0:00:00[Music]
0:00:08From Relay FM, this is Upgrade episode 142. Today's show is brought to you by MailRoute,
0:00:16PDFPEM9 from SMILE, and Encapsula. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Mr. Jason Snell.
0:00:24Hi, Jason Snell.
0:00:25Don't panic. Sorry, it's 142 so I have to do a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference.
0:00:29Oh, of course you do.
0:00:30Any 42 increments. So there it is. Don't panic. Always know where your towel is,
0:00:33Myke. Always know where your towel is.
0:00:35I would be crazy to know too. Jason, Matthew wants to know for #SnellTalk,
0:00:41what is your most anticipated movie or TV show for this coming year?
0:00:45It's funny. I was just watching the first episode of Twin Peaks, which I probably wouldn't have
0:00:54have said anticipated because I sort of as somebody who was a really into that show when
0:00:59it was on 25 years ago, I am actually I was concerned about this being really bad but
0:01:06having watched the first 20 minutes it seems to be exactly the same as what the old show
0:01:10was which is weird and slow and deliberately frustrating the viewer and I was like, all
0:01:16right good. It's not it hasn't disappointed me yet. Anyway, it wouldn't count because
0:01:20I took this to mean in the next year, starting today, starting right now, in the next year,
0:01:25of the things that I know about, what's the thing that I'm anticipating the most.
0:01:28At this point, I will refer you to this weekend's episode of The Incomparable that was just
0:01:32posted which is all about our deconstruction of the trailer for the brand new Star Trek
0:01:37show, Star Trek Discovery.
0:01:39So that is my most anticipated thing in the next year.
0:01:41This fall, there will be a new Star Trek TV show and I am excited about it.
0:01:45How long has it been since there's been a Star Trek TV show?
0:01:48I don't know when Enterprise went off the air. A long time though, right? Like this
0:01:52many, many, many years. More than a decade. 2005 Enterprise went off the air. 2005. So,
0:01:59yeah, so 12 years, 12 plus years since the last Star Trek TV show. It's the longest gap,
0:02:06you know, basically since the original gap between Star Trek and Star Trek The Next Generation.
0:02:10So that was 17 years. 16, 18 years? Something like that. I've never seen Twin Peaks. It's
0:02:15weird. And I've never really watched Star Trek shows desirably. I just assume you haven't
0:02:21seen anything. I just go with that as the default. Twin Peaks was a real phenomenon
0:02:28at the time even when there was no social media or anything like that. It was a rapidly
0:02:33rising kind of fan culture. I went to a diner in San Diego to watch episodes of that with
0:02:39people who were fans of the show to watch it as it aired on ABC. I have a coffee mug,
0:02:44I still have it. I tweeted a picture of it the other day that a friend of mine got when
0:02:48he visited Snoqualmie, Washington, which is where they shot a lot of the exteriors of
0:02:52the show. And Twin Peaks Coffee Break mug, still have it. And now 25 years later, it's
0:02:58back. It's a weird show. It was weird at the time. It was so unlike anything on TV. And
0:03:03it'll be interesting to see how they did this year or the show this time. But it looks appropriately
0:03:10weird. So at least they got that going for it.
0:03:12I really don't want to be that guy and I'm so sorry to ask but 25 years ago how did you even
0:03:17find out that something like an event like that was going on? Well you know 25 years ago the media
0:03:22landscape in the United States at least was so flattened that there were three networks, I don't
0:03:30know if Fox even counted at that point, broadcast television networks and everything they showed
0:03:36it was easy to be aware of everything that was on but Twin Peaks was a phenomenon it got great
0:03:41ratings when it premiered and the question of who killed Laura Palmer that drove the
0:03:48first year and a bit of the show was a real zeitgeist kind of moment for television. So
0:03:57it was it just it spread it spread word of mouth and people tuned in for the pilot because
0:04:01they were intrigued by the promotion for it I guess and it just kind of kept going and
0:04:06then yeah I just heard from somebody that or maybe we even saw in an article in a newspaper
0:04:10that there were fans gathering at this diner, because a diner is a main set in Twin Peaks,
0:04:17and they were watching the show and I thought that would be fun and I went with some people
0:04:20to do that a couple of times. Yeah, it was a--and we had viewing parties at college too
0:04:26in somebody's apartment. They'll be like, "Come on over, we're all gonna watch this,"
0:04:29and you get 10, 12 people sitting in a living room watching a show together. It was pretty
0:04:33wild stuff, but it was definitely of the moment in the early 90s.
0:04:38If you have a question you would like us to talk about at the start of this show just
0:04:42send a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk and we'll include it.
0:04:46Let's do some follow up. I saw today that there are some new Nike plus bands Jason.
0:04:51These are all, there's four colours, they're going on sale at the start of June for $49
0:04:56each. They're all solid colours this time. I think with the include, actually not completely
0:05:02solid but they're not like massively contrasting colors you know like between the holes and
0:05:09the band right so like they are they're like a gray a blue a purple and a darker blue and
0:05:16they're meant to represent day to night so like a day to night schedule they all are
0:05:22to mirror a color of the sky and the holes you know like the holes in the nike plus bands
0:05:28the colors that they're filled in with a less like clashing this time so that doesn't stand
0:05:32out so much. These look really nice and they're going to be limited edition at select Nike
0:05:36stores, Apple stores and at Apple.com. So go check those out if you're interested.
0:05:43One of us is very interested in watch bands and the other one of us is not. So great.
0:05:48I haven't bought any in a while though so these ones, whilst they look nice, I'm not
0:05:54so interested in sport bands anymore. We're a couple of weeks away from WWDC so not only
0:06:01are our topics pretty much focused on that over this week and coming weeks and previous
0:06:08weeks, of course. So is our follow-up. A couple of things I want to let our listeners know
0:06:12about, Jason. The first off is a second meet-up that Relay FM is going to be putting on. So
0:06:19we had a meet-up, the tickets sold out incredibly quickly, and we have a really large waiting
0:06:23list. So we've teamed up with the Women@WWDC organization to host a meet-up at the AppCamp
0:06:30for girls benefit that they have every year. So this is the City National Civic, it's going
0:06:34to be on June 7th at 7pm. The tickets, you have to buy tickets for this, but their money
0:06:39supports a great cause which is AppCamp for Girls. So you'll be able to go to that event
0:06:43and we're going to have a little section inside of the City National Civic which is going
0:06:48to be dedicated for a Real AFM meetup. So there's going to be a bunch of hosts there
0:06:51who will be in attendance, we'll be there so come and say hi and you'll be able to feel
0:06:55good for supporting a really really great cause. There will be links in the show notes
0:06:59to for you to go and get yourself a ticket for that so come and say hi and
0:07:04maybe the most important news of the season next week will be the upgrade
0:07:10keynote draft for WWDC 2017 so we are frantically now putting together our
0:07:18list of rumors that we will be able to pick from for our draft there will be
0:07:23rules next week there were rules we have instituted a series of rules to try and
0:07:28make the the the the drafts as drafty as they can be.
0:07:32Well it's that sort of thing of does it does it get mentioned on stage versus is
0:07:36there a silent press release and we've got all those rules and and they will be
0:07:39enforced by Stephen Hackett in person in force right because we're all going to
0:07:43be at WWDC so he will be able to tick off as the keynote is going on you know
0:07:49yes Jason yes Myke you know and then we can argue about it a little bit but
0:07:53Stephen will be there to be the ultimate decider.
0:07:56if we cannot.
0:07:57- Yeah, basically Steven's role is in if me and Jason
0:07:59cannot come to an agreement on something,
0:08:02then we go to Steven as our adjudicator to help us.
0:08:05- Right, because if we can work it out amongst ourselves,
0:08:08I think that's fine, we don't need to have him.
0:08:10The worst thing would be if he came in and made a decision
0:08:12that we both disagreed with.
0:08:15- Exactly.
0:08:16- Nobody wants that.
0:08:17- Nobody wants that, so that's why we have him
0:08:20as an adjudicator.
0:08:21But if you have any suggestions of rumors for us to include,
0:08:25tweet them to me, I'm @imikeyke on Twitter.
0:08:29I'm going to be collecting those up
0:08:31and then me and Jason will make our silent choices
0:08:33of we need to decide how many rounds we're going to have.
0:08:35We haven't done that yet.
0:08:36And then we'll be doing our picks next week.
0:08:40- Yep.
0:08:41- All right, this week's episode is brought to you
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0:10:03So last week we were talking about some potential hardware that may be on stage at WWDC right?
0:10:08we were talking about Siri in a can, and we were talking about the 10.5 inch iPad which
0:10:13have both been rumoured by Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities.
0:10:17Well, since the episode is posted, Mark Gurman and Alex Webb at Bloomberg have proposed the
0:10:24idea that they, from sources who may be familiar with the matter, that Apple will be refreshing
0:10:31their laptop line at WWDC as well. This would include a new version of the 12" MacBook,
0:10:39the current MacBook Pros will receive faster Kaby Lake processors, and possibly new processors
0:10:50in the 13" MacBook Air. The argument they have made is that they are trying to compete
0:11:01with Microsoft's current offerings.
0:11:04(blows raspberry)
0:11:05Now, on this front, Jason, allow me to see if I can,
0:11:10can try and extract what they're getting at here.
0:11:13Because obviously, they are not trying to compete
0:11:17on sales here because I'm pretty sure,
0:11:21I mean, I don't have numbers, but just historic numbers,
0:11:24and just anecdotally, what you see out in the world,
0:11:26Apple will just like walk in the floor,
0:11:30like walking the floor and cleaning the floor
0:11:32with Microsoft sales of these products, right?
0:11:34Like MacBooks and MacBook Pros, you know.
0:11:39- We don't know what the Surface laptop will sell like though
0:11:41that is the first real like not weird tablet convertible
0:11:44thing that they've done in that line.
0:11:46So I think it's just a timing argument.
0:11:48The idea that Apple is going to ship presumably systems
0:11:53in mid June because Microsoft made an announcement in May
0:11:58is ludicrous because that's not enough time to do that. That strikes me as being a very
0:12:07narrative, you know, layer of narrative frosting on top of this story, like how do we connect
0:12:13all these dots and make it seem like it's part of an ongoing narrative? They put in
0:12:17the Microsoft response thing. I think it might be a response to all the criticism of Apple
0:12:22not updating its products, especially its laptops, as often as it should, I think that's
0:12:29reasonable. I think that this may be a reaction to Apple learning that the way it was handling
0:12:33this was a mistake and they were being rebuked by people in the market. But as the idea that
0:12:39Apple saw the Surface laptop and went, "Oh no, what do we have? Can we put some new chips
0:12:44in things?" I'd come on. So, the way I read this or the way that I think about this, the
0:12:52The only way that I could assume that this is in response to Microsoft at all is just
0:12:57to change the PR narrative a little bit.
0:12:59Sure.
0:13:00Right?
0:13:01Like, like Apple has received criticism for their laptop offering, Microsoft is receiving
0:13:05praise.
0:13:06So like, they may have had this stuff like nearly ready, but didn't want to pollute WWDC
0:13:10with it.
0:13:11But now they're like, spend five minutes, put it on a slide and it's there.
0:13:13Yeah, I mean, it's possible.
0:13:15That's the sort of thing you can do.
0:13:16But the products have to be there.
0:13:18The products with the updates have to be there.
0:13:20And if this is an impetus to ship them at a particular time or announce them at a particular
0:13:24time, fair enough.
0:13:25I mean, I definitely, when I wrote my piece the other week about comparing the Surface
0:13:28laptop to Apple stuff, it was very clear that the strongest argument was they need to be
0:13:33refreshed, right?
0:13:34It's not that, oh, Microsoft got you, you can't catch up.
0:13:37It's like, no, you're out of step.
0:13:39Microsoft's got one step ahead because they've got the newer processors.
0:13:42And if you refresh your product line, you could probably, if you're Apple, get back
0:13:46in line and have it not be an issue anymore.
0:13:49This is all true. It's just a better story that way. And I think maybe the way to really
0:13:55say it is everybody kind of caught Apple sleeping and then Microsoft releases products in that
0:14:01category and everybody says, "See, Apple is sleeping." But it's more, that's not quite
0:14:07cause and effect there. But I'm intrigued by this story. There are two aspects of it.
0:14:13There's what Apple is doing here and there's the WWDC question, which is actually feeds
0:14:19into our more esoteric keynote bingo issue, which is, if Apple did this, how would they
0:14:27do it? And then separately, like I said, the what of it. What is this that they would be
0:14:33doing? And they're both interesting questions, I think.
0:14:37I don't know how I feel about this one, honestly.
0:14:41Search your feelings, Myke.
0:14:42I just think that if all it is is processor updates, like that's pretty much all there's
0:14:49going to be for the Pro line. I don't know if I see them putting it on stage.
0:14:56The wording of the 12-inch MacBook is "new version," right? So it might be something
0:15:02more substantive, but if you think about how Apple does most of their presentations, and
0:15:06the WWDC presentations are a little bit different, but they're all still in the ballpark. There
0:15:10is usually an update section where they talk about all the product lines before they sort
0:15:14of dive into the details. They try to give you kind of a status report on other stuff
0:15:19that's going on at the company. And that can be an area that they want to highlight. It
0:15:23can be, we're going to talk about accessibility or we're going to talk about health. It could
0:15:26be we're going to talk about environmental stuff and sustainability. But they also will
0:15:32say, let me tell you how Apple Watch is doing. Now, because this is WWDC and there are going
0:15:37to be platform introductions, right? There is a basic level of like macOS, iOS, watchOS,
0:15:42and I would argue probably the Apple Watch goes into the watchOS section because there's
0:15:46not a lot there. Those are going to be the big topics of the day, right? Because that's
0:15:50the OS rollout opportunity. And tvOS, easy to forget, but still important. Sorry, Apple
0:15:57TV, tvOS as well, right? They're going to talk about the platforms. Totally going to
0:16:01do that. But they have the opportunity at the beginning to say, "Let me tell you how
0:16:04our Mac hardware business is doing. And within that, I think it is not unreasonable that
0:16:11you can slide in a product announcement. Like you could say, "Hey, people love..." Again,
0:16:17I'm going to do like I did on Six Colors last week when I wrote a fake introduction for
0:16:20the series speaker, like in dialogue of Tim Cook and Phil Schiller, which was really weird,
0:16:26but it was kind of fun to do it, fan fiction for Apple. They would say, "People love the
0:16:32MacBook, it's great. It's the best thing ever. People love it, right? Because that's what
0:16:35they always do. And they're like, but you know, we thought it could be better. And people
0:16:39had some complaints and we took them to heart. And, uh, and today we're announcing that there's
0:16:44a whole new MacBook that's even better because it's got fill in the blank. If they, if they
0:16:49really have something that's a little bit different, it's got two ports, it's got Thunderbolt
0:16:53support, whatever, whatever it is that it's got, if they've got something that's substantially
0:16:58they could say that. And then in passing, they could probably say, "Also, we've heard
0:17:02the feedback. We know you want the latest and greatest Intel processors, so today the
0:17:06new MacBook Pros with Touch Bar are shipping with new Kaby Lake processors, and the MacBook
0:17:11Air, which continues to be an incredibly popular product with a certain set of customers, is
0:17:16being updated to the latest Intel Core i5 and i7 processors. Yay! Moving on." Right?
0:17:21I mean, that's all it takes, right? Is that they spend two minutes or three minutes on
0:17:25the MacBook if it truly is a sort of second generation body model instead of just a speed
0:17:32bump. And then they just mention it in an aside, because I think you wouldn't just
0:17:37relegate it to a press release. I think you'd mention it as an aside, because it's an
0:17:40applause line, right? Developers are going to applause if you say the MacBook Pros that
0:17:43we shipped last fall have just gotten turned over again with new processor generations.
0:17:48They know what that means and they care about that. So that's an applause line. You wouldn't
0:17:51forego applause on stage, right? You want the applause. So I could see that. And then
0:17:56if the MacBook is just a speed bump of the MacBook, then I still can see that in the
0:18:01Mac line, you'd say, "Today, we're making all three of these products better with new
0:18:08processors. Yay. Everybody applaud." And then, you know, and maybe they say, "You know, we're
0:18:12working on a new Mac Pro too, and that's coming because we love you." Moving on, right? There's
0:18:16room in there to do that and not make a big deal about it. It's not going to be like 20
0:18:22minutes about a new MacBook. That's not going to happen. But they could totally take five
0:18:27minutes to an anxious developer crowd who's probably a little frustrated with the pace
0:18:32of the change in the tools they use to develop software to get a little applause for saying
0:18:39we're going to show your product line some more love now.
0:18:44One other story that could be told with this, the thought around Apple this year has been
0:18:53like what are they doing?
0:18:56What is going on?
0:18:58And WWDC, we said this, I think I said this last week, it's the beginning of the year,
0:19:03right?
0:19:04Yeah.
0:19:05And it is a time where under the right circumstances, they can just blow us away.
0:19:12And I think of maybe two years ago when Swift was announced.
0:19:15So it was just so much stuff, right?
0:19:17Sure.
0:19:18In that announcement.
0:19:19And we were like, they could do this and be like, great, here's all this stuff we're doing
0:19:23on software on all of the platforms.
0:19:26Here are all these things we're doing on the iPad, fingers crossed.
0:19:29And like, oh, and by the way, here is this whole new Siri thing that we're doing.
0:19:33Oh, and also here is a new iPad, a new Siri in a can, refreshing all the MacBook lines.
0:19:40we're gonna give you a tingty bit more information
0:19:43about the MacBook Pro.
0:19:44Oh, and here's some changes we're making
0:19:46to the way that we deal with developers.
0:19:47Like, and just totally blow our hair back, right?
0:19:50And then we continue with the rest of the year that way.
0:19:53Like, this would be, if, like, I kind of imagine,
0:19:56like, if they have anything to say about a line,
0:19:59they'll say it, because it will give them
0:20:02a real kind of way to change the way
0:20:06that we're thinking about Apple right now.
0:20:07- Sure, change the narrative, absolutely.
0:20:09if they can just come in and be like,
0:20:10"Oh, but BT dubs, we've done everything on everything."
0:20:15And then we move on from there.
0:20:16- Let the year begin.
0:20:18Let the operating system turnover begin now.
0:20:22- Could be a way of doing it.
0:20:23- And I mean, and that's why I say,
0:20:25the question is not really, how would they do it?
0:20:30Or would they do it?
0:20:31The question is, will they do it?
0:20:33- And if so, why, right?
0:20:35Like, you know, will they do it?
0:20:36If so, why would they do it?
0:20:37I guess that's what we, that's the criminology, right? Is what we like to talk about.
0:20:40Well, I think what we want to see, what a lot of us want to see, what I want to see,
0:20:45is I want to see, this rumor makes me think, we could see from Apple a commitment,
0:20:52maybe even spelled out, but if not, then in actions that the Macs are going to get turned
0:20:57over faster. Right? I mean, and the only way to really do that, you could say, we're going to do
0:21:02it more. They sort of said that in the Mac Pro like little sit-down briefing thingy,
0:21:08right? But you got to show it. So if the next thing they do at WWDC is turn over the laptops
0:21:13and say all new processors, right? There's still a question like, "And where's the iMac?"
0:21:18But this is an opportunity for them to show it. Like we have a laptop that we shipped
0:21:23in October with a processor. A new processor from Intel has come out since then. We're
0:21:30updating those today, it's not even been a year, with the new processor because we know
0:21:33you want the latest and greatest, right? They could make that case and that would be interesting.
0:21:38The question is, will they do that? The rumor is that they will and I think that's great
0:21:42news if it happens and it'll be interesting to see if they also use it to tell a larger
0:21:47story or if they just say, very matter-of-factly, like, "We know you want this. Here it is,"
0:21:53right? Moving on and then go on to the next thing.
0:21:56I'm most excited about the MacBook because, as I've been talking about, I think since
0:22:00the MacBook came out, I feel like all along I've been thinking, a second generation of
0:22:06this where they maybe back off on a little bit of the extremeness of the product or tech
0:22:12advances enough that they can add some stuff in without backing off on how extreme the
0:22:17product is, would really excite me.
0:22:20Like the idea of a MacBook with GASP two ports.
0:22:24That would be really good.
0:22:25That'd be really exciting.
0:22:27- Can they give it its MacBook Air moment?
0:22:29- Right, right, 'cause that's the question.
0:22:31And then there's also a question about like the MacBook Air
0:22:34that we've had, this rumor, I kinda love this rumor.
0:22:36I was listening to the ATP guys talk about it last week.
0:22:39The idea that the MacBook Air would get a processor change
0:22:41'cause it hasn't really changed in two years.
0:22:43They're just, they're selling an old model
0:22:45of an old laptop because people still want it
0:22:47and they want something under $1,000, right?
0:22:49And it's a 999, 13-inch MacBook Air.
0:22:52But I love this move if they did this, I love it.
0:22:55because yeah, it's a MacBook Air,
0:22:58it doesn't have a retina screen.
0:22:59I've got one right here.
0:23:01There are three in my house.
0:23:02We have three MacBook Airs in my house
0:23:04that are used all the time.
0:23:06Mine, my wife's and my son's.
0:23:08And we love them.
0:23:11And it's two years old.
0:23:14It's like, there's really nothing stopping Apple
0:23:17from just dropping a new Intel processor in there
0:23:19and keeping it going and saying, look, it's still $999.
0:23:22It still doesn't have a retina.
0:23:23If you want that, we've got other products for you,
0:23:26but if you want a Mac under $1,000,
0:23:28it's better than it was.
0:23:29And kind of accepting that people are still buying it,
0:23:31so you might as well make it more modern
0:23:34without having to do all the work of re-engineering it.
0:23:37They're not gonna build a new, like next generation
0:23:39MacBook Air with all the guts ripped out, right?
0:23:41They did that.
0:23:42It's the MacBook or the MacBook escape.
0:23:46But it's still on the price line,
0:23:48doesn't seem to be going away.
0:23:49They don't seem to be willing to take the MacBook
0:23:51and do what Microsoft did,
0:23:52which is do a really spec-stripped version for $9.99 that nobody's gonna really want
0:24:00and that isn't very good and then try to upsell you. That's what Microsoft's game is, is that
0:24:05that $9.99 Surface laptop, it has really poor specs, but it's $9.99. Apple seems to not
0:24:13want to do that. They seem to rather just keep selling the MacBook Air, which keeps
0:24:16So I love the idea that they would have enough pride in their product to say we shouldn't
0:24:23be selling a product with that old processor.
0:24:26It's also possible that that old processor is becoming decreasingly available and they
0:24:30need to replace it with a new processor just because that's what Intel is making now.
0:24:34That's also possible.
0:24:35Talking about pride in product though, there are other things in that MacBook Air that
0:24:41I don't think that they can be proud of in 2017.
0:24:45Like just the overall design of it, the screen, like that stuff is really old now.
0:24:50Like personally, I would just prefer to see the MacBook get good enough and cheap enough
0:24:54that the Air doesn't need to be around anymore.
0:24:56I think everybody would prefer that, and this rumor suggests that that's not going to happen
0:25:00this year.
0:25:01So this is where we are.
0:25:02Well unless they were able to keep the current version of the 12 inch and bump that down,
0:25:07make it cheaper.
0:25:08I know that it's not necessarily a replacement for the Air, but that computer is so old now.
0:25:16I know, but this is the thing, as somebody who uses a MacBook Air and has family members
0:25:21using the MacBook Air, it's still pretty great.
0:25:23I see why they sell a lot of them.
0:25:25I see it.
0:25:26I know that it's not a redness screen, but there are a lot of things, like people like
0:25:29it, people like that laptop.
0:25:31And I think if you're Apple, what you're probably doing is analyzing the margins.
0:25:37And the margins on the MacBook Air have to be great.
0:25:39And the margins on the MacBook may not be as great and certainly may not be able to
0:25:43be remotely kept at $999, right?
0:25:47So they don't do it because they've got to have the margins on their products.
0:25:50They've got to have profit of a certain percentage on every product they ship.
0:25:54And so if you do the math and you say, oh, MacBook Air is insanely profitable and people
0:25:59are still buying them even though these other products exist.
0:26:02So let's not give them a reason to stop buying it until we're ready to move down with the
0:26:07MacBook tech or the MacBook escape tech or both. And they'll get there, but it looks
0:26:13like they're just not there yet. And I think maybe they like the idea that there's a premium
0:26:17to be paid for a high resolution Mac laptop screen. But I agree with you, if they could
0:26:22get to $999 in a way that satisfies them with the MacBook, I think that would be a better
0:26:28thing for them to do. The problem is, if you look at what Microsoft is doing, which is
0:26:33a good direct analog, Microsoft only got there by stripping the RAM and storage down to what
0:26:40for Apple appears to be below bare minimum. Because I think it's two gigs and a 128 SSD
0:26:46in the Surface laptop at $999. It's just not, you know, Apple doesn't do that. They're not
0:26:52going to have a 2 gig of RAM laptop. It seems, unless they do, unless they decide to do that,
0:27:00but it seems like that's like, they're not going to go that low. Like if you want the
0:27:03MacBook, you got to pay, you got to pay up. And at that next level, at the price of the
0:27:06MacBook, the Surface laptop has the same specs, except it's got a better processor, but it's
0:27:11got the same RAM and storage. So I don't know. I'm okay with it, accepting the fact that
0:27:17if they're going to keep selling the MacBook Air, having it be a little bit, you know,
0:27:21a modern version of the processor that lives in it is better than having it be an ancient
0:27:28computer that they're still selling. I agree the best thing to do is get another laptop
0:27:32under $1,000 but it appears that they don't want to do that because of the margins.
0:27:39Last week we had Google I/O and you know so Google showed up what they're going to be
0:27:44doing over the coming year I guess and there were a few themes. Google was continuing their
0:27:50theme of machine learning in every product that they have and that every product physical
0:27:55and software that they produce has some kind of machine learning sprinkled into it. I feel
0:28:00like this is a meme right now in Silicon Valley, right, machine learning, but Google is the
0:28:07company that can convincingly show what they're doing with it. I think of everyone, they are
0:28:13the company that when they say we're going to add some machine learning to this, I'm
0:28:17"Yeah, do you know what? You probably are." And I believe that it's going to work, right?
0:28:22Because I think this machine learning trend has been started by Google, right? They started
0:28:26it a few years ago. And of maybe any company in the world, they are the ones that have
0:28:32the machines that can learn more than anybody else, right? Because there's just this sheer
0:28:36amount of data that they are able to pull in and gladly mine, right? As opposed to anybody
0:28:43So they have it and their products continue to show it.
0:28:47So you are a man who is synonymous with photos
0:28:51because of the books that you've written on iCloud.
0:28:54Google showed off a selection of features
0:28:56coming to Google Photos.
0:28:57And I wondered how-- if you could maybe sum up some
0:29:00of the ones that you think are most interesting
0:29:02and compare what you think considering to what Apple's
0:29:04currently offering.
0:29:06Yeah, there's a couple things.
0:29:07One of the interesting things, by the way,
0:29:09about machine learning is that Google--
0:29:11there's an article that I read that I
0:29:12I think it's in Fast Company that's by Harry McCracken about how Google is doing a lot
0:29:17of their in Android O, which is kind of boring, we can talk, there are a couple interesting
0:29:21things, but they're doing some machine learning stuff that is running on the phone. They have
0:29:28a version, a light version of their TensorFlow, which is their machine learning system that
0:29:35runs on phones. And that's because in a lot of contexts, you don't want to wait for data
0:29:41to pass up on the internet and be processed and passed back to your device, you want it
0:29:45instantly. And I think that's really funny because that means that Google is going to
0:29:49where Apple is for certain things because Apple has to be on the device because of their
0:29:54philosophy of not processing your data on the server. But Google sees value in that
0:30:00too. So it's kind of interesting that they're both doing some...
0:30:03So it makes them both, right? Like I think that's the key.
0:30:04They're both doing machine learning on the server or on the client. It's just on the
0:30:08server that Google has the advantage. And it's not, you know, it's not like Apple can't
0:30:13buy access to data streams to do machine learning. It's just that Google has these massive streams.
0:30:21But it's definitely an arms race in machine learning because, bottom line, we talk about
0:30:25this and this buzzword and for people out there who don't know or care, the idea here
0:30:31is that you can have the way, it's sort of how it does it, how it does the magic. So
0:30:37when we talk about photos, Google Photos has this ability to identify the
0:30:42contents of pictures and it does that not because there's a somebody wrote a
0:30:45program to identify what a cat looks like and it's not because there's people
0:30:51looking at your photos and saying there's a cat, it's because Google has
0:30:56trained this algorithm with a bunch of photos of cats and said these photos
0:31:00have in common that these are cats and these these photos do not have cats and
0:31:05machine learning allows them to have these huge data sets dumped into the
0:31:09software and then the software learns based on you telling it these are yes
0:31:14these are no over time the software learns how to differentiate between them
0:31:19instead of having a human being program the differentiation they the human just
0:31:24programs the the data set and the conditions and the the software sort of
0:31:32writes itself, which is incredibly powerful because this is stuff that would be very hard
0:31:36for a human to quantify, but if you dump a billion photos into an algorithm, it's a lot
0:31:42more efficient. So that's when we're talking about machine learning. It's a lot of stuff
0:31:46like that, of being able to take a bunch of data and make sense of it in a way that our
0:31:51brains probably also process data, right? But that is very different than a programmer
0:31:56sitting down and saying, "I'm going to try to write an algorithm that reads your email
0:31:59and determines whether it's happy or sad.
0:32:02Like that's not an efficient way to do that.
0:32:05So that's the background here.
0:32:07For photos, you know, Google Photos has been able
0:32:10to do a better job, I think in general than Apple's photos
0:32:13that they introduced with iOS 10 and Mac OS Sierra
0:32:18of identifying objects in photos.
0:32:20Like Google Photos has lots of things you can say,
0:32:22mountains and valleys and cows and things like that.
0:32:25And it can do that.
0:32:27It can do multiple items in a photo
0:32:28and it scanned, based on the machine learning,
0:32:32it scanned your photo library
0:32:33and it can pull out all the photos or a particular person.
0:32:35And Apple's Photos does some of that.
0:32:38It's a first release.
0:32:39And because of the way Apple does things,
0:32:41they don't have a backend server to keep tweaking.
0:32:44So Photos just sits there.
0:32:46And I assume we will see a progression of that announced
0:32:50at WWDC, the second take that Apple has done
0:32:53with their own machine learning on their photo library stuff.
0:32:56So Google's done that.
0:32:57Google's also added a feature that is the one that I think made me sit up and take notice,
0:33:01which is family sharing, where they're going to launch this thing with one other--you can
0:33:06share your photo library with one other person, and you can either choose that to be a very
0:33:10simple "I'm going to share this library with one other person."
0:33:15That's pretty cool because I've written about that a little bit.
0:33:19When we take trips, after a trip is over, I have to take my wife's iPhone and plug it
0:33:24into my Mac and import her photos because there's no way for us to say, "Look, we just
0:33:30want our photo library to be shared," right? Which for us is fine. That's all we really
0:33:36want. An iCloud photo library, family sharing, all that just doesn't do it. There is—I
0:33:42commented on this on Twitter and I got a bunch of "well actually"s from people saying, "Well,
0:33:47actually there's a family shared library in iCloud photo sharing." It's true, but you
0:33:52You have to manually place your photos in there. They don't go in there as you take
0:33:56them like your like iCloud photo library works. And I believe it's built on the same kind
0:34:02of older sharing infrastructure as photo stream. But regardless, I will tell you, even if you
0:34:09use that approach, all your photos get scaled down to three megapixels, which is not apparently
0:34:14widely known because that's the sharing. If you airdrop something, it's full size. But
0:34:19if you go to Facebook or if you do iCloud photo sharing,
0:34:22it scales the photo down.
0:34:24So it's not ideal.
0:34:25And for me, it's like, if it's not automatic, it's not ideal.
0:34:28Like I don't wanna have to remind my wife
0:34:31to share her pictures from our trip to Seattle
0:34:34in order to get those photos.
0:34:37And she shouldn't have to text me and say,
0:34:39I need that picture that you took of the kids
0:34:41so that I can send, right?
0:34:43I mean, we should be able to opt in and say,
0:34:45no, we just want one library.
0:34:47So Google's gonna let you do that.
0:34:48But Google also has this other sharing feature that uses the machine learning stuff, and
0:34:52that is to be able to say, "Photos of a certain kind, photos in a certain place, photos of
0:34:56certain people, I want you to automatically share them."
0:35:00And it will even suggest sharing them.
0:35:02So if you don't want to share all your photos with a loved one, you could share all your
0:35:05photos of your family with a loved one, and that will work.
0:35:09And it will remind you and suggest, "Oh, here's a photo you took that Bob is in.
0:35:12Would you like me to share that with Bob?"
0:35:14And you can say yes, and then Bob will get the pictures of Bob or Bob's kids or what
0:35:18whatever. And that is really interesting because what Google is saying is our machine learning
0:35:24can now power, it knows about the content in photos to the point where it can suggest
0:35:29other people who want to see those photos. Which if you've ever been to a party or something
0:35:33and there's a bunch of people taking pictures.
0:35:34That's really cool, right?
0:35:36Right? And we just did this because we went to a party for one of Lauren's cousins' daughter
0:35:43of Bat Mitzvah, so big party. All the families there, and this was in Seattle, and everybody's
0:35:49taking pictures. And the vision I think that Google has is, "You were at a place with
0:35:56all of these family members. Would you like me to share your photos from there with them?"
0:36:03And that's a little proactive. It's not like you can't do a version of that today,
0:36:08but that's a little bit more proactive, because otherwise you're going to, maybe you forget.
0:36:13It's just time passes on. It's a week later.
0:36:14- Yeah, my favorite part of that was that
0:36:17once you share those photos with people,
0:36:20Google Photos will suggest,
0:36:21"Hey, we think these photos were of that event.
0:36:23Do you want to share these with everybody as well?"
0:36:25Which I thought was awesome.
0:36:26- Yeah.
0:36:27- So like it's doing the recognition of time and location
0:36:31and probably of people's faces and some image stuff
0:36:33to be like, "We think these were from that event.
0:36:36Why don't you share all of those?"
0:36:37And then you create this like one big shared album.
0:36:40And it's probably doing some duplicate stuff
0:36:42to make sure they're not the same image.
0:36:43Yeah, I think that that sort of stuff is really cool.
0:36:47And I mean, I've really,
0:36:49looking at the landscape right now,
0:36:50it feels like Google is really the only one
0:36:52in the place to do a lot of this stuff really reliably
0:36:55because of just this huge data set that they're building up,
0:36:58which is bigger than anybody else's,
0:37:00especially based on real photos of real people
0:37:04and you and your family and all your friends.
0:37:07It's building up all this information.
0:37:09It's not that Apple can't do it,
0:37:13it's just that it's harder.
0:37:15But Apple could do this stuff.
0:37:16And this is great stuff because this is computers
0:37:21getting, doing stuff that we're not gonna do
0:37:26because it's too complex or we're gonna forget about it.
0:37:29It's like this is, computers making our lives easier.
0:37:31Technology saying we can see the patterns
0:37:35in what you're doing and take that logical next step
0:37:38and make it so that all you have to do is agree.
0:37:41Like, that's great.
0:37:42That is better than saying, well, what I'm going to do
0:37:44is I'm going to make a shared album,
0:37:45and I need to look up every-- oh, I don't have this person's--
0:37:48I don't have Lauren's other cousin's email address,
0:37:51because I haven't seen him since the wedding.
0:37:53And so I got to look that up.
0:37:55And so I'm going to share it with a few of those people.
0:37:57Now I'll create it.
0:37:58OK, now I'm going to add some things in.
0:37:59And people on iPhones can add their own,
0:38:01but the people who aren't on iPhones can't.
0:38:03There's a lot.
0:38:04Or I'm going to upload that to a service,
0:38:06or I'm going to put it on Facebook,
0:38:07but this person's not on Facebook, right?
0:38:09Like to have the ability for a piece of software essentially
0:38:14to say, hey, you got a family get together,
0:38:17should I make a shared thing and share it with everybody
0:38:19and say, yep, that's a great promise.
0:38:22- And like here's the difference of Google, right?
0:38:24You can do that on Android,
0:38:25you could do that on iPhone with the iPhone app
0:38:27and they said that like you can just text it to someone
0:38:30and they could just download them from a webpage.
0:38:32- Yeah.
0:38:33- So like anywhere, no matter what they're using,
0:38:36don't even need to be Google Photos users, you can email them or text them and they can
0:38:39just download the images, right? Like, I just don't see Apple doing that, right? Like, even
0:38:45if they were able to pull all this tech together, I don't see it existing on Android. So like,
0:38:51you're either in this system or you're not.
0:38:52Well, I mean, they probably would generate a web link to an iCloud page.
0:38:56Oh yeah, that's true. But I can't imagine an Android app, though.
0:39:01So my point here is this has been announced by Google, it's not out yet.
0:39:08Apple's going to have their developer conference.
0:39:10Presumably one of their iOS 11 features will be photos related, whether they spend a lot
0:39:14of time with it or not.
0:39:16It was a huge iOS 10 update.
0:39:19Presumably there will be an iOS 11 update with photos that will add a bunch of things
0:39:22to photos.
0:39:23And that's the question is like, how will the machine learning advance?
0:39:26Will they add features to be more proactive about suggesting ways that you could share?
0:39:30Will there be better sharing features?
0:39:32Will there be better ways to take advantage of the iTunes family accounts, which came
0:39:37out six months before iCloud Photo Library and yet have no connection to them?
0:39:42That's the one that really bugs me, is that I want to be able to say, I want to share
0:39:48my iCloud storage space and photo library with my wife and just be done with it, right?
0:39:53But nope, can't do it yet.
0:39:55Maybe this time, maybe not.
0:39:56I did talk to them, I think a photo product marketing manager a couple years ago.
0:40:02This sort of thing about the sharing is actually part of their concern, I think, about why
0:40:08it hasn't happened.
0:40:10Do you really want to share every single photo you take with another person?
0:40:16And I heard from people last week who were like, "No, I don't want to do that.
0:40:19Why would anyone want to do that?"
0:40:21My response would be, "Well, I want to do it, and I don't think it's unusual for a husband
0:40:24and a wife to want to share their photo library so all their family photos stay together instead
0:40:29of being in two separate places.
0:40:30But I like that Google even answered that question themselves by being like, "You can
0:40:34also take it of just certain collections of people. They're the only photos that we share."
0:40:40Exactly right. So those are options, and I think that's a nice way to do it. And maybe
0:40:43that was sort of some of the stuff that Apple's been thinking of as well. Although I will
0:40:47say again, I think even a bare library share would work for a whole lot of people. And
0:40:53I actually was quite disappointed with the response I got on Twitter from people because
0:40:57the attitude seemed very much to be like, "Well, I don't want it, so nobody should have
0:41:01it." It's like, "No, wrong. Wrong. This is a convenient feature. I can see the convenience
0:41:06in it personally, and I know lots of other people would use that feature." Just because
0:41:10you don't want it, it's a super important feature for families and especially for parents
0:41:16of kids to share their photos of the kids so that they don't end up in separate iCloud
0:41:22libraries that's really dumb and you can't share them you can't share full quality photos
0:41:27the answer of like oh this might get some people in trouble like it's so silly yeah
0:41:32oh that was really good it's like we shouldn't do this feature because it might get some
0:41:36husband who's cheating on his wife in trouble it's like yeah well we have find my iphone
0:41:40that ship has already sailed and i don't want to have no access to half the photos of all
0:41:47my family until I plug my wife's phone into my Mac because of some fear that some dumb
0:41:54person who's having an affair and taking pictures of his girlfriend and sharing that library
0:41:59with his wife. I mean, come on. That's just such a bogus argument. So, but I appreciate
0:42:03Google's granularity here because that suggests something that I think was on the mind of
0:42:09the Apple people that I spoke to about sharing, family sharing on Apple's side is, can it
0:42:15be a little more granular if it's just like I would be I would love to be able
0:42:20to say my wife doesn't need to see all those screenshots I take for for stories
0:42:24I write because she does not want to see them and I don't want to flood her
0:42:28camera roll with them fair right sure that would be nice some granularity
0:42:32would be great but in the end the fact that you cannot automatically share any
0:42:37version of a the full quality photo that you've taken with someone else who's in
0:42:43your family in your iTunes account family without air dropping it or doing
0:42:50an import over a wire is that's dumb that's really dumb so maybe they'll
0:42:58overhaul that stuff and like I said I think the sharing stuff is all legacy
0:43:01stuff from before iCloud photo library I think it's all based on the older like
0:43:04photo stream kind of technology which explains why it's it you know why it
0:43:09might be harder to update the sharing stuff because they've got an existing
0:43:12sharing infrastructure and if they do something new they're probably gonna
0:43:15want to base it on iCloud photo library which is a different thing so there's
0:43:19there's I get it this is not necessarily technically easy but I would also point
0:43:23out that it's been now two years since iCloud photo library and two and a half
0:43:27years since the iTunes family accounts came out so I hope to see more from
0:43:32Apple on that end and they don't need to answer Google across but everything but
0:43:37they definitely need to keep stepping up their game because this is an area that
0:43:40that is important. And right now the only thing, I'd say the number one thing that prevents
0:43:44people from switching from Apple's photo stuff to Google's photo stuff on iOS is that Apple,
0:43:51as the system provider, as the platform owner, allows photosyncing to happen at any time
0:43:57in the background when you're on Wi-Fi. And Google can't do that because it's a third-party
0:44:02app. And although it'll sync in the background for a while, eventually, inevitably, it will
0:44:06be quit by the system because it's been running in the background for a long time transferring
0:44:11data, at which point none of your photos sync until you remember to launch Google Photos
0:44:16again on your iPhone. And until Apple, if Apple would ever do that, levels the playing
0:44:22field and allows certain kinds of apps to sync their data in the background sort of
0:44:30eternally when plugged in and on Wi-Fi, like Google Photos, Apple will have a huge advantage
0:44:36like that's a huge advantage that I will,
0:44:40we will miss photo syncs and I'll have to tell my wife
0:44:44to launch Google Photos.
0:44:45Remember to launch Google Photos
0:44:47just so that we can sync our photos, that's dumb.
0:44:49And iCloud, that's a huge advantage
0:44:51that iCloud Photo Library has on iOS right now.
0:44:53And that's an artificial barrier where Apple,
0:44:57it allows Apple to escape with a lower quality product
0:45:01because they've erected a barrier
0:45:04that they don't have to jump over. And that's not how Apple should be winning these battles.
0:45:09They should be winning these battles on their own merit and not because they give themselves
0:45:14permission to do things no one else does.
0:45:16The Assistant battle is continuing to heat up. There are a bunch of enhancements to Google
0:45:21Assistant. One of the key ones, two, I think it's two key ones. It's on iPhone now, although
0:45:27in the US only, but there is an iPhone app and Google have found some interesting ways
0:45:31is to, like, we have a widget, right,
0:45:33to make it very accessible, which is very smart.
0:45:36Yeah, US only right now, boo.
0:45:39And they've also allowed it so you can talk in text
0:45:43to the Google Assistant now in the Google Assistant app
0:45:46or from other parts in Android,
0:45:48which will be coming, I think, in Android O,
0:45:49but you can do it right now in the iPhone app,
0:45:52which is great, it's great to have that option available.
0:45:54This is something I think many people
0:45:57have wanted Siri to do for a long time,
0:45:59and when Google Assistant came out,
0:46:00You could talk to it in Duo, but I think Duo has not done what Google wanted, so they now
0:46:05enabled it in the Assistant app as well.
0:46:08You had a great post that you mentioned earlier on, imagining the introduction of a Siri speaker
0:46:12where you take on the role of Tim and Phil in like a Johnny Ive video and you write out
0:46:18how you imagine it going in an ideal world.
0:46:21You showed your "Down with the Kids" in knowing a Lourdes song that I've never heard
0:46:26of, but you mentioned it, so I assume that you're down with the kids there.
0:46:29- Wasn't it just Lorde?
0:46:31Lorde?
0:46:32- I see, again, so--
0:46:33- Like Sade?
0:46:34- You are proving that you are more down
0:46:36with the kids than me because I have always read
0:46:38that in my head as Lorde.
0:46:40- I was thinking that it would be,
0:46:42you know, this is like when we did our draft predictions
0:46:44not for the last event where I was trying
0:46:47to predict a musical act.
0:46:48And it's like, there's a game plan there.
0:46:50I don't know if Green Light's the right song or not,
0:46:52but I thought that that was placeholder.
0:46:55I was like, yeah, some song that's popular now
0:46:58that's gonna make Apple look cool like Green Light by Lorde
0:47:00and then I thought about changing,
0:47:04using your voice to change the lights in the room
0:47:07to turn green and I thought,
0:47:08oh well, that's a perfect song then.
0:47:11So anyway, yeah.
0:47:12So I did a fake Apple event is what I'm saying.
0:47:14And I don't, I mean, they're the experts at it.
0:47:17I've just, I've seen so many Apple events
0:47:18that I can try to, what I said was,
0:47:20this is the best my Apple event emulator could do.
0:47:23I'm just one person.
0:47:24- It was pretty good though.
0:47:25I can tell you've been to a lot of these things.
0:47:27So yeah, there's more in the assistant world.
0:47:29- I can hear the voices there.
0:47:31Yeah, so it's that is a, right?
0:47:34So Cortana is built into a Harman Kardon speaker.
0:47:37You've got the Google Home assistant is getting built up.
0:47:41The Amazon keeps releasing echoes.
0:47:44And Apple is rumored to have this Siri speaker,
0:47:48which I called Apple Home only because even though
0:47:51there's a Google Home, it's like,
0:47:52that's probably the right name for it.
0:47:54I kept thinking of other things to call it,
0:47:57but none of them were quite as good.
0:47:58- They've had an app called Home for a while, right?
0:48:01Like it's in Apple's branding machine already.
0:48:03- Yeah, well, and in my,
0:48:05one of the reasons that I did this is it made me think,
0:48:08it made me think what, how does Apple describe this?
0:48:12How does Apple sell this product?
0:48:14What features does Apple highlight?
0:48:17And HomeKit has to be one of them, right?
0:48:21Like my thought is that that's one of the ways
0:48:23Apple sells this as a differentiator is,
0:48:26It's a HomeKit hub, so you don't need an Apple TV or an iPad or something.
0:48:29You plug this in, you can control your home.
0:48:31HomeKit is great, blah, blah, blah, right?
0:48:33All the things that they're going to say about how much they love their own
0:48:35technology, because it's an Apple event.
0:48:36They're going to pump up their own stuff, fair.
0:48:39And then you throw in, yeah, it's all the power of Siri, and it'll talk to you.
0:48:44And maybe if it's got a screen and a camera,
0:48:45maybe it'll do something like FaceTime.
0:48:47Maybe it won't.
0:48:47I don't know.
0:48:48But I think HomeKit has to be part of the story,
0:48:52because that's how these products get used, is they're in your home.
0:48:56So having it just lean into that and lean into HomeKit
0:49:00seemed to be like a logical way
0:49:01for them to tie it all together.
0:49:03So that's my, people can read the story,
0:49:06imagine it in Phil and Tim's voices.
0:49:08And I invented a product video that involves the Apple Home
0:49:12in a kind of home setting with kids and parents
0:49:15and playing music and being notified that you need to leave
0:49:20for your next event and stuff like that.
0:49:22And I even threw in a feature that would be really cool
0:49:25that Apple wasn't promising when they launched the product
0:49:28because they do that sometimes now too,
0:49:31which was that later this year,
0:49:33it will recognize your voice.
0:49:37And so if you ask it a question about a calendar,
0:49:40it will recognize that it's you.
0:49:42And if your child asks about their calendar,
0:49:46they will be told about their calendar instead.
0:49:49And in my imaginary thing, that isn't ready yet.
0:49:54And so they're like, that's the thing that ships in December,
0:49:57on December 30th.
0:49:58And then the other thing that I did
0:50:01that was kind of a funny moment was that I,
0:50:03I guessed what I would want to pay for the product
0:50:06and then I raised the price.
0:50:07Because the new Apple products always cost more
0:50:09than what you want to pay.
0:50:11So I guessed 299 and then I said it's 349.
0:50:14So that's-- - Yeah, the Google Home
0:50:15just started doing that voice recognition thing
0:50:18a couple of weeks ago.
0:50:19And that seems like a feature that would be really great
0:50:23have in my echo. Yeah the fact that Google is now doing that I think everybody needs
0:50:29to get there. I'm sure everybody's been working on it right because this is an issue with
0:50:33all of these products like the echo should be able to know that when the little girl
0:50:37wants to order the doll houses that she doesn't get to. That she needs parental approval for
0:50:44that. A code or something. And multiple I mean again coming so many of these services
0:50:50were built on the idea that everybody's got their own account and they're siloed.
0:50:54And the problem with that is that people's lives aren't siloed. A lot of our lives
0:50:59are messy because we live with other human beings, right? It's not—a lot of these
0:51:04things are envisioned as like, you've got your computer, so you log in with your account,
0:51:07and you have another computer, and you log in, which is great, until suddenly you've
0:51:11got a voice box in the middle of your house that everybody can use, and it cannot be one-to-one,
0:51:16right? And so they are trying to find ways to back out of that one-to-one thing, whether
0:51:22it's like a family account thing or it's the ability to log in multiple people and detect
0:51:27them by voice in the case of a voice assistant. It's hard stuff, but surely Amazon is working
0:51:32on it, Google has announced it, and so I kind of envisioned, and that's a little bit wish-casting
0:51:37on my part, but I tried to envision that Apple would have that be a feature that they could
0:51:42tout for a product like theirs because especially if it's tied into the family sharing that
0:51:47kind of makes sense. The ability to differentiate so that if, yeah, and also the way I had them
0:51:53phrase calendars and reminders, they say you can check your calendar, you can check your
0:51:57reminders. In the back of my head I'm thinking it's really only going to work with iCloud
0:52:01calendars and reminders but they're not going to mention that part. Let people who use Google
0:52:06Calendar be disappointed later by the fact that it doesn't work with them. Again, trying
0:52:10to emulate an Apple product announcement.
0:52:11Could it not just like take some information from what's in your iPhone maybe, right?
0:52:15Because like I have Google calendars on my iPhone.
0:52:18I was thinking, well, one of the things I thought while I was writing the story was
0:52:21it could do handoff, right?
0:52:22A Siri speaker could do handoff stuff where like on your Mac if your phone rings or you
0:52:28get a text, you get it everywhere, that you could get that text and it could say, "You
0:52:34just got a text," you know, or play the chime and "Would you like me to read it?"
0:52:38would you like me to answer the phone here?" And those are all things that it could do
0:52:42too. So interaction, that would be another way that Apple could make its product more
0:52:48impressive is have it sync and communicate with the stuff that's on your phone and your
0:52:53tablet. But we'll see. We'll see if it-- I'm not entirely convinced-- we'll see at the
0:52:58draft how we pick it, but I'm not entirely convinced this product actually is going to
0:53:02get announced at WWDC, but I do wonder if the reason to do it is it gives them a long
0:53:07run up until they ship it and because they want to talk about Siri features across all
0:53:12their platforms because they have SiriKit now, which means there's a developer story,
0:53:18and so they want to get developers really excited about supporting SiriKit and one of
0:53:23those reasons they could get excited is because it's going to also tie in to what they're
0:53:27doing with their Siri hardware. And that, for me, that would be the rationale to announce
0:53:33that product, but I'm not convinced. Some of it is wish casting again, some of it is
0:53:39me thinking, "I'd like that product." And that gets in the way of, so I've got a red
0:53:45flag in my mind that says, "No, no, no, no, no, that's probably, come on, that's a product
0:53:49you like, that's a product you want. It probably won't happen, come on, you're just dreaming."
0:53:54But I don't know, that's what the rumor says, so I guess we'll see.
0:53:58- Android?
0:53:59Yeah, it's not a lot to say about Android O. I talked to some people, people can listen
0:54:04to the Download Podcast from last week, we talked about Google I/O a lot, and we talked
0:54:08about Android O very little because there's not a lot, it wasn't a big focus. I suppose
0:54:14there will be more to come as it gets closer to consumers. There's not anything huge in
0:54:22it, there's a bunch of little stuff that's interesting. The one thing about it, and this
0:54:26says a lot about me and my interests that I wrote about on six colors was that they
0:54:32redesigned all the Google emoji and Jeremy Bird wrote a piece about it.
0:54:37- This is a big deal.
0:54:38- Yeah, well, you know, for those who know the smileys on Google's platforms look like
0:54:43gumdrops or if you're less charitable like Jeremy Bridge was at Emojipedia, blobs.
0:54:48- Yeah, a little blob, a little blobby guy.
0:54:52- I like to think that they're like a gumdrop, like it's a gumdrop shape.
0:54:54rounded on top and then sort of like come to an edge on the bottom and then there's
0:55:01a different kind of curve thing at the bottom. It's a gumdrop guy. Well, those are gone.
0:55:04The gumdrop guy is gone, the blob, the Google blobs are gone in Android O and presumably
0:55:09on Gmail and all of that when they roll this out, replaced by more traditional sort of
0:55:14circular faces. And there are people who love those blobs and they're going to be sad to
0:55:19see them go. But I think the number one reason that you do that if you're Google is because
0:55:24Because every other platform does not have gumdrop blobs. Every other platform has circles.
0:55:29And emoji is a language people use to communicate. It's not the place to have a lot of flair
0:55:36on your platform that is not followed on other platforms because, as was the title of an
0:55:41episode of this very show a while ago, because of emoji fragmentation. Because what you don't
0:55:46want to have is, "I send you an image that I think means this, but you receive a different
0:55:50image that you interpret to be completely different and we have failed
0:55:53to communicate. So I think this is a good thing. I know it seems silly but I think
0:55:57it's actually a really good thing for Google to do this to sort of sync up
0:56:00their design language with it and then also this will be the first
0:56:04this is the first announced support for the emoji 5.0 spec so it's the one with
0:56:11like with a dinosaur and a vomiting face emoji and other things like that it's
0:56:14the latest and greatest emoji. Including the mind blown which in Google's version
0:56:19of the mind blown is awesome. It looks great.
0:56:22It's the surprised face with a mushroom cloud coming out of the top.
0:56:26The UK flags, the independent UK flags of Wales, England, Scotland, Scotland.
0:56:32Also a monocle face.
0:56:33I mean, it's all for me really. Monocle face, English flag.
0:56:38Top hat, put it in there.
0:56:39Top hat.
0:56:40It's gonna be great.
0:56:41And iOS 11 will obviously have all this stuff too. It's just a matter of, it's like Google
0:56:45beat Apple. It's like, well no, Google pre-announced their operating system three weeks before
0:56:49Apple because that's when their event was. iOS 11 will undoubtedly support all of these
0:56:53emotions.
0:56:54David: Could still beat them though, could still come first. Race is still on. I think
0:56:58calling it boring is a little unfair. I think that it is a polished release. Feels a little
0:57:05like iOS 10 to me in that there are some cool features but no blockbusters.
0:57:09Tim: So we said this in download too and I want to repeat it here. I think it's a good
0:57:14kind of boring. Like, it's okay. It's okay that it's not, we're tearing everything apart
0:57:20and rethinking it again. I think smartphone operating systems at this point aren't at
0:57:25that level anymore. They've kind of moved past that. Android is just being polished
0:57:30and updated and made better by Google. That's what they should be doing. They don't need
0:57:34to take it apart. But it also means that I don't have a lot to say about it because they
0:57:38released a limited amount of information about it. And because, again, it's not as exciting
0:57:44to talk about incrementally making your products better, even though for end users that may
0:57:49be the best thing to do.
0:57:51There are less big blockbuster features available now for smartphones. A lot of smartphone operating
0:57:56systems as we currently have them are getting pretty close to feature completeness, right?
0:58:00Like it's like what reminds me of the Mac, right? There just isn't that much really whizbang
0:58:06stuff you can put into macOS anymore.
0:58:10to do quantum leaps right now on smartphone OSs.
0:58:13Not that they can't be improved,
0:58:15they absolutely all can be improved.
0:58:17But it's harder to see like we just added this thing
0:58:22that everybody's been clamoring for, that nobody's had,
0:58:25and now we've added it because I feel like we've passed that.
0:58:28All that stuff has been taken down and used.
0:58:32And now it's all about, could you make that better?
0:58:34That thing you introduced five years ago,
0:58:36maybe you can make that better because five years have passed
0:58:38and things are better now.
0:58:39And that's not as exciting, it is more boring.
0:58:43But like I said, I think in the end,
0:58:46that stuff makes the experience better
0:58:48and that makes users happy.
0:58:49And yeah, I'm all on that.
0:58:52Like more polish and fixing things
0:58:54and making everything nicer.
0:58:56That's where we are.
0:58:58And the wacky innovation has gone to other devices now.
0:59:01The smartphone is not done, but it is not,
0:59:05it was leaping from like 10% done to 40% done
0:59:09to 70% done, right? And now it's just sort of ticking through little tiny increments
0:59:14because the quantum leaps aren't there anymore.
0:59:16All right, Jason, do you want to take a break and talk about mail route?
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1:02:08MALECE Mailbagging!
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1:02:16BRIAN You think?
1:02:17Yeah.
1:02:18MALECE Alright, should we talk about Apple Park or
1:02:21maybe some issues in detail with Wired's pretty awesome expose, I don't know if you'd
1:02:31call it that.
1:02:32It's not an expose if they invite you in.
1:02:33Yeah, what is it then?
1:02:35Feature, it's like a big feature story by Stephen Levy about building this. Yeah, it's
1:02:38not an expose if they give you the tour and give you a hard hat. Yeah, it's a, people
1:02:45should read it, it's in Wired, Stephen Levy knows the company better than anybody, it's
1:02:48a really good story. It is a lot of detail about what's going on at Apple
1:02:53Park and how they built it. So I had a couple of notes upon reading it that I
1:02:58wanted to share. I wrote some of this up at Six Colors. One of them is the idea is
1:03:03the concept of the story is that Apple Park is Steve Jobs' last product. The last
1:03:08product that he was heavily involved with and it's taken this long to build
1:03:12it but he was heavily involved in the details of the product up until the
1:03:17park up until he died.
1:03:19Yeah, and it seems like from what Levi was saying, significant parts of his final years
1:03:25were spent on it because he was taking very, very, very long meetings with people that
1:03:31were taking up most of his days, and him and Johnny really spent a lot of time together.
1:03:38It was a big collaboration between the two of them, even from very early on.
1:03:43I think it's not surprising to me when you see this information to maybe realize why
1:03:50Johnny's not been around so much recently, apparently.
1:03:53Yeah, I think that one of the things about this article is, and I've heard from other
1:03:59people who've said similar things, is it's hard to see the description of the level of
1:04:08care that Apple people took with this project, down to the pizza boxes, right, that people
1:04:16mentioned, but also like the door handles and the toilets, like the amount of custom
1:04:23design throughout this. And people, you know, some people are going to roll their eyes at
1:04:29that. And I feel like one, it's Apple and Apple does stuff like this. It's part of their
1:04:34identity that Apple's not going to just move into a rectangular office building
1:04:39with cubicles with the standard kind of panels on the walls right if Apple's
1:04:47making their showcase headquarters of the future are they going to do that are
1:04:51they just going to build drop down an office block somewhere with generic
1:04:54equipment from the office depot it's not going to happen it's Apple it's not
1:04:57going to happen they wanted to be inspirational to the people who work
1:05:00there and Apple does feel like they have things to contribute to making, you know, sort of
1:05:05what the future of a workplace is like. I think Apple is hoping that this, and Steve
1:05:09Jobs is probably hoping that this would be an incredibly influential project that people
1:05:12would learn from and take maybe some lessons of what not to do, but also take a lot of
1:05:16lessons of why don't we do that when we build our next thing, why do we settle for less.
1:05:21So I think that that's all, it's a valid perspective. What I wrote in my piece is it so feels like
1:05:28an Apple product in the sense that they are coming from a point of view when
1:05:31they make this. It's like, we think that offices should be like this. And not
1:05:35everybody agrees when Apple does a product that has a point of view, like
1:05:38the MacBook's a great example, right? Which is, we think a laptop should be
1:05:40like this and everybody's like, "But it only has one port!" Yeah, but it's really
1:05:43thin and light, but it, but, but, but, like, alright, well, it's not for everybody, but
1:05:47like, Apple had a very strong belief, like, this is the kind of product. That's how
1:05:51you get an interesting product, and that's, I would argue, that's how you get
1:05:54a great product, is being opinionated like that. Well, Apple Park is like that,
1:05:58that. And I think that comes from Steve Jobs and carried on by other people. It is their
1:06:02vision, Apple's vision for what a workplace should be like if you've got the money for
1:06:07it and if you've got the space for it and all those things. But it's like imagine what
1:06:11a world-class workplace for 12,000 people would be, and Apple Park is that vision. It
1:06:17is hard though, when reading Steven Levy's article, not to think that because they sweated
1:06:22all those details, and it's very clear that people involved in Apple design, including
1:06:27Jonny Ive were deeply involved in this process, it's really hard not to walk away thinking
1:06:33they've been distracted for the last two years. It's just, and I've heard from
1:06:36other people similarly.
1:06:37I thought that was very insightful that you put that in an article that you wrote which
1:06:43would be in the show notes and I'd never considered that, you know, deeply, but if
1:06:47it was this, you know, the biggest product they've ever designed with more intricate
1:06:55parts than they've ever needed before, that there is a possibility that Apple decided
1:07:00to put a lot of its own people on that project. Like, why, you know, I understand having an
1:07:06architect to design the structure, but all of the internal pieces, why would you not
1:07:13have your own people do them? Right? Like, you have people that you know can do incredible
1:07:18internal design for their stores, right?
1:07:20Well, if you're Apple you feel you're the best in the world at design. Why would you
1:07:24have someone else design your building?
1:07:26>> You would like to think that Apple is trying its best to find the best designers on the
1:07:32planet, right? So they believe they have them. So I understand that. I mean, I'm not necessarily
1:07:37saying they should do this, right? Like their products are what enables a building like
1:07:42this.
1:07:43>> And in fact, somebody who designs computers and phones and things may not be the best
1:07:47person to do industrial design on a workspace, right? They may be incredibly talented, but
1:07:52still may not be the best because they haven't spent the last 20 years designing chairs and
1:07:58doors and things, right? They've spent the last 20 years designing computers, and so
1:08:02you could argue that maybe that's not the best fit, but I see the temptation if you're
1:08:08a designer to be like, "I've always wanted to design a better door because I hate these
1:08:13doors, so let's make a better door." And I can also see somebody who has been working
1:08:17in the real world for the last 20 years say, "What do you mean a better door? We got the
1:08:22the doors, we figured it out, just use the door, like use the pizza box, okay?
1:08:27[laughs]
1:08:28So the great example of this, the classic example was when Steve Jobs was helping design
1:08:34the Pixar headquarters where anyone could put all the bathrooms in one place, you know?
1:08:39Like, that is a… you couldn't see why he wanted to do it, it's an interesting
1:08:43idea, probably not great in practicality.
1:08:46- Well, and I will say that means this is not the first building that Steve Jobs put
1:08:52together, right?
1:08:53- Yep.
1:08:54- 'Cause he did put together the Pixar.
1:08:55- And he loved some lessons.
1:08:56- Yeah, so I think that's interesting too.
1:08:57And he obviously cared about this and the story quotes the architects as being amazed
1:09:01at the level of detail and care and knowledge that Steve Jobs had about this.
1:09:05So I don't wanna go too far down the rabbit hole.
1:09:07It's just, it's hard for me to read that story and say that Apple didn't have some serious
1:09:11design brain power that was busy designing something that's not a product per se.
1:09:16the park and maybe, you know, the fact is that if their brain power was spent on that,
1:09:23that was less brain power being spent on their products and that was a decision they made.
1:09:27But maybe that's something that helps us understand the last couple of years of Apple products
1:09:31better. I don't know. I don't know. I don't want to overstate it, but I also can't wave
1:09:35it away because I think it's possible. And like I said, I've heard from a couple of people
1:09:40who have connections to Apple who've said that that has been a perception as well that
1:09:46some people have been distracted with a new campus. So how big a deal it is? Don't want
1:09:51to blow it out of proportion, don't want to ignore it, right? So I want to just say, it
1:09:55struck me in reading Steven Levy's article, wow, they did spend a lot of their brainpower
1:10:00worrying about a lot of the details of it. But the fact is, now this thing is going to
1:10:04stand for a long time, and so I get why you want to invest some time in it, because then
1:10:10you're stuck with it, right? So the last thing you want to do is say, "Well, you know, I
1:10:14could spend a little more time on this light change to the iPhone or that will
1:10:18ship for two years and then be done or I could do this thing that will be in this
1:10:23facility for the next hundred years that's I get it I get it the the idea of
1:10:29Steve Jobs this being his last product also was it hit me kind of emotionally
1:10:33more than I was expecting in sad I've been thinking about this a lot and it's
1:10:37made me quite sad over the last few days well I mean not only does the article
1:10:42say clearly that this is the of all the things Apple talks about like Steve
1:10:45Steve said don't think of what Steve would do make your own products take
1:10:49Apple forward the one place where that seems to not be true is building Apple
1:10:54Park Apple Park everybody viewed as Steve's legacy they felt like Steve was
1:10:59in the room with them they were working with Steve on all of this this is he put
1:11:02huge amounts of the end of his life into this they wanted to make it something
1:11:06that Steve would be proud of and that they felt like this was essentially the
1:11:09monument to Steve Jobs' legacy. They leavey tiptoes around the discussion. It sounds to
1:11:15me like somebody really offered to Steve Jobs' family that they call it the Steve Jobs Campus
1:11:22and they felt uncomfortable with that and suggested, somebody suggested that they name
1:11:26the theater after him because that's where the product events are going to be and he
1:11:30was so famous for that. But it sounds like regardless of the naming, you know, this is
1:11:34a monument to Steve Jobs and it's his last product. And then the saddest note, whoever
1:11:39wrote the headline, what a great headline. The headline of this story is one more thing.
1:11:46Because this is it, this is the last Steve Jobs product.
1:11:49At least they didn't call it one last thing. Right, which I'm sure was also on the naming
1:11:56board. So, you know, it's an amazing, I can't wait
1:12:01to see this place because it's just sounds bananas. I cannot wait to see it.
1:12:08I did, did I mention that on this show that I did an overlay of, because it's
1:12:12like a 45 acre site or something, I forget what it is, it's huge. I
1:12:18grew up in the middle of nowhere and we had 42 acres and you could just
1:12:28walk you know I would just walk back and up a hill and there's just like hills
1:12:32and there's nothing there we had that the house was right on the on the front
1:12:34on the road and then there was just you know hills and trees and cows and things
1:12:38and I realized you could put almost the entire large property barns and fences
1:12:48and horses and cattle inside the ring of Apple Park. Inside the ring! Like, not like on the
1:12:58site but in the ring it is so huge. And then there's all this detail. I'm fascinated by
1:13:04all of it. I hope to see it sometime and get to see this thing because it will be a pretty
1:13:10wild thing. And then, you know, and then history will judge it and I think it will be, that's
1:13:16what happens when you have a big idea, is history will judge it. It'll be judged as
1:13:20being too expensive or over-designed or full of mistakes, or it'll be judged as incredibly
1:13:25influential, but it will be judged and it will be thought about. And I think that is
1:13:31also true of anything that you do that is great, is you strive for greatness. You may
1:13:35not make it. I'm not saying this is going to go down in history as one of the great
1:13:39buildings. I'm just saying that you have a chance to be considered and critically appraised
1:13:44you go for it, and they totally went for it. So it's just fascinating.
1:13:51I can't wait to see it. The only other thing I wanted to mention before we move on is I
1:13:58put a line in my piece in Macworld about it that just mentioned that I think that when
1:14:05I was thinking about it and reading the story, I had that moment of having just seen Amazon's
1:14:10new stuff that they're building in Seattle downtown, that it is—I have a problem with
1:14:19big companies in general, not just tech companies, building huge work spaces in suburban areas
1:14:29with poor transportation infrastructure, because what it means is that a lot of people have
1:14:33to drive and it fills up the roads. It affects where you can live. It can make it harder
1:14:39for people, they have to have longer commutes in order to find places where the cost of
1:14:43living is acceptable. And the advantage that building in an urban area has is that there
1:14:48is not that urban areas that cities are cheap to live in, because they're not, but that
1:14:52they tend to have the most regional planning is about getting commuters from outlying regions
1:15:00where it's cheaper to live into the city center to work. And so the commute structure builds
1:15:06up. And therefore, my example is I used to work in a suburb and live in a different suburb,
1:15:11and it was the worst commute of my life. And then they moved our offices to a city center.
1:15:17And my commute changed, but the commute got better. The, as an aside, my lunches got better
1:15:25because there was way more stuff, places to buy lunch than there was when I was in the
1:15:30suburbs and there was nothing around but a supermarket. Go to the deli and get a sandwich.
1:15:35But, you know, the biggest thing was the options for where I could live and have a survivable
1:15:43commute got a lot better.
1:15:47And so when I think about Apple building in Cupertino, which is not really a great place
1:15:53in terms of transit, the transit planning was never about putting trains in Cupertino.
1:15:59Mountain View's got Caltrain close by and Santa Clara has the Santa Clara light rail
1:16:05and is going to have, you know, BART is going to connect at some point maybe. But Cupertino
1:16:10is kind of not close enough, so Apple runs a lot of buses just like Google does. And
1:16:16I just had that moment of like, wouldn't it have been interesting if Apple did, or if
1:16:20Google did, what Adobe did, which is build a bunch of high-rises in downtown San Jose
1:16:24and say, we want to be part of the city. And this way our employees can drive or take transit.
1:16:31And San Jose's transit infrastructure isn't as good as San Francisco's. And I think it's
1:16:36worth at least thinking about that. But in the end, and people freaked out, they're like,
1:16:40oh, no, cities are terrible, suburbs forever. And especially people who work in Silicon
1:16:46Valley were very resistant to this because they're used to it. They just, they're used
1:16:49to that and I think maybe can't see outside themselves. And that's fine, but what stopped
1:16:57me is Apple is a suburban company, just like Microsoft in Redmond. Like Apple's front,
1:17:04Steve Jobs is from the suburbs. They built the, the, the garage was in the suburbs. Apple's
1:17:09always been in the suburbs. I can't picture Apple picking up and moving to San Jose or
1:17:16San Francisco. I just can't, I can't picture it. I can't. This is, this campus is Apple.
1:17:25It is in Apple's DNA. It is, to bring it back to Steve Jobs, the expression of how Steve
1:17:30Jobs saw Apple. Now, I'm sure Apple's got a lot of programs to try to tie in their workers
1:17:39to whether it's the buses on the freeway or tying them into transit. I'm sure they're
1:17:43trying they've got a target number that they're trying to get to a percent of
1:17:45of the people who use transit but Silicon Valley is a very expensive place
1:17:49to live and if you have to drive that is not the traffic is really bad it's it's
1:17:55there's lots of issues there that might be different if you're in a more city
1:18:00environment with better transit options
1:18:02the fact is it wouldn't be Apple I can't imagine it just like I can't imagine
1:18:06Microsoft picking up stakes in Redmond and building a bunch of high-rises in
1:18:10downtown Seattle where the transit and infrastructure is better. I just can't
1:18:14see it. So in the end I think it's worth thinking about it and considering that
1:18:18other businesses like Twitter is a good example of that and Amazon is investing
1:18:21in this and even like Apple's got space in south of Market San Francisco it's
1:18:27just not central. Google's got a building south of Market in San Francisco so
1:18:32they've got like presences but in terms of like the DNA of these companies and
1:18:38and Apple in particular, this is what they are. Apple is a Cupertino company and Apple
1:18:44Park is a representation of that identity and I can't imagine it really being any
1:18:49other way. So, you know, in the end, I kind of came all the way around.
1:18:53Will Barron I think something coupled with this that I
1:18:55think is really frustrating is something that was called out in the article and I've seen
1:19:00a lot of people talking about is the fact that there are no childcare facilities inside
1:19:03of this mammoth building that Apple have created. I feel like that this would have helped a
1:19:08lot of young people and young families, especially when they're paying really high rental costs
1:19:15anyway to have something provided by the company so they have a solution for their children.
1:19:20Whilst, you know, there is something that, again, I don't have kids so I can't really
1:19:25speak to a lot of this, but something that I find awkward in the idea of like taking
1:19:30your kid to work and putting them in the childcare and then the company is looking after the
1:19:34children while you're working 14 hour days. Like there is a, I don't know, there's
1:19:38something that makes me shift a little bit about that, but I know that for so many people
1:19:42there are no other options, right, so this is why this should exist. I find it really
1:19:47disappointing that Apple have created a brand new campus and haven't, haven't decided
1:19:52to, to, to give us a facility like this.
1:19:55I'm on the fence about this because of detail. Uh, like I don't know the detail of it.
1:19:59I don't know what all the benefits are about Apple and childcare.
1:20:04Yeah.
1:20:05I mean, I agree with you, but like, you know.
1:20:08And most tech companies, it seems, and large companies don't offer it, but I share the
1:20:14disappointment because I think you could argue that the providing on-site childcare is sending
1:20:24a message that parents of young children especially—
1:20:28Matthew: Are welcome here.
1:20:30Chris: Are welcome to do their jobs. We want you to be able to continue doing your jobs.
1:20:38We don't want to—because it leads to a feeling like this company is hostile to being
1:20:42a parent, right? Like, if you're—and you know, one of the net results of that is if
1:20:48you're a woman who wants to have a kid and wants to—maybe wants to breastfeed the child,
1:20:53for example, it's very easy to look at your company's policies and be like, "They don't
1:20:58want me to have a child here. So if I want to do that, I'm not going to work here anymore."
1:21:03And that's not a great thing if you're trying to increase the—you know, retain your female
1:21:10employees. But even for men, I mean, it's for parents in general, it's saying, "We
1:21:14don't want this." That said, okay, I am also—they're building a big gym there, right? And they've
1:21:19got a big food facility. I am also a little uneasy about the tendency of Silicon Valley
1:21:24companies to build these spaceships like this campus that are designed for the employees
1:21:31to never have to go home. You can eat here, you can work out here, you can do your laundry
1:21:36here, whatever, never leave. Right?
1:21:38David: You can check out whenever you like, but you can never leave, right? Welcome to
1:21:42Apple Park, California.
1:21:43- Yeah, or the Googleplex or whatever, right?
1:21:46We never leave.
1:21:48And having your children be on site is like,
1:21:50well, now you really never have to leave
1:21:52because you never even have to go get your kid.
1:21:55But I don't know what their benefit is.
1:21:57I don't know if their childcare facility is near the campus.
1:22:00There may be issues.
1:22:02I heard from somebody who suggested that,
1:22:04and I thought it felt like kind of excuses,
1:22:08but just to get the mindset of it,
1:22:09I heard from somebody who said that there was a concern about childcare being a distraction
1:22:17if it was on campus, that people were going to the childcare to check on their kids.
1:22:23My argument would be, set a policy, you got a manager.
1:22:28I generally don't like it when the excuse to not offer an employee something is because
1:22:32then you would have to set a policy and manage your employees.
1:22:35Geez, you want to chain people to their desks so they can't go take breaks, right?
1:22:39Yeah, well like we can't offer them something because they might walk away from their job
1:22:45and not do it for a while. It's like, well, make them not do that then. Set a policy about
1:22:50it. Don't say we're just going to not provide any benefits for you because we don't want
1:22:55you, you might be distracted by them. We're not going to have a break room because you
1:22:59might be distracted by it. Or the internet.
1:23:00You probably should have a break room and a policy. Or the internet, exactly, right.
1:23:04So I don't know, it's a complicated issue, it is a little bit disappointing, but I can
1:23:08see that there's probably a lot of other things going on.
1:23:11I think juxtaposing with the gym is a little bit weird, but at the same time I do have
1:23:17an uneasy feeling about that we're going to keep you trapped here.
1:23:22Like, well you could go to the gym somewhere else, but we don't want you to ever leave
1:23:27campus.
1:23:28Then again, as a work-from-home person, I tend to do my activity in the middle of the
1:23:33day, right? I start work a little bit earlier and then at 11 o'clock or 1 o'clock or whatever,
1:23:39then I go out and do my, you know, walk the dog or go for a run or whatever. And so I
1:23:47can see the rationale of like, we would rather you take a break in the middle of the day
1:23:51and go work out and then be reinvigorated when you go back to work. We'd rather you
1:23:56eat in our cafeteria and not have to go get your car and drive somewhere and drive back.
1:24:00It's like, it's too much, we're going to make it easy for you. So I guess what I'm
1:24:03saying is I think it's a complex issue that maybe has been oversimplified, but there's
1:24:07a lot I have a lot of uneasy feelings about a lot of aspects of it on not just the childcare
1:24:14not being there, but also things like the the big gym being one of those yet another
1:24:20thing that keeps you inside because I think I think the ultimate goal and I don't mean
1:24:24it to sound this nefarious, but you know, the ultimate goal is you enter the spaceship
1:24:31And you stay there, you enter when it's early in the morning and you stay there until it's
1:24:35dark and your entire life is lived inside the campus and then you emerge from it.
1:24:41Maybe if it's still light out you emerge blinking into the light, but you know you're in this
1:24:45other world when you're in there and it's kind of hermetically sealed.
1:24:48Your food's in there, your workouts in there, your shower room's in there, everything's
1:24:52in there.
1:24:53And that can be great for focusing, but it can also be a little bit like we don't want
1:24:57the rest of the world to intrude on our employees when we're getting our work out of them,
1:25:02which is great if that's what you want as an employee, but it also feels kind of a little
1:25:06oppressive. So I don't know, it's a choice.
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1:25:52all
1:26:11I'm
1:26:38Okay, we start off this week. O players asks,
1:26:41now that they live stream the keynote,
1:26:43is there any advantage Jason to attending in person?
1:26:46- Well, you get to see everything 30 seconds
1:26:50before everyone else.
1:26:51You get to see people that you know
1:26:55and don't know before and after.
1:26:57And usually there's access to other things afterward.
1:27:02Usually they have some area either an open press area
1:27:07or a series of appointments in order to get your hands on new stuff. So, you know, but
1:27:14it's less, it's less of a big deal than it was when it wasn't live streamed. It's true.
1:27:20But you know, I guess that there are, it's nice to be in the environment as well, right?
1:27:24Like there are just some niceties to that. Um, but I guess the real, the real benefit
1:27:29does come from if there is a press room to see stuff in the hands on area, like if and
1:27:34when they exist at events, I guess that's where the real benefit comes from being in
1:27:39person now, right? Because you might get to touch a product that's not going to be out
1:27:42for six months.
1:27:44So Wes asked, "I want to get my dad either a Google Home or an Echo and not sure the
1:27:49strengths of each. He's a Prime user. What do you think?"
1:27:53Well, I'd say wait.
1:27:59I would agree with that actually, yeah.
1:28:01wait, see what's going on. I mean, because if your dad has Apple stuff and there's an Apple product,
1:28:05that might be better. If he's a Prime user, you know, it depends on what ecosystem you're
1:28:11deepest into. If he's a heavy Google user, Google Home might be better. If he's a Prime user, Echo
1:28:15is going to be better. You can get one cheaper. Yeah, it depends. It really depends. Right now,
1:28:22if I had to say bottom line, I'd say get an Echo, but that could change rapidly. And if you're
1:28:29leaning toward one ecosystem or another that could be enough to sway you.
1:28:34Yeah the home is improving a lot right but
1:28:37the Echo is really great right now but as you say
1:28:40who knows what's just around the corner. I mean if you can wait
1:28:44like three weeks, wait three weeks. Yeah. That's what I would say. James asks is
1:28:50there any possibility that Apple might ship the fancy unicorn iPhone at WWDC
1:28:55because it would be closer to the 10th anniversary ship date?
1:28:58No. I don't think so. There's like a whole industry built around September, right? Like,
1:29:04this is more than just Apple. We'd also know if it was shipping, we'd know. And they do the fall
1:29:12event and the fall event makes sense and it works for them and they get them at that point and it
1:29:16doesn't, yeah. It's a fun idea, but it's on the level of that date that they spotted in the board
1:29:23for
1:29:39about this a lot, right? Because…
1:29:40This is Brent, listener Brent, I'm Grady and Brent.
1:29:42Of course, I'm Grady and Brent, thank you Brent. I've been thinking about this a lot,
1:29:46right? Because whilst this phone would be bigger than the iPhone 7 in screen size, you'd
1:29:51get more screen size, it's less than the Plus which I've come accustomed to. But
1:29:56my feeling about the Plus has kind of been twofold. I like a bigger screen but I also
1:30:02like to have what I consider to be the best iPhone and in my opinion the best iPhone is
1:30:07the bigger one. In the past it's had more features, in the past it's had improved statistics
1:30:14whether it be battery life or something like that. So for me this next phone it may be
1:30:19a little bit smaller but it will probably be the best iPhone available and for me best
1:30:26iPhone trumps screen being a little bit bigger. So I would be happy to go down a little if
1:30:32I'm going to be getting extra features, better features that's in the Plus model. Does that
1:30:37fair Jason. Yeah I think so and it's I mean it's still a bigger screen and high
1:30:45resolution and so it may not be that much of a step down for you. I feel like
1:30:50for people who use existing iPhones it'll be almost like getting a plus
1:30:53screen in not a bigger object. Yeah I would expect that it wouldn't feel like
1:30:59I was going down too much or like I feel like it would be okay but I don't think
1:31:03I wouldn't mind too much. So Patrick's written in with something that I go through quite
1:31:09a bit. So I got an Expedia flight receipt email. Gmail can add it to gCal. Apple Mail
1:31:16doesn't. I thought this was a feature. So here's the thing about this stuff. So there's
1:31:21a thing in Apple Mail and in Apple's Canada app on the iOS devices, I think it's probably
1:31:29on the Mac too, but I know it's on the iOS devices, where it can see certain events including
1:31:33hotel bookings and flight bookings and can either suggest them to you in mail to add
1:31:38them to your calendar, you open the calendar app and you check the little, there's an inbox
1:31:41on the bottom right hand corner, at least on the iPad app, where it will show you invites,
1:31:45if you get invites to regular events, as well as these proactive things. Hey, we found this
1:31:49in your inbox. This is super unreliable and it seems to only really reliably work with
1:31:56certain providers. So like for example, if I book a flight with British Airways, no problem.
1:32:03if I book a flight with Virgin Atlantic, cannot find it.
1:32:06And there are certain hotel providers and aggregators
1:32:10that it works with and some that it doesn't.
1:32:12So one, there is a condition that you need.
1:32:14The email has to be in your mail.app, I believe in Box,
1:32:17but it has to be loaded in the mail.app for it to find it.
1:32:20Like it can't just be in the server, like the mail,
1:32:22the local app has to know it's there and then it can pick it out.
1:32:25When this works, it's great.
1:32:27When it doesn't, it's not so great.
1:32:29And this is a win for Gmail because Gmail works
1:32:31much all of the time from my experience and from other people's experiences. I do find
1:32:35it's pretty frustrating because I keep this travel calendar of mine in iCloud, so I find
1:32:40myself doing a lot of manual entry where I really wish that my calendar application was
1:32:45smart enough to be able to pick this up more often than it does. So this is a feature of
1:32:50Apple's system, but it is a very unreliable one.
1:32:54And finally today, Matt asked, "Will Apple address the number one problem that I have
1:32:59with Siri that pushes me towards its competition, its infuriating personality.
1:33:05So personally, I don't think Siri's personality is going away because it's something that
1:33:11Apple has built around it. And it's not the only one with a personality, you know, like
1:33:15Cortana, I believe has quite a strong personality. And then the Amazon and Google, their voice
1:33:23assistants have it to a point, right? It depends what you're asking. Like, for example, you
1:33:27ask your echo to bark and meow which Adina found accidentally it misheard her one day
1:33:32and the echo just started meowing and she's like what is going on so that's a thing that
1:33:37it can do so it has this stuff in it. I don't think that Apple's going to remove the personality
1:33:43of Siri. I think there's a possibility they may tone it down but I believe it will always
1:33:49remain in some instances but I think that they shouldn't remove the personality as much
1:33:54as they should just improve accuracy and ability, because if the accuracy and ability of Ciri
1:34:00is improved, the personality will be more palatable. When it's giving you the information
1:34:05that you need, and it's doing it well, and in ways that you expect it to, the fact that
1:34:09it might throw a bit of sass in or a joke every now and then might make the whole thing
1:34:13feel better rather than worse. Do you know what I mean?
1:34:17Yeah, and I agree with you. I don't think it's going to happen. I think they feel that
1:34:20this is part of their thing. Like Siri has this way about her/him. Yeah this is
1:34:29this is Siri and that's a feature not a bug so yeah but I do think that if they
1:34:36can make Siri more advanced they could make it smarter then its personality
1:34:42will become less less annoying for us. So and I hope that WWDC brings some of that
1:34:47that's something that I've really got my eye on and if Apple really wants to play
1:34:50in this space there are there are things that they really should be doing not not
1:34:55necessarily say that they're behind although I think I personally feel that
1:34:58they are but not to say that they are but I think that they need to be ahead
1:35:02as well as just catching up in certain areas because of where they are right
1:35:07where they and where their competitors are right now alright so as we mentioned
1:35:11at the top of the show next week is going to be the upgrade WWDC keynote
1:35:15draft if you have any suggestions of rumors that you would like to see
1:35:18be included for the potential for me and Jason to pick for our draft picks, tweet them to
1:35:22me, I am @imikeyke on twitter. Jason if you want to catch up with what his work he is
1:35:27@jsnell and he is at sixcolors.com and the incomparable.com as well. I want to thank
1:35:34Encapsular, Mailroute and Smile for supporting this weeks show. If you want to find our show
1:35:38notes go to relay.fm/upgrades/142. Don't forget to go and check out the WWDC benefit
1:35:47for AppCamp for girls, which has links in the show notes for that.
1:35:50So you can come and say hi to real AFM people, but also listen to some great
1:35:53music and support AppCamp for girls, which is an awesome thing.
1:35:57If you're going to be in WWDC.
1:36:00Thanks for listening. We'll be back next time.
1:36:02Until then, say goodbye, Mr Snell. Goodbye, everybody.
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