0:00:00(upbeat music)
0:00:02Hello and welcome to Connected, episode 204.
0:00:11It is brought to you this week by our sponsors,
0:00:13Squarespace, Linode, and Inboard Technology.
0:00:17I am your host, Stephen Hackett, and I'm joined this week
0:00:20by my co-host and co-founder, Myke Hurley.
0:00:23My co-mic.
0:00:24- Hi. - It's just us this week.
0:00:26- Yes, I don't like co-mic.
0:00:29that seems like you're part of a bigger mic system. Yeah, or that you have multiple mics.
0:00:35You're a cog in the mic machine. One of the mics. Now you're the only mic.
0:00:40We're only spilt with a Y. So we are doing some traveling in October together and I bought our
0:00:46plane tickets, was it last week? And I'm keeping you up to date like, "Hey, this is where we're
0:00:50flying and stuff." And I bought a ticket for you and I spelled your name M-Y-K-E, which is not
0:00:57your given name that your mother gave you when you were born. You have altered it. Do you want
0:01:02to tell people how much money it cost you to fix that mistake you made? No, basically free. I just
0:01:07had to make a phone call to the airline and I lost many minutes off my life. I don't know, I saw a
0:01:14second email that seemed to indicate that there was a fee. There may have been a fee, it's fine.
0:01:18I think there was. But it didn't cost me, it cost us collectively. Right, yes. Your mistake cost me
0:01:24Well, you changed your name. Something that doesn't make any sense. Okay.
0:01:29But I...
0:01:29Okay. We're gonna do follow-up now. Enough, enough mic time.
0:01:35Co-mic time. "Iowas 12 Beta 5 mic. It includes artwork of a thin-bezzled, no-notch iPad Pro."
0:01:44Are you excited about this?
0:01:45Yeah.
0:01:45Do you have feelings?
0:01:46Yeah, I mean, look. This... And we got some stuff later on today, more like iPhone and iPad
0:01:54rumor stuff but we put this one in there because it's it does relate to last week
0:01:59and it's probably the least tantalizing of all of it um but what these things do is they just give
0:02:05you the reassurance right it's like yep it's definitely happening because this is what happened
0:02:10last time they there was some glyphs somewhere inside of ios which very clearly indicated
0:02:17what the iPhone 10 was going to be and now if they're in iOS 12 and they're appearing
0:02:24this late in the beta cycle only seems to add fuel to the fire of new iPads in September.
0:02:30Totally, you know if you go into this article we'll talk about a more face ID, a bunch of fun
0:02:34stuff but yeah it's just like a sign of life right like something is happening it's you know it's a
0:02:40little glyph it's not as fleshed out as say the touch bar was which we had like an embedded video
0:02:46file in Mac OS, not as fleshed out as what the HomePod leak showed about the iPhone X,
0:02:51but it is happening now.
0:02:53We are close enough now.
0:02:54We're what, we're like potentially like five weeks away from a September keynote?
0:03:00Yeah, yeah, I had this realization a couple of days ago.
0:03:03It's here, it's almost here.
0:03:06Yeah, I'm very surprised to have realized this, that we're so close to the iPhone.
0:03:14are the types of leaks that I like because they don't really tell you anything, right?
0:03:18These are the ideal leaks for me where it's like you can see it's coming but you can still like,
0:03:26"Oh, what's it gonna be? What does this mean?" These are my favorites. Probably my least favorite
0:03:32leaks are when it's just everything, right? Because it's only exciting for the moment you read it
0:03:40and then the excitement goes away because you now have all the information. But stuff like this,
0:03:45you're kind of still a little bit like, "Ooh, what could it actually mean?" These are my favorites.
0:03:51These are my favorite types of things. Yeah, I'm right there with it. There's always
0:03:56the excitement when you see someone on Twitter or a nine-to-five or something have a
0:04:03leak and they walk you through it. But you're right. Then it's time for the keynote. We've
0:04:08we've talked about this for years, in time for the keynote,
0:04:11that it's like, oh, I kind of see all this coming. Sometimes
0:04:13Apple jokes about that, like, Oh, stop us if you've seen this,
0:04:16you know, like, feel sure like chucking and jiving. But it's,
0:04:20um, I agree with you, I like, I like this level of leak. And I'm
0:04:25sure we're gonna see more because how this happens.
0:04:27Because it's enough for us to like, talk about and like,
0:04:30really, sort of let our imaginations run wild, we can
0:04:33sort of guess what they're going to do. And that's fun to talk
0:04:36about like on the shows and just kind of you know with nerds and it it also
0:04:41expands the the time that we get to talk about new stuff right like if it's if
0:04:46it's completely secret it's like well you can make guesses but this is a fun
0:04:50middle ground I'm sure that we will see more effect we already have seen more
0:04:54we're gonna talk about that in a little while but I agree with you this is like
0:04:57a nice sort of yeah there's some stuff going on and you know it's a 32 by 32
0:05:04icon so you know throw you can kind of apply your wishes to the to the leak and like apply
0:05:10your desires to it and they can't tell you that you're wrong yet which is fun.
0:05:15So you it was quite funny for me a couple of days ago when I got a notification for
0:05:21an episode of app stories because I have like to have notifications on for overcast because
0:05:25they don't I don't know what this type of notification is but like it doesn't light
0:05:30up my and it never was like made a sound or anything like they're just a
0:05:34notifications are there I don't know what like type of notification this is
0:05:37that Marco's doing but whatever and because I like to be able to just
0:05:41triage the shows that I want to listen to because I subscribe to lots and lots
0:05:44and lots of feeds including the relay FM master feed as
0:05:47well as all of the individual shows I don't even do that so I never I never
0:05:52want to see what the master I never listen to anything from the master feed
0:05:56right I listen to the individual so I get everything twice right so
0:05:59including all my own shows, so I have to delete lots of podcasts, right? Because every show that
0:06:05I'm on, I get two entries in Overcast for it. But I don't need to listen to them because I was there
0:06:11at the time. So I got a notification for App Stories episode 73, "Show me your Mac menu bar
0:06:18apps." And I was like, hang on a second. I was like, "No offense, I love App Stories, but one,
0:06:26I don't want to listen to that episode because I don't care about Mac menu bar apps."
0:06:30And then when I had that realization, I thought to myself, "Federico definitely doesn't care
0:06:35about Mac menu bar apps." And then I realized, "Oh, Steven was on it because Federico's equipment
0:06:43exploded." Yeah. Like I told John, I think it made it in the show, anytime I can hijack one of
0:06:50Fedorico's media properties and talk about the Mac, I will do it. So, John's like, "Oh,
0:06:56I need somebody to record." He's like, "Yes, I can do it right now. Let's go. Whatever time you need
0:07:01me there, as long as we can talk about Mac mini bar apps." That episode may not be for you,
0:07:06and that's fine, but I had a really nice time talking with John about it, and I think it came
0:07:10out really nicely. It's a great show. If you don't listen to App Stories, you need to add it
0:07:13to your rotation. It's fun. Yeah, it's very good. I like App Stories a lot. That one just wasn't for
0:07:20me no offense guys but like I mean I barely care about Mac apps Mac menu bar
0:07:27apps that's you know that's that's not for me I'm sorry I love you all but I
0:07:34just can't yeah well you know I don't know if Federico's discovered it yet
0:07:38because he's sort of in and out so we'll see he hasn't texted me anything angry
0:07:42yet but there was a funny thing with this so I was listening to I just
0:07:48start listening to the last episode of, well I think maybe two episodes ago of
0:07:52Canvas, where it's Jason and Federico talking about shortcuts. Yeah it's a
0:07:57couple of weeks old. I'm still catching up right on my post honeymoon podcasts
0:08:02and they just begin the episode talking about the fact that you shouldn't be on
0:08:07it. Yeah I was supposed to be and like Federico talking about ideas and I was like
0:08:10wait a second like just do a show with Jason. Way better. Yeah and it was really
0:08:15Really good. We'll have a link to that too. I learned a lot listening to Federico talk
0:08:21about that stuff with Jason. It was good.
0:08:24All right. So we are in August and August is a very special time for us here at Relay
0:08:29FM because we celebrate our birthday or anniversary. And I have a question for you because I don't
0:08:36know how old our company is and I need you to help me because I cannot work it out.
0:08:40Four years old.
0:08:42years old so are we celebrating our fourth birthday? Yes. Yeah. See because this is what
0:08:48I struggle with it's like anniversary and birthday. Well no it's the same thing. You don't celebrate
0:08:53zero so you don't you know you just got married like three days ago that wasn't your zero
0:09:00anniversary so it's next summer will be your one year anniversary same with your birthday
0:09:06you don't celebrate. Yes because I knew I know that we started the company in 2014 and I know
0:09:11it's 2018 now, but I keep getting myself confused and like do we say the comp... so the company is
0:09:17about to be four, right? Next Saturday we are four on the 18th. All right, great. Well and to confuse
0:09:25it more, the company is older than the network because we didn't launch immediately so we celebrate
0:09:30it. We celebrate it the day that we launch the network. Yeah, because there wasn't really a specific day
0:09:37that it started. Yeah, it's whenever the state of Tennessee said, "Yes, you're a business!"
0:09:41Congratulations! No, I don't think that counts. It legally counts. Tennessee don't rule me, man.
0:09:47It does. I'm my own man. Well, no it doesn't. It thinks it does. You can't get me. Tennessee
0:09:51can't get me. I mean, I paid state taxes this week, so they do. Yeah, but that's you. Anyways,
0:09:56what are we talking about? I'm over here. It is our fourth anniversary. It's our fourth anniversary
0:10:01fourth birthday and so a bunch of fun stuff happens in August. The biggest thing is our
0:10:09special bonus episodes for our Relay FM members. We will talk about that more beginning next week.
0:10:16But one of the things that me and you always do is an annual Q&A. Now we realized that our Q&A
0:10:23I think has been in different places almost every single year since it started. And this year's Q&A
0:10:30will be next week's episode of Connected. So if you would like to ask us a cue that we can A on
0:10:37that episode send in your questions over twitter please use the hashtag relayqa so r-e-l-a-y-q-a
0:10:46and we will answer as many of them as we can on next week's episode of Connected and it's always
0:10:54good I really enjoy them it gives us time to look over things we can talk about things if you have
0:10:59have burning questions you want us to ask, you want us to know what we think about the
0:11:03industry, all of that stuff, #RelayQA and me and Federico, no, no, me and Stephen will
0:11:08be doing that next week. What I was trying to say and my brain jumped ahead is Federico
0:11:13is back the week after, so he's on vacation right now. So last week his equipment exploded.
0:11:19Now he's on vacation because it's going to be his 30th birthday. On Friday the 10th Federico
0:11:27turns 30 years old, so please do your best to congratulate him on that achievement.
0:11:31He's gonna freak out.
0:11:33He's gonna, you know, it's gonna be, it's a big day.
0:11:36I mean, I remember, I turned 30 many decades ago.
0:11:39About 15 years ago, I think it was.
0:11:42So Federico turns 30, so everyone needs to congratulate him on Friday the 10th.
0:11:48Wait, does that mean he was 25 and we started podcasting together?
0:11:54You know that me and Federico are the same age, right?
0:11:56But I don't like to think about it
0:11:58Okay, cool. I just wanted you to just to know that that we are the same age
0:12:01Yeah, but his birthday is in August and mine is in January
0:12:04So anyways, yes send us your questions. It's always fun to
0:12:09To sit down and sort through them and talk about stuff. So
0:12:13That'll be next week. Yep
0:12:15Look forward to that. All right, should we take our first break? Let's do it
0:12:20This week's episode is brought to you by Squarespace make your next move with Squarespace
0:12:24so that you easily create a website for your next idea, project,
0:12:28and with a unique domain name, award winning templates and more,
0:12:31they will give you the place that you need to put your next thing online,
0:12:34no matter what it is.
0:12:36They're an all in one platform that offers all of everything
0:12:39you're ever going to need for the web.
0:12:41Let's say you want to create a blog.
0:12:43Let's say you want to create a portfolio, a site for your business,
0:12:45a site for a wedding or an event, a site for your local club
0:12:48or even a website to sell stuff.
0:12:50Squarespace has all of the functionality you're going to need
0:12:53for all of that.
0:12:54There's nothing to install or patch or upgrade or worry about
0:12:58because they've got it covered
0:12:59and then backed up with 24/7 customer support.
0:13:02I have used Squarespace for so many projects for like the last
0:13:06probably 10 years, I would say.
0:13:08I've probably been using Squarespace for about 10 years at this point.
0:13:11Like we just did our wedding website with them, and it was so easy.
0:13:14They have templates specifically for that.
0:13:16So they even kind of helped us understand what a wedding website
0:13:20even needs to have.
0:13:22Squarespace plans start at just $12 a month.
0:13:25You can sign up for a trial today and you can check it out
0:13:27and customize your page and build it all up.
0:13:29And then there's no credit card needed to do that.
0:13:31Just go to squarespace.com/connected and sign up today.
0:13:34Then when you're ready to publish that site to the world,
0:13:36just use the offer code connected
0:13:38and you'll get 10% of your first purchase
0:13:40of a website or domain and show your support for this show.
0:13:44Once again, that is squarespace.com/connected.
0:13:46And then the code connected to get 10%
0:13:49of your first purchase.
0:13:50Our thanks to Squarespace for their continued support of this show and Relay FM.
0:13:53Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website.
0:13:56So what have we got going on with rumors today?
0:13:59So I want to talk some about the iPhone.
0:14:01Like we said, we're, you know, a month or six weeks or something away from seeing the new phones from Apple.
0:14:08And about this time last year, some dummy models came out.
0:14:14And so these are like mock-ups of what people think they'll be based on all the leaks.
0:14:18And some YouTubers got a hold of them. We'll have a link to MKBHD's video.
0:14:23I saw Jonathan Morrison had them as well.
0:14:26Kind of a representation of what the phones would be like.
0:14:29They're not working phones, right? But they are sort of the enclosures.
0:14:32It's all kind of put together nicely.
0:14:34It seems like these are built by case manufacturers, right?
0:14:39Based upon leaks from the supply chain.
0:14:42That's where it seems like these are coming from.
0:14:44I think so, yeah.
0:14:46Which is super interesting.
0:14:48And previous years that this is going, you had these last year,
0:14:51at least just last year.
0:14:54This stuff tends to be pretty on the money because
0:14:57it is an incredible advantage for a case maker to have this right.
0:15:02So they seem to be able to pay probably very large
0:15:06sums of money to people that are currently making these phones or know about them.
0:15:12so they can build prototypes and build their cases around them.
0:15:17My personal feeling is what we're seeing in these videos is basically completely what
0:15:22we're going to see in September.
0:15:25I think so.
0:15:26These case manufacturers have a lot of incentive to get this right because if they can have
0:15:30cases ready to go three days before their competition, then that's potentially more
0:15:37sales for them.
0:15:39in a year where you have, and we're going to get into this, new sizes, right? So it's
0:15:43a little bit different when the iPhone 5 and 5s are basically the same. But in years where
0:15:50we have model changes and we can get into what that entails and how this year may even
0:15:56be different from last year, it's important if you're a case maker to get ahead of this
0:16:00stuff. So it makes sense. I'm sure this is like the tip of the iceberg when it comes
0:16:05this industry which I find I find really interesting like who knows with how this
0:16:10stuff comes out and and all sorts of like I'm sure sort of shady things are
0:16:15are going on behind the scenes and alleyways just like the worst right like
0:16:21it's just going to be the worst stuff these mock-ups fall in line with what
0:16:26we've heard and what we've seen before three new iPhones this year an updated
0:16:33iPhone X, a iPhone X Plus, and of course we don't know the names, you know, iPhone X2
0:16:42and iPhone X Plus with a, assuming like iPhone 9 cheaper iPhone in between the two, size
0:16:52wise.
0:16:53And I find this lineup incredibly interesting because it's really different than what we've
0:16:59seen from Apple in the past where we've had, you know, until the 10 you had the regular
0:17:05size phone and the plus phone for a little bit more spec wise, they were basically the
0:17:09same the plus, you know, eventually got nicer cameras and stuff, but more or less the same
0:17:15phone.
0:17:16And now you have that being split by this phone in the middle.
0:17:20That is potentially, potentially drastically different.
0:17:25But I'm curious what you think about that.
0:17:28Is it a mistake for the current iPhone X to be the smallest sized iPhone from here on
0:17:34now?
0:17:35Do you think this is weird that all the phones are getting bigger from where we are now?
0:17:40This was interesting because we knew this, but there was something about seeing it that
0:17:45made it more apparent.
0:17:47All of the rumors have said that there was going to be, like the iPhone 9 we'll call
0:17:52it, was going to be the 6.1 inch LCD screen.
0:17:55screen. I was like, well, obviously that's bigger than the 10, but we didn't really think about it, right?
0:18:00Like I think it just kind of was just until you see it. You kind of realize that oh wait, it's hard to visualize
0:18:05Yeah, it's like well now this is what you get. So my expectation will be that they'll probably still sell something, right?
0:18:11You could probably still get like an 8 maybe right? Yeah, I mean it'll go down
0:18:16It'll go down the wrong one, but I don't see a new phone at that size
0:18:20Yeah, and the 10 will probably get
0:18:24Or whatever that's gonna be is gonna be a little bit cheaper, right? There's probably gonna be a
0:18:28Shuffle down there at least. Yeah, I don't know like does the 10 as we know it now
0:18:33Stick around or does it drop to your point drop down in price or I think the 10 is gonna stick around button
0:18:41Practically nobody else agrees with me, which is fine. Yeah, I don't know like just fine
0:18:45We're an uncharted territory now, right this started with the with the iPhone 8
0:18:53being not the 7s and being different in some pretty radical ways and now we have
0:19:00In my mind like the old playbook like we can't guarantee anything is going to happen the way it used to and so
0:19:06Yeah, who knows what'll stick around? You know, maybe this iPhone 10 is
0:19:10The same we have now and there's not actually a new 10 size phone
0:19:14It's just the 9 and the 10 plus who know like I think anything is possible
0:19:17But there's a shot in the MKBHD video where he has all three sizes
0:19:23Stacked in his hand. It is a real smooth gradient and size from like the 10
0:19:27We'll call it the 9 and then the 10 plus like it is right in the middle. I don't know
0:19:33I just I just don't know and this is not me like like trying to talk someone into the iPhone SE
0:19:40But like the iPhone, you know 8 is a really nice size and if you thin bezeled that design
0:19:47I think a lot of people be happy with that
0:19:49but I just don't know if everything getting bigger if the 10 now being the
0:19:54smallest phone is is gonna make everybody happy or not so let me just
0:20:00say because I'm totally following you here but the 10 it's not that much
0:20:06bigger than the 8 right so you're looking at 0.2 inches in height and like
0:20:17point ten inches in width so you're looking at three millimeters thicker
0:20:22like in width so I should say three millimeters wider and like five
0:20:26millimeters higher okay so they're closer than I haven't held haven't held
0:20:30a phone that size in a long time because my wife has an SE it's the screen the
0:20:34screen being bigger makes you think your phones bigger but an iPhone 8 is 138
0:20:38millimeters 138 point four millimeters tall and an iPhone 10 is 143 point six
0:20:44and an iPhone 8 is 67 millimeters wide and the iPhone 10 is 70 millimeters wide
0:20:51so it's not really that much bigger at all right?
0:20:56okay that makes me feel better then
0:20:58yeah but I think the screen being bigger makes you feel like it's bigger and it's more expensive
0:21:03so my kind of feeling on like it makes sense to me that if they're only gonna make one
0:21:09that it sits in the middle of those two in size
0:21:12Yeah, okay. I think you've talked me into it. Just because I don't have a phone of that.
0:21:17I've actually, you know, except the iPhone 6, which I end up moving to the 6 Plus, I've
0:21:22had Plus phones until this. And I think without that other size phone in my household, I sort
0:21:28of lost track of where things are. So yeah, so I think, okay, so that works. The iPhone
0:21:3310...
0:21:34The problem might be the price though, right? Because it's, you know, if some people were
0:21:38buying the 8 for price reasons...
0:21:40I think people definitely were.
0:21:42they're going to be in trouble because the 10 if it gets any cheaper or whatever is you know, maybe
0:21:46it's the 10 maybe the 10s whatever, it's not going to be that much cheaper, the cheaper one will be
0:21:51the nine, which will be bigger. Yes. So that's going to be bigger still, you know, and these
0:21:58rumors are kind of kind of all over the place about what the what Apple could do to the nine to
0:22:03keep that price down. And so that the model show just has a single camera as opposed to the dual
0:22:08camera module on the X. Lots of rumors have said it's going to be an LCD display.
0:22:13And in his video, MKBHD says that the mock-up is a little bit thicker, and that would make sense
0:22:21with the LCD because you have to have a backlight. The bezels you mean, right?
0:22:24The bezels are thicker. He said the phone itself is also a little bit thicker than the X.
0:22:28Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Which you would need for the LCD. The bezels are a touch
0:22:32thicker. Again, you need that for the LCD because you've got to have backlight and stuff around the
0:22:36the edges were an OLED you can you know Apple's actually folding the OLED over
0:22:39into the into the bottom which is interesting so the screen and the camera
0:22:44two obvious places right to to cut expense and you can make the phone
0:22:49cheaper and honestly like Apple's else like the OLED is really good I don't
0:22:53think I'd want to go back to an LCD phone but people coming from you know an
0:22:59iPhone 6s or an iPhone 7 looking at the 9 it's going to be a better LCD than
0:23:05they have. So I think that's totally fine to still have an LCD phone, like at the top,
0:23:10you know, as a new phone, right? I don't think they have to go all OLED yet. In a couple
0:23:14years, I think that they may need to, but for now, like the LCD makes sense to me. I'm
0:23:19not bummed they're doing it. I think it's a logical choice for this device, looking
0:23:24at the people who will probably buy it. I don't think many people are going from the
0:23:28iPhone 10 this year to the iPhone nine next year. I just don't see that really happening.
0:23:35You know, I just stumbled upon something in my brain.
0:23:38Oh, I think that that device will be called the iPhone 9 because it will look
0:23:45like a bridge between the 8 to the 10, which was kind of the point, right?
0:23:50They were saying that the iPhone 10 was the future's phone, right?
0:23:52Like it was multiple years ahead.
0:23:54And then if you looked back in history, you would see 8.
0:23:57And then from the 8, you go to the 9 because it changed design,
0:24:00but still had an LCD and all that and a single camera.
0:24:03and then you go from the 9 to the 10 and then the 10 got two cameras and it got an OLED
0:24:07screen and all that kind of stuff.
0:24:09So that seems interesting to me.
0:24:12Like I reckon it, I do now, I've talked myself into believing that it would definitely be
0:24:16called the iPhone 9 and then I don't know what they're going to do with the other names,
0:24:20but that's my thinking.
0:24:22Apparently if there are going to be lots of bright colors, which was a rumor from previous,
0:24:28this is where we're going to see them.
0:24:29So it will be in this device.
0:24:31Now I don't know what that does to this device because I feel like it is probably a bad idea
0:24:37to do this.
0:24:38I don't think they should do the colours in just this one device because it seems counter
0:24:44intuitive to making the phone look this way.
0:24:47You take all these steps to make the iPhone 9 look like an iPhone 10 but be cheaper so
0:24:51then it looks like you've got a cool new phone but it's cheaper for you to get it, right?
0:24:58But then if you make that one the only one that has red, blue, and orange, for example,
0:25:03if you bought the red, blue, and orange, you're going to be signaling the fact that you have
0:25:07the cheaper phone.
0:25:09And isn't that counterintuitive to the point of doing it?
0:25:11Well, it's the problem of the iPhone 5C where...
0:25:16Yeah.
0:25:17You know, the iPhone...
0:25:19My argument assumes that the 9 and the 10S have basically the same internal specs, same
0:25:25CPU.
0:25:26iPhone 5 and 5s and 5c were a little bit different in that regard. The iPhone 5c was really an
0:25:31iPhone 5 with a new case. It didn't have the new processor. I think the 9 will have all
0:25:36of the 10 specs, including first gen face ID. Right, that's what I'm saying. So I think
0:25:40that's a little bit different than in the past. But what the iPhone 5c signaled to people
0:25:44is that you bought the cheap one. It was plastic and not aluminum. And some people bought it
0:25:48because they liked the colors, but we know the 5c didn't seem to sell as well as Apple
0:25:54Maybe thought it would, it was gone pretty quickly.
0:25:57They haven't gone back to that sort of decision
0:26:00in their product line since.
0:26:02So maybe this is revisiting that.
0:26:04I honestly would like to see colors in all three models.
0:26:09- Well, so would I, yes.
0:26:11That would be preferable, right?
0:26:12Like I would really like that.
0:26:13I mean, it's very possible that if they do a gold 10 plus,
0:26:17then I like go gold anyway.
0:26:18But like I would like actual color, like real color.
0:26:21Like it would be a bummer to me
0:26:24if there was a blue and an orange iPhone 9 available, but not an iPhone 10 or an iPhone
0:26:2910 Plus. I would be annoyed about that. But I do think that it's weird. If part of the
0:26:34reason that they did this is because they wanted to make all these phones look the same
0:26:38for a status symbol perspective, which is one of the reasons you would do it, not the
0:26:41only but one of, singling it out by giving it the color, I don't think adds to that status
0:26:50symbol thing.
0:26:51doesn't it doesn't it does. It's the same. I think one of the downfalls of the five c
0:26:56it's repeating that mistake because I think people look at the five c and the five s.
0:27:00If you saw five c you knew that someone bought the cheap one. It was really the five c really
0:27:05jumped out at you because it was so bright. And this obviously Apple has done a blue iPhone
0:27:10since and so this would I think they would repeat that that I think what you're saying
0:27:14is a repeat of the five c mistake. So we'll see where that goes. I mean, I said I want
0:27:19colors everywhere. I don't know if I'd buy an orange or a blue phone but I like
0:27:22the option and I think people, we talk about this a lot, people like options. I mean
0:27:27look at the Apple Watch, it's the reason they change the band so often and the
0:27:30case colors. Like people like personalizing their technology based on the
0:27:34color. This is why there's so many cases in the Apple Store. You walk in, Apple
0:27:38makes their leather and silicon cases in like 15 different colors because people
0:27:42you know, you know they highly like this yellow one. I'll put the yellow one on my
0:27:45and now my phone is yellow because most people have cases and
0:27:49Bringing that to the phone itself is something they haven't done much except that one that one year. There's also the idea of
0:27:56A face ID so there's a lot of we're going to into the iPad, but there's a lot of evidence building that the iPad
0:28:04face ID system will be
0:28:07Rotation agnostic so right now if I am I need to be oriented the same way my iPhone 10 is
0:28:14For it to unlock I discovered this when I was doing my iPhone 10 like review like unboxing videos where add the iPhone and a tripod
0:28:21Mount talking to it. The iPhone was in landscape and I'm standing up it wouldn't unlock with my face
0:28:27I had to like turn the phone so it lined up with me and
0:28:29That doesn't really work on the iPad a device that is very often in landscape
0:28:35It can also be used it can be used any way, right?
0:28:36There's no right way or wrong way to hold an iPad really and there's evidence that face ID and the iPad will
0:28:42overcome this that it can it doesn't matter where you are in orientation to the iPad and
0:28:50maybe that could be coming to the new phones and so maybe that's another way to
0:28:54keep the cost down on the nine is to have like face ID generation one if you will and then gen
0:29:00two face ID coming to the the 10s and the 10 plus being a little more flexible and and where you are
0:29:08in space to the phone. Yeah I do wonder if it's hardware or software was the limit for it,
0:29:15but nevertheless I think they will say these new phones have it and like the old phone won't have
0:29:21it. Yeah even if it's the same hardware they could say well it's a software difference.
0:29:24Yeah and then it's just like oh well it's just in these phones right or there might be some kind it
0:29:30might need additional processing power that a new chip will offer we don't know. Yeah but you know
0:29:35I guess it's, I think we can actually see in the XS, say, the X Plus will get the new
0:29:44chip which will probably be the same chip that's in the new iPads.
0:29:49Like what is it, A12, A12X, something like that.
0:29:53Which is going to be what, 7nm I think is the rumor which is, you know, could be very
0:29:57interesting like could make some big jumps so we'll see that.
0:30:01But let's talk about the phone that everyone really cares the most about which is an iPhone
0:30:04plus 6.5 inch display that is that's a big boy so like that's gonna be pretty
0:30:14intense because I so here's the thing right so this will actually be smaller
0:30:20than the 8 plus it's physically smaller but the screens bigger so I think the
0:30:26one-handedness will be worse because you have more of the you have more space to
0:30:31cover than you did with because you never really you never touched the top
0:30:35of the bus phone right there's nothing up like the forehead like yep so it's
0:30:39gonna be super interesting to see how that is how that comes to light but
0:30:44without seeing it I don't need to see it to no one buying it right it's what I
0:30:48want I want a bigger screen so the screen like is insanely large right so
0:30:54MKBHD in his video he puts the 10+ model next to an 8+ and then kind of
0:31:00over laser screen on top of the, you know, like in digitally overlays the screen.
0:31:04And you see that size difference. My word.
0:31:07Which is it's just wild.
0:31:11But the physical size difference between the 10 and the 10 plus is one diagonal inch.
0:31:16It's not that much like you when you when you put the two phones together,
0:31:21the size difference is way smaller than it was between the regular phone
0:31:25the plus one like in previous years which i think is very exciting uh i am i cannot wait i cannot
0:31:34wait for that because that six and a half inch screen that's wild that's nearly ipad mini it's
0:31:40nearly an ipad mini i remember that product oh i'm so excited this it remains an important product
0:31:46in the line i don't even think it got important i think it just it still exists i think anything
0:31:52They've never they don't say anything about that. I too am tempted by this. I
0:31:55like the iPhone 10 size. And I can operate it more or less with one hand if I sort of jostle it around.
0:32:04But having that bigger screen, but especially the bigger battery is is always a an upside to the
0:32:11plus funds. One reason I switched to the plus so many years ago. And yeah, I think I would
0:32:15definitely be interested in it. I don't I think I could order without seeing it. But I think if
0:32:21you're on the fence about it just like before. Oh yeah, don't yeah go and see it. It's worth
0:32:28waiting, going to a store, and handling them both because if the if the relative difference is like
0:32:34the 6 and the 6 plus you do have to like retrain your hand and you have to sort of figure it out
0:32:42because it is it is even though it's just an inch more diagonal it is noticeable in a lot
0:32:47of circumstances and it's worth if you're unsure checking it out because you can definitely be
0:32:55surprised by the the larger size. Plus Club's gonna come back in a very very big way. I'm excited.
0:33:01I think so. So this would be the one you would do? This is it? It's no choice. Like this is one I'm
0:33:06gonna go for right? Like this is not a question for me right? Like I will get the plus phone.
0:33:11Like I'll get the biggest one. I always want the biggest screens I can have and this this will be
0:33:16be no different to that. I'm always happy to go for bigger screens because the tradeoffs
0:33:22for me are never as large as what you know. Like I always want the bigger screen more
0:33:28than I care about the tradeoff.
0:33:30That's fair. 27 inch iMac, 12 inch iPad, 6.5 inch phone.
0:33:36Yeah, it's going to be crazy. It's going to be wild around here. I want to talk about
0:33:40dual SIM.
0:33:41Okay, yeah.
0:33:42Because this has been something that's been prevalent, right? Dual SIM, the iPhone is
0:33:46to have a dual SIM and that was kind of all it was and then over time it's like well what one's
0:33:50going to have dual SIM and will it really and then there's been some stuff floating around of like
0:33:54clearly dual SIM support in iOS and why is this anyway why do people even care about this well it
0:34:00turns out that dual SIM support so having two SIM cards in a phone is very very popular in China
0:34:07apparently somewhere between three to four billion people in China have phones with multiple SIMs in
0:34:13in them or require multiple SIMs.
0:34:15So this is a big deal.
0:34:16And like there are these different ways of doing it
0:34:18and it seems kind of unsure which Apple's gonna do yet
0:34:21where either you have to make a switch between them
0:34:24or they kind of both run concurrently.
0:34:26But now the news report seems to suggest something
0:34:31that makes so much more sense to me
0:34:33that this will be a unique version of the LCD iPhone,
0:34:37so the iPhone 9, only available in China.
0:34:42So everywhere else except for China, it will have a single SIM, but in China,
0:34:47there'll be an option or it will come as default with dual SIM support.
0:34:51This makes so much sense.
0:34:53They clearly have enough people to sell to them that it warrants doing
0:34:56a specific one-off version in the same way that they did the Verizon iPhone.
0:35:00Right. I had one only really in the US.
0:35:04Right. That it could be used.
0:35:06But frankly, this would be a kind of weird
0:35:09an eccentric feature for pretty much everybody else in the world.
0:35:12Like most of the world, especially in the Western world,
0:35:17this is not a thing, dual SIM cards, like it's not a thing.
0:35:19People have two phones, but they don't think about dual SIM cards.
0:35:24It's just it doesn't really make sense.
0:35:26I think for what I don't know the actual reasons why.
0:35:29And I'm sure there are very good reasons why people do this in China.
0:35:32But outside of China, you know, if people have two numbers,
0:35:36it's typically because they want two phones, right?
0:35:38Like there's a thing about having multiple phones, you want multiple handsets, multiple
0:35:42suppliers or whatever.
0:35:44Or you just need, you know, you have specific day needs and night needs, whatever it is
0:35:48that occurs.
0:35:49Day SIM, night SIM, really.
0:35:51Yeah, exactly.
0:35:53But yeah, so this is likely now, and makes so much more sense to me, that it will just
0:35:58be a model for China only.
0:36:03I think it makes sense.
0:36:04I wonder if it should be in the LCD phone or the nice one.
0:36:11There's a lot of discussion in the Asian markets about people's preference and size of phone
0:36:20and as well as having something that looks new.
0:36:22The idea that you can look at it and maybe the 9 works there because they have the colors.
0:36:27Maybe they're leaning into that and not so much that it's the absolute latest and greatest.
0:36:33is a huge market for Apple. And they need to reach those people who aren't using iPhones.
0:36:38And if the iPhone is going to grow, in terms of user base substantially anymore, it's going to be
0:36:44in places like China. And so to, to have something that caters to that market, it makes a ton of
0:36:50sense. You know, I wonder if there are people in other parts of the world that could benefit from
0:36:55it. I know I have no need for dual SIM like I don't even know what I would do with it. But
0:37:01I do wonder if it should be at least an option elsewhere.
0:37:04I don't think it's the thing people are really clamoring for outside of it.
0:37:07Yeah.
0:37:07I don't think that that's a thing.
0:37:09Yeah.
0:37:10Right? Like, I've never seen a phone for sale in the UK or the US which has two SIMs in it.
0:37:20I'm sure that it exists. I've just never come across it. And there isn't even a thing,
0:37:24you know, I watch a lot of reviews of Android phones. It's never mentioned as a feature,
0:37:30Right. Like typically what you see is a SIM card and an SD card or something like that.
0:37:36Expandable storage.
0:37:37But yeah, and I think what happens is like maybe in China, if that phone's sold, there's actually
0:37:44two SIMs that go in there. But this is not a thing that I see anywhere else. I'd never come across it.
0:37:50There's a couple of extra things on iPad rumors. So it's been discovered by a friend of the show,
0:37:57Guilherme Rambo that in the simulator for iOS 12 Beta 5 you can get in iPad size both
0:38:05a home indicator and rounded corners in apps and multitasking.
0:38:11And I've been poking around a little bit and there are hints of rounded corners throughout
0:38:15iOS 12 anyway, like simulator or not on the iPad.
0:38:19Which makes perfect sense because then it would meet the new style of the OLED phones
0:38:23with the small bezels, they have rounded corners, not sharp corners.
0:38:27So just yet again, more and more evidence, new evidence now for this, which also continues
0:38:34with these glyphs, these device sized glyphs, which were also discovered by Rambo's @_inside
0:38:41on Twitter.
0:38:43Found a couple of things.
0:38:44One was these payment glyphs, which was how he found the iPhone 10 one.
0:38:48Do you remember like just showing the outline of the notch?
0:38:50It's the exact same thing.
0:38:52It was a payment glyph and he's found a new iPhone 10,
0:38:56what appears to be an iPhone 10 Plus.
0:38:58And then something which was super weird to see at first,
0:39:01which was the iPad glyph, which is a square.
0:39:04And a lot sent me into a tizzy, right?
0:39:07Like a square iPad, like why would that be?
0:39:10But then more smart people,
0:39:13you can see it in the replies to the tweet,
0:39:15saying, oh, but this is probably just one glyph,
0:39:17which is then resized.
0:39:20- Yeah.
0:39:21on whether it's a bigger or smaller iPad.
0:39:23And it was like, oh, good for you.
0:39:24I was a little bit concerned
0:39:26that we were gonna get a square iPad.
0:39:28So yeah, that's kind of, again,
0:39:31just more and more evidence for these new iPads,
0:39:36which should be coming kind of around
0:39:38the same time in September.
0:39:40- Maybe they do in October with Macs, who knows?
0:39:43That debate is endless of what they put in conjunction
0:39:48with the iPhone and they've done a bunch of stuff with the iPhone.
0:39:51They've had just iPhone events, you know, two, three years ago now they did the big
0:39:56iPad Pro, the Apple TV and the iPhone 6s.
0:39:59Like they can do whatever they want and they've done stuff all over the map.
0:40:03So who knows what will actually happen.
0:40:05I don't know.
0:40:06A significant redesign to the iPads would call for a lot of attention and the best attention
0:40:12you can give it is the iPhone.
0:40:14Maybe.
0:40:15We'll see.
0:40:16I just won October event because I want Max on stage and hopefully there's a...
0:40:20They can still do something.
0:40:22Hopefully there's no new, there are new Max to talk about.
0:40:25If not, people are going to be sad.
0:40:27My other question with the iPad is I'm not convinced that turning the iPad into a big
0:40:32iPhone X is the right answer.
0:40:34You know, there are changes in iOS 12 to the way the gestures work and they put, they broke
0:40:41apart multitasking and control center.
0:40:44in the upper right hand corner, just where it is on the phone.
0:40:48The menu bar looks like it is on the iPhone X.
0:40:53I understand wanting visually things to be the same.
0:40:56These iPads are not rumored to have notches.
0:40:59Whatever bezel they have will accommodate the Face ID hardware just fine.
0:41:02They won't need to cut into the screen anywhere, which would look weird on an iPad anyways.
0:41:07But I don't know, someone who uses an iPad way more than I do, do you have any feelings
0:41:11about them sort of grafting on the iPhone 10 stuff to to the iPad because last year
0:41:18now still unless you're running the iOS 12 beta if you have an iPhone 10 iPad some of the gestures
0:41:24are in direct competition with each other right some things do exactly the different thing if you
0:41:30sit your phone down do your and pick up your iPad and I was hoping they would sort of meet in the
0:41:35middle and maybe the iPhone 10 would get things like putting control center in a place that makes
0:41:39sense and the iPad can maybe pick up some stuff but it seems like the iPhone 10 is the
0:41:44way forward when it comes to gestures. Do you have any thoughts?
0:41:48I think it's fine. I think from a hardware perspective it's the perfect answer because
0:41:52the iPhone 10 hardware is incredible. So if they can make an iPad which is similar to
0:41:56the iPhone 10 hardware it's amazing. When it comes to software, so control center, putting
0:42:00control center where it is I think is the right move because I like it more now, it
0:42:05more sense to me because it's exactly where I use it on my iPhone. I'm not a huge fan of the changes
0:42:11that they made to swiping up takes you to home rather than bringing up the dock. You have to do
0:42:17like a slower, more considered swipe to get to the dock because I believe that the dock makes
0:42:24the most sense for the iPad. However, there are a lot of people that seem to be upset about
0:42:32that when the iPhone 10 came out that it was had completely different gestures to the iPad and
0:42:38people were getting turned off of using their iPads because it was so confusing. Whilst I never
0:42:43felt that and never fully understood it, if that is a thing that has happened and I believe that
0:42:48Apple know that, then yes, they should change the iPad's gestures to make it best for most people.
0:42:55Like if there are a lot of people that really didn't like the difference, like that these
0:43:00gestures were different, then I figure it's probably the right thing to do, even though
0:43:04I don't personally like it.
0:43:06That's fair.
0:43:07I think it's more important that they're the same across the devices than if the specifics
0:43:14are to my liking.
0:43:15I think the uniformity is the ultimate goal.
0:43:18Yeah, and frankly, the iPhone and the iPad are different, but they're not that different.
0:43:26And there should be uniformity.
0:43:28And then what I expect is iOS 13 will take some huge leaps in some directions and then
0:43:3414 will bring it back together a little bit more again and that's just kind of how we're
0:43:37going to go now and I'm fine with that.
0:43:39Yeah.
0:43:40Well, there you go.
0:43:42This is the beginning of what will be rumor month on all the Apple podcasts and websites.
0:43:47So it's just the beginning.
0:43:49Enjoy.
0:43:50Today's show is also brought to you by Linode.
0:43:54With Linode you'll have access to a suite of powerful hosting options with prices starting
0:43:58starting at just $5 a month and you'll be up and running them with your own virtual
0:44:01server in the Linode Cloud in under a minute. Linode has hundreds of thousands of customers
0:44:06who are all serviced by their friendly 24/7 support team. You can email them, call them,
0:44:11or even chat over IRC in the Linode community. That's how important it is that they feel
0:44:17to get you the help that you want. They know that this is something that you're going to
0:44:21need and if you have a question, they want to get it to you. But if you're just the type
0:44:25person that likes to look through stuff and find out on your own, Linode have a suite of amazing
0:44:29guides and support documentation available to give you a reference when and where you need it. Linode
0:44:35has an intuitive control panel which will allow you to deploy, boot, resize, snapshot and clone
0:44:39your virtual servers in just a few clicks and they feature two-factor authentication to keep you safe.
0:44:44Linode is amazing for tasks like hosting large databases, running a mail server, operating a VPN,
0:44:50running Docker containers, hosting a private Git server, and so much more.
0:44:55Their plans start with 1GB of RAM for just $5 a month, and they offer high memory plans
0:45:00starting with 16GB of RAM. As a listener of this show, you can sign up today at lino.com/connected,
0:45:06and this way you'll be supporting the show, but also getting $20 towards any Linode plan.
0:45:11And if you choose the 1GB of RAM plan, that will get you 4 free months of service.
0:45:15And with a 7-day money-back guarantee, there's nothing to lose. So go to lino.com,
0:45:19That's L-I-N-O-D-E dot com slash connected to learn more. Sign up and take advantage of that $20 credit or use the promo code
0:45:26connected to zero one eight a check out our thanks to Leno for their continued support of this show and relay FM
0:45:32So we thought we would talk a little bit about some app news. Federico's not here
0:45:38So there's no one there's no one covering the apps
0:45:40And so we thought we would some stuff that we use and we like should we tell some stories?
0:45:45Probably these apps we sell some stories about apps. There's a name for that. So we're gonna start with instapaper
0:45:51We spoke about this a while back, but they are
0:45:55Independent and spurs been kind of I guess I guess purchased and removed from the cold dead hands of Pinterest and is now back
0:46:03independent owned and operated by the people who are working on it within Pinterest including some friends of ours and
0:46:11They have announced some changes this week. They have returned to the paid subscription model
0:46:17And so if you want things like full text search unlimited notes
0:46:21speed reading no ads
0:46:24on the website you can pay $2.99 a month or 30 bucks a year and
0:46:28This had been removed from instant paper when Pinterest took over they made everything free and now this is sort of back in
0:46:36If you need those features you can do it
0:46:41Those purchases are not available as an in-app purchase. There was a tweet from the developers saying they
0:46:46Hadn't gotten to that yet, but they they were looking into it. You can do it on the web
0:46:51It's hand the payments handled by stripe of course doing that way Apple is not taking their cut so all of it is going to
0:46:59To the developers, and you know I've used instapaper. I've talked about this
0:47:03I've used it since the day it came out and it's been on my home screen in my phone and iPad ever since and
0:47:09There's something that I'm probably gonna do because I want it to be
0:47:12successful it's not necessarily the features, but I want them and I want this app to be around and
0:47:18the news also came that they
0:47:22Have done whatever they needed to do to become GDPR compliant
0:47:26Instapaper was more or less unavailable in the European Union
0:47:30We got a bunch of tweets and stuff people saying well I see it
0:47:32but I don't and it seemed like maybe that was a little weird but
0:47:36That's all been fixed. It's now fully available in Europe again and
0:47:39that they had what I thought was a pretty straightforward apology about that delay and
0:47:46On top of that apology. They are giving six months of free premium users a
0:47:51free premium like a
0:47:54Membership I guess yeah to users in the in the European Union, which I think is a really I think it's a classy move
0:48:01I think that's nice
0:48:04They did the right thing, you know, like they never should have gotten themselves into the situation that they did and it shouldn't have taken as long as it did.
0:48:11I understand that there was obviously some stuff going on, right, which probably was part of the reason that led to this even happening in the first place, right?
0:48:20That it seems to have been bought or just released to this company. I'm still a little bit like confused as to what's going on there, right?
0:48:28I don't know if it's clear if the people that are working for this company,
0:48:32Instant Paper Inc, if they still work for Pinterest or not.
0:48:35I don't know if it is clear what is happening there.
0:48:40Like, is this a side project? Is this a business?
0:48:42It's not important.
0:48:43I just wonder. Like, I don't know.
0:48:47So, you know, because then it's like
0:48:49if this is these people's jobs now, then it becomes more intriguing.
0:48:52It's still like you believe that they're really going to try and push this thing
0:48:56make it very sustainable for them in the long term.
0:48:59But anyway, I think giving the six month free
0:49:02for EU users a good move, I think it's the right thing
0:49:04to do, yeah, I think 'cause it's been a very, very long time
0:49:09what, since April or something?
0:49:11- Yeah, yeah.
0:49:12- April, May, since GDPR came in and they've,
0:49:15if there's still a bunch of websites I go to, man,
0:49:17and it says to me I can't access them,
0:49:19like newspapers, like LA Times, I can't go to the LA Times.
0:49:24Just can't go to it, it's just like,
0:49:25"No, you're in the EU, so we can't help you." Basically, any trunk site is like, "I can't go to it."
0:49:30I just can't believe it. I just can't believe. Like, what are you doing? And it's also like a
0:49:36bunch of company, like a bunch of websites I go to now where it throws up that dialogue box. I'm like,
0:49:41"What? What are you doing?" Anyway, but I wanted to ask you, because I haven't really paid attention
0:49:47to Instapaper for a long time because I just don't use services like this, all of the features,
0:49:53So full text search and limited notes, text to speech play, speed reading, and send to Kindle.
0:49:58Were they available for free before? I believe, so don't take this as gospel, but I believe that
0:50:09these things were part of the previous premium subscription, and then when this paper weren't
0:50:15all free everybody got this stuff. Right, so they've taken what was premium that went free
0:50:22and put it back behind premium again? I think. Okay. I, out of all of these features, I use
0:50:28actually none of these. Like, I don't have any notes in this paper. I actually don't use this
0:50:33paper for search very often. Or if I do, you know, it's not hard to find stuff. I don't, I really
0:50:40dislike speed reading. And I don't send stuff to my Kindle. So I don't, I don't actually know. But
0:50:45that is my, that's my feeling. These aren't all new features. These things have existed in the
0:50:51app. So I believe that they were all free before. So yeah, that's rough. And if you look at the at
0:50:55the comments on this blog post, like, there are a bunch of really angry people in here,
0:51:00instance of paper has a real uphill battle in terms of whatever happened with GDPR and making
0:51:09it right with those users. And saying, Hey, this was free. Now it's paid again. They got a lot of
0:51:16stuff to they have a lot of stuff to overcome and I hope they can do it I really do but if they can't
0:51:24I'm not going to be super shocked looking at the reaction to this because people are rightfully so
0:51:34really really upset because you know going back and forth like this and then being down for a
0:51:45for a bunch of your users for two months is not a great look.
0:51:47Yeah.
0:51:48And then even stuff like you can't buy a subscription in the app right now, which is something that
0:51:55they're looking to change, but like...
0:51:58They should have had that, even if Apple took the cut charge more or something, they should
0:52:02have had that.
0:52:03If I went to the app looking, "Oh, I'll just do it as an in-app subscription."
0:52:09And the fact that that's not there and it's only on the web is like, they said, "Oh, we
0:52:13around time is like, well, you control the schedule.
0:52:15Like if you needed another week, wait a week.
0:52:18I don't think it's about that.
0:52:19My guess is it's really about the income generated from it
0:52:22and putting it on the web versus Apple's cut.
0:52:26I kind of think that may come out in the wash
0:52:28that if it was in the app, more people would do it
0:52:31more quickly 'cause you don't have to deal with Stripe
0:52:33and like going to a website.
0:52:34If you're just on your phone, it's in the app.
0:52:35It's easy to do.
0:52:37And so I wonder if that's the right call.
0:52:38I kind of think it's not, but I don't know.
0:52:41I mean, I don't know their numbers.
0:52:42they do. Whatever happens, though, I would imagine that
0:52:49who whoever joins this, like, paid subscription thing for
0:52:54Instapaper, that number is going to be way lower than it was
0:52:57before, because of all this, this damage has been done to the
0:53:01app and its reputation over the last three or four years.
0:53:04Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well,
0:53:07I mean, you know, I balance all that. And I don't mean to be a
0:53:12downer. I balance all that with the guys who are working on it. I know them a little bit,
0:53:18but they're clearly passionate about it because at least Brian, I believe, followed the app to
0:53:26Pinterest from Betaworks and now owns it. And I believe they have left Pinterest as employees.
0:53:33I don't know that for sure, but that's the sense I get.
0:53:35So Brian's contract expired and he just bought the company and left.
0:53:42Yeah, maybe.
0:53:43Which is totally fine to do, right?
0:53:46To me, that's clearly what happened.
0:53:47Yeah, but also clearly, they clearly care about the product.
0:53:51Yeah, yeah, of course.
0:53:54And they want it to exist.
0:53:55Most apps, we're going to talk about an app in a second that's dead.
0:53:59Instapaper should have died a long time ago, probably.
0:54:01apps would not have survived this many handoffs and the this many acquisitions and changes.
0:54:07Maybe their consistency and hey, the same team is working on it. Maybe that's a good thing. And so,
0:54:13you know, I'm gonna continue to use it as long as I can. And hopefully that's, hopefully that's
0:54:19a really long time from now. Hopefully they can they can get another decade or more out of this
0:54:22app. But I think they've got a lot of stuff to overcome in the short term before they can move
0:54:28on to that sort of long-term thinking.
0:54:30So, as well as, so there's a bunch of other stuff today. Castro, which is a really beautiful
0:54:35podcast app for the iPhone, has a couple of interesting features added to it. One of them
0:54:41is side loading of files, which I think is super cool. So this allows you to save an
0:54:48audio file from any iOS or Mac OS device to a folder that's created in iCloud Drive. So
0:54:57So Castro has a folder in iCloud Drive.
0:55:00So you could, for example,
0:55:01download an audio book on your Mac,
0:55:03and if it's DRM free,
0:55:05you could save it into the iCloud Drive folder.
0:55:08And then when you go to Castro on your iPhone,
0:55:10it's gonna show up there,
0:55:11and then you can play it, and that's really cool.
0:55:13I love this feature.
0:55:14I very frequently use Overcast's upload feature.
0:55:19But adding this being in iCloud Drive
0:55:22is a lot more convenient
0:55:25then uploading it to the web site, to the Overcast web site.
0:55:29Just for me this makes more sense, especially when dealing with things on iOS.
0:55:32You know, if I got something in iOS in Dropbox, I could just drag it in files into the iCloud
0:55:38drive and it would just show up.
0:55:40That is more convenient.
0:55:41I think this is a really cool feature.
0:55:42Yeah, I mean the way I often do it is I'll have something in Dropbox and either on my
0:55:47Mac or it works on iOS as well because of the Files app.
0:55:52You gotta get Overcast's web site and upload it.
0:55:54This is something that I think I think ever cast I think markers should look at for evercast I
0:55:58Use this feature all the time and I understand I
0:56:03would imagine the vast majority users don't like I would venture to guess that it's like single-digit percentage of evercast users or or
0:56:10Castro even side load files, but for those of us who do I
0:56:16wish it was
0:56:18Simpler or even like having a URL of a file if it's on the web somewhere and just giving that URL
0:56:24To your podcast client and it is downloading it directly right now. You can use something
0:56:28like huff duffer for that but
0:56:31More ways to get audio into podcast apps is good
0:56:35And of course the Castro team those guys do amazing work. All this is like
0:56:39Super well polished and it's it comes with like the level of niceness that you would expect from an app as beautiful as Castro
0:56:47they also added a feature the chapter pre selection so you can go in to their
0:56:58chapter view and in Castro chapter selection and skipping and stuff like
0:57:02that is only available to the premium members that I call it premium I say
0:57:08have a town I think it's it's you know what premium means you know what it
0:57:11if you pay them. Castro Crew. That's what they should have called it. Castro Crew.
0:57:17I don't think they should have called it that. I think it's really good.
0:57:21I think it's Castro Plus because they have app icons and one of them is a plus.
0:57:26Yeah, it's called Castro Plus. So if you use the Castro Plus thing, if you pay for that, you can
0:57:32get chapters and then now you can, they have little check boxes and you can untick chapters.
0:57:38So you could go in and be like, "I don't care about follow-up."
0:57:41You know, you go like, "Oh, I don't care about Mac or anything."
0:57:47Everyone cares about both of those things.
0:57:50So you could just look at it and you could untick a bunch of chapters.
0:57:54Of course, you could do this if a show has ads, you could do that too.
0:57:58I would recommend, I would love it if you didn't do that.
0:58:00But what you're going to do?
0:58:02So you can go in and you can uncheck stuff.
0:58:05And so this could be like, say you're getting in a car, you're going to the gym or whatever,
0:58:09there's things you just don't want to hear, you can uncheck them beforehand, press play and let
0:58:13it run. Yeah, it's a nice, it's a nice addition. And again, it it, I love the screen for it. Like,
0:58:19it's really nice interaction is really fun. Yeah, you know, chapters are here to stay. We've,
0:58:26we're doing them in a lot of our shows and where they where they make sense. And I think better
0:58:33ways to manage that is fair game. You know, if you're going to chapterize a podcast, part of that
0:58:37equation is it does make people easier to skip around. And you know, I'm, I'm fine with that. I
0:58:44understand that's part of the medium. And the reality is that the numbers show that most people
0:58:50listen to most of the content and most episodes. So like, I'm not, I'm not worried this is suddenly
0:58:57going to like tank or like drastically change the way people listen. Because you can do this in
0:59:01other apps just manually like they're they're twisted that you can do it on the front end which
0:59:06is clever but i don't think it's really introducing anything all that new from like a producer
0:59:12perspective while we're talking about podcasting mike i have good news skype 7 has gotten a new
0:59:23lease on life for now so this is this is the quote from microsoft we will extend support for quote
0:59:31some time who knows what that means I assume that means the end of the year so
0:59:37Skype 7 no one likes Skype but Skype 7 is a pretty okay version of Skype in
0:59:44most people's eyes I was using Skype 6 for a really really long time and now
0:59:50I'm on 8 which is the current version and it's it's not awesome it's got some
0:59:57weird things like alerts kind of don't work so you have to be looking at Skype
1:00:01Some kind of cross-platform app. I don't know what this cross-platformness is, but it's
1:00:06some kind of cross-platformy stuff. And this, when it first came out, this new version of
1:00:13Skype, which is a...
1:00:14Guess what it's built on. You can guess.
1:00:18Is it Electron?
1:00:19It is. I'm looking in the frameworks folder.
1:00:21Oh, I didn't know that. So Skype is now on Electron app. And there's a bunch of stuff,
1:00:24like it doesn't have a traditional preference pane. They had to add in this weird zombie
1:00:28preference pane because you couldn't change audio inputs. There's a bunch of stuff in this app which
1:00:32is not good. Frankly, I don't like this Skype 7 read decision. I wish they would just make a
1:00:39definitive decision on it so then people can make up their minds about what they want to do.
1:00:44I don't like this, we're going to kill it. Oh no, no, we're going to keep it for some time.
1:00:48Either do it or don't do it and then just be upfront with your customers because if they're
1:00:55they're just gonna keep screwing around with it, then people can decide to go elsewhere
1:00:58if they want to, but I really don't like this kind of like stringing along that they've
1:01:01been doing for multiple years now with Skype.
1:01:07Microsoft clearly have a route they want to go down.
1:01:10If they go down that route or don't like Microsoft is so bad with this stuff.
1:01:14Either go down that route or don't go down that route.
1:01:17Look at Windows 8.
1:01:19Exactly.
1:01:20Like you have to make a decision.
1:01:21Stop making decisions, annoying people and then changing your mind.
1:01:25should know your decisions are going to annoy people before you make them because you should
1:01:28have a lot of smart people there understand what's going to happen. And if you know that
1:01:32just weather the storm because everyone will forget about it eventually, right? Like, just
1:01:36make a decision like I hate this, like, make a decision, go back on it, make a decision,
1:01:42go back on it, like just do it or don't do it. And then let people fall where they will.
1:01:46You're right. Microsoft's really bad at it. Apple is not Apple, maybe on the other end
1:01:50of the spectrum, march forward. And you can run classic for a few years and you can rosetta for
1:01:57a few years. But eventually we're going to kill that stuff because the future is where we're
1:02:00going and come on or get left behind. And I don't know. I mean, Skype eight is not a great program.
1:02:09It's not like it's like you said, it's weird. And it's electronic, which is gross, but it gets the
1:02:14job done. And I'm staying on eight at this point, because I don't want to get used to like the old
1:02:20way again and then be forced back into this. So like my tools still work in it, I've learned
1:02:26it's weirdness and where it can get tripped up and I'm just staying with it for now.
1:02:31The Newton email app is dead, it's dying, gone away, there's gonna be no more.
1:02:38Not staying with Newton anymore. It's shutting down on September 25th. I never used this,
1:02:45did you use this in your great email spiritual journey?
1:02:48I tried it and for a reason that I don't remember it didn't stick with me.
1:02:52Newton used to be called Cloud Magic.
1:02:55That's right.
1:02:56And they rebranded.
1:02:57So they said in their blog post they had 40,000 paying subscribers
1:03:02but they couldn't figure out long-term profitability for the company.
1:03:05I think it is unclear from the way that they've written this
1:03:09as to whether they still had 40,000 paying subscribers.
1:03:13They kind of referenced that at one point they had 40,000 paying subscribers.
1:03:17Yeah.
1:03:17because really if they had 40,000 paying subscribers, I can't understand how they
1:03:23didn't work out to keep the company going. Because that's a lot of people paying you money.
1:03:28It is.
1:03:28And I don't think Newton's very cheap. I think that was one of the reasons that I was put off
1:03:32from it, which is like, it didn't offer me all the features I wanted. And it was pretty expensive
1:03:37for what I thought I was getting. I think that was one of the reasons that it turned me off.
1:03:40Because like a lot of the features that they were promoting just didn't work for what I wanted.
1:03:45They kind of made the point, and I think this is the biggest problem here,
1:03:52premium email apps and services cannot compete with free services and the free services are owned
1:03:57by companies like Apple and Google. Oh yeah, little startups. Right, they all offer free email
1:04:05like for people and for the majority of people all they need is what Gmail provides them.
1:04:10because Gmail is very full featured.
1:04:12They are gonna be offering refunds
1:04:15for the rest of their customers' outstanding subscriptions.
1:04:18They said they're working with Apple and Google on this.
1:04:19I don't understand how that's gonna really help them,
1:04:22but fine.
1:04:24They're gonna try and find a way
1:04:25to give people their money back, which I think is great.
1:04:27My question is, are email apps
1:04:29going the way of photo backup solutions?
1:04:32- Yeah, and I think for the reason that you said,
1:04:35these apps have to compete with first-party solutions.
1:04:40So like mail apps not great for everyone,
1:04:45but it works for the vast majority of people.
1:04:47And if it doesn't work, you can install the Gmail app,
1:04:50which works with the most popular email service
1:04:53on the planet really well.
1:04:55And these companies have to find a leg in to do something
1:05:00that the default apps don't do.
1:05:02And so Spark, for instance, which we've talked about,
1:05:05we use it Relay because of their chat and behind the scenes
1:05:09features, like we can work together on a response to an email or have a conversation about something
1:05:15in like a side rail, and then we go back to the email when it's time instead of like bouncing
1:05:20out to slack.
1:05:22Spark has carved itself out a little spot.
1:05:25And I don't know if Spark's gonna be successful long term, but for now they seem to be and
1:05:30they are they are targeting like business use cases.
1:05:35Newton and probably airmail, I think are different than that, because it's I think their market
1:05:41is like, nerds, like, I was gonna say email enthusiasts, but no one is an email enthusiast.
1:05:47But people who want people a no more features are out there and they exist and want those
1:05:52features. And that's got to be a small number of people. And yeah, I think I think just
1:05:58the end of the day, whatever's built in, or provided for free by the your service that
1:06:03you use. That's what people are going to go with. I know people who have used Gmail on
1:06:07their phone because they don't know that the mail app works with Gmail. They're like, "Oh,
1:06:10I have Gmail, I download the Gmail app," and they use it for years and they're totally fine.
1:06:13It's a good app. I'd imagine it's hard to compete with that. I think you're right. A lot of mail
1:06:19apps, there's a lot of carcasses of email apps stacking up around here. It's starting to be
1:06:26worrisome. I think that really the only way to survive is to offer some kind of business or
1:06:32sales focus features. I don't know what Spark is doing, I don't know how they're doing,
1:06:39but I think what they are doing makes the most sense of today. You put a team on it,
1:06:43the team pays for it, and they get something that they need. Although I will say, I am
1:06:49using it, but I'm not paying for it, because their free tier gives me absolutely everything
1:06:57that I need and I don't understand why. I don't know why they offer their team
1:07:02stuff for free. I don't understand it because I would pay for it.
1:07:07Yeah, yeah we absolutely would. But what I get for paying for it I don't need it.
1:07:11Like I'm planning to, I've just remembered, I was planning to sign up
1:07:14for their paid thing just to give them money but I don't think they need a free
1:07:18version of it at all. It seems strange to me. I'm gonna write down note now.
1:07:24going to sign up to pay for Spark. But it's like, I just, I don't understand why they even offer a
1:07:30free thing. They should offer a trial, like for a time period, so people can try it out. But I don't
1:07:36know why they offer a free tier permanently, it seems strange to me. And talking about things
1:07:43dying, third-party Twitter clients as we know them, it's all about to change. Next week is when
1:07:50when Twitter intends to make their API changes
1:07:52that we spoke about some number of weeks ago
1:07:55that are going to affect the way
1:07:57that third parties access the service.
1:07:59So let me tell you what you're going to see.
1:08:01You're going to see delays on alerts and notifications,
1:08:04some mentions in DMs,
1:08:06and timeline streaming will stop working.
1:08:09So the icon factory who owns Twitterrific,
1:08:11they started their preparation for this a few weeks back,
1:08:14and they did two things.
1:08:15They removed their watch app
1:08:17because this was powered by the streaming API,
1:08:19and new customers were no longer able to access TodayView or get push notifications at all.
1:08:26So come back to that in a second.
1:08:27Tabbots, they've not been as succinct as the icon factory, right?
1:08:32Because the icon factory put this all in a blog post.
1:08:34But tabbots have some wording on their FAQs and in some tweets that they've been sending by the support channels.
1:08:40So you can kind of piece together a little bit about what's going on there.
1:08:44So they say, "Tabbots have said in the worst case scenario we won't be able to show notifications for likes or retweets,
1:08:50or notifications for tweets, mentions, DMs and follows should be delayed by one to two minutes."
1:08:56So I don't really feel like I understand what's going on here, because IconFactory and Tabbots
1:09:03seem to be saying things differently, because the IconFactory completely removed push notifications for new users.
1:09:10But for Tabbots, they're saying that there will still be tweet mentions and DM notifications and follows, but they're going to be delayed?
1:09:18I'm not completely sure what's going on. Is one of them wrong? Is one of them either acting too quickly or not enough?
1:09:27It's a little bit confusing to me because the two companies that really this seems to affect the most, at least in our space, seem to be reacting to this news very differently.
1:09:37Tapbots have also stated that Twitter will remove timeline streaming.
1:09:41They haven't said what's going to happen to their activity or their stats screen, which
1:09:45I assumed was powered by timeline streaming.
1:09:48That's why Twitteriffic had to get rid of theirs.
1:09:51So either the icon factory is overreacting or Tapbots is underreacting or it's somewhere
1:09:57in the middle of it.
1:09:58Yeah, I mean, we will know shortly.
1:10:01So say that Tapbots is right, that some streaming stuff will still work but it's delayed.
1:10:06I wonder if Tapbots looked at that and said, "It's a cleaner experience, more predictable
1:10:13if we just axe all of it."
1:10:15Or maybe they thought, "Hey, you know..."
1:10:17That doesn't seem right to me.
1:10:19Because the things that Tapbots are saying you'll still get notifications for is probably
1:10:23the things people want notifications for the most.
1:10:26DMs, mentions, but they're just coming through slower.
1:10:30But is a one to two minute delayed notification better than no notification?
1:10:35I don't know.
1:10:36Well, I would say yes, it is worth it.
1:10:39Like a delay of two minutes is better than nothing.
1:10:42I mean, if Tapbots is right and they still offer some notifications and Twitterific offers
1:10:49none, that looks real bad on Twitterific.
1:10:51It probably will kill Twitterific, honestly.
1:10:55And maybe it's...
1:10:56Because people will blame them.
1:10:58Yeah.
1:10:59Maybe that's okay with the icon factory.
1:11:01I don't know.
1:11:02I don't know if they're trying to like scuttle the app or not.
1:11:04But this has been coming for a long time, but I still think people are going to be surprised,
1:11:08and I wouldn't want to be in support for either of these apps when this happens in a couple
1:11:12of weeks.
1:11:13I guess people are going to be surprised.
1:11:15Because the amount of people that actually notice information that use these applications
1:11:18is a minuscule percentage.
1:11:21Because as well, the people that even get told this information seem to have very different
1:11:27understandings of it.
1:11:30Or someone's like, or maybe like Tapbots got something special.
1:11:34Like we don't know, but I just looked at this news.
1:11:38I compared what's going on here and it doesn't make sense to me.
1:11:41So like Twitter was making these changes,
1:11:45but two companies that in theory offer the same thing seem to be reacting to it
1:11:49very differently. So I am very keen to see what happens next week.
1:11:53Yeah, me too. And you know,
1:11:55I like to be bot, but Tapbots is not always the most communicative.
1:11:59Communicative? Is that how you say that?
1:12:01Yeah, sure.
1:12:03Sure. They're not the most forthcoming with information at all the time. Their
1:12:09customer-facing communication is not always clear or timely. And so who knows? It's
1:12:17probably somewhere in the middle. And I guess the bad news is we're all gonna find
1:12:21out soon enough. I mean is this gonna, I say that, but is this gonna really drastically
1:12:26change the way you use Twitter? Like I don't have any notifications on except for DMs and
1:12:32very few people DM me and none of those are life or death so if it's a little bit slower
1:12:37or I don't see them for a little while, it's not the end of the world. What about you or
1:12:42like what about people at large? I understand most people don't have the notification problems
1:12:46we do because we have larger followings.
1:12:48I don't want to talk about people at large again, because I'm not going through that conversation
1:12:52with people that we had last time where I tried to say what I believe and still believe to be
1:12:57how it will affect most people using Twitter, but a lot of people didn't seem to agree with
1:13:01what I was saying. For me personally, it will be frustrating at times to have things come through
1:13:08a little bit slower, like a minute or two minute delay, but honestly, I don't think that it's going
1:13:12to be too... I'll get used to it pretty quickly. I don't have any notifications for any
1:13:18interaction on Twitter at all. If it removes the stats and activity screen from tweetbot,
1:13:22I'll be really annoyed because it's two of my favorite features.
1:13:25I think it'll be annoying during keynotes and stuff, right? Like the Twitter's already,
1:13:30the Twitter and the video are already on sync.
1:13:33Live events, yeah.
1:13:33But yeah, I think day to day, like, I don't see it drastically changing the way that I use it,
1:13:39personally. I don't, um, I have, you know, streaming like pin to top whatever turned on,
1:13:46at least in the Mac version. I do on the Mac version, but, um, you know, I don't, I don't
1:13:54think it's going to be a drastic hit just because I don't use the notifications very often. So
1:13:59episode 193 of connected is where we spoke about this last time when I blocked that out completely
1:14:06when the news was originally discussed. You probably blocked it out because I said a bunch
1:14:13of stuff. People got upset. Well, let's talk about some more things that may upset people.
1:14:20You want to take a break and we'll do this? We'll do this last topic? Yes, yes. Let's talk about our
1:14:25final sponsor for this week's episode and that is Inboard Technology. They are the company,
1:14:31the genii behind the motorized M1 electric skateboard. Inboard's flagship M1 eboard is
1:14:38set apart from the pack of its innovative industry-leading features and its sleek,
1:14:43yet rugged design. Talk about those features. What about integrated LED lights on the front or tail?
1:14:49So if you're safe a ride, you can see where you're going. People can see you. You can ride long after
1:14:54the sun goes down. This is the only electric skateboard that has integrated LED lights,
1:14:58which I think when I read it I'm like why don't they all have that? That sounds like a really good thing.
1:15:02What about the ability to change batteries so you don't have to awkwardly find a charging port? The M1 eboard
1:15:08allows you to pop out the battery and put another one in so you could carry an extra
1:15:13battery in your bag if you wanted to and they have a remote. The remote that they have has a simple intuitive
1:15:19design as a safety trigger that means you don't have to worry about any accidental takeoffs as well.
1:15:24So you won't send your skateboard flying into a group of people when you're not on it, right?
1:15:29You just like fidgeting with the remote, right? Yeah, so it's all good. You're all good
1:15:34You can upgrade your commute with one of these boards you forget about spending ages stuck in traffic or looking for a parking space
1:15:40Just pick up your board and head to work and if your commute is just fine
1:15:44You might want to find a way to run some errands around your neighborhood in faster fashion
1:15:48It's great for that kind of stuff, too
1:15:50If you follow me on Twitter, you may know that when I was in Hawaii, I sprained my ankle
1:15:54The greatest shame, the thing that I'm most upset about in my life right now with my stupid sprained ankle
1:16:00Is that I have an inboard electric skateboard sitting right here, and I haven't yet had the chance to ride it
1:16:07But luckily things are looking up. So I expect maybe by the next time you hear us talk about the inboard
1:16:12I will be able to give you my experience
1:16:14But for now, maybe we should ask Stephen what his experience is with the inboard
1:16:18All right, so I am out front of my house gonna retake my inboard out for a spoon
1:16:23I was not really a skateboarder before this but the inboard gives you all the confidence
1:16:33you really need.
1:16:34The board is very smooth, the wheels just seem to glide right over small debris, cracks
1:16:41in the concrete.
1:16:42It's really very, very comfortable.
1:16:45The remote is really easy to understand and use, you're not going to make a mistake with
1:16:49it.
1:16:50and it just makes you feel alive.
1:16:52I like going fast, I like riding my bike fast,
1:16:56I like fast go-karts.
1:16:58The Inboard makes that experience a lot easier to attain
1:17:03'cause you're out in the open getting lots of fresh air,
1:17:07feel the breeze, it's a whole lot of fun.
1:17:09- For a limited time only, you can save $100
1:17:12in your purchase of the M1 eboard
1:17:14by heading over to inboardtechnology.com
1:17:17and using the code connected100 at checkout.
1:17:20Get the board, you can try it out for 14 days.
1:17:22If it's not right for you, you can just send it back.
1:17:25With the easy return policy,
1:17:26if you've always wanted to try out a motorized skateboard,
1:17:29now is the time to do it.
1:17:30That is inboardtechnology, I-N-B-O-A-R-D technology.com,
1:17:35and use the code connected100 to save $100
1:17:39for a limited time.
1:17:40Go there now, you won't regret it.
1:17:42Thanks to inboard technology for their support
1:17:43of this show and Relay FM.
1:17:45- So we've got one last topic.
1:17:47We're just gonna dive into this
1:17:48because the news is a little bit old now,
1:17:50but Apple removed iOS and Mac apps from its affiliate program.
1:17:55So you used to be able to create a special link to the App Store and if someone bought
1:17:59a $5 app, you as the link creator got a little cut of that.
1:18:05Last year Apple tried to reduce that percentage and it was met with a lot of feedback, a lot
1:18:12of negative feedback, but now it has gone entirely.
1:18:18And that is what it is.
1:18:20It's ending October 1st, so there's still six weeks, eight weeks or so of this program
1:18:26left.
1:18:27And after this you can still link to books and movies and TV shows.
1:18:30But the App Store affiliate system made possible a whole ecosystem of websites and people comparing
1:18:40apps, doing roundups, creating editorial content around the App Store.
1:18:44what I really want to talk to you Myke about is this line in Apple's emails.
1:18:50It was like the end of the day on August 1st and it said with the
1:18:55launch of the new App Store on both iOS and Mac OS and their increased methods
1:18:59of app discovery, so all that new editorial stuff that came with iOS 11
1:19:02is coming to the Mac with Mojave, we will be removing apps from the affiliate
1:19:07program and they go on into the details. So like just cards on the table. I've
1:19:12I've been a member of the affiliate program for a long time.
1:19:15Depending on what I'm doing on my site or on Twitter,
1:19:19I make a little money from it each month,
1:19:21but it is nowhere near the amount
1:19:25that this is a big deal to me financially.
1:19:28Like it's very small numbers, a handful of dollars a month.
1:19:31But there are sites like Touch Arcade
1:19:34who are really gonna be crippled by this,
1:19:36who really like, that was a large part of their business.
1:19:38And you could argue that they should have evolved
1:19:40after what happened here, max stories and Federico tweeted
1:19:44about it. Sean Blanc wrote a essay on the suite setup about
1:19:49how they saw this coming and they started to move away from
1:19:52it. And those sites max stories in the suite setup are gonna be
1:19:55fine. But I really don't like that line about Oh, well, the
1:20:01App Store is really great now. So we don't need all of this
1:20:06like, third party content. Like, am I just like reading into this?
1:20:09Am I just being sensitive or like, do you feel like that phrase has some problems in
1:20:15it?
1:20:16I think it's baloney, mostly.
1:20:19I don't think that this is the reason.
1:20:24And there are a lot of people that have given a bunch of other reasons for why Apple could
1:20:27be doing this, either to stop scammy apps from trying to make money, to stop some big
1:20:31apps from circumventing the 30% cut, like some of the 30% cut, by linking to each other
1:20:37or linking to other apps that they own. Or maybe I don't buy this one. I think this is silly. But
1:20:42to further boost services revenue, I think the amount of money this is actually going to be
1:20:45it's not going to be that much for the services revenue column.
1:20:48Yeah. Well, I think the flip side of that coin before you move on is some people have hope has
1:20:53said hopefully, oh, this means once they recover this money, they can move from a 30% cut to a 20%
1:20:59cut or something like that. Absolutely not. Good luck if you think that's going to happen. They
1:21:03did it with subscriptions. That's as far as we're going. The other part that felt bad
1:21:08about this was that this happened, like the day after the quarterly results, like, or
1:21:12maybe the same day, like, right after Apple says, Hey, you know, we've made more than
1:21:18ever this quarter than in previous quarters, and service revenue is up. And saying, Oh,
1:21:23hey, you know, you you guys making, you know, some people making serious money in this system,
1:21:29going away. So I think that the politics of it are really bad. The optics of it are real bad.
1:21:35And you know, I don't I can't speak to like the scammy side of this. Like I'm sure there are
1:21:40people cheating and like doing weird things in this but like you're punishing everybody because
1:21:47there's some bad actors like if you know they're bad. All this is trackable if they're bad actors,
1:21:51kick them out of the system. It's not hard like turn off their codes and let people like
1:21:57like Federico and Sean and, you know, actual publishers continue to move forward.
1:22:02So I don't know. I don't, I don't like it because whatever the reasons are,
1:22:08and it's some blend of these and some factors I'm sure that we're not aware of.
1:22:13No, I can't,
1:22:14I can't come up with a reason that makes me feel okay about it. And,
1:22:19and again,
1:22:20this isn't being covered by the fact that all of a sudden I'm out $2,000 a month.
1:22:24I'm not. Um,
1:22:26but I can't come up with a reason Apple would do this that's not kind of lame.
1:22:30Because the thing is, no matter what that reason actually is, what they're saying is,
1:22:37the only way that we believe the apps need to be like "get promotion" is through the app store now.
1:22:47We do not feel there is a requirement to incentivize people to write about iOS apps.
1:22:53Because that was why it was included, right?
1:22:55That was why it was there.
1:22:56You have this affiliate program to either incentivize people to write about it,
1:23:00for developers to link to other applications,
1:23:02so it can generate more revenue going through the store,
1:23:06because you get a kickback for it.
1:23:08It's the same reason Amazon's affiliates...
1:23:10This is why affiliate stuff exists,
1:23:12because affiliate stuff exists to drive more people to the store
1:23:15to make more purchases, right?
1:23:16That's why this stuff exists.
1:23:18That's why affiliate marketing is a thing,
1:23:20because you are trying to push people through
1:23:22and a lot of ways this is done is through websites and media. But Apple is saying now that with the
1:23:27launch of the new App Store and increased methods of app discovery, they don't need to incentivize
1:23:32people financially anymore to do this. That statement can be read as we do not believe
1:23:39it is important anymore for people who write or publish about applications to receive money
1:23:46for doing so as a cut. Now I find that to be mean-spirited. I don't like it.
1:23:53So I will just say from what you've said, I've never personally made a cent from the affiliate
1:24:00program. Like me personally. I think Real AFM has a code but I couldn't even tell you how much money
1:24:05we make. It's not much. And I'll tell you because whenever I link to apps in our show notes,
1:24:10it's very rare that I'll ever put an affiliate code on it just because like whatever. Like I
1:24:14I just don't bother. It's not massively important to me because I never really
1:24:18ever made any money on it, so I never even think about doing it.
1:24:21So if it makes any financial difference to me, one,
1:24:25I personally it doesn't bother me and two, I probably won't see it anyway.
1:24:29So anyway.
1:24:30But I just think that, you know, like what
1:24:33what what is this going to do to coverage of apps in the long term?
1:24:37Like I don't and like I understand what like that people are saying,
1:24:41You know, like people like Sean and Federico saying that they found other ways
1:24:46to combat against this.
1:24:48But I think for a lot of people, there isn't one.
1:24:50Because writing about technology
1:24:54or applications in 2018, it's not a great way to make a lot of money.
1:24:59Like it is hard to make money in that business
1:25:02because advertising dollars are going to other places by and large, right?
1:25:09one of those places is podcasting. A lot of the money that used to go, I believe, into web media
1:25:17is moving into audio media. As someone in both worlds, I think that's absolutely
1:25:23accurate. And yeah, the thing at the heart of it for me is that this community,
1:25:28these people are writing, again, there may be some bad players out there,
1:25:33But at least everything I've ever come across is that's good for Apple.
1:25:38It's good for the App Store.
1:25:40It helps consumers feel more confident about their purchases.
1:25:42It drives people to discover new apps and new categories of apps that they weren't
1:25:47previously aware of.
1:25:48The reality is getting rid of this is not going to do anything major to App Store
1:25:53download numbers because the App Store is so massive.
1:25:57This is probably a relatively small drop in the bucket as far as like referrals
1:26:02into the App Store.
1:26:03But it's not about the raw numbers.
1:26:05It's about doing right by the community.
1:26:07And Apple, for all of its ups and downs, the thing that always gets me worked up
1:26:15about it is Apple, Apple's community is what sustained it when it was in the dark
1:26:22times, right?
1:26:23There was like the loyal Mac heads who kept buying Quadras and Power Macs, even
1:26:29though all their friends thought they were nuts for doing so.
1:26:32And that community is not the same community that, you know, like Federico wasn't around then Mac stories wasn't a thing then. But Apple has forgotten I think how important its community can be to the company because it's it's massive. And it's well past the days of the Mac sells because people tell their friends to buy their kids and I book and then their family gets hooked. Right? Like it the company is so much larger now makes so much money. I think they've lost sight of that a little bit. And that's really what upsets me at the heart of it.
1:27:02I mean, yes, it's really a bummer that like, sites like Touch Arcade are probably going to go away. That's horrible.
1:27:07But if it's happening because Apple isn't willing or is unable to see that that community is still really important to its long term health, then like that, that is not, it's not great. And it just gives me like a like a sort of a weird bad feeling.
1:27:25I'm not going to give Apple different treatment than I gave Microsoft, right?
1:27:29Like if they've made this decision, fine, the decision is made.
1:27:33I'm not asking for them to go back on it.
1:27:35My concern is I wish they wouldn't have made it in the first place.
1:27:39You know, it's like I wish that this wasn't the decision that they had made.
1:27:42I wish that they would have paid attention to why this thing exists
1:27:48and maybe tried to allocate some resources to deal with the problems
1:27:52if there were some.
1:27:53And if there weren't any, then what they have decided is that they don't want people writing
1:27:57about apps anymore. And that is a very peculiar thing to me. Does Apple believe, or does Apple
1:28:05Marketing believe that the only place that apps should be written about is in the App Store?
1:28:09Are they saying that? Because their actions recently have showed that they believe it's
1:28:15important for apps to be written about in the App Store, and they're doing a great job of it.
1:28:18I love that thing.
1:28:20But there are far fewer apps featured now
1:28:23than there used to be, right?
1:28:25Because they do like three stories a day
1:28:26as opposed to all of the things that they used to do.
1:28:29The features are better,
1:28:30but I don't think that it is,
1:28:34that being featured today is as good as it used to be.
1:28:37I hear from many friends who actually say
1:28:38that being featured today, even in those screens,
1:28:42it's not as powerful as it used to be many years ago.
1:28:46And so I just think to myself, what is the intention here?
1:28:50What are they trying to do?
1:28:51Because what they're saying, what they're being open with,
1:28:55seems to indicate that they don't think
1:28:56that it's important anymore.
1:28:57And I disagree with that.
1:28:59So it is what it is.
1:29:02I think it's worth discussing.
1:29:06But if this is the route that they're going to take,
1:29:08I certainly hope that people will be able to adjust course
1:29:11where they need to.
1:29:12But Adam Angst of Tibbets called it
1:29:16unnecessary, mean-spirited, and harmful. I think I pretty much agree with that summary.
1:29:21Unnecessary, I don't know. Might have been necessary, I don't know. But it does feel
1:29:25a little mean-spirited, it does. Especially to do this in between the time of earnings
1:29:33reports and becoming a trillion dollar company on the stock market.
1:29:36Yeah. That's what I mean. The optics are real bad.
1:29:40Yeah, like this feels like a nickel and diming thing and I don't understand why...
1:29:48Like if it was a significant amount of money that was going through the App Store then
1:29:53surely they could have been able to reallocate some resources to make it better.
1:29:58And if it wasn't, then why do you care?
1:30:01So I don't know.
1:30:02What I will say is, last on this is go download Blink by the Voorhees family.
1:30:07I feel so sorry for them.
1:30:08They were working on an update. John, who's been on previously, he worked on an app called
1:30:12Blink and he's been working on it for many years. We've mentioned it in the show a bunch.
1:30:15It was an affiliate linking app. John was working on a big update. John and his son
1:30:19work on a big update. They were like two days away from publishing the update and this happened,
1:30:25which by and large renders the app useless if there's no affiliate linking anymore. But
1:30:32What I will say, I use Blink as a way to quickly grab links for articles.
1:30:38I have used Blink on my iPad, I don't even have an affiliate token in the app because
1:30:44I just never bothered setting it up, but I use it as a way to like, if I'm writing something
1:30:48and I need a bunch of links, like App Store links, it is a faster way to search the App
1:30:52Store and then with the new swiping actions he added, copy a link to the clipboard in
1:30:56the format that I want.
1:30:57Blink is still really good for that and will remain to be really good for that even after
1:31:01affiliate program goes away. So Blink is now free, so go try it out and if you want to
1:31:07leave them a tip, you can get some alternate icons. I just feel really sorry for them because
1:31:13they're my friends and it's just like the worst possible timing.
1:31:16It's pretty bad. If you want to find links to stuff we talked about, including that video
1:31:21of iPhone mockups and Blink and a bunch of other stuff, head over to relay.fm/connected/204.
1:31:30While you're there you can get in touch via email or of course you can do that on Twitter.
1:31:34Myke is I-M-Y-K-E and you can find me there as I-S-M-H. Federico who is not here is also
1:31:40on Twitter V-I-T-I-C-C-I and he of course is the editor-in-chief of MaxStories.net.
1:31:45I'd like to thank our sponsors for making this episode possible, Squarespace, Linode
1:31:51and Inboard Technology.
1:31:53Until next time Myke, say goodbye.
1:31:55Oh don't forget about #RelayQA questions if you want to give us questions for our anniversary
1:32:02episode #RelayQA for that. Thank you. It's an orange at the bottom of the document and I
1:32:08scrolled up to get the episode number and missed it. So please ask us questions we'll be back
1:32:14next week with those. Until then Myke, say goodbye. Cheerio! Adios.