that extra button
without needing to be a workout thing.
Leo Dion (host): Okay.
Have to be a work workout thing?
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): yeah.
So what?
Yeah, I think so.
It's a start.
It's a workout.
It's a workout intent.
Leo Dion (host): Okay.
Okay.
Got you.
Okay.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): I haven't looked into.
Maybe that's changed this year.
I haven't looked, I don't think so, but I, we'll check it out.
And then other, maybe the background, the ex, the extended runtime sessions
have more categories for that.
But that's, again, on the API level, that's not necessarily
on the hardware level is it?
So on the hardware, bigger and better life,
Leo Dion (host): yeah, I'm really hopeful.
The rumor is they're gonna put a new processor finally in it and that's
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Oh yeah.
Leo Dion (host): me back on not getting an Ultra, cuz the Ultra is
basically the same processor we've been using for the last two, three years.
So that I think is gonna be a big leap, hopefully.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): yeah, hit heyday.
Anything
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Maybe more sensors, I don't know,
may always like more chances.
Leo Dion (host): yeah.
What, like what there's been the blood sugar talk through like
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Oh yeah.
Leo Dion (host): then there's been, who knows what else
they can do off of the wrist.
That'd be interesting.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah they can go nuts, I think.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Was there anything else, Hiday, before we close out?
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): No, thank you for having me.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Thank you so much.
It's been fantastic.
I'm glad to finally have you on and have a really good, fun topic to
talk about this year with watchOS
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): good.
Leo Dion (host): Where could people find you online?
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): I'm at Hida from PL or Hida fidi pl on Twitter.
That's probably in the link in the show notes or something.
And at hi a on Mastodon.
It's, that's hidden without the end, so that's easier.
I take, it's also on my website.
You can find it.
Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah, and we'll have links to your website,
social media, accounts, apps, all that fun stuff is gonna
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah.
I appreciate it.
My, my parents did not my parents did not think of my online
presence in an international world.
Leo Dion (host): You need a, you need like a stage name.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): name.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Mr.
Watch.
Leo Dion (host): Mr.
Watch?
Yeah.
Is that Mr.
Watch?
Oh yes.
What's the latest for Mr.
Watch?
People can find me online at Leo g Dion both Twitter and Mastodon and LinkedIn.
And my company is bright digit.
Take some time to review the podcast.
I'd appreciate any feedback.
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And if you're watching on YouTube, and subscribe.
Of course.
Thank you so much, and we'll be talking to you again.
Bye everyone.
Hidde van der Ploeg (guest): Bye bye.