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187: Putting Plastic on Your Couches

 

00:00:00   Have you guys noticed that this is the 1000 day anniversary of the Mac Pro?

00:00:05   Oh God, do we really have to talk about that? I'm already all fired up.

00:00:08   This is the longest Mac Pro has ever gone. Although, if you count the 2012 as really

00:00:14   just the 2010, which I would, that actually is a longer span than this. That was like

00:00:18   1100. But if you count them separately the way Apple released them, this is the longest

00:00:23   span by a good margin.

00:00:25   Yay, happy birthday Mac Pro or something.

00:00:29   Was it you that was tweeting the other day that like,

00:00:32   you were talking about next spring or something

00:00:35   'cause you thought they weren't gonna update the Mac Pro

00:00:36   until they get the Skylake-E in it?

00:00:38   Whatever happened to them just using the chips

00:00:41   that are available now?

00:00:41   You've given up on that now too?

00:00:43   - We can barely get them to use anything.

00:00:46   The last thing they're gonna do

00:00:47   is use a six month old chip.

00:00:48   I mean, they're gonna either wait--

00:00:49   - A six month old chip is practically new

00:00:51   in a three year old computer.

00:00:52   - That's true, but this is Apple we're talking about.

00:00:55   Apple, like, the wind could blow the wrong direction one day

00:00:57   "Well, better delay the Mac Pro again for another generation."

00:01:01   - I don't know.

00:01:02   I don't know if my poor computer's gonna make it that long.

00:01:04   I don't know if I can wait until mid to late 2017.

00:01:08   - I mean, if I had to take a guess,

00:01:10   if they're truly waiting on Skylake-E

00:01:12   and they're gonna do an update then,

00:01:14   knowing Intel and also these days knowing Apple with the Mac,

00:01:18   I'm guessing that is not even a spring release.

00:01:20   I'm guessing that's June 2017.

00:01:23   I'm guessing that's a WVDC release.

00:01:25   - Yeah, I know, I saw that.

00:01:26   I was like, "Next WRC? No, Apple just released it with whatever's available now. And a new

00:01:32   GPU."

00:01:33   [Music]

00:01:34   So, let's dig in, starting with Zach Woldowski. Doing what Marco wants with Windows is possible.

00:01:40   Windows 8 and up support a deployment method called Windows To Go.

00:01:43   I don't care.

00:01:45   Moving on. iOS 10 home button behavior. This has been less of a cluster than I expected.

00:01:52   So it used to be that on iOS 9, you would pick up your phone and the screen would not

00:01:57   turn on.

00:01:59   And you could press the home button or the sleep/wake button, which a coworker of mine

00:02:04   had no idea was also a wake button.

00:02:07   He thought it was only a sleep button, which I thought that was kind of amusing.

00:02:09   Anyway, you could press either the sleep/wake button or the home button to turn the screen

00:02:13   on and then naturally, if you have Touch ID, particularly on, was it the 6 or the 6s that

00:02:17   got super fast?

00:02:18   6s was, yeah.

00:02:19   Okay.

00:02:20   But the 6S, the thing that happened was the Touch ID was so darn fast that you would pick

00:02:26   up your phone, press the home button, and Touch ID would almost instantly authenticate

00:02:30   you and you would miss all your notifications.

00:02:33   So in iOS 10, the way Apple's fixed this is, when you pick up the phone, and this is all

00:02:38   with the default settings that is, it does what I believe they call "raise to wake."

00:02:41   And so the screen will come on and show you your notifications.

00:02:44   If you press the home button, then it will actually do what it used to do, which is bring

00:02:51   you into the home screen.

00:02:53   But you could just lightly press the home button and it will say on the bottom, "Press

00:02:58   home to unlock."

00:03:00   And then you can press home again to get into your phone.

00:03:02   It's very wonky.

00:03:03   I still, even a month or so in, don't particularly care for it.

00:03:08   And I expected the entire world to lose their crap about this.

00:03:13   And as it turns out, I haven't heard that much complaining,

00:03:15   all told, have you guys?

00:03:17   - Everybody who's a machine I've upgraded to iOS 10

00:03:19   has complained about this,

00:03:20   which just includes the three members of my family, but.

00:03:22   (laughing)

00:03:25   - What do you think about it, Marco?

00:03:26   - I mean, I haven't heard that much

00:03:28   because most of the complaining I heard

00:03:30   was earlier during the beta period,

00:03:31   when all the people I know all installed the beta

00:03:34   on their main phone against most advice.

00:03:38   So most of the complaining I got through back then,

00:03:40   for my own personal getting used to it,

00:03:43   it took me maybe a couple days and it was fine.

00:03:45   And when it first started, I thought for sure,

00:03:48   oh, this is gonna take me a long time to get used to

00:03:51   'cause it's so different on such a common interaction

00:03:54   that I do constantly every day.

00:03:56   And it just turned out, yeah,

00:03:56   it was like a couple days and it was totally fine.

00:03:58   - Ah, I'm jealous 'cause it is still taking me a while

00:04:00   to get used to it.

00:04:01   And in fact, I was reminded by somebody earlier,

00:04:03   either today or yesterday, that I'm so,

00:04:06   it's so ingrained in me to do the swipe up to control center

00:04:10   hit the bottom right to get the camera from the lock screen.

00:04:12   And it is so much nicer in iOS 10 to swipe from right to left, but I completely forgot

00:04:17   that was a thing.

00:04:19   And so I need to also retrain myself on that one as well.

00:04:21   Yep, again, a few days.

00:04:23   So I complained about this thing on the last show.

00:04:26   Like I had just upgraded to iOS 10.

00:04:29   Was I on the beta?

00:04:30   I forget.

00:04:31   Anyway, it was an aside that I complained that this is the one thing that annoyed me

00:04:34   about it.

00:04:35   sentenced me and all of us, I guess, to a good solid week of people telling us how to fix this

00:04:42   which is what this actual follow-by item is about. Like, if you don't like the new behavior in iOS 10

00:04:46   there's a setting to change it back to the old behavior. Although interestingly, the setting by the way is in under general under

00:04:52   accessibility and there's a thing called home button and there's just one little switch

00:04:55   you can change it back to the old behavior. But if you switch it back to the old behavior the text on the screen still says

00:05:00   like

00:05:01   Press to unlock which I guess is true. It will still unlock it, but you don't have to press it anymore

00:05:06   That's the point. It just makes it the old style thing. Yeah, that's a little weird, but I mean it makes sense

00:05:11   There's all there's also a setting for raised awake - by the way

00:05:14   My phone doesn't have raised awake and I don't quite understand why it annoys me a little bit. It's only on the 6s

00:05:19   Oh, is that right? I didn't know that

00:05:20   Yeah

00:05:21   the 6s

00:05:21   you know you could added that low power processor to do to listen for hey see all the time and

00:05:27   And I think that same process is responsible

00:05:29   for constantly monitoring the motion to do that.

00:05:33   - Yeah, so I miss out on that.

00:05:34   But anyway, I changed it back just because I don't wanna

00:05:36   have to do like what I consider to be the extra press.

00:05:40   And I also configured all of my family's devices

00:05:42   to be like that after they complained.

00:05:44   And so now, you know, as far as my family is concerned,

00:05:47   nothing has changed about this.

00:05:49   - Yeah, see, I really wanna change it back,

00:05:51   but I'm trying to train myself

00:05:52   like Marco has succeeded in doing

00:05:54   and get myself used to it

00:05:56   because I really prefer to tactically deploy my home

00:06:02   settings tweaks when I get onto a new device that's

00:06:05   applicable to the Mac and to any iOS device.

00:06:08   So I try to be cool with the defaults, but sometimes you

00:06:13   just can't live with it.

00:06:15   But this one I'm trying to get over.

00:06:16   And I think I will.

00:06:17   It's just taken me longer than it took Marco.

00:06:19   Somebody asked a question, at least in the show notes

00:06:22   anyway, why not five-finger pinch?

00:06:24   So on the iPad, I believe it's optional,

00:06:26   it certainly used to be optional,

00:06:27   you can enable multitasking gestures.

00:06:30   And so as an example, I believe it's a four finger swipe,

00:06:33   will go, will swipe you between apps,

00:06:35   which I love and use constantly.

00:06:37   And I also use constantly five finger pinch on the iPad,

00:06:41   which is you put all five fingers on the screen,

00:06:43   bring them closer together,

00:06:44   and that will bring you back to the home screen.

00:06:46   Why not five finger pinch on an iPhone?

00:06:48   'Cause it's just not that big, man.

00:06:50   I mean, that's what I would think.

00:06:51   - That's not what the question is about.

00:06:52   The question was about my last week's complaint about how I don't like hitting...

00:06:56   It was all about the home button.

00:06:57   How I don't like hitting the home button, like actually pressing a physical button when

00:07:00   I want to go back to the home screen, because it feels like when I'm on my iPad I'm just

00:07:03   like "Oh, touch the screen here, touch the screen there."

00:07:05   But this one thing that I want to do frequently, go back to springboard or whatever, I have

00:07:09   to press this physical button.

00:07:11   And especially if it's like the iPad is like resting on a pillow or something and the home

00:07:16   button could be like down in the little creases of the pillow.

00:07:19   It's not as nice as touching everything else.

00:07:21   of the questions, why not just use five finger pinch?

00:07:23   It gets rid of all that.

00:07:24   You don't touch the home button,

00:07:25   all your interaction is with the screen.

00:07:27   And I love five finger pinch,

00:07:30   but there has always been something stopping me

00:07:33   from enabling it.

00:07:34   In the beginning it was Fruit Ninja, obviously,

00:07:36   because if you wanna have Fruit Ninja on your iPad

00:07:38   and you wanna let your kids play it,

00:07:39   you cannot enable these gestures

00:07:41   because the kids will forever be going back

00:07:43   to the home screen when they're trying

00:07:44   to slice through watermelons or whatever.

00:07:46   And these days, I have Twitterrific,

00:07:49   My Twitter application has many gestures you can do.

00:07:52   One of them I think is like a two finger vertical swipe

00:07:55   or something to change Twitter accounts.

00:07:57   And when I do the five finger pinch,

00:07:59   it sends me back to Springboard.

00:08:00   But when I go back to Twitter, it's on a different account.

00:08:02   - Oh, weird.

00:08:03   - And so, you know, is it just the way

00:08:05   that I'm doing the gesture?

00:08:06   Am I tripping the two finger gesture recognizer

00:08:09   before I trip the OS wide five finger thing?

00:08:11   I don't know.

00:08:12   But anyway, what it boils down to is,

00:08:14   I still cannot get clear of applications

00:08:17   that I use every day that are sort of not nicely compatible

00:08:22   with a five finger pinch, which is not great

00:08:24   'cause I really got addicted to it when I started using it

00:08:26   before I realized I just had to disable it

00:08:28   'cause essentially my iPad was broken

00:08:30   for the purposes of small children playing Fruit Ninja.

00:08:32   And now I really haven't gone back to it.

00:08:34   It means I'm still stuck pressing the home button.

00:08:37   And what I learned from this home button behavior change

00:08:41   in iOS 10 is that a lot of people have ingrained habits

00:08:46   for like pick up your device and unlock it.

00:08:49   So a lot of people are complaining

00:08:50   about this change in behavior.

00:08:53   The number one tip I've seen on Twitter for iOS 10,

00:08:56   both directed at me and just, you know,

00:08:57   going crosswise to everyone else is,

00:08:59   "Oh, there's a setting to change it back to the old way.

00:09:00   Do it, do it, do it."

00:09:01   But if I had raised to wake,

00:09:03   I'm not sure I would change it

00:09:04   because I would try to pick up the new habit,

00:09:06   which is if you just wanna see stuff on the lock screen,

00:09:09   don't touch anything, just pick the phone up.

00:09:10   If that works consistently, that's better, you know,

00:09:13   that's better than doing it.

00:09:14   The reason I don't want it to do the press thing on my phone

00:09:15   It's like it's an extra effort. Well, this is one fewer thing that you have to do. Just pick up the phone

00:09:20   So, I don't know. I don't have a phone that has a feature eventually

00:09:23   I probably will and I might go back and give it a try. What do you mean? Probably are you moving to Android next year?

00:09:29   But the other thing I learned is that lots of people have strange habits related to the home button one

00:09:38   I didn't put this in the notes. I don't have the URL but did you guys read this story?

00:09:42   about

00:09:44   habits related to the home button in the Far East.

00:09:47   Oh, yes.

00:09:48   Where were—this was talked about somewhere.

00:09:51   I think Gruber had brought it up, and I'd heard it somewhere else as well.

00:09:54   Yeah, so this was apparently—in the Far East, like China, Japan, Indonesia, that whole

00:10:00   region—apparently it's very popular on iOS devices to enable the Assistive Touch

00:10:06   feature, which basically puts the equivalent of the home button somewhere on your screen.

00:10:11   I think I enabled this way back when.

00:10:12   I haven't enabled it in years though, but it's like if you have trouble using the home

00:10:16   button, they will put some always visible controls on top of the screen that will do

00:10:21   the same thing as the home button.

00:10:24   And this is apparently very popular.

00:10:26   Everybody does it.

00:10:29   And so if you go to the Far East and you see people using an iOS device and you see a bunch

00:10:33   of junk on their screen, I think it's like always on top, always visible.

00:10:36   Otherwise how would it work?

00:10:38   And so people are moving that stuff out of the way, like when they want to see what's

00:10:40   in the corner of the screen, but this UI is covering it.

00:10:43   They move it out of the way so they can see the other stuff.

00:10:46   From my perspective, they're making their phone harder

00:10:49   to use by putting some always visible UI on top of the screen

00:10:53   that the people making the applications don't

00:10:55   expect to be there, that they have to manage and move around.

00:10:58   And they're doing this because they

00:11:01   think that using the Home button will break it.

00:11:04   And this is another one of those superstition

00:11:06   based on real things, because I think

00:11:09   I think it was the iPhone 4 home button,

00:11:11   had some reliability problems.

00:11:13   - 4, 4S, and maybe 5 also.

00:11:15   It seemed to stop for sure

00:11:17   when the touch ID sensor came in the 5S.

00:11:18   - Yeah.

00:11:19   Although all iPhones forever have had, you know,

00:11:23   some degree of failing home buttoning,

00:11:25   just because it's a very frequently used button

00:11:27   and there's some failure rate

00:11:28   for a certain number of clicks, right?

00:11:29   But the 4 is the one I remember where it was, you know,

00:11:32   it was way out of bounds

00:11:33   for what you'd expect the failure rate to be.

00:11:37   The story I read about this home button thing was like,

00:11:41   their angle was that people feel like a broken home button

00:11:45   hurts the resale value.

00:11:47   So they don't want to ever use the home button

00:11:49   so that when they sell it later to, you know,

00:11:52   trade it in for another phone or just sell it

00:11:53   to get money to buy another phone,

00:11:55   that they won't be hurting its resale value,

00:11:58   which is a kind of a mercenary way to think of it.

00:12:01   But it's also kind of like putting plastic on your couches.

00:12:04   And like, if no one ever uses the home button,

00:12:07   does it matter?

00:12:08   How does it hurt the resale value

00:12:10   if everybody who will buy and use the phone

00:12:12   will never use the home button

00:12:13   because they're all preserving it.

00:12:15   Just in case, you know, the Pope comes one day

00:12:17   and wants to use the home button.

00:12:18   It's like, it's never been used.

00:12:19   Just finally, you can take the plastic off the sofa.

00:12:22   Anyway, this is one article I read on the internet.

00:12:25   I have no idea if it's remotely accurate.

00:12:27   Anybody who lives in the Far East,

00:12:29   by all means send us an email

00:12:30   and let us know if this is a real thing

00:12:32   or if this is just one of those stories

00:12:33   that one reporter happened to see one thing

00:12:36   and now thinks the entire region does this.

00:12:39   - I mean, for whatever it's worth,

00:12:40   I've heard now, since the story's been circulating,

00:12:42   I've heard a lot of people who are confirming it

00:12:45   from their own anecdotes.

00:12:45   Like, oh yeah, I live in X place,

00:12:48   or a relative, a friend of mine lives there,

00:12:50   and this is totally a real thing.

00:12:52   - And this is also as an explanation

00:12:54   of why would Apple get rid of the home button

00:12:56   to try to encourage, try to encourage

00:13:00   potentially millions of people

00:13:01   to actually use the home button again,

00:13:03   because maybe they'll feel like,

00:13:04   well, this button doesn't move, so it won't wear out.

00:13:05   Now, I don't think that's gonna work,

00:13:07   'cause if they have the superstition going for years,

00:13:09   and you know, obviously me being the unicorn that I am,

00:13:12   I've never had a home button fail on an iOS device.

00:13:16   And I don't think there are particularly bad problems

00:13:18   in the post-touch ID age.

00:13:20   You know, the iPhone 4 was definitely the bad one,

00:13:22   and the 4S tried to improve it, but not so great.

00:13:24   And like you said, with the 5R things,

00:13:26   I don't know anybody who's ever had a failed touch ID sensor,

00:13:28   but I'm sure it happens, because it is a physical button.

00:13:31   But anyway, I don't know if this is gonna change things,

00:13:33   but as people pointed out in the chat room,

00:13:35   Apple presumably has diagnostic information

00:13:38   like that little thing where you,

00:13:39   I forget if it's opt in or opt out,

00:13:41   but you can send Apple diagnostic information.

00:13:43   They must know how many people in what regions

00:13:46   are using these assistive touch features.

00:13:48   And they'll know based on the percentage of the population

00:13:51   that actually needs those features,

00:13:52   because they can't use the home button.

00:13:54   Like the numbers must scream to them.

00:13:57   A lot of people are using their iPhones

00:13:59   ways that you, Apple, probably didn't expect.

00:14:01   So maybe address that with your next hardware model.

00:14:04   And so that could be one possible thing added in support of getting rid of the button.

00:14:10   Obviously the reason you get rid of the physical button is just because if things don't move,

00:14:13   it's more reliable and it's easier to waterproof, right?

00:14:15   But another factor could be, oh, and by the way, maybe we can encourage those millions

00:14:19   of people who refuse to use the home button that maybe it's safe to use it again, or they

00:14:23   can just spend the rest of their time sliding always visible palettes around their screen

00:14:26   so they can see their content.

00:14:27   Yeah, I also, I still do want to point out one thing though that A) this won't solve

00:14:33   the problem because people will still keep doing it because of superstition as you mentioned

00:14:38   and B) this haptic engine now will have way more use.

00:14:42   So it's also full of moving parts, just differently moving parts and the Taptic Engine

00:14:48   in the watch dies all the time.

00:14:50   Now the one in the 6S seems to be okay so far, as far as I know.

00:14:53   I don't think we've heard anything about that.

00:14:55   But I wouldn't necessarily rule out

00:14:58   that a new Taptic Engine that is going to be used way more

00:15:03   will somehow fail less than a simple button.

00:15:07   I don't think we know that yet.

00:15:08   Maybe Apple knows that from their own testing, I don't know,

00:15:10   but I think in the real world, we have yet to see that.

00:15:13   - I think it stands to reason that something

00:15:15   that's sealed inside is better than something

00:15:17   that your mucky fingers are touching,

00:15:18   especially buttons when you press them,

00:15:20   you open up a little gap for all sorts of lint and crumbs

00:15:23   and muck and stuff to get into,

00:15:25   it's way easier to make an internally sealed thing.

00:15:28   And like, I remember the bad vibrating things in the watch,

00:15:32   but that sounds like an early model miniaturization problem.

00:15:36   And I also wonder if the Taptic Engine

00:15:38   feels a little bit weaker than normal,

00:15:40   does that, you know, do people care?

00:15:42   Does that hurt the resale value of your phone?

00:15:45   I don't know.

00:15:46   Anyway, like I said, one article,

00:15:49   I don't know if there's any truth behind this,

00:15:51   But in my own personal life, I have learned again when messing with the settings for iOS

00:15:57   10, that people have weird ways of unlocking their devices, that you don't learn until

00:16:01   something changes about it and you have a discussion with it.

00:16:03   My wife presses the sleep/wake button and then puts her finger on the touch ID, which

00:16:09   doesn't make sense to me.

00:16:10   Like, why don't you, like, this is pre-iOS 10, right?

00:16:13   That's her pattern.

00:16:14   Picks up the device.

00:16:15   Yeah, same here.

00:16:16   Presses touch/wake and then does touch ID.

00:16:17   I pick the thing up, put my thumb on the Touch ID button,

00:16:21   press it to wake the thing up,

00:16:23   and just leave my thumb there to unlock it, right?

00:16:25   So I'm only going to one place.

00:16:27   I'm not going to the top and then to the bottom.

00:16:28   I'm just going to the very bottom.

00:16:30   - Well, okay, I can explain why,

00:16:32   well, for me anyway, why that is.

00:16:33   So I'll sleep wake if I want to just see notifications

00:16:37   and not insta-clear them.

00:16:39   And then if I know that I don't really give a crap

00:16:41   what notifications I have,

00:16:42   maybe I just looked at my phone 30 seconds ago,

00:16:44   then I'll do what you described, Jon,

00:16:46   just mash my finger down on the home button,

00:16:49   and I'll just power right through to the home screen.

00:16:51   But in the case that I care about notifications,

00:16:54   and again, like you said, pre-iOS 10,

00:16:56   I would use the sleep/wake button

00:16:57   to just turn the screen on, let me see what I'm doing.

00:17:00   And then if I wanna act on one,

00:17:01   or perhaps just use my phone,

00:17:03   then I will put my finger on the home button

00:17:07   and unlock it.

00:17:10   - Does this habit come from the super fast touch ID sensor,

00:17:13   or were you doing it before the 6S?

00:17:15   Ah, it's a great question.

00:17:17   I definitely think it was influenced

00:17:21   by the super fast touch ID.

00:17:22   I would say I don't remember doing it before the 6S.

00:17:25   I think I retrained myself after I got the 6S.

00:17:28   - Yeah, maybe I'll change to when I have the faster sensor,

00:17:30   but on the 6, I don't have those problems.

00:17:32   Same thing, if I just wanna look what's on the screen,

00:17:34   I just hit it and it doesn't go fast enough,

00:17:35   so it's no problem.

00:17:36   And my son refuses to use touch ID.

00:17:38   He enters his code every time.

00:17:40   He puts his sleep, he hits a sleep wake button.

00:17:43   Then he wants, in iOS 10,

00:17:44   What he wanted to do was how do I get to the screen

00:17:46   that has the numbers, right?

00:17:48   So he gets a sleep-wake button and like,

00:17:50   I forget what, swipe or whatever,

00:17:51   to get to the number thing.

00:17:52   He has an iPad with touch ID, doesn't use it.

00:17:55   - That's crazy to me, huh?

00:17:57   - I think he feels like the numbers are more reliable,

00:18:00   like they work every time,

00:18:01   and that he's not pausing and waiting.

00:18:03   It's kind of, you know, blame my genes for this,

00:18:05   like that he's never waiting.

00:18:07   He doesn't want to be waiting for the computer.

00:18:09   And so putting your finger on touch ID

00:18:11   and waiting to see if it succeeds

00:18:12   and then picking up and putting it down,

00:18:14   It's like the numbers are deterministic.

00:18:16   It's gonna take the same amount of time every time.

00:18:18   During that time, he's always doing something.

00:18:20   Like he's not waiting, even though if you were

00:18:22   to stopwatch it, it's probably faster to do touch ID.

00:18:25   You know, it just feels like I'm busy.

00:18:26   I'm doing the thing, the unlock thing,

00:18:28   and it's probably more reliable for him.

00:18:30   He also has a slow touch ID sensor

00:18:31   'cause he's got an old iPad.

00:18:33   - Hmm.

00:18:34   All right, let's see what else we got here.

00:18:37   Nick Guy, who is the Nick Guy on Twitter,

00:18:40   writes in to say, "This iPhone 7 smart battery case

00:18:43   is 2365 milliamp hours which is up from 1877 for the iPhone 6.

00:18:50   I didn't notice it looking any bigger. Like maybe it's a little bit thicker?

00:18:55   I have one right here comparing it to the old one just visually. It feels about the

00:19:00   same. The only major difference is obviously the headphone jack removal and so it switches

00:19:05   to the two like line shaped girls in the bottom instead of the one line and the one dot and

00:19:10   the giant camera cutout, those are the major ones.

00:19:14   Because of the aforementioned giant camera cutout,

00:19:16   if you have a smart battery case from the 6S,

00:19:20   it will not fit a 7.

00:19:21   - It's interesting that they made the battery case bigger

00:19:23   on the iPhone 7, which also has better battery life,

00:19:25   so more battery for everybody.

00:19:27   - Well, it makes it more reasonable of a thing to buy,

00:19:30   and it makes their price a little more reasonable.

00:19:33   Obviously, you can get lots of cheaper cases

00:19:34   for a lot less money, but to have only the 1900

00:19:38   or whatever it was, now to have like 2400,

00:19:40   like that makes it a little bit better.

00:19:41   'Cause before, you know, the main complaints about it were,

00:19:44   it's ugly, it's ugly, it's also really ugly,

00:19:48   and also that's not a lot of capacity for the price.

00:19:51   So now, you kind of help that last one.

00:19:54   It's still not a great bargain, like price-wise,

00:19:57   if you look at other battery cases,

00:19:59   but as I mentioned before, like,

00:20:00   weird total converts in this family,

00:20:02   they actually work really well.

00:20:04   I think if you're going to use a battery case

00:20:06   on a regular basis, I can recommend the Apple one.

00:20:10   So it's nice that it has a little bit more capacity now.

00:20:13   And it doesn't feel like noticeably heavier.

00:20:15   - I think they should make one for the Plus.

00:20:17   - It would, I mean, obviously it would be really big

00:20:20   and really heavy. - Yeah.

00:20:22   - But it's interesting, you know, like the,

00:20:24   if you want the most battery life in a phone,

00:20:28   a regular 6S or 7 in the battery case

00:20:31   will last way longer than a Plus by itself.

00:20:34   - I know, that's why I think the Plus needs it

00:20:36   because I think of the Plus as like the new iPad mini, right?

00:20:40   Like if you put a Plus in a battery case,

00:20:43   then you could actually take that in a long car trip

00:20:45   and like play games on it and not kill it.

00:20:47   Like the Plus is supposed to be,

00:20:49   I don't mind the humongousness,

00:20:51   I don't mind the extra weight,

00:20:52   I just want as much battery life as possible.

00:20:54   And putting the battery case only on the smaller model

00:20:57   muddies the water 'cause like, well, you know,

00:20:59   I can imagine regular people who aren't like trying

00:21:01   to do the math on the milliamp hours and stuff saying,

00:21:03   well, which is longer?

00:21:05   gigantic plus or the regular 7 with a lump on its back and the regular 7 lump on its

00:21:11   back wins but that's not obvious.

00:21:12   They should make it for the plus and they should also have that lump go across the entire

00:21:16   back.

00:21:17   I can think of lots of reasons why they don't make it for the plus.

00:21:19   I mean, chief among them is size, obviously.

00:21:22   But also, I do think there's a lot fewer people who need it because the plus does have

00:21:25   longer battery life when the screen is on.

00:21:27   Not by a lot, but slightly longer battery life when the screen is on.

00:21:30   When the screen is off, it has substantially more battery life because, you know, things

00:21:34   like, if the screen is off and it's just doing things like playing music over Bluetooth or

00:21:38   something like that, it's going to use the same amount of power as the small phone, or

00:21:43   the medium phone now, the 4.7 inch version.

00:21:47   It only uses more power when the screen is on.

00:21:49   So it has a battery that is sized for the screen to be on and to roughly match or slightly

00:21:53   exceed the power of the smaller phone.

00:21:56   But if most of your usage of the phone is with the screen off, then it can last like

00:22:01   50% more.

00:22:03   it's a huge difference in how much better it lasts that way.

00:22:06   So it really depends on your usage,

00:22:07   whether the battery case is even necessary

00:22:09   for the Plus for most people.

00:22:11   And I think enough people would fall into that usage pattern

00:22:14   of it's not really useful for them,

00:22:16   that there's a lot less demand for it,

00:22:18   in addition to the massive size that it would be,

00:22:21   and the resulting device with the battery case

00:22:24   would be quite ridiculous.

00:22:26   And there are other people who make battery cases

00:22:28   for the Plus, and they do look ridiculous.

00:22:31   So I totally get why Apple has not released theirs.

00:22:34   - Yeah, like I said, I'm thinking of like a kid

00:22:35   in the back of a car who wants to play video games

00:22:37   for a whole like three hour car trip

00:22:39   and they're just gonna be like burning the battery

00:22:41   the entire time.

00:22:42   They'd love a battery.

00:22:43   I mean, it's not any bigger than like a, you know,

00:22:46   a traditional handheld game thing.

00:22:48   Like they're sitting there,

00:22:49   if they were already, they're already accepted plus,

00:22:51   it's like, why not?

00:22:52   Why not just carry around a 12.5 inch iPad Pro

00:22:54   with you everywhere?

00:22:55   You might as well.

00:22:56   (upbeat music)

00:22:58   - We're sponsored this week by Linode.

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00:24:37   for sponsoring the show.

00:24:38   - So some people have noticed that your wishes

00:24:44   have been granted, Jon, and the Apple leather case

00:24:47   now has metal buttons for the iPhone 7.

00:24:50   - That wasn't my wish, though.

00:24:51   When I was talking about my pimply iPhone 6 leather case

00:24:55   that looked really good right up until maybe three months ago

00:24:59   when it started to get all rumply for some reason.

00:25:01   It was in the discussion of the home button,

00:25:03   like how does it feel to press a button

00:25:05   that doesn't actually move on a small device like this?

00:25:07   And I was saying that on my, my rumply case,

00:25:09   when I press the volume buttons, like nothing moves.

00:25:12   Like I'm basically just applying pressure to these lumps.

00:25:14   And what I was saying, it was like back to the discussion,

00:25:15   like why, why did the volume buttons

00:25:17   on the iPhone 7 move at all?

00:25:18   If the home button doesn't move,

00:25:19   why did the volume buttons move?

00:25:20   What I was saying is that I think it would be okay

00:25:22   if on the iPhone 7, the volume buttons didn't move.

00:25:25   the sleep/wake button didn't move.

00:25:26   Like they were just pressure sensitive.

00:25:27   Because obviously I'm okay with it on my 6.

00:25:29   I mean, it doesn't bother me.

00:25:30   Not only am I okay with my 6,

00:25:31   I can't even feel the edges of these buttons.

00:25:33   They're like, they're just like

00:25:34   the slightly more raised pimply area.

00:25:35   Like they're very indistinct.

00:25:36   If they had sharply creased cut buttons

00:25:40   that just did not move and were pressure sensitive,

00:25:43   I think I would be okay with that.

00:25:44   And so would Apple because they'd be like,

00:25:45   "Hey, fewer moving parts, right?

00:25:47   Everybody loves it."

00:25:48   But instead what they did with the Apple leather case

00:25:50   for the iPhone 7 is they made it

00:25:53   so I don't have to deal with these rumbly things anymore.

00:25:54   Oh, now you've got nice metal buttons, which I think they did on the

00:25:57   They did on the bumper maybe or they had I think the bumper had some other kind of pass-through thing

00:26:02   where there was like a

00:26:04   Hard physical thing that when you pressed would slide down and press the button that was underneath rather than coating over with leather

00:26:10   But anyway, I think you're right that is that is sure to be that the new case is obviously an improvement

00:26:15   It's sure to feel better

00:26:16   it certainly looks better to have metal buttons poking out of your leather case and

00:26:20   I bet those won't have the same problem of getting all gross, but I still maintain

00:26:24   maintain that even more than the home button I think, because the home button I haven't

00:26:28   tried it, maybe I'll hate it, right?

00:26:30   But the volume and power buttons I've been using essentially non-moving volume and power

00:26:33   buttons for a long time now and I'm totally fine with it.

00:26:36   On the other hand, my phone doesn't vibrate when I press them either so that probably

00:26:39   helps.

00:26:40   So if on the fancy 10th anniversary iPhone 8 or whatever, iPhone 7s or whatever they

00:26:45   call it, if that has sleep/wake and volume buttons that don't move, I'm already on board

00:26:52   with that.

00:26:53   and the jury's still on 'cause I haven't tried it.

00:26:55   - All right.

00:26:56   Are the Lightning EarPods digital?

00:26:58   And follow on, why do we care?

00:27:01   - I care mostly for curiosity.

00:27:03   I mean, yeah, although Marco,

00:27:05   do you have an audio reason to care?

00:27:07   - Not really.

00:27:08   I mean, so basically through various statements

00:27:11   around PR representatives and various things confirmed

00:27:13   by various people, the original story that we had heard

00:27:17   and talked about on the show that Mac Ocatoro reported

00:27:20   like forever ago, that the iPhone 7 lightning port

00:27:23   was going to be special and that it was going to have

00:27:26   a mode where it could output analog audio over the pins

00:27:29   and therefore the devices plugged into it,

00:27:33   like the new lightning headphones and the headphone adapter

00:27:36   could be really, really simple.

00:27:38   That is apparently not the case, that apparently

00:27:40   all the lightning ports are treated the same.

00:27:42   This port is not different from the rest of them,

00:27:44   at least not in that way as far as we know,

00:27:46   and that the lightning headphones and the lightning

00:27:50   to headphone adapter for $9 are both full digital

00:27:54   lightning devices that include an audio DAC

00:27:57   and a little mini amp in there.

00:27:59   A lot of people have asked me what I think about this,

00:28:03   whether it's possible, whether it's good

00:28:05   'cause it's so cheap, and the quick answer is,

00:28:08   you know, with the disclaimer that I'm not an expert

00:28:09   in manufacturing, little DAC amp chips are very plentiful,

00:28:14   very common, and very cheap.

00:28:16   And the one on the phone before was already not like

00:28:20   a $50 DAC or anything like that.

00:28:22   The parts in a phone, most of them are very, very cheap

00:28:25   parts and the little audio codec chip that was in there

00:28:30   is almost certainly not a very expensive part to begin with.

00:28:35   The one that they put in the headphone adapter,

00:28:38   which also must include an ADC going the other direction

00:28:41   because there's a microphone involved,

00:28:43   but the one they put in there is probably going to be

00:28:47   similar quality than the one they have already in the phone.

00:28:49   I don't expect it to be noticeably different.

00:28:52   I'm generally a DAC quality skeptic.

00:28:55   A lot of audio people think that you have to have

00:28:59   a really amazing, complicated, and key factor here,

00:29:03   expensive DAC/AMP or both

00:29:08   in order to have good audio performance.

00:29:10   And I am generally a skeptic on DACs and amps.

00:29:13   It is very, very rare that I ever hear

00:29:15   any difference whatsoever, even with very good ones

00:29:17   versus very crappy ones.

00:29:19   It is extremely rare to hear any difference whatsoever.

00:29:22   And on the headphones that almost everybody

00:29:24   is using with their iPhones,

00:29:25   it would be extremely difficult for anybody ever

00:29:28   to notice a real difference between DACs and amps.

00:29:32   So that being said, it is indeed totally possible

00:29:36   for Apple to make and sell a whole bunch

00:29:39   of these little crappy adapters for $9

00:29:41   that include a digital DAC chip in there,

00:29:44   especially since Apple themselves do not need

00:29:46   to pay the MFI licensing fee for the lightning chip

00:29:49   that's in there.

00:29:51   So that also helps a lot.

00:29:53   For that reason alone, I don't expect to see a lot

00:29:57   of third party ones that are near that price point,

00:29:59   but we will find out, I guess.

00:30:01   - So the interesting thing to me about this, technically,

00:30:04   is one of the potential promises of digital audio

00:30:09   is you can convert from digital to analog

00:30:13   sort of at the last second, right?

00:30:15   So you don't have to worry about transmitting an audio signal over a potentially long wire,

00:30:20   very thin wire, probably doesn't have, you know, not a particularly sturdy wire, that

00:30:25   could potentially fray or, you know, like everyone has had headphones where one ear

00:30:29   starts cutting out or like the wire starts to fray or if you have like a plug thing that

00:30:33   you plug things into your car with, right, those wires can wear out because they're not

00:30:37   super heavy duty.

00:30:38   And if what you're transmitting over there is analog audio as you're wearing down that

00:30:42   wire or something bad is happening to where it's passing close to something that's magnetic

00:30:45   or whatever, it can mess with your signal and start to sound worse.

00:30:50   So this is theoretical, right?

00:30:51   But it could happen.

00:30:54   And so it's like, oh, we'll send digital.

00:30:55   Digital is robust.

00:30:56   All we got to do is be able to distinguish between a one and a zero.

00:30:58   It's much easier than maintaining the fine details of frequency and amplitude of an analog

00:31:02   signal.

00:31:03   And then just the last second right before it goes into your ears, we'll convert that

00:31:06   with our tiny little DACs into an analog signal.

00:31:10   But did we say DAC is digital to analog converter?

00:31:14   I don't know if people know that, but that's what we're saying.

00:31:17   We're saying all caps DAC.

00:31:18   Right, and so you have to understand that in order to hear audio, you need to go from

00:31:23   ones and zeros into a wave, into something that a speaker can play.

00:31:28   And so the debate is, is the conversion from digital to analog by a digital to analog converter,

00:31:34   DAC or DAC, does that happen in the phone?

00:31:37   Does that happen after it leaves the phone?

00:31:39   So what's coming out of the phone through the lightning port is just ones and zeros

00:31:42   and then eventually gets converted and that's the crux of the conversation.

00:31:45   - Right, and there's lots of different ways to do that.

00:31:49   It is not actually a simple problem electrically to solve, to convert those ones and zeros

00:31:53   to the corresponding waves.

00:31:55   The main reality of it though is that even though there's lots of fancy DACs that can

00:32:00   do a more accurate job, that can measure better on official scientific measurement machinery,

00:32:05   The crappy, cheap, like $2 DAC amp chips all in one

00:32:10   do a good enough job that most people

00:32:12   can't hear the difference.

00:32:13   - And you'll find that Marco prefers

00:32:15   digital analog converters that have tubes in them

00:32:18   because it gives that nice warm, rich sound

00:32:20   that you don't get otherwise.

00:32:21   - Actually, I hate tubes.

00:32:22   They're a giant pain in the butt.

00:32:23   They pick up static, they burn out,

00:32:25   they're asymmetric sometimes.

00:32:27   Cheap tubes suck.

00:32:28   I'm all solid state over here.

00:32:30   - Just messing with you.

00:32:31   Anyway, continue, John.

00:32:32   - So the $9 adapter,

00:32:34   that we have learned, basically conclusively, that has a little digital analog converter in it,

00:32:39   like what's being sent out of the Lightning port is digital, raises the question, where is the DAC

00:32:45   in the wired earpods that come? It could be that the DAC is in the Lightning connector,

00:32:51   and it's still sending analog audio across the wire to the wired headphones. So it only gets

00:32:57   like seven millimeters out of the phone before it's converted by not the DAC in the phone,

00:33:03   but by what is presumably an even cheaper DAC that's like 7 millimeters away, and then it just sends out, you know,

00:33:08   or they could also be in the earphones.

00:33:09   I don't know where it is. Like, I really want iFixit to slice things open to see what the heck is inside them,

00:33:14   but it would be kind of weird to

00:33:16   bundle the thing with like, you know, quote-unquote "digital earpods" that merely move the DAC slightly outside the case.

00:33:23   Oh, yeah. No, that's that's all marketing BS.

00:33:26   Of course, it is very, very likely that the DAC is in the Lightning connector end of it.

00:33:31   that is extremely likely, just based on the way

00:33:35   other lightning peripherals are built,

00:33:37   that is very likely to be the case.

00:33:39   The fact is, this isn't really solving a real problem.

00:33:41   Just like fancy DACs and fancy amps are portable headphones

00:33:45   that don't need more amps than what the phone can provide,

00:33:47   like this is solving fake problems,

00:33:48   this is solving placebo problems for most people.

00:33:52   The fact is, you are not gonna pick up

00:33:54   a meaningful amount of analog noise

00:33:56   that will be audible in your headphones

00:33:58   from the six feet of cable at best

00:34:00   that are running from the phone to your crappy ear pods.

00:34:04   It is way more likely that any flaws in your sound

00:34:07   will be masked by how crappy those drivers are

00:34:11   than being audible by you.

00:34:14   - The practical reality of it would only be

00:34:16   in the failure modes for people who are like,

00:34:18   their pets are chewing on their wires

00:34:20   or they get caught in a car door or whatever,

00:34:22   any other sort of cable abuse.

00:34:24   The failure mode for analog is like staticky or whatever

00:34:28   and the failure mode for digital

00:34:31   sounds different essentially.

00:34:32   - Nah. - You could say that it--

00:34:34   - Anything that would cause noticeable degradation of sound

00:34:37   in the analog from cable damage

00:34:39   would destroy the digital signal also.

00:34:40   'Cause you're talking like shorts and frays and everything,

00:34:44   there's no way.

00:34:45   - But it sounds different.

00:34:46   It's the difference between static,

00:34:48   which we all know from our childhood,

00:34:49   and the manufactured static that comes over

00:34:51   with MPEG-2 compression on television sets.

00:34:54   You know when you turn them on,

00:34:54   they have this fake MPEG of static,

00:34:56   but static is like the worst case scenario

00:34:58   for video compression algorithms, they all look stupid.

00:35:00   But anyway, yeah, like I can imagine

00:35:02   the failure modes sounding different.

00:35:05   One possible way they could sound different is like,

00:35:07   oh, if the thing is damaged enough,

00:35:09   the digital can't get through,

00:35:10   you hear nothing or it cuts out or whatever.

00:35:12   But I don't even know that to be the case.

00:35:13   But I do know that they would sound different

00:35:14   because analog has a different sort of degradation,

00:35:17   you know, anyway.

00:35:18   All that just means you should get your,

00:35:21   get a new set of headphones

00:35:22   'cause if your wire is damaged, your wire is damaged.

00:35:24   It doesn't really make any difference,

00:35:25   but academically, it's interesting to me

00:35:27   think about this whole, because that was one of the things that did it all, the digital audio,

00:35:30   they didn't really push on it too much, but like the digital audio is better than analog audio and

00:35:36   really, like Marco said, it doesn't matter at all for these tiny light-ear pods because

00:35:41   the sound quality is so bad relatively speaking that all those other things are ridiculous and

00:35:46   don't make a big difference. But it does matter from Apple's parts perspective if they could have

00:35:52   it, like, I mean, I'm sure they could have. I'm interested in why they chose to go with tiny

00:35:57   little DACs instead of repurposing the pins. Maybe it really wasn't possible, I don't know,

00:36:00   but certainly if you're going to pinch pennies, you can make an even cheaper connector without

00:36:05   little chips in it. They could have gone that route, but they didn't. Maybe they've used up

00:36:12   all their pins and resistor combinations on Lightning and didn't have the ability to

00:36:16   repurpose it in that way. Or maybe they really are all on board with a digital thing and they

00:36:21   just want to say, "Nope, it's digital from now on. And even if it's digital only until it gets

00:36:25   yeah it's a couple of millimeters outside the phone,

00:36:27   then it's fine.

00:36:28   - Yeah, I mean it's probably a combination of

00:36:31   just not having anything modified about the phone,

00:36:33   having it be compatible with any lightning output

00:36:36   on any model phone, so if you plug it into also an iPad

00:36:41   or maybe down the road if Macs have lightning ports,

00:36:44   that would be kind of cool, stuff like that.

00:36:46   Compatibility in that way and also I think the chip

00:36:49   is just so cheap that it doesn't really matter.

00:36:52   Like I really don't think the difference between

00:36:55   The basic job that all lightning peripherals have to do

00:36:57   to connect to lightning,

00:36:59   like there's already a chip in the connector to do that.

00:37:01   I bet the difference between that and a basic DAC amp

00:37:05   is really not that big.

00:37:07   - I bet the cost of the metal lightning connector

00:37:09   is more than the cost of the chip.

00:37:10   - Probably.

00:37:11   - Like from Apple's perspective,

00:37:13   in terms of like what it takes to manufacture it,

00:37:15   'cause those little DACs,

00:37:16   they could probably buy them for fractions of a cent each,

00:37:18   but to manufacture the lightning connector

00:37:19   to the tolerances required for those little contacts on it,

00:37:22   that's probably the most expensive part

00:37:23   for that entire $9 connector from Apple's perspective.

00:37:27   - Yeah.

00:37:29   - Fair enough.

00:37:30   Let's talk about those AirPods,

00:37:32   which are the wire-free version of the Lightning EarPods

00:37:37   that we were just discussing.

00:37:38   - They have wire, they just move it.

00:37:40   Now you have a wire to charge up the case

00:37:42   that the EarPods plug into,

00:37:43   so you have this intermediary object

00:37:45   that's required for use that has a wire.

00:37:47   - It's not a wire, it's a hole.

00:37:48   - Well, okay, but there's gonna be a wire involved.

00:37:51   See, that's the magic of Bluetooth.

00:37:53   just moves the wires around. Why don't you park your car? Parking in a car hole.

00:37:57   Good grief. Wow. All right. So regardless of whether or not they're wireless,

00:38:04   Captain Pedantic, the question at hand at the moment is, do they or do they not have

00:38:08   start, stop and skip controls? From what I've understood, they do sort of. So if

00:38:15   you take if you have both AirPods in your ears, and take one of them out, by

00:38:21   default it will pause whatever you're listening to unless it's a telephone

00:38:24   call I presume and and you can choose to restart that via your phone or watch or

00:38:31   Siri I suppose and then if you restart it with both headphones out of your I'm

00:38:36   sorry with one air pot out of your ear then it would convert to mono or

00:38:41   alternatively if you say are trying to listen to somebody who's talking to you

00:38:45   and you pop one out and then pop it back in then it will automatically start

00:38:48   playing again. But skipping and volume control, all of that is done either via Siri or via the

00:38:55   phone or watch, as far as I understood. Is that what you guys had as well?

00:38:58   Yeah, in the presentation, they didn't—all they showed was exactly what you described in the

00:39:04   presentation. And I was hoping in the hands-on area that I would hear more details, and when I

00:39:09   did, they basically echoed what Casey said, that like, that what I'm looking for is not there,

00:39:14   that you can do everything you said, and you can talk to Siri, and that's it.

00:39:18   it.

00:39:19   I'm looking forward to hearing stories about people who are on a bus full of other AirPods

00:39:23   users and I'm just hearing everybody say, "Hey Siri, skip forward.

00:39:26   Hey Siri, skip forward.

00:39:27   Hey Siri, wait, skip back."

00:39:29   Yeah, this is what's making, like the AirPods, I totally want to try them because it's like

00:39:33   that's what I've been talking about with the wireless thing.

00:39:34   I would love that and yet I don't, I can't get excited about them if I don't have the

00:39:38   ability to pause and change volume.

00:39:41   I don't care about skip forward and skip back.

00:39:43   All I care about is pause and change volume.

00:39:44   Pausing by taking the EarPod out, talk about a way to lose your EarPods.

00:39:48   don't do it. Like, I'm not gonna do that, right? Being able to tap, can you tap? I think you can

00:39:54   tap to pause, can you? Or can you not even do that? I think there's something like that, yeah.

00:39:58   I know, I thought it was strictly taking one out in order to pause. Yeah, there's not, like,

00:40:05   I don't know. Again, none of us have them, so we can't tell. But it's like, it's tap to talk to

00:40:08   Siri. It's like, I don't want to talk to Siri. I just want to pause playback and changing volume.

00:40:13   It happens if you're walking around and, like, you happen to come through a noisy section where

00:40:16   or you're closer to a road and you need to go up one notch on the volume?

00:40:20   I don't want to talk to Siri to do that. It's like having to

00:40:23   it's like having to have a conversation with somebody to try to like pick a fork

00:40:26   full of food up into your mouth. Like it's like just just let me do it. It's one

00:40:30   little click on the little thingy. I don't... tangent the volume with Siri

00:40:34   is the worst use of speech. Anyway, whole point is these things have accelerometers

00:40:39   in them and I desperately hope that

00:40:42   a future software update enables more useful functionality in these AirPods if what we're

00:40:49   all saying that we think the way these things work is the truth. Because not being able to pause or

00:40:54   change volume means I just won't buy these. Like, I already know before buying them at all that I'm

00:40:59   not going to talk to Siri to do either one of those functions ever. Well, but why couldn't you

00:41:03   reach into your pocket and use the physical buttons on your phone? I mean, you could easily

00:41:08   discover where they are and hit them. I can't go back to that. Are you kidding? Sometimes it's all

00:41:12   You know, sometimes it's in my back pocket.

00:41:14   No, like the little--

00:41:16   I will prefer to use the wired thing with the little clicker.

00:41:20   It's no way.

00:41:20   So this is really depressing me, because it's not like--

00:41:23   it's like, well, how could they do it?

00:41:25   They have a way to do it.

00:41:26   They have a thing that you can tap.

00:41:28   I mean, and by all means, make this the default.

00:41:30   Tap for Siri is the default. But then

00:41:32   have a setting somewhere like the iOS 10 home button that

00:41:34   says, actually, what tap does is pauses.

00:41:36   And then for volume up and down, I don't know, two taps.

00:41:39   I'm willing to tap the little thing in my ear

00:41:41   however many times you want.

00:41:42   Obviously it knows when I'm tapping it,

00:41:44   but play pause in volume, please Apple, please.

00:41:47   - There's, you know, in all of my searches and tests

00:41:52   of good Bluetooth headphones,

00:41:55   it is pretty much impossible to find any

00:41:58   that have good controls for playback and stuff like that.

00:42:03   They exist, but there's very few.

00:42:05   Because the main thing is,

00:42:07   in order to have like good, reachable,

00:42:09   you know, usable, reliable controls

00:42:11   for seeking and volume and everything else,

00:42:14   you really need physical buttons.

00:42:15   Like you need real physical buttons

00:42:17   and some kind of logical arrangement that you can feel

00:42:20   on the headphone when you're walking

00:42:22   so that you can just like hit it

00:42:23   and not even, you know, not have to think about it

00:42:25   and not miss, not have to have a weird touch gesture

00:42:28   or anything weird like that.

00:42:30   And most headphone manufacturers don't do this

00:42:33   because I guessed more parts to have buttons,

00:42:37   but also I think one of the main reasons

00:42:38   is that it just makes it uglier.

00:42:40   And manufacturers are all doing these weird,

00:42:43   like overly clever, overly designed things

00:42:45   with like touch gestures and various like tap commands

00:42:50   and everything, but by far the best headphones

00:42:53   I have to walk with and to listen to podcasts on

00:42:56   are these ugly, really crappy sounding Sennheiser PX210BTs

00:43:01   that are now discontinued, but the Sennheiser MM400

00:43:06   and 450 are very similar.

00:43:08   they have these just nice big buttons on the ear cup.

00:43:11   And it's great, I use those every day

00:43:13   when I'm walking and listening to podcasts

00:43:15   because it is so nice to just be able to reach up

00:43:18   and feel the buttons and just hit the one

00:43:21   and have it work every time, always hit the right one.

00:43:24   It is so, so nice.

00:43:26   And the advantage of Bluetooth is that you can do that.

00:43:28   If you have wired headphones, there is no protocol

00:43:31   that Apple defines for wired headphone makers

00:43:34   for them to have buttons that do anything else

00:43:36   besides the single clicker thing.

00:43:37   But Bluetooth headphones have that spec built in.

00:43:39   Like any Bluetooth headphone can do that.

00:43:42   But it requires some kind of large control

00:43:45   and usually ugly big buttons for it to be any good.

00:43:49   On AirPods there just isn't room for that.

00:43:51   And even if there was room for that,

00:43:53   there is no way Apple would release a phone

00:43:56   with no headphone jack and no buttons on it

00:43:58   and then have AirPods with this giant wall

00:44:01   of buttons on them, no way.

00:44:03   - So I'm being told via the chat that

00:44:07   you can in settings turn off Siri and turn on double tap to pause.

00:44:13   Cool.

00:44:14   The ADB tipster is very adamant about that that setting is there so that's nice to know.

00:44:18   So that puts me back on the fence about buying them.

00:44:20   That solves one of the reasons that you might want to…

00:44:23   Right.

00:44:24   So volume is still out there but play/pause that goes 50% of the way there because I need

00:44:29   to be able to do that and I don't quite… maybe I just haven't been reading enough

00:44:32   articles about it or maybe not enough people have AirPods yet.

00:44:34   No, people have them.

00:44:35   separating them out into a separate review. I guess I haven't read those yet.

00:44:38   But anyway, I'm happy to hear that. I'm back on schedule to potentially buy them

00:44:44   volume. I'm not quite sure how they'd implement that. Two taps? Triple tap up?

00:44:53   I don't quite know. I'm not sure if I can give that up. I'm gonna have to start

00:44:57   keeping track of how often I raise the volume. I have the little clicker on my

00:45:00   my Bose headphones for plane flights too, and I'm also glad that I have that

00:45:03   because my phone is like in my pocket or like somewhere tucked away like I can't

00:45:08   really get to it easily and frequently I pause it and put the volume up and

00:45:12   volume down over the course of the whole flight. Those seem like basic functions

00:45:16   to me. I wouldn't wear AirPods on a plane anyway because I don't have the noise

00:45:20   cancelling but yeah it's it's a problem to be solved for sure. I don't want a

00:45:26   wire dangling from it and like Marco said I don't want buttons they're not

00:45:29   gonna put buttons on it. I certainly don't want buttons on it because how

00:45:32   would you find them on these little tiny ear pods? I can imagine maybe squeezing

00:45:36   little ends, like if they were squishy. No, I mean trust me, like you

00:45:41   you don't want them to come up with clever gestures because they won't work.

00:45:45   On things that are that small, they're not gonna work reliably. It's not a gesture,

00:45:49   it would be a physical button, like a physical squeezy little, you know, like if

00:45:53   they were squishy ends. I've had little squishy ends on them, you know, little

00:45:56   rubberized things. Anyway, maybe that could be stop and then tap.

00:46:00   Anyway, well, we'll see how this goes.

00:46:02   - Well, but then what happens when you're in mono?

00:46:04   Because one of the benefits to my mind of the AirPods

00:46:08   is that they will gracefully switch to mono

00:46:11   if you so desire.

00:46:13   And so then how do you, which end are you squeezing?

00:46:16   Are you squeezing the top end of the headphone

00:46:18   of the mono earpiece to go up

00:46:21   and the bottom end to go down?

00:46:22   Like that's never gonna work.

00:46:23   The right answer to this, unfortunately for you two,

00:46:25   is to just use your darn watch.

00:46:27   But since neither of you believe in the Apple Watch,

00:46:29   then that doesn't really help.

00:46:31   - Is that any less cumbersome than the phone?

00:46:33   - No, actually no.

00:46:34   I would rather do the phone to be honest with you,

00:46:36   even though I do love my Apple Watch,

00:46:37   it would be easier to do it on the phone.

00:46:39   - If I could just turn the little crown

00:46:41   to do volume up and down.

00:46:43   - Well, actually I suppose my watch is actually

00:46:45   in low power mode for the first time possibly ever.

00:46:47   But in any case, if you left up

00:46:50   the now playing glance app thing,

00:46:54   I think you would be able to just raise your wrist

00:46:58   fumble with the crown, but I am not 100% sure about that.

00:47:02   I don't know.

00:47:03   Either way, to be honest, to me, the easiest answer is to just use the volume buttons on

00:47:07   your phone.

00:47:08   I agree with you that it is kind of weird not to have any ability to change the volume

00:47:13   on the device itself, since we've all been programmed to be used to being able to reach

00:47:18   to approximately our chin and grab the little bulbous-y part of the cord and do it there.

00:47:25   But I am not as bothered/offended by this as you seem to be.

00:47:32   There was a lot of contention both online and amongst personal friends of mine.

00:47:37   "Oh, this is ridiculous.

00:47:39   Apple is making a new standard and using their own proprietary junk, blah blah blah.

00:47:44   Why does Apple hate everyone?

00:47:46   Why does Apple hate open blah blah blah?"

00:47:49   So the AirPods do use regular old Bluetooth, just like everything else.

00:47:55   Now they do sprinkle a fair helping of special sauce on top, and hopefully Marco you can

00:48:00   fill in a little bit about the codecs that they're using, because some of my neckbeard

00:48:07   audiophile friends are very perturbed with some of the codec-related things.

00:48:11   But the thing that I want to make clear, which I don't think we were very clear on last episode,

00:48:17   is that AirPods do use Bluetooth, and I'm actually now quoting the really good Buzzfeed article

00:48:23   about why Apple killed the headphone jack. AirPods use Bluetooth for their connection.

00:48:27   Bluetooth headphones have historically suffered from a conga line of connectivity problems.

00:48:31   Honor is pairing, dropped connections, crappy sound. Apple's confident it solved them all

00:48:35   with that W1 chip. "As you can imagine, by developing our own Bluetooth chip and controlling

00:48:40   both ends of the pairing process, there's a lot of magic we can do," somebody named Turnus says.

00:48:45   "We use a Bluetooth connection, but covered in a lot of secret sauce."

00:48:48   And if you haven't read that article, it's not terribly long and very, very worth it.

00:48:52   So it is regular old Bluetooth. And apparently there's a little button on the back of the case,

00:48:57   a little pillbox that you can either press or hold down in order to pair the AirPods with any

00:49:03   traditional Bluetooth device. >> Yeah, that was totally not clear from the talk, from the

00:49:08   presentation, because the word Bluetooth, from my recollection, was not even spoken during the

00:49:13   presentation all they said is "wow wireless things and we have another one of those chips that's like

00:49:18   a letter in a number w1" and so it for all the world it seemed like apple was like "look bluetooth

00:49:23   sucks we have a better solution here it is uses these w1 chips" but very quickly after the that

00:49:29   we learned actually w1 is just a bluetooth chip but there is some extra stuff that apple is doing

00:49:35   to smooth over the parts of bluetooth that don't work but it's nice that as you said that special

00:49:41   sauce or whatever it is like some other protocol that they use to negotiate and sync and handshake

00:49:48   with their own devices.

00:49:50   All that just goes away if you take the AirPods and use them with other devices, they're just

00:49:53   plain old Bluetooth audio headphones.

00:49:56   You can buy AirPods in theory and use them with your Android phone or with any other

00:50:00   thing that supports Bluetooth.

00:50:01   This is my understanding of it anyway.

00:50:04   So how special is the W1?

00:50:07   Is the W1 just a really nice Bluetooth chip?

00:50:12   Does it have any extra hardware features or is that all in Magic software?

00:50:15   I don't know.

00:50:16   This is another one of those mysteries that Apple's not really interested in telling the

00:50:19   world about at this point.

00:50:20   Like I said, they weren't even interested in telling the world that they were using

00:50:23   Bluetooth.

00:50:24   So if they have managed to make Bluetooth, as they say, to fix all the things that bother

00:50:30   people about Bluetooth, that's just as good, if not better, than having to roll everything

00:50:36   your own from scratch.

00:50:37   (upbeat music)

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00:52:15   - Okay, so I have a handful of

00:52:20   super neck beard audio nerd friends

00:52:23   and they were really ticked off

00:52:27   that the headphone jack was going away

00:52:30   and that Bluetooth was the new thing.

00:52:32   mostly because they felt like they were going to have to either have a lossy encoding of

00:52:38   their source material, or alternatively re-encode, even if their source material was lossy in

00:52:45   the first place.

00:52:46   So to back up a half step, MP3s, most AACs if I recall correctly, and jumping whenever

00:52:53   you're ready if I start going off the rails here, are lossy.

00:52:57   Which is to say, they know what a human ear should be capable of hearing, and if there's

00:53:01   information that's outside the range of what a human ear should be able to hear, they'll

00:53:05   just drop it on the ground and just not save it, not include it in these MP3s and this

00:53:10   AAC files, etc. Because in theory, there's no point to having it. You can't hear it anyway.

00:53:15   Now, super nerds, and so as an example, if I were to download a Dave Matthews Band concert,

00:53:22   I know that you could do this with FISH as well, they'll often save these files as FLAC,

00:53:28   which I forget what that stands for. Maybe you know, Margo?

00:53:30   lossless audio codec I believe. There you go. That sounds perfect and you can guess

00:53:34   where this is going. Flak means there is no loss. Everything that the microphone or whatever

00:53:39   mechanism that captured the audio could hear, it gets saved the whole way through. So these

00:53:44   neckbeards, these audio neckbeards were complaining, "Oh, either my flaks or whatever the source

00:53:50   may be are going to have to be lossy encoded and that's BS. Now I'm losing things." Or if

00:53:55   If I start with, let's say, an MP3, most Bluetooth headsets

00:54:00   don't support MP3.

00:54:01   So then it gets re-encoded to something else, like AEC, or--

00:54:06   what is it that's super popular--

00:54:07   Aptx, which is a terrible name.

00:54:11   Then it's going to get re-encoded.

00:54:12   No matter what, it's just lost all the way down.

00:54:14   This is horrible.

00:54:14   And then tables are flipped, and everyone gets angry.

00:54:16   So how much of this is a regular person?

00:54:19   Let's leave aside audio files for a second.

00:54:21   How much of this is a regular person should I care about?

00:54:23   Because I'm assuming the answer is zero.

00:54:25   because that's about how much I care right now.

00:54:28   - So not only should you care zero,

00:54:30   but they should care zero as well, and here's why.

00:54:33   (laughing)

00:54:34   Bluetooth is a digital protocol,

00:54:36   and digital audio is kind of large.

00:54:38   It takes a lot of bits per second.

00:54:40   And so in order to improve the efficiency of Bluetooth

00:54:43   and save battery, 'cause the more you transmit,

00:54:44   the more battery you need, and to make it less skippy,

00:54:48   'cause you don't wanna be maxing out

00:54:49   the all possible bandwidth.

00:54:51   You wanna send as little as possible

00:54:52   to minimize power usage and to maximize reliability

00:54:55   of the connection.

00:54:56   There's all these different codecs that you can use

00:54:58   to either lossily or losslessly compress the audio

00:55:01   going between your transmitting phone or whatever

00:55:04   and your Bluetooth headset so that way you can save bandwidth

00:55:08   and have a more reliable connection and better battery life.

00:55:11   Lossily or lossless compression really does max out

00:55:14   at roughly 50%.

00:55:16   Just by math, like it's nearly impossible

00:55:19   to have an average compression ratio

00:55:21   that's substantially different than approximately two to one

00:55:24   with lossless compression.

00:55:26   Lossy compression can go 10 to one easily,

00:55:29   and some of the more advanced ones can even go better.

00:55:31   So your friends are all upset because the idea

00:55:34   of lossily compressing audio is horrendous

00:55:38   to a lot of audio files.

00:55:40   In reality, it is very, very hard for most people

00:55:42   to tell the difference, even extremely well-trained people

00:55:46   who know exactly what kind of artifacts to listen for

00:55:49   have a very hard time often detecting the difference

00:55:52   between a well-encoded MP3 or a AC file

00:55:55   and the uncompressed version

00:55:57   or the losslessly compressed version.

00:55:59   So the question of whether lossless compression

00:56:01   is even necessary and detectable at all

00:56:04   is certainly up for debate.

00:56:05   I personally lean more towards the fact

00:56:07   that lossless is a waste of space for almost everything

00:56:11   and that it's not really necessary

00:56:14   and that most people can't hear the difference.

00:56:16   Anyway, in the realm of phone audio and Bluetooth,

00:56:20   People blamed Bluetooth headphones for sounding like crap

00:56:24   on these codecs that they use to compress audio.

00:56:28   And it is generally true that the old A2DP standard

00:56:31   did indeed have crappy audio quality

00:56:33   because it was such a primitive standard so long ago

00:56:35   that it had to have very simple electronics on both sides.

00:56:38   That one did kinda suck.

00:56:40   But since then, we've had a few advances.

00:56:43   The aptX codec that you mentioned is a big one

00:56:45   that it can sound very good.

00:56:47   Problem with aptX is that for these codecs

00:56:50   to be supported for playback, both the phone

00:56:53   and the headphones have to support them.

00:56:55   And there are a lot of decently high-end

00:56:58   and mid-range headphones that support aptX these days,

00:57:00   but the iPhone, as far as I know,

00:57:02   to the best of my knowledge, the iPhone doesn't support it.

00:57:05   There's licensing fees and patents and everything involved.

00:57:08   As far as I know, last time I checked,

00:57:11   it didn't support it, and that wasn't that long ago.

00:57:13   I'm guessing no iPhone supports aptX.

00:57:16   Apple does have a license to use AAC.

00:57:19   AAC is lossy.

00:57:21   You mentioned earlier it might be lossless.

00:57:22   Nope, you're thinking of various AAC containers

00:57:26   like M4A that can also contain lossless audio

00:57:29   like the Apple Lossless Audio codec, ALAC.

00:57:31   - Oh yes, that is what I'm thinking of, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:57:33   - Pure AAC is indeed lossy, but it's a pretty good codec.

00:57:37   It's similar in general genre to MP3.

00:57:41   It's slightly newer.

00:57:43   It has some advancements here and there.

00:57:45   So AAC is a decent codec.

00:57:48   And the fact is that, as I mentioned earlier

00:57:50   about the DACs and amps on phones,

00:57:53   the vast majority of Bluetooth headphones

00:57:54   that sound like crap, sound like crap

00:57:56   because of their crappy driver design and cheap components.

00:57:59   It's not because they really need higher fidelity

00:58:03   being transmitted to them from the phone

00:58:05   or through their codec.

00:58:07   That's not the problem that you need.

00:58:09   You can sound way, way better,

00:58:11   even with the most basic MP3 or the most basic AAC encoding

00:58:15   if you just have better headphones to begin with.

00:58:17   And the reason why your friends don't even need

00:58:19   to care about this is because if they're truly concerned

00:58:22   about all this crap anyway,

00:58:23   they probably use external DACs and amps on their phones,

00:58:26   which means that the phone not having a headphone jack

00:58:29   doesn't affect them at all,

00:58:30   because they were already using the lightning port

00:58:32   to have USB DACs and amps.

00:58:34   - You know that's not the case in this particular context.

00:58:38   I mean, I agree with you,

00:58:39   but these particular friends of mine,

00:58:41   and they're smart guys, and I really do enjoy their company,

00:58:46   but they are using just traditional headphone jacks

00:58:50   on traditional phones.

00:58:51   - Yeah, well then in that case, then the adapter,

00:58:54   the lightning to headphone adapter,

00:58:56   should probably be totally fine,

00:58:58   because then you avoid this problem entirely.

00:59:00   Like, you're not being forced to use Bluetooth

00:59:03   with the new phone.

00:59:04   You're just being forced to use the lightning port

00:59:06   or Bluetooth, and again, most high-end audio files,

00:59:09   or really picky audio files, have already been using USB

00:59:12   and portable DACs and amps in the lightning port for years.

00:59:16   Now, just the ones that were using the headphone jack

00:59:18   have to use a little $9 adapter

00:59:20   that is probably using the same quality DAC and amp

00:59:24   that was inside the phone to begin with.

00:59:25   - Yeah.

00:59:26   So for the AAC transmission,

00:59:28   does it take an AAC song and just transmit it as is,

00:59:33   or does it have to double encode it?

00:59:35   Does it have to take an AAC and then encode that as AAC

00:59:38   and then send it?

00:59:39   Is it downgrading it, like I've got a 256 kilobit AAC

00:59:42   and then it's gotta re-encode it as 96

00:59:45   to send it over Bluetooth?

00:59:47   - So it is certainly possible for the software stack

00:59:51   involved there to detect whether something is AAC

00:59:56   and is within all the right parameters to be compatible

01:00:00   and to just send it without recompression.

01:00:01   That is possible.

01:00:03   But given the design of the various AV Foundation frameworks

01:00:06   and Core Audio and everything,

01:00:08   I think it's pretty unlikely that's what's happening.

01:00:10   It's possible, like as I said, but I think it's unlikely.

01:00:13   - So you don't think you could hear the difference

01:00:16   if you have a double encoded AAC?

01:00:18   'Cause I grant that most people can't hear the difference

01:00:20   of a single AAC if it's at a reasonable bit rate.

01:00:22   But if you had a 128 and then re-encoded it again at 96,

01:00:26   a double encoded,

01:00:27   you think you can't hear any artifacts in that?

01:00:29   - If it's a lower bit rate,

01:00:31   and especially if it's as low as 96,

01:00:34   then you'd probably hear that.

01:00:35   But if it's like 128, 160, 192, like in that range,

01:00:40   especially the higher end of that range,

01:00:41   If it's like 160, I don't think you'd hear it.

01:00:43   - But like if you did double 160, double 128,

01:00:46   like take a 128 and then re-encode it again as 128,

01:00:49   like you're getting a loss every time, right?

01:00:52   - Well, not necessarily.

01:00:55   I mean, there are small errors introduced

01:00:59   in the decoding and encoding,

01:01:02   but the way most of these codecs work

01:01:05   is by discarding frequencies

01:01:07   that they don't think you'll hear

01:01:09   or reducing the precision in things

01:01:10   that they don't think you'll hear.

01:01:12   If the input audio is already lacking those frequencies

01:01:16   or those details, you might not actually hear it very much

01:01:19   to have, it's not gonna be like generational loss

01:01:22   of a cassette tape.

01:01:23   It's gonna be different errors and different imprecisions,

01:01:28   but I bet it will be a lot less noticeable than you think.

01:01:31   - I don't know, I've never actually done that experiment,

01:01:33   but I'm assuming that if you were just to run this

01:01:36   on a loop, it would be like generational loss,

01:01:38   to just the question of what's the slope of the line.

01:01:41   Does it get crappy after five re-encodes,

01:01:43   or does it take like 105, I don't know?

01:01:46   - Well sure, yeah, and here the answer is two.

01:01:49   So it's like, it's not, it's very unlikely,

01:01:52   again, it's very unlikely to be noticeable

01:01:55   on even really good headphones that might not be noticeable,

01:01:58   let alone the headphones most people are using

01:02:01   to listen through Bluetooth.

01:02:03   I mean, the realm of Bluetooth headphones is terrible.

01:02:06   There are very few that even have

01:02:09   moderately good audio quality.

01:02:12   And that's not because of the codecs,

01:02:13   it's because of the crappy drivers.

01:02:15   So I wouldn't hold your breath on this being

01:02:20   the answer to really anything.

01:02:23   We're already at AAC apparently.

01:02:26   That's good enough for the vast majority of uses here.

01:02:29   Most people are not gonna notice any difference

01:02:31   that is actually attributable to the codec itself

01:02:34   or any possible transmission re-encoding

01:02:36   might be taking place.

01:02:38   - I would hope that one of Apple's advantages,

01:02:39   maybe not in the W1, but in the W3 or whatever,

01:02:42   at once the minimum bandwidth requirement

01:02:45   goes up a little bit, would be to go end to end

01:02:48   and take your mastered for iTunes 256 kilobit AACs

01:02:53   and just send them exactly as is to your headphones.

01:02:57   Like, you know, if anybody could pull that off, it's them,

01:02:59   because they would literally control

01:03:00   every piece of hardware and software in that chain.

01:03:04   And even though it may be simpler to just,

01:03:06   oh, you just universally encode everything and it will be fine.

01:03:09   Being able to do that is something

01:03:11   they could tout in a presentation.

01:03:13   And whether or not--

01:03:15   they will cater to audio files a little bit.

01:03:17   Whether or not you would actually

01:03:19   hear the double encoding, especially

01:03:21   if they got to the point where they can handle the bandwidth

01:03:23   at 256, it just seems like it would be more efficient

01:03:26   to not have to encode, to just send it as is,

01:03:29   if they know it's AAC already.

01:03:30   And like you said, it fits within whatever

01:03:32   the bandwidth constraints are.

01:03:33   - Yeah, sure, I mean, it's, you know,

01:03:36   Bandwidth Trans also, like, AAC has a lot

01:03:38   of optional features, you know, just like all

01:03:40   the crappy video codec complexity that's out there.

01:03:42   Like, there's all these optional features

01:03:43   and like, kind of out of spec things

01:03:45   you might get in a bit stream.

01:03:46   So there is also a good technical reason

01:03:49   why they would want to just always transcode

01:03:52   what they receive into a certain profile

01:03:54   that they know they support on the other end.

01:03:57   But, and also, you know, I think, again,

01:03:59   with the design of these APIs, it would be difficult

01:04:02   to have a way to pass through the original like lossily encoded data before that without

01:04:10   decoding it first like all the way through AV player and everything like there might

01:04:14   be some of that involved do things like surround pass through but I doubt there's much of it

01:04:19   and and that would just be complexity for this very minor gain that most people wouldn't

01:04:25   notice all to send very, very slightly, probably imperceptibly better sound to crappy little

01:04:33   ear bud drivers.

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01:05:58   (upbeat music)

01:06:01   - All right, so apparently there's a jobs-related story

01:06:06   about the AirPod design philosophy.

01:06:08   - Steve Jobs?

01:06:10   - Not jobs-related, job style.

01:06:13   I was thinking after the presentation of the EarPods was,

01:06:16   if Steve Jobs had given that presentation,

01:06:19   one thing he liked to do

01:06:20   when introducing hardware products is to say something,

01:06:23   especially if it's like a funny or interesting anecdote

01:06:27   about the process of designing it,

01:06:29   of like, why did we decide that this product

01:06:31   should look like the way you see it now?

01:06:34   And what did we, you know, what was our thinking?

01:06:36   We thought of this, the obvious idea,

01:06:38   and why did we reject that?

01:06:39   Why did we go with this?

01:06:41   Probably the most famous one is discussions,

01:06:43   maybe it wasn't even in the keynote,

01:06:45   but subsequently about the flat panel iMac,

01:06:48   the one that was on the Time Magazine cover

01:06:50   It leaked at the little semicircle base and then the the screen and talking about you know

01:06:54   The obvious it was in the presentation

01:06:55   The obvious thing was just to take a big screen and put computers and crap on the back of it

01:06:59   But they didn't like that. So they rethought it, you know, anyway the earpods

01:07:02   the obvious story to me is

01:07:05   You know if you can like make up the the design thing is like

01:07:10   They're gonna have these things in our ears and they're not gonna have wires like that seems like that's the premise, right?

01:07:14   There's not gonna be wires on them at all

01:07:16   They're just gonna be things in the ears

01:07:18   The part that goes in your ear is probably gonna be the same shape that we figured out for the ear pods or whatever

01:07:22   But what about the rest of it?

01:07:23   We have to find place for a battery and for all the chips and stuff like that

01:07:25   What shape should these be a lot of the ones that are on the market that are similar to the air pods?

01:07:31   Are shaped like snails or little turds or acorns some of them some of them have sticks coming out of them, but

01:07:40   You can imagine if you just start with a clean slate and and say what shape should we make the little things that poking?

01:07:46   There's lots of possibilities because obviously the part that's not in your ear can be almost any shape

01:07:50   They're not gonna be that big you want it to look nice and

01:07:53   To be easy to grab and take in and out

01:07:57   And I can imagine if Steve Jobs was there he would show slides of other competitors thing that look like snails

01:08:03   And say but we decided not to do that

01:08:05   You know we thought about it and try lots of different designs

01:08:07   But in the end we realized the the solution was sitting there right in front of us

01:08:10   Just take the ear pods that we know and love snip and cut off the wires

01:08:15   done because conveniently the little white stem thing is a perfect place for a cylindrical battery and

01:08:20   Lucky Apple finally gets to make a cylindrical battery. Yes, they did for the pencil too

01:08:24   I don't even know if they're cylindrical in there, but hey cylinder is the shape of your traditional battery

01:08:29   It's got a nice handle for you to grab it

01:08:32   And I think there's a slightly better chance that you won't lose them when they're awkwardly shaped than if they were actually shaped like

01:08:38   Little snails, you know

01:08:39   Like the fact that it's like longer and has this protrusion coming from it, even though it might look a little bit more awkward

01:08:44   It's just a generally a better design, but like if you look at them they look for all the world like someone took

01:08:49   You know the regular wired Apple earpods and just cut the wires off of them on them and already people are selling wires that you can

01:08:57   Attach them so you don't lose them which is ridiculous. Although I don't understand why

01:09:00   The we're talking about this thing

01:09:03   We all saw like someone selling a sort of a clip-on wire that you attach to your air pods to keep you from losing them

01:09:09   But it clips on like a little cuff like that clips on it like there's little metal things on the bottom

01:09:14   Oh, right. They should be magnetic the little case has little magnets in it right you should make that

01:09:19   I don't understand. That's staring you right in the face

01:09:21   Maybe they can't sell those little tiny

01:09:23   Whatever they are those rare earth magnet things that kids swallow and they go in their intestines and have to you know anyway

01:09:29   Well, they also don't want to cover the mics because I thought the microphones were at the very very bottom of the little

01:09:35   I don't know protrusion

01:09:36   Yeah, you'd have to make it like hollow or do something

01:09:39   but it would be, anyway, if Apple made these things,

01:09:41   which is a ridiculous thing about it, they would do that.

01:09:43   But anyway, that was not discussed.

01:09:45   Like in the presentation,

01:09:47   there was no sort of job style story

01:09:49   about how they arrived at the design

01:09:51   that is essentially exactly like the AirPods

01:09:52   but with the wires cut off.

01:09:53   But I think that's really like not obvious.

01:09:56   If you'd asked me what shape will the Apple things be like,

01:10:00   I would have lots of ideas,

01:10:01   but it wouldn't occur to me

01:10:02   to just take the existing ones and cut off the wires.

01:10:04   But of course, after you see it, you realize,

01:10:06   even though it looks kind of weird,

01:10:08   It does have a lot of advantages.

01:10:10   In particular, I think having a little handle,

01:10:12   like having a thing to grab it by the hand,

01:10:14   an obvious place to grab it

01:10:15   so you're not grabbing a little snail that's in your ear,

01:10:17   you're grabbing a stick, right?

01:10:19   That seems like a big win to me.

01:10:20   And then of course the place to put the battery

01:10:22   is probably easier to hide a battery in a little stick

01:10:25   than it is to try and find a place in the snail shell

01:10:26   to wedge the battery.

01:10:28   - That does make sense.

01:10:30   Especially since, oh yeah, look at what we've done.

01:10:31   It's so perfect now we're just gonna make it perfecter.

01:10:34   (laughs)

01:10:36   Oh goodness.

01:10:37   All right, so let's round out by talking about the iPhone 7 Plus cameras.

01:10:43   And there's been a plethora of debate over what they can and cannot do.

01:10:49   And a mutual friend of all of ours, Matthew Panzorino, who is editor-in-chief of Tech

01:10:53   Runge, wrote a really fantastic review of the iPhone 7.

01:11:00   And you knew it was going to be good when it starts as follows.

01:11:04   This is the very opening.

01:11:06   My kid farts a lot.

01:11:07   Farting and eating is pretty much all he does.

01:11:10   And that's because he's four weeks old.

01:11:11   But anyway, any iPhone review that starts with a story about flatulence is good with

01:11:16   me.

01:11:17   So in this story, he tells us a little bit more about the iPhone 7 camera.

01:11:24   And so he says, "Every time you take a picture with the iPhone 7 Plus, both the wide-angle

01:11:29   and telephoto fire off.

01:11:31   Yes, two 12-megapixel cameras for every shot.

01:11:34   could be a prime driver behind the increase in the iPhone 7 plus' memory to 3 gigabytes.

01:11:40   Both images are needed due to an Apple technique it's calling "Fusion" internally.

01:11:43   Fusion takes data from both sensors and merges them into the best possible picture for any

01:11:46   condition.

01:11:47   If, for instance, there's a low-light scene that has some dark areas, the image processing

01:11:50   chip could choose to pick up some image data, pixels or other stuff like luminance, from

01:11:54   the brighter f/1.8 wide angle and mix it in with the data from the f/2.8 telephoto, creating

01:11:59   a composit-- I can't pronounce it.

01:12:03   >> That's Compasite. >> Yeah, that's it. It's actually pronounced

01:12:06   Bazel. On the fly without any input from the user. This is--this was debated a lot over

01:12:12   the last week. Do both cameras fire and do you get data from both cameras when you take

01:12:18   a picture? And according to Matthew Panzareno, who I trust, the answer is unequivocally yes,

01:12:23   both of them fire. >> Yeah, I saw there's actually a developer

01:12:25   document somewhere along the way where basically at the API level, you can specify like if

01:12:33   If you need certain low level access,

01:12:35   things like raw controls and things like that,

01:12:37   then you have to just pick one and use that one.

01:12:39   But the default mode appears to really be

01:12:42   this kind of mishmash that uses both

01:12:44   and tries to be intelligent about it.

01:12:45   So that's cool.

01:12:46   I worry a little bit about if there's gonna be

01:12:50   any kind of artifacts from that,

01:12:53   but I assume Apple thought of that

01:12:55   and worked around that in software, so we'll see.

01:12:59   That's pretty cool.

01:13:00   The other thing that we need to cover with the camera

01:13:02   which is kind of big, which is kind of related to this,

01:13:04   is that the, what they're calling the telephoto lens

01:13:08   is not as good in a few pretty critical ways.

01:13:12   You might not want the data from it necessarily.

01:13:16   I guess it depends on how they're combining it.

01:13:19   And this is, this kind of actually got me into questioning

01:13:23   whether I'm getting the plus or not.

01:13:24   So basically, we know from the keynote

01:13:28   that it was only f/2.8 compared to f/1.8 of the wide lens,

01:13:33   and that results in a lot less light coming in,

01:13:38   and therefore in low light,

01:13:41   you're gonna have a lot more noise coming from that sensor

01:13:44   because it's gonna have to crank up the sensitivity

01:13:46   to make up for the lack of light coming in.

01:13:48   The other problem is, kinda related to that,

01:13:50   which is that the telephoto lens

01:13:53   does not have image stabilization.

01:13:55   Basically, it's the difference between

01:13:57   what the 6 Plus and 6S Plus have had

01:14:00   over the 6 and 6S camera,

01:14:03   'cause the Pluses have always had optical stabilization

01:14:06   on the main cameras, and the minuses, I guess,

01:14:09   have not until the 7.

01:14:11   And so you can see in the reviews that compare

01:14:14   like the 6S to the 6S Plus camera,

01:14:17   you can usually see in their low light photos

01:14:20   a pretty noticeable difference

01:14:21   because the image stabilizer allows the camera

01:14:24   to have a longer shutter speed,

01:14:26   as long as nobody's moving,

01:14:28   had to have a longer shutter speed

01:14:29   without the shake of your hands getting in the way

01:14:32   and making it blurry.

01:14:33   And so in low light, longer shutter speed means,

01:14:37   again, lower sensitivity needed,

01:14:38   you know, less boosting of the signal on the sensor,

01:14:42   and therefore less noise in the picture.

01:14:45   So the fact that the telephoto does not have stabilization

01:14:49   will generally mean that, you know,

01:14:51   in any kind of moderate to low light,

01:14:54   basically indoors, the pictures from the telephoto camera

01:14:57   are going to be noticeably noisier

01:14:59   than the ones from the wide camera.

01:15:01   And additionally, because of that f/2.8,

01:15:04   it's gonna make it even worse.

01:15:05   So basically, the telephoto camera

01:15:08   is going to be mostly an outdoor camera.

01:15:10   You can use it inside, but it won't be very good.

01:15:13   The second camera, oh, and also,

01:15:16   people on Reddit analyzed the exif data

01:15:20   from some of those Sports Illustrated sample pictures,

01:15:22   and they seem to conclude that the telephoto sensor

01:15:27   is also smaller.

01:15:29   There's some various conflicting reports about this

01:15:31   from like Apple PR statements.

01:15:32   So the sensor might be smaller.

01:15:35   If the sensor's smaller, that also means,

01:15:37   generally speaking, usually more noise

01:15:39   because the pixels are smaller and collect less light,

01:15:41   so again, more amplification necessary.

01:15:44   Anyway, so all of this, there's lots of good reasons

01:15:47   why these might be the case.

01:15:49   Space considerations, a longer lens

01:15:51   that involves differently shaped optics

01:15:54   that are probably deeper.

01:15:56   And these aren't like $1,000 cameras in here,

01:16:00   they're probably like $40 or $50 cameras,

01:16:04   and that adds up to the bill of materials to these things.

01:16:07   They're already adding a second one.

01:16:08   To add a second one that's even more expensive

01:16:10   and even larger and even more mechanically complicated

01:16:13   would probably have a noticeable effect on their cost

01:16:15   and their margins, they probably don't want.

01:16:17   So it's probably, I'm guessing cost is the secondary,

01:16:21   reason and that physical constraints are the primary reason, but whatever the reasons,

01:16:27   it's kind of unfortunate that the telephoto lens is just not as well specced as the wide

01:16:33   lens. So I'm actually, I've decided for myself that I'm probably going to do the

01:16:37   regular size 7 this year and not the plus.

01:16:39   Also the plus is giant. Here's the thing about Apple and this PR cycle. The day of,

01:16:46   I heard from multiple different people who were in contact with Apple PR different things,

01:16:52   which is not typical for Apple. Usually Apple PR has everything all, I don't want to say

01:16:56   specific people and specific facts. These are minor facts that don't really matter in

01:16:59   the grand scheme of things, but where Apple PR will tell one person one thing to a very

01:17:04   specific technical question and tell a different person a different thing. Like obviously Apple

01:17:08   PR is not a single person, so it could just be two different people. Like anyway, it seems

01:17:12   like their story was not exactly straight, but on the censors I have heard that Apple

01:17:16   is very adamant that they are exactly the same sensor.

01:17:19   All right, well, whatever the case,

01:17:21   they still have the optical disadvantages,

01:17:23   where it's a much smaller aperture and the lack

01:17:26   of image stabilization.

01:17:27   Yeah, the image stabilization is the obvious one.

01:17:29   I mean, that one, like Apple confirms, obviously,

01:17:32   and you can look at it in Apple's little pictures.

01:17:34   For the Fusion thing, last show we

01:17:36   were talking about whether the zooming was blending the two

01:17:40   picture.

01:17:40   Now it turns out, like, everything

01:17:42   is blending the two pictures.

01:17:43   Now, forget about the zooming.

01:17:45   In normal operation, everything's blending.

01:17:47   And like you said, we'll put the link in the show notes

01:17:49   to the AV Foundation documentation

01:17:52   for using the camera in fused mode

01:17:54   and how you lose all this control or whatever.

01:17:56   What's interesting to me is if I have one of these,

01:17:58   one of the first things I would do

01:17:59   is put my finger over one of the cameras

01:18:00   and take a bunch of pictures just to try to confuse the--

01:18:03   [LAUGHTER]

01:18:03   Or at least like a color filter or something.

01:18:05   Right, something that they hinted at in the thing.

01:18:08   They're like, oh, this-- whatever,

01:18:09   their image processor with billions

01:18:10   of calculations and every single whatever.

01:18:12   Yeah, because it is doing a fairly complicated task

01:18:16   of what I assume is trying to see

01:18:18   if there is anything worthwhile to combine

01:18:21   from the potentially blurrier,

01:18:24   differently zoomed in image from the other camera

01:18:27   to put together to make a better picture.

01:18:29   And so that algorithm has to be smart enough

01:18:32   to not make your pictures worse if it still happens

01:18:34   that it's just below the light threshold

01:18:37   of the good camera, you know,

01:18:38   or the wide angle camera can get enough light,

01:18:41   but the zoomed in one is all like noisy and gross.

01:18:43   I hope it will be smart enough not to make your,

01:18:45   what would be a perfectly good one camera picture worse

01:18:48   by trying to blend it.

01:18:49   Same thing if I cover up one of the cameras with my finger,

01:18:52   I would hope it would be smart enough to say,

01:18:54   oh, well, there's no useful data and that other thing.

01:18:56   So don't combine it and have it look exactly the same.

01:18:59   I guess if you were a developer

01:19:01   and you have control with these APIs to say,

01:19:03   I wanna either use this camera alone or this camera alone

01:19:05   or do the fusion, that would be fun to like, you know,

01:19:08   do a series of three pictures

01:19:09   with your finger over the thing.

01:19:11   Obviously the picture of the, just your finger

01:19:13   is gonna be all just, you know, black or pink

01:19:15   or whatever color it happens to be

01:19:16   depending on the lighting conditions of, you know,

01:19:18   shining through your translucent skin.

01:19:20   And then the other one would be clear

01:19:23   and then the fusion picture,

01:19:24   would it be the same as the single camera picture

01:19:27   that had a clear shot or would it be like worse?

01:19:31   I don't know.

01:19:32   Anyway, this is all going on behind the scenes.

01:19:33   It's all supposed to be entirely transparent.

01:19:35   I understand why Apple doesn't care

01:19:36   to explain the technical details.

01:19:38   If it just works, it just works and that's great,

01:19:40   but I am very curious about exactly what they're doing

01:19:43   under the covers and if, like you said, Marco,

01:19:46   is it gonna make your pictures better in a noticeable way?

01:19:49   Or will you just never know that it's happening

01:19:52   and you'll just have to trust that things would be worse

01:19:54   if it wasn't combining all these pixels?

01:19:57   - So Ben McCarthy has an iPhone app called Obscura

01:20:02   and so he knows the programmatic interfaces

01:20:05   to the cameras really, really well.

01:20:08   And he had confirmed, and I just wanted to call this out,

01:20:11   that in order to get manual exposure in focus,

01:20:15   and this is what you were alluding to earlier, Marco,

01:20:17   on the 7+, you cannot use the Fuse Camera mode.

01:20:22   You have to say either I want the telephoto or the wide one.

01:20:26   And so we'll put a link in the show notes to that.

01:20:29   The depth mapping.

01:20:31   Buzzfeed says, "Because both cameras in the 7+

01:20:35   can be run simultaneously,

01:20:36   it can capture nine layers of depth

01:20:38   from foreground to background.

01:20:39   I've also seen, and I don't have a link handy,

01:20:42   but I've seen rumors that there is an IR sensor

01:20:45   or something like that sitting in between the two lenses.

01:20:47   Did you guys see that?

01:20:48   - I took that out of the notes

01:20:49   'cause someone was just saying,

01:20:51   because looking at the parts,

01:20:52   there's like a hole in the middle,

01:20:54   but I don't know if that's for an IR.

01:20:57   That's the question.

01:20:58   Where does it get the depth map from?

01:21:00   Last show I said,

01:21:00   these cameras are really close to each other.

01:21:02   So you can get depth from two cameras

01:21:04   that are separated from each other.

01:21:05   the more they're separated, the easier it is to get depth information out.

01:21:08   You could also get it with an IR spray or something, but I have a feeling if that's

01:21:13   what was going on, we would know about it by now.

01:21:15   Anyway, another one of the mysteries of Apple's magical hardware.

01:21:20   How are they getting the depth information?

01:21:21   But the nine layers says they're not getting that much depth information.

01:21:25   Nine layers is pretty granular for an entire scene.

01:21:27   I think like the, what is it, 360 had the first, what the hell was that thing called?

01:21:35   boy it's bad that I can't even remember the name of it.

01:21:36   You know what I'm talking about, right?

01:21:37   You stand in front of the Xbox and wave your arms around.

01:21:39   - The Kinect.

01:21:41   - Kinect, there we go, yes.

01:21:42   The first one of those had fairly primitive depth mapping

01:21:45   to figure out where everybody was in the room,

01:21:47   but it was way more than nine layers.

01:21:49   So the camera, these layers are gonna be used

01:21:53   for the fake depth of field effect that,

01:21:56   as far as I'm aware, no one has actually tried yet, right?

01:21:58   Even reviewers don't have this yet,

01:22:00   'cause it's due later this year.

01:22:01   - Yeah. - So we still don't know

01:22:02   I don't know how that works,

01:22:03   but that's what the depth is for.

01:22:04   And nine layers is from this Buzzfeed article

01:22:08   I assume we confirmed from Apple,

01:22:09   so don't expect miracles in terms of a mapping

01:22:14   of what's near and what's far.

01:22:16   - Yeah, and you can kinda see that in their demo photos

01:22:20   that show off the FOCE effect,

01:22:23   that you can tell the edge detection of the subject

01:22:28   is kinda crude, and it's like things are blurred

01:22:31   that shouldn't necessarily be blurred, like depth-wise.

01:22:35   So what we're seeing there is probably just the effect

01:22:37   of the depth map being fairly imprecise.

01:22:42   - All right, Dan Hickson has written about RAW,

01:22:46   and he has pointed out to us that RAW is not a new feature

01:22:51   of the iPhone 7, but a new feature of iOS 10

01:22:54   that works with any iPhones that have 12 megapixel cameras.

01:22:58   So I believe that's just 6S and 7, is that correct?

01:23:01   - That's right, yeah, 6S and forward.

01:23:02   Although I think also the SE.

01:23:04   - Oh yeah, I think you are right actually,

01:23:06   that's a very good point, I didn't consider that.

01:23:08   He says he's working on a raw camera app for iOS 10

01:23:11   and here's why, he and his partner

01:23:13   are professional photographers.

01:23:15   The main reason we want raw on our phones

01:23:16   is because Apple's noise reduction algorithm

01:23:18   is too aggressive, it's optimized for iPhone screens

01:23:20   and looks good there.

01:23:22   But if you zoom in on a photo that you took recently,

01:23:25   the edges are still milky and yucky.

01:23:27   I even have a friend who is also a pro photographer

01:23:29   has begun stockpiling iPhone 5S's because the noise reduction is less aggressive there.

01:23:34   And I feel like I've also seen previously mentioned Ben McCarthy say some of the same

01:23:37   things, that the noise reduction is really aggressive on the Apple side of things. And

01:23:45   so if you take the RAW image, then you can apply whatever noise reduction you want.

01:23:49   Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Linode, Fracture, and igloo, and we will see

01:23:54   See you next week!

01:24:23   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:24:28   @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:24:33   So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:24:37   Auntie Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C

01:24:42   U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A

01:24:45   It's accidental

01:24:48   They didn't mean to

01:24:50   ♪ New accidental ♪

01:24:52   ♪ Accidental ♪

01:24:53   ♪ Tech podcast ♪

01:24:55   ♪ So long ♪

01:24:57   - We should perhaps talk about the ordering process

01:25:01   and what we ended up doing.

01:25:03   It sounds like, so what did you order, Marco?

01:25:06   I thought you were ordering a plus.

01:25:08   - So I did order a plus, but I decided

01:25:11   at the very last minute to go for jet black

01:25:13   because I wanted the grip.

01:25:14   I was kind of on the fence between regular black

01:25:16   and jet black, and on the plus, I really wanted extra grip

01:25:20   because I really wanted to use it caseless

01:25:22   and because just 'cause it's so big.

01:25:24   And as I mentioned, I had been using a plus

01:25:27   for like the last week or so,

01:25:29   just to kind of as like a sanity check

01:25:31   to make sure like do I really want a phone this big?

01:25:34   And the problem is at minute one,

01:25:38   the earliest and the earliest ship date anybody got

01:25:41   on a Jet Black Plus was September 26th.

01:25:45   By the time my order went through,

01:25:47   mine which had been quoted at that time

01:25:50   I was actually moved up to October 4th through 10th.

01:25:53   - Oh.

01:25:54   (laughing)

01:25:55   - So like, you know, I mean,

01:25:57   granted that's only like three weeks away or something,

01:26:00   but I really want this phone now,

01:26:04   and I really have reasons to get it now.

01:26:06   Like for instance, Overcast has a prominent feature

01:26:10   that depends on the hardware of the phone's

01:26:12   built-in speaker and profiling it

01:26:14   to minimize distortion during voice boost.

01:26:16   I really would like the new phone

01:26:18   so I can profile the speaker,

01:26:20   and I can get this feature out the door

01:26:22   so that all the people who get these phones

01:26:24   can have overcast sound good and correct

01:26:26   out of their speakers.

01:26:27   Plus, I just want the phone.

01:26:29   I'm a nerd, I'm impatient,

01:26:30   I wanna talk about it on this show,

01:26:32   I want for the various minor business purposes,

01:26:35   so yeah, to wait till early to mid-October

01:26:38   kind of would suck.

01:26:40   So in the meantime, I started thinking,

01:26:42   you know, what else could I,

01:26:44   maybe should I just go into the store

01:26:46   and try to get a reservation and everything

01:26:47   and try to get one in the meantime,

01:26:50   and then whichever one comes first,

01:26:51   just keep that one and cancel the other order.

01:26:54   And the problem is I got all this crap with AT&T

01:26:56   where basically Apple is not very happy

01:26:59   to sell you T-Mobile unlocked ones in very much quantity

01:27:02   because most of those are probably being resold

01:27:05   on the gray market.

01:27:07   - Wait, really?

01:27:09   - Yeah, oh yeah.

01:27:09   The T-Mobile stock went out way earlier.

01:27:12   The T-Mobile ship dates went out way further ahead

01:27:14   than everyone else's way faster.

01:27:15   - Oh, I see what you're saying.

01:27:17   - Okay, a little secret between us and the listeners,

01:27:20   which we're not going to tell anyone,

01:27:22   is that I might have ordered a second phone

01:27:25   for somebody else that lives in the house

01:27:27   that may not know this yet.

01:27:28   - Declan? - And that one,

01:27:30   yeah, totally.

01:27:31   And that one I ordered as T-Mobile

01:27:33   because on the off chance that I get murdered

01:27:37   for spending a lot of money on this phone

01:27:40   that wasn't really asked for,

01:27:42   then it would be a very easy return.

01:27:44   It wouldn't be set up against her,

01:27:46   or his, but her phone number.

01:27:49   And so I just got a completely vanilla T-Mobile phone,

01:27:52   and I don't remember what the ship date was.

01:27:54   To your point, it was OutAways,

01:27:56   but I did this like hours after waking up last Friday.

01:28:01   - Also, if it wasn't a plus,

01:28:03   then the dates were a lot closer.

01:28:05   - Yeah, it is not a plus.

01:28:06   And I bring all this up just to say that for one phone,

01:28:09   like I was, as far as Apple is concerned,

01:28:12   like a complete rando, and for one T-Mobile phone,

01:28:15   they didn't blink an eye and it was super easy.

01:28:17   - That's good, yeah.

01:28:18   Anyway, so I was living with the Plus all weekend

01:28:23   and I came to the conclusion that I can have a phone

01:28:27   that big, if it's really compelling for all the other

01:28:30   reasons, I can totally live with the Plus size phone.

01:28:34   So when I came home, I lived with it for a little bit

01:28:36   longer and then I switched this morning back to my 6s

01:28:40   just to kind of have the other side then.

01:28:42   And my God, I love the 6S so much more.

01:28:46   (laughing)

01:28:48   Like-- - Attaboy.

01:28:49   - The same feeling that people get

01:28:51   when they switch to the SE after using a 6 for a while,

01:28:55   they're like, "Oh my God, I can reach everything

01:28:56   "and it fits it on my pockets and it's so small and light."

01:28:59   That's the feeling I got switching

01:29:01   from the Plus back to the 6S.

01:29:03   Like it was such a big difference.

01:29:05   And the Plus, like, yes, the screen is way bigger

01:29:10   and way nicer.

01:29:11   The cameras, even though the telephoto camera

01:29:16   is not as optically high spec as the other one,

01:29:19   I would still love to have dual cameras

01:29:21   and would gladly pay $100 extra if they could be

01:29:23   in the same size body as the regular success.

01:29:25   The battery life is indeed better.

01:29:28   Again, not as much if you're using the screen,

01:29:30   but it is indeed noticeably better.

01:29:33   But there are still some things about it that annoy me.

01:29:36   I still hate that springboard rotates.

01:29:38   I still hate that apps have that weird half iPad view

01:29:42   when you accidentally rotate them,

01:29:43   to the point where I typically have to keep the phone

01:29:46   with rotation lock on,

01:29:47   which I never have to do with my 6S.

01:29:49   But on the Plus, I really just have to keep

01:29:51   the rotation lock on just to tolerate

01:29:53   all the various weird stuff that goes on.

01:29:55   It is really substantially larger and noticeably heavier,

01:29:58   to the point where it's less comfortable to use

01:30:00   while reading in bed, while holding it up above me.

01:30:03   And it does not fit in very many pockets very easily.

01:30:06   And also, yeah, the battery life is much longer,

01:30:10   but when you do wanna charge it up,

01:30:11   it charges a lot more slowly,

01:30:12   'cause it's a bigger battery

01:30:13   and charges at the same milliamp hour rate.

01:30:15   So it charges more slowly,

01:30:17   the battery case not available for it,

01:30:19   and yeah, it's really big.

01:30:21   So I can totally do that, however, next year,

01:30:27   it's gonna be a lot smaller in all likelihood.

01:30:29   If all these rumors are true,

01:30:30   then the plus-size screen will be available

01:30:33   on a much smaller phone body next year.

01:30:35   and we can already look and see what Samsung

01:30:37   and everyone else does with getting rid of bezels

01:30:39   and maybe slightly curving the screen around

01:30:41   and all this other crap.

01:30:42   You can get a big screen in a small phone body

01:30:45   and that's probably what Apple's doing

01:30:46   with the next iPhone for next year

01:30:47   with this big redesign with no bezels.

01:30:50   And one more year would also give it a chance

01:30:53   to maybe improve that telephoto camera a little bit

01:30:55   and for us to hear more from actual users

01:30:58   and actual analysis and deep testing

01:31:00   to see how good is that second camera in practice?

01:31:03   How useful is it really?

01:31:05   Is there anything weird about the dual camera setup

01:31:07   that, as I said, any weird artifacts

01:31:09   with the picture being combined and everything?

01:31:11   We will know all that in a year,

01:31:14   and in a year I'll be able to get all the benefits

01:31:16   of the Plus phone in all likelihood

01:31:19   in a much smaller physical shape and size.

01:31:22   So I think I'm just gonna wait till then.

01:31:23   - Always a plus made, never a plus.

01:31:25   (laughing)

01:31:26   - Yeah, so I think I'm gonna go with the regular size,

01:31:31   the 4.7 inch 7 this year.

01:31:33   And also, the difference between the 7 and the 7 Plus,

01:31:38   like in various specs and everything,

01:31:41   is a lot closer than it used to be,

01:31:42   like between the 6 and the 6 Plus.

01:31:44   The battery life is way closer.

01:31:46   It's very similar now, actually.

01:31:48   I mean, the Plus is still a lot more,

01:31:50   like if the screen is off, as I said,

01:31:52   but like for screen-on use,

01:31:53   the battery life is actually very close,

01:31:55   and the battery got a lot bigger in the 7

01:31:57   and only a little bit bigger in the 7 Plus.

01:31:59   Oh, and also the 7 camera got the optical image stabilization

01:32:03   so that now the wide-angle camera is identical

01:32:05   between the two, which it wasn't before.

01:32:07   So, combined with little annoyances about the Plus,

01:32:10   like the weird iPad half modes

01:32:12   and just the large physical size,

01:32:14   I'm just a lot happier with the regular 6S size right now.

01:32:17   And so, again, next year, when they change the sizes,

01:32:21   maybe I will be less happy with it

01:32:22   and I will go up again, back to the Plus there,

01:32:26   or maybe I will go down and use like,

01:32:29   basically like, so my theory is that the SE name

01:32:34   will make a lot more sense in the future

01:32:36   because the SE is probably a temporary model

01:32:38   inserted as a bridge until we can get

01:32:40   the smaller iPhone bodies that were supposed to be out

01:32:42   maybe a year ago.

01:32:43   So that's basically my theory on the SE there

01:32:47   in four seconds.

01:32:48   But basically the next 4.7 inch phone

01:32:52   might be close enough in dimensions to the SE

01:32:56   that they don't need it anymore.

01:32:58   So anyway, that's my theory, that the SE will never be updated and it was just a bridge

01:33:02   model to get them until next year when the 4.7 is small enough that the SE customers

01:33:07   will tolerate it.

01:33:09   So anyway, so the answer basically is right now I have nothing ordered because I couldn't,

01:33:15   once I, so I canceled my 6 Plus that was gonna ship in October so I could basically reuse

01:33:21   the AT&T verification on a different phone.

01:33:24   But then that stopped working.

01:33:26   And for the last few days, I've tried here and there

01:33:28   placing orders and I've gotten the Apple thing saying,

01:33:30   "Here's a reservation, we couldn't contact

01:33:32   "the carrier system, but here's a reservation for you."

01:33:34   And then I'd go follow through and then it says,

01:33:36   "You know what, nevermind, we actually

01:33:37   "couldn't do it again."

01:33:39   So I keep going through all these stupid processes

01:33:41   and I still can't get an order in.

01:33:44   So I have like a last minute order for a T-Mobile one

01:33:47   that's gonna arrive like in early October also.

01:33:50   - I'm so desperate to have this phone.

01:33:52   - Well, it's the same phone.

01:33:53   T-Mobile, it's the same phone as AT&T.

01:33:55   I'm buying a full price anyway.

01:33:56   - I know, I'm just saying you need to have it now.

01:34:00   - If you had anything in front of you,

01:34:04   if the world was your oyster,

01:34:05   you would get a 128.7 jet black, is that correct?

01:34:08   - That's right.

01:34:10   - Okay.

01:34:11   All right, Jon, what about your household?

01:34:12   Last I heard, you were going to wait on yourself

01:34:16   because you wanted to see both in hand

01:34:18   before you made a decision.

01:34:19   But what about Tina? Did she order one? Was she planning to?

01:34:23   No, she's got a 6S+. It's not her year. I mean, I'm assuming she's gonna get a watch,

01:34:27   but she's not ready to pick that out yet. So yeah, no hurry. I didn't order anything.

01:34:32   Like, I'll just wander into a store at some point and take a look at them. I need to see

01:34:36   them in person first and then decide what I'm going to do. And I'm just gonna wait.

01:34:39   And whatever shortage and shipping dates and other weird things are going on,

01:34:43   I'll wait until that's all over and I don't have to deal with it.

01:34:47   All right, I ordered myself a matte black 7128. I am not a member of the Plus Club. I was flirting

01:34:57   with it real hard for a little while, but when I saw the details about the camera, I felt like,

01:35:02   you know what, there's nothing that's really enticing me about Plus Club except battery.

01:35:06   But like Marco was just explaining, the battery's gotten a lot better than the 7 supposedly anyway.

01:35:10   So it is apparently sitting in Louisville, Kentucky as we speak. Should be delivered Friday,

01:35:15   and I am very stoked.

01:35:17   And then if I had secretly ordered a phone for Aaron,

01:35:21   which I totally did not do,

01:35:23   it would be a 7128 in rose gold.

01:35:26   And that's delivered in like mid-October

01:35:28   or something like that, hypothetically.

01:35:30   - Before we end, I just wanna take one more run

01:35:33   at justifying what I hope is the first software update,

01:35:38   iOS 10, to allow me to send people lasers

01:35:41   with reduced motion on it.

01:35:43   (laughing)

01:35:44   Because first of all, as we discussed last time, it's baffling to people that those two things are

01:35:50   connected in any way. Why is that baffling? I don't get why it's baffling. Because all the

01:35:54   people that I happen to know who have reduced motion on have it merely as an aesthetic preference.

01:35:59   They're not doing it because they experience huge amounts of vertigo. They just like it a little bit

01:36:06   better, like me. That's why I have it. I experience a little tiny bit of vertigo, but not enough that

01:36:10   that I would be better.

01:36:11   I just like it better the other way.

01:36:12   So it's a preference.

01:36:14   It's like a preference in the literal sense.

01:36:17   Like you just like it better.

01:36:18   You don't need it, but you just like it.

01:36:19   And I like it so much,

01:36:21   I don't wanna go back to the other way.

01:36:23   Now I totally understand that people who need the motion

01:36:28   to be reduced because it really affects their ability

01:36:31   to use their phone, also don't wanna see lasers.

01:36:33   Good, all thumbs up.

01:36:35   But there, I mean, there has to be people out there like me

01:36:39   who have reduced motion on just because they feel like it,

01:36:42   but it's a pretty strong preference,

01:36:44   but they also want to send people lasers.

01:36:46   So all you need to do is have a separate preference

01:36:48   in messages that, you know, off by default,

01:36:51   that says, even when reduced motion is off, give me lasers.

01:36:54   That's it.

01:36:55   It's one little toggle.

01:36:57   Throw that in there.

01:36:59   'Cause I have yet to meet a person

01:37:00   who was able to figure out on their own

01:37:03   without, you know, like scratching their head

01:37:05   and just randomly guessing that reduced motion

01:37:07   is the reason they can't send people lasers.

01:37:09   And then to agree that that's a thing that,

01:37:11   oh, okay, well, that's, you know,

01:37:14   now that I understand it should just be that way

01:37:16   because people just want it the way they want it.

01:37:17   They want reduced motion,

01:37:18   no, they wanna send lasers, right?

01:37:21   They have to allow that.

01:37:22   They just have to.

01:37:22   This cannot stand.

01:37:24   - I don't think this is gonna happen personally.

01:37:25   - It cannot stand.

01:37:27   You can't leave it like this.

01:37:28   People want to-- - Why?

01:37:29   - You know how many times I've been

01:37:30   to the reduced motion setting, sending people lasers?

01:37:33   I need to send lasers, okay?

01:37:34   It needs to be done.

01:37:35   And yet I gotta go back to the setting app.

01:37:38   Like I'm working on like,

01:37:39   I leave it on the reduce motion toggle

01:37:41   so I can turn it off, go back to the apps,

01:37:43   and all these, it's just, it's untenable.

01:37:45   They can't leave it like this.

01:37:46   - I completely disagree with you.

01:37:49   And it's best summarized actually

01:37:50   by the tipster in the chat.

01:37:51   Do not use accessibility features to tweak the phone.

01:37:54   Problem solved.

01:37:54   I agree with the tipster.

01:37:55   - No, no, no, no, no.

01:37:56   See, like that's not problem solved.

01:37:57   People want to do this.

01:37:59   I understand why they're there.

01:38:00   And I'm not arguing that this should be like the default.

01:38:02   Obviously it should work this way.

01:38:03   The defaults are correct.

01:38:04   This is the way it should work.

01:38:06   But there are people who use, we all know them,

01:38:09   who use accessibility features as aesthetic preferences.

01:38:13   You can't just deny those people exist,

01:38:14   so you shouldn't be using them that way.

01:38:16   Look, they're there, they're switches people can toggle,

01:38:18   and they're the kind of switches that people can toggle.

01:38:20   Like I've had reduced motion on since iOS 7.

01:38:23   That, as far as I'm concerned,

01:38:24   that is the iPhone experience to me,

01:38:26   is with reduced motion turned on.

01:38:27   Most people who have reduced motion turned on

01:38:29   purely for reasons of personal preference,

01:38:32   that's how they've been using phones for years.

01:38:34   To say that you have to choose between that and seeing confetti and balloons, it's just

01:38:40   not...

01:38:42   I really think they're going to change this because it just seems obvious to me that Apple

01:38:46   has misestimated exactly how annoying it is not to be able to send lasers.

01:38:53   I am, first of all, deeply amused that you are this fired up over something that is so

01:38:59   kitschy and silly. But beyond that, I understand where you're coming from, but I completely

01:39:05   disagree. And again, I think that the fact that you happen to prefer this aesthetically,

01:39:09   well, tough nuggies for you, because that's not the purpose of it. The purpose of it is

01:39:13   to prevent issues.

01:39:14   It doesn't matter what the purpose is. It doesn't matter how people use it. It doesn't

01:39:17   matter what the purpose is. It only matters how people use it. You can make it things

01:39:21   for whatever purpose you want. It just matters how it's like the force quit thing. It doesn't

01:39:25   matter that the purpose is like if your app is frozen, use it. It only matters how people

01:39:28   use it, and people use it to obsessively force quit all their apps to clear off the thing.

01:39:33   Like, you can design a feature with one intention, but when people use it, they're showing you,

01:39:37   "Well, you may have designed it that way, but here's how we're using it."

01:39:40   And then you have to take that input back into the system and say, "Well, if people

01:39:43   really don't like a bunch of clutter on their app switchers, maybe we should give them a

01:39:46   way to get rid of clutter or have an option that says, 'Never show more than three things

01:39:50   in the app switcher,' because it's clear that people are really annoyed by seeing little

01:39:53   screens on the app switcher."

01:39:55   And even though it's supposed to be there to exit and at the tongue, people use it for

01:39:59   something different.

01:40:00   So you have to re-examine.

01:40:01   Now, maybe it's only me and literally the five other people that I know that do this,

01:40:06   and then the rest of the entire world never runs with reduced motion on.

01:40:10   Or they run with reduced motion on, and once they found out they couldn't send lasers,

01:40:12   they either didn't care about the lasers or didn't care about reduced motion anymore.

01:40:16   But I find it hard to believe that there aren't lots of people out there using accessibility

01:40:20   features, quote-unquote, "for the wrong reasons," who are annoyed now that they can't use the

01:40:25   new features in messages.

01:40:27   So really, you just want to be able to tweak everything.

01:40:30   So really, it comes back to what Marco said.

01:40:33   This comes back to Marco suggesting you get an Android phone.

01:40:36   I'm in the Marco camp on this one.

01:40:38   I would gladly trade, for example, the home button tweak, which I'm amazed exists.

01:40:43   Like I'm amazed that home button tweak exists, because it's totally like, look, with the

01:40:46   raise to wake, you don't need it anymore.

01:40:47   So why would we ever give you an option to go back to the old way?

01:40:50   they did. You know why? It's just one little switch. I will trade that in a second for

01:40:54   not having a crippled version of messages with reduced motion on.

01:40:57   But what I don't understand though is I thought you were made physically ill by having reduced

01:41:03   motion off.

01:41:04   It's a little bit of vertical, but not much.

01:41:07   Oh, see the truth comes out.

01:41:08   But anyway, I don't want to turn, the whole point is I don't want to turn reduced motion

01:41:11   back off. That's why I'm not doing that. I just want, I'm not bothered at all. I don't

01:41:16   at any illness at all from balloons and confetti and lasers. See what I'm saying?

01:41:21   I mean, you know, everyone has one of these things. Like, you know, I mentioned earlier

01:41:26   my annoyance with rotation lock on the 6 Plus. I would love it if apps had individual rotation

01:41:32   lock settings. It's not going to happen. Twitter used to have that. Twitter used to

01:41:36   have that and they got rid of it in favor of the OS one. I remember those days.

01:41:39   So Overcast has one too, but like, you know, there's not going to be like a system preference

01:41:43   somewhere that lists all my apps, like the cell data thing.

01:41:46   - Right, but that's untenable.

01:41:47   Like this is an easy, obvious one.

01:41:50   It's one toggle switch, you know exactly where it would go,

01:41:52   you're done.

01:41:52   - But what you're saying basically is,

01:41:55   you really want there to be no motion effects

01:41:57   anywhere in the OS except this one app.

01:42:00   - But there's still motion effects in tons of apps though.

01:42:02   Like I am not, reduce motion does not,

01:42:05   do you run with reduce motion on?

01:42:06   - No.

01:42:07   - All right, so it does not remove all animations

01:42:09   from the system, right?

01:42:10   It reduces them.

01:42:12   - Plenty of apps have their own animations

01:42:14   all over the place in them

01:42:15   that are not affected at all by reduced motion.

01:42:18   - Right, but what, see like,

01:42:19   I get so many ridiculous feature requests for Overcast

01:42:23   that basically are along the lines of,

01:42:26   I like this one feature that you implemented here,

01:42:28   but I want to have per podcast control over it,

01:42:32   or per episode control over it.

01:42:34   That is by far the most common format

01:42:37   of feature request I get.

01:42:38   The problem is that every one of those things is different.

01:42:41   and if I actually satisfied these requests

01:42:44   in any reasonable way, I would just have a wall of settings

01:42:48   and options all over every single screen.

01:42:50   And it's untenable.

01:42:51   And so what you're saying is you want that kind

01:42:55   of granularity for your little pet thing here,

01:42:58   but everybody has one of those pet things.

01:43:00   - No, it's not a granularity thing.

01:43:02   It's about the disconnect between reduced motion

01:43:05   and app features, right?

01:43:07   - No, it does, that's absolutely ridiculous, because--

01:43:10   - No it isn't, because reduce motion does not reduce motion

01:43:14   in apps, like you're like, oh I have reduce motion on,

01:43:16   I don't expect to see--

01:43:17   - It does if they use the right APIs.

01:43:19   No I mean like-- - Right, it's supposed to.

01:43:20   - The accessibility features are meant to be blunt

01:43:23   instruments that are not meant for everyone to use them.

01:43:26   And they're designed that way too.

01:43:28   So like, you know, one of the accessibility features

01:43:30   is bold text, right, because the text got so skinny

01:43:33   in iOS 7 and stuff.

01:43:35   Turns out, if you want bold text in all of your apps

01:43:39   except one, there's no option to do that.

01:43:42   'Cause these are meant to be broad, blunt instruments

01:43:45   for people who need them for accessibility purposes.

01:43:48   - But there are plenty of applications

01:43:50   that ignore the bold text setting

01:43:51   because they don't use it.

01:43:52   The same thing reduce motion.

01:43:53   If you turn on reduce motion and then play a game

01:43:55   that's filled with motion,

01:43:56   it's not reducing motion for you,

01:43:57   there's motion everywhere, right?

01:43:59   - Well, that's true, but--

01:44:01   - This is the only case in which reduce motion

01:44:04   has made entire headline features of any app,

01:44:07   let alone an Apple app, completely inaccessible.

01:44:10   Like, you don't even have a choice to use them,

01:44:12   they're not hidden, they're not locked,

01:44:14   you just cannot use them.

01:44:15   You can't see them, you can't even send them.

01:44:17   Everything becomes sent with lasers in parentheses.

01:44:20   Right?

01:44:21   It's unprecedented, it's unprecedented

01:44:23   that a feature like this would totally,

01:44:24   and like I said, everybody who has discovered this,

01:44:26   you find out all the people who are using reduced motion,

01:44:29   because the first time iOS, they upgrade to iOS 10,

01:44:31   they wanna send lasers, they can't,

01:44:32   and they can't figure it out.

01:44:33   You know how many times I've seen this same conversation

01:44:35   in different Slack channels and on Twitter?

01:44:36   I'm trying to send laser, I'm trying to send balloons,

01:44:39   and I can't, oh, do you have reduced motion on?

01:44:41   That's what it is.

01:44:42   And then those people are just stuck.

01:44:43   It's like, well, I guess I can't have reduced motion anymore.

01:44:46   I mean, think of it this way.

01:44:47   What if you are made physically ill

01:44:49   by the reduced motion effects,

01:44:50   but lasers and balloons don't bother you?

01:44:52   What about that?

01:44:53   No one cares about you anymore?

01:44:54   Because those two things, well, I'm sorry.

01:44:56   You know, like, I don't think

01:44:57   this is a question of granularity.

01:44:58   I think this is a totally unprecedented linking

01:45:01   of basically unrelated things for a feature

01:45:04   that doesn't reduce motion

01:45:05   across the entire operating system,

01:45:06   But just this one app, the messages team said, "You know what?

01:45:10   Balloons is too much.

01:45:11   Confetti is too much.

01:45:12   We've got to reduce it."

01:45:13   Which again, I'm on board with that.

01:45:14   But you have to recognize that there are people out there for whom the constant zooming in

01:45:19   and out motion of transitioning between applications is bothersome, but lasers are not.

01:45:26   This is the most preposterous thing I've ever heard you say.

01:45:28   So the name of the setting is "Reduce Motion."

01:45:33   So use fewer balloons.

01:45:34   But you want it for balloons and lasers that are like on the verge of a strobe light

01:45:40   But you want that to be okay the whole point not by default not by default

01:45:46   Just an option and why should it be an option for this one application because this is the headline feature of iOS 10 the messages

01:45:53   Enhancements are a headline feature of iOS 10 that regular people want to use they're sure to be very popular

01:45:58   It's the first thing everybody tries

01:45:59   It's not like some obscure corner of the the OS where I'm like this one app that nobody ever uses. This is I

01:46:05   Think this is unprecedented. I think this absolutely

01:46:09   Has to change in a future version and I also would like to note that

01:46:14   There is UI

01:46:17   Accessibility is reduced motion enabled which is an official API that that a any developer worth their salt

01:46:23   Which is really none of them because I don't know if I would bother with this

01:46:26   But anyway, any developer worth their salt would check and crank back on their own in-app

01:46:32   animations if this is turned on.

01:46:34   So maybe nobody does this, but strictly speaking, it is the responsibility of Marco, of me,

01:46:39   of any other iOS developer to check this and crank down on animations if it is turned on.

01:46:44   So just because we're maybe bad citizens of the platform—I shouldn't lump Marco in

01:46:49   with this, maybe you are using it—but if some—

01:46:51   I'm not.

01:46:52   Okay, there you go.

01:46:53   the text features, dynamic text, buttons, I use all that stuff.

01:46:56   Exactly. So, if we're bad citizens of the platform and you've, in your bank error, in

01:47:01   your favor, win $200, well good for you. But the fact of the matter is, reduced motion

01:47:06   is supposed to reduce motion, and that's what it's doing! It's reducing the motion of balloons

01:47:10   and lasers and strobe lights and things like that.

01:47:12   Doesn't reduce the motion of the messages sliding up when things go by. This is like

01:47:15   if you had a game where if you had reduced motion on, you could play the game, but you

01:47:19   couldn't fire the rocket launcher because the rocket launcher had too many flashing

01:47:22   lights and you'd be trying to play the game and you can't figure out why you can't beat

01:47:25   this boss and you pick up the rocket launcher but you can't fire it and you can't figure

01:47:29   it out and you write to the developer and they say, "Oh, if you have reduced motion

01:47:31   on you can't fire the rocket launcher."

01:47:33   And that would be an obscure third-party game.

01:47:36   That's a bad decision by one obscure third-party game.

01:47:39   This is a headlining feature totally gone because you don't want to see zoom animations

01:47:44   when you go from springboard into an application.

01:47:46   It's completely absurd.

01:47:47   So, how wrong you are aside, I cannot believe how much time and energy you're putting into

01:47:52   trying to get these like tacky horrible effects.

01:47:55   That's the thing!

01:47:56   This is like the worst part of iMessage.

01:47:58   That's what everybody does!

01:47:59   Do you know someone who got iOS 10 and didn't immediately try to play with those effects?

01:48:03   That's what everybody did.

01:48:04   Oh, at work today, a friend at work was at my desk talking to myself and a coworker saying

01:48:11   why can't I get lasers to work?

01:48:13   And we couldn't figure it out for a second, wait are you on a 6?

01:48:15   So do I need to tap and hold?

01:48:16   Or do you want to success?

01:48:17   Do I need to depress?

01:48:18   - You found another person, another casual reduced motion user.

01:48:21   - Hold on, yes, it was another casual reduced motion user.

01:48:24   However, the moment that I pointed out it's a choice between reduced motion or lasers.

01:48:30   Immediately reduced motion was canned, lasers it is, I'll roll with it.

01:48:34   - These people have more drive for lasers.

01:48:37   I am about 50/50.

01:48:39   I don't want to turn reduced motion off, but I also want lasers.

01:48:42   So I go back to system preferences, I turn reduced motion off.

01:48:45   I send the lasers and then I turn it back on.

01:48:47   [Laughter]

01:48:48   That's ludicrous.

01:48:49   I cannot believe you are that dedicated to frickin' lasers.

01:48:51   I agree it's ludicrous and there should be a preference for it.

01:48:54   And I can understand—I'm not saying like, "Oh, Apple should have known."

01:48:57   Because maybe they just don't know how many people are using reduced motion for like,

01:49:01   you know, who—put it this way—who are bothered by the motion that reduced motion

01:49:06   stops, but are not bothered by lasers.

01:49:08   Right?

01:49:09   And maybe they just didn't know how many people do that.

01:49:11   And the ATP temperature keeps saying "accessibility," as if accessibility is a different class

01:49:13   of people.

01:49:14   for everybody. Every single human being is going to need eventually one or more accessibility

01:49:20   features. There's not a separate class of people. The normal people and the accessibility

01:49:23   people. Everybody needs accessibility features. Every single person. So they are not separate.

01:49:29   But the accessibility options in iOS are designed for non-mainstream use. So they don't put...

01:49:36   No, it's not non-mainstream. It's 100% mainstream. There is no distinction between normals and

01:49:41   and people who need accessibility features.

01:49:42   If you like the accessibility feature

01:49:45   because it makes the experience of using the phone easier

01:49:47   or more pleasant for you, then that's fine.

01:49:49   - But if Apple actually wanted this to be

01:49:51   like a really good setting that had granularity

01:49:55   and features to satisfy everybody,

01:49:56   they wouldn't bury it in accessibility,

01:49:58   they would make it a regular setting.

01:50:00   - This is the headline feature

01:50:02   of their new operating system.

01:50:03   This is not an obscure tweak or setting.

01:50:05   And the fact that it is totally absent

01:50:07   is different from I wish it behaved

01:50:09   in a little bit different a way.

01:50:10   This is not "I want per podcast setting for every single thing."

01:50:13   This is not "I want per conversation red receipts," which by the way they have.

01:50:16   This is not that.

01:50:17   This is those lasers that you keep seeing.

01:50:20   Have fun banging your head against your phone trying to figure out how to send them.

01:50:23   You can't.

01:50:24   And guess what?

01:50:25   It's because of that thing.

01:50:26   Because you didn't want to see zoom animations when you go between apps.

01:50:28   Who is sending you all these lasers?

01:50:29   I haven't gotten any lasers.

01:50:31   What if you were talking to Casey?

01:50:32   I've sent you like one.

01:50:34   You sent lots of drawings and little heart things and everybody's playing with it.

01:50:39   Everyone wants to play with it.

01:50:40   sent you any of that stuff I can't even find oh I haven't sent John that stuff I

01:50:44   was sending Marco stick where are the lasers so I will send you a laser and by

01:50:48   the way I am as deeply pissed off as you are about this which is preposterous I

01:50:53   maintain I am as deeply pissed off if not more so that they remove the sweet

01:50:58   techno beats from the lasers sound effect and now just sounds like garbage

01:51:03   so Marco I will send you lasers by typing the word garbage deep pressing on

01:51:09   on the blue up arrow, hitting the segmented control,

01:51:13   swiping over, and then hitting the blue button.

01:51:16   So I have just sent you lasers.

01:51:18   - Oh my God, look at all that motion.

01:51:20   It's not being reduced at all.

01:51:22   - Nope, not a bit.

01:51:23   - So if you have your phone in silent,

01:51:24   Casey, how would you feel if you had your phone

01:51:26   in silent mode if you couldn't send lasers now?

01:51:28   Like you no longer had access to any bubble effects

01:51:30   or any screen effects if you had your phone in silent mode.

01:51:33   - That is not an analogous argument.

01:51:34   - It is, because the feature totally disappears

01:51:36   because some aspect of it is potentially harmful.

01:51:38   You said you didn't want any noise, and noise comes with the thing, so sorry.

01:51:41   An analogous argument would be, you know, Jon, I would really love to be able to send

01:51:48   lasers, and even if the phone is silenced, it should play the audio for the lasers.

01:51:53   No, no, no, no, because reduced motion is not like the mute switch.

01:51:57   Again, there's motion all over the place from reduced motion on, even in apps that honor

01:52:00   it.

01:52:01   It is impossible to eliminate motion.

01:52:02   Like I said, when you send a message, the bubbles slide upwards.

01:52:04   That's motion.

01:52:05   My goodness.

01:52:06   Okay.

01:52:07   Okay. My goodness. I can't even believe you two are disagreeing on this, because A, Apple

01:52:12   needs to change this. B, I think they will change it, because it's so easy to change

01:52:15   and it's so obvious, and I think they just did not correctly estimate how many people

01:52:20   are casual reduced-motion users who want lasers. Look at all these balloons and confetti. I'm

01:52:24   having all this fun over here with all this motion.

01:52:29   I will bet you one American dollar that your delightful setting will never exist. Ever.

01:52:36   I will take that bet. I will take that $1 bet and my timeframe for that bet is before

01:52:41   iOS 11. That's all I'm saying. I don't know what point release this is going to be. 10.0.2.3.4.

01:52:46   I don't know what numbers they get up to, but that is a $1 bet that I will take.

01:52:50   I will absolutely agree to this $1 bet. Oh my God, this is ridiculous.

01:52:54   Will you give me any odds on that?

01:52:56   No, I will not. But gosh.

01:53:00   It's 10,000 to one in my favor, right? Because Apple not doing something is always the safe

01:53:04   bet so oh god just turn off reduce motion you don't need it yes seriously

01:53:10   thank you I tried I can't take it I can't take it just close your eyes when

01:53:15   you hit the home button oh I can't take it aesthetically like I believe I can

01:53:18   like yeah that's what it really is that's the problem what is don't you

01:53:22   don't need it for an accessibility reason you just have a preference well

01:53:25   then you know I mean it does it's borderline cuz like I do feel tiny tiny

01:53:32   little bit of vertical but I would get over it like it's not it's not

01:53:34   debilitating. When was the last time you used it? Like I don't know like 15 minutes ago like

01:53:38   I keep going back to the reduced motion because again when you send lasers it's

01:53:42   pain to go back and forth so I leave it and then I realize that it's still on I

01:53:45   go oh then I turn it back off. For people who are so sensitive that they would

01:53:49   need that for the actual accessibility purpose I think it's a reasonable

01:53:53   default to disable as many full-screen animations as possible. Oh no it's totally

01:53:58   a reasonable default, totally a reasonable default, but I don't think that if you did

01:54:03   the Venn diagram of people who actually need that feature versus people who are also bothered

01:54:08   by lasers, it's not 100% overlapped. That's why the non-overlapping region is the place

01:54:12   for the second setting. And again, I will gladly sacrifice the home button setting if

01:54:16   you want to keep your number of toggle switches to a constant level.

01:54:19   Ooh, there's fireworks.

01:54:20   Yep.

01:54:21   Look at that.

01:54:22   This is the most preposterous argument I think I've ever heard you make, John Syracuse.

01:54:26   This is truly ridiculous.

01:54:28   By the way, when a reduced motion is on, you can send the sparkly little do-drop message

01:54:32   thingies.

01:54:33   No problem with that.

01:54:34   It's exactly the same motion as fireworks.

01:54:35   Speaking of fireworks, sparkly little lines that when you do the tap on the little black

01:54:38   screen it makes a little bloop and that's basically a firework.

01:54:41   That's apparently fine with reduced motion on.

01:54:43   No lasers.

01:54:46   I can't handle this.

01:54:48   Oh my God.

01:54:51   I literally cannot even.

01:54:52   I'm worn out from the ridiculousness of this.

01:54:55   How many windows do you have open right now, John?

01:54:56   I just need something else.

01:54:57   I mean, just.

01:54:58   (laughing)

01:54:59   - I can't, most of the reason I'm so angry

01:55:01   is I can't believe that you two are both against me on this.

01:55:04   One, I would say odds of one, fine,

01:55:07   but both of you, it's just, it's ridiculous.

01:55:09   - You know what it is?

01:55:10   I have had to support an app that sometimes

01:55:15   didn't look quite right or didn't work quite right

01:55:18   with some of these obscure accessibility options turned on.

01:55:20   And then people, people just turn them on

01:55:23   and then forget that they're on.

01:55:25   And then they send in support emails saying,

01:55:26   "Hey, there's a visual bug in your rendering.

01:55:28   "Here's a screenshot."

01:55:30   And they blame me.

01:55:31   And the reason it looks that way

01:55:32   is because of an accessibility setting they set.

01:55:35   So as a developer, I don't have a lot of sympathy

01:55:39   for people who set these settings

01:55:41   without knowing even what they are,

01:55:42   just as like little preferences that like,

01:55:44   who don't need them for the actual accessibility purpose,

01:55:47   'cause those people tend not to forget why they set them.

01:55:49   Then email me saying, "Hey, this is a problem in your app

01:55:52   "because I set the setting that I forgot about

01:55:54   that I'm not really using for its purpose.

01:55:57   So I do have a hard time feeling bad for you.

01:55:59   - Not using, you keep getting back to the

01:56:01   not using for purpose.

01:56:02   I don't think that's a valid anything.

01:56:04   Like not using for purpose, look, it's a setting.

01:56:06   If people wanna use it, they wanna use it.

01:56:08   Oh, well it doesn't count because you're not using it

01:56:10   for its intended purpose.

01:56:11   Look, they're using the setting.

01:56:12   Anybody can change the switch on the thing.

01:56:15   Like, and again, I think from a UI wise,

01:56:18   people not being able to figure out

01:56:21   why they can't send lasers is just a plain UI problem.

01:56:24   Forget about whether you think it's like they should have something in the UI that says,

01:56:27   I see that you're trying to hold down on this little up arrow.

01:56:30   Like you know, like they have a little cap locks indicator.

01:56:33   Like it's the user's fault.

01:56:34   They have cap locks on.

01:56:35   They don't realize they're not mistyping their passwords.

01:56:36   The cap locks is on.

01:56:37   You put a visual indicator.

01:56:38   It's not even that obvious, but you put something on the screen to let them know rather than

01:56:42   just leaving them there stranded, holding their thumb down a little upward facing arrow

01:56:46   and messages and not understanding why they can't send stuff like that's a UI issue independent

01:56:50   of what you think, whether they think it should be supported.

01:56:52   there should be something in the UI to tell people, you may not realize this, but the reason you can't

01:56:56   do this thing, we know you're trying to do it and we know exactly why you can't do it and it's totally

01:57:00   not obvious and no one will ever think of that setting that they changed in iOS 700 and thought

01:57:04   about since. So that is a separate thing entirely and I hope both of you can agree that that

01:57:08   interface needs to be there because I think you've both dealt with people who have not been able to

01:57:11   figure out why they can't send lasers. I mean I think it should be... You won't even agree on that?

01:57:16   You're sitting, both of you won't agree on that? It should be more obvious what the cause of not

01:57:21   not being able to send lasers is.

01:57:22   - Thank you, thank you for the voice of reason finally.

01:57:25   Marco still won't agree on it, but you will.

01:57:27   That it should be more obvious what the problem is.

01:57:28   - We didn't even give him a chance.

01:57:29   We didn't even give him a chance.

01:57:31   - He just sighed at me, and he is angry at people

01:57:33   who turn on settings and forget about it in his app.

01:57:35   - I'm sighing because, like, yes, I think that is bad UI

01:57:39   to have to just silently fail and not tell UI.

01:57:41   However, I disagree with your entire premise

01:57:43   of why this matters as much as it does.

01:57:45   - Yeah.

01:57:46   - But that's not what I was asking about.

01:57:47   I was asking about the narrow case of you agree

01:57:48   that it should be, because again, that's just a UI problem.

01:57:51   People are confused by an interface.

01:57:52   People are trying to accomplish a task.

01:57:54   They know this task is possible

01:57:55   because they've seen it demonstrated.

01:57:56   They're trying to accomplish it

01:57:57   and they can't figure out why they can't.

01:57:59   And there is a reason,

01:57:59   and you can just say whether this reason is good or bad,

01:58:02   but a good UI will let those people know what the reason is.

01:58:05   - Yeah, again, I concur that the failure is too hidden.

01:58:11   I think, you know, let's take a success.

01:58:14   If you mash down hard on that send button,

01:58:17   maybe the first time or perhaps every time,

01:58:19   that says, "Well, you know, this is where you would normally be able to do things, but

01:58:22   because you're just ridiculous and you're John Syracuse, so we're not going to let you,

01:58:28   but here's where you would need to go to fix it." That I concur, but I still find your

01:58:33   entire argument about a sub-toggle or what have you to be preposterous.

01:58:36   Yes, yes, yes, I see, I know. You'll be one dollar poorer later, you'll see.

01:58:42   Okay, yeah, we'll see indeed. Oh my god. The sad thing is this entire argument has to go

01:58:47   on the show because it is so ridiculous.

01:58:49   And now we have a long show again,

01:58:51   despite our every effort to keep it short.

01:58:54   And we actually did a reasonably okay job.

01:58:57   And here it is, two and a half hours later.

01:58:59   - Worth it.

01:59:00   (beeping)