PodSearch

Connected

The 2022 Annies: A Lot of Mercenaries

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   Hello and welcome to Connected, episode 430.

00:00:13   It's made possible this week by our sponsors, TexExpander, Memberful, and FitBod.

00:00:18   My name is Stephen Hackett and I'm joined by my friend and yours, Mr. Myke Hurley.

00:00:22   My name is Sean O'Steven Hackett and I'm joined by Federico Vittucci. Hi Federico.

00:00:27   Hello, hello, hi guys.

00:00:29   This is our year in review episode.

00:00:33   The Annie's.

00:00:34   Myke really wants to call this episode the Annie's, but I think it's confusing with the annual picks next week.

00:00:40   This wasn't a Myke thing. We decided upon this last time when we made it a game.

00:00:45   We made this a game with the tiki scale and everything.

00:00:48   We decided to call it the Annie's. This wasn't just a me thing. This was an everybody thing.

00:00:53   Okay, we'll do the Annie's.

00:00:54   Right?

00:00:55   Have I lost my mind here?

00:00:57   Wasn't that the thing that we did last time?

00:00:59   - Yeah, no, I think you're right.

00:01:01   I think you're right.

00:01:03   - Kate says I'm right, so I must be right.

00:01:07   - They are the official historian.

00:01:08   - Exactly.

00:01:09   - We need to work out the title then

00:01:11   because we used to do 20, you know, the year,

00:01:14   2022 year interview colon and then a funny title.

00:01:18   But if we do the Annie's parentheses 2022,

00:01:22   like we do the Ricky's episode,

00:01:24   there's not a user-generated title.

00:01:26   It's just the Annie's 2022.

00:01:27   - Oh, we can break all the rules.

00:01:29   Why don't we do the Annie's 2022 colon funny title?

00:01:32   - Or the 2022 Annie.

00:01:34   I just don't wanna do like parentheses and then a colon.

00:01:36   - Whatever you want, Gramble Boy.

00:01:38   You know what I mean?

00:01:39   You just...

00:01:40   - I typed 2002.

00:01:41   We're gonna be talking about the G4 today.

00:01:43   - Oh, I can love it. - Oh my gosh, I can't type.

00:01:45   Okay, so how this works is we will round up

00:01:50   each month of the year and rank them on the teachy scale.

00:01:55   That is the artwork for the episode.

00:01:58   There's also a link in the show notes so you can see it.

00:02:00   That artwork is done by the official relay historian, Kate.

00:02:03   Inferior minus is the lowest possible score.

00:02:06   - No, nightmare.

00:02:07   - We only score a month.

00:02:08   - No, nightmare.

00:02:09   - We only score a month, a nightmare.

00:02:10   - Oh. - Yes, yes.

00:02:12   - You know it when you see it.

00:02:13   - I don't remember what that means.

00:02:16   What does that mean?

00:02:16   (laughs)

00:02:17   - I don't know, Federico said it, I think.

00:02:18   And so, Nightmare is for a truly special month.

00:02:22   - Yeah, you know when you see it,

00:02:22   it was inspired by a Supreme Court decision, I think.

00:02:27   Yeah, you know it when you see it.

00:02:29   - Yeah. - But I don't know what...

00:02:31   (laughing)

00:02:32   How can it be the lowest score?

00:02:34   And then there's a lower score.

00:02:36   - March 2020, Nightmare, right?

00:02:40   So we'll see what happens.

00:02:42   We're gonna round robin this.

00:02:44   And so each of us will take a month

00:02:46   and run through the news.

00:02:47   Lots of links in the show notes this week.

00:02:50   And I apologize in advance for sounding the way that I sound.

00:02:54   - You sound perfect. - I cannot be helped.

00:02:55   Little, little sick.

00:02:57   So let's start with January.

00:02:59   How does that sound?

00:02:59   - I mean, it's the best place to start.

00:03:01   - Makes sense, yeah.

00:03:02   - Cast your mind back.

00:03:03   - Wow.

00:03:04   - iOS 15.4 allows a face ID while wearing a mask,

00:03:09   not requiring an Apple Watch.

00:03:12   And for a while you could do this if you had a watch.

00:03:15   - That feels like two years ago to me.

00:03:17   like, I know, wow, I know.

00:03:19   This was a long running joke on the show, right?

00:03:21   Am I remembering correctly?

00:03:23   We kept making this joke for like weeks about,

00:03:26   oh, iOS 15.4 allows Face ID while wearing a mask

00:03:30   'cause if it was a new piece of news.

00:03:31   Do you remember this?

00:03:32   Ah, yes, yes, yes.

00:03:33   Like breaking news, iOS 15.4, yes, I remember that.

00:03:37   Yes, we were doing this for weeks.

00:03:39   That's so good, this is a great feature.

00:03:42   I love it.

00:03:44   I forgot that I couldn't always do it.

00:03:47   I kind of take it for granted now, but yeah,

00:03:49   it was this year, maybe a little late, you know,

00:03:53   it would have been nice to have it in 2021,

00:03:55   but hey, it's still with us, so I'll take it.

00:03:58   - Still with us.

00:03:59   Also in January, Universal Control,

00:04:02   which is the feature that lets you use your cursor

00:04:05   and keyboard across multiple devices, entered beta,

00:04:09   and a good feature.

00:04:13   I thought it came with iOS 15, apparently it was late.

00:04:16   I know this is real because I can see the link, but I don't believe this is true.

00:04:20   That we only got to use universal control this year?

00:04:23   What happened to that feature?

00:04:27   Yeah, it was delayed multiple times actually.

00:04:29   I think it was delayed twice.

00:04:32   I think it was.

00:04:32   I mean, it would have had to have been.

00:04:34   Yeah, I mean, in hindsight, I got to say, like this feature completely changed, like, the way I work.

00:04:42   And at the time, I mean, at that point in January,

00:04:45   I didn't even know I was gonna buy a house

00:04:47   and have a new desk.

00:04:49   But now that I'm using it, like without universal control,

00:04:53   I wouldn't have the kind of setup that I have right now.

00:04:57   And so I am very thankful that this feature exists.

00:05:01   - Yeah, it's good.

00:05:01   - I will say, part of my surprise

00:05:04   is I was confusing this with Sidecar.

00:05:06   - Oh yeah, that's a--

00:05:07   - I still, I'm surprised,

00:05:08   but that was why I was extra surprised.

00:05:09   - They both exist still.

00:05:11   - Yeah.

00:05:12   - And I get them confused all the time.

00:05:15   - They're oddly sort of the same feature,

00:05:17   but inside out in a way, it's very strange.

00:05:20   - It's very, very peculiar.

00:05:21   - January was also the beginning of two long running stories

00:05:26   that are really still with us.

00:05:28   The first being Google's campaign against Apple

00:05:33   to adopt RCS on the iPhone.

00:05:36   So if you're not familiar with RCS,

00:05:38   we don't really have the time to get to it too deeply today,

00:05:40   but it is something that Google

00:05:43   and carrier partners have worked on.

00:05:45   It's sort of a super set of SMS.

00:05:48   It does offer some end-to-end encryption,

00:05:50   not end-to-end encryption, everywhere, attachments.

00:05:52   It's more iMessagey in some ways,

00:05:56   but Apple's not gonna adopt it 'cause they have iMessage

00:05:58   and Google keeps beating them up in the press about that.

00:06:00   I think the bigger story, at least for Apple-centric people,

00:06:03   is third-party payment methods.

00:06:06   So this is something that Apple has just

00:06:09   continued to fight on and now we have stuff in the EU

00:06:12   which we'll get to later in the episode.

00:06:14   But in January, this saga began with,

00:06:19   of all things, Dutch dating apps.

00:06:22   I don't know how this story broke with something so specific

00:06:26   but here we are, if you're trying to hook up

00:06:29   in the Netherlands, you can use a third party

00:06:31   payment provider.

00:06:32   - Well, that was when it began.

00:06:34   It took months and months and Apple will find lots of money

00:06:37   but this was where they started this incredibly long process.

00:06:41   I don't think this was the first one.

00:06:43   I think it started in South Korea,

00:06:45   but this one, I think, what happened in the Netherlands--

00:06:47   This was the first one this year, I think.

00:06:49   Yeah, and what happened in the Netherlands, I think,

00:06:51   will inform a lot about the way it will work going forward

00:06:54   for when they do these arrangements,

00:06:56   because the Netherlands were very tough on Apple,

00:06:59   and really, I think, in a good way,

00:07:01   and especially around language for errors and stuff.

00:07:05   So Apple really kind of refined it,

00:07:07   And I think it laid the groundwork for what we may see

00:07:11   going into next year about the way Apple talk about

00:07:14   third-party payments and app stores and stuff like that.

00:07:16   - This year has been the year of the NibNib.

00:07:19   We came across this on PocketLint in January.

00:07:24   - CES. - This is the finger--

00:07:24   - Yeah. - CES.

00:07:26   Yeah, man, CES is right around the corner.

00:07:29   Who knows what we'll get this time?

00:07:30   - All kinds of matter accessories.

00:07:32   That's gonna be the thing. - NibNib Pro.

00:07:34   - Yes. - That's what I want.

00:07:35   getting the Nib Nib 2, 2.0.

00:07:37   - Nib Nib, Nib Nib Ultra.

00:07:39   This was a finger biting soft toy cat,

00:07:42   which we for some reason keep referencing.

00:07:46   - We're a bit obsessed about it to be honest.

00:07:48   - We are.

00:07:49   - And then our friend Austin Evans got one.

00:07:50   - Right, I forgot about that.

00:07:52   - I forgot about that too.

00:07:53   - Yeah, in a mystery tag, you got it in a mystery tag.

00:07:55   - Oh my God, yeah.

00:07:56   - Yeah.

00:07:57   - Yeah, Nib Nib.

00:07:58   - Yeah, Nib Nib for the views, you know?

00:08:02   And then really, I feel like the last couple of years,

00:08:05   Elgato has really been on a tear

00:08:08   with accessories for streaming and automation.

00:08:10   Of course, the Stream Deck has been around for a while,

00:08:13   but in January, they announced the Stream Deck Pedal,

00:08:15   which sits on your floor,

00:08:17   and you can tap different buttons with your foot

00:08:19   and fire automations on your computer.

00:08:21   I know several people who have these, who really like them.

00:08:24   I know Matt, one of our Discord mods has one.

00:08:26   David Sparks has one.

00:08:28   And it's just the beginning

00:08:30   of a bunch of Stream Deck news this year.

00:08:32   They've had quite a few releases,

00:08:34   but this one I think is really cool

00:08:35   if you have this sort of need.

00:08:37   I think they're interesting that they keep expanding

00:08:40   their product line.

00:08:42   - Didn't either of you buy the foot thing?

00:08:43   - No, I didn't.

00:08:45   We made fun of it initially,

00:08:47   but I actually think it's pretty cool.

00:08:49   - Yeah.

00:08:50   - I don't have it.

00:08:51   I've got the Stream Deck XL, the big one.

00:08:53   - So that's January.

00:08:55   Goodbye, January.

00:08:56   - Goodbye, Jan, we gotta give it a rating.

00:08:57   - Oh yeah.

00:08:58   - Let's see, let me open the TG scale for context.

00:09:01   So it was definitely a good month, right?

00:09:04   Because we got a bunch of software features,

00:09:07   nip-nip, I mean, come on, right?

00:09:08   - Yeah, I wouldn't go past good,

00:09:11   but I think it's a normal month,

00:09:13   but the nip-nip and the face ID with the mask

00:09:15   pushes it all the way to good, I think.

00:09:18   - Good. - Okay.

00:09:20   - Good work, January.

00:09:21   - Nicely done.

00:09:22   - Good work.

00:09:24   - So now we're onto February.

00:09:25   In February, Apple wrote a thing on their website

00:09:29   kind of addressing some of the stories that appeared

00:09:31   in the media kind of around this time and before

00:09:35   about concerns over people using air tags to stalk people.

00:09:40   But I think the bigger issue that seemed to arise

00:09:44   around this time was some kind of bugs in their software.

00:09:47   I mean, Find My,

00:09:49   that they were labeling things really poorly, right?

00:09:51   It would say like, "A device is with you."

00:09:54   And it really was just like your own AirPods,

00:09:57   but they were doing like a really bad job

00:09:59   of labeling a lot of that stuff.

00:10:02   So Apple kind of laid out its case

00:10:04   for why they think AirTags are good, right?

00:10:06   And why they think that, you know,

00:10:08   they took all the steps that they took

00:10:10   to try and make sure that they were as safe as possible.

00:10:13   They added new privacy warnings

00:10:15   and they then spoke about things they were going to add.

00:10:18   And we've seen a lot of this stuff roll out now,

00:10:20   which is like new privacy warnings

00:10:22   when people are setting them up.

00:10:24   They fixed the AirPods thing.

00:10:26   And then they added some new features like precision findings.

00:10:30   So you could, if an AirTag was said to be with you,

00:10:33   you could use your device to find it,

00:10:36   which wasn't a thing you could do before.

00:10:38   And they made the AirTags alarm sound louder

00:10:42   and stuff like that.

00:10:43   So I would say this seemed to address

00:10:47   pretty much everything.

00:10:49   Like I don't feel like, it felt like for a while

00:10:51   there were a lot of these stories.

00:10:53   And I think I saw maybe one or two more throughout the year,

00:10:56   but it seemed like at least Apple did a good enough job of convincing the media

00:11:01   that they were doing all that they could for this product, right?

00:11:04   So, uh, Beats Fit Pro were released in February.

00:11:09   Oh yeah. We talked about this. I had this for a while, I think.

00:11:13   Was this, was this the one that Mary got?

00:11:15   We had Mary on the show to talk about headphones this year, Steven.

00:11:17   Was it these ones, the Beats Fit Pro?

00:11:20   It was these, yeah.

00:11:21   Okay. I had completely forgotten about them, right?

00:11:24   Cause it's just like, I don't even think about this.

00:11:26   - Yeah, I got Big Apple Buddy to send them to me.

00:11:29   And then of course I used them for like a couple of weeks.

00:11:34   I really liked them, but yeah, I couldn't, I don't know.

00:11:38   I just, something about the little hook, you know,

00:11:41   was kind of weird.

00:11:43   Yeah, I didn't like it.

00:11:44   And I ended up going back to AirPods Pro as always.

00:11:47   - Case is too big, I think.

00:11:49   - Yeah. - The case is too big.

00:11:50   It's huge.

00:11:51   - That's true of a lot of Beats products.

00:11:53   - She also has the, whatever the ones that go over your ear.

00:11:57   - The Powerbeats.

00:11:58   - The Powerbeats, and that case is enormous.

00:12:01   It gets way bigger than it needs to be.

00:12:03   - Just love big batteries, big Beats battery.

00:12:06   And tap to pay contactless payments were announced

00:12:09   as a thing that Apple were gonna work on.

00:12:10   They were gonna basically open up the NFC chip on the iPhone

00:12:13   to allow companies like Square and Stripe

00:12:17   to let businesses create accounts and take payments.

00:12:20   So you could just put your card or your phone

00:12:23   on an iPhone and take a payment, removing the need for those readers devices.

00:12:29   And this seems to be something that like it was announced to a bit of fanfare and more

00:12:33   partners have been added in, but we haven't really heard much about it, but I bet that

00:12:36   it's something that is really great for the people that use it.

00:12:39   Like this is just a good feature.

00:12:40   But you know, now looking at the stuff that we see later on in the year, this is clearly

00:12:45   Apple trying to like hedge against future antitrust stuff because the NFC chip is considered

00:12:51   one of the things that Apple has too much control over? February? Normal? Normal? I

00:12:59   feel like normal. It doesn't, nothing exciting happened. I agree. Normal month, normal month.

00:13:05   Yeah, and in a way like the the AirTags thing is still with us, like Apple's still trying to

00:13:10   yeah work that out with the public, so I don't want to go higher than normal for sure.

00:13:16   All right, we get to March. And March begins with the obviously unfortunate news, something

00:13:25   that is still happening, sadly, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. And Apple put out a

00:13:34   statement at the beginning of the month, saying that they were pausing product sales in Russia

00:13:42   and pulling state media apps from the App Store. So they had a post on the Apple newsroom

00:13:51   about this. I don't know if sales have resumed since.

00:13:58   They haven't.

00:13:59   They haven't, rightfully so, because the invasion is still ongoing.

00:14:03   I think this is one of those things that a lot of companies thought like, "Oh, we'll

00:14:06   just pull out for a bit and nope."

00:14:08   And then unfortunately it wasn't a bit.

00:14:11   So that Apple are not in Russia now at all, like a lot of companies.

00:14:14   Yeah, nine months later, this is still ongoing. It's a tragedy. And yeah, a bunch of companies

00:14:19   like Apple put out these statements and maybe they thought it was going to be over in a

00:14:23   month or something and it wasn't. And it isn't over.

00:14:28   Getting back to Apple, there's a bunch of Apple product announcements here because there

00:14:32   was an event, right? There was an Apple event in March 2022. What was it called?

00:14:38   and Steven were together we watched it together because I was in Memphis you

00:14:43   were in Memphis what was it called what was the tagline of the event son oh gosh

00:14:52   was it anyway it was the max studio event peak performance leap performance

00:14:59   thank you peak performance peak performance performance performance

00:15:04   - Leet performance.

00:15:06   (laughing)

00:15:08   - Like that one.

00:15:09   The Mac Studio was announced,

00:15:13   and this is the mini Mac Pro that many were expecting,

00:15:18   and it sort of, it sits between,

00:15:24   I can't do this with this.

00:15:26   - It really, Leet performance really got me.

00:15:29   It was very funny.

00:15:30   (laughing)

00:15:34   I mean, is it a tiny Mac Pro or is it a big Mac Mini?

00:15:37   - Is it a big Mac Mini?

00:15:38   I don't know, you tell me Steven.

00:15:40   I don't have one.

00:15:41   John, one true John.

00:15:42   - It's a big Mac Mini.

00:15:43   - It's a big Mac Mini, okay, it's not a small Mac Pro.

00:15:44   - Yeah.

00:15:46   - Ooh, that feels like a controversial thing

00:15:48   you may have just said there.

00:15:49   - No slots, baby.

00:15:50   You can't put things inside of it.

00:15:52   - I mean, you can, but it won't be good.

00:15:56   Well, still, it's a brand new product in the Mac line app,

00:16:04   brand new name like the studio name for a product like this.

00:16:09   It was obviously the first time and it led us and many others

00:16:14   to speculate, hey, maybe is there

00:16:15   room for a MacBook Studio in the future or an iPad

00:16:19   Studio in the future?

00:16:19   We'll see.

00:16:21   But in addition to the Mac Studio,

00:16:23   we also got the studio display.

00:16:25   Apple's return to consumer level displays,

00:16:28   a 27-inch 5K monitor that eventually I also got.

00:16:34   I'm looking right at it right now.

00:16:37   There was a controversy though for the studio display about the camera, about the built-in

00:16:42   camera of the studio display.

00:16:44   And now the studio display supports center stage, but it's not, I believe in the reviews

00:16:50   at the time, everybody pretty much agreed that it was not as good as the center stage

00:16:54   seen on the iPad Pro for example.

00:16:57   And really the main problem was that the picture coming out of the studio display's webcam

00:17:02   was terrible.

00:17:04   Like, it didn't--

00:17:06   It was very bad.

00:17:07   It was very bad.

00:17:08   And I want to say that Apple sent a statement to Diverge

00:17:13   and a bunch of others saying that it

00:17:15   was due to something that needed to be fixed with an upcoming

00:17:18   software update.

00:17:19   That software update-- by the way,

00:17:21   the studio displays the kind of display

00:17:23   that it's got its own firmware, runs a fork of iOS,

00:17:26   therefore you can update.

00:17:27   That update has since been released.

00:17:29   I don't think it really did wonders in terms of improving the picture quality of the webcam,

00:17:36   of the display. I mean it made it worse for me. Yeah, exactly. You get the flickering thing going

00:17:40   on. They fixed the flickering and then fixed and then broke it again. Yeah. So I have to use the

00:17:45   continuity camera with my studio display. Good job. And also updating the studio display is so

00:17:50   annoying. It's so annoying. And it's kind of weird. I don't know. It's very weird to update

00:17:56   a thing that like you don't think of, you normally don't think about a display having its own

00:18:02   software and it's kind of strange. Yeah I don't want to have to update my monitor by restarting

00:18:07   my computer. It's like this is, this doesn't feel good at all. Yeah that's the thing to do.

00:18:13   There was also a new iPhone SE and a green iPhone 13. These were the smaller announcements I think

00:18:20   from the event. I mean, it's literally just a green iPhone 13. Coming out months later

00:18:28   from the original iPhone 13 lineup, I always thought that would...

00:18:33   They did it the previous year with the purple one.

00:18:35   Why is this like...

00:18:36   And they always used to do the red before.

00:18:37   They used to do the red. I mean, they must have the numbers. They must know that introducing

00:18:42   a color in the middle of mid-cycle helps somehow with sales, or it's good to get people into

00:18:49   Apple stores to check out the new color and eventually they buy something else? I don't

00:18:53   know. And the SE, which I believe Sylvia's sister bought, it's got still the same boring

00:19:02   design, A15 Bionic inside, 5G, still a home button, better battery life, you know, the

00:19:11   usual. Still an old design that does not have Face ID. The other big news, and this one

00:19:16   and really liked the new iPad Air with an M1.

00:19:21   Now at the time, we all kind of started asking ourselves the question,

00:19:25   and I remember asking myself the question,

00:19:27   "We thought the M1 was supposed to be like for the iPad Pro lineup only.

00:19:32   What does it mean to get an M1 on an iPad Air as well?"

00:19:36   And months later, we eventually got our answer,

00:19:40   and the answer was this iPad Air supports Stage Manager and external displays.

00:19:45   We couldn't know at the time.

00:19:47   I still believe that the iPad Air,

00:19:49   especially now that we got the full picture

00:19:51   with iPad OS 16 and Stage Manager,

00:19:53   I still think it's the definitive iPad for most people.

00:19:57   I mean, you got a relatively portable iPad

00:20:00   that is not too expensive, it's not too big.

00:20:04   It's bigger than an iPad Mini.

00:20:06   It's very balanced as a product.

00:20:09   It's got the M1 and it comes in colors.

00:20:12   I really like this iPad.

00:20:14   I think it's a really good update.

00:20:15   I remember at the time it was like,

00:20:17   "Oh, if they've done this, what are they going to do to the iPad Pro?"

00:20:22   That was the conversation.

00:20:23   The answer was, "Ah, don't worry about it."

00:20:26   Don't think about it too much.

00:20:29   Don't worry about it.

00:20:30   We're going to make the iPad closer to this one as well.

00:20:33   Don't worry about it.

00:20:35   Come on.

00:20:36   And lastly, and I'm going to need some help here from Myke,

00:20:39   a Friday night baseball on Apple TV+ was announced.

00:20:43   if my understanding is correct, this means that each week during the season,

00:20:48   there are two baseball games on Friday nights on Apple TV+,

00:20:53   that include also like pre and post show segments.

00:20:58   Yeah, that's what it is.

00:21:01   Yep.

00:21:02   Yep, and they're available for free.

00:21:04   For free.

00:21:05   To Apple TV+.

00:21:07   Well, they're available for free on Apple TV+,

00:21:12   Does that make sense?

00:21:13   Right, meaning they're not like a paid extra on top of Apple TV Plus.

00:21:18   What? You don't have to be an Apple TV Plus subscriber to watch them.

00:21:23   Oh, okay. So they are free, like free free for all.

00:21:25   They are free.

00:21:26   Okay, good.

00:21:28   Probably won't be forever, but there are free games as part of this.

00:21:33   Because that was like this whole thing about like, Aaron Rodgers was going to

00:21:37   potentially break the record of home runs and everyone was like super mad.

00:21:41   that it was on, no it did but not in this game.

00:21:44   People were super mad that Apple were having it,

00:21:47   like, 'cause it's like, "Oh, now I won't be able to watch it."

00:21:48   But actually people can just watch it for free.

00:21:50   Very cool.

00:21:52   And that was March.

00:21:54   Aaron Judge.

00:21:55   Aaron Rodgers is a basketball player?

00:21:58   Football.

00:21:59   Football, there you go.

00:22:01   I got there in the end.

00:22:02   So obviously everything is very good here, I think.

00:22:06   Mac Studio, Studio Displays, you know, M1, iPad Air.

00:22:11   with the exception of, you know, the war.

00:22:15   So I, but that's like,

00:22:19   that's outside of Apple's control here. Like it's not like, you know, Apple,

00:22:23   and they did the right thing. So overall,

00:22:27   I would argue in favor of a good plus,

00:22:32   maybe I would agree with you.

00:22:35   Me too. Good plus. Now world events,

00:22:39   Nightmare right right exactly don't judge the would necessarily judge world events

00:22:44   here

00:22:46   Mm-hmm as such this episode of connected is brought to you by text expander when you work in a small team every moment counts

00:22:53   You don't want to be wasting your time finding video conferencing details to attend to a new client

00:22:57   You don't want to track down the same FAQ results look from the company website to copy and paste into emails

00:23:03   These are the kinds of things you want immediately at your fingertips so you could get your work done faster. That is why

00:23:09   Why you need TextExpander With TextExpander you can access what you

00:23:12   type the most with just a few keystrokes, allowing you to work with faster and eliminate

00:23:17   repetition so you can focus on what matters most to you.

00:23:21   TextExpander's powerful shortcuts and abbreviations will streamline the work that you and your

00:23:24   team are going through.

00:23:26   All you have to do is type a short abbreviation, TextExpander will do the rest.

00:23:30   You just build and collect your most commonly used phrases, messages, URLs and more right

00:23:34   within TextExpander, create your chosen abbreviation and it will be with you wherever you type

00:23:39   on any device across any app that you use Mac, Windows, Chrome and iOS. You can even have

00:23:44   customization for your snippets having them automatically add in dates, fill in the blank

00:23:48   fields, timestamps and more. Just to make sure that you still keep the personality and the

00:23:52   communication that you send. One of my easy ones that I love is I will type in ZZ-00 and then it

00:24:00   will bring up my zoom URL. So you know if I'm sending that to somebody like you know like my

00:24:04   personal meeting ID thing or whatever because if you press like the copy or

00:24:09   share button in zoom it gives about a novel's worth of information that you

00:24:15   send to somebody like including phone numbers and stuff which nobody needs to

00:24:19   really call into a zoom over a phone now we kind of all get how to do it so I

00:24:24   just was able to copy and like put that into text expander to just have the URL

00:24:28   so when I expand that gives me a URL and I can send it to someone and we can

00:24:32   start meeting. If repetitive typing is getting you down you need TextExpander.

00:24:37   Check out TextExpander today at textexpander.com/connected you will get

00:24:41   20% off your first year. That's textexpander.com/connected to say goodbye

00:24:45   to repetitive typing. Our thanks to TextExpander for the support of this show and Relay FM.

00:24:49   So we are now into April. This is when friend of the show Apple self-service

00:24:56   repair program launched. So proud of them. This is definitely in the category of

00:25:01   Apple hedging against future legislation and present legislation here in the US

00:25:07   with a program where you can order parts. They mail you 500 pounds of tools to do

00:25:13   things. This started just with iPhones and just in the US, but throughout the

00:25:19   year they've expanded it, including this week they added desktop Macs to it. A

00:25:23   good thing for Apple to have from the political angle, I'm not sure how many

00:25:30   regular consumers are ever going to take advantage of this I would love to know

00:25:36   the volume of orders through this I just I have to imagine it's pretty low.

00:25:41   Just as a clarification this was when they announced it was available they had

00:25:46   previously announced this as a thing I think it was in 2021.

00:25:53   I think so yeah I think you're right I think people can do it right but I don't

00:25:57   think people are doing it youtubers are doing it but I don't think anybody else

00:26:00   is really using this.

00:26:02   - It's just Quinn Nelson.

00:26:04   - Yeah.

00:26:04   I think probably the best result out of this

00:26:07   is that small companies could buy better tools.

00:26:11   That's what I reckon is probably the best result, right?

00:26:13   So like a screen repair company

00:26:16   could buy a screen repair tool that Apple makes.

00:26:20   'Cause you can buy the tools, right?

00:26:22   As well as just rent the tools.

00:26:23   So that I reckon is probably pretty good.

00:26:27   But I don't think this is still the easy thing

00:26:31   we were hoping for, right?

00:26:33   And I don't think it's ever gonna happen

00:26:35   'cause Apple would have to design and develop

00:26:37   their products very, very differently

00:26:39   for that to work out, but it's cool.

00:26:41   - We also learned a little bit more about

00:26:44   why the website looks so weird.

00:26:45   I went deep down the rabbit hole

00:26:47   looking up company listings out of state and stuff.

00:26:50   - That was fun.

00:26:51   Oh, that was fun, I forgot about that.

00:26:52   - Yeah, so this is run by a partner company

00:26:55   that does a lot of logistics for tech companies,

00:26:57   including Apple.

00:26:58   So the website's jank, but that is what it is.

00:27:01   Even though it's not hugely popular, I don't think,

00:27:05   I'm glad that it exists.

00:27:07   WBC was also announced in April,

00:27:11   quote, returning to its all online format.

00:27:15   - Fake news.

00:27:17   - Fake news.

00:27:18   - Fake news.

00:27:19   - Because, let me read this,

00:27:21   in addition to the online conference,

00:27:22   Apple will host a special day for developers and students

00:27:25   at Apple Park on June 6th to watch the keynote

00:27:27   and State of the Union videos together

00:27:30   along with the online community.

00:27:32   And you could sign up a few weeks later to get into that.

00:27:36   We'll get into the announcements of WWDC,

00:27:39   but being there was really special this year,

00:27:43   getting to see people for the first time in a long time

00:27:46   and who knows what the future holds,

00:27:48   but it was a really fun day.

00:27:51   I know it wasn't for everybody, but...

00:27:53   - Good for you.

00:27:54   - You know, I'm not trying to bring you down.

00:27:56   - Well, you do though.

00:27:57   You didn't have to say any of that thing.

00:27:58   You could have just moved on, right?

00:28:00   Federico, do you agree with me?

00:28:02   He could have just moved on.

00:28:03   We're not even in June yet.

00:28:04   - I think he lingered a little too much, you know?

00:28:08   Yeah, yeah. - Too long, right?

00:28:10   Like how great a perfect, wonderful day it was.

00:28:13   We got two months until the WWDC part.

00:28:17   You know what I mean? - Yeah, yeah.

00:28:17   - So he's gonna do it again.

00:28:19   - Yeah, it rubbed it in a little bit.

00:28:20   - Well, June is Federico's month, this is my shot.

00:28:23   - Yeah, but you can't say anything?

00:28:24   - And look how tastefully I will handle that.

00:28:27   Just wait 10 minutes or so.

00:28:29   - I'm looking forward to it, I'm looking forward to it.

00:28:32   - Also in March, Apple's Coda,

00:28:35   which was a film on Apple TV+.

00:28:39   It won a Oscar for best picture at the Academy of Wards.

00:28:43   And what's really cool about this is that,

00:28:47   so this movie, if you haven't seen it,

00:28:49   has a lot of deaf actors in it.

00:28:53   And this was the male actor, Tony Coats, Troy Coatsar.

00:28:58   I can't, I don't know what his last name,

00:29:02   how to pronounce his last name.

00:29:03   Or his first name.

00:29:04   That sounds a bit.

00:29:07   You know how much cold medicine I've taken

00:29:08   to be here with y'all?

00:29:10   Not enough.

00:29:11   Too much?

00:29:12   Anyways, a big deal.

00:29:15   And Apple TV Plus just raking in the awards.

00:29:19   And this is a great movie.

00:29:20   Like if you haven't seen it,

00:29:21   you should watch it over the break.

00:29:23   - It's one of those movies you know is gonna make you cry

00:29:25   before you even watched it.

00:29:27   - Oh yeah, it's a tearjerker.

00:29:28   - It's just one of those.

00:29:29   That's an Oscar movie right there.

00:29:30   - Reader apps, okay, going back to App Store versus the law,

00:29:36   reader apps got the ability to post links to their sites

00:29:42   to sign up for accounts.

00:29:43   So the sort of the example I think everybody thinks of

00:29:46   is Netflix, right?

00:29:46   open the Netflix app and it's like sign in. It's like what how do I get an

00:29:50   account? What what does that mean? And so Apple announced some entitlements that

00:29:58   quote reader apps like Netflix, Kindle, etc could apply for and then they could

00:30:05   link out to their sites for account management and creation. So this is the

00:30:14   stupidest thing, the stupidest hill Apple could die on. I hate everything about

00:30:18   their decisions on this, but they finally gave in and you can have a link.

00:30:23   It's still not good enough. Not good enough at all. No, because only certain apps can do it and

00:30:27   it's only under certain circumstances and you still have to have this screen

00:30:30   come between you and the link, right, that Apple's got a bunch of language in.

00:30:33   Like it's a whole... Don't go over the web! It's scary out there! Use the App Store!

00:30:38   And what will probably be the only Twitter story we talk about... Nothing

00:30:42   else happened so nothing else happened the edit button is announced to become a

00:30:49   reality I think it actually launched in April but they talked about it they

00:30:53   started testing it and then they put it into blue later on yeah this yeah it was

00:30:58   weird it was like only to blue users I mean in some places it was they they you

00:31:03   know that's how they do things they really kind of slow roll or at least

00:31:07   used to now they too fast roll but they used to slow roll features who knows

00:31:12   'cause anyways, you can edit tweets for a little while.

00:31:14   Also with Twitter, we got the beginnings

00:31:17   of the Elon Twitter saga.

00:31:22   So I don't, I think we have to spend a lot of time

00:31:25   recapping all of this, but he said he was gonna buy it,

00:31:28   and then he said he wasn't gonna buy it,

00:31:30   and then the court said he had to buy it, and here we are.

00:31:34   - Well, it began in, it began in--

00:31:37   - In April.

00:31:38   - In April? - In April.

00:31:39   - Yep. - Oh, gosh.

00:31:41   - I know.

00:31:42   And then lastly, Dyson known for things with fans in them,

00:31:46   announced a headphone air purifier combo

00:31:50   that made you look like you were in Tron.

00:31:52   And actually it's out now, just this week,

00:31:56   Victoria's song over the verge had a piece

00:31:58   about wearing it out into the streets of New York City.

00:32:01   It's hilarious.

00:32:02   Dyson just puts fans in things.

00:32:04   I don't know. - It looks so bad.

00:32:06   - It does look bad.

00:32:07   - I was convinced that this was an April Fool's joke.

00:32:10   Me too, like I was convinced. I still don't understand why it needs to exist as a product.

00:32:15   At this point, I think I still think it was an April Fours joke, but someone posted it early

00:32:20   and then they just decided to commit to making it. Like they posted it by accident and now they're

00:32:26   like "oh well, I'm gonna have to make this thing now" and so they did.

00:32:31   Also they called it the Dyson Zone, which is also kind of a scary name.

00:32:35   I mean you're inside the Dyson Zone.

00:32:37   Should have called it the Die Zone.

00:32:39   Whoa, it's right there, but it also sounds like die zone, so which is you're gonna die

00:32:45   Sound to die for if you were in an alley and someone came towards you wearing that you would think you were going to die

00:32:54   I will run my favorite part of Victoria's songs review is that she says I'm in New York

00:33:01   So literally no one paid attention to me. Yeah

00:33:05   So she was worried about going out into the street, but nothing happened because she's seen weirder things in New York than that

00:33:11   Which I just also there is yeah. All right, so

00:33:15   Let's see

00:33:19   Decent

00:33:21   Really brings it down and these yeah, no, but you see at the time

00:33:28   It was kind of like funny and like all what might happen

00:33:32   You know what I mean? Like it went real bad, but it was like, what could happen here?

00:33:39   Ah, it was immediately bad.

00:33:41   Yeah, but if it was immediately as bad as it ended up being, we wouldn't have waited until December to leave, right?

00:33:47   Like there was anticipation of what might happen here, which isn't a bad thing.

00:33:53   Let me put the chart again.

00:33:56   Open link, open Safari.

00:34:00   Maybe normal.

00:34:01   I don't think it's higher than normal.

00:34:03   It's not higher than normal.

00:34:05   Yeah, because even the good stuff that we got isn't necessarily that good.

00:34:10   Happy for Coda, but you know, like, normal.

00:34:14   I can go with normal.

00:34:15   No, I'm good with normal.

00:34:16   I think it kind of washes out this one.

00:34:19   Yeah, okay.

00:34:20   We go on to May.

00:34:22   In May, the iPod touch was put on a little boat and sent out into the sunset, never to

00:34:27   be heard from again.

00:34:28   - Oh.

00:34:29   - But as the URL says, the music lives on, which--

00:34:32   - The music lives on, baby!

00:34:34   - Well, you see, I know that they're trying to say

00:34:36   that it's like a touch and tribute,

00:34:37   but it's kinda just like,

00:34:39   we don't need the iPod touch anymore, you know?

00:34:41   Like, music is just gonna continue anyway.

00:34:43   What's the iPod touch gonna do, you know?

00:34:44   - Well, they didn't even announce,

00:34:46   so the iPod touch cancellation is in the subhead

00:34:49   and then the last paragraph.

00:34:51   The rest of it is like, damn, the iPod is pretty good, y'all!

00:34:54   Like, it's so silly.

00:34:56   It's like a victory lap where they accidentally killed something.

00:35:01   Can you still buy it?

00:35:02   No.

00:35:03   No? Because it said like, "While stocks last."

00:35:05   Did those stocks not last for very long?

00:35:06   The stock did last, I think.

00:35:08   Apple had record quarterly results that they posted in NetMay,

00:35:13   but this is where they started to talk about how it could get tougher

00:35:17   to satisfy demand for products later in the year with supply chain issues.

00:35:21   So Apple had done pretty well during all of this time, all of COVID, right?

00:35:25   posting bigger and bigger results than ever.

00:35:28   They didn't seem to be having any particular issues

00:35:30   with chip supply like a lot of their competitors were,

00:35:33   but this is where things started to become a problem

00:35:35   for Apple in the supply chain.

00:35:38   This was also where, leading up to this point,

00:35:41   Apple was kind of going backwards and forwards

00:35:44   on their return to the office stuff,

00:35:45   and we were getting a lot of reports,

00:35:48   and we were getting a lot of people

00:35:49   that were trying to organize against Apple,

00:35:53   and that was getting stamped down,

00:35:54   people were getting fired. It was like a whole big thing, a whole big kind of

00:35:58   cultural thing. And Apple were announcing their plans of like I think three days

00:36:03   you could work. No, maybe two days at home, three at the office I think it was.

00:36:08   Something like that. But they were mandating some days that people had to

00:36:11   be there. But basically like there was not going to be any complete flexibility

00:36:15   which people hoped that they would. So Apple were announcing these and then

00:36:19   they said they set their return to the office date and then had to change it

00:36:22   because of rising COVID cases, which was particularly interesting at the time

00:36:27   because the month previous they were like, "Hey, come to Apple Park, developers!"

00:36:31   and then in May were like, "No, staff should not be here!"

00:36:34   So, it was a bit of a tumultuous time.

00:36:37   It really was, and it's something I think they continue to struggle with even now.

00:36:42   Well, I think every company does, right?

00:36:43   Yeah.

00:36:44   Who's not?

00:36:46   If companies are having people return to the office, that is.

00:36:48   Apple also previewed a bunch of new accessibility features as part of Global Accessibility Awareness Day.

00:36:54   I think the one that caught the most headlines was door detection.

00:36:58   So being able to use scanning cameras and light on all that kind of stuff to work out if there is a door

00:37:06   and then what that door has for opening and how to open the door.

00:37:10   And a lot of really interesting stuff, more Apple Watch accessibility control.

00:37:14   These were all things that were pretty much coming from iOS 16 onwards, but by doing this every May,

00:37:21   Apple has the ability to get a lot of attention for its accessibility features. It's like similarly

00:37:27   how they announced some emoji award on emoji day even though they don't release them until later

00:37:31   on. It's like this is the day when people are talking about and focusing on that stuff, let's

00:37:35   show what we're doing and it gets attention for later on. You know and also one of the interesting

00:37:40   points about the door detection thing of like this would work really well with

00:37:45   some kind of AR device right and so I think that was the thing we were talking

00:37:48   about at the time and it also just shows like you know if it works which

00:37:52   apparently does work pretty well it kind of shows their ability there to do some

00:37:57   some object detection in the real world. Okay so the accessibility stuff is

00:38:02   awesome the rest isn't. No it's good to kill the Apple touch you know that thing

00:38:06   needed to go. Harsh. I'm being real though right like either it was

00:38:12   kind of either do something with it or get rid of it because it was a like not

00:38:16   It was holding iOS back for sure and in fact it did not get you could buy one in

00:38:20   March and it didn't get iOS 16 in the fall like it was stuck on 15 forever.

00:38:24   But I think decent I think we could go with decent. I mean decent. Decent I think is

00:38:28   decent. Yeah. Decent. Because there's some good stuff there's some bad stuff some of

00:38:33   the bad stuff like I mean I don't you know realistically Apple having risky

00:38:40   quarterly results is like not a thing that's going to affect my feeling on the

00:38:43   you know what I mean it's like they're gonna be okay

00:38:46   all right so thank you May you were decent moving on to June obviously

00:38:53   WWDC time now normally I would act much more excited about that with WWDC but I

00:39:01   But I think in respect of our co-host Myke, our fallen comrade, we're going to keep a

00:39:09   much more, what's a good word to describe it?

00:39:13   Sombre.

00:39:14   Sombre tone for this segment.

00:39:18   This is the month where when Myke got COVID in a series of terrible circumstances that

00:39:25   involved a series of unfortunate events.

00:39:30   unfortunate events that essentially ended up with Myke stuck in a hotel room in San Jose,

00:39:36   almost at WWDC, but not quite there yet. So, WWDC, the reason why we said that the

00:39:46   announcement was fake news is that Apple did end up having a bunch of people over at Apple Park.

00:39:52   I was invited but couldn't go. I didn't disclose at the time the reason why, and the reason was I

00:39:58   had just bought a house and we were moving. So that's why I thought, "Eh, not a great time for

00:40:03   me to travel this year." They invited a bunch of developers who won a lottery, I believe, to be

00:40:10   able to watch the keynote at Apple Park. They set up a bunch of chairs outside and in the cafeteria,

00:40:16   and they also did the tours of the developer center. They had a bunch of colleagues of ours

00:40:25   recording podcasts at the podcast studio, the developer center, including one through John,

00:40:30   to whom I connected remote over, what did we use, WebEx or something like that? So FaceTime?

00:40:38   And yeah, so there was that. But then of course there were the announcements. iOS and iPad S16,

00:40:47   Mac OS, watch was nine Mac OS Ventura and the brand new M2 MacBook Air. I believe there

00:40:55   was also an announcement of the like, there's still like a MacBook Pro with the touch bar.

00:41:01   That doesn't sound right. No way they still sell that machine.

00:41:03   They do. They do. Right. They're still, you can buy one.

00:41:06   Yeah, they can buy one. But I don't know if it was here. I don't know.

00:41:10   I think it was. I think it was here. And I remember thinking like, wait, what am I watching?

00:41:14   Like this doesn't make any sense.

00:41:16   And after that on the story, yeah.

00:41:19   Anyway, iOS 16, the big news, which we all knew at the time, like how shortly they're

00:41:24   doing this because of the always on display in the iPhone 14, lock screen widgets.

00:41:30   That was the feature of iOS 16, the customization of the lock screen.

00:41:36   What else is new in iOS 16?

00:41:38   I think it's a useful exercise months after the fact to think about like what else was

00:41:44   new in this. Focus mode stuff, lots of focus improvements. The new focus mode settings,

00:41:50   I'm taking a look at my review again. Notifications, they did some changes to the way notifications

00:41:55   look and work. They did the new display, the display of notifications at the bottom, the

00:42:00   lock screen widgets, the live activities on the lock screen, we couldn't know at the time

00:42:06   that they were going to be the dynamic island. There were some changes to apps, like the

00:42:12   the new features in notes and reminders for lists

00:42:14   and the drag and drop a subject out of a photo thing.

00:42:18   - Mail.

00:42:20   - Big updates to mail.

00:42:21   Yeah, all these things were in iOS 16 overall,

00:42:24   a good update as we'll see later with a bit of a roadmap.

00:42:27   - Oh, and all the messages stuff.

00:42:29   - Oh yeah.

00:42:30   - Editing, retracting.

00:42:31   - Editing and deleting a message.

00:42:31   - I saw iOS 16, really good.

00:42:33   - Really good update on the phone.

00:42:34   - Really good update.

00:42:35   - We saw the announcement of course also of stage manager

00:42:38   on iPadOS 16. And I remember being very happy during the keynote, just seeing the multiple

00:42:45   windows. I almost couldn't believe it that they were going to do windowing on iPad. And

00:42:49   you know, during the announcement, that was fun. Like it was a wild 20 minutes. I was

00:42:54   just very happy tweeting back when I was a tweeter myself. And yeah, that was cool seeing

00:43:02   the windowing and all of that.

00:43:04   WatchOS 9, relatively small update, changes to the workout app, the brand new medications

00:43:11   app, some new watch faces I want to say as always, like a couple of new watch faces from

00:43:17   Apple.

00:43:18   Overall, not a huge update at all.

00:43:23   Ventura, stage manager for Mac OS, which is similar but also kind of different from how

00:43:29   it works on iPadOS.

00:43:31   else is in Ventura? Mail, of course, all the changes, like all the changes to the apps

00:43:36   that we mentioned, they are shared between Mac OS and iPad OS, but also the much criticized,

00:43:43   as we'll see later in the summer, system settings app in Mac OS, Ventura. And yeah, that was

00:43:50   a thing that...

00:43:51   So bad.

00:43:52   Yeah. And the MacBook Air. I mean, I think we are all in agreement that this is an awesome

00:43:58   computer and we love this computer and I wish I had a use case for this computer because

00:44:03   I totally would get one.

00:44:04   That's my favorite Mac ever.

00:44:06   I love mine.

00:44:07   Later in June, like obviously the aftermath of WWDC is always like a couple of weeks all

00:44:14   about sessions and the technical stuff that was announced, Beta 1 and Beta 2, there's

00:44:20   all of that.

00:44:22   But one particular item that I want to mention here is the first of many controversies surrounding

00:44:30   Stage Manager, specifically about the devices that Stage Manager in its original version

00:44:36   was running on.

00:44:38   If you recall, Stage Manager was announced just for the M1 iPads.

00:44:43   And I'm not talking about external display support, which was demoed at the time, but

00:44:48   But I'm talking about the whole feature, like the entire stage manager was supposed to be

00:44:53   exclusive to the M1 and M2 and that's it.

00:44:56   And that drove a lot of people upset, rightfully so I would say.

00:45:02   Steven and I, or was it Myke and I?

00:45:04   No, I think it was Steven and I.

00:45:05   No, it was you two.

00:45:06   I think I was traveling home.

00:45:08   Steven and I, we talked about it in an episode of Connected at length for like 40 minutes

00:45:12   or something about why it was wrong to limit this feature to modern iPads.

00:45:17   later we would get our answer, but not at the time. And lastly for June, Apple landed this deal,

00:45:27   they actually went into a bit more detail yesterday, but they announced it in June.

00:45:32   They landed a deal with the Major League Soccer organization, with MLS, for 10 years. It's a 10

00:45:40   year exclusive deal beginning in 2023, where you will be able to watch soccer games in

00:45:47   the US on Apple TV+.

00:45:51   It's worldwide.

00:45:52   It's US soccer, watch the worldwide.

00:45:54   It's US soccer, but watch it worldwide, if you're into that sort of thing.

00:45:57   Now, unlike the Friday night, I keep calling it Friday night lights, but that's a TV show.

00:46:03   What's it called?

00:46:04   The Friday night baseball.

00:46:05   Baseball.

00:46:06   Friday night.

00:46:07   Friday night baseball.

00:46:08   This is the name of the sport.

00:46:09   I like the Friday night lights thing. This one, the MLS season pass. So this will be

00:46:18   different. They announced the schedule and the pricing yesterday. It will be available

00:46:23   starting February 1 for $14.99 a month or $99 per season. I don't know. How long is

00:46:32   the season? Is it like football in Italy? Like six months or something? Eight maybe

00:46:37   or $99 per season. But Apple TV+ subscribers will be able to get it at $12.99 or $79 per

00:46:46   season, which is a pretty good deal, I think. If you're into that, you can seek $20 per

00:46:50   season if you also subscribe to Apple TV+. I'm going to say, I think that this is a thing

00:46:55   that seems like we're like, oh, this is like a good idea. This is a good way for them to

00:46:59   stretch their wings. Apple has a lot that they're doing with this. They're controlling

00:47:03   a lot that they have really partnered with Major League Soccer to do this. It's like

00:47:07   the baseball thing, Apple's just showing some games, but Apple is like helping dictate the

00:47:13   schedule of the season with Major League Soccer. Like they've worked together on like tons

00:47:18   of stuff about the way they are playing the game is changing for this. Like it's all good

00:47:23   stuff like it makes a lot of sense and to have this partnership. I reckon we will look

00:47:28   back on this and so this is a great thing because soccer is growing in America. The

00:47:33   interest in the sport is growing and Apple have this as exclusive for 10 years which

00:47:39   is wild and Major League Soccer is going to do great out of it. This is great promotion

00:47:43   for them. It puts them on a worldwide stage. Apple is going to show a bunch of games for

00:47:47   free right as well so people can come and watch them. It's very cool and I think it's

00:47:53   super smart. One of my very favorite things if you are already a season ticket holder

00:47:57   for a major league soccer team, you get this for free as part of your season ticket. I

00:48:02   just think that that is like a real respect of the fans. I think that they've come together

00:48:07   to do something really cool here.

00:48:09   Yeah, I would love to see more sports leagues adopt this sort of deal. Like you can do like

00:48:16   NBA league pass, but it's really, really expensive and you still have blackout issues and you

00:48:21   still have, you know, if you're a ticket holder, it doesn't really matter. I would love to,

00:48:26   I mean, I think soccer is doing it because it's growing in popularity, like you said,

00:48:32   but I think there's lessons here that I'd like to see the NBA and NFL and others adopt.

00:48:36   I hope so.

00:48:38   So where do we rank June?

00:48:40   Nightmare.

00:48:41   You guys can rank whatever you want.

00:48:43   I will say nothing more than nightmare.

00:48:45   You got to understand it's one of the worst times of my entire life.

00:48:48   This was the WWC.

00:48:51   We can do a double rating system here.

00:48:54   So we're going to do.

00:48:56   did for March. We're gonna do Myke Nightmare. And then the two of you can decide on the

00:49:02   real grade, but I can't accept it. I don't know, it feels like a good plus at the very

00:49:06   least. I think it is good plus. That is a real spread. What is after good plus? Best

00:49:14   I love you. And it was not that, come on. No, it can't be that, because we were sad

00:49:18   for you. And we also as a team missed out on some stuff because of it, so. And if we

00:49:23   to pick a single one in between Nightmare and Good Plus it would be somewhere... it would be decent

00:49:29   but we'll go with this. I think that you could say it was Good Plus like you can we can officially

00:49:33   rank it as Good Plus. But we'll have the mic rating I think it's important. Yeah that can just always be like a

00:49:39   footnote somewhere that this was for me a nightmare and I can't accept anything. I believe you said it

00:49:45   was literally the worst time of my life so that counts for something. It was genuinely one of the

00:49:50   worst weeks of my entire life. It sucked so bad. It sucked so bad. Like I cannot describe how bad.

00:49:59   Yeah, don't remember that. Don't think about it anymore. It's in the past. It's over.

00:50:05   This episode of Connected is brought to you by our friends at Member4, the easiest way to sell

00:50:10   memberships to your audience used by the biggest creators on the web to generate sustainable,

00:50:14   recurring income while diversifying your revenue stream. Maybe your business's financial situation

00:50:20   has changed in the past year or so and you want a proven solution that is quick to launch so you

00:50:24   can stabilize your business and grow. Memberful handles the hard stuff so you can focus on what

00:50:29   you do best while earning revenue quickly while leaving you with full control and ownership of

00:50:34   everything that relates to your audience brand and your membership. Memberful has everything you need

00:50:39   to run a membership program including an optimized checkout, Apple Pay, easy member management,

00:50:45   free trials, gifts, descriptions, and more, including wonderful analytics.

00:50:49   Memberful recently overhauled this and their charts, their graphs are fantastic.

00:50:52   I feel like we're able to really keep an idea of how our business is running

00:50:57   using Memberful's dashboard. They also seamlessly integrate with the tools that you're already

00:51:01   using, including lots of fully managed integrations with popular services like

00:51:05   WordPress and Discord. Discord is a huge one for us. Our Memberful integration with Discord is so

00:51:11   good like when somebody pays they get the ability to join our discord and if they stop being a

00:51:17   member there is a bot that removes them from the discord so we don't have to deal with any of the

00:51:21   management of this it's really great. You can also send paid email newsletters directly through

00:51:26   memberful without having to connect to a third-party email provider. You can even

00:51:29   publish your paid newsletter content to a memberful hosted members only website.

00:51:34   And there's no additional fee for this if you use one of memberful's pro or premium plans so

00:51:38   So you're going to save money compared to other newsletter platforms.

00:51:41   So go and get started today at memberful.com/connected.

00:51:45   There's no credit card required.

00:51:47   So you can get started for free at memberful.com/connected.

00:51:50   Go there right now and check it out and see what it could do for your business.

00:51:53   Our thanks to memberful for their support of this show and relay FM.

00:51:57   We have some real time follow-up that pains me, but I have to do it because we

00:52:03   have integrity. Kate went back and found a clip from the Ricky's January 2022

00:52:10   episode 379. Wow. I suggested the name Annie's. Yep, and then you tried to tell

00:52:16   me that it shouldn't exist and I just don't understand this. You're not proud of your own work?

00:52:18   I believe that's gaslighting, right? You tried to gaslight, Myke. Which is

00:52:24   unfortunate, really. We were now in July and Apple's done. They're not gonna take

00:52:29   it anymore. They are committing to protect users from quote, highly targeted mercenary

00:52:37   spyware.

00:52:39   So when you put mercenary in a document, right? Apple versus mercenary spyware. There's no

00:52:44   way they said mercenary. There's no, and they did. Oh wow.

00:52:48   It's right there in the headline. So I'm just going to read the subhead. Apple is previewing

00:52:52   a groundbreaking security capability that offers specialized additional protection to

00:52:57   to users who may be at risk of highly targeted cyber attacks

00:53:01   from private companies developing

00:53:02   state-sponsored mercenary spyware.

00:53:07   - The word mercenary is used 28 times in this press release.

00:53:11   - Oh! (laughs)

00:53:12   - There's a lot of mercenaries.

00:53:14   They've gotten into it.

00:53:15   - I don't think I have a state-sponsored

00:53:17   mercenary spyware coming after me,

00:53:19   but if I did, Apple's got my back.

00:53:22   - Well, provided you wanna lock down your entire phone.

00:53:24   - Yes, lockdown mode,

00:53:26   - Which came with iOS 16, right?

00:53:29   - Well, it came recently, 16 point whatever.

00:53:31   Like, so they announced it here,

00:53:33   but it came with the advanced data protection thing.

00:53:37   They all came at the same time, mercenaries.

00:53:39   So this is what it--

00:53:40   - I feel like if you have a state sponsored

00:53:43   mercenary spyware coming after you,

00:53:45   like some things have happened in your life.

00:53:47   - Oh yeah, well, I mean, this was in response

00:53:49   to the Pegasus?

00:53:50   - Yes, yeah, yeah.

00:53:51   - So basically all of these things,

00:53:53   they find their way into your device

00:53:55   by using some kind of like access to an outside door.

00:53:58   So like for example, sending a message to someone

00:54:01   with a link could do it because link previews could load

00:54:04   and that could somehow inject some code into your phone.

00:54:06   It's all pretty scary stuff.

00:54:07   So effectively what lockdown mode does

00:54:10   is it stops the ability for things to automatically load

00:54:14   in a bunch of places, which is really interesting.

00:54:17   Even things like FaceTime calls are blocked.

00:54:21   So this is, they're never gonna be able to stop this

00:54:24   completely, but this will get rid of a lot of the ways that it's done now and

00:54:29   you've got to expect that in the future other features will be added to

00:54:32   lockdown mode as Apple finds out about new backdoors that people are trying to

00:54:36   use. Apple also landed a record-breaking 52 Emmy Award nominations in July. 20 of

00:54:44   those were Ted Lasso with 14 going to Severance, both excellent shows on Apple

00:54:51   TV Plus, of course, and then sort of the other,

00:54:54   were spread across 13 different titles.

00:54:57   I mean, Apple's doing a really good job with their content.

00:55:01   I think way better than we feared,

00:55:04   especially after the planet of the apps

00:55:06   and sort of those early outings.

00:55:09   They hired good people and they pay for good things

00:55:11   and they are definitely reaping the rewards of it.

00:55:15   - They won nine of those Emmys.

00:55:17   I don't know if that's coming up later on, but.

00:55:19   - I don't know.

00:55:20   They won, it's not, so I tell you now,

00:55:21   they won nine of them and it was mostly Ted Lesser.

00:55:24   - July is when the M2 MacBook Air landed

00:55:27   and we have a bunch of reviews in the show notes

00:55:29   you can go check out.

00:55:30   Excellent laptop, like we said a second ago.

00:55:32   I absolutely adore mine.

00:55:34   We also got rumors of the Extreme Sports Apple Watch.

00:55:39   This kicked off lots of discussion

00:55:41   about what it would look like, would it be rubberized

00:55:44   in a way, what we ended up with is the Apple Watch Ultra,

00:55:47   which is fantastic.

00:55:48   But way back in July, started to,

00:55:51   this really started to pick up steam.

00:55:53   There had been stories of this, I think even back in '21,

00:55:57   but it really started to pick up

00:55:59   with this Bloomberg report over the summer.

00:56:01   - Kind of a quiet month.

00:56:03   - But it's all good stuff though, right?

00:56:05   Like for me, it's the MacBook Air, right?

00:56:07   So we didn't spend, but like, that computer was so good.

00:56:10   And this is when it became available.

00:56:12   Like I would lean good plus for this.

00:56:16   - I could do that.

00:56:17   - I can do that, I can do that.

00:56:18   I think it's fine. It's a really good computer.

00:56:20   So far, like, I feel like 2022 has been better.

00:56:24   Yeah, I think it's been a better year overall.

00:56:26   -Except for June. -Yeah, of course.

00:56:30   In August, friend of the show, Shazam.

00:56:33   Shazam.

00:56:35   Shazam.

00:56:36   Turn 20.

00:56:37   Nice.

00:56:38   Oh, that's when you told us that it used to be like a UK service

00:56:42   where you could like a text message thing, yeah.

00:56:44   And then the next week Apple wrote this article referencing the fact that it used to be a text

00:56:49   message thing. This just happened to be I was at a family gathering over the weekend and I used my

00:56:55   iPhone to say like what song is this? My brother was like you should use Shazam for that and I'm

00:57:00   like my friend look the logo right there Apple bought it. He was very surprised by that.

00:57:05   That's the thing people in the UK just know what Shazam is. We just we all just know because we

00:57:10   we were texting it all the time.

00:57:11   I have it in Control Center now.

00:57:13   You know, swipe down, hit the button.

00:57:15   No, no, see, I actually use Siri.

00:57:17   I use Siri for this a lot, because it's good, because it's fast.

00:57:20   Hey, what song is this, I say, and it listens.

00:57:23   The Mac was added to the self-service repair program in August.

00:57:26   Yes, just a series of notebooks, but good.

00:57:30   Good stuff.

00:57:30   The iOS battery percentage indicator was introduced,

00:57:33   and everybody had design opinions.

00:57:35   [LAUGHTER]

00:57:37   Oh, that was that was a couple of weeks on Twitter.

00:57:40   I remember this.

00:57:41   Yep.

00:57:42   Yeah.

00:57:43   And they bullied Apple into making the wrong choice.

00:57:46   Eh, well, they made a choice.

00:57:50   Uh, not sure.

00:57:52   I don't even know what is right or wrong anymore.

00:57:56   So.

00:57:56   And Amazon bought Roomba for $1.7 billion.

00:58:01   I had forgotten about this entirely.

00:58:03   Yeah, me too.

00:58:05   until yesterday when I was setting up the Echo Studio.

00:58:08   More details about this in Connected Pro.

00:58:11   Where can people get connected?

00:58:12   - Get connected pro.co, get connected pro.co.

00:58:15   - The Amazon app tells you,

00:58:18   "Hey, I see there's a Roomba in this house.

00:58:21   Set it up here."

00:58:22   It's like, yeah, I get it.

00:58:23   I get it.

00:58:24   It's owned by you now.

00:58:25   Okay.

00:58:26   - Boys, I have some news for you when it comes to Roombas.

00:58:30   - Oh.

00:58:30   - Just bought a new Roomba.

00:58:32   - Which one did you get?

00:58:33   Did you know that they make a one machine that both vacuums and mops?

00:58:40   And mops, yeah.

00:58:42   It has like a mop on its head, right?

00:58:44   And like an arm comes down or something?

00:58:46   So we just bought that one.

00:58:47   So I'm going to set it up probably tomorrow.

00:58:49   This is a really weird thing for me where a couple of months ago,

00:58:52   I was talking to someone and for some reason

00:58:54   was convinced that they made this product and couldn't find it.

00:58:58   And I felt like I was losing my mind or it came to me in a dream.

00:59:01   So I don't like I must have seen it announced somewhere, but they weren't selling it.

00:59:05   And then I went on to the website a couple of days ago and there it was like a dream.

00:59:09   We're going to call this one Rambo.

00:59:11   Nice.

00:59:12   Makes sense.

00:59:13   Because we had Robbie.

00:59:15   Robbie is our original Roomba and we just had the regular one.

00:59:18   Like it didn't have the like collection part, you know?

00:59:22   Yeah.

00:59:22   Uh, but this new Roomba, because it has a mop, I wanted to put an M somewhere in the name

00:59:28   and Adina suggested Rambo.

00:59:29   So we're gonna get Rambo set up.

00:59:31   The J7 plus yeah J7 plus yeah, it looks cool. It's really quite clever. It's really quite clever

00:59:37   It is very clever. So I've we sent one of those up for the new place. It's so

00:59:41   well

00:59:44   Normal normal

00:59:46   Normal no, okay. Yeah normal. Yeah some good stuff, you know some hot takes a robot or two

00:59:53   Moving on to September, of course, I get all the busy months in this episode. It seems good

00:59:59   Obviously there's the iPhone event and this one what was this one called?

01:00:03   There was a sneak design. No look into the saw. No. Yeah was the space one like

01:00:10   Space is out there. Welcome to the island. What's it called? Like quantum whatever. No, what was it called?

01:00:17   Come on quantum computing. Oh, well, that's a Apple September

01:00:21   2023 - this is what we're all just trying to Google to find this thing

01:00:26   you know what I mean? Looking to the stars was really good, Myke. I really liked that one.

01:00:30   Far out. Far out. Far out. See, that was close enough. Thank you. I knew where I was going,

01:00:35   you know? I just didn't get there. This event, iPhone 14 and 14 plus, so the base model. Yes. We

01:00:43   kissed the iPhone mini lineup goodbye for now, forever. We'll see. When that sentence started,

01:00:50   did not know where it was. Yeah, and that's where it ended. We got a bigger regular model iPhone,

01:00:58   and of course the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, and these are the big updates that we were looking for.

01:01:03   The always-on display of course is here, a better, much better 48 megapixel camera,

01:01:09   support for two features that I didn't think we could imagine, crash detection, which as we saw

01:01:16   later in the year. Apple needed to fine-tune a little bit more because it

01:01:21   was accidentally triggered by people on roller coasters or people skiing, I

01:01:26   believe, and also the satellite SOS feature which was very cool, just launched

01:01:30   in the US. I believe it's launching soon in some parts of Europe including the UK.

01:01:35   I have it now. You have it. And of course the feature of the 14 Pro and

01:01:42   Pro Max, the dynamic island.

01:01:44   It was a great moment when they revealed

01:01:47   the name of the feature in the keynote because unconnected.

01:01:52   Steven had previously joked that--

01:01:55   you remember we were talking about, like, oh,

01:01:57   is Apple going to own the design of the pill-shaped cutout

01:02:02   in the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max?

01:02:04   And Steven said, oh, it's going to look

01:02:06   like an island of black pixels, whatever.

01:02:11   And it turns out that the feature is much more

01:02:13   than we could imagine.

01:02:14   It's a dynamic element that expands and shrinks

01:02:19   and shows you interactive controls and live activities.

01:02:22   It's called the dynamic island.

01:02:24   And so we felt very happy for like 10 minutes there.

01:02:27   So these were the iPhones.

01:02:28   Anything else worth noting about the 14 lineup?

01:02:32   - I mean, the 14 and 14 Plus use an old CPU.

01:02:36   And it's the first time we've seen that happen on an iPhone.

01:02:39   We got the second generation AirPods Pro, finally.

01:02:43   - Yes, very good product.

01:02:45   - Very good product, much improved noise cancellation

01:02:48   and sound, battery life, same design.

01:02:52   The case now supports Find My.

01:02:55   I love the AirPods Pro too.

01:02:56   I think they are like, they are not like,

01:02:59   they don't have an exciting design, but it doesn't matter.

01:03:03   They're supposed to be portable, the battery should last

01:03:05   and they gotta sound good and they check all those boxes.

01:03:09   The noise cancellation is unbelievably good.

01:03:14   - And the transparency mode, like it keeps getting better.

01:03:17   Like I really like, they are,

01:03:19   gotta be my favorite Apple accessory, I think at this point.

01:03:22   The Apple Watch SE2 was announced

01:03:26   along with the Apple Watch Series 8.

01:03:28   The Series 8 kind of a boring minor update

01:03:31   with a temperature, with a wrist temperature sensor

01:03:35   that however cannot use, cannot be used to, you know,

01:03:39   to check if you have a fever or something.

01:03:41   It's been primarily advertised as a women's health feature

01:03:44   for cycle tracking and this ovulation estimates

01:03:48   that the health app can provide you with,

01:03:50   and those are based on taking your risk temperature

01:03:52   each night and establishing this baseline temperature

01:03:55   going forward.

01:03:56   Very cool feature, but maybe not as expensive

01:04:00   as a lot of users were expecting.

01:04:02   Like, oh, I'm gonna check if I have a fever

01:04:04   using my Apple Watch, and no, it doesn't work like that.

01:04:07   But the announcement, of course, in Apple Watch World

01:04:11   was the Apple Watch Ultra, the brand new,

01:04:15   it turns out that that rugged, extreme watch

01:04:17   was actually the Apple Watch Ultra,

01:04:19   a bigger, thicker, chunkier, more serious,

01:04:22   more expensive Apple Watch for people

01:04:25   who are really into almost dying, basically.

01:04:29   Like people who practice extreme sports or adventures,

01:04:33   people who cross deserts and climb mountains,

01:04:37   really dangerous things that they love doing.

01:04:39   And now they can do those while wearing an Apple Watch Ultra

01:04:42   that has more sensors, a bigger display, it's brighter.

01:04:46   It's got a bunch of things.

01:04:48   You've got a new design, it's got the action button.

01:04:50   It's a pretty lovely Apple Watch for a very specific market.

01:04:54   And I think the people who got one,

01:04:56   there is the conversation as to whether

01:04:58   does this replace like a dedicated device,

01:05:00   like a Garmin or like, what's the name of the other company?

01:05:03   like a Sonto watch if you're into scuba diving,

01:05:08   those dedicated devices maybe still have more features

01:05:12   for that kind of niche market.

01:05:14   The Apple Watch Ultra kinda tries to do it all

01:05:17   with Apple's more elegant, more powerful software.

01:05:21   And it's a new product.

01:05:23   I think it's very exciting,

01:05:24   but we'll need to see over time if this category grows,

01:05:29   if this becomes an annual thing.

01:05:31   We don't have the answers to that right now.

01:05:33   Then, of course, there's a software story.

01:05:37   We got iOS 16, which we talked about

01:05:39   in the month of June, and watchOS 9.

01:05:42   I did my usual annual review,

01:05:44   and I just did it for iOS 16 this time around,

01:05:47   because iPadOS 16 got delayed.

01:05:50   This, we heard, I think toward the beginning of September,

01:05:56   we heard the rumor toward the end of August,

01:05:59   and then it was officialised, I want to say, in...

01:06:02   No, it was officialised in the end of August,

01:06:04   but yeah, we didn't get it in September

01:06:06   because it got delayed.

01:06:09   It would eventually launch in October as iPadOS 16.1,

01:06:14   with Stage Manager and Apple was facing multiple issues.

01:06:19   They had to delay it.

01:06:20   In the meantime, they had announced

01:06:22   that they were gonna bring it to more devices,

01:06:25   to older iPads, but the external display part

01:06:28   was going to stay exclusive to the M1 and M2.

01:06:31   However, that external display integration

01:06:33   was not going to be back ported to the older iPads.

01:06:37   So, older iPads would get the single screen stage manager,

01:06:41   everything else will get stage manager

01:06:44   and the external display support,

01:06:45   but staggered in two releases, 16.1 and 16.2,

01:06:50   which we just got, I think it was last week or two weeks ago.

01:06:54   Lastly, in terms of Apple news, we got the first reports

01:06:59   that Apple was considering moving more of its production

01:07:02   out of China.

01:07:04   You know, by, I believe, the report

01:07:06   were saying they were considering India.

01:07:09   Was it also someplace else?

01:07:12   I mean--

01:07:13   Vietnam?

01:07:14   Yes, by 2025, they wanted to diversify the product line.

01:07:17   However, there's also the conversation there.

01:07:19   Like, if you're still using Foxconn,

01:07:21   but in other countries, are you really

01:07:23   diversifying your production line.

01:07:25   This is something that I know Myke and Jason

01:07:27   talked about an upgrade a couple of weeks ago.

01:07:30   So that's a conversation that's still ongoing.

01:07:32   And lastly- - Yeah, it only got worse.

01:07:34   - Yeah, it got worse later.

01:07:36   And lastly, of course,

01:07:38   Relay FM for St. Jude hit another incredible record.

01:07:43   Guys, tell me how much money did you raise

01:07:46   for the kids of St. Jude?

01:07:47   - $706,000.

01:07:50   - Wild, just wild.

01:07:52   - It's incredible.

01:07:53   - Well done both of you.

01:07:54   So that's September.

01:07:57   - I'm gonna go on a limb.

01:07:59   Best I love you.

01:08:00   - So here's what I'll say on that.

01:08:01   I think this is probably the best month of the year.

01:08:04   - Yeah, yeah.

01:08:06   I mean, I remember being very happy

01:08:08   with how my iOS 16 review went,

01:08:11   how people responded to it.

01:08:12   - Yeah, you did a great job.

01:08:13   - Thank you.

01:08:14   - So good, best one.

01:08:15   Best one ever.

01:08:16   - I was very happy, thank you.

01:08:17   I was very happy that iPad OS 16 got delayed.

01:08:20   It's unfortunate that I couldn't review iPadOS 16

01:08:22   the way I want it this year.

01:08:24   There will never be iPadOS 16, the max stories review.

01:08:28   Maybe not say never.

01:08:29   We'll see in 2020 what I can do.

01:08:31   Yes, this is the best I love you month.

01:08:32   It's gonna be the best month of the year.

01:08:35   I can go for that.

01:08:36   And St. Jude, of course.

01:08:38   There's also that.

01:08:38   So it makes it the best month.

01:08:40   - Great products, great community month,

01:08:43   just awesome all the way around.

01:08:45   - This episode is brought to you by Fitbud.

01:08:47   Between balancing your work life, family life,

01:08:49   everything else going on in your life it can sometimes be hard to make fitness a priority.

01:08:54   What you need is a program that works with you, not against you and that's why you need

01:08:57   Fitbond. Fitbond has an algorithm to learn about you and your goals and your training

01:09:02   ability to craft an exercise plan unique to you. Their app makes it incredibly easy to

01:09:07   learn exactly how to perform every exercise by providing you with HD video tutorials shot

01:09:12   from multiple angles to make sure that learning every exercise is a breeze along with some

01:09:16   great instructions so you can learn how to perform every exercise.

01:09:20   What I love about Fitbod is how it learns about me and tailors the plan that I'm working

01:09:25   on and also mixes it up.

01:09:27   So they give you a variety of exercises to make sure that they're balanced.

01:09:30   It will track your muscle recovery so it knows what you've just done, either the day before

01:09:34   or a couple of days before.

01:09:35   So it's going to give you some different exercises to make sure that you're not overworking anything

01:09:39   in any area.

01:09:40   And also Fitbod knows that everybody's fitness path is different so that's why they do so

01:09:44   much work to make sure that they customize things to exactly suit you. You can tweak

01:09:48   the preferences, you can also nudge it, so like I like more stuff like this or less stuff

01:09:52   like that. And it will learn from your last workout, learn from what you're good at, so

01:09:56   your next will be even better whether you work out twice a day or twice a week.

01:10:00   Personal fitness isn't about competing with other people. Don't look to others and try

01:10:03   and be what they are. What you want is something that is for you, because that's when it sticks,

01:10:08   it's when you will also see the results that you're looking for. If fitness is part of

01:10:12   your theme for the upcoming year, Fitbud is a wonderful app to try. Trust me on this,

01:10:17   it's what I did and it's made a huge difference to my life and started me on a fitness plan

01:10:21   that continues to this day. Fitbud will also integrate with your Apple Watch, your WearOS

01:10:25   Smart Watch and apps like Strava, Fitbit and Apple Health. Fitbud is just $12.99 a month

01:10:30   or $79.99 a year. Personalized training of this quality can be expensive, but Fitbud

01:10:35   has a wonderful price for you to go and get your own fitness plan. You can get 25% off

01:10:40   your membership if you sign up today at fitbod.me/connected. So go now and get your customized fitness plan

01:10:46   at FIT BOD.ME/CONNECTED and you will get that 25% off if you go to fitbod.me/CONNECTED.

01:10:54   Thanks to Fitbod for the support of this show and Relay FM.

01:10:58   In October the iPhone 14 Plus shipped and came a little bit later than the other phones.

01:11:04   I am very curious to know how well this phone is selling.

01:11:09   I feel like I haven't heard anything about it

01:11:12   now that it's out in the world.

01:11:14   I just don't know.

01:11:14   I think we all believed it would do really well

01:11:17   because it was cheaper with a bigger screen,

01:11:20   compared to the Pro and Pro Max, but I just don't know.

01:11:24   I'm curious to see how this strategy plays out for Apple.

01:11:28   I don't think I've seen one in the wild,

01:11:30   which is interesting.

01:11:32   All estimates suggest that it's not doing very well, which is really interesting, right?

01:11:42   I wonder if the old CPU turned people off.

01:11:44   I don't know.

01:11:45   I just don't know.

01:11:47   Maybe we'll see what happens if they do a bit more to it.

01:11:50   Maybe they go for some design updates and stuff.

01:11:52   I don't know.

01:11:53   We also got a series of updated products in October.

01:11:59   We got the 10th generation iPad, which brings it in line with the current design language

01:12:04   with the flat sides.

01:12:06   We talked a lot about this iPad when it came out.

01:12:09   It's more expensive than the old ones.

01:12:10   The old one is still on sale.

01:12:12   It has the new design, but Apple Pencil 1 support because they moved the camera to the

01:12:18   long edge with the Pencil 2 charges.

01:12:20   And apparently those two things cannot be rectified in time for this iPad to come out.

01:12:25   I think it's a good iPad.

01:12:26   I just, there's lots of questions about it.

01:12:29   And I think we all kind of feel that the lineup is kind of hectic between this and like the

01:12:36   iPad Air and to make matters I think even more confusing.

01:12:39   The iPad Pro was updated with the M2 chip that's in the MacBook Air and the touch bar

01:12:44   machine, but no real design changes or other feature changes.

01:12:50   And design is now four years old.

01:12:53   And I think we're hoping that Apple moves the iPad Pro forward in a more meaningful

01:12:57   away next time around.

01:12:59   And the last October press release was a new Apple TV 4K.

01:13:04   So this is the now, I think the third 4K Apple TV.

01:13:09   That's right.

01:13:12   - I think so.

01:13:13   - Yeah, updated with the A15 bionic

01:13:16   and support for HDR 10 plus.

01:13:20   New starting price, the form factor is the same

01:13:23   but a little bit shorter than the previous one.

01:13:27   They got rid of the fan apparently,

01:13:28   and it comes with the Siri remote,

01:13:31   which now supports USB-C and not lightning.

01:13:34   So some decent, if not a little confusing products

01:13:40   in October.

01:13:41   - Oh, I mean, I think the iPad Pro,

01:13:43   underwhelming, like, and the introduction

01:13:49   of the 10th generation iPad was the good product

01:13:51   as we kind of hinted at earlier,

01:13:52   just further made the whole thing

01:13:55   just hard to understand the whole iPad line is just very confusing.

01:14:00   We got some software stories in October as well.

01:14:03   Mac OS Ventura and iPad OS 16 both ship in October.

01:14:08   Um, on the Ventura front, I don't think that's super surprising.

01:14:14   Mac OS has lagged behind iOS about a month for a while now. Uh,

01:14:20   but of course we'd mentioned last month,

01:14:22   last time that iPadOS had been delayed.

01:14:26   And Federico, you haven't done a full iPadOS 16 review,

01:14:31   but you've obviously continued to write about Stage Manager

01:14:36   and what Apple's doing with iPadOS 16.

01:14:39   How did you feel when this came out

01:14:42   and kind of the state that it was in?

01:14:43   - Yeah, I felt very bad about it

01:14:45   because it's been like one of the things

01:14:47   that I didn't like about 2022 was the stress

01:14:50   of dealing with Stage Manager and iPadOS 16 in the summer

01:14:54   while I was moving, iOS 16 made it pretty easy

01:14:59   for me to write about it because if it was a very solid,

01:15:01   very stable, polished update, iPadOS 16 was a mess.

01:15:06   And it was a mess up until the very last minute

01:15:09   when they somehow managed to make something

01:15:12   that didn't crash every five minutes.

01:15:14   However, still that feature was, you know,

01:15:19   It was filled with so many different design issues

01:15:24   and interaction problems that are still with us today.

01:15:28   So the underlying, like the core problems of Stage Manager

01:15:33   in terms of like the way it's designed,

01:15:35   the way you interact with it,

01:15:37   I have learned to accept it by now, but I don't love it.

01:15:42   And I don't think it's a good design.

01:15:44   It's all I have.

01:15:45   I have no other option.

01:15:46   And unfortunately, you know, I love using the iPad.

01:15:50   It's the only device that lets me do what I want to do.

01:15:53   But I gotta tell you, I don't love Stage Manager.

01:15:56   I accept that it's my only option

01:15:59   if I want to use the device I want to use,

01:16:01   which is a hybrid tablet, laptop device.

01:16:05   That it's the only one that Apple makes.

01:16:07   And if I want to have more apps at the same time,

01:16:09   Stage Manager is my only option,

01:16:11   but it's got a long way to go.

01:16:12   And so far, the latest version of the beta of 16,

01:16:17   16.3, has nothing in terms of stage manager changes.

01:16:23   So we'll see if in 2023, this cycle, this 16.3 cycle,

01:16:28   maybe 16.4 in the spring,

01:16:30   we'll have something for stage manager before WWDC.

01:16:34   But I'm afraid that if we want to get

01:16:37   any more stage manager fixes and like major changes,

01:16:40   we're going to have to wait another year.

01:16:42   October also saw a lot of upheaval in the App Store.

01:16:45   So basically the last week of the month,

01:16:48   Apple announced that,

01:16:49   "Hey, we're gonna do some more ad spots,"

01:16:52   including, I think, the most controversial one,

01:16:55   being the You Might Also Like section,

01:16:58   which is at the bottom of an individual app page.

01:17:01   They gave people basically like three or four days notice

01:17:04   that this was going to happen.

01:17:07   And it went off the rails really, really quickly.

01:17:12   the bulk of these ads were purchased by apps

01:17:15   that I think a lot of people find objectionable

01:17:18   or at the very least questionable.

01:17:20   And there were lots of stories about like recovery apps

01:17:23   and they'd have a gambling ad on them

01:17:24   and lots of terrible things.

01:17:27   Apple announced they were quote,

01:17:29   "Putting a pause on some categories of these ads."

01:17:34   And I don't think the other shoe

01:17:36   has really dropped there yet,

01:17:38   but I feel like they really botched this.

01:17:40   And if they were surprised that these were the type

01:17:43   of developers that were gonna pay the most,

01:17:46   then whoever is running this program in Apple

01:17:49   is not doing their job very well.

01:17:52   - I agree.

01:17:52   - They have burned so much goodwill this year

01:17:55   with developers.

01:17:56   And this was just like the cherry on top

01:17:58   of a pretty crappy deal and caused a lot of outrage

01:18:03   and anger amongst users and developers both.

01:18:07   There's really no winning for Apple in this.

01:18:09   - Bad idea, poorly executed.

01:18:11   - Bad idea, yes.

01:18:13   - And we had two launches in October,

01:18:15   Matter finally launched.

01:18:19   Launched is like, I'm putting in air quotes a little bit

01:18:22   because just now three months later,

01:18:25   we're seeing some products roll out with Matter support.

01:18:29   This is gonna take a while,

01:18:30   but people are off to the races.

01:18:33   And James Thompson's podcast, "Citron," screensaver.

01:18:37   So if you backed the relay FM for St. Jude campaign,

01:18:40   you got a macOS screensaver

01:18:42   and I hope everyone's running it.

01:18:44   I run it, I use the fireworks mode and absolutely love it.

01:18:48   - It's the best.

01:18:49   - It is.

01:18:50   - Made my Mac better.

01:18:51   - I feel like October is a real mixed bag.

01:18:53   - It is.

01:18:54   - I feel like we got new products, but they're not amazing.

01:18:57   We have the app store thing.

01:18:59   - I am gonna suggest inferior minus.

01:19:01   - Inferior minus?

01:19:03   - Yeah.

01:19:04   - I was gonna go inferior.

01:19:06   Man, that's the each manager shipping and the 14 plus

01:19:09   and that weird iPad lineup.

01:19:12   - I can see this.

01:19:13   There was some good stuff,

01:19:14   but there was like without same matter

01:19:17   and the screen saver,

01:19:18   I think it may have been down there anyways.

01:19:22   - Okay.

01:19:23   Yeah. All right.

01:19:24   Inferior minus it is.

01:19:25   - In November, Apple had to publicly announce supply issues

01:19:30   for the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max,

01:19:34   because it is going to make a significant impact

01:19:39   on their holiday earnings for this quarter.

01:19:42   Apple cannot fulfill demand.

01:19:44   This is primarily due to COVID shutdowns

01:19:49   and lockdowns inside of China,

01:19:52   and then riots at their factories

01:19:54   because of the conditions that their workers were in

01:19:56   because of these lockdowns and shutdowns.

01:19:59   So the impact is like millions of iPhones

01:20:03   that won't be made.

01:20:04   And so I'm fascinated to see what these quarterly results

01:20:08   are gonna look like because it was so bad

01:20:10   that Apple needed to release a press release

01:20:12   because otherwise they would basically be misleading

01:20:15   their investors if they didn't announce this information.

01:20:18   - Yeah, that's a bad deal.

01:20:21   - The previously announced emergency SOS satellite feature

01:20:26   launched in the US.

01:20:28   - Okay, nice.

01:20:29   - Which is cool, it's a cool feature.

01:20:30   One thing I don't like now is now when my iPhone

01:20:33   doesn't have service, I see a little satellite icon

01:20:36   and I think it's too busy.

01:20:38   - Yeah, does it say SOS at the top?

01:20:40   - Yes, it says SOS and then there's a little satellite

01:20:43   and it's like, this is too much.

01:20:44   Chills one or the other.

01:20:46   - The way I read that is the iPhone is crying out for help?

01:20:49   - Yeah. - I can't find the internet.

01:20:50   - Please, I need the internet.

01:20:52   My iPhone's even more addicted to the internet than I am.

01:20:56   - Maybe your iPhone should quit Twitter, you know?

01:20:58   - Maybe it should, come on iPhone.

01:20:59   The long awaited Apple Music Replay

01:21:02   - They came out and confused everyone

01:21:04   because you open the app and you have to go out

01:21:06   to a webpage and log in for a bad experience.

01:21:11   - And it's a bad webpage, yeah, let's go.

01:21:14   - They should just stop doing this

01:21:16   because it is so embarrassing, right?

01:21:19   Like, because Spotify Wrapped gets better

01:21:22   and better every year, Apple need to either do it all

01:21:26   or just don't, just don't get involved in it

01:21:29   because it's just a sad time, I think,

01:21:34   every year when they put this out there.

01:21:36   - There is one upside, is that Marco has said

01:21:40   he's going to do something like this in Overcast,

01:21:43   because Pocket Casts and others do it.

01:21:45   So I'm much more excited about to see it in Overcast

01:21:48   next year than in my Apple Music.

01:21:50   - Yeah, Pocket Casts did it this year and it was awesome.

01:21:53   - It was great. - It was really great.

01:21:54   And it was very fun as a podcaster to see that, right?

01:21:57   Like see people posting their things,

01:21:58   "Hey, I listened to this many episodes this year and this is my favorite show."

01:22:02   And something I liked is Cortex listeners, basically,

01:22:05   they were one of the things that was the longest episode.

01:22:08   I don't know if this was on Pocket Caster or on Spotify, it was one or the other.

01:22:12   And basically, if you listen to Cortex, the state of the apps was the longest episode.

01:22:16   -Rockash, you listen to this, yeah? -Yeah.

01:22:18   And so I enjoyed that. I enjoyed seeing that.

01:22:21   In November, Elon Musk charged at Twitter.

01:22:25   And then the clown cars arrived and the wheels fell off incredibly fast.

01:22:33   Yeah.

01:22:34   And here we are now.

01:22:36   Yeah.

01:22:37   The iOS 16, iOS 16.2, the beta allowed for always on customizations.

01:22:43   This is when we found out this was going to happen which is shit later on.

01:22:46   The only reason I put this in here is I wanted to ask the two of you if you've changed any

01:22:49   of the settings of the always on display on your phones.

01:22:52   Yes.

01:22:53   Okay.

01:22:54   Were you both turned off the wallpaper?

01:22:56   Yeah, I just have the black dimmed lock screen, yeah.

01:23:00   Just that.

01:23:01   That's what it's supposed to be.

01:23:02   You know, always on.

01:23:04   Just let me see the minimal stuff.

01:23:06   But yeah, I understand why other people like it the other way around.

01:23:09   But I'm happy with this option.

01:23:10   Yeah, I like the images.

01:23:11   I know you are a visual person, so it makes sense.

01:23:16   So November...

01:23:17   Normal.

01:23:20   I would...

01:23:20   No, no, inferior.

01:23:23   I just scrolled and saw that Twitter item.

01:23:28   Yeah, I would say inferior.

01:23:30   Yeah.

01:23:33   It's not minus, but it's inferior for sure.

01:23:36   All right, Federico, take us home.

01:23:37   All right, I'm taking you guys home

01:23:39   with the month of December.

01:23:41   December saw the debut of a bunch of things, really.

01:23:44   The first one we couldn't anticipate, Apple Music Sing.

01:23:47   This is a karaoke.

01:23:49   Where did this come from?

01:23:50   Out of nowhere.

01:23:51   A karaoke mode for Apple Music.

01:23:53   I love it.

01:23:54   I absolutely love it.

01:23:56   It's time-synced karaoke mode built right

01:23:59   inside the existing real-time lyrics feature of Apple Music.

01:24:04   You can do it on the iPhone, on the iPad, on the Apple TV.

01:24:07   I love it.

01:24:08   I love this feature.

01:24:09   It's gonna be great for parties,

01:24:10   great for just goofing around with your partner

01:24:13   or with friends and family at Christmas, whatever.

01:24:16   I love it.

01:24:17   Apple announced some pricing changes for the App Store,

01:24:19   kind of boring stuff.

01:24:20   There are like over 700 new price points.

01:24:24   Basically, you can price your subscription

01:24:27   like 29 cents or something.

01:24:29   There's much, much greater flexibility.

01:24:32   - You can also do round numbers.

01:24:33   - You can do round numbers like $5,

01:24:35   and it's literally just $5 instead of $4.99.

01:24:38   Advanced data protection.

01:24:41   Also another feature that came out of nowhere.

01:24:44   I mean, we've been talking about this for years,

01:24:46   and it basically refers to-

01:24:48   - Mercenaries, man, they're out there.

01:24:50   - The mercenaries are out there.

01:24:51   - I don't know if this one is mercenaries too.

01:24:53   - We understand those mercenaries are out there.

01:24:56   Sometimes those mercenaries are governments, turns out,

01:24:59   but you know, that's-

01:25:00   - I was gonna say the mercenaries are the FBI.

01:25:02   - That's a different conversation

01:25:03   for a different type of show.

01:25:05   - There's no mention of the word mercenary

01:25:08   in this press release.

01:25:09   - This is about end-to-end encryption

01:25:12   for your iCloud backups, including messages, conversations,

01:25:16   and a bunch of other things.

01:25:18   It's US only for now.

01:25:20   It launched with 16.2.

01:25:22   It was announced right before the public release of 16.2.

01:25:27   At this moment, neither Myke nor I can use this feature

01:25:31   because we are, you know, we're not in America.

01:25:36   But why do I see an item that says neither can marry LOL?

01:25:41   - I still can't turn it on.

01:25:42   I spoke last week about the recovery key

01:25:44   wouldn't enter into system settings, still won't do it.

01:25:48   I don't know why.

01:25:49   - Okay, perfect.

01:25:50   - That's pretty bad.

01:25:51   - Good job, advanced data protection.

01:25:53   Freeform, which was also announced to WWDC,

01:25:56   finally launched with 16.2 and Ventura 13.2.

01:26:00   Is it also two or is it one?

01:26:05   I don't know.

01:26:06   I guess it's one.

01:26:06   - One, yeah, it's kind of weird whether or not the same.

01:26:10   Still, I don't get it.

01:26:12   So Freeform, there's a bunch of reviews.

01:26:15   Jason wrote about it.

01:26:16   John wrote about it.

01:26:18   I think Steven, you talked about this with David?

01:26:22   - Yeah, on MPU 672, we went deep,

01:26:26   or 673, excuse me, we went deep into it.

01:26:28   - It's basically like a fancy mind map collaboration app

01:26:31   that can also be used for yourself

01:26:33   if you're not into live collaboration,

01:26:35   which is also part of these other collaborative features

01:26:38   in 16 and Ventura this year.

01:26:40   It's very flexible, limited in the usual ways you would expect a brand new Apple app to

01:26:47   be limited in a 1.0, but otherwise very good debut, I think, from what appears to be a

01:26:54   joint collaboration of the Notes team and the iWork team at Apple, based on some things

01:27:00   I've heard.

01:27:01   It's very nicely done.

01:27:04   The self-service repair pro...

01:27:05   Why are we talking about the self-service repair program?

01:27:08   It's the friend of the show.

01:27:09   We just mentioned that he added desktops a few months back.

01:27:13   He added support for the Mac.

01:27:15   Oh, I guess-- - No, that was laptops.

01:27:17   - Oh, that was laptops.

01:27:17   So now we added the Mac Studio

01:27:19   and the Studio Display, maybe.

01:27:23   - Yeah, so it's the iMac, the Mac Mini,

01:27:26   the Mac Studio and the Studio Display.

01:27:29   - Very nice.

01:27:30   Our friend keeps growing.

01:27:31   It's, we love to see it.

01:27:33   - Grows up, we love it.

01:27:34   You do love to see it.

01:27:36   - And finally, of course,

01:27:37   we all said goodbye, or in my case, are you there, Chi, to Twitter, given the circumstances of,

01:27:44   you know, we don't need to go to get into this conversation again. We spoke about it at length

01:27:49   last week, but we left for now, forever, we'll see, we left Twitter, goodbye, Twitter. Some of

01:27:57   us are using Mastodon, some of us being me. We'll see where it goes from here, but this will be a

01:28:04   topic for 2023. Like what will happen to our social media usage will very much be a conversation

01:28:11   for next year.

01:28:12   Because we all can't stop thinking and talking about it. It is such a big deal to us. Just

01:28:17   real quick, I need to share an earworm with the two of you. Power Rangers, right? Familiar

01:28:22   with Power Rangers? Do you watch it when you were a kid?

01:28:25   Yeah, all the time. I had the toys.

01:28:27   Right. So do you remember the moment when they would go from being humans, right? And

01:28:31   they would, they would like bring the robot right during like the transforming scene.

01:28:37   One of them would say Mastodon and then the next one was Pterodactyl. So every single

01:28:41   time someone says Mastodon, I say Pterodactyl in my brain and I can't stop it. And I think

01:28:46   I will never stop because it's still happening. Oh my God. Thank you. I knew it was, it was

01:28:52   familiar. It started to me for me in 2018 when it launched and it's still happening.

01:28:58   So I'm now sharing this with other people of around our age who also watched Power Rangers.

01:29:03   Thank you.

01:29:04   I knew it was familiar from my youth from somewhere.

01:29:07   I was like, I know what a Mastodon is, but like, why does it sound familiar?

01:29:11   Now I get it.

01:29:12   Thank you.

01:29:13   Thank you.

01:29:14   So I've had in my mind, like, I would like to start a Mastodon instance called Pterodactyl.

01:29:20   Something that I want to do, but can't be bothered to do the work.

01:29:23   So somebody else can do it if they want to.

01:29:24   So it's great December.

01:29:25   Mmm.

01:29:26   Good plus.

01:29:27   made a good choice in our lives. Yeah good plus because we left Twitter. I

01:29:31   think we should do it. And the data protection thing is great.

01:29:33   Apple Music Sing is hilarious. Apple Music Sing free form is good. I love it.

01:29:39   I love weird. So yeah. If you want to find a whole lot of links head on over

01:29:44   to the website relay.fm/connected/430. There you can get in touch

01:29:50   via email. You can also join Connected Pro which is a longer ad-free version of

01:29:55   of the show each and every week.

01:29:57   You can find us all online.

01:29:58   Federico is the editor-in-chief of MacStories.net.

01:30:02   Myke hosts a bunch of other shows here on Relay FM,

01:30:05   as do I, and I write over at 512pixels.net.

01:30:08   - You can go to MykeHurley.net.

01:30:10   MykeHurley.net, I set it up.

01:30:11   - MykeHurley.net.

01:30:13   - There you go, find me on the line.

01:30:16   - Yeah, he's on the social web.

01:30:17   You can, yeah, go read that.

01:30:20   Make it your homepage, is what I'd say.

01:30:22   - What do you mean?

01:30:23   make mycurly.net your homepage.

01:30:25   - Like when you see when you open a new tab.

01:30:28   - Oh, I thought you were telling me

01:30:30   that it needed to be my homepage.

01:30:31   I'm like, "Why, what did I do?"

01:30:32   I understand now.

01:30:33   - It should be yours as well.

01:30:34   - It is.

01:30:35   - It should be the default in Safari, honestly.

01:30:37   - Okay.

01:30:38   - I'd like to thank our sponsors this week,

01:30:39   TextExpander, Membrful, and Fitbaud.

01:30:42   And until next week, guys, say goodbye.

01:30:44   - Arrivederci.

01:30:45   - Cheerio.