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Upgrade

318: Four Weeks Out or Tomorrow

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 318.

00:00:13   Today's show is brought to you by Pingdom and Eero.

00:00:16   My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell.

00:00:20   Hello, hello. Hello, Myke. How are you?

00:00:23   Hmm.

00:00:24   Governor?

00:00:25   [Laughs]

00:00:27   I don't know.

00:00:27   Did I tell you that somebody got mad at me because I said Premier League?

00:00:30   Because they want me to say "Premier League" like a fancy English person.

00:00:35   I'm not an English person, I'm American, it's Premier League.

00:00:36   Or a French person, I guess.

00:00:38   Premier.

00:00:40   Premier.

00:00:41   Premier.

00:00:42   That is actually how all football fans say it in England.

00:00:45   They say "Premier League." I didn't know if you knew that.

00:00:47   Premier League.

00:00:48   League de Premier.

00:00:50   Yeah.

00:00:51   League de Premier.

00:00:52   We have now upset everyone in England and France, so...

00:00:56   Yeah, that's what I was going for.

00:00:58   Good work on us.

00:00:59   #SnellTalkQuestion comes from Tim this week and Tim asks, "What image, Jason, do you use for your user login profile on macOS?"

00:01:08   So when you go to the login screen, if you use the login screen, I'm assuming that you do, and you put your password in, you get a little image that pops up there.

00:01:16   Or you kind of think you can also see this image somewhere in System Preferences.

00:01:21   Yeah.

00:01:21   I don't remember where, but what is the image that you use?

00:01:23   Users.

00:01:25   And users, okay.

00:01:25   My Mac auto logs in, so I don't see it.

00:01:28   It only sees it when I wake it up and it's coming back.

00:01:32   It's a picture of me taken by John Gruber at WWDC, like, in San Francisco, like, seven years ago or something, that got stuck on there and has never been replaced.

00:01:44   That's it.

00:01:50   So you do use a picture of yourself?

00:01:52   Yes.

00:01:53   Interesting.

00:01:54   Yes.

00:01:54   So do I. And I had to just go and check that.

00:01:57   So I think it uses my iCloud picture now, though.

00:02:01   I don't think so because my -- I believe my icon in the chats that I've got in Messages are not that, but I don't know.

00:02:13   I think I have -- what do I have set for you as a message?

00:02:16   Let me see.

00:02:17   There is a picture of you looking inquisitively using a microphone, which I think was from one of our live episodes.

00:02:24   Oh, yeah.

00:02:25   That is -- no, that's my Apple -- that's the one it's using.

00:02:29   That's my Apple ID image.

00:02:30   Right.

00:02:31   That's the one that it shares with everybody.

00:02:32   So when I open System Preferences, that's the image of me that displays.

00:02:36   But if I click on Users and Groups, it's a different picture.

00:02:40   There you go.

00:02:41   If you would like to send in a Snowtalk question to help us open a future episode, just send out a tweet with the hashtag #snowtalk or use the command ?snowtalk in the Relay FM members Discord.

00:02:52   We had some follow-up.

00:02:53   You wanted to talk about your Apple Watch stand rings.

00:02:57   But actually, before we do that, final call for St. Jude donations.

00:03:01   We are now rounding out September.

00:03:03   And I just wanted to thank everybody who has donated to our St. Jude campaign here at Relay FM over the month.

00:03:11   We have currently raised over $367,000, absolutely smashing our goal of $315,000.

00:03:18   So we are all so incredibly thankful for your support in helping St. Jude ensure that no child dies from cancer.

00:03:26   That is what your donations go towards.

00:03:28   So thank you so, so much to everybody that's donated.

00:03:31   If you have been waiting for some reason, you still have a couple of days left.

00:03:36   Go to stjude.org/relay.

00:03:38   And next time you hear about it on this show will be next year.

00:03:41   So thank you so much for your donations.

00:03:43   It's been really incredible over this month.

00:03:47   So tell me about your Apple Watch.

00:03:50   -Yeah, so this is just a piece of follow-up we got from a lot of people, which was last week we complained.

00:04:00   I complained about how I felt like the stand ring calculation is not the --

00:04:06   however, it's using its sensors to determine how you're standing or not standing, that it's super ineffective, super inefficient.

00:04:15   I stand all sorts of times and I'm told you should stand.

00:04:18   I get really angry at that.

00:04:20   -It's so interesting that the sensors in the Apple Watch are so advanced in some ways, like the hand washing one, for example.

00:04:30   Like, it really does know when I'm washing my hands, but yet still after all this time,

00:04:34   continues to have issues with whether I'm standing up or not.

00:04:39   -Yeah, this is my point that I made last week is the hand washing thing is they did

00:04:45   a machine learning algorithm, which I think is super clever and this is what machine learning is good for, right,

00:04:52   which is you measure what the watch measures when people wash their hands and you feed that into the algorithm.

00:05:02   And it learns how, it builds up a model of understanding what it needs to see in the sensors.

00:05:11   Because, you know, the Apple Watch isn't a person.

00:05:13   It can't look around and say, "Oh, look, you're washing your hands."

00:05:15   It's just got its sensors.

00:05:17   But if you can say, "These are all the times that you wash your hands and this is all the sensor data,"

00:05:23   you can train it to be pretty smart about, like, this person is washing their hands.

00:05:29   I don't think they did that or did that properly for the stand algorithm.

00:05:33   In fact, my guess is that the stand thing hasn't been touched in years.

00:05:38   And that's what I was saying last week is do that.

00:05:41   Train, use some advanced machine learning to do a better job of understanding when people are standing or not.

00:05:47   And I say all of this because we got a lot of feedback from people who said, "Oh, Jason, it's really easy.

00:05:52   If you want to trick your watch into thinking that you're standing, you just make sure you hold your arm straight up and down,

00:05:58   like, just put it down at your side for at least a minute and then it'll trigger it and it'll give you credit."

00:06:04   Which I appreciate the help, but my goal here is not to cheat, nor is it to hold my arm at a weird angle

00:06:12   that is uncomfortable just to trick the stupid Apple Watch into thinking that I'm standing, whether I am or not.

00:06:19   My point is, I want my Apple Watch to understand when I'm freaking standing.

00:06:23   Like, I don't want to trick it.

00:06:25   I don't want to have to hack the stupid thing to know when I'm standing or not.

00:06:30   It should know when I'm standing.

00:06:32   So that's my point.

00:06:33   I appreciate all of the help of people who apparently just sit on their couch and let their arm dangle down for a minute every hour

00:06:39   and are killing it on the blue ring.

00:06:41   Also, I heard from people who don't see this as a problem, and I think the answer there is their body motions obviously work

00:06:48   with whatever algorithm is in the Apple Watch now, and mine obviously doesn't.

00:06:52   I guess when I'm standing, I'm not letting my arms dangle by their sides or my left arm or my watch is.

00:06:58   I don't know.

00:06:59   We've all seen you, you know, I've seen you, when you stand, you stand perfectly still, right?

00:07:03   And we've all seen Jason do this.

00:07:04   I do, because the aliens hunt based on movement.

00:07:08   That's what you are.

00:07:09   So if you stay still, the aliens/dinosaurs can't see you.

00:07:13   Exactly.

00:07:14   But I want my Apple Watch to know that I'm still standing and give me credit for it.

00:07:17   We started talking about widgets last week and I think it started because I think it's going to be,

00:07:22   I will say before we get into talking about widgets, this is kind of the point.

00:07:26   This has been one of those very rare features that ends up being a bigger deal than we thought

00:07:32   it was going to be when Apple announced it.

00:07:34   And that's definitely the case with widgets.

00:07:36   Not just because of everything we were talking about last time, you know, with like,

00:07:40   there'd be all the customization, everything going on with Widgetsmith and all that kind of

00:07:45   incredible stuff, but also just my daily usage of widgets is higher than I would have expected it to

00:07:52   be. Because one of the things that we were talking about at the time was when we found out that these

00:07:57   widgets were non-interactive, right? That you couldn't have buttons, they would always open

00:08:02   an application when you tap them, no matter what it is that you're doing, that kind of stuff.

00:08:06   And there was a concern that it's not going to be as good as it used to be.

00:08:09   But I think that what we have seen now is it was the best case scenario that I had posited at the

00:08:15   time, which was what we lose in functionality, we gain in general design, the ability to place them

00:08:23   in more circumstances, in better orientations, especially on the iPhone, where you can put them

00:08:28   anywhere on your home screen and they're in different sizes and the overall visual design

00:08:32   improvements of widgets, all of that, I think has come together to create something which is

00:08:38   so much better than what we had expected it to be. And developers continue to do really cool,

00:08:44   weird, fun, useful things with this technology. So, sorry.

00:08:48   - And I think Apple will make widgets more functional over time.

00:08:55   - I 100% guarantee that iOS 15 will have much more features for widgets because it's been such

00:09:00   a smash, right? - Sure. However, I will say that some of the stuff they took away and going from

00:09:05   the old style widgets to the new style widgets is, I think, a philosophical decision, which is Apple

00:09:10   feels like widgets aren't apps, right? That widgets shouldn't be a thing that you entirely like tap a

00:09:17   bunch of different buttons and get an answer and stuff like the Peacock widget, right? Like, I

00:09:21   think Apple feels like that was not what their intent was, that they want widgets to be glanceable

00:09:25   or very simply interactive. That said, I look at what the limitations are on widgets now,

00:09:30   and I think they could be more interactive than they are. And I think that will come next year.

00:09:35   But they do philosophically, they don't want it to be a replacement for an app. They want it to be

00:09:40   a very simple kind of interaction. But yeah, so unexpected that I didn't expect that I would

00:09:46   create a GitHub project for the first time, but that's where I am because I wrote that article

00:09:53   about using the Air Quality, the Purple Air Quality network to make a widget saying what

00:09:58   my nearby Air Quality was. And I pasted it into Gist, which is part of GitHub. And I had multiple

00:10:05   people make code contributions and say, "Oh, I changed this to add a gradient and I moved this

00:10:11   into a subroutine and here's what I did." And I realized, "Oh, this is like a project with

00:10:17   contributors?" So I actually will put a link in the show notes, but I actually put it up. So it

00:10:22   uses the Scriptable app. And actually the version that's up there now uses the beta, the new beta,

00:10:29   the Scriptable app because the developer of Scriptable keeps adding new features. But yeah,

00:10:34   I posted that. I mean, like you would never have bet that something like that would have happened,

00:10:41   but I wanted that widget because we've got like wildfires and stuff this season and the widget

00:10:46   seemed to be a really useful way for me to do that. And other people seem to want it too. And

00:10:50   it just sort of snowballed. So I'm not a developer and yet I have a GitHub project now. I told Casey

00:10:55   Liss immediately that I had a GitHub project because he is into that sort of thing. And within

00:11:02   five hours, I had somebody asking me for a whole bunch of features that are beyond the scope of the

00:11:07   project, which I feel like is, it's almost like there's a light goes off somewhere and they say,

00:11:12   "Okay, there's a new project that from somebody who's never had a project before, it's time to

00:11:17   haze them. So why don't you ask for a scope creep and a whole bunch of features that are not relevant

00:11:23   and see what he says." And what I said was, again, within five hours, I said, "Well, if you want

00:11:30   those features, you should just fork this project and do it yourself because I'm not adding it." So

00:11:34   I truly am now a developer of software apparently on the internet.

00:11:37   - Congratulations.

00:11:39   - Yeah. Oh boy. It's great. But the fact is that widget that I built is way better now because of

00:11:46   the contributions of people who actually know what they're doing. So that's awesome. By the way,

00:11:51   did you know that we pre-announced software last week?

00:11:53   - Yeah, I felt pretty bad about that.

00:11:55   - They were nice about it. So we mentioned how great the Fantastic Al widget

00:12:00   is. It wasn't out yet. But a couple of days. I mean, it was short.

00:12:07   - Luckily it was super close to being released.

00:12:11   - Yeah. They were nice about it. And they're like, "Oh, it's all part of the marketing, I guess."

00:12:19   But people were like, "You mentioned these widgets and I don't see them." And it's because the

00:12:24   version of Fantastic Al we were using is the beta and it wasn't out yet. But it is now.

00:12:28   People were also confused about something I think you said about the Carrot Weather widget.

00:12:32   And when we say people, I think I mean primarily our friend Todd, friend of the show Todd,

00:12:39   listener Todd. But Mr. Carrot, Mr. Brian Carrot explains what's going on there.

00:12:47   - Yeah. So I had mentioned that the widget that I was using for Carrot Weather was changing

00:12:53   throughout the day to appropriate weather conditions. And people thought that I was

00:12:58   using multiple widgets, but I wasn't. There is a widget type that... And I think that the Carrot

00:13:05   Weather developer Brian has added some features into the most recent update, which lets you

00:13:09   control this a little more. But basically the medium-sized versions, this came from Brian,

00:13:15   of the SNARK and forecast widgets that I was using, and I'm using the forecast widget,

00:13:21   automatically switches between hour and daily data throughout the day. So if you put the hourly and

00:13:27   daily widgets into a stack though, they would automatically rotate hourly during the day.

00:13:30   - So you can do either one. You can put two widgets in a stack and they'll rotate. Or if you put the

00:13:34   hourly and daily, but if you put the SNARK or the forecast, they change their time horizon so that

00:13:41   they're telling you what happens that day, early in the day, and then late in the day when it's not

00:13:45   relevant anymore, they'll tell you what happens the next few days.

00:13:48   - And furthermore, that forecast widget will

00:13:50   give you rain information if rain is happening.

00:13:53   - Yeah.

00:13:54   - So it's a fantastic implementation of a widget. This is one of my favorites so far,

00:14:00   because it is so smart, it feels like it has a brain of its own, which is kind of

00:14:04   a wonderful thing. I've seen a few things that it is, but this widget for sure feels like it's

00:14:11   doing more than I thought could be done. And this is one of those things where the widget is

00:14:17   updating information throughout the day based upon what seems to be logical for the time that I need

00:14:23   it, which I mean, I know that from an underlying perspective, it's like, that's what the widgets

00:14:27   are supposed to do, right? But I don't think I've seen an implementation of this kind of logic as

00:14:34   good as the Carrot Weather widget, which frankly I'm not surprised about because Carrot Weather

00:14:38   is a truly fantastic application. We've said it many times on this show, it is one of my very,

00:14:44   very favorite apps on iOS, and the widget has just made it even better.

00:14:49   - I will also throw in another app that I was trying, which is Weatherline, which I know a lot

00:14:55   of people like, and they don't even have an iPad app, it's just an iPhone app. But its widget is

00:15:02   really nice because the way it presents the weekly forecast with the little line that goes up and

00:15:07   down. So I've been trying that out, I never really used it before, but I like its widget, so I added

00:15:12   the app to my iPad and then I added the widget. Again, it's an iPhone app, so the app is terrible

00:15:20   on the iPad, but I don't use the app, all I'm using is the widget and it's a beautiful widget.

00:15:26   So I'm using the Weatherline widget now on my iPad. So that's a pretty cool thing where you

00:15:32   can have an app that is bad on the iPad, but their widget is still great because widgets are widgets

00:15:37   wherever they live, I think. - Widgets are widgets wherever they live.

00:15:42   - Wherever they live, there's a children's book coming, it's Jason Snell's,

00:15:47   Widgets are Widgets, an iOS 14 story for children. - This episode is brought to you by Pingdom. Hey,

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00:16:35   Pingdom cares about your users having the smoothest site experience possible

00:16:39   and if disaster strikes, you're going to be the first to know. Will you be second to know?

00:16:42   Pingdom knows first, then they tell you, but you're the first to know outside of Pingdom,

00:16:48   which is really useful. If it's super easy to get started, go to pingdom.com/relayfm right now and

00:16:53   you can get a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. Then when you sign up, use the

00:16:58   code 'upgrade' at checkout and you'll get a huge 30% off your first invoice. Our thanks to Pingdom

00:17:04   from SolarWinds for their support of this show and Relay FM. Jason, today as we are recording this,

00:17:11   Apple and Epic are back in court to argue over whether Apple can legally keep Epic out of the

00:17:17   App Store. So if you remember, there were some temporary injunctions put in place about Apple

00:17:26   not getting rid of the developer account that was to do with the Unreal Engine,

00:17:30   if you remember just a few weeks ago. Well, they're back in court today to make this permanent.

00:17:35   So there will be a final ruling from Judge Rogers as to whether Apple will be able to

00:17:39   revoke this developer account and also they will be talking about whether Fortnite can come back

00:17:46   to the App Store or not. Of course, the Judge has already, I think, made it pretty clear

00:17:53   that she's not going to allow this to occur. I would be surprised unless Epic somehow have

00:17:59   got this incredible argument that we've not yet seen from them. It seems very unlikely. However,

00:18:05   the reason I want to note it is because if for some reason the Judge decides that Apple has to

00:18:11   reinstate Fortnite into the App Store, it would set a precedent for third-party payments because

00:18:20   that would be the assumption, right? That they will keep using their third-party payment method

00:18:23   in a court and said that it's okay. So there will be some interesting discussion, I think,

00:18:29   to come out of this, but I believe it starts today and I think will be over the next couple of days,

00:18:34   I believe, but we'll see. Meanwhile, there is, of course, more PR battles, but this time not just

00:18:41   from Apple. Epic have joined up with Basecamp, the Match group. The Match group is, you can assume,

00:18:48   like Match.com, Tinder, companies like that. Spotify, Tile, and many more to create the,

00:18:54   quote, "coalition for app fairness." They have a big 10-point plan of the things that they want

00:19:00   to see changed, but these points all coalesce around three ideas. They want to fix anti-competitive

00:19:08   policies that have been occurring, the 30% app tax, and no consumer freedom. So this is basically

00:19:16   them railing against Apple mainly, but Google also. I actually saw a report a couple of days ago

00:19:22   that Google is actually trying to get more of their 30% out of people than they have been in

00:19:28   the past. So no doubt to combat all of this, Apple has created another new selection of web pages

00:19:35   that explain the benefits of the App Store and what they give to developers. These pages are

00:19:40   funny to me. They don't need to exist because Apple has to sell itself to developers. That

00:19:48   job has been done. It's purely to counterbalance a lot of these discussions. This is Apple's side

00:19:55   of the PR piece where they're trying to say, "Look how amazing we are. Look what we give everybody."

00:20:01   Because these pages, if you looked at them without knowing any of this information, they look like,

00:20:06   "Oh, we're trying to convince you to develop for our platform," but that's clearly not something

00:20:10   that Apple needs to do. People want to make iOS apps. It's a very smart business to be in if you

00:20:18   want to be in any kind of app development company or app development business. But they're doing

00:20:23   this, I would assume, as a way to try and say, "Hey, we are not so bad," I guess.

00:20:29   HOST 1 Yeah, it's an interesting... This is an extension of the thing that they always do,

00:20:33   which is, "Look at how much money we bring into the economy, and look at all of these

00:20:36   businesses that we help enable," and all of those stories that they tell. So they're fighting a PR...

00:20:42   This is the PR battle, right? There's the epic creating an organization full of the usual suspects

00:20:47   of companies that have had run-ins with Apple, and Apple posting a bunch of stuff on their website

00:20:52   about how great they are and how good they are to developers. This story will continue.

00:20:58   HOST 2 It most definitely will. I think we said this a while ago, but this will continue to be

00:21:04   probably the story of the year. It will just keep on rolling, especially now as a lot of these

00:21:09   companies are starting to band together. This was when the epic thing started. This was the

00:21:15   big question. Will other companies start to get together on this? And if they do, what happens?

00:21:22   Now, at the moment, just creating a coalition where they just make some noise is not really

00:21:27   that effective. The effective part is if any companies follow in what Epic tried to do and

00:21:32   really kick up a storm, but we'll see. So I have some upstream news for you, Jason.

00:21:38   It's actually all focused around Apple today. So there's been some new content signings. Apple's

00:21:43   partnership with the development company A24, the film development company, will be bringing a new

00:21:49   original movie to Apple TV+. It's called The Sky is Everywhere and stars Cherry Jones, Jason Segel,

00:21:57   and Grace Kaufman. So A24, this is a deal that Apple done a long time ago with them,

00:22:02   and it's basically to help them do this, right? Develop movies and other TV shows and stuff like

00:22:07   that. Apple has also announced a deal with Patricia Arquette and Ben Stiller to create a new comedy

00:22:13   show, High Desert. Arquette will star and produce, and Stiller will be producing and directing some

00:22:19   episodes. This is being produced by Apple Studios, which is why this is one of the rare press releases

00:22:27   that was on Apple's website as opposed to Deadline or Variety. Apple's weird, totally separate TV

00:22:33   PR website, right? Yeah, at least it's now at apple.com/tv-pr because for a while it was like

00:22:44   apple.tv. It looked like a fake website, right? It was very weird. But at least they've tightened

00:22:51   that one up now. This is the second project with Arquette and Stiller attached to it. They're also

00:22:56   working on a show called Severance, which is a thriller series for Apple. It's kind of

00:23:01   interesting because they don't own a production company together. Stiller does, and it's his

00:23:06   production company. And Patricia Arquette seems to have a working relationship with Ben Stiller

00:23:11   because they seem to keep executive producing shows together. But this is notable because

00:23:15   this is one of the few so far projects that are being produced by Apple Studios directly.

00:23:22   That's obviously going to continue as time goes on. Apple have also required the rights to a movie

00:23:29   called Cherry, which is a Russo Brothers movie. They directed the Avengers movies, the last two

00:23:34   Avengers movies. It will star Tom Holland and Clara Bravo, or Chiara Bravo. Apple reportedly paid over

00:23:42   40 million dollars for this drama movie. It focuses around heartbreak, drug addiction, and crime.

00:23:50   They're kind of the main themes. So, you know, it's a gritty movie for sure. And it made me

00:23:58   think again about the expensive NBC comment. Because I started watching Ted Lasso. If you're

00:24:06   sick of everybody telling you how good Ted Lasso is, I'm sorry. I'm going to tell you now. It is

00:24:11   absolutely fantastic. I think we're four episodes in. But even with that show, so much cursing,

00:24:17   which really works for the show, but is way more than you would find on a network television. It's

00:24:22   more HBO, really. It reminds me of Veep. Like, Veep has a ton of cursing.

00:24:27   Yeah, that's why it's not expensive NBC. But there was an angry, for those who don't remember,

00:24:31   there was some report that they were basically, the Apple TV+ shows were all going to be expensive

00:24:35   NBC. A lot of money, but they want to have control over the content. And that was very clearly from a

00:24:40   producer who basically got fired off of a show, or their show got killed or something like that,

00:24:45   and they had an axe to grind. And they had had a bad experience because of what was being asked

00:24:49   of them. They assumed that was being asked of everyone. It wasn't. It was just them. But they

00:24:54   ran to the press about it. And yeah, Ted Lasso is great. You know where, because his team is

00:25:03   AFC Richmond, right? They're in the Ligue de Premier.

00:25:10   - In the show, yes.

00:25:12   - In the show, because they're not in real life. They're made up because they're sort of

00:25:16   Crystal Palace. But Crystal Palace also exists in the show, so it's very confusing.

00:25:21   - I actually think it was a good move.

00:25:22   - I called it soccer too. Soccer, soccer, soccer, soccer, soccer, soccer.

00:25:27   - It was a very good move, I think, to create a fake team. And I will say, as a British person,

00:25:35   they do a very, I mean, it's clearly got British writing in it. Like, it clearly has been written

00:25:40   by people that are very familiar, if not are British or very familiar. Because it fits,

00:25:45   everything fits really well. None of it seems out of place, like what people say, the words

00:25:50   that they use, that kind of stuff. You know, like, it feels like a British comedy show to me.

00:25:55   - Yeah, it's got Americans running it, but it's shot in England and Americans starring in it.

00:26:02   But it's shot in England. And I'm unclear whether they had English writers or whether they had

00:26:07   the English, some English people do a pass on it to make sure that it, but you know, I'm glad to

00:26:12   hear that you, it felt authentic to me. I'm glad you feel it seems authentic to you. Authentic in

00:26:17   the sense of Britishism. I mean, it is, the show itself, the premise is kind of ludicrous, but it

00:26:21   doesn't matter because it's great. - Yeah, and what I like about what we've

00:26:26   seen so far as well is I like shows that they seem to be following conventions and then just don't.

00:26:34   And I like that kind of stuff, especially in comedy shows. Like you're like, oh,

00:26:37   I can see where this is going. And then it doesn't go to that place. So I like that kind of stuff.

00:26:41   - Yes. - Apple has also acquired Scout FM,

00:26:46   which was a startup that creates radio stations for podcasts. This was a cross-platform application.

00:26:53   Basically you pick a topic and Scout put together a playlist of podcasts for you.

00:26:58   This isn't something that you can currently get anymore. The app has disappeared.

00:27:04   I don't know really who was using this. I cannot, I've read the use case. I

00:27:11   can understand what they are saying. I don't know who wants this.

00:27:16   - I, yeah, I mean, my initial thought was, oh boy, just what podcast needs something that makes it

00:27:23   more like radio, which is why people listen to podcasts is they don't want radio. Here's my

00:27:28   theory. My theory is they like this technology and they want to do a better job of building a

00:27:35   podcast recommendation engine based on listening history. - Yes, that makes more sense too,

00:27:41   because that's one of the ways that they were doing it. Like basically the stuff that you seemed

00:27:44   to engage with and like, they would use that to feed the system to recommend or to put more stuff

00:27:49   into your feed. - So this is the thing is my guess is Apple's not going to do a genius playlist for

00:27:56   podcasts, but they are going to look at user behavior in the podcast app using the technology

00:28:01   from Scout FM and say, people who liked this podcast liked this other podcast or people who

00:28:08   liked what you like also like these other things and try to say like, rather than it being like,

00:28:17   here's an endless podcast playlist. You just press play and we pick whatever.

00:28:21   Maybe they tweak it so it's more like, are you looking for more podcasts? Here are some that we

00:28:26   think you will like, but who knows? I mean, who knows what their philosophy is? I'm not a believer

00:28:31   in trying to genius playlist, trying to radio eyes podcasts because podcasts are like, they're

00:28:43   longer than songs for one, right? So like you listen to something for an hour and then there's

00:28:49   sort of like, here's a random podcast for another half hour or whatever. They're not easily split up

00:28:54   in that way. And I think people, I think the challenge is more about discovery and finding

00:28:59   things that you might like and that makes sense for this technology and if Apple can go in that

00:29:03   direction, that's great. - Yeah, I don't know. It seems really weird to me. Like, there are people

00:29:09   in the Discord saying like, maybe this is the type of thing for new users, but that doesn't make

00:29:13   sense to me either. 'Cause like, if you're a new user, it doesn't have any information on you. So

00:29:18   it's basically just the same as doing a search by a topic and just playing whatever's popular.

00:29:24   This really feels like I can see how somebody came to the idea. I can see how somebody get

00:29:31   investment for a project like that because if you invest to people that understand what radio is,

00:29:36   they're like, yes, podcasting needs to become more like radio. So it gets more listeners for

00:29:41   some reason that people think that it needs and then you get investment and then it becomes a

00:29:45   project. - I think the goal is somebody sends you a link to, you know, hello from the magic tavern

00:29:50   and you're like, okay, I'll listen to that and you listen to it and you're like, oh, this is great.

00:29:53   And then if, and this is why you'd Scout FM isn't the right answer. It's a vehicle to be

00:29:59   acquired by somebody who has a lot of podcast listeners like Apple, Perfect Match, whoever made

00:30:03   that company. I think this is probably what their ultimate goal might've been to get bought by Apple.

00:30:08   - Or a company, right? - Or a company, but it allows Apple to say, hey, new podcast person

00:30:14   who's never listened to a podcast before and listen to hello from the magic tavern. If you

00:30:18   like that, here are like five podcasts that are just like that. And maybe even five podcast

00:30:24   episodes you could listen to, to try to find something else. Cause the goal is to increase

00:30:29   engagement, I would assume and like not lose that person where they listen to one. So it was funny,

00:30:34   I guess, but I don't know where I go from there and say, oh, I can tell you exactly based on our

00:30:38   algorithm where to go from there for whatever it is that you happen to like. And then if you're a

00:30:44   again, we're all kind of intense podcast listeners, I think here, but there are also people who they

00:30:50   like podcasts, but they only have a handful and they don't know where they go from there.

00:30:55   And maybe it's a big mainstream podcast. Like, you know, it's a, they do a sports podcast and it's

00:31:00   able to throw them to a bunch of different kinds of sports podcasts from which they find something

00:31:04   a little more obscure, but that's a good fit for them. Like there are, you know, I like it as that.

00:31:09   I think better discovery in podcasting is a good thing. And I hope that that's what it is because

00:31:16   the, you know, just press play on sports and give me a, a, a lot of sports podcasts back to back

00:31:23   that nobody wants that. And it was also like, you know, you just go and press play and then

00:31:28   you give them something that's 10 minutes and then something that's two and a half hours. Like,

00:31:32   it's just, I just don't think it's the medium, you know, it's, it, I just don't think the medium is,

00:31:38   is created for that. You know, it's like, yeah, I don't know. It just doesn't work. Anyway, moving

00:31:44   on, uh, exposure notifications are now supported throughout the United Kingdom, Jason. So Scotland

00:31:49   was turned on a couple of weeks ago. Now, England and Wales are too. Uh, the NHS, the government and

00:31:56   the NHS have released their application. I had previously said that I would not use the app.

00:32:01   But I am using the app. Oh. Because I went and took a look at it. And also there's some of

00:32:07   the features that the application has in it, which are kind of useful for stuff that's going

00:32:12   on right now. So all the app does is asks for your postcode. But like only so our postcodes are like

00:32:19   four characters and three characters. And the four character thing is the general area. And then the

00:32:25   three characters narrows it down to where you are more exactly. And all the app wants is the first

00:32:30   four characters. So basically like what town do you live in? Right. Um, and then from there, it,

00:32:37   it gives you based on the town that you're in, what your kind of threat level is basically,

00:32:42   right? Like what is the, how bad is the virus where you are? And this is the England and Wales

00:32:47   app. Scotland has its own app. Um, and the, one of the other things that the application does is

00:32:54   has a QR code scanner in it. So if you go to public places like restaurants, cafes, that kind

00:33:01   of stuff, any retail business now has to display a, um, like a QR code on the door that you're

00:33:09   supposed to scan before you go in. So it's effectively helping with the test and trace

00:33:15   type stuff, right? Like that's, that's the thinking to it. Um, so I use the application.

00:33:21   I've been, uh, I've had it on for a few days. I haven't had any kinds of notifications yet.

00:33:26   I know that there's like a system based notification that tells you, Hey, you're fine.

00:33:30   Uh, I haven't had one of those yet either. I think it's after a week or something alert,

00:33:34   alert, alert, nothing to report. Yeah. It's a simple weird thing, but look, I am,

00:33:38   this is a long-term followup. This took longer than it should have because the government made

00:33:43   a stupid decision in trying to make its own application first. But frankly, I'm just pleased

00:33:48   that it does exist. Um, so yeah, there we go. I just wanted to follow up on that.

00:33:53   MATT, that's good to know and report back. I, that, I mean, I know you're, you're staying safe.

00:33:58   I would imagine that if there's like somebody who's got it, who is riding the same train as you or

00:34:02   something like that, that that would be where you might get a notification saying, Oh, that guy

00:34:06   across the train from you had it. And you're on the train for 15 minutes, something like that.

00:34:12   I think that that's possible. Like that would be the most possible for me, um, because that's the

00:34:16   only time that I would be in contact with people for that amount of time. Or like a Lyft driver or

00:34:22   something. Yeah. Yeah. Like a driver or, um, or, or, um, in public, basically transport.

00:34:29   Transport is my main risk vector personally. Right. Cause you're just going from where you

00:34:33   live to where you work and back. But the good things that we have is one, if we do take taxis,

00:34:38   like, you know, I've seen some science in this, I don't know, but I've seen stuff that made me

00:34:41   feel better. Like you've opened the windows, which they recommend that you do like that airflow is

00:34:45   really good. Yeah. My understanding is that the ride sharing, um, companies in the U S have

00:34:51   basically mandated that the windows be rolled down. It's the same. Yeah. Yeah. Before you take

00:34:56   an Uber here, you have to like, there's like this extra screen now, which is like, you need to agree

00:35:01   to doing all of these things. Right. It's like, wear a mask, uh, wash your hands, open the windows,

00:35:08   like all that kind of stuff. Um, and with the trains for me, I can stay pretty far away from

00:35:14   people. Like I haven't had too many instances, but it's been, when I've been around too many people.

00:35:19   So, you know, it's been fine for me so far, but, uh, I, I will report back if I'm self isolating

00:35:25   at any point because the app told me to. If a podcaster self isolates, does anyone notice?

00:35:30   Oh, nice. Nice. Uh, probably not. Probably not actually, unless they tell you. Uh, so during an

00:35:37   interview at the Atlantic festival, uh, Tim Cook says he has been quote impressed by employees

00:35:44   ability to operate remotely and predicts that some new work habits will remain after the pandemic.

00:35:51   This is a report from Bloomberg. Cook said he doesn't believe Apple will return to the way

00:35:57   we were because we found that there are some things that actually work really well virtually.

00:36:03   This is a very surprising thing. Um, you know, if you've paid attention to Apple for long enough,

00:36:09   you will be aware of the fact that they are very hesitant, almost allergic to, uh, homeworking or,

00:36:16   um, kind of like telecommuting, right? Like that, that basically if you want to work for Apple,

00:36:22   you have to move to be near whatever place is closest to you. So whether it's Cupertino or

00:36:29   whether it's like a place in London or whatever, like you have to be able to go to that office

00:36:35   because that's where you work from. Um, and, and this isn't just because of a secrecy thing.

00:36:40   It's basically every part of the company. If you are in the, if you are in a head office function,

00:36:45   you have to be in the head office. So I think it's really refreshing.

00:36:50   Steve Jobs didn't like telecommuting and really bought into the, uh, the concept that you had

00:36:56   to have people in person in order to have magical collaboration and all of that, which, um, you know,

00:37:02   I don't want to be too cynical here. Um, it does happen. It doesn't, it is not, uh, the only way

00:37:10   that those things happen. It's like, I'm a big supporter of remote work. And I, I hired a lot of

00:37:16   remote work people when I was a manager of a, an editorial organization at Mac world, we hired lots

00:37:22   of remote people because they were the best people and they were great. Um, and the issue I have is

00:37:31   this kind of myth that the only time you get collaboration and magic serendipity happens is

00:37:38   when people are like waiting for the toaster to toast a bagel in the lunchroom or whatever. Like,

00:37:43   it's not bump into somebody and there's that magical moment. I'm sure that happens,

00:37:47   but I think that there are lots of other ways to facilitate stuff like that, that don't require

00:37:51   your every single person that you have to be in an office together. And, you know, my, my experience

00:37:57   is when they were staffing up, um, app store editorial, a bunch of people I know were contacted

00:38:03   by Apple about that, um, those jobs. And what I found fascinating was that it was an in Cupertino

00:38:12   job. Like literally you had to be in Cupertino every day for that job. And it was no different

00:38:17   from the Mac world jobs that we all had where you could have somebody at their house. Cause

00:38:22   literally it's like writing words and you're not even dealing with the developers. The developers

00:38:28   are all remote. So it's really just you and your fellow people who are doing app store editorial.

00:38:32   And I had this moment where I just, I couldn't process it. It was like, this is so ingrained in

00:38:38   Apple's culture. I think because of not just Steve jobs, putting it there, but also this feeling of

00:38:44   control that a lot of people want over their employees where I want to see them. I don't

00:38:49   believe that they're working and maybe some of that has been removed now that you can't see them.

00:38:56   And yet they do their jobs. How about that? Isn't that amazing? So I hope this continues. And I hope

00:39:01   Tim Cook is serious about this. I'm skeptical. Corporate culture is really, really powerful

00:39:07   at resisting change. Even if everybody agrees that it should change a lot of times the change

00:39:13   just doesn't happen. It's amazing how corporate cultures are designed to resist change. Um,

00:39:19   because it's in many cases that's helpful, but in other cases it's really bad. So I hope this is

00:39:24   true because there are so many stories of people. Imagine the people who would be, uh, great

00:39:31   contributors at Apple, but they're not going to move to a big city and they're certainly not going

00:39:34   to move to the Bay area with the cost of living here. And, you know, I'll footnote James Thompson's

00:39:40   famous story where, you know, Apple was told move in the early days of Steve jobs return.

00:39:46   If you want to work on Mac OS X and the finder, you have to, you have to come to Cupertino. And

00:39:50   he was in Ireland and, you know, he left Apple because he wasn't going to move to California.

00:39:56   It was that simple. And Apple still has that attitude, not everywhere and not for everything.

00:40:01   But, um, I think companies, I'm not saying that having offices isn't good and that it can't be

00:40:07   good and that there aren't some jobs where it's necessary, but it's very frustrating when their

00:40:11   jobs that I know for a fact aren't necessary to be in person. And the company line is no,

00:40:20   you have to, you have to be in person. That's it. That's we, we all have to be here. Um, it's dumb.

00:40:26   So I hope that changes at Apple because, uh, it's wasteful. And they're, they're not hiring good

00:40:30   people, uh, because those people don't want to either move to or commute to, um, Cupertino.

00:40:37   Yeah. I think at this point, there will be very few companies that can truly believe that the

00:40:44   adaptations that they've had to make during the pandemic won't remain in some form because for

00:40:50   many, it's going to be a long-term change, but at all, there is any point that we can go back.

00:40:55   And that's how you make cultural change, right? Is that if you do it, if you do anything long enough,

00:41:00   it becomes the culture. That's the way we do things, right? We were, um, so, so my wife went

00:41:07   back to, they have a new schedule at the library. She's a librarian and they're still just doing the

00:41:13   people aren't in the library. They're just doing curbside service, but they're on a new schedule

00:41:16   where she's in, um, every other Friday and then, and then two other days in a week. And so she

00:41:22   worked her first three consecutive days in the office last week. And it was one of those things

00:41:27   where she used to work five days a week. Right. But after a few months, you're like, whoa, wow,

00:41:32   three days in a row. And like, that's, that's the thing is that you get used to the new thing after

00:41:38   a while. And then going back to the old thing is no longer back to normal. Now it's back to a weird

00:41:44   thing that I don't do right now. And that's that moment of opportunity. So I hope Tim Cook seizes

00:41:49   it because, um, it definitely has been going on long enough now that they should see one that it's

00:41:56   just a lie that these jobs can't be done remotely. Um, and, and two it's already changed the culture,

00:42:05   even if they didn't plan it just because of circumstance. Yeah. Currently just 10 to 15%

00:42:13   of Apple's employees are back at Apple park with the expectation that more will be able to return

00:42:17   next year at some point, because look, this is the thing for some people it is better to be,

00:42:23   uh, in the office. I do, whilst I am obviously a large proponent of, uh, remote work, I do

00:42:30   understand the benefits of being able to be in the same place as people like, it's something that I

00:42:35   would try and do every once in a while, you know, go to a different place, be with friends, that

00:42:39   kind of stuff. And you could have a more collaborative working environment. There's no

00:42:43   one size fits all to this. That's the thing. Every job is different. Every person is different. And

00:42:47   we should mention, I mentioned this before when we've talked about this also, it's not, we've all

00:42:52   hit this with COVID-19. Um, it's not fair to expect every employee to have their own

00:42:59   workspace available to them. Right? Some people don't have a place to work at home and you,

00:43:06   and now you can't go to a coworking facility, right? Those are, are not inbounds for the same

00:43:12   reason. So there's lots of issues here. Or even just a coffee shop. You can't go and work in a

00:43:17   Starbucks anymore. Like you just can't do that. And there's a gray area here too, which is like

00:43:21   Apple park is a good example. Like do they, when they come back, do they all come back full time

00:43:27   or do they come back with a mix where they, uh, everybody gets a little more space and people

00:43:35   are there, uh, some days, but not all days and they're home some and together some it'll be

00:43:40   interesting to see how that all pans out, but never bet against corporate culture reasserting

00:43:45   itself though. I would say so I'm glad Tim Cook is talking about this because maybe that means

00:43:49   that they've really had some moments of realization that they don't need to be quite as hardcore with

00:43:55   this where like, Oh, this person is brilliant, but we're going to make them move to California

00:43:59   and they won't move to California. So we're going to hire this person. We don't like as much like

00:44:03   that's a net loss for Apple hiring a person you don't want to hire instead of a person you do

00:44:08   because of your demand that they be in California for, if it's for a job that they don't actually

00:44:13   need to be in California, that's the kind of stuff that I hope they're rethinking.

00:44:17   Yeah. And as a company that is openly trying to improve diversity of hires,

00:44:23   having a reason to exclude people, you know, it doesn't help with that, right? Like, as you say,

00:44:31   like you might end up finding the right person for the job, but they don't want to move to where

00:44:35   you're telling them to move. Right. Because eventually being in Silicon Valley becomes a

00:44:41   huge liability because the requirements, if you're not sort of in your twenties and willing to share

00:44:48   an apartment with eight random people, like if you're somebody with a family, like, and you're

00:44:55   not in Silicon Valley and you look at it, you think, Oh my God, like, where are we going to

00:44:59   live? And how much is that going to cost? And how long is my commute going to be? And, and that

00:45:04   becomes a major source of a brain drain within all of the companies in Silicon Valley. So,

00:45:10   this, this is an opportunity if they seize it, but they got to go against some of their existing

00:45:14   corporate culture in order to do it. I mean, unless you're getting a really good job at Apple,

00:45:20   you can't afford to live anywhere near, right? Well, that's, I mean, those editorial jobs,

00:45:26   I mean, we're talking about jobs that, that I will grant you pay better than working at an

00:45:30   independent publishing editorial organization. Cause of course they do. It's Apple versus IDG,

00:45:36   right? Apple's going to pay more, I would hope, right. But still it's not like that much more

00:45:42   that, that, you know, Apple doesn't pay every employee, even though they're the richest company

00:45:47   in the world, in some ways, Apple, believe it or not, Apple does not pay its employees,

00:45:51   you know, a million bucks to start like that doesn't happen. And that becomes a serious issue

00:45:58   if you're not an executive and you're trying to find a way to live with a family in the South Bay

00:46:05   and not have a hour long commute. Yeah, this is going to be a big change. The working

00:46:11   environment stuff is going to continue to be a really big change. And if you're Apple and you

00:46:15   invest in Apple park, you're like, Oh, they spent billions of dollars on this thing. I think the

00:46:19   answer is going to be, don't feel bad for Apple for Apple park because Apple park will fill to

00:46:23   whatever capacity they choose for it. My understanding is they were already over capacity

00:46:27   before I opened. Yeah. So we'll up more property in the surrounding area. Let's say, yeah, let's

00:46:32   say Apple doesn't want to bring everybody back or bring everybody back full time. What will happen

00:46:40   is Apple park will fill up infinite loop will fill up, but maybe that old and kind of decrepit office

00:46:48   building that's on the border of Sunnyvale and Cupertino that they have now because they they're

00:46:53   desperate, but when they have some people work from home, it's like, Oh, we don't need to pick

00:46:59   up the lease on that building and that building and that building. That's, I think when you'll

00:47:04   see it there, their core campuses are going to be full as full as they want to make them because

00:47:09   Apple is in this case where, you know, Apple park is only a small percentage of the total

00:47:15   Apple workforce, even in Cupertino, believe it or not for people who don't know about that,

00:47:19   that the size of Apple and the size of that area. So they'll always be able to fill up Apple park.

00:47:24   So, uh, that beautiful thing, they spent a lot of money on it'll get used. The question is,

00:47:30   you know, does there end up being some kind of crappy office space somewhere in Cupertino or

00:47:35   Sunnyvale or San Jose or somewhere like that, that Apple dumps, you know, the lowest stuff,

00:47:40   the worst stuff, because those groups don't need to be there anymore.

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00:50:23   show and Relay FM. All right, Mr. Snell, let's talk about you. This is, you wouldn't usually

00:50:32   think that this is worthy of discussion, but we are in 2020. You went to an Apple store.

00:50:37   Breaking news, breaking news. Person goes to store. Yeah. So I bought a solo loop. I wanted to try on

00:50:47   the new solo loop and I was clicking around on apple.com as you do and looking at the colors

00:50:55   and thinking about if I could get one, cause I don't want to get a new Apple watch. I don't,

00:51:00   I don't have a need for it. Mine's fine. But I was curious about the solo loop and I thought

00:51:05   I could maybe write about it, which it did. So I'm looking on apple.com and what I see

00:51:12   is that the Navy solo loop is I'm trying to find one that's like available quickly. And most of

00:51:20   them are not most of them, like the online orders are out in like October and November.

00:51:24   And then the Navy solo loop, it says, or pick up tomorrow in Corte Madera, which is my local

00:51:30   Apple store. I thought, Oh, so it's four weeks out or tomorrow. And I haven't been to that Apple

00:51:39   store since, you know, the pandemic. So I bought it and I have it. So I went to an Apple store

00:51:47   and I got, uh, and I got a solo loop. The solo loop is nice. Um, it's weird, but I, I've, I've

00:51:55   kind of gotten used to it. It's weird because you expect I've been wearing the sport band for so

00:52:00   long that I don't, like, I keep looking for the, the, the little dots or the it's the, it's that,

00:52:09   you know, where's the rest of me kind of moment of like, where is the, why is it? Does it keep going?

00:52:14   And it doesn't have little dots, rubbery one, the nylon one. Okay. Yes. It's the sport D solo loop.

00:52:22   The Apple watch names are so confusing now. I think by all rights, this should be called the

00:52:25   sport loop. Yeah. By all rights, this should be called the sport loop, but they already had made

00:52:29   a sport loop, so they can't call it that. So this is the solo loop like Han solo, I guess. Um,

00:52:35   but, uh, pulling it on and off is weird. It's kind of rubber bandy, but it feels nice.

00:52:39   Um, pulling it off is a little bit strange, but, but it feels nice and it is snug,

00:52:45   but it doesn't feel like it's, it's cutting off circulation. My arm, I used

00:52:49   John Gruber's chart and we'll put a link to it. If you haven't seen it, he took a picture. He

00:52:54   basically mapped the dots on the sport band to sizes of the loop. Yeah. Cause Apple make a chart

00:53:02   that you can print out that we spoke about, but it seems like the, that people's, um, experiences

00:53:09   in using the chart and ordering have been a little bit all over the place as to what they actually

00:53:15   end up receiving, how it ends up fitting them, I should say. Yeah. I think there's issues with

00:53:20   measurement, maybe issues with your printer scaling the file when it prints it. I don't know

00:53:25   what's going on there, but John figured out, cause he's got them, uh, cause he got them with his

00:53:30   reviewer package that, um, they map pretty directly to the number, the dot number on the sport band.

00:53:39   So if you have a sport band and you know what dot you usually use, which I imagine anyone with a

00:53:44   sport band has noted that they're on like four or five or whatever, for me, it was always like four

00:53:49   or five. Um, you can get your size from that. And so I did, that's how I picked my size is I used

00:53:55   Gruber's photo and, uh, I am completely baffled why Apple doesn't offer that. Like, it's such a

00:54:02   smart thing to say, do you already have an Apple watch with a sport band? Well, you could figure

00:54:06   out like based on like, why would you not do that? And I think the answer is that why you might want

00:54:11   to create something for people that it would be their first Apple watch. Yes, of course. Also,

00:54:15   right. Also, why not do this and avoid a bunch of returns, right? Avoid the returns by offering this

00:54:22   as a, as an option. And I don't understand it. I think they just, you know, this was a concept

00:54:27   from a different time and they expected people to try this on in stores and that's less of a

00:54:32   thing right now, but still somebody should have said, uh, we can map this to the sport band size

00:54:38   and solve this for a lot of people because the base model, the sport band is probably by far,

00:54:44   by far the largest percentage of the existing Apple watch population. So, um, anyway, my size

00:54:50   does alternate. I will use the fourth dot or the fifth dot in the sport band. Um, but I went with

00:54:56   a smaller one because I figured it's a stretchy material. And also with the fifth band, uh, the

00:55:02   fifth dot, it would rattle a little bit and not always make a contact with my wrist for like, um,

00:55:07   the heart rate monitoring. So I figured, okay, go with the smaller one because the, the band will

00:55:12   be stretchy, but I also do want it to not rattle around on my wrist and I want to make contact.

00:55:17   And it, and it feels pretty good. Like if I put it in the wrong place, it is a little too tight,

00:55:20   but if I wear it sort of where I'm supposed to wear it, it is, uh, solid and it doesn't bother me.

00:55:26   And, uh, it's, it's not for everybody. Um, I love the sport band, which is funny because

00:55:33   if you go back to early days of upgrade, you'll undoubtedly hear me talk about how I just,

00:55:38   we all, I think maybe assume the sport band was cheap and crappy and it's not, it's great. It's

00:55:43   the material that floral elastomer, whatever, it's really good. And I like it a lot. So there's a high

00:55:51   bar for this thing to clear and, um, it's pretty close to clearing it. It's, it's really, uh, pretty

00:55:57   nice. I'm not sure it's necessary in life. Like my sport band was fine, but this is definitely kind

00:56:02   of simpler and cleaner and, um, it looks nice. Um, so, so yeah, it's, I, I tried it. So definitely

00:56:12   endorsing John Grouper's, uh, map of the dots on your sport band to the loop if you want this.

00:56:19   And I bet the one that's fabric that costs 99 bucks, which is one of the reasons I didn't get

00:56:23   it. Plus it's hard to find availability. I bet that's nicer. Like I bet that's a lot nicer than

00:56:30   this, but this is nice. I like it. Yeah. If I was going to get one of these, I would get the braided

00:56:35   one because I think, I think it adds something. So, cause what I was thinking for me personally,

00:56:41   the, the rubber, the silicone sport loop, the solo loop. Oh my God. I don't,

00:56:47   yep. I don't see why anyone would want this product for typical usage because it seems

00:56:55   way less convenient to me than, than putting the watch on and with the clasp, because surely that

00:57:04   is easier or more comfortable to do. I would say relatively hairy man. So there's, it doesn't,

00:57:11   I am too. And that's not an issue. It's actually not an issue. It's very easy to put it on. I think

00:57:16   within Apple and perhaps within the watch world, Marco could tell us, um, there is this feeling that

00:57:23   sizing your watch band is a hassle. So it's like the, um, the, the sport loop, right. With the

00:57:31   Velcro you, it's like, this is great. You just put it wherever you want it. And, and you don't have

00:57:37   that hassle of like getting which, which band, which dot fits you. You just fit it to exactly

00:57:42   right. And then it's, and you don't have to worry about it. Yay. And I always thought like, and I

00:57:46   don't really, I have one of those. I don't, I don't wear it and I don't wear it because it ends up being

00:57:51   so fiddly like, is this too tight? Is this too loose? Is this too tight? It's this you loose.

00:57:54   Whereas I know it's number four on the sport band. I counted, but there's somebody at Apple who was

00:57:58   like, you don't want that cognitive load of having to count four holes in your watch band every

00:58:03   morning. No, that's too much. So we want to make it infinite. Like I get that there's somebody there

00:58:08   who's saying that that said, this gives me the feel of the sport band without having to do anything

00:58:14   except just slide it over my wrist. And that's kind of cool, but, but again, it's marginal,

00:58:20   like it's marginally better. I would say if it is better at all, it's just different. But, um,

00:58:26   but it's not bad. I was worried that it would be a really awkward experience putting it on, taking it

00:58:30   off and it's not, it's easy. You get used to it. You see, cause I understand what you mean about

00:58:35   the sizing thing, but like it just seems like such a pain in the butt to actually get the right one

00:58:39   in the first place. That's true. But once you get it, but this is, this is the fascinating thing,

00:58:43   right? It's like, there was definitely somebody at Apple who was like, oh, well, you know what

00:58:47   the perfect thing is to have the perfectly sized watch band and never have to size it and never

00:58:51   have to hassle with it and never have to check the Velcro or to count the dots. It's just perfect.

00:58:56   And we're going to do that by making 13 different sizes for both of the size watch classes. And then

00:59:00   people have to measure their risks. It's like, okay, you just lost it, right? It was perfect,

00:59:04   except for all the things that make it more complicated. But if you get one

00:59:08   and it's the right size, it's, uh, it's, it's nice. It's nice. Yeah. You see, I liked having

00:59:15   the ability to change the, the, where the, how my watch is buckled. I like that personally,

00:59:23   because there'll be different times where I want to tie it or looser. Like that's just like a

00:59:27   personal preference thing of mine. But so my point is like the, the, the, the regular rubbery one,

00:59:33   like for me, the way that I look at it, I don't see why I would want that over the typical,

00:59:40   uh, sport loop because I, I like the sport loops. I wear the Nike pride sport loop on my Apple watch

00:59:47   and have been for a while since the, with my, um, series five, I've only worn, uh, sport loops with

00:59:54   it because I got the addition one, the white one. So I was wearing the white one that had the

00:59:59   matching ceramic pin on it because I really liked that. And then when they brought out the pride

01:00:04   Nike one, I was like, Oh, I liked that too. Cause it's also white. So I've been wearing that,

01:00:08   but I would consider the braided solo loop, um, because it looks nice. Right. Uh, so I think that

01:00:16   it is a good looking band. I actually would really like them to make that with a buckle on it

01:00:21   personally. Um, but I would consider it, but like, I'm not in a rush. Uh, I actually, I've,

01:00:28   I'm not going to buy one of the braided solo loops until I could try it on. And that's not going to

01:00:34   be anytime soon that I will want to try one on, but I do. I like colors. Um,

01:00:39   there were people in my Apple store. Uh, it seems as if, if I can give my report about that,

01:00:47   I showed up, there's a line of people that is like the line to see where you, who you are and why

01:00:52   you're there. And that was very short. And I said, I'm just here for pickup. And they said,

01:00:56   go stand over there. There was a separate line that was like for people who wanted to go in the

01:00:59   store. And it seems like everybody who went into the store was escorted by an Apple employee.

01:01:04   Um, to wherever they said they needed to go to do whatever they needed to do. So they could get in,

01:01:09   ask their questions that they needed to get in, get out. And they take the temperature before they

01:01:14   go in and stuff like that. But surely one of the things that, that you're not able to do right now

01:01:18   is try on a band. I don't know. It would be interesting to see, I bet you could, I bet you

01:01:24   could say, I want to buy a sport loop, but I don't know what my size is. And I wonder if they would

01:01:29   be like, we, we can do that. We can, we can make that happen. Um, I don't know what level they are,

01:01:34   but there were people in there. That's the thing that got me is like, what are they saying? Are

01:01:39   they saying I would like to look at an iPhone? Is that it? I would like to look at an iPad. Can you

01:01:43   show me an iPad? Okay, sure. Wait over there and we'll, we'll usher you in. Cause there were people

01:01:47   in there. There were probably, um, you know, 15, 20 people in the store with Apple employees.

01:01:54   So it was super, it looked busy in the context of mid 2020, but, uh, empty in the context of before

01:02:02   March of 2020. So it was fascinating to see that, but it was super efficient for me because I was

01:02:07   doing in-store pickup. So they literally, uh, had me wait on the side and then brought me the thing.

01:02:13   And I showed my ID and then I left. I didn't have to set foot in the store, which was just fine with

01:02:18   me because they don't need me in there and I don't want to be in there. So, um, the veg in the chat

01:02:25   is saying that they do, you can do it and they will sanitize the watch bands for you.

01:02:29   There is a difference between Apple doing it and me wanting to do that. And I don't want to do that.

01:02:35   I see. Right. Like even if they are going to do it, if you're so keen on your Apple watch sizing

01:02:41   that you want to go to an Apple store, they will let you do it. Everybody's got a mask on,

01:02:44   they'll show it to you and all of that. So it's your level of comfort, but they seem to be up

01:02:48   and running for that. And then we have somebody else, uh, maybe Carter in the chat room saying,

01:02:52   uh, in their Apple store, you just need to be accompanied by a specialist at all times,

01:02:57   which is definitely what I saw is it's a one-to-one and which is great, except it's not

01:03:02   scalable. So I think it's going to be interesting to see how Apple handles this. If, you know,

01:03:06   as we get more toward the holidays, are they going, is there going to be more demand or they're

01:03:11   going to be longer lines? Are they going to have to change their policies? How are they going to

01:03:15   deal with the iPhone? That's what I'm interested in. I don't know. How are they going to sell the

01:03:19   next iPhone? Will you be able to buy it in a store? If you can, what does that look like?

01:03:23   Um, I I'm because, you know, we've all been in lines at Apple stores on iPhone day at some point

01:03:30   in our lives. Maybe you haven't actually, but most, most people have been. I have. Oh yeah,

01:03:35   you have? I have. Okay. Um, but those lines are long and they are crammed. So if you want to put

01:03:45   a bunch of distance between every person in that line, I think you could line up the entire of the

01:03:50   United Kingdom on iPhone day. You could just say all the lines will just start meeting with each

01:03:54   other at some point. Um, like I don't really know how they're going to manage that. Um, I also

01:03:59   personally would love to just run by an Apple store and just pick one up real quick, like how

01:04:05   you did on iPhone day. Cause I hate waiting for the delivery truck, but that, you know, I would

01:04:11   really want to know what their process is before I would consider that. I think it's going to be

01:04:15   interesting to see how that one all goes down. Yeah, well we'll keep watching it. This is among

01:04:21   our list. I feel like upgrade is, has formed its own little identity over time. And like,

01:04:25   we're interested in the rise of streaming media and the streaming wars. We're interested in

01:04:29   Apple retail and sort of like what their strategy is there. Like we have these little, little areas

01:04:33   that we're interested in. So we'll keep our eye on it. Hey, Upgradients, if you're out there,

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01:05:28   you can sign up for our annual plan, which is $50 a year. We've been really enjoying the additional

01:05:33   content that we make available for upgrade plus subscribers. It's fun, relaxed and can let us be

01:05:38   creative in different ways. There's a lot of stuff that is behind the scenes type of conversations

01:05:44   that we have as well. So like around the draft, we were talking about like kind of the meta draft

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01:05:54   rest of the year runs out. So you can hear us talk about stuff like that. And there's also sometimes

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01:06:08   there. So you can get this and so much more by becoming a member today. Once again, that is

01:06:14   getupgradeplus.com. It is time for some hashtag ask upgrade questions. And we'll start off with

01:06:23   Molly's question says, what is your favorite widget right now on your iOS devices? Oh,

01:06:30   oh, that's so hard. It's tricky, right? I have lots though. So I mean, a lot of them are pretty

01:06:37   similar to what I was talking about last time. So I think I'm going to have to go with three.

01:06:45   Okay. No, four. Jason, I'm going to do four. I can't help it. The Carrot weather widget that

01:06:55   I mentioned earlier, the forecast one, I think it's fantastic. I really love the fantastic cow

01:07:00   widget, which is called event list and calendar. Um, and I, they have a feature that I wasn't sure

01:07:07   about at first, but I've tried out and it's called to show heat map, which basically highlights in

01:07:13   color, how busy your day is on the calendar. And I wasn't sure about it at first, but I've actually

01:07:20   come to really enjoy getting that like bird's eye view of what my week looks like. So I like that

01:07:25   and I stuck around, um, the time zone widget and widget Smith. I really love that, especially

01:07:32   because I've been able to make it look really nice and aesthetic as the kids say. And also,

01:07:38   uh, there's an upcoming widget that for Timery, which is my time tracker. Um, and this, I think

01:07:44   it's coming pretty soon. Um, it's called time tracked, which is basically a widget that shows me

01:07:50   my total time track throughout the day and a little graph that shows me what I've spent my most time

01:07:56   on. Uh, and it also, when I'm tracking something, which like I am right now, uh, the time is ticking

01:08:02   up on the widget in real time, which I think is fantastic. It's really, really great. So then my

01:08:07   favorites, I do like the, um, the fantastic how widget a lot. I don't have it with the calendar.

01:08:16   I don't like the calendar. I like the straight up event list because the calendar is tiny and I don't

01:08:23   need to know all the things that are in there. So I, uh, although one of the things that's nice is

01:08:27   you can set those widgets to have different calendar sets. So one of the things that I'm

01:08:31   impressed by is you can have like, I could have my family calendar in a widget that is not my normal

01:08:36   calendar set, but in a widget, I can see what the family calendar is telling me, which is pretty

01:08:41   cool. Um, my favorite widget, honestly, it is scriptable because my two favorite widgets are

01:08:47   these widgets that I built for myself that use, you know, my local data to tell me the weather

01:08:53   that, or the current temperature and the high and the air quality and stuff like that. And I used to

01:08:58   hit my, um, my little weather server webpage all the time. And now I don't because I have it in

01:09:03   widget form, which is better. So scriptable. It's great. It's awesome. I saw somebody posting, uh,

01:09:10   and I believe that, uh, Simon, I believe is the name of the developer. He posted,

01:09:15   somebody, somebody posted a scriptable, uh, script for a widget that ended up creating a

01:09:25   transparent background because you use a screenshot of your home screen. It's wild.

01:09:32   Yeah. So it takes a screenshot. It figures out what your wallpaper is, and then it uses that,

01:09:38   uh, and your location of your widget. And it basically runs out in the background. So it

01:09:42   looks like it's transparent, even though widgets don't apparently, um, support like an alpha

01:09:46   channel. So it fakes it. It's very clever and there's, there's going to be more stuff like that.

01:09:51   Also, I, I could say, Hey, uh, which is supporting alpha channels is a good idea. Also, it's

01:09:56   fascinating to be on the test flight for scriptable because he's, he keeps thinking of things that he

01:10:00   could add to it. Um, as he goes, so like now you can do a grid, so you can do, um, stuff that's

01:10:07   placed horizontally within a widget whereas previously it was just sort of a stack of

01:10:10   vertically. Um, so there's always new stuff and he did an auto resize thing, which I actually added

01:10:16   to my widget so that you can set a, uh, if, if you have text that changes like the air quality,

01:10:20   you can set a font size for it, but now you can set a minimum scale and it basically makes it

01:10:25   smaller until it fits, which is really great because some of the descriptions are long and

01:10:30   some of them are short and I want it to be big. And I was previously doing that manually. I always

01:10:34   like, if it's this word, make it this size. If it's this word, make it this size. And now that's

01:10:38   all back out because he added this thing that lets it just automatically scale. So, um, yeah,

01:10:44   he's, it's fun to see developers like widgets. It's not just users who are figuring out what

01:10:49   widgets are for the developers. People like Simon, people like David Smith are figuring out what

01:10:54   widgets are for too, as they go, which is fascinating. Alex asks, would renaming the low

01:11:02   cost $329 entry-level iPad to be called the iPad se help define the line of iPads in your opinion?

01:11:10   I like the suggestion. I think it would help. I, it would help how we refer to it, right? Cause

01:11:17   there'd be the iPad se, the iPad air and the iPad pro, and rather than the iPad, that's just the

01:11:21   iPad. Like we have to explain that iPad is also a product it's a product line and a product it's

01:11:26   confusing. So I would say in that, in that sense, yes. Um, in another sense, I don't know, it's an,

01:11:33   it's an iPad. It's the classic iPad. I kind of like that. It's still just the iPad, but it would

01:11:38   be much less confusing if it was the iPad se at this point, I think it's the only product that

01:11:46   still maintains the name of the line. There isn't an iPhone called iPhone. There isn't a Mac watch.

01:11:54   There's no Mac book, but even that, like not Mac, right? Like there's no product.

01:11:59   Yeah, but it's not Mac. That's true. So I think a name for that iPad would be good.

01:12:05   An iPad se totally works because that still looks like the really old iPad,

01:12:12   which is like, that's the iPhone se. So I think that's a smart idea.

01:12:17   But as we know, you cannot rely on Apple's naming. You just can't even, even if something seems like

01:12:23   the logical thing, it doesn't mean that they'll do it. Luke asks, Jason, we're going to go back to

01:12:29   stand goals again. You mentioned that you lowered your stand goal from 12 hours to eight. How'd you

01:12:33   do that? You go to the activity app on the watch. This is a watchOS 7 feature, right?

01:12:39   This is a new watchOS 7 feature. So on the watch, you go to the activity app and scroll down to the

01:12:44   bottom and there's a button called change goals. Did I just blow your mind? And you change your

01:12:50   goals and you say, you know what? I don't want to stand for 12 hours a day with your stupid thing

01:12:54   that can't detect when I'm standing. Uh, let's shoot for eight and it'll say, okay. So that's

01:13:01   what I did. I would like to air a frustration. Why? Like there are some things that you can do

01:13:07   on the watch and some things you can do in the watch app and some things can only be done on the

01:13:12   watch and some things can only be done in the watch app and it is impossible to try and understand.

01:13:19   There's no logic to which can be done where. So I find that very frustrating. I know that's,

01:13:25   that's, uh, a constant frustration for me. The idea that you have these two devices. I,

01:13:31   I ranted about this a few years ago about my, um, my Amazon echo show, which has a touch screen

01:13:40   and it has a settings menu and there are certain things that you can control from the settings

01:13:45   menu. And there are certain things that you can control from the Alexa app and they're totally

01:13:52   separate. And, and, and like, so you'll be like, well, why can I do this? And the answer is, oh,

01:13:58   I think what I was doing is I was complaining that there was something I couldn't do. Uh,

01:14:02   and somebody was like, oh, you do that on device in the settings window. And I'm like,

01:14:05   are you kidding me? So it is a problem that a lot of these little satellite devices have where

01:14:10   they're like, well, we have an app over here on your smartphone, but also there are some settings

01:14:14   you set on the device and sometimes it's only on one or the other. And it's very frustrating. So

01:14:19   yes, in this case, I can't find any way to do it in the watch app on the iPhone,

01:14:23   but in the activity app on the watch, you can set it. Andrew says iOS 14 now has a visual indicator

01:14:30   in the operating system for when the camera is being used. There's also one for the dictation

01:14:35   too. I think that one's orange. The camera one is green. Do you think this could come to the Mac,

01:14:39   uh, perhaps allowing our max to drop the little light next to the camera?

01:14:44   Uh, they could, I think the little light is great because the little light is, is wired into the

01:14:52   hardware and like literally you can't turn that camera on without turning the light on

01:14:58   in software. Um, because it's hardwired in, I think that's the best practice is to make it

01:15:04   something that's not hackable by software to give the highest level of reassurance. And I like that

01:15:09   they're in, in, you know, Apple could say, well, it's so locked down that we control it all now

01:15:14   and it goes through the T2 and it's fine. And the T2 controls that. But you know, if you're just

01:15:18   displaying something in the Mac interface, it is theoretically something that could be hacked.

01:15:22   Whereas, um, something on your screen or the actual light you would need to with hardware,

01:15:28   like cover or break the light in order for that to not happen. And I think that's better. So I,

01:15:35   I don't see Apple backtracking on that. They could, if they want to cheap out and not have

01:15:39   the light there anymore and just have it be in software. But I think in terms of

01:15:42   a commitment to security and privacy, it's better to just keep it the way it is.

01:15:46   And Chris asks, is it a bad time to buy AirPods pro?

01:15:56   This one was tricky cause my gut says no, you're, you're fine. Yeah. But don't buy something. Don't

01:16:02   buy anything when we're maybe like two weeks away from an Apple event. Like just if you can wait two

01:16:10   weeks, just wait. If you can wait until the Apple after the iPhone event, I guess you could, I don't

01:16:16   think it's a bad time to buy AirPods pro because they're great. Right. And like they show off the

01:16:21   new AirPods studio, the headphones, and then Chris is like, Oh, you know what? I would prefer those.

01:16:27   Well, if you would prefer a different product to the AirPods pro, then now it's probably not

01:16:31   the right time to buy the AirPods pro, but if you want AirPods pro and you're just worried that

01:16:36   they're going to be replaced by a second generation, you know, not only do the rumors not

01:16:40   really suggest that, but if there is a second generation, I have a hard time believing that

01:16:44   it's going to be anything that isn't pretty incremental sort of like with the original

01:16:48   AirPods. So I wouldn't sweat it too much unless as Myke said, you are thinking of your options

01:16:55   and there might be a better option and Apple's got an event probably coming in the next few weeks. So

01:16:59   why not wait? Yeah, I think it's if you are desperate for a product of some kind, you get it now.

01:17:06   But if you're just interested or like you just really want it, don't just wait. It's like a couple

01:17:11   of weeks and then you'll know. I'm putting my money down personally now on October 13th, by the way,

01:17:19   for the next Apple event. I think that's the best guess is October 13th. Yeah, but we'll see. I was

01:17:28   thinking last week that it might be the 6th, but now I've changed my bet and I'm sticking with this

01:17:34   one. I reckon it's going to be the 13th. It's going to be our next Apple event, which means

01:17:39   that we'll probably be drafting again on the 12th. I guess. I don't think we're going to get two

01:17:44   weeks notice. Who knows? Maybe they'll give more notice for the iPhone event, but I doubt it. I

01:17:49   doubt it. If you'd like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, you can just send out a

01:17:55   tweet with the hashtag #askupgrade or use question mark ask upgrade in the Relay FM members discord,

01:18:01   which is something that is available for people that sign up for Upgrade Plus. You can go to

01:18:05   getupgradeplus.com and you can support the show, get more content and hear no ads. If you'd like

01:18:11   to find Jason online, you can go to sixcolors.com and he is @jsnell, J S N E double L. I am @imike,

01:18:18   I M Y K E. Thank you so much to Pingdom and Eero for their support of this week's episode. And of

01:18:24   course, thank you for listening and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye Jason Snell.

01:18:29   Goodbye Myke Early.

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