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145: Wandered into the Unicorn Grove

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 145. Today's show is brought to you by

00:00:14   Encapsula, Blue Apron and Mail Route. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined back

00:00:18   over the Skype waves by Mr Jason Snell.

00:00:22   Present.

00:00:23   Hi Mr Jason Snell.

00:00:26   Hi.

00:00:27   Jason, Kevin would like to know, did you drive to San Jose in your Nissan Leaf?

00:00:34   I did not.

00:00:35   I took a gasoline car, in fact I took the minivan to San Jose, because it's got all

00:00:42   the range in the world.

00:00:43   And San Jose was, again, I kind of wanted to drive the Leaf to San Jose just for the

00:00:48   challenge of it.

00:00:50   And one of these days I'm going to do it where I'm going to drive that car somewhere that

00:00:54   that I don't need to go just to see how far I can drive it.

00:00:57   But I decided there was too much else going on.

00:01:01   And then I was also giving Dan Morin a ride down

00:01:04   and I didn't wanna like, you know,

00:01:05   subject him to my insanity of the, you know,

00:01:09   eco mode of the Leaf to see if I could max out the range

00:01:12   and things like that.

00:01:13   So I just, I left that for my wife to commute in

00:01:16   and we took the gas car down.

00:01:18   - Pulling these on.

00:01:20   - That's fine.

00:01:22   it's, you know, it specializes on short trips.

00:01:26   - Okay, but Kevin did want to know, then,

00:01:28   what is the furthest you have driven it,

00:01:30   if not to San Jose?

00:01:31   - I looked it up.

00:01:32   I think the furthest that we've driven the car

00:01:35   is the 42 miles that I drove it from the dealership

00:01:39   in Santa Rosa to my house.

00:01:42   But I have driven it twice to Petaluma,

00:01:45   which is probably 35 miles away,

00:01:50   to Twit, which I was the guest host on Twit yesterday,

00:01:55   'cause Leo Laporte is frolicking in the Galapagos

00:01:59   with turtles and things.

00:02:01   And there is a charger, a level two charger

00:02:06   across the street from the Twit offices in this office park.

00:02:09   So I drove up there, plugged in,

00:02:12   walked across the street to Twit,

00:02:13   and then plugged back, you know, unplugged,

00:02:16   and drove home with mileage to spare.

00:02:19   So I've done that a couple of times now

00:02:20   and that totally works.

00:02:21   'Cause with these electric cars,

00:02:22   there's sort of two, there's two different ranges.

00:02:25   There's the range of what you can just drive

00:02:27   all the way out there and all the way back home

00:02:29   without plugging in.

00:02:30   And then there's the range where you drive somewhere,

00:02:32   find a charging station, plug in,

00:02:34   do what you're doing out there

00:02:35   and then are able to drive home.

00:02:37   And obviously that's a longer range.

00:02:39   If I went to San Jose, that's what it would have been.

00:02:41   - There you go.

00:02:43   Thank you, Kevin, for your #SNELtalk question.

00:02:46   If you have a question you would like to open

00:02:47   an episode of Upgrade, tweet it with the hashtag #snelltalk, and it will go into a spreadsheet

00:02:52   for my choosing.

00:02:53   Casey List was very upset with me, because I hadn't asked a Snell Talk question that

00:02:58   he had, but I didn't think that it was interesting enough, so it will never get asked. So I will

00:03:03   invite Casey to try again. He was talking about some kind of university thing. It really

00:03:09   wasn't a very interesting question.

00:03:11   The short version, I'm going to answer Casey's question, which is...

00:03:14   Oh, I forgot you were there. Otherwise, I wouldn't have brought it up.

00:03:17   am I, why am I, I think I answered it to him, but just for everybody, why am I a,

00:03:21   why do I have loyalty to the University of California at Berkeley? And the answer

00:03:25   is my dad went to the University of California at Berkeley. I went to

00:03:29   football games there from when I was a little kid. We still have the football

00:03:32   season tickets that used to be my parents. My wife and I now have those, and

00:03:36   I did go to graduate school there too. So it is a, it is a family thing from when I

00:03:41   was a kid, and that's why I'm a Cal fan, despite that it's like being the Cubs, a

00:03:46   a Cubs fan before they won the World Series. It's a, it's not a team to be a fan of, and

00:03:51   I am. And that's just how it is. That's part of the, part of life, part of a personality.

00:03:56   Casey is a Virginia Tech fan, so.

00:03:58   Because, I never trust Casey's questions, because I feel like he's trying to trick me

00:04:03   into goading you into something like that. You know, like, why are you a Cal fan, like,

00:04:07   with the implication of because Cal sucks, right? So I never, you know, I can't trust

00:04:12   him.

00:04:13   Well, he's not wrong.

00:04:15   [laughter]

00:04:17   Yeah, it's also the Cal logo is a script Cal, and I wear Cal apparel from time to time.

00:04:24   And I remember I was on the East Coast, I was visiting Boston, and I was having dinner with Rich Siegel, the author of BB Edit,

00:04:30   and he looked at my shirt, my Cal shirt, and said, "Who is Cal, and why did you steal his shirt?"

00:04:35   Which I thought was funny. Like, it's a little monogrammed, like, some guy named Cal.

00:04:39   Right, well this was part of the reason I never asked the question in the first place,

00:04:42   because I couldn't understand it. He just says, "Why does Jason like Cal?" I'm like,

00:04:47   "Who's Cal?" So I didn't ask the question.

00:04:49   Yeah, who is he and why is he so magnetic? Yeah. Anyway, so sometime in the fall,

00:04:54   he'll be in the Bay Area and I will subject you to American college football and you will see the

00:05:00   spectacle and then you will understand. Or you won't understand, I don't know. I took Anjé Tomich

00:05:04   to a college football game when he was out here. And I got to expose all of, all of,

00:05:11   essentially all of Slovenia's tech journalism to college football in America.

00:05:16   It's a service you provide. It is an occasional service I provide. And

00:05:21   that is Snell Talk. The lasers are way too soon this week. So we're

00:05:27   back from WWDC. We're a week removed from the keynote. And I just wanted to get a sense

00:05:32   from you, Jason, kind of what your feeling about San Jose WWDC was like, like what you

00:05:39   thought San Jose was like as a host of the conference.

00:05:43   I thought it was great. I really liked the vibe of it. I thought the... I mean, it's

00:05:51   different, so it takes some getting used to. But let's see, like, getting there wasn't

00:05:56   a problem. There was parking. One day I actually parked on the street. I mean, there was a

00:06:02   parking. There were lots of different venues, but it was all walkable. At one point, I was

00:06:10   with Dan Morin and David Sparks, and we were looking for someplace to have dinner. And

00:06:14   we found, you know, we were just sort of wandering, and we ended up walking for quite a ways.

00:06:18   But I looked on a map, and it looked like it was a million miles away to where we walked.

00:06:24   But it wasn't, because the scale of downtown San Jose is not particularly huge. Like, it's

00:06:31   It's all walkable. There's lots of restaurants. It is kind of one of those places that feels

00:06:35   like it's geared more for people during the day than it is in the evening. But the fact

00:06:41   was there were so many evening events that it was pretty lively, I think even in the

00:06:45   evening, and you just keep running into people. Like blocks away from the convention center,

00:06:49   you would see people you knew. So it was like, it really was like what we thought it might

00:06:52   be where you kind of took over the downtown for the week. And that felt good. And San

00:06:59   San Francisco never really felt like that. So, um, and personally for me, even though

00:07:03   it's inconvenient to drive all that way, um, it was much more kind of pleasant to be there

00:07:09   and to hang around there than it was in San Francisco where, you know, I don't know, it's

00:07:13   just so dense and so much else going on and kind of hard to get from place to place and

00:07:17   everything is packed and that was my take on it. What was your take?

00:07:21   I loved it. I hope they never go back to San Francisco. I hate downtown San Francisco.

00:07:27   The area around Moscone that we have been at for the last 4 or 5 years that I've been

00:07:33   going there, I've just come to really not enjoy it.

00:07:37   It's just not a very nice area.

00:07:38   There are very nice parts of San Francisco, the Moscone Center is not one of them.

00:07:45   The area around there is just not, it doesn't give me anything, I don't really enjoy it.

00:07:50   San Jose does have less food options and stuff like that, as you said, less bar options and

00:07:54   stuff but I got by Vine, everything I needed was there. Plus it was really nice and the

00:07:59   weather was fantastic, I could walk around in t-shirts and shorts every day. It was just

00:08:05   lovely, it was really really nice. It had more personality to it in its own little way

00:08:10   and as you say it felt much nicer as an attendee or as somebody coming into town for that time

00:08:16   because it just felt like WWDC had just taken over, like the Apple community just descended

00:08:23   upon the town because it feels like that area is not really used for very much other than

00:08:28   like people attending the convention center because there were like a couple of hotels

00:08:33   that were all clustered together and then a bunch of food places so it really felt like

00:08:38   the it really just felt like everything was ours and it was great I loved it and also

00:08:46   I have a voice which is great that is the benefit of there not being so many bars and

00:08:51   and stuff open at night meant that people were either hanging out in the hotel or like

00:08:56   what I did at view nights which is having a bunch of people in our hotel room and just

00:08:59   like we had like a living area sitting area in our hotel room. You could have like eight

00:09:03   or nine people in there and it was totally fine. So that was just a thing that I did

00:09:06   a couple of occasions as well. And that was really lovely because I got to spend all the

00:09:11   time with the people I wanted to spend time with and also keep my voice. It was great.

00:09:16   And there were more like meetups and stuff to go to this year so I could see a bunch

00:09:19   of people. It was great. I really, really, really loved it. And I hope that it is there

00:09:25   for the foreseeable future.

00:09:27   Yeah, and there were places like, talk about, I mean, there is definitely a WWDC bar culture

00:09:33   that I'm not really a part of, but I also found like, there are a lot of places like,

00:09:38   one night we hung out in the Fairmont Hotel lobby, basically, and there's a bar there,

00:09:43   and people were having drinks if they wanted to, but it was a large space with comfortable

00:09:49   seating and things like that. So it's different, but it is geared, that area has built up to

00:09:56   handle conventions that can fit in the convention center. It is made for that. And so it's got

00:10:02   enough to handle all of that. And yeah, it doesn't have the feel of like, wow, we're

00:10:09   in San Francisco, which I would argue feels a little bit like, wow, we're in Chicago or

00:10:13   while we're in New York where there's a real sense of place. In San Jose, it feels like we're in

00:10:20   a city that is a middle-sized city. It's not a super dense city. And so there's not that sense

00:10:29   of like, I can't believe we're in San Jose, right? But it doesn't matter. Who cares? It was a

00:10:36   pleasant place to do it. And I think that's more important. Ironically, is this irony? Okay,

00:10:43   I'm not gonna say ironically I withdraw my comment of irony. Is this like Alanis Morissette irony?

00:10:47   It could be. It did rain on Thursday

00:10:51   On the wedding day. In June in San Francisco, which I'm sure somebody was getting married and it was bad for them. Don't you think?

00:10:57   but

00:10:59   I think Steve Jobs moved

00:11:02   WWDC to San Francisco because he wanted he wanted Apple to appear more big time at a time when Apple wasn't being taken as

00:11:10   seriously as he wanted it to be, and he wanted it to be like, "No, we're not minor league.

00:11:14   We're going to take over San Francisco."

00:11:16   I think it helped, and I think it especially helped with all the iPhone stuff as well,

00:11:19   right?

00:11:20   And that's why they did all those events up there. They moved to WWDC up there. They did

00:11:23   the events in Moscone. They did the events in Yerba Buena. Then they did the last couple

00:11:28   of keynotes at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. But I think Apple in its current status doesn't

00:11:32   need to do that, right? Apple can go to San Jose, and it's going to take it over, and

00:11:36   people will still come because it's Apple and now it's more like it's at

00:11:39   their home court basically because it's a lot closer to go to San Jose than it

00:11:43   is to San Francisco. So now all their press events are gonna be on campus as

00:11:46   well right like they're just like we don't need this anymore. I would assume

00:11:50   that all the press events are gonna be in that new Steve Jobs theater so yeah

00:11:54   it's a I thought it was great I thought was successful I I hope they will

00:11:58   continue as far as I've not heard anything to dissuade me from the belief

00:12:01   that future WWDCs will be in San Jose. Sometimes people ask, "Well, if they have it in San

00:12:07   Jose, would they have it somewhere else?" The thing is, though, that WWDC Apple employees

00:12:11   really participate in it. They're all over that event, and so they're not going to do

00:12:15   a road show, I think. San Jose is close to the campus. It's the right place for them

00:12:19   to do it.

00:12:20   The movement to San Jose doesn't mean that it's about to go on tour. If they did it in

00:12:26   New York this year, you could be like, "Well, maybe they'll do it in London." No, they just

00:12:30   did it somewhere that was physically closer to their office.

00:12:33   - Yeah, yeah, for those who don't know Bay Area Geography,

00:12:36   it's quite a bit closer.

00:12:38   It's like, it's quite a bit closer to Apple.

00:12:41   - Great all around, big fan.

00:12:43   So I look forward to going back to San Jose next year.

00:12:46   - Yeah, and next year we'll have the benefit

00:12:48   of knowing more about the area.

00:12:50   That was one of those things.

00:12:51   Like we did the relay meetup and it was really lovely

00:12:54   at the Quilt and Textiles Museum.

00:12:57   - Yup.

00:12:58   But it was, that was, and we heard from a lot of people who wanted to be there and couldn't

00:13:03   because it was a fairly small venue. And, you know, our reasoning was in part just that we

00:13:08   hadn't seen the, we didn't know if people would come to WWDC. We hadn't seen any of the venues.

00:13:14   It was pretty risky to put on an event sight unseen at all. And everybody, you know, sort of

00:13:20   took that risk credit to John Gruber for getting the California theater and selling it out basically

00:13:25   for the talk show live. But next year everybody's going to have a much better idea about how

00:13:32   it works and I think it will be more of a well-oiled machine. I think with a couple

00:13:36   of years, WWDC in San Jose could actually become incredible because everybody, and that

00:13:43   doesn't just mean the people who go and the people who plan events, but it also means

00:13:47   the people in the services in San Jose, the hotels and all that, I think everybody's going

00:13:52   to get a better sense of like, "Oh, I see what this is now." And yes, they may raise

00:13:58   their prices, that may happen. But I think there's enough flexibility there that it'll

00:14:07   be a little bit harder for them to do what maybe the San Francisco hotels did. But I

00:14:12   think in general, everybody's going to get a better sense and it could actually become

00:14:15   pretty incredible as time goes on to take that place over for a week.

00:14:20   Yeah, I think that bars and restaurants will understand a little bit better, like, what

00:14:25   they're supposed to be doing, you know?

00:14:27   Right, who are the nerds? Why are they here?

00:14:29   Yeah, exactly, like, I don't know what this is all about, but I think it's gonna change.

00:14:33   There was this coffee shop called Social Policy, which was fantastic, but that place was just,

00:14:38   like, completely overrun. Yeah, it was really nice.

00:14:42   I spent some time in another café that was just sort of like a block away that was really

00:14:48   good that was a like a yeah I forget the name of it now but it was like an Italian name

00:14:53   it was very very nice to level cafe and I hung out there for a few hours that I more

00:14:59   people were basically taken over the upstairs and we're using it as their base of operations

00:15:04   but I think yeah I think people will get it there was also a perception from a lot of

00:15:07   people this is something that I know that some people ran into that that this was an

00:15:10   Apple event through and through and so there was some confusion among the people like running

00:15:15   the venues and all that. They're like, "Oh, you're with Apple. This is all part of Apple's

00:15:18   thing." It's like, "No, we're not with Apple. We're kind of like independent on the outside."

00:15:22   And so hopefully that education will happen too because, you know, that it gets a little

00:15:27   weird when they're like, "Oh, well, you're with Apple. You're with a billion dollar company.

00:15:30   You're worth, you know, you can billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars.

00:15:35   So this shouldn't be a problem." It's like, "No, no, we're a podcast network. We're tiny.

00:15:39   We're not Apple." And hopefully that education process will go on too. So they'll understand

00:15:43   that there's sort of like the main event and then there's all the ancillary events.

00:15:49   So WebRTC is coming to Safari. This is something that you've been excited about for a while.

00:15:56   Why is this important to you and kind of, is it coming to iOS as well as on the Mac?

00:16:02   It's funny, I have written about this. So WebRTC is this set of extensions for web browsers

00:16:08   and it's in Chrome and Firefox, and it's real-time communication. And the idea is you should

00:16:14   be able to do audio and video conferencing and other applications that use audio and

00:16:19   video streams primarily without a plugin. Like, you shouldn't need Flash, you shouldn't

00:16:25   need Silverlight, you should just be able to do this. So if you open a Google Hangout

00:16:29   in Chrome, it doesn't need a plugin. It does on Safari, but it doesn't need a plugin, I

00:16:36   believe on Chrome because it's using WebRTC. And the best example I can give is that there

00:16:44   are these two apps, Zencastr and Cast, that are podcasting apps. And they only work with

00:16:50   Chrome and Firefox because they're using the WebRTC protocols. But what it means is you

00:16:55   don't need a plug-in, you just use their site in the browser and you can hear other people

00:17:00   and record and it creates a whole podcast studio inside of web browser. Pretty cool.

00:17:06   So I've written about this a little bit, we've talked about it a little bit. I had somebody

00:17:10   come up to me as I was walking out of the talk show live out of the California theater

00:17:15   who was from Apple who said, "WebRTC! Did you hear? It's in the new Safari, it's in

00:17:22   the betas!" So I guess somebody was paying attention to these things I've been writing,

00:17:27   which is nice. So, enough to tell me, not enough to, like, it's not like I asked and

00:17:33   they did it, it's more like they knew I was complaining and they were like, "Okay, finally

00:17:37   you can stop complaining now." My understanding is that this is in Mac OS and iOS, and my

00:17:45   understanding from talking to some web developers is that Apple's, how is it phrased to me,

00:17:52   Google's interpretation of the WebRTC specification is slightly different from Google's interpretation

00:18:02   of WebRTC as implemented in Chrome. So my understanding is this isn't one of those

00:18:08   things where one of these web app developers like Cast or ZenCaster can just sort of turn

00:18:14   off the browser detection for Safari and say, "Safari, hooray, you can now use our tool."

00:18:21   I think they have to do some work.

00:18:24   I also saw a tweet from the Zencastr developers saying that their approach on iOS is probably

00:18:29   going to just be to build an app, because that's the other way to do it.

00:18:34   But in the long run, what this is going to probably mean is that apps that use WebRTC,

00:18:39   including my podcast apps that I'm excited about, but also all sorts of other applications

00:18:43   that currently only work on Chrome because they're using these features, will be supported

00:18:47   in Safari on the Mac, and I believe that's going to be for High Sierra, Sierra, and El

00:18:53   Capitan. I think they go three versions back when they do Safari updates. So I think it'll

00:18:59   actually roll back a couple of versions. And in iOS 11, it should be there. And if it's

00:19:05   in iOS 11 and these apps get updated to work with it, it's a big deal because that means,

00:19:10   say sometimes I have these incomparable podcasts where Dan Morin is like in a, they release

00:19:15   a new Star Wars trailer and Nana is at a convention somewhere and we want to do a Star Wars trailer

00:19:19   podcast. And he's on an iPhone and it's like he's just going to sound terrible because

00:19:23   we can't record him. We are going to be able to do that, right? We will be able to all

00:19:28   go to a link and he'll be able to go there on his phone and we'll record the podcast

00:19:32   and it'll record his microphone and upload that recording in the background to us so

00:19:38   that we can make a good sounding podcast. That's pretty awesome. And that's the promise

00:19:42   So this may be the first crack in the wall in terms of being able to really legitimately

00:19:48   do good sounding podcasts entirely on iOS that include multiple people and multiple

00:19:56   platforms and all of those caveats.

00:19:59   So it's great.

00:20:00   And plus it means that Safari is a more complete web citizen and you don't end up in these

00:20:04   situations which I hate when I get in there because I'm a Safari user where I get to a

00:20:08   site and they say, "Oh, you need to use Chrome for this."

00:20:10   I keep Chrome around for like three or four specific reasons, and I would prefer not to.

00:20:16   Yeah, I mean, I still use it as my web browser, right, Chrome? I do. But I would like to be

00:20:22   able to have the flexibility on iOS to eventually record podcasts in a pinch, right, with a

00:20:28   USB microphone and an adapter, right? That's what I find interesting about this, it's what

00:20:34   I hope it means it gets implemented at some point.

00:20:37   sounds like why was 11 may give us that even if even if it is not what we would

00:20:41   prefer to do right because there are other issues going on just the fact that

00:20:45   it will be if it's capable of doing it that means in a pinch or if you are on

00:20:51   like for me it's a lot of times it's like I'm taking this trip and I I have

00:20:54   one podcast to record so I have to bring a whole like laptop setup and it may be

00:20:59   enough to realize to make me realize like oh I don't need to that one I can

00:21:03   do just on my iPad and it'll be fine. That's great.

00:21:07   Talking about iPads, the iPad 10.5 inch Pro thing, need a good name for that, haven't

00:21:15   got it yet in my head. The reviews are out and I want to point everyone to Max Stories.

00:21:20   Federico had a review unit of the new iPad Pro and he wrote a lovely little review about

00:21:25   it so you should go and check it out. And I expect that before next week's episode we'll

00:21:30   both own new iPad Pros, so we'll be able to talk about them next week. They come out,

00:21:34   I think tomorrow?

00:21:35   Yeah, I think that's right. And yes, I anticipate that we'll have new iPad Pros to talk about

00:21:41   next week. I liked Federico's review and how he, because he, like me, is a 12.9 inch iPad

00:21:49   Pro user. And it's funny because on Twit yesterday, Harry McCracken was there and his primary

00:21:56   computer is also a 12.9 inch iPad Pro. He's like Federico. He uses it more than he uses

00:22:03   a computer, a PC. It's iPad all the way. And I like how Federico, because I was curious,

00:22:11   was like, "It's pretty good, but the screen's not as good as the 12.9 because it's smaller

00:22:17   and everything's a little bit smaller." I like how he was really generous about how

00:22:22   impressive a product it is, while also kind of giving you the sense that if you're a fan

00:22:28   of the 12.9, he seems to not be convinced that people who like the 12.9, that this extra

00:22:36   space on the 10.5 is going to really be enough to make you go down from a 12.9 to a 10.5.

00:22:44   And I think the fact that the 12.9 still exists suggests that they had that conversation at

00:22:49   Apple and it was very clear that the answer was no there's still a place for the bigger

00:22:53   iPad. Yeah all that that math that we spoke about that Dan Provost did it didn't yeah

00:22:58   they didn't do it. True. No it's a it's a it's same same resolution in terms of pixels

00:23:04   per inch as the old 9.7 it's just got more screen space so it's it's a new resolution

00:23:12   in terms of pixel dimensions so it's a little bit bigger but still if you run two apps side

00:23:18   by side on a 10.5 iPad Pro, they're both using basically the phone layout, not the iPad layout.

00:23:25   And side by side on a 12.9, you get two basically vertical iPad apps, traditional iPad layout

00:23:32   size side by side. And so that changes the equation. It has positives in that if it was

00:23:40   an iPad Mini resolution, everything would be way smaller on the display and it would

00:23:45   make the touch targets harder. It would be a tricky decision to make for a mainstream

00:23:51   iPad to make that resolution that much higher. But this is the trade-off. The trade-off is

00:23:56   it's still not, you know, it's still a little cramped. It's not as cramped as the 9.7, but

00:24:02   it's still cramped.

00:24:04   So more next week, I think, on that.

00:24:06   Yes.

00:24:07   More next week.

00:24:08   Much, much more next week.

00:24:09   Because there's so much to talk about about these devices that we really need to play

00:24:11   the more I sell first I think. Also I'm planning on putting 11 on mine.

00:24:16   Well that's the, a lot of the reviews that's unsaid, like I've spent about half an hour

00:24:23   using one of these 10.5 review units in demo area at WWDC but they were running 11 and

00:24:31   that says it all right. That Apple would rather you see these things with a developer beta

00:24:36   than the shipping OS because this is the fully realized version of this. And so quite rightly

00:24:41   a lot of the reviews basically say, "Well, this is good, but what really is going to

00:24:46   make it great?" A lot of the reviews are debates about can it replace your laptop, and some

00:24:52   say yes and some say no, which I think is silly because I think yes is the answer there,

00:24:58   but you know, reasonable people disagree, it's fine. But a lot of them say, "Well, maybe,

00:25:04   But when iOS 11 comes out, yes.

00:25:06   So that's part of the trick of writing a review of something

00:25:09   like this, and Federico definitely

00:25:10   had to deal with it, which is you want to talk about iOS 11,

00:25:14   but it's not out yet, and your review unit didn't come with it.

00:25:19   And so your perception of it is, what's here now,

00:25:23   and then what's the coupon in the box

00:25:26   for the promise of the real features in the fall?

00:25:30   So it's a weird situation.

00:25:32   But as we were last--

00:25:34   My enthusiasm, and I think this is true of you too, my enthusiasm about the future of

00:25:38   the iPad and how awesome it's going to be to use iOS 11 with these new iPads, my enthusiasm

00:25:45   has not dimmed even a little bit.

00:25:46   I am very excited about where this is going in terms of being a productivity person on

00:25:53   an iPad.

00:25:54   All right, today's show is brought to you in part by Blue Apron.

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00:27:35   a better way to cook.

00:27:38   So being at WWDC, we mentioned this on the show, I mention it a bunch, being at WWDC

00:27:43   recording as quickly as we do, by the way, three and a half hours from keynote end to

00:27:48   upgrade being published. I think that was pretty impressive.

00:27:50   Yeah.

00:27:51   Felt real good. Felt real good.

00:27:54   That's what we were going for, is to get it out there as quick as we could.

00:27:57   First and never worst. That is the mantra of the keynote upgrade. It is a thing that

00:28:04   we mean you like to do. We like to have the show out as soon as we can.

00:28:08   We're a Monday podcast. We're a Monday podcast and the keynote's on a Monday. We're going

00:28:12   to do that. Like, how could we not do that?

00:28:15   Exactly. And we want to get it out quickly because there are a lot of people that immediately

00:28:18   want to hear it, right? And so we can provide that. It's very important to us. But it does

00:28:22   mean that there's a bunch of stuff that we missed. So our friends over at MacStories

00:28:26   rounded up a bunch of little things, kind of the little details that maybe didn't get

00:28:31   any coverage from Apple on stage. And I wanted to run through a few of them, Jason, in case

00:28:35   our listeners don't know as well.

00:28:37   So I think we need to do it. Yeah, we didn't get the breakdown to -- we didn't get the

00:28:42   chance to break down things because we were in the bubble, right?

00:28:45   Exactly.

00:28:46   At that post keynote bubble.

00:28:47   So one of them is that, I guess something me and you have been talking about for a long

00:28:52   time but now it's here, I wonder what we think of it, which is that WatchOS 4, and WatchOS

00:28:59   4, the beta of the next version of the operating system for the watch, the home screen can

00:29:04   be replaced by an alphabetical list of apps instead of the honeycomb.

00:29:11   I'm looking forward to trying it.

00:29:12   I'm not going to install WatchOS 4 beta for a while because I use my Apple Watch.

00:29:17   but I am intrigued by this.

00:29:21   I hope that it's good.

00:29:23   I think, yes, that list is potentially long.

00:29:25   You should probably,

00:29:27   everybody should probably better curate

00:29:28   what apps actually are on their watch.

00:29:31   But like the idea of just scrolling through with the crown

00:29:33   and finding an app alphabetically

00:29:35   instead of having to go like pick through that weird thing.

00:29:40   It doesn't work for me.

00:29:40   I don't love going to the honeycomb.

00:29:43   So I'm hoping this will be a better experience.

00:29:46   Here's my thinking on this. I don't like the idea of a scrolling list of stuff, right,

00:29:51   because it's kind of slow and inelegant, but with my Apple Watch, I can never remember

00:29:58   where the apps are on my home screen, because I very rarely go there. At least of an alphabetical

00:30:04   list, I will know where to go to find the one I'm looking for. So whilst it's kind of

00:30:11   like a band-aid over a gunshot wound as a situation as like a solution to a

00:30:17   problem I think it works because it's not elegant it's gonna take longer than

00:30:23   you'd want but at least you'll know where to go yeah I think that's about it

00:30:28   is I mean you can use Siri to launch apps on the Apple launch there's lots of

00:30:34   different ways to do it complications are a really good way to do it so but I

00:30:41   I think it's good to offer this option,

00:30:43   but in practice, that's the question.

00:30:44   It's like, is it really gonna be better

00:30:45   to scroll through a list alphabetically

00:30:47   than to kinda poke around and slide around

00:30:50   and try to find that icon?

00:30:52   It's like, which one is the timer

00:30:53   and which one is the alarm clock, right?

00:30:56   It may be better just to have that list, but we'll see.

00:30:59   And people get the choice, right?

00:31:00   It doesn't, if you don't like one, the other is still there.

00:31:02   - I think the doc solved the problem for me, honestly.

00:31:06   But just for that every now and then,

00:31:09   I think that this is a good idea.

00:31:11   - Docking complications really made that thing so unimportant.

00:31:14   It's rare that I go there, and mostly when I do go there,

00:31:17   it's sort of like, oh yeah, I need to set an alarm,

00:31:20   at which point I should probably just use Siri,

00:31:22   because it does that just fine, and sometimes I forget,

00:31:25   and then I'm in the honeycomb, and no, no,

00:31:30   I didn't want to do that, so yeah, we'll see.

00:31:32   But it's good that that option exists.

00:31:34   - There is a new accessibility option called Typed Siri,

00:31:37   which gives you a text box at the bottom of the screen

00:31:40   when you invoke Siri.

00:31:42   I've also seen that regular Siri questions

00:31:45   have an edit button on them.

00:31:46   So even without enabling the option,

00:31:49   you're able to correct what Siri heard you say.

00:31:52   So you can fix it and then it will re-answer the question.

00:31:56   So I think that this is, I think this is good.

00:31:58   This is good to have.

00:31:59   I think the ability to now, in some cases or all cases,

00:32:02   type to Siri instead of talking to Siri.

00:32:07   And as an aside, the new Siri voice is unbelievable.

00:32:11   - New Siri voice is very good, very good.

00:32:14   - Very good.

00:32:15   - I'll miss the old lady,

00:32:16   but the new lady is doing a great job.

00:32:19   - You could fool me with that, I think.

00:32:22   It's very impressive.

00:32:24   Jason, I'm sure you're very happy about the fact

00:32:27   that you can now share iCloud storage with family sharing.

00:32:31   - Yeah, this is something that has been a long time coming,

00:32:34   but I was telling my daughter about this,

00:32:36   that she'll actually be able to like back up her photos

00:32:38   and her phone because we've got,

00:32:41   they increased the terabyte option to two terabytes

00:32:43   and we're on the terabyte option

00:32:45   because I have more than 200 gigabytes of photos

00:32:48   and that's it.

00:32:49   You either pay for 200 gigabytes or you pay for two terabytes

00:32:53   there's nothing in between.

00:32:55   So yeah, now my family will be able to have access

00:33:00   to that two terabyte portion,

00:33:03   which means they'll all back up,

00:33:05   They'll all be able to have their photos stored.

00:33:07   We didn't get any announcements about sharing photos

00:33:10   in the photo library,

00:33:11   but at least the storage pool can be shared,

00:33:14   which means that like,

00:33:16   I won't have to have my wife paying for her amount

00:33:20   and then my daughter just having the five gigabyte amount

00:33:24   and all of that.

00:33:25   It'll all just be, we'll pay one bill

00:33:26   for the two terabytes I'm already paying for

00:33:28   and everybody will back up freely into it

00:33:31   with all their iOS devices.

00:33:32   It'll be a much better situation.

00:33:34   - And two terabytes for the price of one terabyte is good.

00:33:37   Like, right, like two terabytes is more than enough

00:33:40   for a family, I think.

00:33:42   - Yeah, I think that this is a sign that Apple is,

00:33:46   like their prices are more competitive

00:33:47   and now their storage is getting even more competitive.

00:33:51   I, you know, I hesitate to say it

00:33:54   because everybody's got a reflexive horror story about it,

00:33:58   but I think Apple is making some serious strides

00:34:02   with their cloud stuff these days.

00:34:03   like the iCloud photo syncing works.

00:34:07   I am hoping that Hi Sierra.

00:34:10   - Hi Sierra.

00:34:11   - Be high, potentially feels like handles

00:34:16   the iCloud drive stuff syncing better

00:34:19   that that's settled down a little bit.

00:34:20   But with this two terabytes, I started to think,

00:34:22   you know, maybe I should start using iCloud drive

00:34:26   because Dropbox has still not brought Dropbox infinite

00:34:29   to regular users where you get to say like,

00:34:33   store this on the server.

00:34:35   I want to be able to see it on my computer,

00:34:37   but I don't want the file to actually reside on my computer

00:34:39   until I click on it.

00:34:40   That's a feature that they now offer.

00:34:41   So you can use that terabyte of data within Dropbox,

00:34:44   but it's only for business customers.

00:34:45   So I can't use it.

00:34:47   And with this two terabytes in iCloud,

00:34:49   I started to think, you know,

00:34:50   maybe I should actually try to store stuff in iCloud

00:34:53   because it will be able to dynamically like remove it

00:34:56   if it needs the storage space.

00:34:57   So I could store two terabytes worth,

00:35:00   even though I've got a 500 gigabyte SSD on my iMac,

00:35:03   I could store a couple of terabytes of data

00:35:07   and it wouldn't be a problem

00:35:08   'cause it would all be dynamic.

00:35:09   And that's, I don't think the way Apple approaches it

00:35:12   really works for me, but I'm starting to think about it

00:35:15   just because this is, Apple keeps iterating

00:35:19   with its cloud stuff and making it more reliable

00:35:21   and making it more competitive.

00:35:23   And I think it's to be taken seriously.

00:35:28   I'm not saying they've leaped ahead of everybody,

00:35:30   but I am saying that I feel like Apple has been doing the right thing with their cloud

00:35:35   stuff for a little while now and it's really showing.

00:35:40   There is native screen recording coming to iOS 11 with a new control center action.

00:35:45   Yeah, I saw that. You can add a little record button. Talk about an esoteric feature that

00:35:49   nobody would expect. I mean, I think the original iPhone OS, you couldn't even take screenshots,

00:35:55   right? Because who would want that except for journalists. And it turns out everybody

00:35:58   who can't fit a tweet and writes it in notes and takes a screenshot of it and then tweets

00:36:03   the screenshot. It's actually this big thing. And there's a screenshot interface now where

00:36:07   you can immediately tap on, after you take a screenshot, and crop it and share it right

00:36:11   there. So Apple is embracing the fact that people want to do screen captures of maybe

00:36:17   of games they're playing or who knows what else and they want to take screenshots. And

00:36:22   it's cool. Yeah, it'll do it and record audio. And I actually started to wonder if, and I

00:36:27   haven't tried this because it's a beta and nothing works right yet, but I wonder, somebody

00:36:32   asked me and I had already thought of it, could you do a screen recording of a Skype

00:36:37   call and then take the recording and export the audio and have local audio of your podcast?

00:36:45   I don't know. Maybe you could. I don't know. I'm not sure if it captures the audio from

00:36:51   applications? I think it might capture your microphone audio. I'm not sure. Or maybe it's

00:36:58   just the system audio. Anyway, these are features that I don't think I would ever have predicted.

00:37:03   I would never have predicted that Apple would build a screen recording system into iOS.

00:37:09   That just seems so outlandish. And there it is. Just pop it on the control center, you

00:37:13   get a little record button, and you're good to go. It's just like doing a movie capture

00:37:17   inside QuickTime on the Mac. You get a little, you know, little red recording icon and it

00:37:23   happens.

00:37:26   There is also now a limited edition Rainbow Pride band for the Apple Watch under the nylon

00:37:31   bands. This is a six color band. It's exactly what you wanted.

00:37:35   Yeah, and it's now available for, uh, for people and it's directly from Apple. It's,

00:37:43   in stores as well as online. You can get it.

00:37:48   And I already ordered mine.

00:37:52   - Cool, I'm gonna hopefully pick mine up tomorrow

00:37:54   when I go and stake out my Apple store for iPads.

00:37:58   - Yeah, good job.

00:38:00   - 'Cause I think it looks real great.

00:38:01   I saw a couple of people wearing it the end of last week.

00:38:04   It's a great, great, great watch band.

00:38:06   I think it looks a lot of fun and it's awesome.

00:38:08   And it's, you know, yeah, I really like it a lot.

00:38:11   - Yeah, and it is the classic six colored Apple rainbow,

00:38:15   which is beautiful.

00:38:16   - With iOS 11, AirPods gain the ability to skip tracks.

00:38:22   So not only can you do forward and back track skipping

00:38:26   on the AirPods, you can now set each left and right AirPod

00:38:30   to have a different function.

00:38:31   - Yeah, that's right.

00:38:33   - For example, you could tap left for Siri,

00:38:35   tap right for pause, or you could maybe have

00:38:37   tap right for pause, tap left for skip.

00:38:39   I think you can only do one function for each ear,

00:38:43   but there are more options that you can choose from as well.

00:38:45   - That's right.

00:38:46   - And once you, this is the crazy thing.

00:38:48   Once you make a change with an iOS 11,

00:38:51   this functionality stays set even when it's connected

00:38:55   to an iOS 10 device.

00:38:57   - Right, because what it's really doing

00:38:58   is it's programming the AirPods

00:39:00   to have what Bluetooth command they're sending,

00:39:03   which they can do from anywhere.

00:39:06   - 'Cause it's whatever the AirPod OS would be,

00:39:08   that's what it's updating like on the device you say rather than what the iPhone's connected

00:39:13   to so I'm really excited about pause and skip that's that's what I'm pleased about that

00:39:19   they're doing that's how I'm going to set them up although I maintained I still really

00:39:24   hate the feeling of tapping the AirPods in my ears I don't I don't like it.

00:39:28   I've gotten I've gotten used to it I avoid it whenever possible my favorite ways to control

00:39:34   the AirPods are to take one out of my ear

00:39:37   or to use my Apple Watch.

00:39:38   - I use my Apple Watch, that's how I do it.

00:39:40   - But I do sometimes do the double tap thing.

00:39:45   And I'm actually very excited about this

00:39:49   because this is what I asked for.

00:39:53   And it seemed like an obvious way

00:39:54   that if it was capable of doing it,

00:39:56   that they could do it with the AirPods

00:39:58   to have different gestures with left and right

00:40:01   and having the skipping be programmable too.

00:40:05   That's pretty awesome.

00:40:06   So that's kind of it.

00:40:07   I think they're reluctant to do like triple tap for this

00:40:11   and quadruple tap for that.

00:40:12   They don't wanna do that, but that's fine.

00:40:13   And I'm okay with that.

00:40:15   I think just letting you program left and right

00:40:18   for that double tap to be what you want it to be,

00:40:22   great news.

00:40:22   - And you went ears on with the HomePod.

00:40:28   - I did.

00:40:29   I listened to a HomePod.

00:40:31   you listened to a home pod. So you were given the ability somewhere in WWDC to listen to

00:40:38   a home pod compared to an Echo and a Sonos Play 3, right?

00:40:43   - Yep, that's exactly it. So I got to, yes, I was wandering lonely as a cloud when I happened

00:40:50   upon a Sylvan Glade, there were unicorns and rainbows and also a HomePod.

00:41:03   I want to know how, in your opinion, the HomePod stacked up against these other devices. Did

00:41:09   you have any chance to experience the room-filling sound that Apple was talking about?

00:41:15   I did. I experienced room-filling sound. So yeah, it's a... Look, it's unfair. I guess

00:41:25   you know people don't know, but it's totally unfair to put this thing next to an Amazon

00:41:28   Echo because the Amazon Echo doesn't sound very good.

00:41:31   And it was never built for music really. I mean it plays music, but it's not built for

00:41:34   that.

00:41:35   It plays music fine and my family uses it to play music all the time because it's so

00:41:40   easy to just call up a song and have it play it that they use it all the time. And we have

00:41:45   so many better speakers in the house but they use the Echo. The Echo is also a lot cheaper

00:41:50   than the HomePod, but the Sonos Play 3 is a good example. That is a product that is

00:41:55   about the cost of a HomePod and generally does not sound as good as the HomePod, I would

00:42:03   say, having heard them both in the same space, although again, the Sonos Play 3, I don't

00:42:08   know whether it was tuned properly or anything like that. I'm pretty sure the HomePod doesn't

00:42:12   sound as good as the Sonos Play 5, but the Play 5 is way more expensive than the HomePod.

00:42:15   pod, I believe. So, and the other thing I noticed about the Play 3 is that the Play

00:42:21   3 is a, you know, it's a speaker box, right? So even though it's stereo and the HomePod

00:42:29   is not, technically it's a, it's got lots of speakers, but it's really just doing a

00:42:33   sort of single sound field. It's doing its own processing to shoot different parts to

00:42:38   different directions. But the Sonos Play 3, my point is, when you're sitting in front

00:42:44   of it, it sounds really great, and then you walk to the side of it and it sounds like

00:42:49   the noise is being pointed somewhere else, because it is, it's being pointed right in

00:42:53   front of it. And the HomePod doesn't sound like that. The HomePod is engineered to fill

00:42:57   the room in the sense that it doesn't feel like you're out of the sweet spot, it's trying

00:43:01   to make the entire room the sweet spot. And it sounds pretty good, the bass is good, the

00:43:06   treble separation is good, they're doing a lot of processing, like I said, they are trying

00:43:10   to fire different parts of the music off in different speakers in order to give you this

00:43:18   distinct sound and room-filling sound. And I think my question on the music side is,

00:43:24   what's Apple doing to process this stuff? And how's it going to sound in its final iteration?

00:43:29   Will there be settings? Will it intelligently detect what kind of music it is and alter

00:43:33   how it does it? Can you turn that sort of processing off? Because I know that there

00:43:37   going to be some music lovers who will, most people won't care, but there will be some

00:43:41   music lovers who will be freaked out by what it does to the music in terms of basically

00:43:47   remixing it on the fly in order to get what Apple's setting says is the best sound. I

00:43:54   do think it would be great if it was really intelligent and we don't have any details

00:43:58   of this now and said, "Oh, this is classical. I'm going to do something different. And this

00:44:02   is pop. I'm going to do something different." But we don't know whether it's got presets

00:44:06   or something that's dynamic that's just like so much of the HomePod, it's kind of a mystery.

00:44:12   All of it sounded pretty good except the one example I keep giving that I thought was an

00:44:17   interesting example of how the HomePod is manipulating the sound is Stevie Wonder's

00:44:25   Superstition which when I was standing right in front of the Sonos Play 3 and standing

00:44:29   in front of the HomePod, I felt like the Play 3 actually did a better job of representing

00:44:33   it than the HomePod because the HomePod sort of split it out and made it kind of more airy

00:44:39   almost like it's got different sounds kind of coming from different places because that's

00:44:43   what the HomePod does and that song it struck me like it didn't sound right that the kind

00:44:49   of crunchy compressed 70s Stevie Wonder sounded better crunchy and compressed rather than

00:44:57   kind of decompressed and flung out to various portions of the room via the HomePod. But

00:45:05   they got six months to work on the software that processes the audio. But again, Apple

00:45:11   owns Beats. Beats has an opinion about what makes music sound good, and people who are

00:45:20   like real audio aficionados can often hate that because they don't think that it's a

00:45:26   true like representative sound and that's just an argument that's going to happen. So

00:45:29   maybe the HomePod will be like that in that they're going to process that sound to something

00:45:34   that they think is a crowd pleaser and fair enough they probably should do that if most

00:45:39   people will enjoy it that way. I think the question is you know will it do that to what

00:45:43   degree does it do that and most of the songs I heard sounded fantastic on the HomePod.

00:45:49   It was just the Stevie Wonder song that I thought, although it sounded good, it didn't

00:45:52   sound right. And that was interesting to me to have that experience. And then there was

00:45:58   also in the glade over by one of the unicorns, there was a second home pod. And I did get

00:46:06   to hear one song in stereo pair mode where you can take two home pods and have one basically

00:46:11   handling left and one handling right. And that does fill the room with even more kind

00:46:16   of impressively directional sound where I felt like I was in a more like a surround

00:46:22   sound space where I could get a lot of stereo detail. Whereas my understanding is that the

00:46:28   HomePod doesn't actually try to do directional stereo kind of detail when it's just operating

00:46:35   by itself. It's basically treating it as a mono signal and then doing its own secret

00:46:38   sauce which seems a little weird to me but since I've got seven speakers that they couldn't

00:46:43   like process the stereo signal and try to give it a little bit of directionality, but

00:46:49   it seems not to.

00:46:50   What did you think of how the HomePod looked?

00:46:52   I don't know, I think it looks weird, but that would get used to it.

00:46:55   I guess they all kind of look weird, don't they?

00:46:58   The Amazon Echo looks weird too.

00:47:00   It's like, what's inside that canister that's sitting on your kitchen table?

00:47:04   It's this kind of computery pod with the perforations around it, and this one's got this kind of

00:47:09   fabric-y looking thing on it.

00:47:12   And I don't know, it is a pod that sits in your home.

00:47:17   I mean, it's not wrong, that's what it is.

00:47:21   And I think, yeah, I think, like the name,

00:47:25   I think people will get used to it.

00:47:26   It's a new sort of thing.

00:47:27   I think Apple's trying to make it not super obtrusive

00:47:30   and they make claims that that's all sort of sound

00:47:34   conducting goodness, 3D fabric, whatever, I don't know.

00:47:39   But yeah, I'm intrigued by it,

00:47:42   but I will also point out that it's priced

00:47:45   as a premium speaker, it's 349.

00:47:47   So it is not priced as an affordable digital assistant box

00:47:52   that will play sound, but not very well.

00:47:56   Like Apple seems, at least with this first product,

00:47:58   Apple did not choose to compete directly against the Echo.

00:48:01   Like they are creating a Sonos caliber speaker

00:48:06   with Siri embedded in it.

00:48:08   And that's a different market than the Google Home

00:48:10   and the Amazon Echo.

00:48:12   So that's important to keep in mind.

00:48:13   Also, we have never heard it respond to a Siri command.

00:48:17   That is a completely, like,

00:48:19   other than the slides they put up at the keynote,

00:48:22   we have to imagine that right now.

00:48:24   And I suspect that's in part

00:48:26   because of the marketing push they wanna do,

00:48:29   which is to make it about music.

00:48:30   It's in part because the Siri stuff

00:48:32   is still being worked on.

00:48:33   I mean, there were no Siri demos

00:48:36   of the HomePod at WWDC that you couldn't touch it, couldn't speak to it. You could look at

00:48:43   it and you could, if you were lucky, and you wandered into the unicorn grove, listen to

00:48:48   it. But that's it.

00:48:49   Do you know if there is a touchscreen on the top of the HomePod? It seems like this is

00:48:55   something that people are in disagreement over on the internet.

00:49:01   So it looked like the demo units that I was seeing, it looked like there was some sort

00:49:06   of Siri animation thing happening on the top of it.

00:49:11   Keeping in mind these are canned, like it's not a real product yet, right?

00:49:14   So they were playing that.

00:49:16   I was told that you can get volume up and down buttons on there, although I didn't see

00:49:21   them.

00:49:22   So it sounds like there is a display and it does have some touch sensitivity on it, but

00:49:27   it's on this, on the top of this device.

00:49:31   So to call it a touchscreen in the way

00:49:35   that we think of touchscreens,

00:49:37   I think is probably inaccurate.

00:49:39   It does seem to have some sort of a display

00:49:41   with some sort of touch on it,

00:49:43   but it's not really meant to be an interface

00:49:45   other than for the most basic things

00:49:48   like changing the volume or maybe pausing

00:49:51   or something like that.

00:49:52   But I got no details about it

00:49:55   other than that you could touch for volume up and down

00:49:59   and there would be volume up and down buttons on the top.

00:50:01   And since there don't seem to be physical buttons,

00:50:03   as far as I could tell,

00:50:04   that suggests that there is touch sensitivity

00:50:07   on some part of the panel.

00:50:08   It's also possible that there's touch sensitivity

00:50:10   on certain parts of the panel

00:50:12   and that it's not a touch screen,

00:50:13   but there are a couple of touch areas

00:50:16   that light up when they're activated

00:50:20   and that it's not,

00:50:22   it depends on the engineering of it.

00:50:23   Like, it may not be that you could program any sort of button to be on there.

00:50:27   It may be there's a certain area where there's a button that can light up that you can touch.

00:50:32   I don't know.

00:50:33   But there's something going on up there.

00:50:34   If I was going to place my bat, it would be that this is not a touch screen.

00:50:38   Like it's not, it's not a screen that's going to have content and information displayed

00:50:43   on it.

00:50:44   I think that's what people are still kind of hoping that this is what it's going to

00:50:46   be.

00:50:47   I think it certainly won't, because it's not, it's not even something that you could literally

00:50:51   look at conveniently.

00:50:52   It's in the wrong place.

00:50:53   basically on the top on a flat surface it's on a horizontal plane parallel to the table

00:50:59   it's sitting on. It's not a place to read things. So I think it'll be like used for

00:51:05   feedback like color maybe like the ring. Think of the ring on an Amazon Echo like that ring

00:51:12   is animating and showing you color to indicate things.

00:51:15   Yeah that is more easily seen though because it's around the edge and not the top exactly

00:51:20   you know.

00:51:21   the way that it's structured, you can still see that,

00:51:24   again, if all you're looking for is like a little

00:51:26   color feedback, you can see that on the HomePod too,

00:51:29   but that's about all.

00:51:31   And then yeah, maybe if you touch it,

00:51:32   it presents you with a couple of touch buttons.

00:51:35   I think it may be a touch surface, maybe not multi-touch,

00:51:39   but like a touch surface that will give you kind of basic,

00:51:41   like tap here to increase the volume

00:51:44   when you put your hand on it,

00:51:46   like it'll let you physically interact a little bit with it.

00:51:48   but it's not, I would not call it a display.

00:51:53   It's more like an ambient interface kind of thing.

00:51:56   - Okay.

00:51:58   - It's my guess.

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00:55:00   There was a session at the end of WWDC this week about podcasting.

00:55:05   There was.

00:55:06   It was full of some expected and unexpected things that have been added to Apple podcasts.

00:55:14   One of them is, I want to say a welcome change, but then I think it kind of colors the rest of

00:55:24   my discussion in a way that I'm not expecting it to sound like, which is RSS enhancements.

00:55:31   So this is something that I have been expecting Apple to do for a while to find ways to enhance

00:55:36   the RSS spec for podcasts, which Apple kind of created in its current form, hence why

00:55:42   there are so many tags that say iTunes something and everything else looks for those tags.

00:55:47   All other podcast apps are built around these tags that Apple created for their iTunes feedback.

00:55:54   It's kind of how all podcast feeds are built using these tags.

00:55:58   Yeah, for people who don't know, it's RSS and podcasting, you know, yeah, it's a standard,

00:56:03   but Apple has been in it so long and they created a whole bunch of these custom tags

00:56:08   that are all precluded or preceded by iTunes to enhance the data that iTunes displayed

00:56:15   on a Mac in 2005, basically.

00:56:19   And if you're running your own podcast app now, you would be silly to not take advantage

00:56:25   of that metadata, and so everybody reads it. And so it's not standard standard, but it's

00:56:30   basically a standard. And it means that Apple, because it's so popular as a podcast platform

00:56:37   — I think podcast app on iOS is the number one by far podcast listening app in existence

00:56:42   on any platform. It is able to put in new tags for its use that everybody's going to

00:56:52   do and then everybody, every other app can pick those up because it's totally open. It's

00:56:56   not like Apple has secret sauce here. And so they did. They made a lot of enhancements,

00:57:02   some of which they already had in some other form. But I think this is a kind of a big

00:57:07   batch trying to see what podcasts are doing today and how the current set of tags in a

00:57:13   podcast feed aren't good enough. So they added a whole slew of them.

00:57:17   So, as a, as a owner of a company that creates its own CMS for podcasts, therefore its own

00:57:27   feeds, I would like to extend my thanks to Apple for not changing the names of the tags

00:57:34   from iTunes to Apple because in theory they should, right? Because it's not iTunes anymore,

00:57:40   it's Apple podcast. So I would just like to thank Apple for not doing that, right? So

00:57:46   I don't now have to rewrite everything. But what because what they've given are additional

00:57:51   pieces of functionality on top of what is existing. And these are really all focused

00:57:57   around seasons because there have been lots of podcasts, plus a very popular podcasts.

00:58:03   the clue is in the name for how some of these tags are written, uh, that are for seasons.

00:58:09   And I think Apple are referring to these as, uh, standard and serial. Um, and I don't think

00:58:14   it's like just for serial, just that these shows are serialized, hence where the name

00:58:19   serial came from in the first place, but it is funny.

00:58:22   There was already a sort order tag, which they are replacing basically with this, that

00:58:26   let you say, 'cause Steven Wilson from Apple told me about it at one point, um, and I used

00:58:31   it on Total Party Kill and Incomparable Radio Theater. And the idea that some podcasts should

00:58:37   be listened to from the start and not from the most recent. Like Upgrade, you should

00:58:41   listen to the most recent episode because we're very topical. But something like Total

00:58:45   Party Kill, which is a Dungeons and Dragons podcast that I do and it's storytelling and

00:58:49   you start at the start of the story. The latest episode will make no sense. You should start

00:58:53   at the beginning. So now there's a new version of that called the iTunes Type and that lets

00:58:59   you choose episodic or serial. And so yeah, if you want people to start at the beginning,

00:59:03   you say serial, this podcast is meant to be serial, and then people will, it'll be sorted

00:59:07   properly with the first episode at the top.

00:59:10   I assume there will be use UI that will allow for like collapsing and stuff like that inside

00:59:14   of applications.

00:59:15   Exactly. So, so the, the, they also didn't break like the standard title of an episode

00:59:20   because a lot of times I think really does this and comparable does this. Um, and a lot

00:59:24   of podcasts do your episode title would be like the episode number colon the name of

00:59:28   the show or maybe season 2 episode 2 colon the name of the episode that is

00:59:34   that that kind of catch-all title tag is still there but Apple has introduced a

00:59:40   pure title tag which just as the name of the episode an episode tag which is just

00:59:46   the number of the episode and a season tag which is the season number of the

00:59:53   that the episode lives inside now have some questions about this in terms of

00:59:57   how it's interpreted in the podcast app in iTunes and then how will be

01:00:03   interpreted by other apps that don't follow those things because I'm not

01:00:07   quite sure if you say that it's season 2 episode 1 and you're in a regular

01:00:11   podcast app does it display that is just another episode 1 and is that weird

01:00:16   I don't I don't know all of the all of those details but it's it's clever and

01:00:23   it's one of the things that it will make for a way better interface for podcast

01:00:26   listeners because now the apps won't have to do any funny business to try and extrapolate

01:00:31   episode numbers from titles or things like that. They'll just have the metadata. They'll

01:00:35   have a raw, clear title with no junk in it. They'll have an episode number. They'll have

01:00:40   a season number if available and a summary field that's a single descriptive sentence

01:00:46   in plain text. And that's good. That is going to make cleaner interfaces with a lot less

01:00:52   junk in them for everybody who listens to podcasts in the long run.

01:00:56   Yeah, there are also the ability to add trailers and bonus episodes too, as denoted in the

01:01:01   feeds. This is the one, I think, of all of them that I could see us using at Relay FM.

01:01:05   We don't do currently any shows that are seasonal in nature, I can think of. There might be

01:01:11   some shows that might want to take advantage of this, I don't know, but...

01:01:15   Well, your, uh, your inquisitive did a couple of seasons, right?

01:01:20   That was what I was thinking of, yeah.

01:01:23   Total Particle and the Incomparable Radio Theater and not playing three shows on the

01:01:27   Incomparable Network all do seasonal stuff and it would be pretty good for that. But

01:01:33   you're right, a lot of podcasts do trailers for a few reasons, not only to hype up a show

01:01:39   but to get it in iTunes because you can't publish a podcast with nothing in it. So you

01:01:45   have to have like either your first episode but you kind of want people to know that it's

01:01:50   coming so you post like a zero episode that is this podcast is coming subscribe

01:01:56   now and you'll get it when it starts and that's a teaser or a trailer and now

01:02:00   there's an episode type called trailer that you can mark that treats it

01:02:04   differently for if it's seasonal it'll actually say here's the trailer for the

01:02:08   season if it's for the whole podcast will say here's the trailer it it'll be

01:02:12   separate in the interface and again any podcast app can read that and and

01:02:16   display it in an appropriate way and then bonus like that's a great example

01:02:19   example of like 5x5 did After Dark, The Incomparable did Bonus Track, we occasionally have these

01:02:24   that relay does B-sides, we occasionally do this thing where we've got not, it's not in

01:02:30   the episode, but it's like additional material. And what this would allow you to do if you

01:02:36   chose to do it, and I was thinking to myself, I'm not sure whether I would choose this,

01:02:40   but if this was widely implemented, I might, which is rather than have like a separate

01:02:43   feed for your bonus stuff, what this does is let you put it in the in the feed and just

01:02:48   say, here's the episode, here's the bonus, mark it as bonus.

01:02:52   And then in the podcast app,

01:02:55   it looks like it will be like shown that way

01:02:57   where you'll see the episode and then you'll also see,

01:02:59   oh, and there's also bonus material you can listen to,

01:03:02   which depending on how that's done

01:03:04   could actually be really clever and cool.

01:03:07   So we'll see, but these are all things

01:03:09   that podcasts really do and that the podcast spec

01:03:13   didn't really know how to handle and it made it all messy.

01:03:15   So I'm very happy that Apple has stepped up here

01:03:18   because who, if not them, then who?

01:03:20   Like, I think it had to be Apple to do this.

01:03:22   - So I'm keen to see how all of this is implemented

01:03:26   across the board from just technically

01:03:30   and from a user interface perspective.

01:03:32   'Cause there could be some things here

01:03:33   that we might wanna take advantage of.

01:03:35   Maybe, I don't know, there might have been some ideas

01:03:37   that we have not pursued

01:03:38   because it would have been tricky to do.

01:03:41   So I'm keen to see how a lot of this stuff shakes out.

01:03:44   The other story, which got like just a couple of minutes

01:03:46   the end of this presentation is that in December, I think they said, towards the end of the

01:03:52   year, Apple is going to be opening up some new analytics for podcasts. And if Apple is

01:04:00   going to do any analytics, this is the right way to do it. So it's all anonymized data

01:04:06   and using aggregate listener behavior. And this will be statistics and analytics for

01:04:11   what the Apple Podcasts app can work out from you listening on any of their platforms.

01:04:21   There are listener numbers. Now obviously these are just listeners that have just listened

01:04:25   inside of the Apple Podcasts app. And the big thing is that Apple is going to show podcasters

01:04:33   how many people are listening in Apple podcasts where they start, stop, and skip in the episodes.

01:04:43   So this is really interesting. So people are going to be able to find out where their listeners

01:04:53   are skipping ahead.

01:04:54   BRIAN KENNY Yeah, we've talked about this in the past

01:04:57   where we don't actually know generally if you play an episode. We only really know that

01:05:02   downloaded it. That's it. Like, that's that's it.

01:05:05   >> Well saw it stream in it. >> Yeah, exactly. So to have the actual play

01:05:12   number is huge, and then we're going to be able to know how long do people listen, and

01:05:18   where do they skip, and and how many of those things. And that's I think that's really valuable

01:05:23   because we're gonna just being on the positive side here, like, I think I think knowing when

01:05:32   people tune out on a long podcast is really useful.

01:05:36   And if you do ads, knowing that you should probably

01:05:39   put your ads when people are listening

01:05:41   and not when they've tuned out.

01:05:42   'Cause I've been on long podcasts

01:05:44   where the ads are in the first hour.

01:05:46   And I've been on long podcasts where the ads

01:05:48   are spread across two and a half hours.

01:05:51   And if I were the advertiser,

01:05:52   I'd probably prefer to be in the first hour

01:05:54   and not in, you know, at two hours and 10 minutes, right?

01:05:57   And so we'll have numbers that'll say,

01:05:59   "Oh, geez, yeah, we should not,

01:06:02   all the ads should be earlier on."

01:06:04   And it does mean that if those advertisers

01:06:05   get those numbers, they're gonna be able to say,

01:06:07   "I don't wanna be in the last half hour,

01:06:09   I wanna be in the first hour."

01:06:10   And that's fair.

01:06:12   It also lets us as podcasters know,

01:06:14   "Oh, you know what?

01:06:15   Doing those two hour shows, nobody likes it.

01:06:17   They never get to the end.

01:06:18   They run out of, their patience ends

01:06:20   after an hour and 15 minutes.

01:06:21   Maybe we should shoot for that."

01:06:23   And I think that's really valuable too.

01:06:24   And we don't know that.

01:06:26   And then, yeah, we're gonna find out

01:06:27   what percentage of people skip podcast ads.

01:06:31   And you could argue that that will be bad

01:06:34   because the advertisers will get mad

01:06:36   because they'll know that.

01:06:37   But I don't know, in most,

01:06:39   there's a lot of complexity here, right, Myke?

01:06:41   Because like, if you're a brand advertiser,

01:06:44   who's like Coke, it's great.

01:06:45   Ford, you should buy a Ford truck.

01:06:47   It's different than if you're a direct response advertiser

01:06:49   who's paying for people to put in a code

01:06:54   or visit a URL where they know it came

01:06:57   from a particular podcast. It's a different kind of business and I'm not sure one of those

01:07:01   is as affected by it as the other is.

01:07:04   My take on this is that the reason that this is happening is because the New York-based

01:07:12   media of the world want to get companies like Coke to advertise on their shows, but can't

01:07:23   because Coke want to know exactly how many people are listening to their ad, which is

01:07:30   something we can't provide.

01:07:32   So these companies have been asking Apple to do this for a while and I'm happy that

01:07:37   what it seems that Apple is doing or at least beginning with is basic and it's anonymized

01:07:41   because the whole of the thing that we were talking about before is how it could get really

01:07:45   bad. So I'm pleased that they're going down this route, at least if this is just the beginning,

01:07:51   at least showing good intentions with how they want to track it all. So the thing is,

01:07:57   how it's going to affect the medium as a whole is unknown. But if I was going to put money

01:08:04   on it, I don't think it's going to have a big effect. I think a lot of people are thinking

01:08:08   now, ah, well this means there's going to be no more advertising because no one listens

01:08:14   to the ads? Well I can tell you that people do. Because in case you hadn't noticed, basically

01:08:23   all of our advertisement ends in one of two things. Go to this URL, use this code. And

01:08:30   it is the redemption of visits of these two things combined with whatever the advertiser

01:08:36   wants to track plus any other measurements that they have for their own analytics and

01:08:42   their own performance, right? So like all they'll see is visits or redemptions. Now

01:08:46   they have their own internal metrics as to whether that's good for them or not,

01:08:50   right? They'll know what they're trying to meet target wise. The fact that these

01:08:54   are still happening and those advertisers keep coming back shows you

01:08:59   that this is working. Now I will tell you, Squarespace, they're still tracking all

01:09:05   this stuff, right? They are an advertiser that you might think by this point has maybe

01:09:12   got enough but I can tell you that they still track it. They track those

01:09:17   redemptions like every other advertiser that I know that uses this stuff and we

01:09:21   have some advertisers that all they're doing is just trying to get their name

01:09:24   out to the world and they may be the ones that become the most interested in

01:09:27   how many people are actually listening. That's what I was going to say is I

01:09:31   actually think this is going to be really great for brand advertising and

01:09:33   Squarespace I think is an interesting example where because of the nature of

01:09:36   the medium Squarespace has been doing direct response in their advertising and

01:09:40   and measuring it because how else do you measure podcast advertising effectiveness?

01:09:45   It's either that or how many jokes are made about Squarespace because everybody hears their ads on

01:09:50   podcasts. But like how do you do it? Direct response is the only way, which is funny because what I

01:09:54   would argue Squarespace has been doing all along is running a branding campaign. Ultimately what

01:09:58   they want is not, they don't expect you're necessarily going to start a website now,

01:10:02   but they are expecting that when you think of starting a website, you'll think, "Oh,

01:10:06   I could do that on Squarespace and then sign up maybe with a code or maybe just on your own.

01:10:11   But if you're Coke, if you're Ford, if you're somebody like that, that's a pure brand advertiser,

01:10:15   like they can't, they could say visit ford.com/podcast123, right? But they don't want to do

01:10:23   that. So for them, they're going to be able to go to a, and it's not going to be us, right? It's going

01:10:28   to be a giant ad sales network like Midroll maybe and say, we want to buy these podcasts and get

01:10:36   feedback back of like how many listens we got and maybe they will be able to do that.

01:10:42   What I expect what will happen is they will go, it will basically be the way that newspaper

01:10:49   advertising and TV advertising and billboards work.

01:10:53   Where what will most likely happen is they will go to an ad buying agency, either someone

01:10:58   like a mid-roll or someone like a just a traditional media buyer, like CBS or someone like that

01:11:07   who put things into billboards and stuff like that. And they will say we want to reach 10

01:11:13   million podcast listeners. And these are the types of shows we want and these are the types

01:11:20   of shows we don't want. We want comedy, we don't want technology. And then a company

01:11:25   like the Mid-Royal will go, "Okay, we will get you those listens," and then they will

01:11:29   just spread it all out, right? And I think that some of the direct response stuff I believe

01:11:34   is actually done this way. So some of the companies that are doing this, the current

01:11:40   advertising that you're hearing, they go to an agency and say, "We want this on these

01:11:44   types of shows," and then those agencies will pitch to them, "These are the shows

01:11:48   that we think will fit for you." So there's a bit of that done right now.

01:11:52   That's what happens with the ads on the incomparable. Those are all part of bulk buys,

01:11:57   mineral cells.

01:11:59   So for me, I'm not worried about this more than I am any other change and honestly I'm

01:12:05   worried about this less just because over the time that we've been running this company,

01:12:12   lots of things have changed and there have been lots of things I've been worried about

01:12:15   but nothing has affected it in the grand scheme of things.

01:12:19   So really, I'm assuming there is a percentage

01:12:23   of our audience that are skipping, but it's still fine.

01:12:27   Right, like the advertising that we're doing,

01:12:30   which I am managing still, and have been mostly

01:12:35   since the beginning of the company.

01:12:37   I know the relationships are good,

01:12:38   I know that the redemptions are good,

01:12:40   so I'm comfortable with it.

01:12:41   I don't think it's gonna change.

01:12:43   Maybe people will want numbers differently

01:12:45   and there will be some stuff that we'll be able

01:12:47   to give people and some stuff that we want.

01:12:48   And that could change some prices,

01:12:50   but honestly I don't think it's gonna be a lot, if anything.

01:12:54   But what it might do is open us up to some companies

01:12:56   that wouldn't have taken us before.

01:12:58   So I think that could be really interesting.

01:13:00   We could get companies like Ford.

01:13:03   It has been a long-term dream of mine to get a car company.

01:13:06   I don't know why, it's just something I thought

01:13:07   would be kind of funny ever since I've watched like Mad Men.

01:13:10   Because for advertising agencies, they all want a car,

01:13:13   So I'm like, well, I work on a car advertise, you know?

01:13:15   So that could happen now because it's a different type

01:13:18   of reporting that we're able to give,

01:13:20   where we can give more numbers than the company themselves

01:13:24   can work out, right, 'cause there's no code redemptions

01:13:26   and stuff, but the problem that we're gonna have

01:13:30   is that Apple podcasts are in the inverse,

01:13:34   percentage-wise, I believe, to most of the shows

01:13:38   that you may know of in the bigger space.

01:13:41   So like, I will say like for this show,

01:13:45   I expect that Apple Podcasts app

01:13:48   is less than 30% of our downloads.

01:13:50   Because it's difficult to tell,

01:13:53   because currently anything listened to

01:13:55   on any Apple platform is reported as one thing,

01:13:59   which is like this core media thing that Apple have.

01:14:03   So like it could be people listening in Safari,

01:14:05   it could be people listening in iTunes, like whatever.

01:14:09   but it's probably around a third.

01:14:11   Now that means that our numbers will be very different

01:14:15   to some other companies.

01:14:16   So we will have to extrapolate.

01:14:18   And also they may not be proportional

01:14:21   to our entire audience, either negatively or positively.

01:14:25   So unless other applications start doing this,

01:14:29   which some may, some may not,

01:14:30   I know lots of people that make them

01:14:32   and I haven't asked anyone.

01:14:34   Honestly, I've not spoken to anyone about this.

01:14:36   I haven't spoken to Russell about this.

01:14:37   I haven't spoken to the Cashflow team about this.

01:14:39   I haven't spoken to Marco about this.

01:14:40   Like I know these people

01:14:41   and I'm not talking to them about it yet because whatever,

01:14:44   maybe we will at some point.

01:14:46   But I think that everyone will be waiting to see

01:14:49   how this goes with Apple

01:14:50   before considering to do it themselves.

01:14:52   This is something that any podcast app can do by the way.

01:14:56   - So I don't, my gut feeling is that nobody else

01:14:58   is going to feel the need to do it

01:15:01   or really any reason to do it.

01:15:03   For the reason that you just described,

01:15:05   which is, I think, Apple's--

01:15:08   although for certain markets like ours,

01:15:11   Apple's stats may not be a great proxy,

01:15:16   because it may be that if it's only 30% of relay listeners,

01:15:20   I just looked, it only seems to be about 25%

01:15:27   of incomparable listeners.

01:15:29   I would say that that relay--

01:15:30   I meant upgrade, by the way.

01:15:32   Oh, yeah, OK.

01:15:33   It's different across the entire network.

01:15:34   different on every show, right? But for these tech-skewed ones, like half of the Incomparable's

01:15:39   listeners are on Overcast, right? I mean, that's not normal in the industry, but it's

01:15:45   sort of fitting for where we are. So the argument would be, well, the people who tend to listen

01:15:51   in Overcast are a different kind of person with different behavior than the person who

01:15:56   listens in the Apple podcast app, and therefore the Apple stats are not applicable necessarily

01:16:01   as applicable as to the, you know, something like cereal where it's probably a much larger

01:16:05   percentage. But I think the argument would be that the Apple stuff is going to be the

01:16:10   best proxy for the market as a whole, for the larger market, and that the smaller markets

01:16:15   aren't going to be worth the podcast ad, podcast advertisers, or I mean podcast app developers

01:16:22   adding in stats because they're going to be such small numbers that they're not going

01:16:25   to really be particularly applicable either. And one of the ways you differentiate yourself

01:16:30   from Apple is by saying we don't track you.

01:16:33   Which is probably what Overcast will do, is my guess.

01:16:36   It's just like, that's great.

01:16:38   We won't track you.

01:16:40   So if you don't like Apple tracking every pause and play

01:16:42   and ad skip in your podcast app,

01:16:45   'cause that's gonna happen now,

01:16:46   then use a third party instead.

01:16:48   - They are doing that, right?

01:16:50   Like I say it's anonymized,

01:16:52   but they are anonymizing the data

01:16:54   that they're providing to people.

01:16:56   They are tracking in some way.

01:16:57   - Yeah, just like many apps do,

01:16:59   But yeah.

01:17:00   What they're probably doing here is, I say any app can do this, what they're probably

01:17:06   doing is just tracking the play pause for their syncing between devices, which any app

01:17:12   can do.

01:17:13   But they are choosing to actually take that data and do something with it, as opposed

01:17:19   to it just being a syncing system.

01:17:21   That's what I assume is going on, right?

01:17:23   But they're taking that information and making that data available, even though it's anonymized.

01:17:28   So there is an element of them keeping data about you, which I don't believe any other

01:17:36   application is doing, past the point where it would just override it for wherever you

01:17:40   are in that show.

01:17:42   If I'm making sense here, my assumption would be that for other applications, they're just

01:17:46   like wherever you are in that current episode, that's kind of the information that's been

01:17:50   synced to the cloud.

01:17:51   But Apple is now storing that information because they are like, you skip to here, okay,

01:17:56   we'll store that, store that.

01:17:57   storing each of these data points that they're keeping, which I don't believe other applications

01:18:02   are doing, right? They would probably just override the information for their syncing

01:18:06   system.

01:18:07   I wouldn't surprise—I mean, like, my guess is that all of the company-owned apps are

01:18:16   tracking—like Stitcher. I would imagine Stitcher is—since Midroll bought Stitcher,

01:18:20   I'd imagine Stitcher is tracking everything, and Midroll is probably using that as a proxy

01:18:25   to get some ideas about user behavior. And that this will be a much better proxy because

01:18:32   it's a huge sample size. Although, something else we should talk about, how Apple's going

01:18:36   to make this available. It sounds like it's going to be available to the owner of the

01:18:39   podcast in iTunes.

01:18:40   David: Yeah, in Podcast Connect.

01:18:42   Tim: Yeah, so the logistics issue is going to be like, if you're the owner, you have

01:18:48   to get it out of there. If you're somebody who has an ad network you're working with,

01:18:52   going to have to like export the data and provide it to them. There's going to be some

01:18:56   challenges with how that is structured. That'll have to come up. I realize this is inside

01:19:00   baseball, but it's like, you know, it, this is the start of a process that may lead to

01:19:03   way better data and may change the way that this all works, but it is just a step along

01:19:08   the way and there's way more that has to happen and it won't be a catch all. But I do think

01:19:12   that in the end for most people, this will be a proxy for all podcast behavior because

01:19:20   because Apple owns so much of this market.

01:19:23   I'm interested to see how it will affect shows like ours.

01:19:27   I expect honestly not massively because the companies that we're working with

01:19:31   we've been working with already

01:19:33   so they know how it works and how it doesn't and we may provide this

01:19:36   information

01:19:37   we may not. I mean

01:19:40   I haven't decided how we're gonna work with this yet honestly like we're gonna

01:19:44   have this information

01:19:45   we don't have to give anybody anything like I'll tell you now like I don't even

01:19:49   I give total download numbers to sponsors when they ask it, but I give no proof of it

01:19:54   other than what I'm telling them.

01:19:57   They don't get screenshots from me or anything like that.

01:19:59   I give the information and there is an expectation that the honesty is maintained.

01:20:04   And it is.

01:20:05   I give people the numbers that they need, but that's all anybody gets right now.

01:20:09   There's no other information provided.

01:20:11   So I'm interested to see how that goes as well.

01:20:14   Like will we just provide this information?

01:20:16   Will people want proof of this information?

01:20:17   I don't know.

01:20:18   That's why I don't know how we will deal with it yet.

01:20:21   Because as well, I don't even know

01:20:22   if I'm ever gonna be asked for it.

01:20:24   Because if we continue working with companies

01:20:26   in the same way that we have now,

01:20:27   then it doesn't make a difference.

01:20:28   And I do believe, honestly, that if the industry,

01:20:32   outside of the industry remains as it is right now,

01:20:35   companies getting their own data

01:20:37   is way better than the data that I give them.

01:20:40   Like a company knowing how many code redemptions they've had

01:20:43   is better, and honestly as well,

01:20:45   Ads with discount codes work better than ads without,

01:20:49   because people are getting something.

01:20:52   So I'm keen to see how it all unfolds,

01:20:55   and I guess there's gonna be a lot more as the year goes on,

01:20:58   and then more to say once it actually happens.

01:21:00   But I will tell you honestly,

01:21:02   I am not worried about this at all.

01:21:04   Uncertainty is concerning,

01:21:07   but I honestly don't believe

01:21:09   there's gonna be any major changes,

01:21:10   because I also don't think it's a large percentage

01:21:13   of our audience that do skip.

01:21:14   I don't because otherwise my business

01:21:16   would have failed before now.

01:21:18   Right, if there were not enough people

01:21:21   to justify the ad spend buying the products,

01:21:23   our business would have folded a long time ago.

01:21:26   And I don't think that this is the case, right?

01:21:29   I just don't, I think that we're fine.

01:21:33   I think that the, well I know the advertisers are happy.

01:21:36   So any extra data will be nice,

01:21:38   but I don't see it making massive changes to our business.

01:21:41   So that is your Inside Baseball for this week's episode.

01:21:44   Yeah, I think we will learn more about podcast behavior and that will be interesting.

01:21:48   There could be some stuff that we will want to change. I mean, I'll tell you right now,

01:21:53   I'm not going to pay episode to episode focus on this, right? Like, "Oh no, people didn't

01:22:00   like that ten minutes in that last episode. We can never talk about that again." Because

01:22:04   I don't think that's healthy and I don't think that it will be completely accurate, so I

01:22:08   don't want to be a slave to those numbers. But if I can look at a specific show and be

01:22:12   like every single episode nobody listens to specific 15 minutes and maybe we'll want to

01:22:18   change it but honestly I feel like that's the sort of information if it was like widespread

01:22:24   that we would have heard by now.

01:22:26   Yeah.

01:22:27   That people would have told us "oh I hate Ask Upgrade don't ever do that again."

01:22:30   I think we would have and no one's ever said that so.

01:22:32   Right but I still feel like if you're doing a podcast that's regularly two hours long

01:22:38   and you get feedback that the last half hour you have like 15% of the people listening.

01:22:43   Maybe your podcast is too long.

01:22:44   That's what I mean. That's what I'm saying. Like, if there is data that is clear for every

01:22:48   single episode, then maybe we would want to change something. But what I'm saying is that

01:22:52   I don't want to check every episode and like look specifically when did people tune out.

01:22:56   Oh God, what did we say? Oh, they hated when we talked about, you know, yeah.

01:22:59   I don't think it's healthy because you don't get any context around it, right? And there

01:23:03   could be some just wide-scale thing that happened which meant nobody listened, right? But it

01:23:08   doesn't… yeah, so I just think that I personally find it unhealthy to track statistics that

01:23:15   closely and so I won't be, but I will use it the way that I use any numbers in that

01:23:19   I will look at them every now and then and then maybe make some changes.

01:23:24   Yeah, yeah, that's… I think we talked about this when we talked about ads the last

01:23:28   time that I never, I try very hard not to look at web stats and it's for the same reason

01:23:33   is that it gets in your head and you start to chase the statistics and the statistics

01:23:37   are not what that chasing statistics does not make for good material. That's you can't

01:23:42   have that be the thing that's in your head. So for that, yeah, I don't want to, I'm not

01:23:47   going to, I'm not going to care, but a very broad aggregate that could be really useful

01:23:51   and let's, what we're talking about here in the end is that the thing we do for a living

01:23:56   has provided almost no information about how people actually use it, so we all just have

01:24:01   to extrapolate. And this is going to give us some idea, and we'll learn some things

01:24:06   from it, and that's great in general. And I'm open to learning from the broad swath

01:24:13   of data, right? I think that'll be really interesting and could be good and could help

01:24:17   us make podcasts that make the audience happier, and that's great.

01:24:23   the

01:24:37   If it's not, then maybe we can have some guests on again to talk about this at some point in the future.

01:24:42   Maybe so.

01:24:44   Alright, it's time for some Ask Upgrade. Today's Ask Upgrade is brought to you by our friends at Encapsula,

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01:25:55   upgrade time. Today's first question comes from Robin. What is your take on using the

01:26:00   iOS public beta on a secondary device with primary accounts like iCloud? Is it too risky?

01:26:08   So at the stage that we're at right now, I recommend that people only use secondary devices

01:26:14   with the iOS public beta. Jason, would you like to tell people what happened to you a

01:26:18   couple of days ago?

01:26:19   I installed the developer beta on a 9.7 inch iPad Pro,

01:26:24   which is a test system that I have.

01:26:26   It's not the system that I use.

01:26:28   I use a 12.9, but I do have a 9.7.

01:26:30   I use it to review accessories and all that.

01:26:33   Not anymore, right?

01:26:34   Now it's a goner,

01:26:36   but I installed it on there as an iOS 11 test.

01:26:40   It was great.

01:26:41   And then I tried to set a desktop wallpaper

01:26:43   and it died and wouldn't reboot.

01:26:48   and I had to reset it, put it into reset mode

01:26:52   and attach it to a Mac running iTunes

01:26:55   and reset it to get it to work again.

01:26:57   And that was in the first like hour that I used it.

01:26:59   So what I'm saying is definitely don't install this

01:27:03   on anything but a secondary device,

01:27:05   not a device you care about.

01:27:06   And in terms of iCloud stuff,

01:27:08   I've never had a problem with that.

01:27:09   I've never had an experience where,

01:27:11   I think iOS knows what to keep separate

01:27:15   in terms of devices and I don't think it's risky.

01:27:19   I've never seen an issue with it.

01:27:20   - There was one release, I think it was iOS 7,

01:27:25   it was either iOS 7 or iOS 8,

01:27:26   where if you signed in to iCloud,

01:27:30   it would destroy your iCloud,

01:27:33   like some functions of iCloud syncing

01:27:35   across all of your devices, right?

01:27:37   They were upgrading something or changing something

01:27:40   and if you did it, it was like, well now,

01:27:42   iCloud app syncing, or whatever it's called,

01:27:45   won't work on any device, right?

01:27:47   Like it just hosed it.

01:27:48   They did say that that was gonna happen though

01:27:52   in the release notes.

01:27:53   So I think by now it's known.

01:27:55   What I will say makes a big difference now

01:27:56   is that there is a public beta.

01:27:58   Apple would not do that for public beta, right?

01:28:01   The Your iCloud is not going to be intended

01:28:04   to be reset or killed if you're using the iOS public beta.

01:28:08   So I would say use the public beta

01:28:11   if you want to put it on any device that's important to you,

01:28:15   but still with caution, because for example,

01:28:19   your battery life may become atrocious, right?

01:28:22   Like these are some of the things that you have to accept.

01:28:25   But I recommend that you put it on a secondary device

01:28:28   and I will say, I use my own iCloud information.

01:28:32   I don't have a test iCloud account.

01:28:33   But it has happened in the past,

01:28:35   so just pay attention to the release notes

01:28:37   and the known issues before installing.

01:28:40   Tim asked, is it worth buying the 13" MacBook Pro with Touch Bar for the better processor

01:28:46   if I don't care about the Touch Bar?

01:28:49   I will say, unless you intend to use the Touch Bar, I wouldn't get this machine. I used the

01:28:57   Touch Bar MacBook Pro for editing connected last week and I hated it. I found it really

01:29:04   distracting that the screen kept changing and in its current form which is that maybe a lot of apps

01:29:12   like there's still not still doesn't tend to be like a lot of really amazing functions for it

01:29:17   i don't know if i would enjoy using it on a daily basis like the fact that every time i switched app

01:29:21   the screen changed my peripheral vision was triggered and i would look down no i don't know

01:29:28   if this if people that use this every day all day still suffer with this issue but i think for me

01:29:34   personally it's not great. Also I would put my hands down on the keyboard and I

01:29:39   would accidentally trigger expose and stuff like that. I found it I found it

01:29:45   frustrating. If it was me I would go for the non Touch Bar MacBook Pro right now.

01:29:50   You've had you've had more time with a MacBook Pro. Does the distraction stop?

01:29:55   I I couldn't say I have I wouldn't say that I've spent enough time deep down in

01:30:00   on a Touch Bar MacBook Pro to make a decision about that.

01:30:04   Did you find it distracting like I did though?

01:30:06   I didn't find it distracting, no.

01:30:08   Okay, so maybe this is just a personal preference thing, so try and use it in a store maybe

01:30:11   first.

01:30:12   No, I think if you don't, well, because the premise of this question is the processor,

01:30:18   even if you don't care about the Touch Bar, and my answer to that is no, don't get the

01:30:22   Touch Bar if all you care about is the processor, because you can get the MacBook Escape, the

01:30:26   13-inch without Touch Bar, and you can add $300 to it, which is bill to order, it brings

01:30:30   it up to $1799 which is the cost of the base Touch Bar configuration and that is

01:30:35   a I know the gigahertz looks lower than on the base of the of the Touch Bar

01:30:40   because it's a 2.5 but it's a 2.5 gigahertz i7 that turbo boosts up to 4

01:30:46   gigahertz that is probably going to be a faster processor than the processor in

01:30:50   the Touch Bar the base Touch Bar so unless you unless you're planning on

01:30:55   buying a Touch Bar you don't want and having it be a high-end one with a

01:30:58   high-end build-to-order processor. I think if you don't care about the Touch Bar

01:31:01   you're better off just buying the MacBook escape and maybe spending that

01:31:07   extra $300 on the faster on the i7 processor. But that depends on how you're

01:31:12   going to use it for. Just bear in mind you will lose Touch ID and you will

01:31:18   certainly have two Thunderbolt 3 ports so it's just something to bear in mind.

01:31:22   Right. If I was making that choice right now I think I would go without the

01:31:27   touch bar on this model personally.

01:31:29   - Yeah, me too.

01:31:31   - Chris wants to know, do you use a screen protector

01:31:34   on your iPad with the Apple Pencil?

01:31:35   I'm worried that it might scratch,

01:31:37   but I don't want to lose screen sensitivity.

01:31:40   So no, I have never,

01:31:41   and this is absolutely nothing to worry about.

01:31:43   These devices are made to work together.

01:31:46   The Apple Pencil does not scratch the iPad screen.

01:31:49   I have used an Apple Pencil on an iPad for 18 months,

01:31:53   and there has never been a scratch given

01:31:55   to the screen from the Pencil.

01:31:57   Like I would not worry about this at all.

01:31:59   Would you agree? - Yeah, agreed.

01:32:01   - Yeah, it's like if it scratched that screen,

01:32:04   Apple would be the worst company ever, right?

01:32:06   Like that would be such a bad decision,

01:32:09   like just to not bother testing it well enough

01:32:11   that you wouldn't know that.

01:32:13   It does not scratch it.

01:32:14   You don't need to worry about it.

01:32:16   Paul asked if I will upgrade to High Sierra.

01:32:19   Slowly, I mean, I just upgraded my iMac to Sierra

01:32:25   and I'm having some slight issues regarding audio which I didn't have before Sierra

01:32:30   and I upgraded it to Sierra because there was some software that I needed to use that had to have Sierra

01:32:34   I would still not be using Sierra if I didn't need that software

01:32:38   and this is because

01:32:40   for the exact reason that I'm having some weird audio bugs right now

01:32:44   I don't like to upgrade the machine that I record the shows on

01:32:47   because if it's working fine

01:32:50   don't jeopardise that

01:32:52   because I don't care about the Mac enough that I have to be on the latest and greatest.

01:32:56   I'm not using it for fun, right? Like, I'm using it to sit down, record and edit and publish a show,

01:33:02   and then I go back to my iPad again. So having just the most stable machine is all I care about.

01:33:08   I do security updates, but I'm not fussed about macOS feature updates now. So I'm frustrated that

01:33:15   Sierra has introduced some bugs that Yosemite didn't have. Wait, was I using Yosemite? What

01:33:21   what was I using before this, Jason?

01:33:22   I can never remember the names now.

01:33:24   - El Capitan. - El Capitan.

01:33:25   El Capitan had no problems for me,

01:33:28   and Sierra has some problems.

01:33:29   So, hey, this is why I don't upgrade.

01:33:33   - Sorry, and yet you do upgrade every week?

01:33:37   - I know, but I will upgrade everything else

01:33:40   as quickly as I can, just not this machine.

01:33:42   - I will almost certainly upgrade to Hi Sierra,

01:33:45   because I'll be using the betas over the summer,

01:33:47   'cause, hi, because that's the,

01:33:50   I need to know about it, right?

01:33:53   But I did, you know, for a while with Yosemite, I think,

01:33:58   I had to like reboot into the previous version

01:34:02   in order to record podcasts

01:34:05   because there were horrible USB audio bugs.

01:34:07   And so that's the thing that remains.

01:34:09   A question is, can I use this for my day-to-day system

01:34:14   or do I have to sequester it?

01:34:15   And that, you know, there's no way to tell now.

01:34:18   Like literally I'll find that out by trying it out and discovering whether it's a disaster or not.

01:34:23   And there's no way to tell because it'll be some bug somewhere that might get introduced that

01:34:27   if it doesn't get fixed precludes me from using it.

01:34:30   Mickey wants to know, "Is it possible to use the iPad Pro's smart connector for docking

01:34:37   an iPad Pro like the Nintendo Switch?" Jason?

01:34:42   Yeah, there's a thing called the Logitech Base that's a hundred bucks.

01:34:48   Which did not get a great review from you.

01:34:51   I don't understand quite why you'd want it, but it is a piece of metal with a smart connector on it.

01:34:57   And so you put it somewhere and then you drop an iPad onto it and it's connected and that means that it's charging.

01:35:05   Unfortunately, you know, it doesn't really offer other things.

01:35:07   It's not like there's a full featured dock

01:35:10   that will improve your connectivity in some way.

01:35:15   It doesn't attach to a keyboard or anything like that.

01:35:20   It's literally just a sort of slow,

01:35:23   because it's via the smart connector,

01:35:24   charger for your iPad.

01:35:27   I don't, yeah, I don't see the point, but it does exist.

01:35:33   - If you need that.

01:35:33   And it's one angle.

01:35:38   So it's not like it's an adjustable angle,

01:35:40   it's just a piece of metal in a curve.

01:35:42   So it's an interesting idea.

01:35:45   I don't really, it does not appeal to me at all,

01:35:48   but, and it's not like they make,

01:35:50   there's nothing that is, you drop in to the smart connector

01:35:53   and you get video out or something like that.

01:35:55   I don't think a smart connector can do

01:35:57   the high transfer of data anyway.

01:36:00   There may be, somebody may have made some dock,

01:36:02   I don't know that uses lightning to like you pop it in somewhere and things happen but

01:36:07   basically no. So no.

01:36:09   Yeah the docking like the Nintendo Switch I think what Mykey or Mickey is relating to

01:36:13   is just the easy put input out because it doesn't click in you just drop it into the

01:36:18   dock so that's what the Logitech base would provide you that there isn't like a lightning

01:36:23   port that you need to find it just finds its way in itself.

01:36:27   And will charge from that very slowly.

01:36:29   Gary wants to know what are your favourite iOS games for long plane rides?

01:36:34   So obviously I can speak to this. I like games that I can play for long stretches that are

01:36:38   simple whilst listening to podcasts is typical for me. So my kind of long term games for

01:36:44   this are Threes, Altos Adventure and Mini Metro. They are games that you can play kind

01:36:50   of without a lot of thought for long periods of time. I was playing some Monument Valley

01:36:56   2 on the plane, but that's not necessarily something that I would recommend for the way

01:37:01   that I usually play stuff because Monument Valley 2 usually listens to the audio and

01:37:04   I like to listen to podcasts when I'm on the plane.

01:37:07   I am taking my time with Monument Valley 2, which by the way I am so excited is available.

01:37:15   What a great surprise and I'm very excited to play more of it.

01:37:18   But they are the games that I play on planes.

01:37:20   Do you play any games on planes, Jason?

01:37:22   Yeah, that's what I was going to say is I don't... games is not a thing I do on planes

01:37:25   generally.

01:37:26   I get that. On a plane, I am editing a podcast, I am reading a book, or I'm watching a movie

01:37:32   or a TV show, but playing games on planes? Nah. Not for me.

01:37:36   That's not the Snell way. No.

01:37:40   Alright that is it for this week's episode. As always you can send in your questions for

01:37:44   us to answer at the end of the show with #askupgrade and our beginning of the show question, which

01:37:48   is #snelltalk. Remember Snell Talk is for just esoteric questions. If you're looking

01:37:53   for more in detail questions about technology. Keep those for Ask Upgrade. I know we have

01:37:59   lots of hashtags and lots of questions and I appreciate every single one of you that

01:38:03   sends in one every week or whenever you do them. I really appreciate it. Please continue

01:38:08   to send those in because it helps us make the show. So thank you for that. And also

01:38:13   thank you for listening. If you listen to all of the show or part of the show or you

01:38:17   skip certain parts of the show, we'll know soon. But I still want to thank you for doing

01:38:21   it anyway. If you want to find Jason online you can find him at SixColors.com and he is

01:38:26   @JSnell on Twitter and of course at TheIncomparable as well. TheIncomparable.com. I am @imike,

01:38:32   I M Y K E. Thanks to Encapsular, MailRoute and Blue Apron for supporting this week's

01:38:38   show and thank you as always for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, say

01:38:43   goodbye Jason Snell. Goodbye everybody.

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