Folding the iPhone into the Creator Economy | AppStories transcript

Hello and welcome to another episode of AppStories. I'm John Voorhees, and today's episode is brought to you by Inoreader and RevenueCat. In fact, it's Shipaton from RevenueCat. And I have with me today a very special guest, Mr. Christopher Lawley. How are you doing, Chris? I am doing great. Thank you for having me. Look, I'm no Federico Viticci, but I will do my best. I will try and fill those shoes. All right. Well, Ticci's off beaching it, I think.

He's off on vacation. And if people don't know you, Chris, I got to imagine that people don't know you by now. I mean, you've been hanging around MacStories quite a bit, obviously. Got your YouTube channel. You're also a host on Comfort Zone. And of course, there's Cozy Zone, which is the subscriber-only version. Extra episode every week of Comfort Zone. So that's pretty cool. Those are available at MacStories. But if you haven't checked out Chris's videos, you should check him out.

He does a lot of stuff with all kinds of things. iPad, Mac. He's got an app, in fact, too. That has only been out a couple of weeks. It has. It's only been, I think it's been a little over two weeks now. And yeah, it's going great. I mean, it was, if I can pat myself on the back for a second, it was the number one paid productivity app on the App Store. And it got as high as the number four paid app overall. So that's kind of exciting.

That's amazing. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. I know everyone can kind of do the thing where, oh, I didn't expect this to blow up or anything. I literally didn't expect it to do that. No, no, I get it because you can't really expect that kind of thing. And I think it's a great app for the record. And we wrote about it in Club MacStories Weekly just last week. But you can't expect that. And at the same time, it's like, it's a very good app.

But even very good apps don't end up at that kind of ranking, right? So that's why you really can't expect it. So very, very big deal. But you know what, we're going to talk about Parchment, which is the name of Chris's app in a little bit. First, I wanted to get your read on some iPhone fold stuff. Because, you know, obviously there's a rumor that Apple's going to release a foldable phone in the fall. And I think I would guess that's probably a lock at this point.

And I've been thinking about it a lot. And for the longest time, I was not very excited about it. I wasn't really sure what I would do with a foldable phone. And I think that's because unlike the early years when I was at MacStories, I don't really work on my phone that much. My phone's more for notifications, scrolling social media, reading the news, reading, you know, RSS feeds, watching a video here and there. But it's more of a consumption device in a lot of ways, other than like text messaging or email, I suppose.

Whereas when I got my start writing at MacStories, I actually wrote whole articles on the train going into the city in the morning to my day job. And it was like critical for me to be able to do that, to get some, you know, to get articles out at MacStories. And that changed a lot when I started working from home. And as a result, the iPhone took a bit of a back seat in my lineup, even though it's always with me and I'm always using it for things.

It really changed the character of it for me. And so I think early on, I wasn't super excited about it, even though I like the idea conceptually. I've always liked the idea of foldable phones, especially if they get to the point where they seem to have now, where the creases are not so noticeable and they're a lot more durable than they used to be. And I think this is going to be one of those situations where Apple waited until the right moment.

They waited until the technology was there. And, you know, there have been like, I don't know, seven years of foldable phones or something like that out there so far. And here we are, seven years in, and I think people are going to, a lot of people are going to roll their eyes and say, Apple didn't invent this thing. And of course they didn't. But I think that they may have picked the right moment for this. The only thing that I think for me makes me wonder if it's the right moment is just the prices and the component stuff that's going on, generally in the consumer electronics industry, which might put a damper on their launch.

Yeah, I have had a rollercoaster of emotions when it comes to the foldable iPhone. Like you, I kind of also got, you and I have a very similar story of us kind of having day jobs and stuff like that and then going independent. In fact, I believe you and I compared notes at WWDC and we did it around the same time. Yeah. And I used to work on my iPhone. I used to work on scripts and stuff on my iPhone because I didn't want any of my business stuff touching work-issued computers and stuff like that because I didn't want any sort of them coming to me and being like, oh, legal issues and stuff like that.

So I used to do a lot of work on my iPhone as well. Now that I work from home, my iPhone out of like the three main devices, my iPad, Mac, and iPhone is probably my least important device. Like I don't use it as much as the other two because I work from home. But for Christmas this last year, I got a 3D printer. And I 3D printed one of those mock-ups that was going around of the foldable iPhone. And I've just been playing around with it.

For your video viewers, I'm holding it up here. And at first I really wasn't into this passport style size. Like I was like, this seems weird. I want an iPad mini. I want it to open up and be an iPad mini. But the more I've played around with this and we should also talk about, we should also mention the Galaxy. Oh gosh, I'm going to mess up the name. The Galaxy Fold 8 reviews just came out, which is the same size as supposedly the iPhone Fold because Samsung is making the displays for the iPhone Fold.

It just came out and pretty much is universally loved for the size. Like people are really liking the size. So I think this is going to be a very interesting device. I'm excited for it because I can take this out of my pocket. And, you know, I've been playing around with the 3D mock-up and I can use this one-handed. Now I have big hands. I can type one-handed on the main non-open folded screen. I don't even know what you call that.

The single screen? What would that be called? The front screen, maybe? The front screen? Yeah, I guess the front screen. Yeah. Front versus the inner, maybe? Yeah, front. Okay, yeah. So I can one-handed type on the front screen. But when you open it up, you get like a 4x3 screen. And I think this is going to be really interesting for a lot of reasons. Because, yes, you can have it in landscape, but you can also turn it portrait.

And this is going to be great for reading, like reading books. And we were kind of talking a little bit before we jumped on the call. I was like, this is going to be great for doing, like, Codex remote stuff. Like, I could just see sitting here and just, like, working with Codex and just typing away on this. I could also see this being huge for your other show NPC and emulating video games as well. Yes, that 4x3 is great for especially the older games.

Mm-hmm. But like you were kind of mentioning, the price is worrying. I, like, okay, so I'm a big iPad boy. I love my iPad. So I'm definitely going to be getting an iPhone Fold. Because I think when you open it up, it'll be iPadOS-ish. I don't think it will. I've heard people say, oh, you're going to open it up and it's just going to be iPadOS. I don't think that's the case. I think there will be things that Apple adopts from the iPad.

But I don't expect there to be, like, a full, like, menu bar or anything like that at the top. I'd be very surprised if Apple brought, like, the menu bar or, like, windowing apps to the foldable iPhone. Especially if it's a smaller device than the existing iPad mini. Because the existing iPad mini has its issues with, you know, the multi-windowing and everything at times. Yeah. In fact, I have an iPad mini here. And I don't even use the windowing mode for the apps.

I just use the single mode. Just because it doesn't really make sense on the iPad mini. It's too small. But if Apple brings split view, like, old school iPad split view to the foldable phone, I could see that being really cool. Because then you could have, like, your notes open on one section. And your task manager on the other. Or you could have Safari open on one side and your notes and stuff. And, like, there's a lot you can do with that and have a pocketable iPad, essentially.

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New pro subscribers can get 30% off their first year. Visit Inoreader.com to learn more and get started today. That's I-N-O-R-E-A-D-E-R dot com. Our thanks to Inoreader for their support of the show. Yeah, absolutely. And I think this, you know, another thing that occurs to me is this is probably a really good time for Apple to finally do a proper clipboard manager for its devices. Because it would be really nice on a phone and it would translate, of course, very well to the iPad as well.

And it makes sense when you have a bigger screen, I think. More sense than it does on a regular phone. Yeah, the more I think about the size and the form factor and I watch that, I think, you know, maybe it is time for me to have a smaller phone when it's actually folded up. Since I don't use it as much as a work device in that form factor. But having the benefit of being able to open it up and make it even bigger than an iPhone Pro Max will be really useful.

I mean, that's, that to me is an interesting and compelling potential thing. But I want, I do wonder what people will use it for because, you know, there's a school of thought. And I think I was listening to the Vergecast and they mentioned, you know, they, that the problem with foldables is that people spend a lot of money on them. Then they realize they never open them up. Because at most they're opening them up to watch maybe Netflix once in a while on a plane or something.

And I guess I can kind of see that in a lot of ways that that's a mirror of the split in how people use the iPad in the first place. And I'd like to get your thoughts as an, you know, heavy iPad user about this. Because there is a big market of people who are primarily using iPads to read or watch video. And that, you know, consumption, the traditional consumption device thing. But a lot of us are the weirdos who actually use it to get work done.

And I can kind of see a similar split potentially forming for a foldable iPhone too. Because that, I think it will be big enough opened up for at least certain kinds of work tasks. You know, maybe you don't want to use, maybe you're not going to edit a final cut timeline on a phone, even if it's unfolded and bigger. But you might, you know, that's the kind of thing where writing or doing research on the web and stuff like that would work pretty well, I think.

Yeah, I think the one thing that has me kind of curious to see how they do the, you know, the inner screen is the keyboard. I think that's going to play a big part into what you can do with this productivity wise. That's a good point. Is it going to be split so that you're using your thumbs? Are they going to do the floating iPad style keyboard where like, you know, if you have an iPad and you like are in a text entry, you can pinch on it and it makes it like a small floating iPhone keyboard.

And you can just kind of like one hand it. But that I think is going to be a big deal on to like when the software keyboard is open, how much of the UI, how much of the rest of the UI can you see? Like if I have the notes app open and Safari open, how much of those can I see with the keyboard open? Because that'll make a big difference between like, can I actually use this in a productive way? Or is this something that like I want to just keep my AirPods in and I use dictation?

You know, Apple is doing the whole Siri AI thing. And part of the iOS 27 features is there is a new advanced dictation feature. And that maybe that plays into this a little bit more. Maybe we're not using software keyboards as much and dictating things, though. I wouldn't want to be one of those people that's like dictating stuff out in public. Like I wouldn't want to be on an airplane, like dictating a blog post or a script or something like that.

Don't be that person. You know, one thing that I see an awful lot that I'm always amazed at is I see a lot of people doing Zoom calls at coffee shops. Oh, really? Oh, I do. Almost every time I go now, there will be, because I have one coffee shop that I go to that there's a whole other floor that's almost like a coworking space. And there's almost always somebody up there doing a Zoom call. And it is not private at all.

I mean, maybe not everything they work on is confidential, but I wouldn't want to be talking to people I work with on a Zoom call in a coffee shop. Yeah, that's interesting. An interesting point about dictation. I think that that's one way I could see it going. I also do wonder, like, what the accessory type story is going to be here, because I feel like there needs to be a physical keyboard story here, too. And it would be interesting to see Apple do something.

You know, there are foldable keyboards out there, and I don't think any of them are all that good. I mean, they're certainly not keyboard snob good in any sense of the imagination, right? Yeah. No. For the record, for those that don't know, I am a huge keyboard snob. Like, I have 25 keyboards, most of which I built myself, and I am very particular about it. I am a huge keyboard snob. Yes. They tend to be, the foldables tend to be thin and light and scissor keys, and they tend to also be shrunken down a little bit, which can, a lot of times, can make it hard to type on if it's not, like, standard-sized keys.

So, it would be interesting to see what Apple does there. I have been thinking about this, like, would I get a little stand for the iPhone and then use one of those, like, Logitech Keys-to-Go 2s, which are, Logitech actually makes a really nice, thin, light travel keyboard, because that Keys-to-Go keyboard, I use it quite a bit. But it runs on a watch battery, and it will run for years on a watch battery, and it folds and magnetically shuts to protect the keys.

And they're very shallow. They're even a little shallower, I think, than your standard Magic Keyboard. But it's pretty nice for when you want to have something light to go with you. But it's certainly not something that's going to fit in your pocket, because it's close to the size of the Magic Keyboard. It's a little smaller, I think. But it'd be interesting to see if they do something there. Maybe that's just me projecting too much because I'm a writer.

But it'd be nice to have some kind of story there for propping it up, even if it's not for writing, if it's for watching video. Yeah. What I wouldn't be surprised to see is if the cases for the iPhone Fold have a kickstand built into them to kind of prop it up to watch video. That's kind of my prediction, is that there'll be some kind of kickstand that you can pop out, and that way you can kind of stand it up and watch a video or something like that without needing to put a book behind it or something like that.

Yeah, that makes sense. If there isn't something like that on Apple cases or something like that, there's going to be a huge market on Amazon of, like, attach this sticker, not sticker, but, like, sticky kickstand thing to the back of your iPhone Fold, and you can pop it up, and, like, it'll just stand up on its own. I will 100% put one of those on these because if you look for video viewers, you can see on the 3D model that I have, there is a pretty big camera plateau.

I'm trying to get it to focus. So, like, you could easily put another kickstand, like, right down here or here, and it won't take up a ton of space on your iPhone, and it wouldn't make it, like, it wouldn't protrude anymore. So, that way, you know, it's not going to, like, give it extra wobble or anything like that. It's a good point, although I have a hard time seeing Apple going the kickstand route. That seems like a very un-Apple thing.

I mean, there is one iPad keyboard with a kickstand. The base iPad keyboard does have a kickstand. Oh, I guess that's true. I always forget about the base iPad accessories. Most people do. It's a very good point. All right, let me lay an even wilder scenario on you, Chris, because you do YouTube videos, and I want to think of this from the standpoint of the creator economy, because one of the Apple's biggest pushes in the last year or so is things like its Apple Creator Studio, right?

And it's a subscription. It's, like, $129 a year or something like that. Something like that. $12.99 a month. Yeah. Anyway. It's, like, $3 a month if you're a student or something like that. It's actually a pretty good deal if that's the kind of stuff you need. It is. It is. But I'm here to say that what Apple should be doing, and I think that here's my pitch to Apple for one of their marketing campaigns, is make the iPhone Fold a creator device.

Throw in the creator studio subscription for, quote, free as part of the package. Because, one, you'll get the creators on your side using it and showing it off. And, two, you'll get all the people who aspire to be creators. Maybe, you know, the people who have set up their YouTube channel and haven't posted anything in a couple of years. That kind of thing. Because I think even though the cameras are rumored to be, they're rumored to only be a couple of cameras and not the full range you get with, like, a Pro Max.

I think that, you know, Apple's camera technology has gotten to a point where for a lot of YouTube uses, for a lot of people, it's good enough. And you could then not only shoot using that phone, but open it up and have more space to do the editing. Because, you know, a lot of people today are doing their video editing on phones, especially when we're talking about vertical video. And that just gives you more space. And I think while there are a lot of good apps, though, that make use of editing tools in a confined iPhone form factor, it's still going to always be better if you have, if you're working on some sort of timeline type of work to have a bigger screen.

Yes. I actually completely agree with you. I think this could be, I think Apple could pitch this as the all-in-one creator studio hardware device. Exactly. If there is, like, the same 1X camera that's on the iPhone Pro, iPhone 18 Pro this year, and a good ultra-wide or decent ultra-wide lens, that's kind of all you need for to be a creator. And, like, there'll be a selfie camera. And so if you're doing vertical video, that's perfect to record on here.

You know, load up Final Cut Camera, the Final Cut Pro camera app or the Blackmagic camera app. Right. Boom. Bob's your uncle there. And then if you open it up and Apple ships Final Cut Pro for the iPhone and Pixelmator Pro for the iPhone, that right there is a full YouTube studio right there. I've edited I don't know how many videos on Final Cut Pro for the iPad. It's very capable. In fact, I did a talk on it at Apple's Final Cut conference a couple years ago.

It's very, very capable. So if you're doing vertical video, yeah, it would probably need a little bit of UI work, but Apple's capable of making that happen. But you could absolutely edit a video on an iPhone. And if you're just especially short-form creators, that would be killer. You know, I was especially WWDC. I was watching all these short-form creators, and they're just constantly capturing and editing on their iPhone.

They're not like me where they're capturing on a cinema camera and then transferring their footage to an iPad or a Mac and sitting down and cutting up all this stuff. There are two, three clips. Throw it in a timeline. Throw some titles, facts, whatever, music, sound effects, whatever. And then they're out the door in 15, 20 minutes tops. Yeah, and you've hit on one of the main hitches that I think Apple – but I think one of the roadblocks to Apple really getting in deep with the creator economy is that they haven't put out those iPhone apps.

I mean, yeah, the creator studio should come with this phone, but it should come with this phone with versions that work on the phone too, not just on the iPad and on the Mac. Oh, 100%. There has to be a version of it that not just works on the open screen, the inside screen, but the front screen as well. And that would be the trick, but Apple can do it. Yeah, I think that they can. And maybe they just haven't gotten to it yet.

I mean, it was a big transition just to kind of push – smush all that stuff together and tune up the iPad versions more like they have. But I really do think that it's pretty clear just both from looking at how their PR organization has leaned into the creator economy like Instagram and TikTok and that sort of thing and YouTube, of course. Between that and the kind of things that they're promoting and the kinds of tools that they're also promoting, that's a focus for the company right now.

And if you're going to do that, you really need to bring this stuff to the phone too, I think. It's very clear to me as somebody that's been doing video stuff for a very, very long time. When I got into video editing or when I started using Final Cut, that was when Final Cut Pro 7 was a thing. And that was – they were very focused on Hollywood for that. And when Final Cut Pro 10 came out, they lost Hollywood because Hollywood did not like Final Cut Pro 10.

And it's come a long way since then. It's nothing like it was when it launched. But Apple really to me doesn't seem like they care about Hollywood. They care about the creator economy, the creator people. And that's what they're kind of pitching Final Cut to. I mean it's in the name of the bundle. It's called the Creator Studio. It's not called the Hollywood Studio. It's called the Creator Studio. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

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Join at shipaton.com or click the link in the show notes. That's S-H-I-P-A-T-O-N.com. Our thanks to Shipaton from RevenueCat for their support of AppStories. That's a good conversation, Chris. I want to transition a little bit to talking a little bit about parchment. Because, you know, your gig has always been YouTube and podcasts and other things. And you decided to make an app. And I just want to understand kind of where you're coming from with the app, where the idea came from.

And I guess first explain to folks what it does and what it's all about. Yeah. So the app is called Parchment. And the idea is to bring your day, your current day into one place. So we all have a task manager. We all have a calendar. Some people have daily notes and stuff like that. And they can all be spread across from the place. And it all kind of came from the fact that I've never been busier in my life. We just got a puppy a couple of months ago.

And she's kept me on my toes. She is a little rascal. I also just got engaged earlier at the beginning of July. Congratulations. Thank you so much. So we're going into wedding planning phase. Oh, boy. And I have my business. So I've never been busier in my life. This is the busiest I've ever been. And there was one day. Well, I've been using calendar apps that have been combining task management and your events into one place.

So that way you can see your whole day in one place. Calendars does this. Fantastical does this. I think BusyCal does this. So many do this. The problem was is one day I had a bunch of all-day events just kind of sitting there at the top. And it pushed my schedule stuff down. And I was dealing with Riley the puppy. And I missed an important meeting. Like a very important meeting I should not have missed. And that was not good.

And that's kind of when I knew something had to change. So I was looking around for an app that kind of understood the way I wanted events and tasks to be handled. Because I believe not all events and tasks are equal. If you have a meeting that happens at 4 p.m., that's not as important as needing to set out the trash cans so that they get picked up the next day. Right. Setting out the trash cans can be done at any point that day.

But that meeting has to be done at 4 p.m. So what I wanted was something that kept calendar events and tasks together but separated out your all-day events and separated out your timed events. So that's where Parchment kind of came from. So if you look at the agenda view of Parchment from the screenshots or whatever, that's where I kind of started with this. Right. And originally I was like, okay, maybe this will just be like a widget or something.

And then I kind of just kept developing it a little bit more and I added a daily notes section. And I was like, oh, this is kind of nice for just being able to keep meeting notes, almost like a journal, just write stuff down. Like I've been using it to just like as we like research wedding venues and stuff like that. Like, oh, hey, this place has this and stuff like that. So it's just kind of like evolved a little bit more to the point where like this is the app, the first app I open every day.

And whether I'm on my Mac, I always have it open. Or if I'm on my iPad, I keep it in slide over a lot. It's just like the place that I kind of manage my day. Yeah, that's really interesting. And I think, I mean, I think the reason it resonated with a lot of people is that it kind of scratches an itch that I think a lot of people are always kind of pursuing, which is sort of the morning briefing idea in a way where it's like you have that kind of agenda that pulls all the information together in one place.

So that you can always go back to your home base, you know, whether it's a dashboard in Notion or, you know, an app like yours or even just like a written journal piece of paper that where your tasks and your calendar items and little scratch pad type notes can kind of live in the same place. Because ultimately, yeah, you're right. I mean, all this stuff is one of, it's your day. It's what you have to do. You know, you have sometimes you have to be somewhere.

Sometimes you have to do something and other things just are all day events. So I think that's a really interesting approach to it. And I'm surprised. I mean, you're right. Calendar. I mean, the thing that's, I think, a little different, too, about your app is that calendar apps that incorporate to-dos, they're kind of, it depends on how many tasks you have, whether that works for you. Because if you have a lot of tasks, they can really get lost in that calendar because they're kind of crammed into the calendar view in a lot of ways.

Whereas when I've opened your app on my phone or on my iPad, even if I have a lot of things going on that day, I don't feel like they're competing with the calendar items. They're kind of all created equal, if you know what I mean. Exactly. And I should say, so it's not a separate task manager. Parchment sits on top of reminders and calendar. Like, it uses EventKit. So it's pulling from reminders and it's pulling from whatever the system calendar is.

So whatever accounts you're signed into on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. And I didn't want events and reminders are equal, but they're equal whether they're all-day events and all-day reminders or they're timed events and timed reminders. And they're separated out into those two sections. And one of the things I added in an update after the app launched is for all-day events, you can drag and drop now and you can manually rearrange them.

So when you sit down to organize your day, if you're somebody that wants a list and you want to work from the top to the bottom, you can arrange your task however you want that day or all-day events or whatever. So that way you can just start at the top and work your way down. And that has been something that people have been emailing me about and that they really like. Yeah, no, I can imagine that. I think that there's a lot to be said for that kind of manual ordering.

You know, not everything needs to be sorted alphabetically or by time. You know, I mean, a lot of things is just like a lot of it's just like, what do I have the energy for next? And that's why manual ordering like that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it's nice too that, you know, you can go directly from a task and flip over into reminders from your app too. Because I think that that's, you know, you can just tap on it and move over there, which is pretty, you know, that's just a good way to be able to go where the more detail is.

If you're really like, oh, no, you know, now I need to really dig into my reminders. I'm going to go over there and deal with it in context that way. Yeah, and that was kind of my pitch is I didn't want Parchment to replace reminders. I wanted it to kind of sit on top of it. I've been calling Parchment an agenda app. So it kind of like brings your day together. But you can go in, I go into reminders. I'm still working out of reminders every day to manage projects and stuff like that and to manage like tasks that don't have due dates and stuff assigned to them.

I'm still going into reminders to deal with that. But like when I want to pull out and I just want to focus on my day because I have ADHD, it's very easy for me to go into reminders and get distracted by a bunch of other stuff. Oh, I think it is for everybody. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So like for me, when I want to just focus on like the stuff I need to get done today, that's when I just stick into Parchment. Yeah, that makes sense.

That makes sense. Yeah, it's really interesting what you can do with EventKit. I've played around with it a little bit too. I have like a calendar view app that I just call Reflow where it's not a calendar at all. Well, I mean, it's different than what you're doing. What I do is instead I have two sidebars on the Mac and the iPad. On the left is all of the tasks for a particular day. On the right are all the events for the day.

And then I have the calendar in the middle and I can then go and drag those items onto different days. It's just a, it's a scheduling program. Oh, nice. I'll figure it out. I got it all kind of readjusted, which I've enjoyed using that. I don't know if I'm ever going to release it. It's definitely a good personal tool, but it makes reorganizing my days a lot easier. That would be killer. I would buy that. Like, absolutely.

That's something I would buy. Because I do that a lot where, especially Mondays, whenever I, like if I don't get to something on a particular day and I'm like, okay, it's not that big of a deal. I don't do it today. And I'm just out of time. I pretty much always kick it to Monday. So, Monday mornings I always sit down and I always have like 19 tasks to do. And it's like, okay, I can't do all this today. Oh, man. All right.

Well, so what are your plans now with it? I mean, it's obviously, as we said at the top of the show, it has become, it blew up pretty quickly. I was surprised. Within a few days, I think by what, if I remember right, you release it like the middle of a week. And by Friday, it was kind of already kind of climbing the charts, wasn't it? Yeah. So, I released it on a Wednesday. And then, I mean, so I should say, like, I kind of have something a lot of developers don't have.

I have one of the best marketing tools imaginable. I have a very successful YouTube channel. So, I released it Wednesday. I put out a video on Thursday. Okay. By Thursday evening, it was like the number four paid app on the App Store. So, it was like, so, yeah, it climbed the charts pretty quickly. Power YouTube right there. Everybody should get themselves a YouTube channel. Yes. Honestly, like developers, if you, you should be, like, yes, it's great to email press and stuff like that.

Like, yes, please email me when you have an app. And I'm sure John feels the same way. Like, I want to know about new apps. But, like, you should also be, like, making stuff about your apps as well. Because nobody knows your app better than you. Like, there's been a couple of people that have covered my app, and I really appreciate it. But nobody knows the ins and outs of Parchment better than me because I'm the one that made it.

And the same goes for all, like, all developers. Like, nobody knows your app better than you. Yeah, I do find that a short walkthrough video can be really handy when I'm evaluating an app. Because one of the first things I do when somebody sends me a pitch, even beyond reading about it, is I want to see the screenshots because I can just kind of get a vibe for what it's all about pretty quickly by looking at a handful of screenshots.

And having, like, even a couple of minute video goes a long way because you can kind of see the thing in action. You can see the animations. You can see what the different screens look like and what the workflow is, especially on productivity apps. Yeah. No, absolutely. In fact, it's something I still need to do is make, like, a short, like, 60-second demo of Parchment. It's just I just haven't had time to do it. Because one thing that's happened is I've been getting a ton of support emails for feature requests and things like that.

And I think I have, like, 60-something feature requests. And a lot of them are, like, a lot of people repeating what other people have said. So, like, I need to go through all of these and, like, kind of decide the future of Parchment. And one of the things is I don't want to overcomplicate Parchment. I see this happen all the time. You need a ticket system now. You need to get into JIRA. Oh, no. No. No. You need a personal ticketing system.

No. Chris used to work in IT. He knows those systems well. Oh, I can't do it. I can't do it. No. No. I actually have a list and reminders with all, like, the feature requests and stuff like that. Good for you. Yeah. So that's – I do – I am keeping track of them. But one thing I don't want to do is I don't want to overcomplicate Parchment. I want Parchment to stay simple. Because I made it as a tool for me. Like, it started off as, like, it was just going to be an internal tool for me.

And then I started using it. And I was like, wow, I think other people might really like this. And I released it to a few other people. I sent it to some friends. I put in our MacStories Slack. And, like, people seemed to really resonate with it. So I was like, okay, I think I'm going to make this a thing. And I'm really glad I did because it's helped me – it's helped me expand my knowledge of app development. And basically, like, not only is that helping me grow my business, but it's also helping me understand app development, which is something, you know, I talk about apps on the channel.

So, like, it's kind of just helping everything. And it's helping me grow. Yeah, it's very useful context, I think. Especially I've been getting back into doing this stuff and building some of my own apps, too. And it is very useful context. And Federico and I have talked about it. It's like, as we get ready for our fall reviews, instead of just reading about the APIs, he and I have been using the APIs. We've been testing some of the new things, just making little experimental apps and things to see how the stuff works and how well it works and what the boundaries are and what you can do.

I'm curious, especially given that you already had a pretty busy job as a YouTuber and a podcaster, you know, how are you fitting in being now, maintaining this app? Because I do think that one of the things that people maybe go into doing an app, especially these days where it's more accessible than it's ever been, thanks to things like the assistance of coding agents, is that now you've kind of signed up for support emails and, you know, bug fixes and updates.

How do you, you know, where does that all stand for you? So that's been something I've been figuring out. But the nice thing is I've been making some changes to my business. One thing that I have been doing is I've been scaling back. I've been changing the way I handle sponsors on the YouTube channel. Sponsors used to take up a majority of my day. And I got to the point where I was like, this is not okay. This is not what I want to do.

I don't want to be dealing with sponsors for most of my day. So I've actually changed how I dealt with that. And that has actually freed up a lot of time so that I'm actually able to do more stuff with parchment. That being said, I also spend a lot of my evening sitting on the couch next to my fiance with my laptop also. So I'm... You and I live very similar lives, Chris. Yeah. I just don't have the dog. Yeah, exactly.

Like, I'm a workaholic. Like, I love working, especially because I own all of my work. You know, I used to have the typical day job where I worked for somebody. But now I own all my work and I love it. But I've been making a few changes. One thing that I did, and I got this tip from you and Federico, is I signed up for Spark, the email app. And there's a few things that are really nice about it. One, it has template support.

So a lot of the support emails that I've been getting, a lot of, like, bugs and stuff like that, are basically being reported multiple times to me. Right. So I just wrote out some templates and been like, hey, apologize. This will be fixed in the next update. Or if it's a critical bug or something like that, I'm like, hey, sorry about that. Here's a link to the TestFlight. Join the TestFlight. It's fixed there. You know, right now I'm literally, I have a big update coming and I'm just waiting on App Store approval.

And App Store approval, a little peek behind the curtain, has been very slow lately. I don't know what's going on, but even, like, the season developers. Oh, I'll tell you what's going on. Vibe coding is what's going on, Chris. Okay. The volume. It's my fault. We're going to, we are at, halfway through the year, Apple's already had almost the same number of apps published on the App Store as all of last year. So they are like, and it's accelerating.

And I, based on my email inbox. Oh, same, same. So that was another thing that, another reason. So yesterday alone, so I tackle my email once a day. I handle all of my email. I sit down and handle it once a day. I had over 300 emails in a 24-hour time span between parchment support, YouTube sponsorship stuff, like new apps and pitches and stuff like that. And all the spam I get. Because I've, like you, I'm sure you get signed up for a lot of stuff that you didn't sign up for, and it's all spam.

So I had, like, over 300 emails I had to deal with yesterday. So I was like, this has got to change. So I have been using the Spark CLI and Codex to automate cleaning up some of that email. I'm not automating, like, support stuff because I still want to handle that myself. But I am automating, like, hey, is this spam? Is this an app pitch? Is this, you know? I think it was you that told me about, like, you set up Codex to summarize all the TestFlight emails.

It's like, that's genius. I need that. So, like, I've been using that to, like, kind of help me clean up my inbox a bit. Yeah. The two big things that I do is I now pull all the pitches and TestFlights out of email. I automatically archive them. And the details go into a Notion database that has links back to the email so that I can kind of get a sense of what things are and that I can go back and look at the thread later if I want even more detail.

And usually I use Codex to supplement that, too. Like, if there are URLs in the email, I'll follow the link to the app and get more details from the App Store and that kind of thing, too. And so that's helped a lot. And it's good for triaging, too. I know a lot of people will, like, why would you want a CLI for email? Do you read your email in the terminal? And it's like, no. But what I do do is I'll have one of those panic attack days where I'm, like, I'm way behind on email.

And I'll be like, Codex, just look through all my inbox, all the things that are unread in the last 24 hours that look like they're interesting or important. And it does a pretty good job of just putting that all together in, like, a summary. And then I can be like, I can at least have the peace of mind of knowing, okay, there are only five or six things that I really need to deal with. And I go deal with them. And then I actually usually go back to the inbox and give it another quick look over to see if it missed anything.

But most of the time, that's more than enough. And it does accelerate the process of getting the good stuff out and not having to deal with the junk until I have a little bit more time. Yeah. Yeah. No. There are so many things that I was like, why does this need a CLI? And then now that I've kind of been getting into – now that I've been doing more Codex stuff and stuff like that, I'm like, I'll automate this. Like, my co-host, Matt Birchler, he makes an app called Quick Subtitles.

And he added a CLI to that. And it's fantastic because what I use that app for is creating subtitles for my YouTube videos because the YouTube generic subtitles are just terrible. So now I literally have a folder on my computer that I just dump all my videos into. And whenever it's ready, I'm just like, okay, make subtitles, put it here. And then once it makes the subtitles, it triggers some other stuff that helps. It just makes life so much easier because I'm a one-person business.

I have zero interest in hiring somebody because I'm a control freak and I can't let control go. I can't give it up. But having those tools has just really helped me be able to stay on top of everything and to be able to do something like parchment. Yep. Yep. No, and I think that that's like, this is something that we talked a little bit about last week on AppStories. And for me, and I also wrote about it for the club, is like one of the things that I've been thinking about a lot with agentic coding is I have like a list of priorities in my head.

My first priority is internal tools first and foremost because building tools that make my life easier, doing a lot of the administrative stuff that goes around making shows like this or doing the writing, that frees up time so I can do more of that. So that's like the number one most important thing. Number two is maybe making things like you have, like parchment, to actually distribute to other people, which is, and ideally it's both.

It's for yourself and for other people like you built. And then third is just goofing around, experimenting and trying weird things every now and then. And I try to keep that in a corner because I only let that one out every now and then. Because, you know, you can, you read all these articles about people having AI psychosis and stuff. I can see people going down a rabbit hole with this and just like experimenting constantly.

Yeah. Like I'm trying not to create the AI assistant that everyone's doing, like that like talks back to you and stuff like that. And I'm like, I'm not quite interested in that, but I am interested in like, hey, these things that these repetitive tasks that I do all the time that are a bit more complex than something like shortcuts can handle. You know, let's hand it off to Codex. Let's let these repetitive tasks that aren't creative work.

Like I will never let my creative video or photography workflow ever be touched by AI. That is a line in the sand I will not cross. It's a pretty, in most cases, it's a pretty easy line to draw because to me, it's all, it's all where it's whatever something becomes editorial and where there's judgment involved. You know, like whether it's writing or editing the video or shooting the video or, you know, that kind of stuff.

Like I know there are tools out there that creators use to throw their video in and the tool will chop up their talking head for them. Not interested in that. I'm really not. Like that to me is, that's on that other side of the line for me that I don't want to cross. But hey, something that can summarize all the TestFlight emails I get, that's fantastic. Like that's not like, like I don't, I don't need to sit there and go through a dozen TestFlight emails every day.

If only Apple had a way to really, truly shut off TestFlight emails, I would. People probably wonder. Can I have a 30 second rant on TestFlight, please? Sure. I'm always out there ranting about TestFlight. I hate the new TestFlight update. It's ruined everything. Did you know that TestFlight is destroyed? Some people don't have that. Some people don't see that. And I heard from, after I wrote about it, I heard that from some people.

But I, so I don't know what's going on. Is it a, I don't, it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would be a bug. And I'm not, it could be A-B testing. I'm not sure what's going on. If it's A-B testing and we're in the B group, this is a bad group. Like I am having expired TestFlights like you. I have expired TestFlights. In line with like active stuff. And I'm like, why? From ones that, for apps that don't even exist anymore.

Because they're just so old. And yeah, I don't know. It's, that's, that's a problem. Yeah. All right. Yeah. That's your rant. You're being put back in your cage, Chris. Yep. Yep. Yep. Chris, I want to thank you for joining me on this very special episode of AppStories. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. It was great chatting with you. I always love chatting with you. Well, and in the post show, we're going to talk a little bit about video and audio workflows.

Because you know what? Every time I mention things like Logic or Final Cut to Federico, his eyes glaze over. And he starts typing on his computer. And I don't know if, is he texting Silvia? Is he, is he doing something with Codex? I, you know. He's making another CLI. He zones me out when I talk about those things. And I know you won't do that to me because you, you enjoy those things too. So we're going to talk about that in AppStories Plus.

But in the meantime, I also want to thank our sponsors, Inoreader and RevenueCat with their shop, with their ship a ton thing that's going on right now. And of course, you can find me over at MacStories.net. And Chris, where can people find you? Yeah, you can find me on YouTube. I'm just at Christopher Lawley, L-A-W-L-E-Y on there. And you can find Parchment on the App Store. All right. Yeah. Yeah, do that. Give him, you know what?

You should like and subscribe and download. You've got like all these options when it comes to Chris now. There's so many options. There's so many buttons. So many buttons. We want everybody clicking all the things. All right, Chris, I'll talk to you later. Talk to you later. All right.