Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade episode 109. Today's show is brought to you by Help Spot,

00:00:15 ◼   ► Ring, and Boom 2 from Global Delight. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by the Snellatron,

00:00:21 ◼   ► Jason Snell. Uh, you can't do that, Myke. Exits are east and west.

00:00:28 ◼   ► If you've listened to the members episode, you'll get that joke.

00:00:30 ◼   ► If you haven't, go become a member, you can still get it.

00:00:33 ◼   ► Become a member!

00:00:34 ◼   ► It's still available to you.

00:00:35 ◼   ► How are you Mr Snell?

00:00:37 ◼   ► I'm doing fine, I haven't been the Snell-a-tron in a little while so that was fun to do.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Yeah, good, good, how are you?

00:00:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm good, a busy day today for me.

00:00:46 ◼   ► I launched a YouTube channel.

00:00:49 ◼   ► I saw that.

00:00:50 ◼   ► I saw that.

00:00:51 ◼   ► It is a little project that I've been, I've had kind of rattling around my brain for a

00:00:56 ◼   ► a while and I've been working on it for a couple of weeks and it's a vlog is

00:01:01 ◼   ► what I'm working on and in the style that I'm kind of working through is just

00:01:06 ◼   ► I'm making videos about my life the things that I do the things that I think

00:01:10 ◼   ► I think that there's gonna be a lot of crossover between the shows that I do

00:01:15 ◼   ► because the shows that I make are about things that I like right so there's I've

00:01:20 ◼   ► made your videos so far one of them includes the Amazon echo quite

00:01:24 ◼   ► significantly. One of them includes pens. I saw that one. I saw the one with pens.

00:01:31 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the first full video. There's an episode one and then there are three episode

00:01:35 ◼   ► zeros which were just like tests but I decided to put them up because I made them. And I'm

00:01:40 ◼   ► pretty proud of it and so far people seem really happy with it. So I would really really

00:01:45 ◼   ► love it if everybody listening would go and subscribe to the channel. The channel is Myke

00:01:50 ◼   ► mike hirley. So you can go to youtube.com/mikehirley. But if you're on mobile for a reason I cannot

00:01:55 ◼   ► understand, you have to go to youtube.com/user/mikehirley. There seems to be some kind of bug with YouTube

00:02:01 ◼   ► right now that any URL, not just like for people that have just started channels, just

00:02:06 ◼   ► throws up an error when you do that. I can't work this out. This is part of, so there's

00:02:10 ◼   ► a couple of reasons for this Jason why I'm doing this and this is exemplifying one of

00:02:15 ◼   ► them. I'm trying to understand YouTube.

00:02:17 ◼   ► Sure.

00:02:18 ◼   ► of them. So what goes into it, kind of what the challenges are of it, and this is one of them.

00:02:26 ◼   ► So like on this show we have spoken so much about platforms and gatekeepers and stuff like that.

00:02:31 ◼   ► This is the biggest one of all of them. So I'm trying to understand what it's like to be within

00:02:38 ◼   ► a system that you cannot control for your content, which is this, but also the flip side of this is,

00:02:45 ◼   ► I want to give myself over to their algorithm and see what happens.

00:02:49 ◼   ► I think, I mean, I totally get where your reasoning for doing this and wanting to discover

00:02:55 ◼   ► this. One of the things that I had on my list when I started being an independent person

00:02:59 ◼   ► was experimenting with YouTube and I just haven't done more than a couple of videos

00:03:04 ◼   ► and partly it's I haven't had the idea that pushes me over the edge and part of it is

00:03:11 ◼   ► not having, you know, it's very time consuming and there are lots of reasons, but I too am

00:03:16 ◼   ► fascinated by YouTube and it is, you know, having kids. My son, YouTube, is his only

00:03:25 ◼   ► video entertainment. And for my daughter, it is a huge part of her video entertainment,

00:03:30 ◼   ► although now that she's a little bit older and a teenager, she's really into Netflix

00:03:34 ◼   ► stuff too. So that's how she's coming around to traditional television. But YouTube was

00:03:40 ◼   ► there first and is still a great love of hers, she loves youtubers, those are

00:03:45 ◼   ► her TV stars. So I think it's a super important part as media people, right?

00:03:50 ◼   ► It's a super important part of our landscape and the future and so to kind

00:03:54 ◼   ► of poo-poo it would be a big mistake. I'm still trying to figure out the right

00:03:59 ◼   ► way for me to do it and I suppose, you know, I've been putting it off.

00:04:04 ◼   ► So it's great to see you jumping in. I'm struck by looking at your videos that it

00:04:08 ◼   ► is an awful lot of work that you're putting into those videos. Not just in Final Cut where,

00:04:15 ◼   ► I mean, I wrote a post on Six Colors last week about slapping together the Total Party

00:04:19 ◼   ► Kill videos and how I'm impressed at how easy it is to do that in Final Cut Pro X. I'm just

00:04:25 ◼   ► amazed at how quickly I can put together something that looks more or less like I wanted it to

00:04:30 ◼   ► look. But when I looked at your videos, I thought, you spent a lot of production time

00:04:34 ◼   ► on it in terms of putting in text and overlays and things and the music and doing your editing

00:04:40 ◼   ► and I've done video editing for like 20 years, 25 years. I know how much time that takes

00:04:44 ◼   ► but I also noted that you're committing to videoing your life which means that now when

00:04:50 ◼   ► you go to dinner with Adina, you're taking time lapses and taking videos and even if

00:04:57 ◼   ► you don't, everything you do in your life isn't videoed, you, by doing this you're sort

00:05:03 ◼   ► of committing to saying, "I'm going to consider what in my life is going to be something I

00:05:11 ◼   ► document for everything you do," which is more time and more brain space that is taken

00:05:17 ◼   ► up by it.

00:05:18 ◼   ► It's weird, and I don't know how it's going to fall out yet. I know I'm really excited

00:05:22 ◼   ► about it right now, and frankly Adina seems excited about it too.

00:05:25 ◼   ► That's great.

00:05:26 ◼   ► Which is good, because she would kind of have to be for this to work.

00:05:31 ◼   ► Yes, I thought that as I saw her sitting there across from you at dinner smiling, I thought,

00:05:36 ◼   ► "Well, she's got to be okay with this or this is not going to happen."

00:05:39 ◼   ► She thought I was taking a picture of her then.

00:05:42 ◼   ► She did know that I ended up taking a video that I was going to use, but she thought it

00:05:45 ◼   ► was a photo.

00:05:46 ◼   ► So a friend of the show, James Thompson, developer of Peacock, he sent me a message earlier and

00:05:50 ◼   ► he said, "It looks like this is a lot of work.

00:05:52 ◼   ► How does this compare to audio?"

00:05:54 ◼   ► So I have not been tracking this properly because every single one of the videos has

00:05:58 ◼   ► taken a vastly different amount of time to put together for reasons that I can't understand,

00:06:03 ◼   ► mainly because I'm still learning and I see things that I want to do but I don't know

00:06:08 ◼   ► how to do them so I have to work out how to do them.

00:06:11 ◼   ► But to kind of, on the back of the envelope calculation, purely in the edit, so let's

00:06:17 ◼   ► say I'm just talking about editing, with audio it takes me about two minutes to every minute

00:06:23 ◼   ► if I'm doing a full edit. So I don't do this with all of our shows, some shows I make notes

00:06:28 ◼   ► and go back and edit and take it out quickly. So like this show, I make notes as we record

00:06:33 ◼   ► for the things to cut out and it means I can get a 90 minute show edited in 15 minutes

00:06:40 ◼   ► because this is a timely show, we like to get it out. But Cortex isn't, for example,

00:06:45 ◼   ► so for Cortex I do a full listen edit and that takes about two minutes to every minute

00:06:50 ◼   ► of what's recorded to do. So it's about twice as long to edit as it is the recorded length.

00:06:56 ◼   ► I would say right now for video, it's 45 to 60 minutes per minute of edit.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Let alone wrestling with YouTube's system.

00:07:08 ◼   ► Which is just crazy making.

00:07:12 ◼   ► Just doing things like putting in the annotations, like the areas that you can click, trying

00:07:17 ◼   ► to deal with their system is crazy.

00:07:21 ◼   ► I can't believe that YouTube haven't released native tools to do this, that you just upload

00:07:27 ◼   ► the metadata, because part of the problem is dealing with their website and its caching.

00:07:30 ◼   ► But anyway, I'm going to save this discussion for Cortex, because this is a little bit in

00:07:36 ◼   ► the weeds now.

00:07:37 ◼   ► I would love to hear you guys talk about it.

00:07:39 ◼   ► Episode 38 of Cortex, which also came out today, kind of talks about in much, much more

00:07:44 ◼   ► detail why I'm doing this.

00:07:46 ◼   ► And then me and Gray are going to kind of talk about this over the next few episodes

00:07:49 ◼   ► as I come to terms with all of the things that are going on in my new YouTube life,

00:07:56 ◼   ► which is a very, very weird thing to say.

00:08:01 ◼   ► So just after we recorded last week's episode, it was rumored that Disney were in the fray

00:08:07 ◼   ► for buying Twinkies.

00:08:08 ◼   ► Yeah, it doesn't, it never fails, does it? That we do a subject and then, like immediately

00:08:14 ◼   ► after that episode posted, like within an hour of that episode posting. The rumor was

00:08:20 ◼   ► that Disney was considering a bid for Twitter, so I just want to warn everybody that when

00:08:26 ◼   ► you hear the news in the next couple of hours that Twitter might also be bought by Toyota

00:08:31 ◼   ► or Rolex.

00:08:32 ◼   ► Or that they just flat out have been sold, which I reckon is the most likely thing.

00:08:36 ◼   ► SpaceX, the US Army, you know, a shadowy billionaire industrialist.

00:08:41 ◼   ► Yeah, great podcast.

00:08:42 ◼   ► great podcast. Yeah, then we did that apparently because this is what we do is talk about things

00:08:49 ◼   ► and then immediately other things happen. Disney makes sense only to me. People are

00:08:55 ◼   ► like, "Whoa, Disney, that doesn't make any sense," because they're thinking of Disney

00:08:57 ◼   ► as the brand and Mickey Mouse and theme parks and things like that. But Disney is a huge

00:09:01 ◼   ► media company, not just the movies from Disney and Marvel and Star Wars, but ESPN and ABC.

00:09:10 ◼   ► So if you think about Twitter as a real-time medium for sports and news, that's another

00:09:15 ◼   ► thing and reality TV shows and commentary about things that are happening on television,

00:09:21 ◼   ► that's all actually not as weird a thing as you might initially think. So I didn't think

00:09:25 ◼   ► that was an unreasonable suggestion, but it just was a surprise to us because we had just

00:09:30 ◼   ► talked about that subject. We had one little bit of follow-up too, which is I know you

00:09:34 ◼   ► mentioned Google and the real names policy and whether if Google is a suitor for Twitter,

00:09:40 ◼   ► if Google might be better at that and I complain about YouTube comments. Good luck with that,

00:09:44 ◼   ► by the way, Myke.

00:09:45 ◼   ► Myke L: They've been really great so far.

00:09:46 ◼   ► JE; That is good. I've come around to Grey's opinion about YouTube comments, which is you

00:09:52 ◼   ► just let them go. Just embrace them. I don't know if he ever said that on a podcast. I

00:09:56 ◼   ► asked him that in person.

00:09:57 ◼   ► Myke L; He said it on episode 38, so you're all good.

00:10:00 ◼   ► JE; When we had lunch, I was like, "What do you do about the YouTube comments?" He says,

00:10:04 ◼   ► "You don't have to look at them." Although, he says, "I look at them and laugh if there's

00:10:09 ◼   ► something awful because it's like, you know, whatever, it's a YouTube commenter. But if

00:10:16 ◼   ► they bother you, just don't look at them. But leave them on because let them have their,

00:10:20 ◼   ► you know, let whoever have their fun. And I kind of have come around to that now that

00:10:24 ◼   ► they are what they are. But anyway, it's so our listener Harley wrote in and said they

00:10:31 ◼   ► moved away from that and actually linked to a recent study that said that using real names

00:10:38 ◼   ► and having a real names policy doesn't help when it comes to abuse online.

00:10:42 ◼   ► So which is a shame. I was always under the impression that it would help in my brain,

00:10:46 ◼   ► you know, like I just thought, oh, if people were accountable, but seems like maybe not.

00:10:51 ◼   ► So thank you to Harley. I'm glad you sent that in.

00:10:55 ◼   ► Tony suggested for the comic segment Com Myke Con. How is this one sitting with you?

00:11:03 ◼   ► I like putting the con making a comic-con instead of just comics actually makes me like it more so I'm kind of intrigued by that

00:11:11 ◼   ► I'm also thinking that since we've got Myke that maybe Myke's comics or comics with Myke is enough

00:11:18 ◼   ► Just keep keep it simple

00:11:21 ◼   ► We've gone around this far like weeks and weeks of suggestions, and we're just gonna call it comics with Myke

00:11:29 ◼   ► so

00:11:32 ◼   ► I'm gonna let you have the final decision on this one. I'm still I'm still pondering still pondering

00:11:37 ◼   ► I also just wanted to include in the show notes Joe Steele fake name wrote a blog post about

00:11:43 ◼   ► the iPhone portrait mode where he goes into

00:11:47 ◼   ► Incredible detail about the things that he can see good and bad about the portrait mode

00:11:53 ◼   ► and I wanted to include this in the notes because

00:11:58 ◼   ► Steel knows what he's talking about when it comes to visuals. So I thought it was just a good thing to include

00:12:04 ◼   ► It really does upset me whenever I see any blog posts with my photos in them though from that first day

00:12:10 ◼   ► Because it just feels unfair like so, you know Joe included a couple of pictures that I took

00:12:15 ◼   ► Yeah, but it's just in the worst light possible

00:12:18 ◼   ► Yeah, well he also has my picture that I took of my cat which which is good because it's got a great example of really

00:12:26 ◼   ► consistent blurring effects in the foreground.

00:12:29 ◼   ► But yeah, yeah.

00:12:31 ◼   ► No, it's a really good post.

00:12:33 ◼   ► He, I mean, as he says,

00:12:35 ◼   ► he is a professional at fake imagery.

00:12:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's what he knows for a living.

00:12:41 ◼   ► - So he knows about faking, you know,

00:12:44 ◼   ► things to look like they came through natural light

00:12:48 ◼   ► in a camera, that's his job.

00:12:49 ◼   ► - It's like, I would imagine that sometimes for Steele,

00:12:53 ◼   ► he causes those errors and then has to fix them with his work right like you know he creates

00:12:59 ◼   ► things that don't look right and then they have to be fixed so yeah i mean look i could go around

00:13:04 ◼   ► again and again talking about this but i've been taking more pictures of this thing and i think

00:13:09 ◼   ► it's freaking amazing and do you know what like there are some photos that i've been taking where

00:13:13 ◼   ► i delete them because i can see some errors but i kind of don't care like the ones that i like i

00:13:19 ◼   ► I know that there are things in them that aren't magically perfect and that people can't

00:13:23 ◼   ► take but it's like for me, really, it's telling that everybody who is upset about this feature

00:13:30 ◼   ► or thinks that it's not good or is unhappy with the results, they own big cameras.

00:13:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's right. Joe, by the way, Mr. Steele himself suggests a piece by Stu

00:13:43 ◼   ► Maschwitz that we'll put in the show notes about the depth effect. So, thanks, Joe.

00:13:49 ◼   ► last thing about the cameras and this is something that is weird but okay in low

00:13:54 ◼   ► light situations the two times mode is digital zoom and I've been testing this

00:13:59 ◼   ► out but put my finger over the cameras and it on the plus and it's just a

00:14:04 ◼   ► little bit strange I mean I can see why they're doing it and you can kind of I

00:14:07 ◼   ► can kind of trick it like I can point it inside the room into a dark area and I

00:14:11 ◼   ► can see it when I cover the camera then I point it at the window and it goes

00:14:14 ◼   ► black as the cameras are switching over and I'm kind of like I'm fine with it

00:14:20 ◼   ► like I'm because I know why it's doing it like it's trying to make

00:14:24 ◼   ► sure it can get the best picture and the low light from the other camera isn't

00:14:28 ◼   ► great but it's like huh it's just weird I don't really have a lot to say about

00:14:32 ◼   ► it but it's just like a weird thing so what I would suggest though if anybody

00:14:36 ◼   ► is frustrated by this is to download a third-party camera app which will allow

00:14:41 ◼   ► you to control specifically which camera you're using. I've been using an app called ProCam

00:14:47 ◼   ► just again to fiddle around with stuff as I'm doing my YouTubing stuff because all my

00:14:51 ◼   ► videos are shot on my iPhone and I'm planning to leave it that way for the foreseeable future

00:14:58 ◼   ► and ProCam just does some crazy stuff and you can like choose which camera lens you

00:15:04 ◼   ► want to use. They have this like 3D thing now where it uses both of them and it creates

00:15:08 ◼   ► these like glitchy jiggly photos that go backwards and forwards and it looks kind of 3D. It's

00:15:14 ◼   ► really weird. But it's a great app so I recommend it. I'll put a link to it in the show notes.

00:15:19 ◼   ► But that's all I have to say, Jason. It was very kind of backwards and forwards what I

00:15:23 ◼   ► was talking about just there. But there we go.

00:15:26 ◼   ► That's okay. That's all right. So what you're saying is that you had a different, several

00:15:30 ◼   ► different planes of depth in your conversation and then they were calculated.

00:15:34 ◼   ► And turned into a very blurry opinion.

00:15:36 ◼   ► Well, only some of it. Some of it was perfectly in focus and the others we artificially blurred.

00:15:41 ◼   ► Blurry around the edges. Joe will diagram your paragraph for you and

00:15:44 ◼   ► tell you what you did right and wrong. It'll be fine.

00:15:47 ◼   ► You could do it for me because you're the pro.

00:15:49 ◼   ► I could. I could. This week's episode is brought to you by

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00:18:02 ◼   ► So Jason Snell.

00:18:04 ◼   ► So Myke Hurley.

00:18:06 ◼   ► With my new video career here.

00:18:08 ◼   ► Yeah, so who's my new co-host once you become a huge video star?

00:18:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know. We'll work that out.

00:18:15 ◼   ► I guess you will kill the radio star. You're a video star. You were your own video star

00:18:20 ◼   ► killing your own radio star.

00:18:21 ◼   ► YouTube killed the podcast star.

00:18:24 ◼   ► Oh man, get the Buggles on the phone. Mm-hmm, Buggles 2.0. File a Buggle report.

00:18:30 ◼   ► With... anyway. Go mic at the movies. Nope, let's stop now, shall we? As I am now finding new ways

00:18:41 ◼   ► to put my Mac through its paces, I'm wondering where are all of the Macintosh computers? It is

00:18:52 ◼   ► October the third? No no no no Myke you know what it is? What is it?

00:18:57 ◼   ► MACTOBER! Oh yeah? We're in MACTOBER are we? I think maybe we are. Tell me about this.

00:19:05 ◼   ► I am I am increasingly optimistic let's put it that way I feel I feel good about this I feel like

00:19:12 ◼   ► we're going to get MACs of some sort this month I just I the rumors are heating up

00:19:21 ◼   ► the you know they've recycled the MacBook Pro with OLED Touch Bar and

00:19:27 ◼   ► Touch ID sensor rumor again but it's out there again

00:19:32 ◼   ► it sounds like it just it you know they couldn't ship it for WWDC and so they

00:19:36 ◼   ► delayed it but the rumors are swirling that it is coming soon

00:19:40 ◼   ► there was a story on a site that I've never heard of that was referred to by I

00:19:46 ◼   ► think macrumors.com as a shaky rumor which is hilarious to me that rumor sites

00:19:51 ◼   ► are calling out other sites for their quality of rumors, but hey, they're the ones who know,

00:19:57 ◼   ► that actually said that it was going to be, there was going to be a media event on October

00:20:02 ◼   ► 24th, which is a Monday, which seems really weird to me. But I feel like this is, if you

00:20:07 ◼   ► look back, Apple has more often than not over the last few years had an October event following

00:20:13 ◼   ► their big blowout iPhone September event. And last year they didn't. And I think given,

00:20:20 ◼   ► we talked about it like that conversation I had with Jon Gruber as we were going into

00:20:23 ◼   ► the Apple event this year where last month where the whole thought was maybe when they

00:20:29 ◼   ► said goodbye to town hall, they really legitimately did think that they were those MacBook Pros

00:20:33 ◼   ► were going to come out at WWDC and they wouldn't need another event to launch them. But obviously

00:20:37 ◼   ► that didn't happen. So maybe this is something that is sort of come into focus in the last

00:20:43 ◼   ► few months that yeah, we're going to we're going to need to go back to the two-step instead

00:20:46 ◼   ► of just the single event like we did last year. So I think that's the most

00:20:50 ◼   ► likely scenario and when you talk about the rumors that are heating up

00:20:53 ◼   ► again, reheating those rumors for the MacBook Pro, when you talk about the

00:20:57 ◼   ► rumors of a new MacBook Air, which baffled us sort of when we

00:21:02 ◼   ► heard that initially, but you know those are out there, a USB-C MacBook Air, maybe

00:21:06 ◼   ► even a MacBook Air with a Retina display, that, you know, I don't know what

00:21:11 ◼   ► of that is true or not, but there's enough accumulating here and that the

00:21:14 ◼   ► bottom line is that MacBook Pro cannot be launched with a press release. It is a

00:21:17 ◼   ► dramatic change to the flagship Mac essentially and so how could they just

00:21:24 ◼   ► do that with a press release? So I just feel like all signs are pointing to a

00:21:28 ◼   ► mid to late October Apple event somewhere maybe on campus maybe it's

00:21:32 ◼   ► Town Hall again one last ride for Town Hall an encore performance at Town Hall

00:21:37 ◼   ► or maybe it's something that's off-site but because it's a Mac event it won't

00:21:40 ◼   ► need the media scrutiny that an iPhone event requires. So I don't know, I'm feeling better

00:21:47 ◼   ► about this being—plus they need it, right? I mean, that's the other bottom line here,

00:21:51 ◼   ► is that those products all need to be refreshed. Macs are not necessarily holiday splurge items,

00:21:58 ◼   ► but still, going into the holiday season with a line that is, other than the MacBook, completely

00:22:03 ◼   ► covered in dust and cobwebs seems like a bad idea to me.

00:22:08 ◼   ► So regarding the weirdness of the MacBook Air, my theory on this, it's not a complicated

00:22:15 ◼   ► theory, but it's my theory, there is no MacBook Air. That's actually a refresh to the MacBook,

00:22:20 ◼   ► but the wires got crossed. Like, that they're going to refresh the MacBook again.

00:22:26 ◼   ► It could be. It could be.

00:22:28 ◼   ► Because I seriously cannot understand why they would do this, anything, to the MacBook

00:22:33 ◼   ► Air now.

00:22:34 ◼   ► I think the question is, the MacBook is, well, Apple knows how the MacBook is selling better

00:22:40 ◼   ► than we do, right? And the MacBook is a beautiful piece of hardware, but it is limited. The

00:22:45 ◼   ► processor isn't very fast.

00:22:47 ◼   ► Right, but that's what I think they're going to do. They're going to put something

00:22:49 ◼   ► more comparable in there.

00:22:51 ◼   ► Yeah, well, so this is the question, but would you do that in an Air, which is this old enclosure?

00:23:02 ◼   ► seems weird to me if they take the MacBook Air which rather than just

00:23:05 ◼   ► having a variation on the MacBook right? It may be that they're feeling is like

00:23:09 ◼   ► the MacBook Air still sells well and they can without having to go

00:23:15 ◼   ► because the MacBook because it's so small and fanless has incredible

00:23:22 ◼   ► limitations that the MacBook Air enclosure doesn't have so they could put

00:23:26 ◼   ► a retina display in the 13-inch MacBook Air enclosure and still have a pretty

00:23:31 ◼   ► powerful processor in there compared to what they can fit in the MacBook. And so

00:23:35 ◼   ► I wonder if that's the conversation is like look if everybody loves the MacBook

00:23:38 ◼   ► Air and it's still selling really well and it allows us to kind of hold down

00:23:42 ◼   ► the bottom of our product line on the laptop front in terms of price why

00:23:45 ◼   ► wouldn't and we still can't really crank up the power on the MacBook it's just

00:23:51 ◼   ► too early why not just keep the MacBook Air around another year or two it's not

00:23:56 ◼   ► like the old Apple Playbook I will grant you a hundred percent but you know it's

00:24:00 ◼   ► a new Apple and I do wonder if somebody made that argument that they'd be better off in

00:24:06 ◼   ► the interim having a product that's not the high-end MacBook Pro but is also not the speed

00:24:12 ◼   ► limited and port limited MacBook.

00:24:15 ◼   ► I just can't stand the design of that thing anymore. That horrific huge silver bezel.

00:24:21 ◼   ► The bezel, hey, I have one, I don't use it every day anymore, but I have one sitting

00:24:26 ◼   ► right behind me now and and I love that I love that computer so much but compared

00:24:31 ◼   ► to Apple's entire product line it looks wrong doesn't it? I mean I suppose they

00:24:36 ◼   ► could change the bezel if they're if they're making it a retinas display

00:24:40 ◼   ► maybe they change the bezel or something but it does it is the last it's I don't

00:24:46 ◼   ► even know how you you call it it's the last series design language right it's

00:24:49 ◼   ► like the previous generation design language of Apple laptops and it's still

00:24:53 ◼   ► kind of hanging around. So I don't know what that is. I think you're totally right that

00:25:00 ◼   ► one of the problems with especially supply chain rumors is that you don't know what the

00:25:06 ◼   ► marketing is, right? So there are, it's just like remember the iPhone math, which was iPhone

00:25:13 ◼   ► Plus I guess. There are lots of, you could be seeing a 13-inch USB-C laptop from Apple

00:25:21 ◼   ► that is not going to be called a MacBook Air and doesn't look like the MacBook Air but

00:25:25 ◼   ► is also not the super thin MacBook, it's a different MacBook and they call it something

00:25:30 ◼   ► different or they call it the MacBook or maybe they do call it the MacBook Air. That's the

00:25:34 ◼   ► part that we don't know but there are those rumors out there about that which was surprising

00:25:37 ◼   ► but they have not faded away. So what it's called would be an interesting part of it

00:25:44 ◼   ► and if the MacBook Air keeps on living for a while I think that's fine, I think there's

00:25:49 ◼   ► a place for it because the MacBook, as futuristic as it is and as perfectly good as it is for

00:25:55 ◼   ► a lot of uses, there are also a lot of people who use a MacBook Air who probably would not

00:26:01 ◼   ► choose to switch to a MacBook because of the limitations of it right now, today, maybe

00:26:06 ◼   ► not in two years.

00:26:09 ◼   ► So I want to go back to that timing for a second. October 24 feels really late because

00:26:17 ◼   ► then you're looking at what shipping note start of November maybe or like within a couple

00:26:21 ◼   ► of days basically start of November.

00:26:24 ◼   ► Yeah, but that is something that Macs sometimes are shipping same week, right? They have done

00:26:30 ◼   ► that with Mac announcements. Also, they've done Mac announcements where they ship certain

00:26:34 ◼   ► models that day or at the end of that week and then other ones come later, right? And

00:26:41 ◼   ► it ends up being, "Oh, well, that one didn't ship until December 28th." That has happened

00:26:46 ◼   ► too. But again, holiday, you could refresh the bulk of the product line and then if one

00:26:52 ◼   ► of the products seems problematic, right? One of the problems is like, "Ah, this is

00:26:56 ◼   ► hard to make, it's having delays on the product line," you know, they say, "Well, that one

00:27:02 ◼   ► will be available later," and they just kind of move on with it. But it's late if you're

00:27:06 ◼   ► thinking about capturing holiday shoppers, but if they're all on the channel by the first

00:27:10 ◼   ► couple weeks in November, I think it'll be fine.

00:27:12 ◼   ► Yeah, it's, it's, um, it just seems, it just seems too close to the holidays, you know?

00:27:21 ◼   ► And I don't know why they're releasing them. I don't know if they're doing them for the

00:27:24 ◼   ► holidays or they're doing them just, like, because at this point, but it, yeah.

00:27:29 ◼   ► Or because of timing, that this is when they've got the, they feel like they have to. They've

00:27:33 ◼   ► also been pressured, you know, with the Intel chip delays, they may be, feel pressured to

00:27:38 ◼   ► maybe they almost certainly had a different schedule planned and the way that Intel's

00:27:43 ◼   ► chip releases are falling, they can't. So they may have finally decided we just need

00:27:49 ◼   ► to do a refresh now even though it's not the ideal time because we can't, we've

00:27:54 ◼   ► waited too long already and now if we wait for the next shoe to drop it will be spring

00:27:59 ◼   ► and everything will be six months, even six months older.

00:28:01 ◼   ► David: Especially when they're sitting on not just revisions but potential revolutions

00:28:06 ◼   ► in the products, right? Like, that the MacBook Pro is a brand new MacBook Pro. It's not just

00:28:12 ◼   ► like the MacBook Pro that we know and love, you know?

00:28:15 ◼   ► - Right. There are also rumors that Sierra is the next beta of Sierra. That's one of

00:28:21 ◼   ► the prime features that's gonna go into it, is the support for all the, you know, the

00:28:25 ◼   ► touch bar and touch ID on the Mac and all of that, which, you know, people were intuiting

00:28:29 ◼   ► from the fact that Sierra has this unlock, Apple Watch unlock feature and Apple Pay that

00:28:35 ◼   ► all uses iOS devices that, yeah, that uses touch ID. So, you know, that you can do Apple

00:28:43 ◼   ► Pay but you need to have a device that you're authenticating that's external, the logical

00:28:48 ◼   ► thought is, well, this will be on Macs in the future, when will that be? And so, yeah,

00:28:55 ◼   ► all signs point to it and all timing suggests that it was meant to be sooner and it didn't

00:29:00 ◼   ► get out then. So, but I think it's going to happen. I'm optimistic about it. This is not

00:29:07 ◼   ► one of those like sources tell me that, but it's not that. But it just, if I had to, my

00:29:16 ◼   ► confidence in this being a real thing has gone up, I guess is what I would say.

00:29:21 ◼   ► - I was in an Apple store yesterday. I went to a Covent Garden Apple store. I was in the

00:29:26 ◼   ► area and I wanted to just to hold the jet black a little bit more than I had

00:29:32 ◼   ► because I'd only touched one for like a second yeah and I wanted to kind of pick

00:29:37 ◼   ► it up and yeah it does feel really great like it feels amazing to hold it is a

00:29:43 ◼   ► very strange feeling product it I almost can't believe that there's aluminium in

00:29:47 ◼   ► there but I also again turn the thing over and it was just caked in hand grease

00:29:53 ◼   ► further proving to myself why I just couldn't deal with that phone but

00:29:59 ◼   ► walking around the Apple store and kind of just looking at stuff and they had

00:30:03 ◼   ► all these Macs everywhere right because obviously they sell them and that every

00:30:08 ◼   ► single one of them had people in front of them playing around with them and

00:30:12 ◼   ► certainly that day people were buying them right because that's just I assume

00:30:18 ◼   ► is the natural thing in what is currently the only central London store

00:30:22 ◼   ► because the Regent Street store is still closed for renovations. So there's going to be people

00:30:27 ◼   ► buying those computers that day and they're going to be spending a lot of money and probably

00:30:31 ◼   ► many of them, if not all of them, will fall outside of the return window. And there's

00:30:36 ◼   ► just a part of me that's like, "Those computers are really old." It's not that like if somebody

00:30:43 ◼   ► goes in and buys an iPhone three weeks before the next iPhone, because that thing's good.

00:30:51 ◼   ► got some time on that. But you've got people going in there and buying MacBook Airs and

00:30:56 ◼   ► MacBook Pros. It's like those machines, you're starting off with a computer that's two or

00:31:00 ◼   ► three years old.

00:31:01 ◼   ► Yeah. For full price.

00:31:04 ◼   ► For full price. I know that I am not asking Apple to reduce their stuff, I'm not asking

00:31:10 ◼   ► them to pre-announce their stuff, I'm not saying that. But it's just at this point,

00:31:14 ◼   ► This is a rarity for them, where the entire Mac line is old.

00:31:19 ◼   ► You know, the Mac Pro and the Mac Mini

00:31:23 ◼   ► have had this problem for as long as I've been interested

00:31:26 ◼   ► in Apple products, that they go for hundreds and hundreds

00:31:30 ◼   ► and hundreds and hundreds of days,

00:31:32 ◼   ► if not thousands of days, without updates,

00:31:34 ◼   ► especially the Mac Mini.

00:31:35 ◼   ► That product has always kind of been in the corner, right?

00:31:39 ◼   ► Like it's just this thing, it is a gateway drug,

00:31:42 ◼   ► it's just there.

00:31:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like a spork.

00:31:46 ◼   ► It's a utility item that few people care about

00:31:50 ◼   ► and some people love, but it's good to have it in the world.

00:31:53 ◼   ► - It was created at a very different time.

00:31:55 ◼   ► It was created for PC switches.

00:31:57 ◼   ► They already had all the hardware.

00:31:58 ◼   ► They already had their monitor

00:32:00 ◼   ► and their keyboard and their mouse.

00:32:01 ◼   ► And quite frankly, that's just not a thing anymore.

00:32:04 ◼   ► - No, it survived because it's useful

00:32:07 ◼   ► for some of Apple's customers to have

00:32:09 ◼   ► as a second computer or a server.

00:32:13 ◼   ► I mean, there are lots of reasons that it still exists.

00:32:16 ◼   ► And I think that if those reasons didn't exist,

00:32:18 ◼   ► it would have gone away.

00:32:19 ◼   ► There is an audience for it,

00:32:20 ◼   ► but it is such a small audience that it is, yeah,

00:32:24 ◼   ► it's updated in small ways every few years,

00:32:27 ◼   ► and that's fine.

00:32:30 ◼   ► - But it's to see the laptops in this state.

00:32:33 ◼   ► - In the state.

00:32:34 ◼   ► - Is very weird.

00:32:36 ◼   ► And it should be, there is nothing that calls this out more

00:32:39 ◼   ► then standing at the top of one of those glass staircases

00:32:44 ◼   ► and looking down at these tables and tables and tables

00:32:46 ◼   ► full of Macs with people in front of them,

00:32:48 ◼   ► potentially weighing up a buying decision.

00:32:50 ◼   ► Like that's really where it's like,

00:32:52 ◼   ► oh man, what are you doing?

00:32:54 ◼   ► - It's like you want to push through the crowd going,

00:32:56 ◼   ► stop, no, stop, don't, don't do it.

00:32:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, it felt like that.

00:33:00 ◼   ► - Other than the MacBook, you can buy the MacBook.

00:33:02 ◼   ► I think buy the MacBook, it's fine.

00:33:04 ◼   ► I think you could buy that

00:33:05 ◼   ► because it was updated in the spring, it's fine.

00:33:07 ◼   ► - But yeah, even if it gets updated in a couple of weeks,

00:33:09 ◼   ► that one's still pretty much fine.

00:33:11 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:33:12 ◼   ► - It's not gonna be, yeah.

00:33:13 ◼   ► If they updated it in a couple of weeks,

00:33:14 ◼   ► it wouldn't be that much better than the current MacBook.

00:33:16 ◼   ► It would just be, it's a MacBook.

00:33:18 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:33:19 ◼   ► But the others, all the others, basically,

00:33:23 ◼   ► I had this, I was sitting in for Leo Laporte

00:33:25 ◼   ► on his radio show, his Colin show.

00:33:28 ◼   ► - Oh, I forgot to watch that.

00:33:30 ◼   ► - I'm sure they archive of it.

00:33:33 ◼   ► And it was, you know, it was me

00:33:36 ◼   ► and the home theater geek guy.

00:33:37 ◼   ► So we're like, if you've got Apple or home theater questions,

00:33:40 ◼   ► call in, but one guy called in and he's like,

00:33:43 ◼   ► I really want to get a new Apple laptop,

00:33:45 ◼   ► what are my options?

00:33:45 ◼   ► And I walked through them and he was like, yeah,

00:33:47 ◼   ► I think for my uses, I really want the MacBook Pro.

00:33:50 ◼   ► I said, well, here's what you do.

00:33:51 ◼   ► Don't buy one until they announce new ones

00:33:54 ◼   ► because they're really old.

00:33:55 ◼   ► And it was like, that was what I need to,

00:33:58 ◼   ► that's how I need to express this at this point is wait.

00:34:01 ◼   ► You just have to wait for all of these things.

00:34:03 ◼   ► So, you know, I would imagine that if Apple does

00:34:07 ◼   ► a Mac event and it's mostly about that Macbook Pro. They will probably also

00:34:12 ◼   ► update everything that except maybe the MacBook that would be my my gut feeling

00:34:17 ◼   ► is that if it's a Mac event they're going to tell you how great Sierra is

00:34:21 ◼   ► again just to remind you they're going to talk about the MacBook Pro and yeah

00:34:27 ◼   ► maybe there's a maybe that 13-inch MacBook Air / MacBook / something else

00:34:33 ◼   ► is the other product that they talk about there. And then they mentioned that

00:34:37 ◼   ► the Mac Pro gets updated, the Mac Mini maybe gets updated, and the iMacs are

00:34:41 ◼   ► very popular computers and they have gotten updated the last two

00:34:44 ◼   ► years this time of year. So another speed boost for them. If there's a product that

00:34:52 ◼   ► brings Touch ID to the iMac, like a keyboard with Touch ID or something like

00:34:58 ◼   ► that, which has not been rumored, but I do wonder about that, if that might be part

00:35:02 ◼   ► of this story is an accessory for, unless it's built into the iMac itself, but something

00:35:09 ◼   ► like that for the iMac would be kind of an interesting thing to see too. Yeah, I can

00:35:14 ◼   ► imagine this event. I'm gonna, maybe I'm wishing it into existence here, I don't know, but

00:35:20 ◼   ► I feel like one of the last couple of Tuesdays in October that, you know, hopefully we'll

00:35:26 ◼   ► get an invite and it'll be a nice smaller crowd, people who care about what's going

00:35:32 ◼   ► on with the Mac, which is nice. I'd like to go back to the Mac, so to speak.

00:35:37 ◼   ► Speaking of which, this episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Boom2 from Global Delight,

00:35:43 ◼   ► which is a lovely little Mac app. We all use our Macs for different purposes. Some of us

00:35:46 ◼   ► use it professionally for creative stuff, maybe for designing. Others maybe stick to

00:35:53 ◼   ► daily usage like Netflix and YouTube, just consuming media. But one feature that all

00:35:57 ◼   ► of these types of things depend on is the use of the system's volume. So we've all found

00:36:02 ◼   ► times where I think we just need a little bit more from what our Mac can output. We

00:36:08 ◼   ► like to have our favourite music louder, we maybe wish that our movies sounded a little

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00:37:14 ◼   ► with the output of its customisable equalisers letting you tweak your own output to your

00:37:19 ◼   ► heart's content. I remember when I was a MacBook Air owner Jason, I had an 11" MacBook Air

00:37:24 ◼   ► for many years, Boom was absolutely indispensable to me because I couldn't hear a thing coming

00:37:33 ◼   ► out of those speakers. And I used to use Boom to great effect to be able to watch and consume

00:37:39 ◼   ► any media.

00:37:40 ◼   ► Yeah, that was, we did a Mac World Best of Show about it because it was very impressive

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00:38:08 ◼   ► Delight for supporting this show and Relay FM.

00:38:11 ◼   ► Boop.

00:38:12 ◼   ► Alright, so let's talk about messages shall we? You wrote a nice little post on 6colors

00:38:18 ◼   ► about some of the trouble with messages from a usability perspective.

00:38:24 ◼   ► Right, I mean, my point is not that I've written and talked about the fact that I really like

00:38:30 ◼   ► the features in the new iMessage, you know, stickers, new messages stuff. I like it. Stickers

00:38:37 ◼   ► and lasers and all that stuff. It's fun, people can complain about it, but it's fun and people

00:38:42 ◼   ► like sending stuff like that. That's just, people like having fun when they're sending

00:38:47 ◼   ► messages to each other. Not all people, no, we hear from people who don't like fun things,

00:38:52 ◼   ► and that's fine. You don't have to use those features. But my bigger point was I love that

00:38:59 ◼   ► Apple dumped all of this stuff into their apps, especially on iOS. I wish they had done

00:39:05 ◼   ► more of it on the Mac. But I love that they said, "Okay, we're bringing the fun. We're

00:39:10 ◼   ► putting all the stuff in there. We're just going to pour it all in." What I don't love

00:39:14 ◼   ► is that it is, on the interface standpoint,

00:39:17 ◼   ► from the usability standpoint, it's a mess.

00:39:20 ◼   ► It's like it's not, once you know how to use messages,

00:39:25 ◼   ► you can use all of those features fairly easily,

00:39:27 ◼   ► but you have to know how to use it,

00:39:30 ◼   ► and the idea that you have to sort of like discover

00:39:32 ◼   ► all of the complex secrets of your messaging app

00:39:35 ◼   ► seems a little counterproductive to me.

00:39:39 ◼   ► - So I would like to make a similar opening statement,

00:39:42 ◼   ► and I love the new iMessage. I really like that it's bringing more conversations for

00:39:49 ◼   ► me from other places, from other apps back into it because it's so good and I'm having

00:39:54 ◼   ► a lot of fun talking to people in it. Like I really love the stickers. I actually really

00:39:58 ◼   ► like the effects because they're fun, kind of silly and sticky in the way that like they're

00:40:03 ◼   ► making me want to stay within the application and use it more. I love all the rich previews,

00:40:08 ◼   ► the rich media previews like previewing tweets,

00:40:10 ◼   ► previewing like different posts.

00:40:11 ◼   ► I love all of that stuff.

00:40:13 ◼   ► It means you don't have to keep clicking backwards

00:40:14 ◼   ► and forwards between applications.

00:40:16 ◼   ► And like all of these things have been a much needed change

00:40:20 ◼   ► for iMessage to make it kind of a real 2016

00:40:23 ◼   ► internet aware messaging platform.

00:40:26 ◼   ► But there are issues and it's mostly around the fact

00:40:29 ◼   ► that how you mentioned pouring it all in.

00:40:32 ◼   ► They didn't change messages.

00:40:35 ◼   ► They just bolted all of these features

00:40:37 ◼   ► to the existing applications. And this always creates issues when you do something like

00:40:42 ◼   ► this. And I can see why they did it the way that they did, because they wanted to kind

00:40:46 ◼   ► of add these things into the familiar environment. But in doing that, things are really hidden

00:40:52 ◼   ► and complicated. And your post kind of breaks down a few of them, so I thought we'd touch

00:40:56 ◼   ► on them. So the first one being the little blue up send arrow, which just in and of itself

00:41:03 ◼   ► makes no sense as a glyph.

00:41:05 ◼   ► Yeah, it's, it's you get used to it and you start to realize that's what you're doing,

00:41:10 ◼   ► but I have yet to encounter somebody who's upgraded to iOS 10.

00:41:15 ◼   ► This includes everybody in my family and this actually includes me because by the time I installed iOS 10 beta,

00:41:20 ◼   ► I had forgotten the detail of that from the demo at the at the developers conference and you're sitting there and you're going,

00:41:28 ◼   ► what do I do now?

00:41:30 ◼   ► Like you type a message and you're like, how do I send this?

00:41:34 ◼   ► And it's just, it used to be a thing that said send, right?

00:41:38 ◼   ► And now there's an up arrow and you can get used to it, but it's not obvious.

00:41:42 ◼   ► And it's sort of like, it starts there where you're, you need to intuit what

00:41:48 ◼   ► between the gray rectangular box with a, uh, uh, kind of like a

00:41:54 ◼   ► carrot pointing to the right.

00:41:56 ◼   ► And then you've got a blue circular box with an arrow pointing up.

00:42:02 ◼   ► And I would also say you're using two different kinds of pointers here in two different box shapes,

00:42:08 ◼   ► a circle and a rectangle. I also find that weird. But anyway, that's what's going on here.

00:42:14 ◼   ► It's less obvious than it was before, and everybody seems a little stymied by it when

00:42:21 ◼   ► they first see it. And then something that I find really weird is that it is on 3D Touch-enabled

00:42:27 ◼   ► devices you 3D touch this arrow to get to the effects, you know, like to the lasers

00:42:33 ◼   ► and the confetti and all that stuff. On non-3D touch devices you long press to get it, but

00:42:39 ◼   ► on 3D touch devices you can't long press to get it.

00:42:42 ◼   ► Yeah, right. Just 3D touch, lazy person, it says. Push harder!

00:42:49 ◼   ► But my biggest issue with this is that you 3D touch, you swipe up while still holding

00:42:54 ◼   ► holding down to choose your effect. You let go, and then you still have to press send.

00:42:59 ◼   ► When I let go, it should send.

00:43:02 ◼   ► Right, because you've done that in one swift movement to get to that point. You're showing

00:43:07 ◼   ► very clear preference for that. You want to let go and have it send, and instead it just

00:43:12 ◼   ► takes you back and then you tap and then it goes.

00:43:15 ◼   ► Every time feels like it's broken to me.

00:43:18 ◼   ► I heard from several people when I mentioned offhandedly that you long press on the arrow

00:43:23 ◼   ► to get those effects who had no idea. Right? Because that's even more. I mean, 3D Touch

00:43:30 ◼   ► in general is a not-discoverable feature, and you have to just push on things hard and

00:43:36 ◼   ► see what happens. And Long Press is similar. I mean, it's good that those are there. I

00:43:42 ◼   ► advocated for that, that you gotta have an alternative to 3D Touch for people who can't

00:43:46 ◼   ► do it. But behind that arrow, I think that there are not a lot of people expecting that

00:43:51 ◼   ► there's a whole category of effects because remember there's still the gray

00:43:54 ◼   ► thing pointing right that's over there that reveals a whole bunch of effects.

00:44:00 ◼   ► So I think people assume that that's what's available to them once they

00:44:03 ◼   ► explore

00:44:04 ◼   ► and don't understand that beneath that that send arrow which

00:44:08 ◼   ► also is scary because if you don't do it right you just sent a message.

00:44:13 ◼   ► Which I think people are reluctant

00:44:16 ◼   ► to press the arrow if they are not done with what they're doing. Even if you're going through

00:44:22 ◼   ► the arrow, not sending it because instead you're picking an effect. Yeah.

00:44:29 ◼   ► >> The handwriting keyboard is weird. I completely agree with you that it is not important enough

00:44:35 ◼   ► for a software keyboard key and it's not important enough for automatically switching to when

00:44:40 ◼   ► you put your phone in landscape. >> Yeah, plus it's unlike any other interaction

00:44:45 ◼   ► in messages is that on the iPad you get this ink button on your keyboard and then on the

00:44:50 ◼   ► iPhone you don't and the only indication that you can do hand inky handwriting in messages

00:44:55 ◼   ► is if you turn your phone sideways and then that's the interface for it and how do you

00:45:00 ◼   ► discover that why is it completely different interaction from all the other effects. I

00:45:07 ◼   ► don't know. Also there are two we'll get to it. But also there are two different things

00:45:12 ◼   ► where you can use your finger to draw messages to people.

00:45:16 ◼   ► - Digital touch.

00:45:17 ◼   ► - Right, they behave completely differently

00:45:20 ◼   ► and are located in different places,

00:45:23 ◼   ► and I don't really understand that decision either.

00:45:26 ◼   ► - Digital touch on iOS devices

00:45:28 ◼   ► is flat out inscrutable to me.

00:45:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, it's baffling.

00:45:31 ◼   ► I mean, it's so baffling that if you tap,

00:45:33 ◼   ► they had the little animated, like,

00:45:35 ◼   ► trying to tell you what happens,

00:45:37 ◼   ► which itself is inscrutable.

00:45:38 ◼   ► The, you know, if you, you know,

00:45:41 ◼   ► they've got these like three, it's a strip of like three icons explaining to you what they are and they animate to say like if you put two fingers you get a heart and you put one finger down and you get a fireball or whatever it is.

00:45:52 ◼   ► But even that's so confusing that if you tap on that animated little chart, it brings up a full screen bit of documentation explaining to you how to use messages for digital, how to use digital touch basically.

00:46:06 ◼   ► Why was this the only part of Messages that got any documentation inside of the application?

00:46:11 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:46:13 ◼   ► Because you can argue that Apple wouldn't give you a splash screen when you open Messages,

00:46:19 ◼   ► like a little tour, even though that's the way to do these things.

00:46:24 ◼   ► If what you're going to do is take an existing UI, put these features into it, the way that

00:46:28 ◼   ► you tell people about them is by actually showing them.

00:46:32 ◼   ► Full screen, little tour, this is how you do it.

00:46:35 ◼   ► kind of the way you do it but it's very unlikely for Apple to do something like that, it's

00:46:38 ◼   ► very unlikely for many developers to do something like that because it's kind of admitting that

00:46:43 ◼   ► these things aren't intuitive.

00:46:45 ◼   ► Yeah, which they aren't.

00:46:48 ◼   ► So why did they do this for Digital Touch but nothing else? They've admitted Digital

00:46:51 ◼   ► Touch wasn't intuitive. It's strange to me. Also, the heartbeat doesn't make any sense

00:46:56 ◼   ► because it's not a real heartbeat. The taps don't make any sense because they don't hit

00:46:59 ◼   ► you on the wrist. That's why it only really works on the watch. The only part of this

00:47:03 ◼   ► digital touch thing that was kind of needed, well not needed but is kind of any good really

00:47:08 ◼   ► in my opinion, is taking a picture and drawing on the picture. That's cool. Everything else,

00:47:13 ◼   ► I don't get it. The fireball one, what does that even do? It doesn't even do anything.

00:47:17 ◼   ► It's just like this little orb.

00:47:19 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Yeah, that's, my son is sending me fireballs.

00:47:22 ◼   ► That's what he does. Every now and then I just get a fireball from him. And I think

00:47:26 ◼   ► it's just because that's his, he knows to put down the one finger. Also, we haven't

00:47:31 ◼   ► mentioned yet that there's the, Digital Touch starts in the small area but if you tap the

00:47:37 ◼   ► right thing it expands and you get like full screen Digital Touch canvas. I don't know

00:47:44 ◼   ► who thinks Digital Touch is a great idea at Apple. On the Apple Watch it was silly but

00:47:51 ◼   ► a little bit fun and oversold and overemphasized in the interface and they've de-emphasized

00:47:57 ◼   ► it in watchOS 3. But now here it comes in messages being emphasized like this.

00:48:03 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like two teams got different memos. The watch team got told to de-emphasize it,

00:48:08 ◼   ► then the iMessage team got told to emphasize it.

00:48:11 ◼   ► Bring it up! Yeah, it's, uh, right. And again, it's the second feature that lets you draw

00:48:18 ◼   ► in messages. So take your pick based on whether you want ink on paper or whether you want

00:48:24 ◼   ► like a light colored thing on a dark background which is there because of the OLED screen

00:48:28 ◼   ► on the Apple Watch and they've imported it from the Apple Watch. I don't know. So that's,

00:48:32 ◼   ► yeah, yeah, it's not great. You're right, drawing on pictures is like the best part

00:48:36 ◼   ► of that.

00:48:37 ◼   ► Mhmm, which I like. I like that part. I think that's cool.

00:48:39 ◼   ► It's basically markup.

00:48:40 ◼   ► But it's got that kind of shiny neon, like I like all of that. I like that. I think that's

00:48:44 ◼   ► cool but I think a lot of the tapping effects, you're best served using stickers for that

00:48:50 ◼   ► stuff as opposed to the taps.

00:48:53 ◼   ► Now the taps are really there because you're so limited on the Apple Watch with what you

00:48:57 ◼   ► can do and so then bring that over to the iPhone, you know, other than that it is Apple

00:49:02 ◼   ► Watch compatibility, I guess, so that if you send a digital touch to somebody who's using

00:49:06 ◼   ► an Apple Watch they'll get the taps and things along with a phony heartbeat but…

00:49:10 ◼   ► This continues the chain of perplexity for me though because it's like, okay, so you

00:49:16 ◼   ► did this because you want to have parity between the Apple Watch and the phones right? So it's

00:49:25 ◼   ► not just the phones that can send and receive this digital touch stuff, so the watches that

00:49:30 ◼   ► can send and receive this digital touch stuff, you put it on the phones as well so then they

00:49:33 ◼   ► mix over and then you can kind of, okay, alright, I see where you're coming from, like you want

00:49:38 ◼   ► to make sure that like all of your devices can kind of interact with this stuff, but

00:49:43 ◼   ► about the Mac in anything because the Mac cannot do any of the stuff that iOS can do.

00:49:50 ◼   ► So like you felt it was important enough to put digital touch in the iPhone so that there

00:49:55 ◼   ► was another device to communicate digital touch stuff with the watch. But then none

00:49:59 ◼   ► of the stickers, none of the apps, none of the digital stuff is in the Mac. So that can't

00:50:03 ◼   ► communicate correctly with the iPhone. It's like this weird disconnect stuff, which always

00:50:09 ◼   ► feels to me like as a consequence of Apple's secrecy, that like these teams don't get

00:50:14 ◼   ► to work together properly. That's the way I always think of it in my head. I could be

00:50:17 ◼   ► completely wrong, but that's how I see it.

00:50:20 ◼   ► You'd think there would be one Messages team though, on all platforms.

00:50:24 ◼   ► You would. I mean, that's all I have to say. I have no idea. Yes, you would think

00:50:29 ◼   ► that, but some of the features seem to argue otherwise at times.

00:50:33 ◼   ► So we talk about the Message App Store, that's another challenge.

00:50:37 ◼   ► Let me quote from your article here.

00:50:40 ◼   ► Here's how to direct someone to the Messages App Store.

00:50:43 ◼   ► Tap the grey greater than sign, then the App Store icon, then the four circles icon in

00:50:49 ◼   ► the bottom left corner of the screen, then the icon with a plus symbol that's labelled

00:50:53 ◼   ► "Store".

00:50:54 ◼   ► See?

00:50:55 ◼   ► It's that simple.

00:50:56 ◼   ► That's simple.

00:50:57 ◼   ► It's a nightmare.

00:50:58 ◼   ► That is a nightmare piece of term that I've heard people use recently that I like, "Mystery

00:51:03 ◼   ► Meet".

00:51:04 ◼   ► - It's for me the interface, yeah.

00:51:05 ◼   ► - And the idea that there's no way to know it,

00:51:07 ◼   ► you kind of just have to guess it.

00:51:10 ◼   ► - I don't think we're saying that this is easy stuff.

00:51:13 ◼   ► How do you add an interface for all of these features?

00:51:15 ◼   ► But as somebody looking at the end product,

00:51:18 ◼   ► it's hard to approve of what got done.

00:51:22 ◼   ► It's hard for me to say, yeah,

00:51:23 ◼   ► this is a good way to approach this

00:51:26 ◼   ► because it seems so scattershot.

00:51:27 ◼   ► It's not like they buried everything

00:51:29 ◼   ► under that little gray arrow thingy.

00:51:34 ◼   ► they buried some of the things under there and some of them are not under

00:51:37 ◼   ► there and some of them are one level under there and some of them are two or

00:51:40 ◼   ► three levels under there. So it's all over the place. People are

00:51:45 ◼   ► really excited about stickers and yet the access to stickers,

00:51:48 ◼   ► if you want to get stickers through that interface,

00:51:52 ◼   ► you kind of have to go deep down in because you have to go past your

00:51:56 ◼   ► existing stickers to get to the App Store to get more stickers.

00:51:59 ◼   ► Having that weird kind of like alternate App Store,

00:52:03 ◼   ► I'm not sure that's a good idea. I'm not sure that what they should not...

00:52:07 ◼   ► Maybe what they should have is just a button that takes you to the App Store...

00:52:11 ◼   ► App.

00:52:12 ◼   ► And shows you stickers.

00:52:14 ◼   ► I don't know. Having that little store without throwing you out is kind of nice though.

00:52:19 ◼   ► Because all you're seeing there is those apps. If you went to the App Store, it might be a bit...

00:52:26 ◼   ► trickier.

00:52:27 ◼   ► There's nothing stopping them from having a button somewhere that just opens the App Store app

00:52:31 ◼   ► and shows you the sticker section and you're looking at stickers and it's just the same as

00:52:36 ◼   ► you're seeing but you're not inside messages anymore and it just goes back there it's just

00:52:41 ◼   ► it's a little weird because you end up in this kind of strange modal app store inside messages

00:52:46 ◼   ► that doesn't behave quite like the regular app store and then there's also like the manage apps

00:52:52 ◼   ► icon having having a second class of apps at all is strange that these are these are apps but they

00:52:59 ◼   ► they sort of aren't apps and they show up in a different app launcher than the regular

00:53:03 ◼   ► app launcher, which I understand why, but it's just conceptually it's a difficult thing.

00:53:08 ◼   ► But I just, it takes a long way. Somebody was like, "Oh, stickers are cool, how do I

00:53:13 ◼   ► get stickers?" and I thought about how to explain to them how to get there and I realized,

00:53:16 ◼   ► wow, that's a long way to go to explain how you get to the sticker app store, basically.

00:53:21 ◼   ► I want to talk about stickers as well now, because there are some things here. Like,

00:53:27 ◼   ► I wished that stickers synced across platforms.

00:53:31 ◼   ► So like the stickers that you downloaded, the sticker packs,

00:53:34 ◼   ► I would love to be able to have them sync and install automatically without

00:53:39 ◼   ► needing to have all apps sync.

00:53:41 ◼   ► I'm sure that if I had all purchased apps sync across devices,

00:53:45 ◼   ► maybe it would show up or I bet maybe it would then just show up in the store

00:53:49 ◼   ► and I'd have to manually install them on each device anyway.

00:53:52 ◼   ► But like I wish that they just synced across devices and their positions,

00:53:56 ◼   ► So what I'm finding myself doing is every few days, I'll open one of my iPads, I'll

00:54:01 ◼   ► go into the store, I'll go to my purchases, I'll download all of them, because I have

00:54:05 ◼   ► to go to the App Store purchases, not the messages App Store purchases, so to install

00:54:10 ◼   ► them all.

00:54:11 ◼   ► Then their positions aren't the same as on my other devices, so I either change them

00:54:14 ◼   ► or just leave them.

00:54:16 ◼   ► And that's kind of frustrating because it frustrates me because I really like to use

00:54:23 ◼   ► them.

00:54:24 ◼   ► some of my favorites but I wish that this just worked better. I wish that also when

00:54:30 ◼   ► you didn't get to the limit like those little kind of dots at the bottom that it then starts

00:54:36 ◼   ► to sneak onto the other UI which is clearly a bug that never got fixed but everybody encountered

00:54:40 ◼   ► on day one because there's so many sticker packs. I had no idea that you could rotate stickers and

00:54:46 ◼   ► change their sizes so like you drag up and then just use another finger to like turn them around

00:54:51 ◼   ► or make them bigger. I was maybe using messages for nearly two months before I knew this.

00:54:56 ◼   ► I was just like, one day, I think it was you, sent me a sticker upside down, and I was like,

00:55:01 ◼   ► how did you do that?

00:55:02 ◼   ► I sent you Skeletor upside down.

00:55:05 ◼   ► And Easter Egg, that conversation I've discovered today is in the App Store screenshot for the

00:55:12 ◼   ► Incomparable Sticker Pack.

00:55:14 ◼   ► It is.

00:55:15 ◼   ► The conversation that me and you had where I found out I could turn stickers upside down

00:55:18 ◼   ► is the conversation is you then used it as the thing which I just found out about today

00:55:23 ◼   ► whilst going through the app store to pick out some of my favorite sticker packs to put in the

00:55:26 ◼   ► show notes. I saw that you did that and it really made me laugh. So yeah I wished that it was better

00:55:34 ◼   ► I don't know if it will ever get better because they wouldn't make any significant changes to

00:55:41 ◼   ► iOS 11 and then by that point everybody's just used to it so maybe by then it's like a moot point

00:55:46 ◼   ► anyway but I wish that they would have done more to kind of maybe redo messages. Our phones

00:55:53 ◼   ► are so big now, there's so much of that stuff that they could have put in a bar above the

00:55:58 ◼   ► message field. Like how Facebook does it. It can get a bit messy but Facebook just has

00:56:05 ◼   ► this bar which allows you to quickly get to all of your apps and stickers and emoji and

00:56:09 ◼   ► stuff. I kind of wish they would have just done that. There are a bunch of applications

00:56:12 ◼   ► even on the iPhone where Apple does this stuff, and like so many developers do this stuff,

00:56:17 ◼   ► add that like app-specific keyboard row, I really wish that they would have done something

00:56:22 ◼   ► like that.

00:56:23 ◼   ► It would have been, they would have been able to get way more buttons in there, they could

00:56:27 ◼   ► have split up stickers and apps into their own little trays, it would have been really

00:56:30 ◼   ► nice.

00:56:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I kind of feel like what we're really saying here is that obviously the people who

00:56:36 ◼   ► built Messages were put to work adding all these features.

00:56:41 ◼   ► And by and large, we have issues maybe with digital touch, but by and large, it's not

00:56:46 ◼   ► like I have problems with the features. I think the features are fun. I love the idea

00:56:50 ◼   ► that they wanted to make it more fun. But it does feel a little bit like they had more

00:56:56 ◼   ► time to get the features right than to get how they all work together seamlessly in one

00:57:01 ◼   ► app right. And that is what feels like a hodgepodge to me, which is why my story is something

00:57:06 ◼   ► like "Great Features, bad usability." It's like, you know, yes, but also no.

00:57:12 ◼   ► But honestly, it's probably the way it should be done. Get the features right, and then

00:57:17 ◼   ► find a way to put them in. And then it may just be that you run out of time and you just

00:57:20 ◼   ► kind of have to put them where they need to go. Because it's arguably more important that

00:57:24 ◼   ► the features work than them be easily findable. I don't know.

00:57:28 ◼   ► I feel like that Digital Touch feature shouldn't have shipped, but...

00:57:31 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. I mean, I question its existence in general.

00:57:35 ◼   ► Touch is somebody's baby and that person is high up enough that they can, against maybe

00:57:44 ◼   ► any people telling them otherwise, just keep putting it in there.

00:57:48 ◼   ► Yeah, because I would rather have like a sketch feature that maybe has colors and stuff and

00:57:53 ◼   ► not just the ink and that also lets you draw on pictures if you want. I mean, having a

00:57:58 ◼   ► single feature that lets you do that, but instead we've got kind of the ink feature

00:58:02 ◼   ► and then we've got the separate digital touch feature that's complicated and you've got

00:58:06 ◼   ► all the finger gestures and yeah.

00:58:08 ◼   ► The pure maximum that it should have gone to was just exactly what the watch has because

00:58:13 ◼   ► the phone has more, right? Like it has hearts and heartbreak and fireballs. They should

00:58:18 ◼   ► never have been there. I don't know why they're there.

00:58:22 ◼   ► Reasons unknown. Jason, can I run through some of my favorite sticker packs?

00:58:25 ◼   ► Yes, let's get positive here.

00:58:27 ◼   ► 'cause I wanna bookend this with talking about

00:58:30 ◼   ► probably my favorite iOS feature of the last two years,

00:58:33 ◼   ► which is the inclusion of stickers,

00:58:34 ◼   ► because they are so much fun,

00:58:36 ◼   ► and they make my messages way better,

00:58:39 ◼   ► and it's like, emoji who?

00:58:40 ◼   ► I've got stickers now, right?

00:58:42 ◼   ► I love the Stamp Pack by Illuminated Bits.

00:58:46 ◼   ► There'll be links to all of these in the show notes.

00:58:48 ◼   ► The Stamp Pack is basically just tons and tons of stamps

00:58:51 ◼   ► that you can put over things, including Firelaw Radar,

00:58:54 ◼   ► which is a hilarious stamp.

00:58:56 ◼   ► The extra finer by a pen addict listener and aficionado, Lee Reyes, she's basically a bunch

00:59:04 ◼   ► of beautifully illustrated, which she did, found in pen and found in pen related stickers.

00:59:10 ◼   ► Of course.

00:59:12 ◼   ► There is the ragtag classic pack, which is a bunch of animated emoji kind of like things,

00:59:19 ◼   ► which I really like.

00:59:20 ◼   ► The best one there, they have a mic drop, an animated mic drop sticker, which is great.

00:59:24 ◼   ► Grammar Snob, which I love because I get to correct my own grammar with all the messages

00:59:29 ◼   ► errors that I make.

00:59:32 ◼   ► Aardman Face Bomb, which is hilarious.

00:59:34 ◼   ► It's just, Aardman animation has created a bunch of eyes and faces, like mouths and stuff,

00:59:38 ◼   ► so you can put them over other people's pictures, which is good.

00:59:43 ◼   ► This is one of the great things about every time anybody ever sends a picture to you or

00:59:48 ◼   ► in any message these days, it just gets immediately sticker bombed.

00:59:53 ◼   ► The Emojipedia flag stickers pack by Jeremy Burge of Emojipedia because it has the Hello

00:59:59 ◼   ► Internet flag and the flaggy flag. So it has Nail and Gear and flaggy flag. I love that

01:00:04 ◼   ► because, mostly because I love sending the flaggy flag sticker to Grey. It's effectively

01:00:09 ◼   ► the only reason that I like that this thing exists. Sticker Pals which is a ton of stickers.

01:00:15 ◼   ► It can be a little bit confusing to work through this application sometimes but the David Lanham

01:00:19 ◼   ► animations is so good and the stickers are so good that it's worth it.

01:00:24 ◼   ► David Lanham did a bunch of icons for me when we did the Mac user blog at Macworld that

01:00:30 ◼   ► I loved. I love his work so I was happy to see that he did this sticker pack.

01:00:34 ◼   ► Me too. The hipster sticker pack because of course there's like a little character that

01:00:39 ◼   ► looks like me and I can put beards and top hats and things on everybody. And of course

01:00:43 ◼   ► the incomparable sticker pack. Oh yes well that's the finest of all the sticker packs

01:00:48 ◼   ► because I swept out all of the art that we've collected over the years and just dumped it

01:00:53 ◼   ► into a sticker pack that you can get for free. So if you want to send Skeletor, you can now.

01:00:58 ◼   ► Or the shame burrito, you can do that. Or glenning.

01:01:02 ◼   ► So I will say at this point, and we've mentioned it before, there are relay stickers in the

01:01:09 ◼   ► It is coming.

01:01:10 ◼   ► I've seen them.

01:01:11 ◼   ► They are, they're in testing right now because it's part of our application.

01:01:17 ◼   ► We're not just releasing a pack and we're trying to do some cool stuff with that.

01:01:22 ◼   ► So they're –

01:01:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:01:24 ◼   ► You may be asking yourself how does one test stickers?

01:01:25 ◼   ► The answer is very carefully.

01:01:26 ◼   ► Well, no, I just send them all to you.

01:01:29 ◼   ► Yeah, that's – okay.

01:01:32 ◼   ► So yeah, I'm very excited about all stickers and of course our stickers as well.

01:01:38 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:01:39 ◼   ► Mr Jason Snell, I believe that it is time to take a break because it is Ask Upgrade

01:01:45 ◼   ► time.

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01:03:58 ◼   ► Okay, Jason Snell, it's time for some Ask Upgrade.

01:04:02 ◼   ► No lasers. Yay! No, I already did the lasers. Okay.

01:04:07 ◼   ► There you go. The lasers have now landed. Thank you.

01:04:11 ◼   ► Brett wants to know, "Can the iPhone 7 Plus use the MacBook adorable USB-C to lightning

01:04:17 ◼   ► charger or the iPad Pro charger for fast charging?" Not that I've noticed, and from things that

01:04:24 ◼   ► I've seen online, and I don't have an accurate source for this so don't quote me, that it

01:04:28 ◼   ► would have been checked to see if this device was capable of USB 3 speeds and transfer,

01:04:35 ◼   ► it's not. And it currently, under the 12.9 iPad Pro, is the only iOS device that can

01:04:41 ◼   ► take advantage of the USB-C power and transfer speed.

01:04:44 ◼   ► Yep, it seems so. That seems to be the case. That hasn't come to the rest of the product

01:04:49 ◼   ► line.

01:04:50 ◼   ► Which is weird.

01:04:52 ◼   ► I agree. I wonder about that sometimes. I wonder about the iPad Pro, where they're going

01:04:59 ◼   ► with it, and I occasionally wonder to myself if they might put more ports on it at some

01:05:03 ◼   ► point which I know is wacky for an iOS device but I don't know could you put a USB-C port

01:05:10 ◼   ► on an iPad Pro in addition to lightning?

01:05:11 ◼   ► At this point I think they should, honestly.

01:05:13 ◼   ► I think that would be great right because then they're saying this is a real you know

01:05:17 ◼   ► a real computer that can be used with with more peripherals and it's Pro that's one of

01:05:21 ◼   ► the things that makes it Pro I think that might be an interesting choice for them to

01:05:25 ◼   ► have it be have it have the same ports as the as the MacBook.

01:05:30 ◼   ► Casper wanted to know, "Now that the iPhone has a non-button button that vibrates, do

01:05:35 ◼   ► you think it will come to the iPads?"

01:05:37 ◼   ► Now I want to put something out here and I may be thinking of this Jason, as like the

01:05:45 ◼   ► MacBook Adorables keyboard.

01:05:47 ◼   ► That keyboard has not yet found its way to other products.

01:05:51 ◼   ► Because that keyboard is needed there for other reasons, like that little butterfly

01:05:56 ◼   ► super shallow keyboard.

01:05:57 ◼   ► Apple are going to continue to, and they still have, make keyboards with more depth of travel.

01:06:05 ◼   ► I wonder if the non-button button, the Taptic Home button, will only remain on the iPhone

01:06:12 ◼   ► because it's needed there for space reasons and that the iPads that don't even have Taptic

01:06:19 ◼   ► motors in them will continue to have a physical home button.

01:06:27 ◼   ► I think it's possible. I think the question is why does that non-moving

01:06:34 ◼   ► home button exist on the iPhone 7? It's possible that this is the only time

01:06:39 ◼   ► we'll see that product because if there's a if it's all screen next time

01:06:43 ◼   ► the home button may completely change its appearance again. So do you need to

01:06:47 ◼   ► replace the physical button on the iPad or is it good enough? Is it not? You

01:06:51 ◼   ► don't need the space, you don't need the you don't you're not worried about the

01:06:54 ◼   ► fact that it's a moving, I think, what's the cost of it and is there a benefit?

01:06:59 ◼   ► And I'm not sure whether the iPads have that benefit or not.

01:07:03 ◼   ► I'm sure they, Apple knows how to make it now, right?

01:07:05 ◼   ► So they feel like there's a direct benefit to doing it, but I'm not sure they're trying

01:07:09 ◼   ► to waterproof the iPads and all of that.

01:07:14 ◼   ► I think Taptic Engine is a good question on the iPad, right?

01:07:17 ◼   ► I mean the iPhone 7 has all those taptic features all over the

01:07:24 ◼   ► interface now and the iPad has none of those and it also has no 3D touch and

01:07:28 ◼   ► part of the problem is a much larger device you've got to do more work in

01:07:33 ◼   ► terms of vibration and in terms of reading the screen for 3D touch kind of

01:07:40 ◼   ► stuff and so I think it's a really good question of how far do the iPad and

01:07:45 ◼   ► iPhone diverge in terms of features and does Apple care about bringing those

01:07:51 ◼   ► features to the iPad or does Apple say look you know Taptic stuff is fun but

01:07:57 ◼   ► it's not an iPad feature like whether that's because they don't want to bother

01:08:00 ◼   ► or whether that's because they feel like the products are used differently and

01:08:04 ◼   ► they don't have they don't have to have those things. It'll be interesting to see

01:08:08 ◼   ► what happens there because that really is a choice that Apple has to make. They

01:08:11 ◼   ► can keep them in lockstep even if it's delayed by a year or whatever but they can say "okay,

01:08:17 ◼   ► new iPads next spring and they've got 3D touch or they've got the Taptic Engine or they've

01:08:21 ◼   ► got the non-moving home button" and will they do that or will they instead say "no, iPads

01:08:26 ◼   ► don't do that, just iPhones" and here's why.

01:08:29 ◼   ► - Yes, I just wonder if you could really do Taptic on a device that big. That's what I

01:08:35 ◼   ► wonder about.

01:08:36 ◼   ► hard, right? I mean, I'm sure you could, but you might have to do like multiple engines

01:08:42 ◼   ► in different parts and have them, you know, move simultaneously in order to get that effect.

01:08:48 ◼   ► It would be--

01:08:49 ◼   ► putting them in the corners, maybe.

01:08:51 ◼   ► Yeah, a different engineering challenge for sure. Similar to what we talked about with

01:08:55 ◼   ► 3D Touch, where if you're reading the strain across that, you know, that big screen, comparatively

01:09:00 ◼   ► giant screen, it's a harder trick than doing 3D touch on the smaller screen. Not that they

01:09:07 ◼   ► can't do it, but it's more work and do they want to do it, is that a priority for them

01:09:12 ◼   ► in terms of the iPad.

01:09:13 ◼   ► David Pembroke Daniel has asked, "Now that you guys seem

01:09:15 ◼   ► to be using iOS more than ever, what email client have you settled on?" Jason?

01:09:20 ◼   ► Jason

01:09:20 ◼   ► Well, I am not happy with my--we're going to talk about this in a forthcoming episode

01:09:25 ◼   ► of Free Agents. I'm not happy with my email setup on iOS right now. I don't have a--I'm

01:09:32 ◼   ► not using any of the fancy, you know, defer your email for later kind of mail processing

01:09:37 ◼   ► features right now. I've tried a bunch of them. None of them really worked for me and

01:09:41 ◼   ► I've gone back to kind of plain vanilla mail. So, on iOS, I'm just using Apple Mail right

01:09:46 ◼   ► now. And part of that was because I wanted to spend time with Apple Mail and iOS 10 every

01:09:49 ◼   ► time you do a new version, you know, I feel like it's worth doing that. And it's simple

01:09:54 ◼   ► and it's reliable in a way that the other apps that I was using were not so reliable

01:09:59 ◼   ► with, and since I'm using, basically, Gmail on the Mac, it seems like the best solution

01:10:06 ◼   ► for now. But I may try something else at some point, but I've just reverted to default and

01:10:11 ◼   ► I'm using Apple Mail.

01:10:12 ◼   ► I use airmail and I've been very happy with airmail.

01:10:16 ◼   ► It has some rough edges in places, but it's incredibly powerful.

01:10:25 ◼   ► And I'm able to get a lot of stuff done on my iOS devices in a really interesting way.

01:10:32 ◼   ► A lot of the stuff that it can do with integrating with other applications is really great.

01:10:36 ◼   ► I love some of the notification features that it has.

01:10:41 ◼   ► It is a powerful application, but sometimes its power can kind of shake it off course

01:10:48 ◼   ► a little bit. But I'm confident in the Air Mail team to continue making the app better

01:10:54 ◼   ► as they have been over the last few months. So, big fan of Air Mail.

01:10:58 ◼   ► My challenge is that I'm very happy using MailPlane, which is essentially Gmail in a

01:11:04 ◼   ► Mac frame on the Mac and I do a lot I do the bulk of my email on the Mac and so

01:11:11 ◼   ► using an iOS app that has a bunch of features that really require you to use

01:11:15 ◼   ► their Mac app you see that Ml has them but I don't do them look I don't do any

01:11:21 ◼   ► of the snoozing stuff it has or anything like that

01:11:24 ◼   ► well I think those are the features that would make me want to switch so the

01:11:29 ◼   ► reason that I stopped doing it was because mailbox went away and when that

01:11:33 ◼   ► went away I realized that I need to stay as close to dealing with my emails the way it

01:11:38 ◼   ► should be dealt with everywhere because when mailbox went away I lost a lot of features.

01:11:45 ◼   ► The one thing that I really wish could come back is the ability to, like that airmail

01:11:49 ◼   ► we'll put in there and I should ask them if they've ever thought about it, is the ability

01:11:53 ◼   ► to rearrange messages in your inbox. Oh I miss that so much. I used to be able to do

01:11:58 ◼   ► that with mailbox just like to move them around. That was my favorite thing. But yeah, I decided

01:12:05 ◼   ► to like to stop doing a lot of that snoozing stuff because it keeps you within the platform

01:12:09 ◼   ► and if the platform goes away you're kind of stuck. So I stopped, I've just stopped

01:12:13 ◼   ► doing it and I'm trying to just deal with my email as it should be really.

01:12:17 ◼   ► I may play around with Google inbox at some point but we'll see.

01:12:22 ◼   ► I use some non-inbox stuff.

01:12:25 ◼   ► Like non-Gmail stuff, I should say.

01:12:30 ◼   ► All right, Carlos has written in to ask,

01:12:35 ◼   ► what stock iOS apps have you deleted from your phones?

01:12:39 ◼   ► None.

01:12:40 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:12:41 ◼   ► As now this feature has been released,

01:12:43 ◼   ► I wonder why they even did it.

01:12:44 ◼   ► I think they only did it because people think

01:12:46 ◼   ► that it should be done.

01:12:47 ◼   ► It doesn't really do anything.

01:12:48 ◼   ► Like, I just have all those apps in a folder.

01:12:51 ◼   ► the fact like removing default apps is not the thing,

01:12:56 ◼   ► it is changing the default, that's the thing.

01:12:58 ◼   ► Because if I remove, I don't know, mail,

01:13:03 ◼   ► I just can't open the mail app

01:13:05 ◼   ► and I can't use any send to links anymore.

01:13:08 ◼   ► You know, like if I remove stocks, okay, it's gone now,

01:13:11 ◼   ► but like I never see it anyway

01:13:12 ◼   ► 'cause I don't keep it on my home screen.

01:13:14 ◼   ► So it's kind of a pointless feature to me really

01:13:18 ◼   ► at this point, like what are you gonna do?

01:13:20 ◼   ► like, "Oh, free up that space." It's not doing that.

01:13:23 ◼   ► - It doesn't actually do that.

01:13:25 ◼   ► - I don't know why.

01:13:26 ◼   ► You know, I just, now I can't really understand

01:13:28 ◼   ► why they did it other than to appease people

01:13:30 ◼   ► that thought that they needed it.

01:13:32 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:13:32 ◼   ► - Which was us at the time.

01:13:34 ◼   ► At the time, we were like, "Great, we can finally, oh."

01:13:38 ◼   ► Yeah, it was kind of, it quickly fizzled out

01:13:40 ◼   ► was the thing that I wanted to do.

01:13:42 ◼   ► - I still removed stocks with prejudice.

01:13:44 ◼   ► I was very happy to do it. - Just for fun, right?

01:13:46 ◼   ► - I did that, and I actually, on my iPhone,

01:13:48 ◼   ► I removed calendar because I would search sometimes and get calendar instead of fantastical

01:13:56 ◼   ► and I don't see it now.

01:13:59 ◼   ► Yeah, that could be a good reason to do it, to kind of whittle down the spotlight results,

01:14:05 ◼   ► but I don't really have a problem with that.

01:14:07 ◼   ► But I can see if you're searching for events in your calendar because of your crazy system,

01:14:12 ◼   ► why that would be useful.

01:14:14 ◼   ► Gary asked, I don't know why Gary asked this, but Gary did ask this. Can you read the question

01:14:20 ◼   ► so I don't give away my answer?

01:14:22 ◼   ► Alright, Gary asks, "Is ZZ Top, the band, ZZ Top in the UK?"

01:14:32 ◼   ► Now I feel like Gary is trolling me, because I don't know how you couldn't just know the

01:14:39 ◼   ► answer to this? The band's name is not ZZ Top. The band's name is ZZ Top. Like that

01:14:44 ◼   ► is the band's name. You know? Like, what is the answer? You know what I mean? It's not

01:14:53 ◼   ► like I will pronounce, it's not like I call them like Metallica. It's Metallica, right?

01:14:58 ◼   ► Because that's just the band's name. Like, I know it's written out that way. But I have

01:15:07 ◼   ► I have no answer that is...

01:15:09 ◼   ► Well, if there's somebody, if there's a guy whose name is ZZ Top, like Zoroastrian Zool

01:15:17 ◼   ► Top, but he goes by Z period Z period because he is a, you know, he doesn't, that's a ridiculous

01:15:25 ◼   ► name so he doesn't go by it. I think that's the question. At what point does it go from

01:15:28 ◼   ► being, well, it's your name, everybody in America, you're American, everybody in America

01:15:32 ◼   ► calls this person ZZ Top, would you call them, are you going to make the sounds that an American

01:15:38 ◼   ► would make to name them or are you going to use the letters because it's really just letters

01:15:42 ◼   ► that you're saying.

01:15:43 ◼   ► Right, that is a way better question than Gary's question. The answer is I would call

01:15:47 ◼   ► him ZZ Top if I didn't know that he liked to be called ZZ Top.

01:15:51 ◼   ► Right. So, I have a related story here which is, this is always a problem and this has

01:15:56 ◼   ► come up I think on previous episodes here where there's a question of how you pronounce

01:16:00 ◼   ► things and in some cases the issue is are you pronouncing it, for me the challenge is

01:16:06 ◼   ► always do I pronounce it the way that they pronounce it in England, let's say, if what

01:16:13 ◼   ► I'm doing is basically just doing an English accent? Because I think that's one of the

01:16:18 ◼   ► issues is if we have the same word that you do and you say it one way and we say it in

01:16:23 ◼   ► another way, then if it's a name, let's say, do I affect an English accent to

01:16:30 ◼   ► call them the way that they're called in England, or do I just use the way

01:16:34 ◼   ► we pronounce that name in America? And I say this because I have a friend who--

01:16:40 ◼   ► it's a friend of a friend--who changed his name from P-A-U-L to P-O-L, and he did

01:16:50 ◼   ► this because he moved from England to the United States and didn't want to be called

01:16:54 ◼   ► "Paul" because in England everybody called him "Pol." So he changed the spelling of his

01:17:01 ◼   ► name so everybody would call him the right pronunciation of his name. I realize this

01:17:04 ◼   ► is extreme, but…

01:17:06 ◼   ► Well, yeah, this isn't unlike people that maybe come from… from… how would they

01:17:13 ◼   ► say it on ATP? Is it East Asia? Was that the…

01:17:17 ◼   ► on. Yeah, you mean the Far East? No, I don't. Yeah. I think it was East Asia, right? East

01:17:25 ◼   ► Asia, sure. So, people that come from East Asia, who like, just give themselves English

01:17:30 ◼   ► names? Yeah, oh yeah, I grew up with a guy, a Vietnamese guy, who had a, he was, he said

01:17:37 ◼   ► just, "Dan, call me Dan." It's like that was not his name. But, yeah. I don't know, it's

01:17:44 ◼   ► It's an interesting little bit of pronunciation nerdery, but yeah, I think my childhood librarian

01:17:51 ◼   ► was B.Z. Smith, right? That was her initials, right? I think it would be perfectly reasonable

01:17:57 ◼   ► for an English person to say B.Z. Smith, but if you met B.Z. Smith and were talking to

01:18:05 ◼   ► her, you would probably not continually refer to her as B.Z.

01:18:08 ◼   ► I mean I might. It sounds kind of cool.

01:18:14 ◼   ► Anyway. Yo what's up BZED? I like the BZED. As cool as the name is that is, is a librarian.

01:18:21 ◼   ► Children's librarian, yeah. I love that you went with Children's Librarian

01:18:27 ◼   ► for the name BZED. Wow. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade.

01:18:32 ◼   ► You can find our show notes for today's show over at relay.fm/upgrade/109.

01:18:39 ◼   ► Thanks again to Help Spot, Boom from Global Delight, Boom 2 I should say from Global Delight

01:18:45 ◼   ► and Ring for sponsoring this week's episode.

01:18:46 ◼   ► If you want to find Jason online he's over at 6colors.com.

01:18:50 ◼   ► You can find him on Twitter he is @jsnell on Twitter J S N E double L. I am @imike and

01:18:57 ◼   ► at youtube.com/mikeurley.

01:18:58 ◼   ► slash Myke Hurley whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo