Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 317. Today's show is brought to you by TextExpander from Smile, ExpressVPN, and Hover. My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined by Jason Snow. Hello, Jason Snow.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Hello, Myke Hurley. You survived a big week last week.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Yep.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Big week.

00:00:28 ◼   ► We both did. It was a huge week. We'll talk about that as the episode goes on. We are back to normal now. This is our first regular episode. We are in what I have dubbed, but it's not like official, like Summer of Farm. We're in the fall of content now.

00:00:42 ◼   ► Okay.

00:00:43 ◼   ► It's before the winter of discontent. We're in the fall of content.

00:00:46 ◼   ► Yes, fall of content. Yeah, that is how it works.

00:00:48 ◼   ► We have a #SnowTalk question. Today's question comes from Paul, and Paul wants to know, "Jason, when typing on your Mac, do you mistakenly type in a double space hoping to create a period like you would on your iPhone?"

00:01:01 ◼   ► No.

00:01:02 ◼   ► Interesting. What about, I have a secondary question for you. Secondary question for you.

00:01:06 ◼   ► Okay. All right.

00:01:07 ◼   ► There's a reason I included this, because I knew you were going to say no.

00:01:09 ◼   ► I think my brain on a touchscreen on the iPhone or iPad software keyboard is doing something very different than if I'm using a traditional keyboard.

00:01:18 ◼   ► But you do use the double space for a period in the -- by the way, I have to change now. Paul says period. I say full stop, so I'm now going to switch back to my native tongue.

00:01:29 ◼   ► Hello.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Hello, Governor. Do you use a full stop when you're cleaning the chimneys? No. When you're on the iPhone and on the iPad software keyboard, do you use the double tap, the space bar for a full stop?

00:01:41 ◼   ► I think I do it on the iPhone a lot, because on the iPhone I'm definitely in the mode of just mashing the keys and hoping that autocorrect figures it out.

00:01:51 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:01:52 ◼   ► And the double tap on the space bar is part of that. Is it a full stop bar, Myke?

00:01:58 ◼   ► No, it's a space bar.

00:01:59 ◼   ► It's just a space bar, okay. Because it doesn't make the full stop unless you press it twice. Then it's a full stop bar.

00:02:04 ◼   ► Exactly. Then it's a full stop bar.

00:02:05 ◼   ► And the British word for space is space.

00:02:08 ◼   ► So I have another question for you.

00:02:10 ◼   ► And is enter and return, are they the same thing? I don't know. Anyway, they're shaped different.

00:02:14 ◼   ► I think so. Anyway, so when you're on the iPad and you're on the software keyboard on the iPad, do you do it then?

00:02:21 ◼   ► I think it varies. And that's because I have a couple of different ways of typing on my iPad.

00:02:33 ◼   ► I would say when I'm holding my iPad in two hands and sort of thumb typing, I'm treating it like an iPhone.

00:02:40 ◼   ► And I'm just trying to get the words out and hope they autocorrect to the right thing so I don't have to go back.

00:02:44 ◼   ► But sometimes I've got my iPad in my lap and I'm using many fingers to type and that's different.

00:02:53 ◼   ► Then I'm sort of in keyboard mode, like physical keyboard mode.

00:02:58 ◼   ► Because I'm actually pretty good at typing on the iPad if it's laying in my lap and I've got my two hands down on it,

00:03:04 ◼   ► I can go pretty fast and I'm pretty accurate. It's just that most of the time I'm not doing that.

00:03:08 ◼   ► That's more like I don't have a keyboard around and I need to do a bunch of text so I'm going to lay the iPad down on my lap and go to town on the keyboard.

00:03:19 ◼   ► But most of the time I don't do it. Most of the time I'm holding it with two hands and kind of just trying to get the words out.

00:03:27 ◼   ► Okay, so I do it on all software keyboards. On my iPad, I've turned on the setting.

00:03:35 ◼   ► There's a setting in the keyboards for like hardware keyboards that if you double press a space bar on a physical keyboard of any kind attached to an iPad, it will add the full stop.

00:03:47 ◼   ► This is something Apple puts into the software to allow you to do it.

00:03:50 ◼   ► And I also have a text expander shortcut on my Mac to put two spaces as a full stop.

00:03:56 ◼   ► Wow.

00:03:57 ◼   ► I've just gotten used to it and I like it.

00:03:59 ◼   ► So I don't like it and let me tell you, let me share with you what my hardware keyboard settings are on my iPad.

00:04:05 ◼   ► Yes, I know, I know.

00:04:07 ◼   ► Everything off.

00:04:09 ◼   ► Everything off, including the capitalization.

00:04:11 ◼   ► I don't want capitalization. I don't want correction.

00:04:15 ◼   ► I do.

00:04:16 ◼   ► Because with auto correction, when you're writing on an iPad, as people who work on their iPads, right, you're writing on an iPad and you post a story and people are like, "Why did you use this word?"

00:04:26 ◼   ► And I'm like, "Mmm, auto..." and then I immediately turn off all the auto correction because that's a thing that really happens is auto correct corrects the word you meant to a totally different word.

00:04:37 ◼   ► And as a writer, can't happen.

00:04:40 ◼   ► Just can't happen.

00:04:41 ◼   ► So all that stuff is off.

00:04:42 ◼   ► All of it.

00:04:43 ◼   ► You know, one of the funny things about, I mostly pay attention, pretty much only pay attention now to the live stream chat that we have in the Relay for Members Discord.

00:04:52 ◼   ► And you know something contentious is happening when it says several people are typing, like it does in Slack, and as soon as I said about what I do in the keyboard settings, it immediately turned into several people are typing for about 25 seconds.

00:05:07 ◼   ► So I have no doubt that we're going to get a lot of follow up about this, but you know what? Here's the thing.

00:05:12 ◼   ► That's why they have settings.

00:05:13 ◼   ► You can get up to me as you like, but Apple put those settings in.

00:05:15 ◼   ► That's why they have settings.

00:05:17 ◼   ► Why would people get upset?

00:05:18 ◼   ► I don't use your settings, but that's the beautiful thing about settings is that I can have it the way I want it and you can have it your terrible way.

00:05:29 ◼   ► And it's all fine.

00:05:30 ◼   ► We could maybe even call these ones up settings if we wanted to.

00:05:34 ◼   ► New segment, up settings.

00:05:36 ◼   ► Eventually upgrade will be all verticals.

00:05:39 ◼   ► That's all verticals.

00:05:41 ◼   ► If you would like to send in a question for a future episode of Upgrade to help us kick off a show like Paul did, just send in a tweet with the hashtag #SnailTalk or use question mark snail talk in the Relay FM Members Discord.

00:05:52 ◼   ► I'd like to take a brief moment to once again remind you all about why we are supporting St. Jude here at Relay FM throughout the month of September, because you can join us and help support this incredible charity of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, which runs throughout September.

00:06:10 ◼   ► St. Jude combines the very best in personalized care with one of the most technologically advanced treatment clinics in the world.

00:06:18 ◼   ► It's called the Red Frog Therapy Center and it is the first proton therapy center in the world dedicated solely to children with cancer with the ability to kill and shrink tumors while keeping healthy tissues and organs safe.

00:06:31 ◼   ► And the donations if people like you allow St. Jude to afford this incredibly cutting edge technology.

00:06:37 ◼   ► St. Jude will continue to research the use of proton therapy, preventing the growth and spread of tumors while reducing the risk of treatment related side effects.

00:06:46 ◼   ► And again, one of the fantastic things about St. Jude is that it is a research hospital.

00:06:50 ◼   ► So what they learn from treating their patients they share with the world.

00:06:54 ◼   ► Donate to St. Jude today at stjude.org/relay to support the advancement of childhood cancer research.

00:07:00 ◼   ► Again, that is stjude.org/relay to donate today.

00:07:04 ◼   ► Last Friday we had the second ever podcastathon, which was our six hour event that we streamed.

00:07:10 ◼   ► If you've missed it and you want to watch it, we've put it on YouTube and we've posted the audio in our kind of live event feed, which is called Departures.

00:07:19 ◼   ► I'll make sure both of those are in the show notes.

00:07:22 ◼   ► The second podcastathon was an absolute resounding success in every single measure.

00:07:28 ◼   ► It was a lot of work from a lot of people and we got it all together and we made it happen.

00:07:36 ◼   ► We not only raised a lot of money, we raised $100,000 during the event, which was just unbelievable.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Because of those incredible donation amounts, we actually hit our goal for the entire month.

00:07:52 ◼   ► So we'd set $315,000 as our goal as a community to raise throughout the month of September.

00:07:59 ◼   ► And as I'm currently recording, we're at $336,000 raised for St. Jude.

00:08:07 ◼   ► So I just want to thank everybody that has donated.

00:08:10 ◼   ► An incredible extra thank you to everybody who watched the podcastathon, donated during the podcastathon.

00:08:16 ◼   ► But there's still a lot of September left, so let's just continue to push that higher and higher.

00:08:22 ◼   ► Again, thank you to everybody who played a part, including Jason, of course, for the wonderful game show that you put on,

00:08:30 ◼   ► which is available for people to watch on the YouTube there as well.

00:08:34 ◼   ► Right, two segments of it. You can check it out.

00:08:36 ◼   ► It is based on the great British game show, sorry, I almost called it--

00:08:41 ◼   ► Taskmaster.

00:08:42 ◼   ► Taskmaster, it's called Hostmaster, where I am the hostmaster and I force real AFM hosts to do silly things.

00:08:47 ◼   ► And it's wonderful.

00:08:48 ◼   ► For charity. And it was a lot of fun to put that together,

00:08:52 ◼   ► but that was another one of the things that was happening last week while everything else was going on,

00:08:57 ◼   ► is I had to furnish you with 40 minutes of a game show that I had to edit together.

00:09:02 ◼   ► That was a lot.

00:09:03 ◼   ► One of the things that struck me, and it struck me last year too, but even more this year, is how packed the podcastathon was.

00:09:09 ◼   ► Other than your personal exhaustion, and I think maybe if you bulk up for next year, if you cross-train or something,

00:09:15 ◼   ► I felt like it was really cramped. I think you guys could have gone for eight hours or ten hours in terms of the material.

00:09:23 ◼   ► We did seven hours in total, which was wild, because we were only scheduled to do six,

00:09:31 ◼   ► and we even cut content and we're going to be doing additional streams now throughout the rest of the year.

00:09:36 ◼   ► The thing was, Jason, we had planned to do eight hours this year.

00:09:41 ◼   ► That was what we were going to do as the extension.

00:09:44 ◼   ► But then we had to do it all remotely and was like, "Okay, why don't we just..."

00:09:48 ◼   ► Scale it back.

00:09:49 ◼   ► Yeah. And also, the longer we went, the later it got for me.

00:09:53 ◼   ► Right. Well, that's true.

00:09:54 ◼   ► We finished I think 20 to 2 in the morning, I think, was when we ended up finishing.

00:09:58 ◼   ► But the final hour, we ended up going an extra hour because it made us push to reach the goal.

00:10:05 ◼   ► And there was a special surprise guest in the last hour because there was literally there was follow-up.

00:10:10 ◼   ► And of course, it's follow-up from something that had just happened in the segment where Quinn quizzes you and Stephen.

00:10:17 ◼   ► And I'm not going to give anything away for people who haven't seen it yet. You should go watch it.

00:10:21 ◼   ► But the segment where Quinn quizzes Myke and Stephen about Relay led to a very particular thing being discovered.

00:10:29 ◼   ► And sure enough, not long after that, the person involved with that appeared for some official John Syracuse approved podcast follow-up.

00:10:40 ◼   ► It was amazing.

00:10:41 ◼   ► I really think you should watch it, even at least skim through it.

00:10:44 ◼   ► But the final, I think, maybe 90 minutes, that's maybe really worth watching.

00:10:50 ◼   ► There's some really good stuff in there.

00:10:51 ◼   ► So, yeah, we're already planning for next year. We're obviously going to do it again because we've continued to raise so much money for a cause that means a lot to us.

00:11:02 ◼   ► So thank you to everybody that was involved in any way for the podcast.

00:11:06 ◼   ► We have some follow-up.

00:11:08 ◼   ► So on the last episode, obviously, a lot of the episode was taken up by talking about iOS 14 dropping within 24 hours of Apple's event.

00:11:17 ◼   ► And one of the questions we had is, will there be any apps?

00:11:21 ◼   ► And there were.

00:11:23 ◼   ► So kind of anecdotally, it kind of seems like a lot of developers were still able to make day one releases for applications.

00:11:31 ◼   ► It seemed like App Review moved pretty fast for a lot of developers.

00:11:34 ◼   ► So if someone could get Xcode downloaded and could get a build submitted, it seemed like App Review were moving fast in some instances.

00:11:43 ◼   ► Of course, this could not and was not the case for everybody.

00:11:46 ◼   ► But there were many developers that I saw commenting online that they did get approved in time.

00:11:51 ◼   ► I think maybe you could make an argument that it seemed like developers that have been around for a while got their apps through.

00:11:58 ◼   ► Which you can see some sense in that, right?

00:12:01 ◼   ► Like maybe established developers of companies that are large, but even independent developers.

00:12:05 ◼   ► It seemed like a lot of people in our circles got their apps approved pretty fast.

00:12:10 ◼   ► This obviously doesn't change the fact that they had to scramble.

00:12:14 ◼   ► And I don't know about you, Jason, but I've seen an awful lot of bug fix updates for apps that did get through the first hurdle over the last few days.

00:12:23 ◼   ► I mean, I would assume at this point that Apple have heard the concerns of the developers in the community about the sheer amount of issues of doing what they did here.

00:12:36 ◼   ► And I would hope that they won't do this again.

00:12:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I think they didn't intend to do it, right?

00:12:41 ◼   ► I do think, somebody asked me this on Twitter, I think this was a chain of events where they made some decisions that didn't expect it to go this way.

00:12:51 ◼   ► And then they made some other decisions and then things changed and everything kind of cascaded to this point.

00:12:57 ◼   ► I don't think they intended to give the developers no time, but then they felt they had to stick with this timeline.

00:13:04 ◼   ► I'm sure it will be even more clear.

00:13:07 ◼   ► I will note that it seems like App Review was very much aware of what was going to happen and that they did expedite these app reviews and they had reviewers ready to go.

00:13:18 ◼   ► So clearly, as this, and there were some theories that maybe they had originally intended this thing to happen last week, and for some reason it got delayed.

00:13:27 ◼   ► I don't know, but in the end, I think Apple probably didn't want it to go this way and I think even more so now, I would hope they would look at it and say, "Oh yeah, this is not ideal."

00:13:40 ◼   ► I'm glad they stepped up on the App Review side because one of my least favorite things about Apple is when Apple makes one of these decisions that is frustrating

00:13:49 ◼   ► and kind of walks away and leaves everybody else to deal with the fallout. And that happens sometimes when they release an app that competes with other apps

00:14:00 ◼   ► and it drives those apps out of the platform and then they never update it.

00:14:04 ◼   ► It's like, "Well, wait a second. If you're going to do this, you should follow through. You should have that follow through."

00:14:08 ◼   ► And I will say, this is a bad situation that I hope is never repeated.

00:14:12 ◼   ► I am glad that Apple very much knew it was a bad situation and really geared up App Review to try and get the backlog through as much as possible.

00:14:24 ◼   ► Again, it's not what you want, but I like, because there's another scenario where Apple does this and then App Review still takes days or weeks.

00:14:33 ◼   ► And this was the thing that I really wanted to follow up on. Whether App Review were very aware or whether it was jumped on them, it doesn't matter. They made it work.

00:14:44 ◼   ► That part of the team, because the reason I say that is we know that Apple is secretive even in itself.

00:14:53 ◼   ► Who knows if the App Review teams, the app reviewers even knew that they were going to be dealing with what they dealt with.

00:14:59 ◼   ► But nevertheless, that part of the organization made it work because there were applications that had iOS 14 features available on iOS 14 launch day

00:15:10 ◼   ► because I personally was genuinely questioning as to whether that would even be the case.

00:15:15 ◼   ► So whatever it is they did, they made it work. And you've got to assume that even inside of the company, people were making the argument like, "We can't do that again. That was a bad idea."

00:15:27 ◼   ► And it's normal that point releases when there's hardware, this can happen. I could imagine them saying, "We have a new iPad. It needs iOS 14.3 and it's coming out tomorrow."

00:15:40 ◼   ► That's one thing, but an entire OS version is too much.

00:15:45 ◼   ► And Xcode, right? Because that's the other part that didn't get as widely understood. There's some stuff where you need to compile it with the final version of Xcode in order to submit it to be on the iOS 14 train.

00:15:59 ◼   ► And when they made the announcement, and even as they were pushing out the GM, Xcode wasn't out yet, right? So they couldn't. They could submit an iOS 13 version, but they couldn't actually...

00:16:12 ◼   ► You could feel like your app was done and ready to go, but you had to download Xcode first and compile it through there.

00:16:18 ◼   ► Here's the thing about why this is... I'm not going to say this won't happen again. I'm going to say that Apple doesn't want this to happen. Any developer will tell you, and you can look in the app store today and see all of those great with iOS 14.

00:16:32 ◼   ► Apple, especially on the marketing side, loves developers who embrace new OS features. Now, those are the people they hurt, right? Because I saw a couple of people were like, "Well, what's the big deal? Why not just wait?"

00:16:49 ◼   ► And they answered, "Well, one of the big deals about being there on day one is that Apple markets your app heavily if you're there on day one with a feature that takes advantage of the new features of their operating system, because that's good for Apple, because it allows Apple to say,

00:17:03 ◼   ► "See all the great things we did with iOS 14 and include all the apps," because saying, "Here's a great API," as you do at WWDC, doesn't matter to an end user. You need to say, "See this app," which we're going to talk about some of them.

00:17:15 ◼   ► "See this app that lets you put widgets on your home screen," right? So Apple wants it to be this way, but in the end, the needs of marketing are not going to override some big engineering problem that happened, which probably happened here.

00:17:30 ◼   ► There is continued weirdness, though, which iOS 14.2 is currently the version of iOS 14 available to developers. So if you were on the developer train, you've gone from 14 to straight to 14.2.

00:17:47 ◼   ► There's lots of tweaks, lots of fixes here and there. But yes, you are hearing me correctly. 14.1 is lost somewhere. Now, we can all make the natural assumption as to where iOS 14.1 is living.

00:17:58 ◼   ► 14.1 is a very special build. Yeah, 14.1 is a very special build of 14.0 that includes all of the special features that are only available in the new iPhone hardware. That's it, right? That's got to be it.

00:18:16 ◼   ► And there are features, there are new pieces of hardware. I have a theory too, which is part of me thinks that Apple has gotten more careful about stuff like this because of Guy Rambeau and Steve Tratton Smith.

00:18:30 ◼   ► I am agreeing with this here, which is why we then go back to why did they do a 24 hour release of the Golden Master? And it's like, I think that there is a potential here that it was Apple's intention to never release the Golden Master until 24 hours before.

00:18:47 ◼   ► Because it has features that were announced in the keynote and they knew, and this is the frustrating thing is they knew since it was a GM that those features had to be baked in there and they would be found out, right? People would find them out and so they just didn't put them in there.

00:19:02 ◼   ► And it's frustrating. The solution would be to give them a few days and then have it drop on Friday instead of have it drop on Wednesday. But yes, I do think it's at least possible, maybe very possible that one of the reasons Apple is doing some of the things it's doing and being a little more careful with its OS releases is because it got tired of being burned by people looking at their code.

00:19:25 ◼   ► Now I would say the real solution is to not leak stuff in your code, but I can also see how something like a GM version that is final. It's the GM version. You can't not have the features in the GM version that are going to ship or it's not a GM version.

00:19:42 ◼   ► So I can see if you're going to roll some new features that previously have never been announced into your announcement, then which you know, this is why you don't do that.

00:19:51 ◼   ► This is why ideally you don't do that, but they did it. So it's frustrating and 14.1, you know, I'm sure first off I would bet you that there's going to be something in 14.2 that leaks that is like, oh, this is proof of this, right?

00:20:05 ◼   ► I still don't think there hasn't yet. I just, maybe they've gotten it right. Maybe they've gotten their story right. But 14.1, obviously if you've got a brand new X in the iPhone, you know, one of the iPhones doesn't even need to be all of them, then you need the software to support that.

00:20:23 ◼   ► And then if you release that as a beta, somebody's going to find it. So they're just not going to show it.

00:20:30 ◼   ► Yeah, but I understand this idea, but if the way that you get around people finding stuff in the GM is to never release a GM again, I think you maybe need to go back to the drawing board on that a little bit, right?

00:20:43 ◼   ► Like there is some logic in this approach, but you can't take this approach of like, we value secrecy over even allowing for our development partners to have access to the code that they desperately need.

00:20:59 ◼   ► Like that has to be a middle ground in there somewhere.

00:21:01 ◼   ► Also the GM deprecated some stuff. I saw that from a couple of developers that there were things that they were working on and the GM was like, that's not in the final build.

00:21:13 ◼   ► It was not like critical, but like there's like a new logging API or something that they just pulled out and people were using it and they're like, oh, okay. Right? Like it seems basically the rule should be a GM needs a little bit of time for the developers to get it and test it and get the new final X code and submit it.

00:21:35 ◼   ► And if you can't release it in advance because you're making secret surprise announcements in your event, then build more time in on the backside, right?

00:21:46 ◼   ► Make the event Tuesday, release the GM right after the event and then push out the final release.

00:21:54 ◼   ► I mean, Friday, Thursday, right? Like just wait, just wait.

00:22:03 ◼   ► Last piece of follow up. It's actually an upstream follow up. Billy Crudup picked up an Emmy for his role as Corey Ellison on the morning show.

00:22:10 ◼   ► So this was Apple's first Emmy. It was their only win of their 18 nominations, but a win is a win and this is a good one for them.

00:22:18 ◼   ► And in a high level category, a high profile category.

00:22:22 ◼   ► Sporting acting.

00:22:23 ◼   ► In the drama.

00:22:25 ◼   ► But of course the best thing that happened in the Emmys last night was the clean sweep of Schitt's Creek in the comedy.

00:22:30 ◼   ► Amazing.

00:22:31 ◼   ► Which was just, I watched all of the acceptance speeches this morning and it was just for a show that I absolutely adore.

00:22:39 ◼   ► It had such great messages to it. Just watching them win, win after win and you could like see the tension building as it looked like they were going to sweep it.

00:22:50 ◼   ► That was the best part of the Emmys.

00:22:53 ◼   ► I think it may be the first show, comedy or drama to sweep all seven major nominations, which is, or categories, which is unreal.

00:23:01 ◼   ► And it's unreal that it's this little Canadian show that did it.

00:23:04 ◼   ► But it was worth it.

00:23:05 ◼   ► That was fun. Yeah, they did a good job with a Zoom based TV show, I thought.

00:23:12 ◼   ► The Hazmat suit award givers was weird though.

00:23:15 ◼   ► It was weird, but I liked it. I thought it was good weird. And I liked the automated boxes O-Emmy that happened in some places.

00:23:23 ◼   ► Like John Oliver had the exploding confetti box with his Emmy in it. I thought that was...

00:23:28 ◼   ► I didn't see that.

00:23:29 ◼   ► Oh yeah, that's like everybody got a box, but only one of them had an Emmy in it and it was John Oliver's and the box opened and confetti blew out and a mechanical hand holding an Emmy was released.

00:23:41 ◼   ► It was pretty good.

00:23:42 ◼   ► That's better than the Hazmat suits was a little too like...

00:23:46 ◼   ► But they were tuxedo Hazmat suits. Did you see that?

00:23:49 ◼   ► I liked that even least.

00:23:51 ◼   ► It was weird and creepy, but also I thought very 2020 and kind of, I liked the approach there.

00:23:59 ◼   ► It was weird. But anyway, so Apple, as we've said here, one of the great things, and I know we all think the giant tech companies are cold unfeeling monsters and all they want is more money and more power.

00:24:11 ◼   ► Right. But there's something else that cold unfeeling monsters want.

00:24:17 ◼   ► They want love from the academy.

00:24:19 ◼   ► It's validation of what they do. And Apple got one with the Billy Crudup Emmy, which is honestly Billy Crudup's performance in the morning show. I don't love the morning show. I liked it. I didn't like how it ended.

00:24:32 ◼   ► His performance is really good. He's a good actor. I like him.

00:24:35 ◼   ► That performance is so strange because he starts out so weird and slimy and yet over time you kind of get...

00:24:46 ◼   ► You start rooting for him a little bit.

00:24:48 ◼   ► Yeah. He's like, yeah, he's a slimy executive, but he's our slimy executive. It's a legitimately good performance. Great performance maybe from a very good actor.

00:24:58 ◼   ► Also, I want to point out that the actor who played Cal in Watchmen... How shall I phrase this? The actor who played Cal in Watchmen won for best actor in a limited series.

00:25:15 ◼   ► Which is fun.

00:25:16 ◼   ► Or best supporting actor in a limited series. Anyway, and he's great. He's from Oakland. He went to Cal. Go Bears.

00:25:23 ◼   ► But this means that he and Billy Crudup won awards last night, which is funny because, and again, I'm not going to spoil Watchmen for you.

00:25:30 ◼   ► It's funny if you see it. We'll say that.

00:25:32 ◼   ► Everybody should go watch HBO's Watchmen. It's amazing. But I'll just say that that actor, Yahya and Billy Crudup, have played the same character in the past.

00:25:44 ◼   ► And so I found that highly amusing. Anyway, but Watchmen won a bunch of awards and people should check it out.

00:25:50 ◼   ► Watchmen is one of the most relevant shows you'll ever see. And as I said on Twitter last night, it's not a show about superheroes.

00:25:57 ◼   ► It's a show about police abuse and white supremacy in America. And it is as current as you could possibly get.

00:26:06 ◼   ► And it's a piece of brilliant art. And then chase that down with Chernobyl, which is about systemic failures in a society that lead to a lot of deaths.

00:26:16 ◼   ► And just, you couldn't get more 2020 than that. So anyway, awards, validation, the cold, unfeeling monsters just want to be loved.

00:26:26 ◼   ► This episode is brought to you by Hover, one of our longest running sponsors here at Relay FM. Hover has been with us since the very beginning.

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00:28:26 ◼   ► So today we are obviously going to talk about iOS 14 because that is what's happening right now.

00:28:34 ◼   ► iOS 14 is available. We've been talking about some of its features throughout the year.

00:28:38 ◼   ► And our usual episode would be to talk about, kind of run through some of our favorite features.

00:28:45 ◼   ► And we're going to do that maybe over the next couple of weeks.

00:28:47 ◼   ► But what we're going to talk about today is how iOS 14 is affecting customization of people's iPhones in ways that I don't think we would have, not don't think, in ways that we definitely did not expect to occur.

00:29:03 ◼   ► And so I think one of the things that we really need to talk about is widgets.

00:29:08 ◼   ► And if we're going to talk about widgets, we have to talk about Widgetsmith, which is a very good friend of the show, David Smith, underscore David Smith,

00:29:15 ◼   ► created an app called Widgetsmith, which was based on an app that he made called WatchSmith.

00:29:20 ◼   ► And WatchSmith came out, I think it was earlier this year, and it was an application which was built to help you create complications for your Apple Watch with varying data.

00:29:30 ◼   ► And you could set them on schedules and stuff like that. And David put an incredible amount of work into building this application.

00:29:36 ◼   ► And then when Apple introduced Widgets, the new widget system, David was like, well, this naturally, the work that I have done with WatchSmith,

00:29:44 ◼   ► I could move over and create a new app called Widgetsmith, doing similar kinds of stuff.

00:29:49 ◼   ► And I had been on the beta for the app for a few months and was given lots of feedback to David, and I know that you were too, Jason,

00:29:57 ◼   ► and we were kind of helping him work through some of the widgets we'd like to see.

00:30:01 ◼   ► Then on Friday, Widgetsmith truly went viral. It was appearing in various TikToks and YouTube videos.

00:30:11 ◼   ► I saw the phrase Widgetsmith trending on Twitter at one point, and it has been the number one free app in the App Store pretty much worldwide since Friday.

00:30:22 ◼   ► Because what happened was people wanted to customize their home screens, and David includes in Widgetsmith loads of options to add images,

00:30:32 ◼   ► to add text, and to do lots of color customization to them.

00:30:37 ◼   ► And it turns out this is something that a lot of people, especially young people, want to do.

00:30:42 ◼   ► I will include a link to a Verge article because it's like the thing now.

00:30:48 ◼   ► Everyone's writing these articles. The reason I put this one from The Verge is they link to a lot of tweets and stuff that people have been doing to make really weird home screens,

00:30:57 ◼   ► like that look like Windows 98 or look like the Animal Crossing phone and stuff like that.

00:31:03 ◼   ► Now, what has ended up happening is people want to -- this is more than just Widgetsmith, and we'll talk about the icon stuff in a bit.

00:31:12 ◼   ► But basically what's happened is people want to customize their home screens much more, basically theme them, and apps like Widgetsmith are allowing them to do it.

00:31:24 ◼   ► Yeah, it could be a simple -- I mean, the one, the TikTok video that really went viral, I mean, literally it's things like, "I can put today's day on a window in a nice color."

00:31:37 ◼   ► And with a nice font. And it seems like the one that people really love is Apple's new New York font, which is a serif font, rather than San Francisco, which is a sans serif.

00:31:49 ◼   ► Yeah, and this is a lesson that Apple learned a long time ago on the Mac, right?

00:31:56 ◼   ► In the early days of the Mac especially, people customized their Macs. This is why John Saracusa keeps needling case lists on ATP about naming his hard drive something.

00:32:07 ◼   ► Because when I first got into the Mac, everybody had extensions that made different sounds, and everybody had a different background image, or pattern.

00:32:21 ◼   ► And you name your hard drive something, and you put a custom icon on it, and you put custom icons on folders.

00:32:29 ◼   ► All of these things are about making the Mac feel like it's yours, and not just a cold, unfeeling computer that was sent to you by the computer company.

00:32:41 ◼   ► "No, this is mine. It has a name, it has an icon, whatever it is. It's yours."

00:32:46 ◼   ► And iOS kind of -- Apple lost the plot on that a little bit, right? At some point they added wallpaper, and you could move the icons around.

00:32:58 ◼   ► But something as fundamental as custom icons, or icon themes, or color themes that exist on Android, and on the Mac, iOS was just like --

00:33:08 ◼   ► I think part of this is that Apple, because they were focused on other things and they just didn't prioritize it, I think the springboard in general, the home screen, just didn't get a lot of attention.

00:33:22 ◼   ► I think that was sort of why it led this way, but you can see it. So the moment that you put widgets on the home screen, it's like a damn burst.

00:33:33 ◼   ► Somebody on Twitter said to me the other day, or yesterday, "Isn't this just a fad?" And it's like, "Well, is it a fad?"

00:33:40 ◼   ► Yes, in the sense that there's a new OS version, and everybody's going to do it, and a lot of people are going to get tired of it.

00:33:47 ◼   ► And yes, but it's also, I think, a super valid impulse that people have. It is a decades-old user impulse to make your device your own.

00:34:02 ◼   ► What is more personal than a smartphone, right? Our smartphones are our whole lives. They're encompassed in there.

00:34:11 ◼   ► It's our communication. It can be our business or our school. It's our friends. It's our entertainment. Why would you not want to customize it?

00:34:21 ◼   ► And Apple, with this one feature, just cracked open a little bit of it.

00:34:29 ◼   ► It was just enough.

00:34:30 ◼   ► And you can see, and it's like people are thirsty. They desperately want this, and so they rushed into this.

00:34:38 ◼   ► And it's great for David Smith. He's a beneficiary of this, but you can see the user desire here.

00:34:45 ◼   ► And I know that David, in day one, is like, "Oh, I need to give more fonts and more color options to these people because they really want that."

00:34:53 ◼   ► I hope somebody at Apple is looking at this and going, "Oh, huh."

00:34:58 ◼   ► Because we hear about the emoji effect, right, which is that people update their OS because they want the new emojis.

00:35:07 ◼   ► That's a real thing that happens, and it doesn't happen in the .o release. It happens a little bit later in the fall.

00:35:13 ◼   ► People are updating their OS for WidgetSmith.

00:35:17 ◼   ► People are updating their OS to get this. And so if I'm Apple, I look at this and I go, "Oh, okay."

00:35:24 ◼   ► That's another way, like emoji releases, to get people to update.

00:35:31 ◼   ► So we should -- I hope, and I can only assume that somewhere deep inside Apple,

00:35:37 ◼   ► as they're desperately trying to put together whatever version of iOS runs on the new phone and all of those things,

00:35:43 ◼   ► there is somebody who has taken their priority list and put user customization up.

00:35:49 ◼   ► -I will make a long-term prediction now, Jason, and say that we will get home screen themes before we get watch faces.

00:35:57 ◼   ► -Yeah, sure.

00:35:59 ◼   ► -And I think it's going to become a thing now, just because this is --

00:36:03 ◼   ► Look, the idea of being a fad means you're not going to still see people posting about this on Twitter

00:36:09 ◼   ► with how they're doing right now, like with the veracity that we're seeing right now in six months' time.

00:36:15 ◼   ► -No.

00:36:16 ◼   ► -But people will be used to this being a part of their operating system and will continue to tweak and share it.

00:36:21 ◼   ► But I don't think that this is something people are going to forget about,

00:36:25 ◼   ► because they're setting up their home screens now, and they will know that their phone can do this,

00:36:29 ◼   ► and it looks like this, right?

00:36:31 ◼   ► The funny thing to me is, you know, I was testing Widgetsmith,

00:36:34 ◼   ► and I was super focused on utility, utility, utility, right?

00:36:38 ◼   ► And the things I was asking David for is like, "I want this time zone thing,

00:36:42 ◼   ► and I want it to work this way, and I want a step counter, and I want it to work this way."

00:36:46 ◼   ► It never occurred to me at all that people would use the cosmetic widgets that he included.

00:36:53 ◼   ► I never used any of them.

00:36:55 ◼   ► And I have only really thought about having the photo widget that he has,

00:37:00 ◼   ► the one that shows photos from an album.

00:37:02 ◼   ► I put that on after I see so many people doing it.

00:37:04 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, yeah, I can do that."

00:37:06 ◼   ► I want to take a quick sidebar here and just talk about how unbelievably thrilled I am for David.

00:37:12 ◼   ► Like, the past few days have just been a joy for me as I am watching all of the press that he's getting,

00:37:21 ◼   ► seeing his app, number one in the app store.

00:37:24 ◼   ► David is one of the very nicest people that I've ever met in my life,

00:37:29 ◼   ► and he was also one of the hardest working.

00:37:32 ◼   ► And to see him getting what is not just--

00:37:36 ◼   ► I don't know anybody that has achieved this level of mainstream success.

00:37:41 ◼   ► I don't know anybody personally that's done something like this before, right?

00:37:45 ◼   ► Number one in the free charts in the app store for four days?

00:37:50 ◼   ► Like, that is next level, right?

00:37:53 ◼   ► And I'm seeing Widget Smith just everywhere, right?

00:37:58 ◼   ► And I'm so, so happy for him because I know how Hardy works.

00:38:04 ◼   ► I'm looking forward to his discussion presumably on Under the Radar about--

00:38:07 ◼   ► Oh, my God, I can't wait.

00:38:08 ◼   ► --the business side of this too because the thing is the reason that it is trending,

00:38:12 ◼   ► it talks about how app store economics work in a way.

00:38:18 ◼   ► Widget Smith is trending in part because it's free.

00:38:21 ◼   ► Yes.

00:38:22 ◼   ► So anyone can try it and anyone can get it.

00:38:24 ◼   ► And so congratulations, Underscore, you have just sold a bunch of free apps.

00:38:29 ◼   ► Here's your no money, right?

00:38:32 ◼   ► And your enormous, by the way, support cost now

00:38:36 ◼   ► because he's got all of these people asking questions about Widget Smith.

00:38:41 ◼   ► So the other part of this is how does he convert this--

00:38:45 ◼   ► because he is a solo developer, right, with other apps--

00:38:48 ◼   ► how does he take advantage of the fact that he has a huge user base

00:38:51 ◼   ► and find ways to make money not only because he needs to support himself and his family

00:38:56 ◼   ► but because he has a greater support burden now on the users?

00:39:01 ◼   ► So I'm curious to see, you know, is it just as simple as a certain percentage of free users

00:39:08 ◼   ► are going to buy the in-app purchases for things like the weather and tides

00:39:12 ◼   ► and stuff like that that he's got in the app?

00:39:15 ◼   ► Or does he now think of customization packs kind of things

00:39:22 ◼   ► that are more designed to appeal to this aesthetic audience, you know,

00:39:28 ◼   ► and do an in-app purchase for stuff related to that?

00:39:32 ◼   ► These are decisions he has to make.

00:39:34 ◼   ► But, you know, in the end, it's great that he has the number one free app all over the world,

00:39:39 ◼   ► but number one, free app doesn't get you anything because it's a free app.

00:39:43 ◼   ► It's what you make of it and what you make of the user base.

00:39:47 ◼   ► And I'm curious to see how his approach to the app changes

00:39:52 ◼   ► because I think this changes where he was going with the app, right?

00:39:54 ◼   ► -Oh, surely. I mean-- -Like, the users have steered this in a very different direction.

00:39:58 ◼   ► So how does he adjust and how does he find a way to make the app still popular and usable

00:40:04 ◼   ► but also actually make him money?

00:40:07 ◼   ► Does he need to adjust his plan there as well?

00:40:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I will also be very interested.

00:40:12 ◼   ► We've had some basic conversations about it,

00:40:15 ◼   ► but I'm super interested to see what it ends up doing for him, right?

00:40:19 ◼   ► Because there is already a subscription method in there,

00:40:25 ◼   ► but as you say, the things that it is offering are not the things that people now seem to be wanting.

00:40:32 ◼   ► -They're functional, right? -Right.

00:40:34 ◼   ► And he was good about that. He's like, "These are the ones that cost money to do,"

00:40:37 ◼   ► which is, you know, a weather API costs money. The tide API costs money.

00:40:41 ◼   ► So I'm going to charge for these.

00:40:43 ◼   ► And now he may want to change to, you know, I'm going to create these themes or these colors or whatever,

00:40:49 ◼   ► or he may not. He may just figure that it actually works as well as it does with the current system

00:40:55 ◼   ► because people are going to love these widgets and then they're going to want the weather widget.

00:40:58 ◼   ► But, you know, he's competing with other apps there.

00:41:00 ◼   ► And I don't know, it's a tough one, but, you know, he wants to make the most about this.

00:41:05 ◼   ► I'm sure he doesn't want to be the guy who sells everybody a free app

00:41:09 ◼   ► and then does a bunch of jerky things in order to make money off of it, right?

00:41:12 ◼   ► But at the same time, he needs to make money because he is a solo developer.

00:41:16 ◼   ► So that'll be fascinating to watch.

00:41:18 ◼   ► But I think, again, first off, I mean, every other app developer is now going to try to attach to this market,

00:41:24 ◼   ► which is going to be funny.

00:41:25 ◼   ► But if you're Apple, you got to look at this and say,

00:41:29 ◼   ► "We need to do more to enable stuff like this,"

00:41:33 ◼   ► whether it's in the system, in the OS, or in APIs that app developers can use, or both.

00:41:40 ◼   ► You got to think that we're going to go there.

00:41:43 ◼   ► But I'm very happy for him and I hope he makes the most of his top of the charts time.

00:41:50 ◼   ► Of course, the other part of this is the app library because now people can hide their icons.

00:41:56 ◼   ► They're using shortcuts to create custom icons, which is super janky, but it works.

00:42:03 ◼   ► You can make a shortcut that is "Open this app,"

00:42:07 ◼   ► and then you can save a shortcut to the shortcut,

00:42:11 ◼   ► an icon of the shortcut that launches the shortcut to the home screen,

00:42:17 ◼   ► and that can contain a custom icon.

00:42:20 ◼   ► You can paste in a custom icon there.

00:42:23 ◼   ► Then when you tap on that icon out on the home screen,

00:42:28 ◼   ► what it does right now is it opens shortcuts and then opens the app you want,

00:42:32 ◼   ► which a lot of people have said, "Hey, Apple, maybe you should just let this pass through."

00:42:40 ◼   ► But there's a security issue there, right?

00:42:42 ◼   ► Whether this is a real important security issue, I don't know,

00:42:45 ◼   ► but theoretically you could create an icon that looks like a legit app but is not,

00:42:53 ◼   ► and you wouldn't know that you were tapping a shortcut to somewhere else

00:42:59 ◼   ► unless it gave you some sort of indication.

00:43:02 ◼   ► So there are some issues here, but it's amazing that you can do this and people are doing this, right?

00:43:09 ◼   ► That's the other part of this is not only can you have that icon,

00:43:12 ◼   ► but you can hide the old dumb app icon away because you can hide home screen pages now.

00:43:22 ◼   ► Obviously this isn't the only thing that widgets are for,

00:43:26 ◼   ► and I don't know about you, I don't have a WidgetSmith widget

00:43:31 ◼   ► that tells me the current date in a nice color on my home screen.

00:43:35 ◼   ► I'm using WidgetSmith widgets in other ways, but the more of the ways that I'd expected.

00:43:40 ◼   ► So I wanted to talk a little bit about widgets and how we're using them.

00:43:44 ◼   ► And it's been interesting as I'm now getting access to more widgets

00:43:48 ◼   ► as they're being released from apps that I'm used to,

00:43:51 ◼   ► what I'm realizing is that there is a barrier or a bar for what an application

00:43:57 ◼   ► needs to provide me for me to want to have the widget.

00:44:00 ◼   ► For example, an app that I use every single day is Dew,

00:44:03 ◼   ► and it reminds me of certain things throughout the day,

00:44:06 ◼   ► but I don't need to have the Dew widget on my home screen telling me about things

00:44:10 ◼   ► that are going to come up later on because I'll just get notified about them at the time.

00:44:14 ◼   ► But I do want my calendar, Fantastic Cal's widget, right, so I can see my events.

00:44:19 ◼   ► So it's kind of interesting, there are applications that you use every day

00:44:24 ◼   ► that are fine to just-- the information to just stay in the app,

00:44:27 ◼   ► I don't need a widget for them.

00:44:29 ◼   ► And it's about kind of like a combination of what does the developer offer

00:44:34 ◼   ► plus how important is that data for me to have constant visibility to

00:44:39 ◼   ► and kind of working out for yourself which ones make sense there.

00:44:43 ◼   ► Like, do I need to see my task list on my home screen?

00:44:46 ◼   ► I don't know if I do.

00:44:48 ◼   ► But I do want a quick way to add a task, right?

00:44:52 ◼   ► So there's different functionality requires that kind of visibility for me.

00:44:59 ◼   ► I've also found out that widget design I think is more important

00:45:03 ◼   ► than a lot of developers have given thought to.

00:45:06 ◼   ► Like, for example, I use dark mode all the time,

00:45:09 ◼   ► but it doesn't mean I want all my widgets to be black,

00:45:11 ◼   ► and that's what a lot of developers seem to have assumed.

00:45:14 ◼   ► But I still want color on my home screen, but I don't--

00:45:18 ◼   ► but I just don't want everything to be white.

00:45:20 ◼   ► So there's an element there of I think I really like the widgets

00:45:24 ◼   ► that they default to the dark mode but allow me to customize them.

00:45:29 ◼   ► So I've really liked that because I still want color.

00:45:32 ◼   ► Just because I don't use light mode doesn't mean I want everything

00:45:35 ◼   ► to be all black all the time.

00:45:37 ◼   ► I just don't want all white all the time, right?

00:45:40 ◼   ► And also, I mean, I'm sure this is the same for most of our audience.

00:45:44 ◼   ► I do feel like I need to make some sweeping changes

00:45:46 ◼   ► to the way that my home screen works,

00:45:48 ◼   ► but I feel like I'm still waiting on a few more widgets to appear

00:45:51 ◼   ► and then work out which icons are going to go away.

00:45:54 ◼   ► Like, I feel like I maybe don't need my fantastic icon on my home screen anymore

00:45:59 ◼   ► if I'm used to having the widget there.

00:46:01 ◼   ► I still need to work out how and what's going to show and where.

00:46:05 ◼   ► Have you found that?

00:46:06 ◼   ► Like, there needs to be some change here,

00:46:08 ◼   ► but you're just not sure what it is yet?

00:46:10 ◼   ► Yeah, and one of the challenges is the iPhone and the iPad are different

00:46:16 ◼   ► because the iPad, you've got the one screen that has everything.

00:46:21 ◼   ► Yeah, it is frustrating to not be--

00:46:23 ◼   ► I mean, we've been saying this the whole time,

00:46:25 ◼   ► but it's still incredibly frustrating to have all of the widgets

00:46:28 ◼   ► locked away to that bar on the side.

00:46:31 ◼   ► Yeah, it is.

00:46:32 ◼   ► So it's--but at the same time, I'm happy that they're there

00:46:36 ◼   ► and they're very nice, but it's kind of not necessary.

00:46:43 ◼   ► I'd like more if I could.

00:46:45 ◼   ► I'd like more functionality.

00:46:46 ◼   ► I get why it's not there.

00:46:47 ◼   ► You have to rethink the grid and all that.

00:46:49 ◼   ► Like, I see why they punted on this one and said,

00:46:51 ◼   ► "We'll deal with it next year maybe."

00:46:54 ◼   ► But yeah, I have a lot of pondering to do about how I use widgets

00:47:00 ◼   ► and what information I want, and I'm experimenting,

00:47:03 ◼   ► but I'm kind of starting slow

00:47:05 ◼   ► because I think what I've decided is on my iPhone--

00:47:07 ◼   ► I don't use my iPhone as much as my iPad since I rarely leave the house.

00:47:12 ◼   ► I was using the iPhone a lot more this weekend because we were traveling,

00:47:16 ◼   ► and it's actually kind of a push and pull between the fact

00:47:21 ◼   ► that I can hide all of my extra pages of apps

00:47:24 ◼   ► and have a much simpler interface

00:47:27 ◼   ► and adding widgets where it clutters it back up but with widgets.

00:47:33 ◼   ► And I think I'm appreciating the simplicity more than I'm appreciating the clutter.

00:47:38 ◼   ► But we'll see.

00:47:40 ◼   ► I mean, the number of--I have a small widget stack on my--page one of my iPhone home screen.

00:47:49 ◼   ► And that's it.

00:47:52 ◼   ► And on page two, I'm experimenting with some widgets.

00:47:55 ◼   ► There's actually no icons on page two.

00:47:57 ◼   ► It's just widgets, and I'm trying some different stuff out there,

00:48:01 ◼   ► but I'm not sure I actually want anything more than page one and nothing else

00:48:09 ◼   ► and have it be super minimal.

00:48:11 ◼   ► But it's really too early to tell.

00:48:14 ◼   ► It's fun to have the options.

00:48:17 ◼   ► I'm not sure--every time I try something out, I'm like, "Whoa, that's kind of a lot."

00:48:23 ◼   ► And so it may be that I end up much more minimalist

00:48:25 ◼   ► and not doing as much with widgets as I maybe thought on the iPhone.

00:48:29 ◼   ► On the iPad, definitely it's nice to have--

00:48:33 ◼   ► I've got a couple small widgets and a medium widget stack

00:48:39 ◼   ► with Fantastic Cal and the weather forecast, and that's all been good.

00:48:45 ◼   ► Yeah, some of my favorites so far is Fantastic Cal.

00:48:48 ◼   ► I use one called Event List plus Calendar.

00:48:51 ◼   ► Carrot Weather, super good, the forecast widget.

00:48:54 ◼   ► I think Carrot Weather's widget is my favorite widget.

00:48:57 ◼   ► My time tracking app Timery, the widgets are in beta right now,

00:49:01 ◼   ► but there's some good ones in there.

00:49:03 ◼   ► I use a bunch of the shortcuts ones for different shortcuts.

00:49:06 ◼   ► Apple's photo widget is super nice.

00:49:09 ◼   ► It's actually--they've done a really good job with that widget.

00:49:12 ◼   ► I recommend everybody at least tries that one out for a while,

00:49:15 ◼   ► like leave it on your home screen, because I didn't use it at first,

00:49:18 ◼   ► and then everybody was telling me to try it, so I did, and it's really nice.

00:49:21 ◼   ► And then of the Widgetsmith that we were talking about earlier,

00:49:24 ◼   ► I use Photos in Album to select photos just from a specific album that I love.

00:49:29 ◼   ► I use the step count widget and the timing locations,

00:49:32 ◼   ► which is the time zone widget.

00:49:34 ◼   ► They're some of my favorite ones that I've used so far,

00:49:36 ◼   ► but I'm still waiting on what I expect,

00:49:38 ◼   ► like a bunch of apps that I use to update with widgets

00:49:40 ◼   ► in the not-too-distant future.

00:49:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm also using Carrotweather widget, which I really like.

00:49:47 ◼   ► One of the things I'm really liking is these apps

00:49:49 ◼   ► that offer a whole bunch of different options,

00:49:51 ◼   ► because especially some of the Apple stuff,

00:49:55 ◼   ► but also some of the old-style widgets that we used to have

00:49:58 ◼   ► were like one size fits all, like here is the widget,

00:50:02 ◼   ► or they were configure the widget in the app to be what you want it to be,

00:50:08 ◼   ► and what seems to be happening with iOS 14 is you just have

00:50:14 ◼   ► so many different widgets to choose from pre-formatted.

00:50:19 ◼   ► So like Carrot is a great example where, as I scroll through,

00:50:22 ◼   ► they have snark widgets that say the forecast

00:50:25 ◼   ► and also one of the funny lines that the app says.

00:50:30 ◼   ► They have forecast widgets that show the current forecast.

00:50:33 ◼   ► They have hourly widget that shows the hourly forecast

00:50:36 ◼   ► and a daily widget that shows the daily forecast for the next few days,

00:50:40 ◼   ► and they have, if you're paying them a tier 3 membership,

00:50:42 ◼   ► a weather map that will show you like the local radar and stuff.

00:50:46 ◼   ► Like all of that, those are just pre-formatted, so you just choose,

00:50:50 ◼   ► and you can choose multiple ones and put them in a stack and all of that.

00:50:53 ◼   ► And like what I wanted was the daily forecast,

00:50:56 ◼   ► and I want to see what's happening the rest of the week,

00:50:58 ◼   ► and so that's one that I've got on my iPad screen.

00:51:01 ◼   ► I really like what they did with that.

00:51:03 ◼   ► What I like about the Carrot one, they have one that I'm using,

00:51:06 ◼   ► it's just called forecast, and what it does, which is what I love,

00:51:10 ◼   ► is in the morning and most of the day it shows me hourly,

00:51:14 ◼   ► but in the evening it switches to daily.

00:51:16 ◼   ► And I really like that, because in the morning and through the day

00:51:21 ◼   ► I want to know what it's like for the rest of the day,

00:51:23 ◼   ► but in the evening I don't care,

00:51:24 ◼   ► I just want to know what the rest of the week is like.

00:51:26 ◼   ► So I really like that it does that switching on its own.

00:51:32 ◼   ► Right, being in California, I don't really have to think about,

00:51:36 ◼   ► is it going to rain later until basically November?

00:51:40 ◼   ► The Carrot one also, she's set in a bunch of additional data points,

00:51:45 ◼   ► and I have precipitation percentage of course.

00:51:49 ◼   ► Yeah, so that will all be more relevant.

00:51:51 ◼   ► I may actually find value in an hourly in a little bit, but not quite yet.

00:51:57 ◼   ► The one that I'm using the most is Scriptable.

00:52:01 ◼   ► And I know this is wacky, but so Scriptable is an app,

00:52:06 ◼   ► it's kind of like shortcuts, except the way,

00:52:09 ◼   ► what it lets you do is run JavaScript scripts,

00:52:13 ◼   ► and you're saying to yourself, why would there be a widget for that?

00:52:18 ◼   ► But the new version of Scriptable lets you write your own widgets in JavaScript

00:52:29 ◼   ► to do anything, anything you want.

00:52:34 ◼   ► So I have written based on some code I found and modified,

00:52:39 ◼   ► and then people have contributed to it.

00:52:41 ◼   ► And I wrote about this on six colors a little bit,

00:52:43 ◼   ► but like I have a widget on both my phone and my iPad

00:52:47 ◼   ► that literally just talks to my weather station and tells me my home weather.

00:52:54 ◼   ► So it's not something that I can distribute to anyone else

00:52:57 ◼   ► because it doesn't make sense for anyone else.

00:52:59 ◼   ► It's not following an API, it's not talking to a weather,

00:53:01 ◼   ► it's literally talking to my server.

00:53:03 ◼   ► And it's got the current temperature, the high and low,

00:53:05 ◼   ► is it warmer than it was or colder than it was yesterday,

00:53:08 ◼   ► and what's the trend over the last hour?

00:53:10 ◼   ► And it's great, and it's like, it's green when it's cool and red when it's hot.

00:53:15 ◼   ► It's great.

00:53:16 ◼   ► And then I also wrote in a bunch of different forms,

00:53:19 ◼   ► including in Scriptable, this air quality widget,

00:53:22 ◼   ► because we've had the fires in the West,

00:53:25 ◼   ► and so you kind of need to know is the air breathable outside or not, essentially.

00:53:30 ◼   ► And that has been a lot of fun.

00:53:32 ◼   ► And that one I posted the code for,

00:53:35 ◼   ► because you can literally put in the code of a Purple Air air quality station near you,

00:53:41 ◼   ► and then it works.

00:53:42 ◼   ► That one is relevant for people who are not just me.

00:53:44 ◼   ► It's not hard-coded to my local air quality.

00:53:48 ◼   ► And I don't know anything about JavaScript,

00:53:51 ◼   ► but there was a script that I used as the basis that did some basic stuff,

00:53:57 ◼   ► and then I changed a bunch of the math,

00:53:58 ◼   ► and then somebody who saw my article about it

00:54:01 ◼   ► threw in this sort of theme approach where you could have a color gradient,

00:54:06 ◼   ► and then I modified that so that the light colors have dark text

00:54:10 ◼   ► and the dark colors have a light text.

00:54:12 ◼   ► And it's been a lot of fun, but it's also been super useful,

00:54:15 ◼   ► especially right now, to know what the current temperature is

00:54:17 ◼   ► and to know what the air quality is.

00:54:19 ◼   ► So if you know enough JavaScript to be dangerous,

00:54:27 ◼   ► I would recommend trying it out also because the great thing about things like JavaScript

00:54:32 ◼   ► is it's all open code.

00:54:34 ◼   ► You can see all the code.

00:54:36 ◼   ► And there are lots of examples.

00:54:37 ◼   ► There's a thread actually over in the Automators Forum

00:54:42 ◼   ► that's a spinoff of the Automators podcast on Relay FM

00:54:46 ◼   ► where it's a bunch of examples of widgets written in Scriptable.

00:54:50 ◼   ► And there is a similar project that's trying to get widgets in shortcuts.

00:54:56 ◼   ► It's a little more complicated that way,

00:54:59 ◼   ► but if you think in terms of shortcuts, you can do that too.

00:55:02 ◼   ► And I love this, right?

00:55:04 ◼   ► I love the fact that if there's not a widget out there that does exactly what you want,

00:55:08 ◼   ► like my personal weather street,

00:55:09 ◼   ► there is an app that does air quality called Air Lookout,

00:55:14 ◼   ► and it will look at purple air stations near you, and there is a widget, right?

00:55:19 ◼   ► So there is an app that does that.

00:55:21 ◼   ► It didn't do that when I started writing mine, but it does that.

00:55:24 ◼   ► But for my personal weather station, there is nothing.

00:55:27 ◼   ► And I could get one that looks at my weather station through an API or something,

00:55:31 ◼   ► but I just wrote it, and it works.

00:55:35 ◼   ► And I love that, that you can write your own widgets if you want to.

00:55:39 ◼   ► So most of my widget time has actually been in Scriptable of all places.

00:55:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

00:55:49 ◼   ► I know so little JavaScript that I would be dangerous, right?

00:55:53 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I know very little of it too, but I know enough.

00:55:58 ◼   ► It's how I learned all of my scripting languages is I looked at the existing code,

00:56:03 ◼   ► and I was like, "Oh, so that's how you do that," and then you take it.

00:56:06 ◼   ► And then every now and then I run into something where I'm like,

00:56:09 ◼   ► "I literally don't know what I'm seeing here," and then I have to Google it and all of that.

00:56:12 ◼   ► But it's actually been kind of a fun experience to do that

00:56:14 ◼   ► and see what code is similar in JavaScript to PHP to, you know, AppleScript

00:56:20 ◼   ► and how they're different and all of those things.

00:56:22 ◼   ► It's actually been a lot of fun.

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00:57:47 ◼   ► Of course, WatchOS 7 was released as well.

00:57:51 ◼   ► I don't have as much to say about WatchOS 7.

00:57:55 ◼   ► I did get a thumbs up earlier when I washed my hands, which was nice.

00:57:59 ◼   ► By the way, if you are wondering about the hand washing feature,

00:58:02 ◼   ► it's actually off by default on WatchOS 7.

00:58:05 ◼   ► You have to go and turn it on, and I did that in the settings on my watch.

00:58:10 ◼   ► I don't know why that is.

00:58:13 ◼   ► Maybe it's a functionality that maybe they're not comfortable enough is working correctly.

00:58:17 ◼   ► I know a lot of people in the bay was saying that it was firing off at random times.

00:58:21 ◼   ► I haven't had that yet.

00:58:23 ◼   ► I did have some thoughts on some of the new watch faces.

00:58:26 ◼   ► That's the thing that I care the most about,

00:58:28 ◼   ► because I don't use all the functionality of my Apple Watch,

00:58:32 ◼   ► but I do like the faces sometimes.

00:58:34 ◼   ► Well, I have a love-hate relationship with the watch faces.

00:58:38 ◼   ► I really like the typograph face,

00:58:41 ◼   ► but I find the process of picking colors to be annoying,

00:58:45 ◼   ► because some colors change the background color, but some don't.

00:58:49 ◼   ► I can't choose what I want it to be.

00:58:51 ◼   ► I can just choose from the preset colors,

00:58:53 ◼   ► which is weird because Apple has now created the stripes face,

00:58:58 ◼   ► which does allow you to choose the colors arbitrarily,

00:59:01 ◼   ► but there are some faces where you have to go with the ones that Apple is picking,

00:59:04 ◼   ► the same with the GMT face.

00:59:06 ◼   ► They give you preset colors that Apple say match,

00:59:09 ◼   ► but this is a similar thing to what we were talking about earlier.

00:59:11 ◼   ► Why don't you let me choose the colors that I want exactly,

00:59:14 ◼   ► rather than choosing from ones that you've told me and ordained are okay?

00:59:18 ◼   ► But I do like the look of the typograph face.

00:59:20 ◼   ► I was using the California face before,

00:59:22 ◼   ► so it was purely aesthetic, no function, and the typograph face is similar.

00:59:26 ◼   ► Although the one that I like,

00:59:28 ◼   ► which is just the four very large numbers,

00:59:33 ◼   ► it's actually quite hard to tell the time on that face,

00:59:36 ◼   ► because they're so large,

00:59:37 ◼   ► where it's much easier when if you just have a watch face

00:59:40 ◼   ► that has four numbers on and they're kind of sized correctly,

00:59:42 ◼   ► you have a better approximation of where the hands are pointing.

00:59:46 ◼   ► But I just like the way this one looks,

00:59:48 ◼   ► which for me is an important thing about watch face design anyways,

00:59:51 ◼   ► is design.

00:59:52 ◼   ► I like the GMT face.

00:59:54 ◼   ► I like GMT watch faces.

00:59:56 ◼   ► A GMT face, basically in a nutshell,

00:59:59 ◼   ► is it allows you to tell two different times

01:00:02 ◼   ► for different time zones at the same time.

01:00:04 ◼   ► So you have two hour hands on a watch face.

01:00:08 ◼   ► One is your local time,

01:00:10 ◼   ► and then it's typically an hour hand in a different color,

01:00:13 ◼   ► which is set to a different time zone.

01:00:15 ◼   ► So I would typically, and the reason it's called a GMT face,

01:00:19 ◼   ► is you would set it to GMT.

01:00:21 ◼   ► So you would always know what the kind of standard time zone is.

01:00:25 ◼   ► Setting a GMT time for me is mostly pointless for half of the year,

01:00:30 ◼   ► because it's the time zone I live in.

01:00:32 ◼   ► So I always set, and I have another watch face,

01:00:36 ◼   ► which is a world timer of a similar idea.

01:00:38 ◼   ► I set it to New York time, to Eastern time,

01:00:41 ◼   ► because that works great for me,

01:00:42 ◼   ► because from Eastern time I can approximate the rest of the time in America.

01:00:45 ◼   ► And I like this watch face,

01:00:47 ◼   ► but it has the infograph style in the four corner complications,

01:00:52 ◼   ► which is a very, I find that to be a very messy, very loud layout.

01:00:57 ◼   ► And I want to do some tweaking with that

01:01:00 ◼   ► to see if I can pick some complications that I actually like in those corners,

01:01:03 ◼   ► or otherwise I'm just going to turn them all off.

01:01:06 ◼   ► I find that design, I understand why it's useful,

01:01:09 ◼   ► but I really do find it to be quite a lot, I'll say.

01:01:15 ◼   ► It is a lot, although I use that.

01:01:17 ◼   ► I use the California face, and I have the four corners.

01:01:20 ◼   ► And it's because I like, because of how I use the watch, honestly,

01:01:24 ◼   ► because I have the activity shortcut, and overcast shortcut,

01:01:28 ◼   ► and my rings, and the weather, which I find valuable.

01:01:31 ◼   ► If I used the Apple Watch every day,

01:01:33 ◼   ► I would be using more of the functions of the Apple Watch,

01:01:37 ◼   ► so I would also imagine myself doing this.

01:01:39 ◼   ► So here's my frustration with this, which is a lot of these faces,

01:01:43 ◼   ► Apple has decided they're monochrome faces,

01:01:46 ◼   ► and so you can pick a color.

01:01:48 ◼   ► So on California, you can pick the color of the disk behind,

01:01:52 ◼   ► so you can make it orange, or you can make it gray,

01:01:54 ◼   ► or you can make it white, or you can make it black.

01:01:57 ◼   ► The problem is, or one of the many other colors that are available,

01:02:00 ◼   ► there are lots of colors in watchOS 7.

01:02:03 ◼   ► So here's the thing, what it enforces is monochromatic, monochromicity?

01:02:11 ◼   ► So if you choose orange, it uses orange as a highlight color

01:02:14 ◼   ► on all of your complications.

01:02:16 ◼   ► And if you choose green, it makes green all of your complications.

01:02:20 ◼   ► And what I really want is I want a setting,

01:02:23 ◼   ► because I use it with a black background,

01:02:25 ◼   ► I just want an option to say, show the colors on the complications,

01:02:31 ◼   ► because the complications have colors,

01:02:33 ◼   ► but on monochrome faces, they're drained out.

01:02:36 ◼   ► And it just frustrates me to no end that I would be happy,

01:02:40 ◼   ► I would like my little running guy to be green on that face.

01:02:44 ◼   ► He's not, he's white, because no color, only gray,

01:02:50 ◼   ► except for the second hand, which is red.

01:02:52 ◼   ► But if I choose orange, then they'll be orange,

01:02:56 ◼   ► but they'll all be orange, and it's too much orange.

01:02:58 ◼   ► And if they're different colors, you can more easily pick out visually

01:03:02 ◼   ► what you're looking for, right?

01:03:03 ◼   ► Exactly. I don't mind.

01:03:05 ◼   ► If I'm going to have the four corner complications,

01:03:07 ◼   ► I want a mode that lets me say, just draw the complications with color.

01:03:11 ◼   ► I want a separate switch that basically says mono or not for complications.

01:03:16 ◼   ► And it doesn't offer that to me.

01:03:18 ◼   ► And it's annoying, because it's not like the Apple Watch

01:03:21 ◼   ► doesn't have that functionality, because one of the Infograph faces

01:03:24 ◼   ► has multiple color options, doesn't it?

01:03:27 ◼   ► Yeah, so it's frustrating.

01:03:30 ◼   ► I have to try some of the new watch faces.

01:03:32 ◼   ► My gut feeling, though, is that, I mean, essentially,

01:03:34 ◼   ► the California face that I've set up is literally the closest

01:03:40 ◼   ► I could get to the utility face, which is still my favorite,

01:03:43 ◼   ► but of course the utility face is one of those faces that was designed

01:03:47 ◼   ► for the small screens and doesn't support any of the big,

01:03:50 ◼   ► modern complications, even though I have a big screen,

01:03:54 ◼   ► which is also a frustration of mine, because I love that face,

01:03:57 ◼   ► but it's an old face that they haven't updated.

01:04:02 ◼   ► And so I only have little tiny complications that I can put in the corners,

01:04:07 ◼   ► which is not what I want. Yeah.

01:04:10 ◼   ► I also saw on Twitter you've been having some battery life problems.

01:04:14 ◼   ► Yeah, so this happened last year. Remember Casey?

01:04:17 ◼   ► Casey had big problems, yeah.

01:04:19 ◼   ► So I have an Apple Watch Series 5.

01:04:23 ◼   ► I've had it for about a year since it came out.

01:04:28 ◼   ► And so it's been running WatchOS 6, and I've never, maybe once,

01:04:35 ◼   ► but I think basically never had that thing where I'm sitting on the couch

01:04:40 ◼   ► at the end of the day and I get tapped on my wrist saying, "You're at 10%.

01:04:43 ◼   ► Do you want to go in battery reserve mode?"

01:04:45 ◼   ► Maybe it happened once after I did a long, like, height or something.

01:04:50 ◼   ► If it happened, you could probably point to a reason, right?

01:04:53 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. It would have been weird.

01:04:55 ◼   ► It literally, I think, if it happened at all, it happened one time,

01:04:58 ◼   ► and it would have been where I was like, "Oh, yeah, I did have the workout on

01:05:01 ◼   ► for a long time," or "I left the workout on when I got home,"

01:05:03 ◼   ► or something like that. There was a reason.

01:05:05 ◼   ► But it was literally once in 300-plus days.

01:05:08 ◼   ► So I update my Apple Watch to WatchOS 7 on Wednesday.

01:05:17 ◼   ► And Wednesday it goes into power reserve. Thursday it goes into power reserve.

01:05:22 ◼   ► Friday it goes into power reserve. Saturday it goes into power reserve.

01:05:26 ◼   ► Day one or two you can let go, but past that, something weird's happening, right?

01:05:31 ◼   ► I was like, "Every day." It either went into power reserve or it got --

01:05:36 ◼   ► it was offering to go into power reserve, and it was, you know, I was like,

01:05:42 ◼   ► "I'm just going to let it run out because I'm going to go to bed in half an hour

01:05:45 ◼   ► or something," so I didn't bother. But basically, after not running out of battery

01:05:50 ◼   ► for every day for a year, every day it ran out of battery.

01:05:54 ◼   ► And I mentioned this on Twitter, and people are like, "Oh, well, you know,

01:05:58 ◼   ► you change your habits or whatever." It's like, "No, no, literally no change

01:06:02 ◼   ► in anything I do except the OS update." And then people are like, "Oh, it's hand washing.

01:06:08 ◼   ► Turn off hand washing, and I've heard that works." And it becomes like the home remedies,

01:06:14 ◼   ► like everybody's got to draw a chalk circle and stand inside it.

01:06:19 ◼   ► Also, if it is hand washing, well, that's watchOS 7 killing battery life then,

01:06:24 ◼   ► isn't it, because that's a feature added. Like, that would be point proven,

01:06:28 ◼   ► even though, as I've said, it's actually off by default. But even if you had turned it on

01:06:33 ◼   ► and it was now killing the battery life, well, that's showing that watchOS 7 is killing

01:06:37 ◼   ► the battery life, which is bad. It doesn't matter how you fix it.

01:06:42 ◼   ► The point that the operating system has been updated and is now destroying the battery,

01:06:46 ◼   ► well, that's an issue, isn't it?

01:06:48 ◼   ► Yeah, if they have a new feature and it's turned on and it kills your battery,

01:06:50 ◼   ► then that would be a problem. Anyway, I did finally one of these home remedies,

01:06:53 ◼   ► you know, kill the chicken, hang it upside down, whatever, all these home remedies

01:06:56 ◼   ► that you've got for Apple Watch battery fixes. I had two people say to me,

01:07:01 ◼   ► "Have you tried unpairing and re-pairing your watch?" Because, of course,

01:07:08 ◼   ► what would be better than turning it off and on again is unpairing and re-pairing.

01:07:13 ◼   ► Now, anybody who has an Apple Watch knows, unpairing and re-pairing,

01:07:16 ◼   ► it's not that simple.

01:07:17 ◼   ► Isn't that basically a factory reset, like, effectively?

01:07:20 ◼   ► Yes.

01:07:21 ◼   ► It's like reinstalling MacOS or something.

01:07:23 ◼   ► It's close. It's not reinstalling the data, but not the OS. But it is,

01:07:30 ◼   ► and you have the option of, like, not unpairing your cellular, which is good,

01:07:33 ◼   ► because then you'd have to re-enable your cellular and go back to your carrier

01:07:37 ◼   ► and all of that. You have the option to do that. But it is a bit of a thing,

01:07:42 ◼   ► because you've got to put your Apple Pay back on, so you've got to put your

01:07:46 ◼   ► card codes in for all your Apple Pay credit cards. There's a whole bunch of

01:07:50 ◼   ► stuff that you have to do, but you can do it. It does a backup of your watch

01:07:55 ◼   ► before you undo it. So I did that. I actually did that in the hotel room

01:08:01 ◼   ► on Saturday night after we moved my daughter in to her apartment.

01:08:05 ◼   ► I was, like, so tired, and yet the battery -- I had actually gone into Power Reserve,

01:08:10 ◼   ► charged it while we were unpacking her stuff for about 20 minutes, put it back on,

01:08:14 ◼   ► and then it died again. I was like, "This is ridiculous." So I did it,

01:08:19 ◼   ► and then I used it all day yesterday, and guess what, Myke?

01:08:24 ◼   ► I went to bed, and there was still, like, 30 percent battery.

01:08:31 ◼   ► Huh. Okay.

01:08:33 ◼   ► So -- Again, nevertheless, even though you fixed it, that's something in

01:08:37 ◼   ► WatchOS 7 killing battery life, no matter what you know.

01:08:39 ◼   ► Well, I think what it is is something in a watch that is updated to WatchOS 7.

01:08:47 ◼   ► Some watches that are updated to WatchOS 7 from WatchOS 6 are getting in a state

01:08:54 ◼   ► where they are running -- some process is running, and it's freaking out,

01:08:59 ◼   ► the watch, and it's draining the battery. And apparently, the way you stop that

01:09:06 ◼   ► from happening is by unpairing and repairing. So it's a bug, but it strikes me

01:09:12 ◼   ► as being a bug about doing an update to an existing, right? Like, it feels like

01:09:18 ◼   ► that's really the bug here. If you can unpair and repair, and then it works fine,

01:09:23 ◼   ► it's not quite the OS. It's the act of the OS being updated that's triggering

01:09:29 ◼   ► something, and my guess is it's a data thing where it's trying to update an app

01:09:33 ◼   ► from the phone, or it's trying to do something, and it's in a state where it's

01:09:39 ◼   ► confused about what state it's in, and it continues to churn, and it kills your

01:09:45 ◼   ► battery. But it was remarkable, and I only have one day as a data point so far,

01:09:50 ◼   ► but let me tell you, yesterday, the watch was fine. So I guess if you're having

01:09:56 ◼   ► these problems, try that.

01:09:58 ◼   ► -Try doing that, yeah. -Yeah, but this is a bug, and Apple needs to address it

01:10:02 ◼   ► because it's super annoying for all the reasons that we said on that iPhone show

01:10:07 ◼   ► we did. Upgrading your watch to a new version of WatchOS should be a delight,

01:10:11 ◼   ► right? You should be like, "Yeah, new features, new faces, it's great," and not

01:10:15 ◼   ► a, uh, oh, a dance. You just ruined my, you ruined, this OS that I can't revert

01:10:21 ◼   ► has ruined my watch, because it, like, literally ruined my watch. My watch could

01:10:25 ◼   ► not get through the day. It was, it was super sad to have this watch that I've

01:10:31 ◼   ► been using, and using a lot over the last year, suddenly not be able to get it

01:10:36 ◼   ► through dinner.

01:10:38 ◼   ► -Yeah, I am at 54% right now, and it is 6.37 PM. I put the watch on probably

01:10:47 ◼   ► about 10. I mean, I don't know if that's good or bad. I mean, you can kind of,

01:10:53 ◼   ► maybe, I'm just saying that as a way for, like, people to judge it by their own

01:10:57 ◼   ► benchmarks for the watch. I don't do enough with mine, I think, that I've ever

01:11:02 ◼   ► really had battery issues, so I'll let you know. I've just said I'm going to wear

01:11:05 ◼   ► a little bit more now, because I want to try out Watch OS 7 and see, see what

01:11:09 ◼   ► else is going on there. There's a couple of more things I want to touch on from

01:11:14 ◼   ► last week's event. One of them was the A14. You wrote a great article about the

01:11:19 ◼   ► debut of the A14, and I also, um, John Siracusa made some points on the last

01:11:24 ◼   ► episode of ATP, which lets me just want to make a correction from stuff that I

01:11:28 ◼   ► was saying last week, and plus, because it taught me something that I didn't know.

01:11:32 ◼   ► Um, so when we were talking about the gains in the speed of the A14 in the

01:11:38 ◼   ► iPad Air, these gains were over what it replaced in the iPad Air. I thought they

01:11:45 ◼   ► were saying, look how much faster the A14 is to the A13, but it wasn't that. It was

01:11:52 ◼   ► how much faster the A14 was to the A12, which is what was in the iPad Air before

01:11:57 ◼   ► it. So those 30%, 40%, you know, double speeds and all that kind of stuff is for

01:12:03 ◼   ► what it is in the iPad Air. Um, and whilst this is a super powerful processor, it

01:12:08 ◼   ► still needs to be benchmarked against the A12Z to see if it is in fact more

01:12:14 ◼   ► powerful than the current iPad Pro, which is something I know I've said, right?

01:12:19 ◼   ► That like the, the, the A14 is more powerful and we, and I don't know that's

01:12:23 ◼   ► the case.

01:12:24 ◼   ► Here's the thing though, and none of us know because Apple is talking about the

01:12:28 ◼   ► A14, but nobody's actually used it, is, and I can tell you this with some

01:12:33 ◼   ► certainty. Um, the A14 in single core is going to be faster than all the A12s.

01:12:40 ◼   ► Right.

01:12:41 ◼   ► Because it's a new, it's a new core and it's faster. The A12Z is multi-core.

01:12:48 ◼   ► It has more cores, right?

01:12:50 ◼   ► It's probably, yes, it's more cores. So if you're doing multi-core tests,

01:12:54 ◼   ► because it has more performance processor cores, it will probably be faster.

01:13:00 ◼   ► But I think we can say with some certainty that if you compare the A14 to

01:13:06 ◼   ► the A12X or Z, there will be places where one of them is faster and places

01:13:11 ◼   ► where the other one is faster. And that's, you know, that is a weird kind of

01:13:16 ◼   ► place we're in right now where the iPad Pro doesn't have the 14 architecture

01:13:23 ◼   ► that's coming out now. Now it will probably pretty soon because otherwise

01:13:26 ◼   ► they wouldn't have done what they did as we talked about last week.

01:13:29 ◼   ► But, uh, yeah, I, I feel pretty confident that the A14 is definitely going

01:13:34 ◼   ► to beat out all the A12 based stuff and, uh, and the A13 stuff in some ways.

01:13:40 ◼   ► It's just a, we don't know because nobody has got their hands on an A14 iPad.

01:13:44 ◼   ► And I think that's in part because Apple is saving, as my article goes into,

01:13:48 ◼   ► it's kind of saving some of the hype for the iPhone. Yeah, because like it is

01:13:53 ◼   ► this new processor, five nanometer, and they, they couldn't not talk about it

01:13:57 ◼   ► and they did talk about it, but I feel like they've saved some of the hype.

01:14:00 ◼   ► They only are comparing it to the previous iPad Air, not to the A13.

01:14:05 ◼   ► So you have to kind of extrapolate how much faster it is than the last chip

01:14:08 ◼   ► generation because Apple doesn't want to talk about it. They will talk about

01:14:11 ◼   ► that next time when they compare the new iPhones to the previous iPhones.

01:14:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I just, I got sucked in by the market and assumed it was faster than

01:14:21 ◼   ► anything, but was not paying attention to what they were actually saying.

01:14:25 ◼   ► Yeah, no, they, they have scrupulously avoided comparison. There is one

01:14:29 ◼   ► because the, some of the machine learning stuff basically didn't exist in the

01:14:35 ◼   ► A12. So they compared that to the A13, but otherwise they are scrupulously

01:14:40 ◼   ► avoiding talking about it. And, you know, as I say in the article, like I

01:14:45 ◼   ► get the argument that you want to compare like to like, and the iPad has

01:14:52 ◼   ► its own thermal characteristics and you know, it's gonna, it's gonna behave

01:14:56 ◼   ► in a certain way. And so you compare an iPad Air to an iPad Air and it would

01:15:00 ◼   ► be different on an iPhone. I get that. And yet at the same time, it kind of

01:15:04 ◼   ► feels like an excuse because really the A14 performance is what it is, whether

01:15:08 ◼   ► it's in an iPad or an iPhone, it's not that different. And I think it's an

01:15:13 ◼   ► excuse for them not to talk about it because they want to save that for the

01:15:17 ◼   ► iPhone because, because they're not happy about the fact that they had to

01:15:20 ◼   ► announce the A14 with an iPad Air. They want to make the big deal about their

01:15:24 ◼   ► five nanometer chip and the great new thing. And this is going to be the

01:15:27 ◼   ► generation that essentially this technology will probably power all the,

01:15:31 ◼   ► you know, iPhones and iPads and Macs, even if, no matter what they call it,

01:15:36 ◼   ► it's probably based on this generation of processor and Apple Silicon, right?

01:15:42 ◼   ► They wanted to make a big explosion about this with their biggest event of

01:15:45 ◼   ► the year, which is the iPhone. And it didn't work out. So they're saving their

01:15:49 ◼   ► powder a little bit, some of it, some of their powder for whenever they

01:15:53 ◼   ► announced the iPhone. And so, you know, you end up with this reluctant debut

01:15:58 ◼   ► that's like, "Yeah, it's the A14. Okay, we'll be back later with more."

01:16:03 ◼   ► And I also wanted to talk about, I want to touch on the blood oxygen sensor

01:16:09 ◼   ► again, because this was something that I was really banging the drum on this

01:16:14 ◼   ► last week of like, I don't know why this isn't, like, Apple, and again,

01:16:19 ◼   ► I'll say this again, I think Apple did a bad job of selling this to me.

01:16:22 ◼   ► And you linked to a Verge article on Six Colors, written by Nicole Wetzman,

01:16:28 ◼   ► and it says, give a quote, "The Apple Watch's blood oxygen sensor isn't a

01:16:32 ◼   ► medical device and won't be able to diagnose or monitor any medical conditions.

01:16:36 ◼   ► The company says the feature is simply there to help users understand their

01:16:41 ◼   ► fitness and wellness." And I've been seeing a lot of people use the phrase

01:16:45 ◼   ► "wellness" a lot over the last week. I've seen people talking about language

01:16:49 ◼   ► changes on Apple's website. I've also had many friends over the last seven

01:16:54 ◼   ► days attempt to tell me why the blood oxygen sensor is important. They all did

01:16:58 ◼   ► a better job than Apple, but everybody falls into the same trap, which is

01:17:02 ◼   ► explaining a lot of things that a sensor like this could potentially tell me,

01:17:07 ◼   ► but no definitive answers as to what it can do, or what Apple's can do, and

01:17:13 ◼   ► especially nowhere near as definitive as what the heart rate sensor can do for me.

01:17:18 ◼   ► And I think that's the thing here. The blood oxygen sensor seems like a nice

01:17:22 ◼   ► thing to have, but a sensor as important as the heart rate sensor,

01:17:27 ◼   ► it is not.

01:17:28 ◼   ► So I think Nicole Wetzman's story gets to the heart of why that presentation

01:17:35 ◼   ► seems so weird, which is Apple can't market this for medical things.

01:17:40 ◼   ► It can't. It has no authorization to market this as a medical sensor.

01:17:45 ◼   ► So it can't talk about it in that form. And you saw what they did, which is

01:17:51 ◼   ► sort of say, "Oh, we've learned a lot about blood oxygen sensors from

01:17:56 ◼   ► COVID-19." And then they move on, and then they say, "Oh, we have a blood

01:18:02 ◼   ► oxygen sensor. It's great for runners."

01:18:05 ◼   ► And then it's like, "We're doing a bunch of surveys with these people for

01:18:09 ◼   ► these reasons."

01:18:10 ◼   ► "Yeah, we're going to do some medical studies."

01:18:12 ◼   ► Oh, and by the way, they were all very... Basically, and I think what this

01:18:19 ◼   ► all boils down to is because of these reasons, it was not a cohesive

01:18:24 ◼   ► presentation for this feature, which is very un-Apple.

01:18:27 ◼   ► And I think that was why I struggled for it to attach.

01:18:31 ◼   ► And it's because their lawyers won't let them do that, because it's not

01:18:34 ◼   ► legal for them to make those claims. I'm sure what they want is to say,

01:18:39 ◼   ► "In the age of COVID, it's really great that we now have blood oxygen

01:18:42 ◼   ► sensing on the Apple Watch, because what we found in the early days of

01:18:45 ◼   ► COVID is that a lot of people had very low blood oxygens and didn't

01:18:48 ◼   ► realize it, and they got to the hospital and they were really, really sick,

01:18:51 ◼   ► and a lot of them died because they didn't realize how sick they were.

01:18:55 ◼   ► And if they had had the Apple Watch 6, maybe they wouldn't have died

01:18:59 ◼   ► because they would have gotten a warning about their blood oxygen.

01:19:02 ◼   ► That's what they want to say. And they can't, because one, they're legally

01:19:07 ◼   ► prevented from saying it, and two, because it's unclear if the Apple Watch

01:19:13 ◼   ► really would work in that way because it hasn't been scientifically tested.

01:19:18 ◼   ► So they can't say that. So instead it's like, "Oxygen, right? Right?"

01:19:22 ◼   ► Link?

01:19:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've also had some people say to me that a sensor like this one,

01:19:28 ◼   ► it would be too light for you. At the time that it would alert you to how

01:19:34 ◼   ► bad it could potentially be.

01:19:36 ◼   ► - Actually, if it works like a lot of these things work, based on the early

01:19:40 ◼   ► days of COVID, it would actually get you to the hospital sooner. Yes, it would,

01:19:46 ◼   ► because all these stories are about people who seemed fine, they felt fine,

01:19:52 ◼   ► and they felt a little sick, and they came in and it turned out their blood

01:19:55 ◼   ► oxygen was ridiculously low, where they were not getting enough oxygen,

01:20:00 ◼   ► but they didn't feel it. And the theory is that you monitor your blood oxygen

01:20:05 ◼   ► for COVID because when it starts to fall down, you have a warning to go

01:20:12 ◼   ► get help sooner. That's the theory. Again, the problem is that that's a

01:20:18 ◼   ► narrative, and what is the science? And Apple doesn't have that. Now, I'm sure

01:20:25 ◼   ► Apple wants that and wants to get that, but it doesn't have that now, so it

01:20:29 ◼   ► can't market it this way. My guess is that they put this in to the Apple Watch,

01:20:34 ◼   ► very much thinking of a medical device approval, and it may be that COVID has

01:20:38 ◼   ► actually thrown the medical device approval stuff completely out of whack,

01:20:42 ◼   ► because presumably the sensor was in planning long before COVID, right? But

01:20:46 ◼   ► this has added this whole layer of complexity to this issue. And so what I'm

01:20:51 ◼   ► saying is I know why Apple didn't sell it properly. I understand that. I also

01:20:56 ◼   ► kind of understand why that's a good thing, because I'm not sure they've got

01:21:01 ◼   ► the backing to make that kind of claim, but it ends up being the sensor that's

01:21:06 ◼   ► kind of a medical sensor, except not really. And you're right. What does that

01:21:10 ◼   ► mean? Why do I care? If I'm not an elite runner, why do I care about this

01:21:14 ◼   ► oxygen sensor? And the answer is, hmm, we can't really say.

01:21:18 ◼   ► Because it ends up kind of being the point like, all right, they've got a

01:21:21 ◼   ► better altimeter in there as well, right? Well, I don't care about that,

01:21:24 ◼   ► because I'm not going on at high elevation. So this is like the Watch Series 6

01:21:30 ◼   ► is not really interesting to me, except the only thing that -- if I wore the

01:21:35 ◼   ► Apple Watch every day, the thing that would make me consider buying it is the

01:21:40 ◼   ► brighter always-on screen. But because I don't wear it every day, that's not

01:21:45 ◼   ► enough for me.

01:21:46 ◼   ► Yeah, well, and that's why the colors came in here too, is they're pitching in

01:21:50 ◼   ► a whole bunch of different features, because this is a pretty incremental

01:21:53 ◼   ► update. So it's like, you know, it does this and this and this and this, huh?

01:21:56 ◼   ► And some people will get that, but the truth is that most of the people who are

01:21:59 ◼   ► going to buy the Series 6 anyway aren't upgrading from the 5. They're upgrading

01:22:02 ◼   ► from a lot beyond, you know, way back.

01:22:04 ◼   ► Yeah, if you are like a 4 or a 3 or a 0 or whatever, like this one is great,

01:22:11 ◼   ► right? Like it's fantastic, because I think the Series 5 is great. Like it does

01:22:15 ◼   ► a great job at what it does, and so the 6 is better than that in certain ways.

01:22:21 ◼   ► But if you're coming from something before the 5, you'll be very happy with

01:22:24 ◼   ► this update. But if you're coming from something before the 5, the SE might be

01:22:27 ◼   ► enough for you anyway.

01:22:28 ◼   ► Yep.

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01:24:22 ◼   ► expressvpn.com/upgrade to learn more. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their

01:24:29 ◼   ► support of this show and Relay FM. It is time for some #AskUpgrade questions

01:24:35 ◼   ► to round out today's episode. And the first question this week comes from

01:24:39 ◼   ► Ryan, and Ryan wants to know, "So now that we have time to think about it,

01:24:43 ◼   ► and lust after it, do we think that the iPad Air's Touch ID sensor will make

01:24:48 ◼   ► its way to the iPhone 12?" I'm really going back and forth on this one a lot,

01:24:54 ◼   ► Jason, honestly. Because I want it for sure. And you can say, "Oh, these things

01:25:04 ◼   ► take a lot of time. It might not have been in their plan." We don't know it

01:25:09 ◼   ► wasn't in the plan, right? Because people saying that they want Touch ID back

01:25:15 ◼   ► in the age of COVID and stuff like that. And yeah, that's true. But the thing is,

01:25:19 ◼   ► people wanted Touch ID back before we in the West were wearing face masks,

01:25:25 ◼   ► because in Asia, they've been wearing face masks a lot. And we spoke about

01:25:30 ◼   ► on this show, because I remember it, because I remember doing some prep

01:25:34 ◼   ► for a show after the iPhone 10 came out. And we were talking about the fact

01:25:38 ◼   ► that I read a report somewhere about face masks being an issue. And the reason

01:25:43 ◼   ► I remember this is because of how stupid I felt. Because I was like, "Wait, what?

01:25:47 ◼   ► Face masks? I was thinking about face masks that you put on for exfoliating?"

01:25:53 ◼   ► Right? Because that's what that phrase meant to me at the time. And I felt like

01:25:58 ◼   ► an idiot when I then had the realisation, "No, they mean face masks you wear

01:26:02 ◼   ► when you're sick." Right? Which is a thing that I know people have been doing

01:26:06 ◼   ► forever in Asia, or for a long time, because of the original SARS, which is,

01:26:10 ◼   ► by the way, I will continue to wear face masks here forever now. It's just a part

01:26:16 ◼   ► of my life, right? Like, this is a thing that I will continue to want to do.

01:26:20 ◼   ► So this is a thing that Apple has been aware of for a while. It is not impossible

01:26:25 ◼   ► that they had always planned for this to be in the iPhone 12. It is also not impossible

01:26:30 ◼   ► that they made this decision back in February to add it. These phones will be

01:26:34 ◼   ► eight months later than that. I know that people say this stuff takes a long time.

01:26:38 ◼   ► I know it takes a long time, but I'm sure a company like Apple could move

01:26:43 ◼   ► heaven and earth with their manufacturing partners to add a feature. So what I'm

01:26:48 ◼   ► saying is, "Difficult? Yes. Impossible? No." Which is why I am not sure what I think

01:26:53 ◼   ► about this happening.

01:26:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't have any inside knowledge about Apple's hardware approach.

01:27:02 ◼   ► Everything that we've heard and read suggests that every iPhone and every other

01:27:09 ◼   ► Apple product is really designed multiple years in advance in that pipeline that

01:27:15 ◼   ► Tim Cook always talks about. It's a long pipeline. It's like a years-long pipeline.

01:27:21 ◼   ► Okay, I will accept that. Of course it is. They are planning stuff out way in

01:27:26 ◼   ► advance. I get it. You can't just slap a bunch of stuff together and say, "Well,

01:27:30 ◼   ► here's the iPhone," right? You can't. So you've got to plan. I will accept that,

01:27:36 ◼   ► but I don't know if I accept the idea that Apple—this is one of those things of

01:27:43 ◼   ► like, "Oh, Apple just can't do it," because we hear that a lot. Like, people who

01:27:48 ◼   ► are convinced that everything Apple does is right but that everything Apple

01:27:51 ◼   ► doesn't do is because they just couldn't do it. Like, they are the most powerful

01:27:56 ◼   ► and rich company on the face of the earth, and this is their most important product.

01:28:04 ◼   ► Do you think that given that they have a touch ID sensor that works in a power

01:28:09 ◼   ► button for the iPad, which means that already I'm starting to think, "Maybe

01:28:18 ◼   ► they didn't just engineer that for the iPad," right? Like, maybe they already are

01:28:22 ◼   ► thinking about the iPhone as a potential for that. And if they didn't put it in

01:28:27 ◼   ► the iPhone 12 and then COVID happens, and they're like, "Oh, wow, the whole world is

01:28:33 ◼   ► wearing masks now," are they—surely, a company as resourceful as Apple, who

01:28:42 ◼   ► knows how important the iPhone is to their business, would say at the very

01:28:48 ◼   ► least, "Could we do this?" Right? Could we at the last minute—I mean, we've

01:28:53 ◼   ► definitely seen them swap things out at the last minute based on reports, right,

01:28:56 ◼   ► where it's like, "Well, this thing was in all the DVT versions of the phone, and it

01:29:00 ◼   ► isn't there," and you can see on the logic board where it was, but it wasn't in

01:29:03 ◼   ► final production. You know, and I know it's easier to remove than to add, but,

01:29:07 ◼   ► like, is it not possible that in March or April, somebody at Apple said, "Could we

01:29:12 ◼   ► use that sensor, that touch ID sensor we're working on? Could we swap that in to

01:29:16 ◼   ► some of these iPhone 12 models?" And maybe the answer was no, right? Maybe the

01:29:20 ◼   ► answer is no, it's just too far along, or the placement, it has to have this stuff

01:29:24 ◼   ► behind it, and that's already locked down in terms of the design. But I choose to

01:29:30 ◼   ► believe that Apple is more flexible and has more capability and isn't just one

01:29:38 ◼   ► of these, "Well, what you gonna do? Check back in two years," kind of companies. And

01:29:43 ◼   ► I would say that, honestly, as an operations guy, if Tim Cook looks at this

01:29:47 ◼   ► situation and says, "How can we not react for a year and a half to something that

01:29:52 ◼   ► happens? How can we not react faster than that?" I would consider that a problem of

01:29:58 ◼   ► my design and production system, that you can't change on the fly in case

01:30:04 ◼   ► something, like, huge like COVID happens. So to bring it back to Ryan's question,

01:30:11 ◼   ► "Do I think that the touch ID sensor will be on the iPhone 12?" I don't know. Flip a

01:30:15 ◼   ► coin. I will say, "I'll be disappointed if it's not," because it should be. It should

01:30:21 ◼   ► be. And they've had, I know not years of warning, but they've had a long time

01:30:27 ◼   ► since the world changed to make this change. And if they fail to do it, I don't

01:30:36 ◼   ► think you shrug your shoulders and go, "Well, what you gonna do? Everything's

01:30:39 ◼   ► going to be fine." I think if you're inside Apple, you're like, "We shouldn't

01:30:43 ◼   ► be able to get caught flat-footed like this again, right? Like, wrong-footed. We

01:30:47 ◼   ► should not be put in this situation again." Because, I mean, face ID is a liability

01:30:55 ◼   ► in an era where people are wearing masks. So if the iPhone 12 comes out and it has

01:31:02 ◼   ► only face ID, it's a failure. It's a failure on Apple's part. And they've had

01:31:07 ◼   ► to figure it out. So I don't know if they'll do it, but they should have done

01:31:12 ◼   ► it back in April. They should have done it.

01:31:15 ◼   ► I agree. If it hasn't happened, I will understand that they, for whatever reason,

01:31:24 ◼   ► didn't do it. But I will still say that it is a failure, that it didn't happen.

01:31:28 ◼   ► Because I get it, right? I can understand how it can be difficult to do it. Or I

01:31:35 ◼   ► can understand that maybe they couldn't fit it in, right? Like you said, it just

01:31:40 ◼   ► wouldn't fit. And what they couldn't do was redesign the entire phone. But I will

01:31:44 ◼   ► still be disappointed about it. And I will still say that I would consider it a

01:31:49 ◼   ► failure. Because I want it to be in there. I want it to be in there. And it would be

01:31:53 ◼   ► great if it is. They have the technology. The technology exists. It's worse, right?

01:31:59 ◼   ► If the iPad Air didn't have that feature, I would be more willing to accept it. But

01:32:06 ◼   ► Apple are now shipping a product before the iPhone 12 that includes this

01:32:10 ◼   ► technology. So I now want the technology in my phone.

01:32:14 ◼   ► Yep.

01:32:15 ◼   ► Kibi asks, "If you could add one new feature to the Apple Watch, what would it

01:32:22 ◼   ► be?" This is an easy one for me, Jason. I would like to see an Apple Watch with a

01:32:26 ◼   ► round face. I just want to see what it would look like. I want to see what they

01:32:29 ◼   ► would do. I think it would look nicer, personally, for my own tastes. So I would

01:32:32 ◼   ► like a round face Apple Watch.

01:32:34 ◼   ► I think we're reaching the time where that's going to be a thing that Apple

01:32:36 ◼   ► needs to do is provide at least a variation, a physical variation on the

01:32:40 ◼   ► Apple Watch. Like it's been a while. It's been six years.

01:32:43 ◼   ► It's had one design, right? Like their other products don't do this. They have,

01:32:47 ◼   ► you know, I know that they have different sizes, but like whatever. But like

01:32:51 ◼   ► there's only been one design, really. And they've made some tweaks to it. But

01:32:55 ◼   ► you know, like if you were imagining what's a, what is an iPhone 10-like

01:32:59 ◼   ► redesign for the Apple Watch, it is a new physical shape. That's what we're

01:33:03 ◼   ► talking here.

01:33:05 ◼   ► My new feature is going to be an OS feature. So it doesn't have to be in the

01:33:09 ◼   ► hardware. Although if the hardware can add some, you know, more machine

01:33:12 ◼   ► learning sub-processing, that would be great too, which is use machine learning

01:33:16 ◼   ► to properly detect when I stand up.

01:33:19 ◼   ► Okay. Right. Because I never, I never get credit for standing up.

01:33:25 ◼   ► Except sometimes I get credit when I'm not standing up for standing up.

01:33:29 ◼   ► But I feel like whatever model they're using to determine based on their

01:33:34 ◼   ► sensors, what I'm doing, they need to retrain their model to be better because

01:33:39 ◼   ► it doesn't, it's great that it can detect hand washing, but it can't detect me

01:33:42 ◼   ► standing up and cooking for an hour in the kitchen.

01:33:46 ◼   ► That's ridiculous. So that's, that's going to be my, my thing is, is please

01:33:52 ◼   ► do a better job of sensing my emotions and giving me credit for it.

01:33:56 ◼   ► I actually turned in, in watchOS 7, you can reduce your goals and increase them,

01:34:01 ◼   ► but let's focus on the important part, which is you can reduce them.

01:34:04 ◼   ► And I've reduced my stand goal because it wants me to stand 12 hours a day,

01:34:09 ◼   ► and I don't get credit for a bunch of times that I stand. So I,

01:34:12 ◼   ► I've reduced my stand goal to eight hours cause I'm tired of it.

01:34:16 ◼   ► I never meet my stand goal and it's not because I'm not standing. So,

01:34:21 ◼   ► and I've done the thing where I stand and I wave my arms around and I move

01:34:25 ◼   ► around and all of that. And it like, I just, so that's what I want is I know it's hard.

01:34:29 ◼   ► You've got a limited set of sensors in there.

01:34:31 ◼   ► It has to guess what the humans are doing.

01:34:33 ◼   ► Maybe you can use some of that fancy machine learning to retrain this thing to figure out

01:34:38 ◼   ► better what is going on on the outside. Elray has asked something that I've had

01:34:43 ◼   ► many people ask over the last week.

01:34:45 ◼   ► Has anything been said about how the Apple One Bundle will work if you have

01:34:49 ◼   ► separate iTunes and iCloud accounts? So this is,

01:34:52 ◼   ► there are some people that have an iCloud account and then they have an iTunes or

01:34:55 ◼   ► an App Store account that they use for purchases and they're on different

01:34:59 ◼   ► Apple, they're on different email addresses.

01:35:01 ◼   ► So like you have your Apple ID address and then your purchases address.

01:35:05 ◼   ► And how is this going to work for the Apple One Bundle?

01:35:08 ◼   ► Now whilst I do not have details for you here, Chris Espinoza,

01:35:12 ◼   ► who was employee number eight at Apple.

01:35:15 ◼   ► Seven, eight, something like that, yeah.

01:35:17 ◼   ► Chris' bio on Twitter is eight. So I'm assuming that's what that means.

01:35:21 ◼   ► He replied to a tweet from Christina Warren and says, and I quote,

01:35:28 ◼   ► "It manages that. I just double checked."

01:35:30 ◼   ► Now we're going to have to see what the details are,

01:35:33 ◼   ► but there's not nothing, which is what I thought.

01:35:36 ◼   ► I thought it was going to kind of just be like,

01:35:38 ◼   ► "Ah, you're on your own here, merge." Right?

01:35:41 ◼   ► But it seems like there's going to be some kind of way for Apple One,

01:35:44 ◼   ► the Bundle, to work out how this is all going to work together.

01:35:48 ◼   ► I do kind of feel like if you're doing this,

01:35:51 ◼   ► it might be time to try and find some way to merge it.

01:35:54 ◼   ► I don't know how you do it, but I can't imagine that this functionality

01:35:59 ◼   ► is going to continue to give you issues into the future, I'm sure.

01:36:04 ◼   ► It's like I always worry. I have an @mac.com email address, right?

01:36:09 ◼   ► Which was @mac became mobile, me became iCloud,

01:36:14 ◼   ► and I am always concerned that whatever they're doing

01:36:19 ◼   ► to make sure I still get my email is going to break one day.

01:36:22 ◼   ► But, you know.

01:36:24 ◼   ► And Noah asks, "We're going to finish and start today

01:36:27 ◼   ► with things that I'm sure are going to be contentious amongst our listeners."

01:36:31 ◼   ► So I picked this one particularly.

01:36:33 ◼   ► Noah asks, "What fingers do you use to press Command + Space on your keyboard?

01:36:37 ◼   ► I had a contentious discussion with some co-workers about the 'correct' way.

01:36:42 ◼   ► Personally, I use my right thumb and left thumb for Command and Space, respectively.

01:36:48 ◼   ► Jason, what do you do?"

01:36:50 ◼   ► Let's start with you. I want to know what you do.

01:36:53 ◼   ► So I had to monitor myself today, right, to make sure how I was actually doing this.

01:36:59 ◼   ► Of course.

01:37:00 ◼   ► I kind of have two options here.

01:37:02 ◼   ► Sometimes I use my left ring finger for Command and left pointer for Space.

01:37:09 ◼   ► That is my typical one.

01:37:11 ◼   ► So I don't know why, but the middle finger just gets completely left out of this.

01:37:15 ◼   ► So I do left Command with my left ring finger

01:37:20 ◼   ► and then the Space with my left pointer.

01:37:23 ◼   ► Or sometimes I use both pointer fingers.

01:37:26 ◼   ► So pointer on always left Command on my left hand

01:37:30 ◼   ► and then my right pointer finger on the Space bar.

01:37:34 ◼   ► Does that make sense?

01:37:36 ◼   ► Wow. So you use your spacing with your fingers.

01:37:42 ◼   ► Yeah, it turns out.

01:37:44 ◼   ► But not when I type.

01:37:46 ◼   ► Just when I do this.

01:37:48 ◼   ► When I type, I use my thumbs to use Space.

01:37:51 ◼   ► But when I use this shortcut, these are the two ways that I do it.

01:37:54 ◼   ► It is always left pointer finger on left Command.

01:37:58 ◼   ► No, wait, it's not, is it?

01:38:00 ◼   ► I'm always using left Command.

01:38:02 ◼   ► Sometimes it's with my left ring finger, sometimes with my left pointer finger,

01:38:06 ◼   ► and then it's either the left pointer on Space or right pointer on Space.

01:38:12 ◼   ► Okay, so when you're issuing, not typing, but issuing a Command Space,

01:38:15 ◼   ► you're using your left hand exclusively and putting one of your fingers

01:38:19 ◼   ► on the Command key on the left Command key

01:38:21 ◼   ► and one of your fingers on the Space bar.

01:38:24 ◼   ► Fascinating.

01:38:25 ◼   ► Now, I'll just say again to Noah, correct in quotes is good.

01:38:31 ◼   ► That's, again, the reason we do have keys the way they are

01:38:36 ◼   ► is that everybody can choose their own way to press the keys.

01:38:39 ◼   ► And there's no right way or wrong way.

01:38:42 ◼   ► But that said, I do it exactly the same way Noah does,

01:38:45 ◼   ► left thumb and right thumb.

01:38:49 ◼   ► All thumbs.

01:38:50 ◼   ► All thumbs.

01:38:52 ◼   ► All the time.

01:38:54 ◼   ► So you use left thumb for Command and right Space,

01:38:59 ◼   ► right thumb for Space.

01:39:01 ◼   ► Yep.

01:39:02 ◼   ► You never do right on the Command?

01:39:05 ◼   ► No.

01:39:06 ◼   ► No, I never use the right Command key ever, ever, ever.

01:39:09 ◼   ► And I don't know what keyboard broke me of using modifier keys

01:39:12 ◼   ► on the right side of the Space bar,

01:39:14 ◼   ► but I never use the modifier keys on the right side of the Space bar.

01:39:17 ◼   ► Not even for like Command P to print,

01:39:19 ◼   ► which you could normally do with one hand.

01:39:21 ◼   ► I don't.

01:39:22 ◼   ► My left thumb does the Command key and one of my right fingers does the P.

01:39:26 ◼   ► I use the right Command if I'm doing like Command Return or something.

01:39:31 ◼   ► I use the right Command.

01:39:33 ◼   ► Yep.

01:39:34 ◼   ► Never.

01:39:35 ◼   ► Never.

01:39:36 ◼   ► So you could just reprogram that key for something else, huh?

01:39:39 ◼   ► Absolutely.

01:39:40 ◼   ► Absolutely could.

01:39:42 ◼   ► Interesting.

01:39:43 ◼   ► If you would like to send in -- I love these questions, by the way.

01:39:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:39:47 ◼   ► So if you have stuff like this, I always want it.

01:39:49 ◼   ► So you can send in questions, #AskUpgrade on Twitter,

01:39:54 ◼   ► or if you're in the Relay FM members Discord,

01:39:57 ◼   ► you can use ?AskUpgrade for that to join the Relay FM members Discord

01:40:03 ◼   ► and get access to Upgrade Plus, which is a longer version of the show with no ads.

01:40:08 ◼   ► Go to getupgradeplus.com, and thank you to everybody that is an Upgrade Plus subscriber.

01:40:14 ◼   ► Thank you so much to our sponsors this week.

01:40:17 ◼   ► That is the fine folk over at Express, VPN, Smile,

01:40:21 ◼   ► and of course our friends at Hover as well.

01:40:24 ◼   ► If you want to find Jason's work, you can go to sixcolors.com and @jasonel on Twitter.

01:40:29 ◼   ► Jason hosts many shows here at Relay FM, as well as The Incomparable as well.

01:40:34 ◼   ► I am iMyke, I am YKE, and you can find my shows here at Relay FM as well.

01:40:40 ◼   ► And again, if you want to donate to St. Jude, go to stjude.org/relay.

01:40:45 ◼   ► We're continuing to raise money for St. Jude up until the end of September,

01:40:49 ◼   ► so you've got just over a week left to go on that.

01:40:53 ◼   ► Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade,

01:40:55 ◼   ► and we'll be back next time.

01:40:56 ◼   ► Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow.

01:40:59 ◼   ► Goodbye, everybody.

01:41:00 ◼   ► [Music]

01:41:06 ◼   ► [Music]