Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:06 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode 131. Today's show is brought to you by

00:00:12 ◼   ► Mac Weldon, Encapsula, and Blue Apron. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by

00:00:17 ◼   ► Mr. Stephen Hackett. Hello, Stephen Hackett.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Hello, Michael Hurley.

00:00:21 ◼   ► And Federico Vitucci. Welcome back to the show.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Hello, guys.

00:00:26 ◼   ► So we got a lot of great feedback last week from my own new host.

00:00:30 ◼   ► It was a great show.

00:00:31 ◼   ► Thank you very much.

00:00:32 ◼   ► Stephen, how did you feel about the segment?

00:00:36 ◼   ► Because you really were not in the room.

00:00:38 ◼   ► Did you enjoy hearing me talk to Mary and finding out all of the juicy details about you?

00:00:43 ◼   ► I did. It was very good.

00:00:45 ◼   ► And most of the follow-up about it basically says that everyone likes my wife more than they like me.

00:00:50 ◼   ► So I got that going for me.

00:00:52 ◼   ► I agree. I agree, actually.

00:00:54 ◼   ► I spent... Actually, what are you doing here today? Remind me again why... I like her more than I like me.

00:00:59 ◼   ► So... Makes sense. Thumbs up all around. No, it was great. I really enjoyed it.

00:01:03 ◼   ► So I set her up in here and then I ran away.

00:01:05 ◼   ► But as soon as the show was posted I skipped that that section and listened and it was really good and

00:01:11 ◼   ► Yeah, we some people have asked if they will hear her on future shows and I think the answer hopefully will be yes.

00:01:18 ◼   ► So...

00:01:21 ◼   ► Moving on to sort of more regular follow-up.

00:01:24 ◼   ► Follow-up.

00:01:25 ◼   ► The iPad Pro, I don't know what to call this rumor cycle.

00:01:31 ◼   ► This is like the weirdest rumor cycle around these products, right?

00:01:34 ◼   ► Just say it, just because I need to say something else.

00:01:38 ◼   ► Just say it. Oh.

00:01:40 ◼   ► So the products that have not been announced and have not been given a shipping date are delayed.

00:01:45 ◼   ► I was supposed to say that.

00:01:46 ◼   ► I was supposed to say that. Come on.

00:01:49 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:51 ◼   ► - So the gist of this story is that,

00:01:56 ◼   ► at DigiTimes, so kind of, you know,

00:01:58 ◼   ► they get some stuff right, they get some stuff wrong,

00:02:00 ◼   ► that the 10.5 and 12.9 inch iPads Pro, iPad Pro units,

00:02:05 ◼   ► won't ship until maybe June, maybe May, sometime in Q2,

00:02:12 ◼   ► even though we would be having an event, again,

00:02:16 ◼   ► that hasn't been announced here in a couple of weeks.

00:02:20 ◼   ► They've kind of pulled something out of the quarterly call

00:02:23 ◼   ► Apple had a few weeks ago with Tim Cook saying

00:02:25 ◼   ► they're having issues meeting demand on some iPad units.

00:02:29 ◼   ► And like right now the 12.9 iPad Pro

00:02:33 ◼   ► is a little bit harder to get ahold of,

00:02:35 ◼   ► so maybe they're scaling that down.

00:02:36 ◼   ► Like there seems to be something happening.

00:02:39 ◼   ► And this is my semi-regular reminder

00:02:41 ◼   ► that Apple is now being run by the operations guy

00:02:44 ◼   ► and they struggle with operations,

00:02:45 ◼   ► which is sort of endlessly funny to me,

00:02:48 ◼   ► but I don't see how they announce these things in March

00:02:52 ◼   ► and they don't have them ready to ship pretty quick.

00:02:55 ◼   ► I mean, the only thing that kind of comes out in my mind

00:02:58 ◼   ► is remember the iPad mini, the first one,

00:03:00 ◼   ► they announced it in October

00:03:02 ◼   ► and then it shipped basically at Thanksgiving,

00:03:04 ◼   ► like barely in time for the holidays.

00:03:06 ◼   ► That's about as far as I think you could take this.

00:03:09 ◼   ► I think if they are on stage in March,

00:03:11 ◼   ► then we will see these things hopefully before May or June.

00:03:14 ◼   ► Just a weird twist in this already crazy rumor cycle.

00:03:19 ◼   ► - Like I'm looking at Apple's website right now

00:03:23 ◼   ► and in the UK, if you want to get a 12 inch iPad Pro,

00:03:26 ◼   ► like you're waiting two to three weeks before dispatch.

00:03:29 ◼   ► And they only have models for pickup in the big stores.

00:03:34 ◼   ► Like in the smaller stores.

00:03:36 ◼   ► Like if you're in a relatively small town store,

00:03:39 ◼   ► there are no, it says nothing until the 22nd of March

00:03:43 ◼   ► for pickup. So, I mean, we had heard, like I had some emails from feedback to upgrade

00:03:55 ◼   ► from people like in far flung lands that they weren't getting units like outside of Europe.

00:04:00 ◼   ► But it looks like it's happening here. Like I'm looking at the 9.7. The 9.7 won't deliver

00:04:05 ◼   ► until the 1st of March. So there's something happening. Like there aren't a lot of these

00:04:10 ◼   ► things and/or they're getting ready to replace them and I think it's probably a

00:04:14 ◼   ► little bit of column A, a little bit of column B, but it seems a bit strange that this

00:04:17 ◼   ► long into the product cycle like I can't imagine that there's been an influx of

00:04:22 ◼   ► people trying to buy these things like why why are they so hard to get a hold

00:04:26 ◼   ► of? Yeah it is weird and this it's a very similar situation here in the US I mean

00:04:32 ◼   ► I picked a 12.9 chip I'd pro and it's not available to pick up until March 28th

00:04:37 ◼   ► Like something's up and and you know generally this means there's new stuff coming because they adjust the product ramps and

00:04:43 ◼   ► That's my guess my guess is that this rumor about them being delayed isn't super accurate that you know

00:04:50 ◼   ► There may be some delay, but I really can't see them announcing in March and then not to not shipping until until June

00:04:56 ◼   ► You know some people in the chat room talking about the first iPad being an example of this

00:05:00 ◼   ► Well, there's initial products at the first time they do something pen is pending FCC approval a lot of times here in the States

00:05:06 ◼   ► and so they pre-announce things really far in advance

00:05:10 ◼   ► because getting the first of something through takes longer.

00:05:12 ◼   ► They announce the iPhone, what, like six months in advance?

00:05:16 ◼   ► So that, it's a little bit different, I think,

00:05:18 ◼   ► but what would be a run-of-the-mill upgrade

00:05:21 ◼   ► even with this 10.5 kind of new device?

00:05:23 ◼   ► - To my memory, I don't think the FCC thing applies anymore

00:05:26 ◼   ► 'cause it used to be done because the FCC stuff was public,

00:05:30 ◼   ► but since the original iPhone

00:05:32 ◼   ► and subsequent companies releasing phones,

00:05:35 ◼   ► The FCC will now agree to do a non-public review

00:05:39 ◼   ► of a product, so like it's sealed, like from the public,

00:05:43 ◼   ► so it's not in the public record.

00:05:45 ◼   ► So I think it is possible for a company to get it done.

00:05:48 ◼   ► 'Cause otherwise, wouldn't we have this with every iPhone?

00:05:51 ◼   ► - I mean, I don't know.

00:05:53 ◼   ► - 'Cause the radios change, you know?

00:05:55 ◼   ► - That doesn't really affect like why these things would be,

00:05:58 ◼   ► you're right, but I don't know if it's a huge deal.

00:06:01 ◼   ► But it's weird, and if you want an iPad right now,

00:06:05 ◼   ► it's hard to get one, like other Apple products.

00:06:08 ◼   ► The Apple Watch is still hard to get ahold of sometimes.

00:06:10 ◼   ► And there's another chapter in this very crazy iPad story.

00:06:15 ◼   ► But the other side of this too,

00:06:19 ◼   ► we talked about a couple weeks ago,

00:06:20 ◼   ► is that iOS 10.3 didn't bring anything new for the iPad.

00:06:25 ◼   ► We all thought that new hardware,

00:06:27 ◼   ► new software would come together,

00:06:29 ◼   ► but that doesn't seem to be the case this time.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Federico, you were one to really kind of push that idea. What do you think's gone on there?

00:06:38 ◼   ► Like, is this a big deal?

00:06:40 ◼   ► Well, I think we're, as I said, you know, some things got moved to WWDC, which is really

00:06:49 ◼   ► interesting to me because it means that by June it'll be two years since we last saw

00:06:59 ◼   ► some iPad only features on stage at an Apple event.

00:07:04 ◼   ► So the last iPad features that we saw were in WWDC 2015

00:07:09 ◼   ► for iOS 9 and Split View.

00:07:11 ◼   ► So if what I hear is correct

00:07:13 ◼   ► and we're gonna see some iPad love at WWDC,

00:07:17 ◼   ► it'll be two years.

00:07:18 ◼   ► Now, a lot of people are certain

00:07:21 ◼   ► that Apple is gonna do a March event.

00:07:23 ◼   ► And it wouldn't be unprecedented for the company

00:07:27 ◼   ► to have, you know, to split kind of the hardware announcement from the software updates.

00:07:35 ◼   ► Even the, you know, both iPad Pros for example, both the 12.9 and the 9.7 got announced with only minor changes to the software.

00:07:43 ◼   ► I mean, of course, the new resolution for the big iPad Pro and the True Tone stuff, for example, and, you know, for the small iPad Pro.

00:07:52 ◼   ► So it wouldn't be unusual for Apple to release new hardware and eventually update the software for it.

00:07:59 ◼   ► It's just, it's quite, you know, I would love to see, to ask Apple, why are we seeing this, you know, two-year gap in between major software updates to the iPad?

00:08:12 ◼   ► Is this something we should get used to or is this something the company will get better at, you know, by releasing annual upgrades?

00:08:19 ◼   ► because every two years it seems like a long stretch, you know, to this long gap

00:08:24 ◼   ► between improving the software for the product that the company itself is

00:08:30 ◼   ► calling the future of computing. It's quite strange. And I find some irony that

00:08:36 ◼   ► the Mac has gotten annual OS updates now for several years and most Mac

00:08:41 ◼   ► users want them to slow down on that, right? When iPad users want them to speed up.

00:08:46 ◼   ► So it goes back to that conversation Myke had a couple weeks ago about what takes the priority and is the iPad being like

00:08:53 ◼   ► In lockstep with the iPhone is that holding it back?

00:08:56 ◼   ► there's lots of different ways that could change this and and and

00:09:00 ◼   ► Come at it from a different angle and I agree with you that you know a year and a half or two years

00:09:04 ◼   ► However long it's been that is a long time for something that they are pushing as

00:09:10 ◼   ► You know the quote future of computing whether you believe that or not aside

00:09:14 ◼   ► that's how Apple pitches it, but Apple's own actions don't seem to back that up

00:09:18 ◼   ► very often. I think that's where that that tension comes in. I wanted to

00:09:23 ◼   ► revisit something for 2015 because I'm in charge of follow-up so I can go

00:09:28 ◼   ► way back. In 2015 I had a pretty big problem with iCloud photo library and as

00:09:34 ◼   ► the two of you know and as our audience knows, photo management solutions are

00:09:38 ◼   ► really the backbone of our show and it's what we talk about when we're just

00:09:42 ◼   ► hanging out you know together we talk about different ways to upload JPEGs to

00:09:46 ◼   ► the internet and so I tried iCloud Photo Library during the beta like way back in

00:09:52 ◼   ► the beta and then in 2015 gave it a run I was using Dropbox and finder but I had

00:09:57 ◼   ► iCloud Photo Library basically overwrite a lot of data local on my iMac and

00:10:05 ◼   ► actually had data loss because iCloud did the wrong thing I had backups I

00:10:09 ◼   ► didn't actually lose anything, but iCloud Photo Library should not have overwritten

00:10:13 ◼   ► data on disk with bad data. Since then, and I haven't really written about this,

00:10:18 ◼   ► I've talked about it here and there, is that I've returned to iCloud Photo Library.

00:10:21 ◼   ► I did it back in the fall, about the time Sierra came out, because like the

00:10:27 ◼   ► Dropbox thing just wasn't scaling, I wanted everything on my phone, and I had been

00:10:30 ◼   ► using iCloud Photo Library. I set up for Mary a while back, and she really liked it,

00:10:35 ◼   ► I like the way it works, so I gave it another run, and I had no problems.

00:10:39 ◼   ► Now during that 2015 time, I spoke to AppleCare people, they did some sort of voodoo on my

00:10:44 ◼   ► iCloud account, and everything was good.

00:10:47 ◼   ► And it's been fine since then.

00:10:48 ◼   ► I have, I'm not going to open photos now, but I have tens of thousands of photos in

00:10:52 ◼   ► there, lots of videos, lots of albums, and it's been seemingly rock solid for me and

00:10:56 ◼   ► I've really enjoyed it.

00:10:59 ◼   ► until I noticed something last night.

00:11:02 ◼   ► So I have been this year taking a photo a day,

00:11:05 ◼   ► it's like an art project,

00:11:06 ◼   ► and I've been writing a description for each one.

00:11:07 ◼   ► Normally I don't write descriptions in photos,

00:11:10 ◼   ► but I have been for these

00:11:11 ◼   ► 'cause it's like a little story in my day.

00:11:13 ◼   ► And I was just sort of reviewing the photos

00:11:15 ◼   ► from this year already,

00:11:17 ◼   ► and noticed that the first half of them

00:11:20 ◼   ► all have the same description all of a sudden.

00:11:22 ◼   ► It took the description from like a random photo

00:11:25 ◼   ► and it populated all the other descriptions with that text.

00:11:27 ◼   ► - If you think about it,

00:11:29 ◼   ► It's kind of like a commentary on your life, you know?

00:11:31 ◼   ► - It is.

00:11:32 ◼   ► And in fact, the one--

00:11:33 ◼   ► - It's like every day is the same, you know?

00:11:34 ◼   ► The march of time, that kind of thing.

00:11:36 ◼   ► - In fact, ironically, the caption that it copied

00:11:39 ◼   ► was something about going outside

00:11:41 ◼   ► and taking advantage of the sunshine.

00:11:42 ◼   ► You know, so it's like that on tops of photos.

00:11:45 ◼   ► - Maybe it's sending you a message, I don't know.

00:11:47 ◼   ► - It's trying to teach you a lesson.

00:11:49 ◼   ► - It is.

00:11:50 ◼   ► So that's worrisome for a bunch of reasons.

00:11:54 ◼   ► So I exported one of the images with bad metadata

00:11:57 ◼   ► and opened it in preview and sure enough it had written that description into the metadata

00:12:02 ◼   ► for the photo itself.

00:12:03 ◼   ► So it has created a destruction, a destructive action on those photos.

00:12:10 ◼   ► Which is like the number one thing it's not supposed to do.

00:12:15 ◼   ► So I don't know what to do with that.

00:12:17 ◼   ► I have the descriptions elsewhere so again I haven't lost that data.

00:12:20 ◼   ► I'm gonna probably today copy it back in and see what it does.

00:12:25 ◼   ► But at this point, now my trust in iCloud Photo Library has been broken.

00:12:29 ◼   ► And yes, it's just descriptions, it's just metadata, like the dates are still correct,

00:12:33 ◼   ► the geolocation is still correct.

00:12:35 ◼   ► It's just one field.

00:12:36 ◼   ► But it's not supposed to like, fundamentally against what it's supposed to do.

00:12:42 ◼   ► So I filed a radar because don't yell at me that didn't follow radar.

00:12:45 ◼   ► I don't expect to hear back.

00:12:47 ◼   ► But it's just really frustrating because I like so much about iCloud Photo Library.

00:12:51 ◼   ► I know the two of you are using it.

00:12:53 ◼   ► Lots of people use it.

00:12:54 ◼   ► I've set people up on it.

00:12:56 ◼   ► It really is great, but it should not be doing

00:12:59 ◼   ► what it's doing, and there's no way to see what happened.

00:13:04 ◼   ► So one thing I tried last night, I had photos open,

00:13:07 ◼   ► and I went to my menu bar and said, "Enter Time Machine,"

00:13:10 ◼   ► and it keeps me to Finder and then open Time Machine.

00:13:14 ◼   ► That interface isn't what it used to be in iPhotos.

00:13:16 ◼   ► Well, I'll just go get backups of these pictures

00:13:18 ◼   ► and bring 'em back in, and the descriptions will be there.

00:13:21 ◼   ► That's not even an option, because you can't see

00:13:23 ◼   ► what any of this is doing.

00:13:24 ◼   ► - Well, but couldn't you get the correct files

00:13:27 ◼   ► from Time Machine though?

00:13:28 ◼   ► Like without the metadata being ruined in the original?

00:13:32 ◼   ► - If, I mean, if I dug into the package and found them,

00:13:34 ◼   ► I'm sure I could, but I was hoping that it would be

00:13:38 ◼   ► much simpler than that.

00:13:39 ◼   ► And I haven't gone that route,

00:13:40 ◼   ► and because I have them out,

00:13:41 ◼   ► because I'm posting them online,

00:13:42 ◼   ► so I have all the descriptions,

00:13:43 ◼   ► like I'm just gonna reenter them.

00:13:45 ◼   ► - So when you go to Time Machine,

00:13:47 ◼   ► it's not taking you to those original photos then?

00:13:50 ◼   ► - No, no, it kicks me to my home folder

00:13:53 ◼   ► and then opens my home folder in Time Machine,

00:13:55 ◼   ► which is like, again, the wrong thing to do.

00:13:58 ◼   ► So, you know, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

00:14:01 ◼   ► Like, I'm not gonna rage export to Dropbox over this,

00:14:04 ◼   ► but I'm keeping my eye on it very closely now,

00:14:07 ◼   ► because it's like, it seems like such a simple thing to,

00:14:11 ◼   ► I mean, it's just a metadata tag in the image,

00:14:14 ◼   ► and it overrode it all for some reason.

00:14:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like, I mean, obviously,

00:14:19 ◼   ► why would you not do this, right?

00:14:21 ◼   ► like why would you not put that information in there?

00:14:24 ◼   ► But like for me personally, like I'm kind of just like,

00:14:28 ◼   ► I would, I just don't, I just tried that time machine thing

00:14:32 ◼   ► by the way, like that's crazy.

00:14:33 ◼   ► It just opens the finder window you were last in.

00:14:35 ◼   ► Like it's like, thank you so much, it's perfect.

00:14:39 ◼   ► - It's not good.

00:14:40 ◼   ► - Personally, I think kind of just wouldn't trust

00:14:47 ◼   ► iCloud photo library or photo library

00:14:50 ◼   ► with that type of super specific data,

00:14:53 ◼   ► like a manually entered description.

00:14:55 ◼   ► - But that's the point of it.

00:14:56 ◼   ► - No, I know, I know. - That's the reason

00:14:57 ◼   ► it's there. - I know, I know.

00:14:58 ◼   ► But it just, I don't know, I just feel like

00:15:02 ◼   ► that isn't really a thing that I would give it

00:15:05 ◼   ► because it seems like a kind of finicky little piece

00:15:10 ◼   ► of the metadata or the application.

00:15:14 ◼   ► It just, I just wouldn't do it.

00:15:16 ◼   ► Because you can save that stuff elsewhere,

00:15:19 ◼   ► That's probably what I would do,

00:15:20 ◼   ► which you obviously did anyway,

00:15:21 ◼   ► 'cause clearly you didn't trust it 100%,

00:15:23 ◼   ► because you had that information in other places.

00:15:26 ◼   ► - Well, and I just had it there

00:15:28 ◼   ► because I've been posting them online,

00:15:29 ◼   ► so someone wants to see them all in one place.

00:15:31 ◼   ► It wasn't to back up the metadata,

00:15:33 ◼   ► it was just a side effect of how I'm sharing the photos.

00:15:36 ◼   ► But it's just frustrating.

00:15:39 ◼   ► We talked last week about how we store our data and stuff,

00:15:42 ◼   ► and the, I think I said it, even said it on the show,

00:15:45 ◼   ► any time Google and Apple overlap,

00:15:48 ◼   ► and iCloud overlaps with something else,

00:15:51 ◼   ► I don't pick iCloud because of this sort of thing.

00:15:53 ◼   ► And I have all my stuff in Google Photos,

00:15:55 ◼   ► and it's great that it's there and it's searchable and stuff

00:16:00 ◼   ► but iCloud Photo Library is such a nice experience.

00:16:03 ◼   ► It is so great having all, I don't know,

00:16:05 ◼   ► 37,000 photos I have available on all my devices.

00:16:09 ◼   ► Like I truly like that, but it's gotta work.

00:16:12 ◼   ► It's gotta be bulletproof.

00:16:13 ◼   ► So we'll see if that gets,

00:16:16 ◼   ► I don't expect if the radar gets entered,

00:16:18 ◼   ► I don't expect them to be able to fix it.

00:16:20 ◼   ► I mean, I can put my data back in,

00:16:22 ◼   ► but it's something that I hope does get looked at

00:16:25 ◼   ► because not everyone is as creepy as I am with data.

00:16:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I will say, today I learned

00:16:32 ◼   ► that you could add descriptions to photos in a photo app.

00:16:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, I had no idea either, Hans.

00:16:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I never do it.

00:16:39 ◼   ► I've only done it for this, you know, but--

00:16:41 ◼   ► - Like, is that even a problem?

00:16:43 ◼   ► And today I learned, as Myke said.

00:16:45 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:16:46 ◼   ► I mean, that's not good, you know, I totally agree with you, like, you know, you've been burned twice at this point,

00:16:52 ◼   ► I guess the first time in a major, more serious way, maybe, and now it's happening again, so it makes sense that, you know, you want to look elsewhere, I think.

00:17:02 ◼   ► It's a shame because iCloud is so easy to use, so easy to set up, and I recommend it to all of my friends, you know, just use iCloud.

00:17:10 ◼   ► when that stuff happens. And it seems to me like it tends to happen more with the Mac app, maybe?

00:17:14 ◼   ► Well, you can't even see the descriptions on iOS, so it could be destroying them all for you and

00:17:21 ◼   ► you just don't know. Okay, okay. Yeah, that's not good. Yeah. Anyways, this week's episode is

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00:18:18 ◼   ► underwear and shirts that are naturally anti-microbial. They eliminate odor,

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00:18:26 ◼   ► Magworld will make you feel comfortable and smell good. Like, you know, that's such a great combo.

00:18:30 ◼   ► Like what more could you ever want?

00:18:32 ◼   ► And they also, they back this up with Mac Weldon, which I like as well.

00:18:36 ◼   ► If you don't like what you get from them, like if you buy some socks and you put them on,

00:18:39 ◼   ► they're kind of like these socks. You can send them back, right?

00:18:42 ◼   ► That's what you'd usually do, but no, not with Mac Weldon.

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00:18:47 ◼   ► They don't want your socks back. You just keep the socks, they'll refund you.

00:18:51 ◼   ► But I'm very sure that you will get those socks, you'll put those socks upon your feet,

00:18:55 ◼   ► and you will decide and say to yourself, "You know what? This is better than any pair of socks I've ever had."

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00:19:13 ◼   ► upon your body. Listeners of this show can get 20% off, that's a big discount, 20% off

00:19:19 ◼   ► at macweldon.com by using the code connected at checkout. Thank you so much to Mac Weldon

00:19:25 ◼   ► for their support of this show and Relay FM.

00:19:30 ◼   ► So, moving on, still in follow-up, Federico, you are a... you guys mock me for my collection

00:19:39 ◼   ► of computers, but Federico is very passionate about digital preservation and you wanted

00:19:44 ◼   ► to highlight this really awesome project.

00:19:48 ◼   ► Well, it's not that I mock you, I love you in an alternative way.

00:19:55 ◼   ► Anyway, there's this cool project by the Video Game History Foundation,

00:20:01 ◼   ► spearheaded by Frank Cifaldi, he's a video game developer, archivist, historian,

00:20:06 ◼   ► he's done a bunch of things with video games over a decade, possibly more.

00:20:10 ◼   ► He's a cool guy, and now he's started this foundation, it's a non-profit organization based in the US,

00:20:16 ◼   ► and they're working to create this complete and full archive of the history of video games.

00:20:23 ◼   ► They're trying to digitize video games, so old cartridges, CD-ROMs, DVDs, and they're trying to

00:20:32 ◼   ► not only preserve those games but to make sure that their source code is safe, can be reused in

00:20:39 ◼   ► the future and can be portable, you know, between different, you know, archiving systems. And they're

00:20:45 ◼   ► And they're also trying to create this digital archive of the culture surrounding video games.

00:20:51 ◼   ► For example, magazines, articles from newspapers, old video game guides, you know, everything

00:20:57 ◼   ► surrounding the video game space, starting from the early 80s, you know, to the most

00:21:05 ◼   ► recent video game era.

00:21:07 ◼   ► And they're doing so by, well, first, Cifaldi is donating his own private collection to

00:21:12 ◼   ► the foundation.

00:21:13 ◼   ► they've started this project you can find it on gamehistory.org. There's a link to a Patreon that

00:21:19 ◼   ► they've started to sort of you know make sure that this organization can build this space, this

00:21:26 ◼   ► archive, and eventually they have a bunch of projects in mind for the future whether it's you

00:21:31 ◼   ► know working with museums to actually archive and you know show off these old video games or maybe

00:21:37 ◼   ► to create a searchable database of old video game magazines, old articles, maybe open a library in the future

00:21:45 ◼   ► for a physical library you can go to and read old video game magazines, which can be an incredible resource

00:21:51 ◼   ► not just for cultural preservation purposes but also for researchers, for example, or for video game developers

00:21:59 ◼   ► who want to check out an old game or old marketing strategies, for example.

00:22:05 ◼   ► anything that comes to mind when it's about, you know, video game culture.

00:22:08 ◼   ► This is the exact type of project that I would love to see for apps, you know, for software.

00:22:15 ◼   ► And to an extent the Internet Archive is doing something similar with software,

00:22:21 ◼   ► not necessarily for iOS apps because, you know, they're not as,

00:22:24 ◼   ► you know, they're not as open, for example, as software on the PC.

00:22:31 ◼   ► But you know, if you're into video games and the idea of preserving games and the culture of video games as much as I am,

00:22:38 ◼   ► go to gamehistory.org, there's two pages you can check out, there's also a video,

00:22:43 ◼   ► and there's the donate button that will take you to this page where you can choose to support, you know, monthly on Patreon

00:22:50 ◼   ► or to just send a one-time donation. So the Patreon is going well, they have lots of plans for the future,

00:22:56 ◼   ► You know, if you listen to connected over the past couple of years and also to remaster,

00:23:01 ◼   ► you know this is something I really care about, to preserve old video games, to preserve the

00:23:06 ◼   ► culture of game makers and game developers and everyone, journalists, this is great.

00:23:11 ◼   ► Watch the video, there's some awesome footage of the private collection being donated to

00:23:16 ◼   ► the foundation.

00:23:17 ◼   ► It's very awesome, I love this idea.

00:23:19 ◼   ► I have a question for you Federico.

00:23:22 ◼   ► Okay.

00:23:23 ◼   ► Should bad video games be put in the archives?

00:23:25 ◼   ► Yes.

00:23:26 ◼   ► Because everything should be preserved, even the bad things, the good things and the bad things.

00:23:30 ◼   ► You know, when you go to a museum and you come across this medieval painting,

00:23:36 ◼   ► you don't question whether it's a good or a bad painting, it's important to preserve everything.

00:23:40 ◼   ► You know, when the Roman Empire was falling apart and historians were looking back at the things left from the Romans,

00:23:47 ◼   ► they didn't go like "Oh well, this building is awful, let's just tear it down, we don't care."

00:23:51 ◼   ► we don't care. No, you preserve everything because it's necessary to keep

00:23:55 ◼   ► everything if you want to build the complete and you know honest and

00:23:59 ◼   ► accurate archive of you know what came before. Okay. That's what I think. I agree.

00:24:07 ◼   ► So what else do we have? We have Mozilla buying Pocket which I think is only

00:24:15 ◼   ► follow-up because we spoke about Instapaper and Pocket a couple weeks ago.

00:24:18 ◼   ► It's not super surprising that it's Mozilla right pocket started as a Mozilla

00:24:23 ◼   ► plugin. They've partnered for a long time. You can log in with a Mozilla login,

00:24:27 ◼   ► which is the only app I've ever seen that button in. And now they kind of

00:24:31 ◼   ► returned home. It is Mozilla's first acquisition, I think ever, I

00:24:35 ◼   ► think is what I read. It's pretty stunning and they say that it will

00:24:39 ◼   ► continue to operate as an independent company, have its own leadership, its own

00:24:44 ◼   ► designers and developers but be backed with that sweet Firefox money. I don't

00:24:51 ◼   ► have much to say past that I mean I get the impression that a ReadItLater

00:24:55 ◼   ► service is just a hard business to be in right it's a paper sold to Pinterest

00:24:59 ◼   ► last year and now this but I think Mozilla will be I think they'll be hands

00:25:04 ◼   ► off I think they'll let them do their thing which would be good right we need

00:25:07 ◼   ► we need these apps to be competing with each other so they both get better.

00:25:11 ◼   ► I mean, it makes a lot of sense for, I guess, for Mozilla to try and gain this foothold

00:25:18 ◼   ► in mobile that they kind of lost.

00:25:21 ◼   ► You know, when they focus on the desktop browser, but then eventually people move to Chrome

00:25:27 ◼   ► on the desktop and they just use Safari on iOS and also whatever Google has on Android.

00:25:35 ◼   ► I think it makes sense to try to win back mobile users.

00:25:38 ◼   ► This is what Mozilla wants to do apparently.

00:25:41 ◼   ► But it's just every time I see these companies, right, grabbing these smaller products or

00:25:50 ◼   ► services I never get a good feeling about it.

00:25:54 ◼   ► You know, I always leave a bad taste in my mouth when I see in a pocket that these big

00:25:59 ◼   ► plans to create this search engine for stories on the web.

00:26:05 ◼   ► smart engine for recommendations, finding the topics that you care about.

00:26:10 ◼   ► Now it's gonna be a product under Mozilla? I don't know man, it's the same

00:26:15 ◼   ► feeling that I got with Instapaper and Pinterest for example. And it kind of

00:26:19 ◼   ► shows how it's become so difficult, if not downright impossible, to

00:26:24 ◼   ► create a business on top of a read later service. Now that the web landscape is so

00:26:30 ◼   ► much different from just five or six years ago when today you could

00:26:36 ◼   ► argue that most websites have at least a decent reading layout. I mean, sure

00:26:43 ◼   ► there's ads and banners and whatever but I would say in terms of

00:26:48 ◼   ► typography and general layout and mobile versions I think the situation

00:26:54 ◼   ► today is better than six or seven years ago. When you go to Medium,

00:26:59 ◼   ► where you go to the Virgil and you go to Bloomberg or the New York Times, you get a decent layout,

00:27:05 ◼   ► decent reading layout.

00:27:06 ◼   ► Most of these apps, by the way, whether it's the native New York Times app or Apple News

00:27:12 ◼   ► or Google Newsstand on any platform, or if you look at the browser, for example, if you

00:27:16 ◼   ► look at Google Chrome, if you look at Safari, even if you look at Facebook, for instance,

00:27:21 ◼   ► the only app there at this point is Twitter.

00:27:23 ◼   ► Go figure.

00:27:24 ◼   ► have native save features to save a story for later. And so these

00:27:30 ◼   ► read-later services, they have pressure from both sides

00:27:35 ◼   ► because websites are not as terrible in terms of reading experience as they used

00:27:41 ◼   ► to be six or seven years ago. And the social networks or the apps or

00:27:47 ◼   ► the browsers that people actually use already have implemented native

00:27:51 ◼   ► read later features. So at this point what is left to do for a read later

00:27:56 ◼   ► service? I don't know and that's why we're seeing these acquisitions. That's

00:28:00 ◼   ► my two cents. Yeah I wonder if it's just that this is something that people

00:28:07 ◼   ► don't want anymore and/or we don't need because our phones load stuff really

00:28:13 ◼   ► quickly now. We don't kind of need to queue stuff up to read later. I mean as you say

00:28:19 ◼   ► like so many services have these built in. I mean I wonder if the reason that Instapaper

00:28:23 ◼   ► and Pocket got acquired is because they, you know, maybe their businesses were declining,

00:28:29 ◼   ► which makes me kind of wonder why companies would buy them. I don't know, it depends how many people

00:28:34 ◼   ► were still using Pocket. Um, as Carlos in the chat room points out that Pocket had 10 million users,

00:28:41 ◼   ► which is a lot of people, I don't know if it's really like build an independent business from

00:28:47 ◼   ► their business model amount of people.

00:28:49 ◼   ► But yeah, so there you go.

00:28:52 ◼   ► I just don't think it's something that

00:28:54 ◼   ► most people really have much of a need for anymore

00:28:56 ◼   ► outside of the tools, as Federico pointed out,

00:28:59 ◼   ► that are in our browsers, you know?

00:29:01 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:29:03 ◼   ► I don't know, I mean, I still use mine,

00:29:06 ◼   ► I still use this paper heavily,

00:29:07 ◼   ► but really not necessarily to read in,

00:29:10 ◼   ► because like you said, websites have gotten so good,

00:29:14 ◼   ► but really it's kind of like a temporary bookmark holder.

00:29:18 ◼   ► Like I just need to get back to this at some point

00:29:20 ◼   ► and I would use Reading List if I use Safari on the Mac,

00:29:24 ◼   ► but I don't.

00:29:25 ◼   ► So it is interesting.

00:29:27 ◼   ► I agree with you guys that I think the use case,

00:29:30 ◼   ► you know, the importance of these issues,

00:29:31 ◼   ► of these services has faded some over time.

00:29:34 ◼   ► And there's still people who are like Marco

00:29:37 ◼   ► when he invented it right, who gets stuck on a train

00:29:38 ◼   ► or something and want offline access.

00:29:40 ◼   ► But I gotta think that that has gotten

00:29:44 ◼   ► to be less and less important over the years.

00:29:46 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:29:47 ◼   ► I saw some news today on Engadget that is relevant to me,

00:29:51 ◼   ► but I don't know if I'm massively interested,

00:29:54 ◼   ► which is that Google Home is launching in the UK

00:29:58 ◼   ► in the second quarter.

00:29:59 ◼   ► So sometime between now and June, we're gonna see it.

00:30:04 ◼   ► So April, May, June time,

00:30:05 ◼   ► we're gonna see Google Home in the UK.

00:30:10 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:30:11 ◼   ► Like, it still has some features that I wished the Echo did,

00:30:15 ◼   ► but I don't know if it's gonna be enough.

00:30:19 ◼   ► I'm gonna keep my eye on it, right?

00:30:20 ◼   ► Like if they have some interest in integrations

00:30:23 ◼   ► and stuff like that, you know, it could be a good product.

00:30:26 ◼   ► But I'm definitely less excited about this

00:30:29 ◼   ► than when it was announced,

00:30:31 ◼   ► just because it seems like most people are kinda like,

00:30:33 ◼   ► "Eh, you know, if you already have an Echo,

00:30:36 ◼   ► "you're totally fine."

00:30:37 ◼   ► So.

00:30:38 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:30:39 ◼   ► Yeah I think so and Google hasn't even shown you know at least I think sort of an ecosystem

00:30:45 ◼   ► like the Echo has you know you can buy a main Echo speaker and then buy like satellites

00:30:53 ◼   ► with the Echo dots and just place them around the house and I don't think Google has a similar

00:30:58 ◼   ► solution yet.

00:30:59 ◼   ► They have the Chromecast integration which is cool but they don't have you know these

00:31:02 ◼   ► multiple additional microphones you can put in different places of the house and it just

00:31:06 ◼   ► feels like Amazon is sort of an advantage here because they've been around for longer,

00:31:11 ◼   ► they have more skills.

00:31:13 ◼   ► You know, yeah.

00:31:14 ◼   ► So that's that.

00:31:15 ◼   ► Talking about Google though, my keyboard of choice, Gboard, was recently updated.

00:31:22 ◼   ► It was a much awaited update for many people who were using the keyboard like me because

00:31:29 ◼   ► the thing that I was waiting for the most was for them to adopt the new emoji that were

00:31:34 ◼   ► were introduced in iOS 10.2, they weren't in the keyboard.

00:31:38 ◼   ► So that was kind of frustrating

00:31:40 ◼   ► and the glyphs were out of date.

00:31:42 ◼   ► So that's great.

00:31:44 ◼   ► They also added a dictation, which was again,

00:31:48 ◼   ► was something that I really wanted,

00:31:49 ◼   ► but I'm not too keen on the implementation.

00:31:53 ◼   ► So the way that it works is the space bar

00:31:57 ◼   ► now has a little microphone icon on it.

00:31:58 ◼   ► If you press and hold the space bar,

00:32:00 ◼   ► it opens a Google application,

00:32:02 ◼   ► it throws you out to the Google app, you speak into the app, it does the translation for

00:32:07 ◼   ► you, copies the text and pastes it and then it kind of throws you back to messages or

00:32:11 ◼   ► wherever you were and pastes it in.

00:32:13 ◼   ► So it's fine, it does an okay job but my problem, the reason that I'm not using it is I got

00:32:21 ◼   ► into the habit as a long time Gboard user of having to use the space bar as the way

00:32:26 ◼   ► to move the cursor around. So I press, like I force touch the space bar so I can move

00:32:34 ◼   ► the cursor around and over like the day that I left the keyboard shortcut for the text

00:32:40 ◼   ► to speech on, I just kept launching out of the application every time I wanted to use

00:32:44 ◼   ► the cursor so I've turned that feature off. But it is cool that it's there because it

00:32:49 ◼   ► is something that I miss, you know, my hands are full, like sometimes I just want to speak

00:32:54 ◼   ► into the phone but I can't do that. I can't do the text to speech stuff until now. So

00:32:59 ◼   ► I'm pleased that they have it. I wished that they would just let me add a key for it instead

00:33:04 ◼   ► rather than it making it full touch or long press or whatever on the space bar. But I'm

00:33:10 ◼   ► pleased that it's there. Do you want to know why I continue to use Gboard?

00:33:14 ◼   ► Yes, I would love to honestly, I really do.

00:33:18 ◼   ► So the main reason is the absolutely fantastic swipe keyboard functionality. So the ability

00:33:28 ◼   ► to just with one finger, you just swipe your finger over the keyboard and it works out

00:33:34 ◼   ► what you're trying to say. So instead of just you typing every key, you just swipe your

00:33:40 ◼   ► finger over them and it will write stuff out for you. I use that all the time, I love it, I use it

00:33:46 ◼   ► even when I don't, you know, like this stuff exists because it's like all with one hand, but I actually

00:33:51 ◼   ► just find it quicker and nicer to type that way to just use this swipe keyboard stuff. The auto

00:33:55 ◼   ► correction is vastly superior to Apple's auto correction from a perspective of learning words,

00:34:02 ◼   ► from using I'm sure Google history and stuff like that to kind of understand what I'm looking for,

00:34:09 ◼   ► So if I'm typing something, the quick type stuff is much better.

00:34:14 ◼   ► But also, I'll paint this picture for you, how many times are you writing out a message

00:34:20 ◼   ► and it kind of comes up as like "Hello N my N name N is N" right?

00:34:25 ◼   ► Yeah, because you miss the spacebar.

00:34:26 ◼   ► I do it all the time.

00:34:27 ◼   ► And you keep hitting N. Google knows this and you can write an entire sentence and it

00:34:32 ◼   ► will correct it for you.

00:34:35 ◼   ► The Apple keyboard gets really upset after the second word.

00:34:39 ◼   ► But the Google auto-correction stuff is way better and I just find the auto-correction

00:34:43 ◼   ► in general to be superior.

00:34:46 ◼   ► It has a better understanding of what I'm trying to write.

00:34:51 ◼   ► I also love the emoji suggestions.

00:34:53 ◼   ► So if you type out in text it suggests emoji by a quick type.

00:34:57 ◼   ► I feel like with Apple's implementation of this you kind of have to speak to it in code.

00:35:03 ◼   ► You have to be asking for the word, sorry specific words, but with Google they seem

00:35:09 ◼   ► to attach more words to the emoji.

00:35:11 ◼   ► I mention this one every single time, but it is my favorite if you type the word "but"

00:35:15 ◼   ► you get a peach.

00:35:18 ◼   ► I love that.

00:35:19 ◼   ► I think it's hilarious.

00:35:20 ◼   ► Some developers spend hours on that just for you.

00:35:24 ◼   ► So that's why I use it and I continue to use it.

00:35:26 ◼   ► I use it every single day.

00:35:27 ◼   ► The main Apple keyboard remains turned off on my iPhone.

00:35:33 ◼   ► - Wow, is the bug still there where sometimes

00:35:36 ◼   ► it won't load a third party keyboard in the Siri search?

00:35:40 ◼   ► - It's gotten a lot better.

00:35:41 ◼   ► It happens way less to me.

00:35:43 ◼   ► - So I don't, the only third party keyboard

00:35:47 ◼   ► I have installed is TextExpander by our friends at Smile.

00:35:51 ◼   ► But other than that, I've tried them,

00:35:52 ◼   ► but they always seem just sort of buggy and janky,

00:35:56 ◼   ► and I don't know if that's still fair.

00:35:58 ◼   ► I haven't really used one in a long time.

00:36:02 ◼   ► I thought this would be an interesting opportunity to talk about what Apple could do to make third-party keyboards better.

00:36:09 ◼   ► This is where we all look at Federico.

00:36:12 ◼   ► Well, aside from the fact that I totally understand Myke,

00:36:16 ◼   ► but I could never use Gboard because they don't do

00:36:19 ◼   ► multiple languages at the same time like the Apple keyboard, and I would also be too upset

00:36:24 ◼   ► if I had to wait for new emoji to be supported after like three months since they came out. Aside from that,

00:36:30 ◼   ► There are some major problems with custom keyboard and the API on iOS.

00:36:36 ◼   ► Just before we go down this rabbit hole, can I just address that emoji comment?

00:36:39 ◼   ► Yes.

00:36:40 ◼   ► Like, it's totally true that it took a while, but you still have the button there to switch to Apple's emoji keyboard.

00:36:46 ◼   ► Like, it's just as easy, because Google implemented their own emoji keyboard, right?

00:36:51 ◼   ► So you can do that and you'll get the old stuff, but like, all you have to do is just press the same button you'd press if you use an Apple standard keyboard and you get the regular Apple emoji keyboard.

00:37:00 ◼   ► So it's not a dire situation, right?

00:37:04 ◼   ► It's not like I couldn't use those emojis for a long time.

00:37:07 ◼   ► It just wasn't in Google's implementation

00:37:09 ◼   ► of the emoji coupon.

00:37:10 ◼   ► - I mean, I get it.

00:37:12 ◼   ► Just so, you know.

00:37:13 ◼   ► - It's frustrating, but not like a

00:37:15 ◼   ► I couldn't get emoji situation, you know?

00:37:18 ◼   ► - You know, and the multiple language stuff is--

00:37:20 ◼   ► - Multiple language thing is like, that is awesome,

00:37:23 ◼   ► the way that Apple does that.

00:37:24 ◼   ► And it's not like Google updated a bunch of languages.

00:37:28 ◼   ► You can have a bunch of languages,

00:37:30 ◼   ► but it's the way that you can type in multiple languages

00:37:32 ◼   ► about switching.

00:37:33 ◼   ► That's kind of what makes Apple's implementation better.

00:37:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's really terrific

00:37:38 ◼   ► when you speak two languages.

00:37:40 ◼   ► I can keep the same keyboard and I can switch,

00:37:43 ◼   ► you know, on a message conversation with my girlfriend

00:37:46 ◼   ► and with you guys, and I don't need to adapt.

00:37:48 ◼   ► And within the same sentence,

00:37:49 ◼   ► I can actually switch from Italian to English.

00:37:51 ◼   ► So if I'm talking in Italian to my web developer,

00:37:54 ◼   ► for example, but I want to use some English words,

00:37:56 ◼   ► it's not gonna be autocorrected.

00:37:58 ◼   ► it's not gonna be with a red underline to signify an error

00:38:02 ◼   ► because it understands multiple languages.

00:38:03 ◼   ► So that's awesome.

00:38:05 ◼   ► Anyway, the problems with the custom keyboards,

00:38:08 ◼   ► I believe that most of them go back to the fact that

00:38:11 ◼   ► when Apple launched the API,

00:38:14 ◼   ► and this is something that I heard years ago,

00:38:17 ◼   ► it was mostly a response because at the top level,

00:38:21 ◼   ► Apple wanted to offer an alternative

00:38:22 ◼   ► to custom keyboards on Android.

00:38:24 ◼   ► And so they basically, they put together this feature.

00:38:27 ◼   ► I don't want to say at the last minute, but it wasn't, you know, not a lot of engineering

00:38:31 ◼   ► resources or thought went into this API because Apple just wanted to have, you know, to match

00:38:36 ◼   ► Android and to offer this keyboard functionality.

00:38:39 ◼   ► But as you remember, when they launched on iOS 8, they were really, really rough.

00:38:43 ◼   ► Yeah, they were unusable.

00:38:44 ◼   ► That's a lot of issues.

00:38:46 ◼   ► Some people would say unusable, I would actually agree.

00:38:49 ◼   ► They got slightly better through the years, but there are still some design choices that

00:38:55 ◼   ► fundamentally make them difficult to use, I think, for some people.

00:39:00 ◼   ► So the main problem is that by design, Apple doesn't want custom keyboards to be able to type into the secure text input fields.

00:39:08 ◼   ► So when you're coming across a dialog that asks for a password, or if it's the iTunes login prompt or the iCloud login prompt,

00:39:18 ◼   ► You won't be able to type in with the custom keyboard and the system will

00:39:23 ◼   ► automatically by default revert to the Apple keyboard, which is the only one

00:39:28 ◼   ► that can type into the password fields. So developers can choose to of course

00:39:32 ◼   ► encode, they have to say "okay this is a secure text input fields" and

00:39:39 ◼   ► usually you can recognize it because the letters that you type get

00:39:43 ◼   ► masked as a dot, because they're a password. And I guess Apple

00:39:49 ◼   ► doesn't want Google to be able to sniff out the letters that you type

00:39:53 ◼   ► into a password or really any other third-party company, not just Google.

00:39:56 ◼   ► So that's a design decision, so by default you won't be able to just

00:40:01 ◼   ► install Gboard and say "I never ever want to see the Apple keyboard again"

00:40:05 ◼   ► because eventually if you type a password you will see the Apple keyboard.

00:40:08 ◼   ► So that's not a big deal, I mean actually that's a pretty sweet design decision.

00:40:13 ◼   ► would say but you won't be able to go full-time. The major problems I would

00:40:18 ◼   ► say are the things that Apple has done with the first party keyboard that they

00:40:22 ◼   ► don't open up to third parties which basically create this huge obstacle to

00:40:28 ◼   ► make a solid, you know, to make a decent alternative to the Apple keyboard which

00:40:32 ◼   ► is Apple rolls its own dictation engine of course and they don't let third party

00:40:38 ◼   ► keyboards access the native dictation interface that you get in the Apple

00:40:42 ◼   ► keyboard. So if you wanna make a third-party custom keyboard, you gotta make your own dictation.

00:40:48 ◼   ► Google can, of course, but some indie developer who wants to make a different keyboard design

00:40:53 ◼   ► probably cannot run a dictation server for 120 languages. And then there's the language model

00:41:01 ◼   ► and the multi-language support. All of these features that Apple has honed, has perfected over

00:41:07 ◼   ► the years, they're not open to third-party developers. So you basically

00:41:11 ◼   ► you need to maintain your own dictionary, your own language model,

00:41:16 ◼   ► the mechanics of guessing what word the user wants to type and all of the different

00:41:24 ◼   ► adjustments that iOS does dynamically in real time as you tap on the keys on the keyboard.

00:41:30 ◼   ► You know iOS under the hood it actually adjusts the tap targets of the keyboard to match the word

00:41:37 ◼   ► and the letters that the system thinks you're going to type.

00:41:40 ◼   ► All of that stuff that you don't see but that actually happens,

00:41:43 ◼   ► it's not open to developers, at least most of it. And that's a huge barrier to entry for most custom keyboards.

00:41:50 ◼   ► And then there's the basic user experience stuff.

00:41:55 ◼   ► So installing keyboards is still super difficult. You need to follow this procedure basically.

00:42:00 ◼   ► It's like a six-step process. You need to open settings, you need to find the screen,

00:42:04 ◼   ► you need to enable the keyboard and you need to switch on some permissions if the app wants to use the

00:42:09 ◼   ► internet to fetch some data and

00:42:11 ◼   ► So developers basically came up with these different tutorials

00:42:17 ◼   ► It's showing you a video on how to install a keyboard and then you need to explain users

00:42:23 ◼   ► Well, you just downloaded this app from the App Store, but it's not really an app. It's a keyboard

00:42:27 ◼   ► So you need to go into settings and do this and do that

00:42:30 ◼   ► it's very difficult and it sort of highlights the confusion that

00:42:33 ◼   ► that Apple has created in these different parts of iOS where you download the app from the App Store

00:42:41 ◼   ► but it's not really an app, you know, like you download this piece of software and then maybe it's an extension

00:42:47 ◼   ► maybe it's a widget or maybe it's a keyboard or maybe it's in a message seeker pack, right?

00:42:52 ◼   ► So you're still downloading the same way, but you're forcing users to install all of these different bits of

00:43:00 ◼   ► of an app, each in a different way. And I believe all of this would get fixed if only Apple would come up with this

00:43:08 ◼   ► new design where you get, I don't know, like a prompt maybe, a menu that says, "Okay, this app contains this and that.

00:43:16 ◼   ► Tap and switch it on and you're gonna install the keyboard or you're gonna install the widget."

00:43:21 ◼   ► Instead of having to go into settings and do all the things manually. So there's a lot Apple can do with custom keyboards.

00:43:28 ◼   ► It's gotten better since the days of iOS 8. Still not perfect, still not great, and I believe the underlying problem is

00:43:35 ◼   ► Apple is moving towards this model where apps contain a bunch of different extensions, a bunch of different

00:43:42 ◼   ► widgets and other things than the traditional app experience, but enabling these

00:43:47 ◼   ► extensions, enabling these extras still takes too many taps, still takes too much time. And that's the basic problem to fix, I think.

00:43:55 ◼   ► Do you think they're going to do any of that?

00:43:57 ◼   ► Well, not for custom keyboards. I think if they're gonna do anything, it's gonna be widgets and iMessage stuff.

00:44:04 ◼   ► And especially the iMessage stuff. I saw many, many developers complain about getting one-star reviews on the App Store

00:44:11 ◼   ► because users download the app and they expect the app to be available on the home screen

00:44:17 ◼   ► and instead it's an iMessage sticker pack or it's an iMessage app and they don't find it.

00:44:23 ◼   ► And I think if Apple is gonna do anything, so they already added to the App Store a badge that says

00:44:30 ◼   ► "This is an iMessage only app", but still so many users don't, you know, they don't read what is, you know,

00:44:38 ◼   ► on the product page. They just hit the download button.

00:44:40 ◼   ► So I think if Apple needs to do anything is to make it easier to install iMessage Seekers and to install iMessage apps and maybe widgets.

00:44:48 ◼   ► I don't have a lot of hopes honestly about custom keyboards because I don't think the attitude has changed.

00:44:54 ◼   ► It's a feature that iOS has, it's not deprecated, it's maintained, it's still available,

00:45:01 ◼   ► but it's not getting any major new additions. I mean with iOS 10 the only

00:45:05 ◼   ► improvement that Apple made was to make it slightly more reliable.

00:45:10 ◼   ► So the keyboards don't crash as often anymore and now you can tap and hold the globe icon,

00:45:16 ◼   ► which has to be consistent among third-party keyboards and you get the same keyboard switching menu of the native Apple keyboard.

00:45:22 ◼   ► And that's it. That's literally one change for one fix for you know to make it crash less and another change to

00:45:30 ◼   ► use the same switcher, but there's no new API's, no new, you know major changes. So I don't have a lot of hopes honestly.

00:45:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know how like you've definitely outlined a couple of key areas that they can change it. Like I don't think this needs

00:45:45 ◼   ► an incredible amount of work from Apple, right?

00:45:48 ◼   ► Like stability is key and then just allowing them

00:45:51 ◼   ► some additional access would be great.

00:45:54 ◼   ► Like and as well, something that I would really like,

00:45:57 ◼   ► and I know why Apple does it,

00:45:59 ◼   ► but I really wish that I was able to just say to them,

00:46:02 ◼   ► like I'm okay with enabling this keyboard

00:46:07 ◼   ► to let me enter passwords or whatever.

00:46:11 ◼   ► Like when I go into one password and then I'm given

00:46:14 ◼   ► Just I'm always throwing up the emoji keyboard as my way to type into one

00:46:19 ◼   ► password.

00:46:20 ◼   ► And then I hit the button and then I get like the most stripped down version of

00:46:24 ◼   ► Apple's keyboard with no, because it does default to that.

00:46:27 ◼   ► Like if you don't have the keyboard installed,

00:46:28 ◼   ► what it does is when there's no keyboard, because the, an app has said, no,

00:46:33 ◼   ► I know you better than you know yourself. Um,

00:46:37 ◼   ► then it will, uh, just give you this keyboard, which is, it has no quick type.

00:46:41 ◼   ► It has no autocorrect.

00:46:43 ◼   ► It has no suggestions, nothing like it's just basic text entry.

00:46:47 ◼   ► And it's the same for when you get a notification and you respond to the

00:46:53 ◼   ► notification, like if the phone's unlocked, it won't let you use the third party

00:46:56 ◼   ► keyboard. And it's like, it's like, look, I super appreciate that you're trying to

00:47:01 ◼   ► take care of me, but just just just let me use the keyboard that I want to use.

00:47:06 ◼   ► Like when you're when you're wording like warnings, like full access, then I

00:47:11 ◼   ► I feel like you could maybe actually give them full access,

00:47:15 ◼   ► which also they should just change the wording of that box

00:47:18 ◼   ► because it's like, oh, this keyboard has access

00:47:20 ◼   ► to everything on your phone.

00:47:22 ◼   ► It can dig into all of your apps.

00:47:23 ◼   ► It can listen to your music if it wants to.

00:47:25 ◼   ► Full access is such a strongly worded phrase.

00:47:30 ◼   ► I feel sorry for any keyboard developer

00:47:32 ◼   ► that has to tell someone to enable that.

00:47:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I would agree with that.

00:47:36 ◼   ► But I think they say that because they wanna

00:47:40 ◼   ► err on the side of caution, right?

00:47:41 ◼   ► Like the other side of it is they do what Android does

00:47:43 ◼   ► and do something really modular.

00:47:45 ◼   ► Or like it's kind of more overwhelming.

00:47:48 ◼   ► But yeah, it seems silly to me.

00:47:50 ◼   ► Like you, it's difficult to install as you guys outlined.

00:47:54 ◼   ► And that's fine.

00:47:55 ◼   ► Like someone who really wants to do it will figure it out.

00:47:57 ◼   ► If someone goes through those hoops,

00:47:58 ◼   ► like let them use it everywhere.

00:48:00 ◼   ► And it just seems like Apple did the keyboard thing

00:48:04 ◼   ► and like minimal viable product, right?

00:48:09 ◼   ► Like it works most of the time

00:48:11 ◼   ► in most of the places, but not everywhere all the time,

00:48:13 ◼   ► and they've just walked away from it.

00:48:14 ◼   ► And there's a lot of stuff about that in Apple Software,

00:48:17 ◼   ► just all over the map, but it seems like,

00:48:20 ◼   ► and the keyboard thing is probably not

00:48:21 ◼   ► the most important section of iOS, right?

00:48:25 ◼   ► Whoever did that, I'm sure,

00:48:26 ◼   ► hasn't been in there very often.

00:48:28 ◼   ► And that's fine, but it would be nice to see them do it,

00:48:31 ◼   ► because there's a lot of things in Gboard

00:48:32 ◼   ► that sound appealing to me,

00:48:35 ◼   ► but I don't wanna deal with the glitchiness,

00:48:38 ◼   ► and sometimes it doesn't work,

00:48:40 ◼   ► a keyboard should be there when I want it so I don't know like it as great as

00:48:44 ◼   ► it may be I don't want to depend on it if it's going to be flaky I strongly

00:48:50 ◼   ► recommend that everyone including you install g-board and just try it all

00:48:57 ◼   ► right I'm doing it oh I did it's impressive I mean the suggestions are

00:49:00 ◼   ► terrific and the swiping you also get gifts as well like going to the keyboard

00:49:04 ◼   ► No, Gboard is amazing. It's just... I don't like how... I'm trying to think of a right word...

00:49:12 ◼   ► extraneous, maybe? It just looks strange. It doesn't look native, that's all.

00:49:18 ◼   ► And so when I install Gboard and I open, I don't know, Messages or Tweetbot,

00:49:23 ◼   ► it just looks like one half of the screen is iOS and the other half is Android.

00:49:29 ◼   ► I don't know if it makes sense.

00:49:31 ◼   ► You can also create themes so you can make it look, you know...

00:49:34 ◼   ► Yeah, in your own way. I have the dark theme, so I have like a dark keyboard all the time, which I enjoy.

00:49:38 ◼   ► I get what you mean though, because it's styled in Google's style.

00:49:41 ◼   ► Like, it actually looks like Google's keyboard. They have actually since renamed the keyboard on Android Gboard.

00:49:49 ◼   ► Like, it is the name of the product.

00:49:53 ◼   ► If Google had an iOS styled theme for Gboard, I would probably use it much, much more.

00:50:02 ◼   ► But I remember, like, a couple of months ago, I used Gboard for a month, right?

00:50:05 ◼   ► I think it was before the holidays.

00:50:07 ◼   ► And it was impressive. I mean, the suggestions in English and Italian were perfect,

00:50:11 ◼   ► and the GIF search, the emoji search is terrific, and I like how I can glide with one hand,

00:50:17 ◼   ► and it just picks up words. That's amazing.

00:50:20 ◼   ► But I look at it and I'm like, "It doesn't look okay to me," you know?

00:50:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I get it, I get it, I get it.

00:50:26 ◼   ► But you've tried it, right? And you've made your decision.

00:50:29 ◼   ► I think if people haven't they should and I will just underscore it and say if you're

00:50:33 ◼   ► going to try it remove the Apple keyboard.

00:50:36 ◼   ► You've got to go all in on that thing.

00:50:38 ◼   ► Should I, I'm doing it right now, should I remove Apple's emoji keyboard too I guess?

00:50:42 ◼   ► You can now.

00:50:43 ◼   ► I mean I have it on just because whatever but you can now.

00:50:46 ◼   ► I'm doing Gboard and TechExpander.

00:50:48 ◼   ► So I'm going to live this way until the show next week and we'll see if I have destroyed

00:50:52 ◼   ► my phone or not.

00:50:54 ◼   ► Excellent news.

00:50:55 ◼   ► Maybe we won't know because you won't be able to fill out any of the documents.

00:50:57 ◼   ► Oh, by the way, it still sucks on the iPad.

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00:52:12 ◼   ► So today the war street journal published an article talking about some rumours that

00:52:20 ◼   ► they have been given regarding the iPhone 8.

00:52:24 ◼   ► So according to the Wall Street Journal, the iPhone 8 will feature a curved OLED display

00:52:30 ◼   ► made by Samsung.

00:52:31 ◼   ► They are saying that this curved display will be featured on one model of the new iPhone

00:52:37 ◼   ► lineup, kind of therefore corroborating Min Ji Kuo's reports of there being a 7S, 7S+

00:52:44 ◼   ► and an iPhone 8 in September.

00:52:46 ◼   ► They also cooperate that they will drop the physical home button in favour of a function

00:52:52 ◼   ► area.

00:52:53 ◼   ► So therefore the screen is going to be bigger, that kind of thing, right?

00:52:56 ◼   ► Then we're going to have no home button, we're going to have these software keys, everything

00:52:59 ◼   ► was talking about last week.

00:53:01 ◼   ► But then the Wall Street Journal just throw this line in there about Apple adding USB-C

00:53:08 ◼   ► to the iPhone.

00:53:09 ◼   ► It seems what they're saying is they're going to be adding USB-C in favour of lightning.

00:53:16 ◼   ► Let's park that just for a moment.

00:53:18 ◼   ► What do you guys think about this curved OLED thing?

00:53:22 ◼   ► Like I'm assuming from this,

00:53:23 ◼   ► it's gonna be like curved at the edges, right?

00:53:25 ◼   ► You know, that's kind of the rumor that they're going for

00:53:29 ◼   ► or curved might mean flexible,

00:53:31 ◼   ► but like, does this sound good to you?

00:53:33 ◼   ► Right, this seems like what we heard last week?

00:53:36 ◼   ► - I mean, yeah.

00:53:38 ◼   ► If Apple can figure out OLED with True Tone,

00:53:41 ◼   ► that'd be amazing.

00:53:42 ◼   ► And I think OLED also opens up the door

00:53:44 ◼   ► for a proper dark theme on iOS with APIs for developers to make dark themes and to kind of switch the UI from

00:53:52 ◼   ► you know, bleach white to some decent dark or black, dark gray, you know, dark blue, whatever.

00:53:58 ◼   ► So yeah, I'm all for OLED, honestly. I think if Apple can figure it out with True Tone and with Retina, you know,

00:54:04 ◼   ► with all of the pieces of this display puzzle, it's gonna be glorious.

00:54:08 ◼   ► So yeah, the display sounds good to me, even the curved edges, I mean if it's comfortable to hold.

00:54:14 ◼   ► And I'm kind of curious about the case situation, like if it's got a curved edge with a curved display.

00:54:20 ◼   ► Because I'm not familiar with curved Samsung phones and I'm not sure how case makers can make

00:54:26 ◼   ► actually cases that cover the curved sides. But anyway, yeah, thumbs up for the display part.

00:54:33 ◼   ► USB-C. So let's just assume that what the Wall Street Journal are saying here is that this phone will have a USB-C port.

00:54:47 ◼   ► Okay, yeah, because people are already saying on Twitter that maybe the Wall Street Journal got that rumor wrong

00:54:53 ◼   ► because they meant that the port is going to be lightning but the cable is going to be USB-C on the other end.

00:55:00 ◼   ► the other end. So that's what some people are saying on Twitter but actually the

00:55:04 ◼   ► Wall Street Journal is saying it's gonna have a USB-C port. So do you want me to read the

00:55:08 ◼   ► exact quote from the Wall Street Journal? Yes please, so we'll just make it clear.

00:55:12 ◼   ► They say "USB-C port for the power cord and other peripheral devices instead of the

00:55:18 ◼   ► company's own original lightning connector." Well there you go. To me that's pretty clear.

00:55:23 ◼   ► I think people are reading too much into the fact that it's weirdly written and says

00:55:27 ◼   ► power cord but it says instead of the company's lightning connector now the

00:55:31 ◼   ► lightning connector is not featured on the other side of the cord that's a USB

00:55:35 ◼   ► you wouldn't call it a port you would call it you know a connector whatever it

00:55:41 ◼   ► would be so like I am reading this as they are saying USB C for the iPhone

00:55:47 ◼   ► like it will have a USB C port on it yeah so Stephen yes do you think they

00:55:54 ◼   ► will do this? I think that they should do it. I'm not sure that they will this time

00:56:01 ◼   ► but we're gonna get I guess into pros and cons but before we do like the

00:56:07 ◼   ► Wall Street Journal gets Apple leaks. They get like if Apple so we've been

00:56:13 ◼   ► saying for weeks right if some of this stuff isn't real on this phone Apple is

00:56:16 ◼   ► gonna start playing the PR game pretty soon. Well now pretty soon has come and

00:56:20 ◼   ► we have this thing in the Wall Street Journal where Apple has done PR head

00:56:23 ◼   ► games before. So like I think that they should do it. I think that having USB-C

00:56:28 ◼   ► everywhere is the future. It would be really great to be able to take just a

00:56:33 ◼   ► you know one cable with you somewhere and know that it works with everything

00:56:36 ◼   ► you have and it gives them a lot of the benefits that lightning does where it's

00:56:40 ◼   ► reversible, it's small, it is bigger than lightning a little bit but yeah I

00:56:47 ◼   ► think it would be I think the the long-term benefits are there. I think it'd be

00:56:52 ◼   ► great I would you know it's always a bummer to replace all your cables which

00:56:56 ◼   ► is what everyone has been moaning about today on Twitter but I think that's a

00:57:00 ◼   ► reasonable trade-off if we can if at the other end of it you have one cable that

00:57:04 ◼   ► does all of your things right that everything is USB-C everywhere and it

00:57:08 ◼   ► truly is like a universal standard as opposed to it being fragmented right now

00:57:14 ◼   ► is is this the year for that I guess to really answer your question maybe I mean

00:57:19 ◼   ► I mean, if this was not in the Wall Street Journal,

00:57:22 ◼   ► I would not take it so seriously,

00:57:24 ◼   ► but because it is, you've gotta think that it's real.

00:57:27 ◼   ► And if they're gonna do it the way they say,

00:57:30 ◼   ► this article says they're gonna do it,

00:57:32 ◼   ► where you have the 7S, 7S Plus, you know,

00:57:36 ◼   ► be basically the same phone they have now,

00:57:38 ◼   ► but upgrade internals, and this new fancy phone

00:57:40 ◼   ► moves to USB-C, like that's not a terrible way to do it,

00:57:42 ◼   ► I guess, it eases people into it, people are gonna,

00:57:47 ◼   ► like the three of us and our listeners

00:57:48 ◼   ► gonna buy the most expensive, nicest iPhone there is,

00:57:51 ◼   ► we'll have to deal with it.

00:57:53 ◼   ► But by the time, you know, the phones get handed down

00:57:57 ◼   ► to our family members or other people,

00:57:59 ◼   ► they sort of trickle out, then people will be used

00:58:02 ◼   ► to the idea.

00:58:02 ◼   ► Same thing, same way they did 30-pin dock connector

00:58:05 ◼   ► to lightning, right?

00:58:06 ◼   ► It was a slow thing.

00:58:07 ◼   ► So I'm gonna say it's gonna be uncomfortable,

00:58:11 ◼   ► but I'm gonna say yes, that this is what is happening.

00:58:15 ◼   ► Federico, it's been five years since Apple unveiled the Lightning connector in place of the 30 pin.

00:58:22 ◼   ► Is that too short a time period to change over again?

00:58:26 ◼   ► It feels too short.

00:58:28 ◼   ► Because when you talk to any

00:58:32 ◼   ► person who doesn't listen to tech podcasts, they're still kind of burned by these, which from

00:58:38 ◼   ► the 30 pin to Lightning. And I

00:58:42 ◼   ► I just brought up this story this morning with my girlfriend

00:58:45 ◼   ► and the very first reaction was,

00:58:46 ◼   ► but they just changed the connector with the iPhone 5.

00:58:50 ◼   ► So it's still fresh in people's memory, I think,

00:58:52 ◼   ► that the transition between different cables is painful.

00:58:56 ◼   ► As much as we as nerds like to constantly upgrade

00:58:59 ◼   ► to the latest standard, because we love standards, right?

00:59:02 ◼   ► Everybody does.

00:59:04 ◼   ► But most people, I'm afraid they don't care

00:59:07 ◼   ► and they just want to not replace cables

00:59:09 ◼   ► every four to five years.

00:59:11 ◼   ► I don't think any of us want to replace our cables, right?

00:59:13 ◼   ► Like I think just take a straw poll.

00:59:14 ◼   ► Like I don't want to do that.

00:59:16 ◼   ► - We are more inclined to do so.

00:59:18 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:59:19 ◼   ► - We think on the other end, there's a better solution.

00:59:21 ◼   ► And USB-C clearly is the better solution.

00:59:23 ◼   ► I'm all for USB-C, like OLED.

00:59:25 ◼   ► I think USB-C is the future.

00:59:28 ◼   ► It's the dream of a single connector

00:59:29 ◼   ► that does a bunch of things and it's small,

00:59:31 ◼   ► it's reversible and it's adopted by the whole industry.

00:59:34 ◼   ► So it's basically USB-A,

00:59:36 ◼   ► but at a much better proposition

00:59:41 ◼   ► because it's smaller, it's compact, you know, and it can do power delivery, it's awesome.

00:59:46 ◼   ► And that said, it's quite the predicament that Apple is in right now, because on one end you have people like us

00:59:54 ◼   ► who say "well, it's gonna be painful, but I think Apple should do USB-C".

00:59:58 ◼   ► And then you have, on the other side, the people who are like "no, Apple is never gonna do the switch from Lightning".

01:00:08 ◼   ► So Apple either way there's going to be a massive wave of criticism because if Apple adopts USB-C

01:00:14 ◼   ► There's going to be the transition. There's going to be you know

01:00:18 ◼   ► The questions about why did you release lightning?

01:00:21 ◼   ► Earpods last year if you knew you were gonna do USB-C and then if Apple doesn't do USB-C

01:00:28 ◼   ► There's going to be the opposite of that which is why is not Apple adopting, you know this new

01:00:34 ◼   ► awesome standard, why are they still using Lightning? So whatever they do, there's going to be negative PR,

01:00:40 ◼   ► which I think is exactly why Apple is getting started with this story in the Wall Street Journal right now.

01:00:46 ◼   ► Because if you know, either way, there's going to be criticism. Well, it's better to get started in,

01:00:51 ◼   ► you know, February, basically, for September. - Before the phone's on sale, right?

01:00:55 ◼   ► - Because the phone is on sale, just like they did... So with the... - Headphone jack.

01:01:00 ◼   ► with the audio, with the iPhone jack. I just couldn't think of headphones. With the iPhone jack.

01:01:04 ◼   ► He's forgotten all about them. Port's gone. It's like I don't know what they are anymore.

01:01:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I just, what is the thing? So they started, I think even earlier than February,

01:01:14 ◼   ► I think I remember it was maybe December, January maybe? Because they knew, I mean,

01:01:18 ◼   ► getting rid of the iPhone jack is a big deal. But you know, lightning to SBC is also a big deal.

01:01:24 ◼   ► And I almost wonder if maybe besides you know planting these stories, maybe adding USB-C to the

01:01:34 ◼   ► iPad Pro in the meantime would also be another move to kind of make people more comfortable with

01:01:39 ◼   ► the idea of an iOS device with a USB-C port, you know? So if you see Apple moving to USB-C on the

01:01:45 ◼   ► iPad, you know, the iPad Pro, you know, maybe with a bunch of other USB-C features on iOS,

01:01:52 ◼   ► like external devices maybe, then you get people comfortable with the idea and then you know come

01:01:57 ◼   ► September you show off three phones. Two are like an upgrade of the iPhone 7 with the lightning

01:02:02 ◼   ► connector but you know upgraded specs and then you have the future of the iPhone you can position in

01:02:08 ◼   ► that way it's the future of the iPhone with the new connector with wireless charging and I can

01:02:13 ◼   ► see Apple saying well you charge it wirelessly every night because you just place it on your

01:02:17 ◼   ► nightstand and you don't need, you know, because of wireless charging we were able to get rid

01:02:23 ◼   ► of the light-keeping connector.

01:02:24 ◼   ► Whatever Apple can do, you know, they can spin it positively, I'm sure.

01:02:28 ◼   ► Just like they did with the headphone jack, but maybe not with the courage line.

01:02:33 ◼   ► I will say on that, right, like I have remained unsatisfied with Apple's reasoning for the

01:02:40 ◼   ► headphone jack and for the home button because in my opinion they gave no reason.

01:02:45 ◼   ► are strong, clear reasons to make this switch that I would be happy with. You could just

01:02:52 ◼   ► straight up say, imagine only needing one cable for all of your technology. That is

01:02:58 ◼   ► a good enough reason. You could have your MacBook, your iPad, your AirPods, maybe we'll

01:03:03 ◼   ► talk about that, and your phone, and you just need one type of cable. If you travel, you

01:03:09 ◼   ► just need to take one cable with you. And like, we're about to get Nintendo Switches,

01:03:14 ◼   ► charged by USB-C. That's awesome, right? That's amazing.

01:03:18 ◼   ► And talk about wired headphones, right? Like it's too difficult for a company to make wired

01:03:23 ◼   ► headphones with either USB-C or Lightning on it. Because you have to make a choice.

01:03:29 ◼   ► And so I think a lot of companies aren't doing this. But if you still want wired headphones,

01:03:33 ◼   ► like having them all be USB-C is great. Like being able to go to like a friend's house

01:03:40 ◼   ► like in a few years time, be like, oh, my phone's dead.

01:03:42 ◼   ► Do you have this type of charger?

01:03:46 ◼   ► No, it's just like, can I use your phone charger?

01:03:48 ◼   ► Because we all have the same cable.

01:03:50 ◼   ► Like this makes so much sense to just be like, this is a great standard.

01:03:55 ◼   ► It's got everything you need.

01:03:56 ◼   ► It's small, it's reversible.

01:03:58 ◼   ► You can do data, you can do power and it can be used by everyone.

01:04:01 ◼   ► It's perfect.

01:04:02 ◼   ► You know why that's awesome?

01:04:04 ◼   ► Because it's just like electricity.

01:04:07 ◼   ► You know, the wall socket is the same for everyone.

01:04:10 ◼   ► And I mean, it changes depending on country, but you know, most of the time when you go

01:04:14 ◼   ► to a friend's house, you can plug your stuff in because they have the same plug as you

01:04:18 ◼   ► do, because it's a universal standard.

01:04:21 ◼   ► And that's the dream of USB-C. And I think maybe this is interesting because on the one

01:04:26 ◼   ► hand there's the Apple that likes to control their own stuff.

01:04:30 ◼   ► They're different from the industry, they're different from everyone.

01:04:33 ◼   ► And so they have lightning, they can more tightly control the experience and whatever.

01:04:37 ◼   ► But on the other hand, there's the reality that, you know, the world is like...

01:04:43 ◼   ► You have friends that use Android phones and you use other stuff than Apple products.

01:04:47 ◼   ► Apple doesn't make the entire universe of electronic appliances in the world.

01:04:54 ◼   ► There's consoles, there's computers, there's headphones.

01:04:57 ◼   ► There's different stuff than iPhones and iPads and Siri remotes, which also charge real lightning.

01:05:03 ◼   ► So the dream of a single cable, same connector, everywhere, that's amazing, right?

01:05:09 ◼   ► You can buy them cheap on Amazon, you can go to any store and grab a USB-C cable, I

01:05:14 ◼   ► just bought two this week, and it's so convenient and it's awesome.

01:05:19 ◼   ► And Apple, if they don't want to do USB-C, there has to be a reason.

01:05:24 ◼   ► Could be, well, we can save more space with lightning, I doubt it, or we can do better

01:05:31 ◼   ► audio, we can do high definition audio.

01:05:33 ◼   ► I don't know, I'm pretty sure you can do the same with USB-C.

01:05:35 ◼   ► I'm really, if Apple does it, I'm happy.

01:05:38 ◼   ► It's gonna be painful, it's gonna be people who complain,

01:05:40 ◼   ► but that's why they're doing the leak now.

01:05:42 ◼   ► If they don't do it, I'm just left wondering

01:05:45 ◼   ► why did you not do it?

01:05:46 ◼   ► So it's a very interesting situation.

01:05:49 ◼   ► - I would like to just head people off at this point

01:05:51 ◼   ► before they start saying that we only think

01:05:53 ◼   ► it's a good idea because Apple's now maybe

01:05:56 ◼   ► potentially deciding to do it.

01:05:57 ◼   ► I know we have spoken about this before.

01:06:00 ◼   ► - Oh, we did.

01:06:01 ◼   ► And I know, I don't know when, but I know I have said on this show that I wished that the iPhone had USB-C.

01:06:08 ◼   ► Like, and that I think Apple should do it.

01:06:10 ◼   ► I remember I said I want USB-C, maybe even two USB-C ports on the iPad Pro.

01:06:14 ◼   ► Yep.

01:06:15 ◼   ► I'm sure I said.

01:06:15 ◼   ► We have spoken about that too, and like, serious fingers crossed, man, like, for two of them.

01:06:20 ◼   ► Like, I, uh, Samsung just brought out these, these tablets that look like iPad Pros, right?

01:06:25 ◼   ► They have like keyboard covers.

01:06:26 ◼   ► Keyboard cover looks awesome, by the way, it's adjustable by angle.

01:06:29 ◼   ► I'm just gonna say.

01:06:30 ◼   ► Oh, nice.

01:06:31 ◼   ► But they have Windows versions, right? So they have Android versions and Windows versions.

01:06:36 ◼   ► And I was looking at the Verge's review of it and they were like showing a side view

01:06:39 ◼   ► of it and it had two USB-C ports on the side and I just felt something in my heart, you

01:06:43 ◼   ► know? I was like, I want it! You know, like, I, I, you know, they're so small you could

01:06:48 ◼   ► just put two next to each other, then I could do charging and I could have like an external

01:06:52 ◼   ► hard drive or I don't know, like whatever. But I feel like that they could, they could

01:06:56 ◼   ► do that on the iPad.

01:06:58 ◼   ► The big problem here is that compared to 2012 with the iPhone 5, there's so much more stuff

01:07:06 ◼   ► Apple has done that charges via Lightning.

01:07:08 ◼   ► There's keyboards, there's AirPods, there's the Siri remote, there's the Apple Pencil,

01:07:15 ◼   ► there's a mouse, there's so many more Apple accessories and even major ones like the AirPods

01:07:21 ◼   ► and the Pencil, big products that Apple has released that use Lightning.

01:07:26 ◼   ► And so this transition wouldn't just affect iPhones. It would be a whole ecosystem, bigger

01:07:31 ◼   ► than it used to be in 2012, needing to transition from one standard to the other. So, you know,

01:07:37 ◼   ► I love USB-C, but it's just, man, it's gonna be rough for Apple to pull this off if they

01:07:43 ◼   ► want to do it.

01:07:44 ◼   ► That is an issue, right? I mean, we will still be stuck in the world of needing multiple

01:07:49 ◼   ► cables for a while for some stuff and it also opens more problems. So let's just focus on

01:07:56 ◼   ► headphones for a moment. So what would they include in the box with the iPhone? This expensive

01:08:05 ◼   ► iPhone? Do we get USB-C earpods? Or do we get AirPods? But if we get AirPods, right?

01:08:13 ◼   ► Let's just imagine that they do something awesome and they include with this phone,

01:08:17 ◼   ► which is probably going to cost over a thousand dollars.

01:08:19 ◼   ► They include AirPods in the box.

01:08:21 ◼   ► Those AirPods would have to be charged by USB-C, right?

01:08:26 ◼   ► Not Lightning. So then there would be different versions of that which you would

01:08:30 ◼   ► buy.

01:08:31 ◼   ► See, that's what I'm talking about.

01:08:33 ◼   ► It's this whole thing of multiple

01:08:38 ◼   ► accessories and a bigger ecosystem than the days of the iPhone 5

01:08:43 ◼   ► that needs to move.

01:08:45 ◼   ► And there's the question of what do you put in the box, right?

01:08:49 ◼   ► So I assume if there's a single USB-C port, there will be USB-C earpods in the box.

01:08:56 ◼   ► So that's the cheapest, most likely option.

01:09:00 ◼   ► But if Apple wants to go with the, you know, let's do this crazy expensive iPhone, let's put the earpods in,

01:09:05 ◼   ► then those earpods will have to charge with USB-C.

01:09:09 ◼   ► The other option would be let's just put both cables in the box.

01:09:13 ◼   ► So let's put it one USB-C cable, one lightning cable to kind of help with the transition like they did with the headphone jack adapter.

01:09:20 ◼   ► So let's put two things in the box. That's the other option. Maybe, or you know, another crazy idea, maybe this iPhone has two ports.

01:09:28 ◼   ► Maybe there's a lightning port, maybe there's a USB-C port.

01:09:30 ◼   ► What? No. I can't imagine that. I appreciate where you're going with that, but like I can't imagine that.

01:09:37 ◼   ► I'm just considering all of the possible options, right? Because on the iPad it's not too crazy to imagine

01:09:42 ◼   ► there's one Lightning, one USB-C or maybe one Lightning, two USB-C ports.

01:09:47 ◼   ► Because the iPad has a lot of space. Of course the iPhone traditionally only offered

01:09:52 ◼   ► one connector at the bottom, so I would rule out the dual option.

01:09:58 ◼   ► But there's this question of Apple has done all of these accessories since the iPhone 5

01:10:04 ◼   ► and whether it's the desktop or the iPad or the iPhone and now you know there's

01:10:09 ◼   ► this new standard of USB-C and you need to transition everything again but I

01:10:13 ◼   ► also have another question what if you know two years from now we you know the

01:10:17 ◼   ► the industry comes up with mini USB-C and so now there's this even better

01:10:22 ◼   ► standard so once you once you get on the industry train it's difficult to get off

01:10:29 ◼   ► because you're always gonna be asked to adopt the latest standard and these

01:10:33 ◼   ► standards, they like to be refreshed often. So it wouldn't be impossible, you

01:10:37 ◼   ► know, two, three years from now there's an even smaller, even better USBC. So now

01:10:41 ◼   ► people expect Apple to, you know, switch to the better USBC and there's this

01:10:45 ◼   ► problem all over again and it grows exponentially every time because, you

01:10:50 ◼   ► know, the time period between changes only gets shorter the moment you

01:10:55 ◼   ► adopt the standard that other people choose. I think that once they're on the

01:10:59 ◼   ► train it becomes less of a problem and they move along with it.

01:11:04 ◼   ► It just becomes like Samsung basically that you know you change the adapter often

01:11:09 ◼   ► but is that something Apple wants? Maybe, I don't know. I don't know if it makes too

01:11:14 ◼   ► much of a difference to them like if they change along with the times

01:11:17 ◼   ► right like it's well you just have to buy new accessories like we'll take the

01:11:20 ◼   ► fees, awesome. But there's a there's a I mean I get that but there's also

01:11:25 ◼   ► beauty in the idea of, well the iPhone has this cable and it's different from

01:11:30 ◼   ► everyone else but I know it's always gonna work. At least that was the idea.

01:11:35 ◼   ► Yeah I know. I mean it would be great right? Like if it it would be great if I

01:11:39 ◼   ► could get all of the benefits. Well you know what would be really awesome? It's just that everybody

01:11:42 ◼   ► adopted lightning but that's you know, can't or never would happen.

01:11:45 ◼   ► I'm really 50/50 on this you know debate right now. Yeah because I want the

01:11:52 ◼   ► benefits but I don't want to replace everything right so I choose which one of those I want

01:11:56 ◼   ► and I want the benefits more and I'll take the short-term pain of like either spending

01:12:02 ◼   ► a bunch of money to do it all at once or like over time still needing multiple cables as

01:12:07 ◼   ► I slowly transition things you know.

01:12:09 ◼   ► Yeah most of all I would really like to have a story to tell my friends whenever they inevitably

01:12:16 ◼   ► approach me and say is it true they're gonna change the cable again and I don't know what

01:12:20 ◼   ► what kind of narrative I'm supposed to explain right now.

01:12:23 ◼   ► It's like, they come to me with questions

01:12:25 ◼   ► and they expect answers.

01:12:27 ◼   ► And if I'm like, well, maybe they're gonna change the cable,

01:12:29 ◼   ► I'm not really sure they should do that

01:12:32 ◼   ► because it's gonna be painful.

01:12:33 ◼   ► My friends are gonna be upset.

01:12:34 ◼   ► And I'm dead serious here.

01:12:36 ◼   ► When you become the tech support person

01:12:40 ◼   ► of your family and of your friends,

01:12:42 ◼   ► they expect answers and they expect safety.

01:12:44 ◼   ► They expect to be calmed down.

01:12:47 ◼   ► And man, telling people,

01:12:48 ◼   ► well, you gotta change 10 cables now.

01:12:50 ◼   ► buy all of you know different adapters. Well there's an easy thing to say for now. Just say

01:12:56 ◼   ► only if you're willing to spend a thousand dollars on an iPhone. Right there you go there you go.

01:13:01 ◼   ► Yeah it won't trickle down for a while potentially. Because you know this is gonna be the talk of the

01:13:07 ◼   ► summer and you know any family gathering you know I mean man. I just feel bad for the poor person

01:13:14 ◼   ► who walks in the Apple store to buy a new set of headphones for their phone and they have to know

01:13:18 ◼   ► if they have a headphone jack or a lightning port or a USB-C port.

01:13:22 ◼   ► - Or so many ports. - And the two look alike.

01:13:25 ◼   ► Like, the average consumer, like USB-C and lightning are very similar.

01:13:29 ◼   ► And so it's like, do you have a round one or do you have like a rectangle?

01:13:32 ◼   ► You know, that's just gonna be messy.

01:13:35 ◼   ► And some people in the chat were like,

01:13:36 ◼   ► "Why didn't they do it last year when they ditched the headphone jack?"

01:13:38 ◼   ► - Right, right. That's the ultimate question. - Beats me.

01:13:41 ◼   ► Like, that's a great question.

01:13:43 ◼   ► Allow me to add some stupid speculation to all of this mess.

01:13:46 ◼   ► - Oh, no. - Remember the whole thing

01:13:47 ◼   ► about how the AirPods were, like the hole on the AirPod case looks like it could fit

01:13:53 ◼   ► a USB-C port, right? And then also coupled with the other rumors of like Apple missed

01:13:59 ◼   ► their time with the phone, maybe those two things line up. Maybe it was supposed to be

01:14:03 ◼   ► USB-C on the AirPods and there's just nothing they could do about it. And so the phone was

01:14:09 ◼   ► late, they still wanted to put the AirPods out, they just retrofitted the lightning port

01:14:12 ◼   ► the thing and chipped it.

01:14:14 ◼   ► Hm.

01:14:15 ◼   ► Wild speculation.

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01:16:37 ◼   ► So there are mobile phones being distributed across the world from the hub of Barcelona

01:16:42 ◼   ► this week as the Mobile World Congress is occurring.

01:16:47 ◼   ► And there is just a couple of things I think that's worth pointing out here.

01:16:51 ◼   ► One of them is what I think I will now refer to as thin bezel phones as opposed to bezel-less.

01:17:00 ◼   ► Let's just say, right, we can call them bezel-less, but I don't think anyone really expects that

01:17:03 ◼   ► there'll be no bezel at all.

01:17:06 ◼   ► the screens that stretch around the side, something still has to hold onto it. There

01:17:11 ◼   ► has to be some edge. That's where we are right now.

01:17:14 ◼   ► So I think the most impressive looking phone that has come out of MWC this year is the

01:17:19 ◼   ► LG G6. I think that this phone looks amazing. There's a couple of things I like about it.

01:17:27 ◼   ► I'll include a link in the show notes to the Verges review and MKBHD's kind of countdown

01:17:32 ◼   ► of features. This phone, I think, has a lot of what we expect the iPhone to have, that

01:17:39 ◼   ► it is kind of smaller in size than the big phones, like the 6 Plus or the Pixel XL, but

01:17:46 ◼   ► with a bigger or comparable screen size, but the screen is long. So this is, I think, 18

01:17:54 ◼   ► by 9 aspect ratio on this phone.

01:17:57 ◼   ► Yeah, 2 by 1.

01:17:58 ◼   ► by one. So the phone is tall, right? So video doesn't go all the way to the edges, there's

01:18:04 ◼   ► black bars on the side, but I think LG are doing some really cool stuff with it. So in

01:18:09 ◼   ► the camera app, for example, you see the full camera viewer, but also a preview of all the

01:18:14 ◼   ► pictures you've taken. So like your camera rollers up the top, so as you're taking pictures,

01:18:17 ◼   ► you're seeing previews. But because the screen's so big, the previews are big enough that you

01:18:21 ◼   ► can actually make sense of them. Or if you want to take square photos, so just cut the

01:18:25 ◼   ► the screen in half and then you can just see like the picture you've just taken in the

01:18:29 ◼   ► full size and in the square to the next of it. Another thing I really like, I mean this

01:18:33 ◼   ► is just MKBHD's great video skills, he does this one shot where you're looking at the

01:18:38 ◼   ► Pixel XL, he picks up the Pixel XL and there's a 6, like a 7+ underneath it, he picks that

01:18:44 ◼   ► up and the G6 is underneath it and you just see how much bigger these phones are even

01:18:49 ◼   ► though the G6 has a 5.7 inch screen on it. So like this is like big screens in small packages

01:18:56 ◼   ► and I think this is the trend that we're seeing right now which I think is really interesting.

01:18:59 ◼   ► So I have one question that I want to ask you both on this right. So one of the things that

01:19:04 ◼   ► the MKBHD points out is that um the multitasking, Android phones have multitasking on them so you

01:19:09 ◼   ► can have two apps open at once, that it's better because you can get more on screen because it's

01:19:14 ◼   ► bigger right, it's more screen real estate. Do you think that Apple might put multitasking on the

01:19:19 ◼   ► the iPhone if the screen is bigger? No. You don't think so? I think the Android

01:19:25 ◼   ► implementation is a little bit it's just weird like it's still so small and I

01:19:31 ◼   ► don't know if Apple sees that as beneficial enough to do it. Yeah I don't

01:19:37 ◼   ► think it looks good honestly. I think it looks I mean the screen is bigger but

01:19:41 ◼   ► two apps on a phone are still kind of cramped you know especially when you

01:19:46 ◼   ► when you bring up the keyboard, I don't know.

01:19:49 ◼   ► - Okay, just wondering.

01:19:51 ◼   ► I mean, I don't wanna live my life, right,

01:19:55 ◼   ► like with Slack and Twitter open,

01:19:57 ◼   ► but there are times where it would really be great

01:19:59 ◼   ► when I've just got my phone with me

01:20:01 ◼   ► that I could just have two apps open,

01:20:02 ◼   ► just look and check something, you know,

01:20:03 ◼   ► and enter something into something else.

01:20:05 ◼   ► But that's more of a work thing,

01:20:06 ◼   ► and I don't know how much real work

01:20:08 ◼   ► is really being done on iPhones

01:20:10 ◼   ► that people couldn't wait for, I guess,

01:20:11 ◼   ► but maybe it's just a thing that I wouldn't mind sometimes.

01:20:15 ◼   ► So Federico, what do you think about the OGG6?

01:20:19 ◼   ► - I mean, I don't think it looks amazing.

01:20:22 ◼   ► I think it looks very good.

01:20:24 ◼   ► I think the idea of making a bigger screen

01:20:30 ◼   ► in a more compact size by making it taller,

01:20:32 ◼   ► I think it's a great idea,

01:20:34 ◼   ► and it's obviously what most companies are moving towards.

01:20:37 ◼   ► I have a feeling Apple wants to go the extra mile here,

01:20:43 ◼   ► and I think it will be even better than...

01:20:46 ◼   ► - What does that mean though?

01:20:48 ◼   ► - It could be, you know, not having a chin at the bottom,

01:20:51 ◼   ► for example, or actually extending all the way to the top.

01:20:56 ◼   ► I expect Apple to do more than what LG has done,

01:21:01 ◼   ► but maybe it's just my personal speculation.

01:21:03 ◼   ► Maybe it's gonna be along these lines, right?

01:21:05 ◼   ► With a, you know, with a thin chin at the bottom

01:21:08 ◼   ► and this edge at the top with the sensors.

01:21:11 ◼   ► Maybe that's it. Maybe that's what companies can do these days.

01:21:15 ◼   ► I just hope or think, you know,

01:21:17 ◼   ► making my personal hope or my personal speculation that Apple is going to do a

01:21:20 ◼   ► little more.

01:21:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I can, I can understand that.

01:21:24 ◼   ► My personal feeling on this is that they'll still have to be something,

01:21:27 ◼   ► but like they will not be in this first revision of this type of thing.

01:21:33 ◼   ► I can't imagine there being no chin or forehead on the phone.

01:21:38 ◼   ► I think that that would be quite a big leap.

01:21:43 ◼   ► But we'll see.

01:21:44 ◼   ► - They gotta stick that stuff somewhere.

01:21:46 ◼   ► In those product shots of the LG,

01:21:47 ◼   ► you can see everything's kinda squished up there,

01:21:49 ◼   ► but it's still there.

01:21:50 ◼   ► You can't, I mean, as magical as it would be

01:21:53 ◼   ► to have a camera behind the screen,

01:21:54 ◼   ► that's not super feasible.

01:21:56 ◼   ► So I think the way the G6 looks,

01:21:59 ◼   ► I think it looks great,

01:22:01 ◼   ► and I think that if Apple is going to shrink the edges,

01:22:06 ◼   ► you know, the stuff around the screen,

01:22:07 ◼   ► that they would do in a similar fashion.

01:22:10 ◼   ► I mean, watching this video and looking at some

01:22:11 ◼   ► of these other phones coming out of MWC,

01:22:14 ◼   ► like I was picking my iPhone, it's like,

01:22:15 ◼   ► this just looks old, and that's kind of a weird thing

01:22:19 ◼   ► to think about an Apple product.

01:22:21 ◼   ► - Couple of weeks time, so March 23rd, Samsung

01:22:25 ◼   ► are going to be announcing the S8,

01:22:29 ◼   ► and I guess this will be that kind of design as well, right?

01:22:33 ◼   ► I mean, they're probably gonna continue with curved sides

01:22:36 ◼   ► as well as like making the screens bigger.

01:22:39 ◼   ► We were talking earlier in the show about the potential

01:22:43 ◼   ► of Apple going this route, right?

01:22:46 ◼   ► Having curved edges on their phones.

01:22:48 ◼   ► Samsung did it first.

01:22:50 ◼   ► Will we say that Apple copied Samsung

01:22:54 ◼   ► in the way that we've said for so many years

01:22:56 ◼   ► that Samsung copied Apple?

01:22:58 ◼   ► What's fair here?

01:23:00 ◼   ► - Well, yeah.

01:23:01 ◼   ► I mean, that's what's gonna happen, right?

01:23:05 ◼   ► If you look at other companies like Xiaomi for example, or LG and Samsung, they're doing this approach of almost all screen, especially the Xiaomi one.

01:23:17 ◼   ► It's kind of impressive because it actually does stretch all the way to the top, which looks amazing.

01:23:23 ◼   ► And it's basically the closest to the idea of bezel-less that we can get today.

01:23:31 ◼   ► So of course if Apple is gonna do it, it's gonna come after these companies.

01:23:35 ◼   ► And I think it would be fair to say that Apple is following what these companies have done before.

01:23:42 ◼   ► But I think it also happened before, right? When Samsung was doing the S Pen on the Galaxy Tab line, for example.

01:23:52 ◼   ► Then several years later Apple did the Pencil, or when Microsoft did the Surface with the flexible keyboard and the Stylus.

01:24:01 ◼   ► then Apple did the iPad Pro and the Pencil.

01:24:03 ◼   ► I think every time Apple does it, there's a unique twist to the implementation

01:24:09 ◼   ► that makes it look more different, even if it's basically the same idea.

01:24:13 ◼   ► So for example, the Pencil with the low latency, with the tilt and pressure angle stuff,

01:24:17 ◼   ► with the API for developers, there's always some kind of unique Apple thing about it.

01:24:23 ◼   ► But yes, the idea is the same, and I don't think it would be the first time.

01:24:28 ◼   ► If they do the curved edges like the Samsung phones, that would be interesting to me.

01:24:33 ◼   ► Because nobody else is doing it the way that Samsung does it.

01:24:37 ◼   ► I don't know why.

01:24:38 ◼   ► I mean, I wonder if it's like this might be a thing that only Samsung are able to do right now

01:24:42 ◼   ► for whatever reason.

01:24:44 ◼   ► You know, maybe they have the technology in place or they have the ability to order these screens

01:24:49 ◼   ► in big enough yields, right, that it's fine to do.

01:24:53 ◼   ► But I love that design.

01:24:55 ◼   ► You know, I've said this many times.

01:24:57 ◼   ► I think that some of those Samsung phones, some of the best looking, if not the best

01:25:00 ◼   ► looking phones are on the market right now.

01:25:02 ◼   ► Because that kind of, irrespective of whether it's useful or not, just the look of that

01:25:07 ◼   ► phone where the screen just melts off to the side, I just think is such a striking look.

01:25:13 ◼   ► And I would love that in an iPhone.

01:25:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree.

01:25:17 ◼   ► Nokia is bringing back the 3310.

01:25:20 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the real attraction in Barcelona right now is the Nokia.

01:25:28 ◼   ► And it plays Snake!

01:25:29 ◼   ► Yeah!

01:25:30 ◼   ► Come on!

01:25:31 ◼   ► That's incredible.

01:25:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:25:33 ◼   ► I have a real problem with this phone.

01:25:36 ◼   ► Come on.

01:25:37 ◼   ► I have a real problem with this.

01:25:39 ◼   ► What do you mean?

01:25:41 ◼   ► There are like, in the past few days I've seen people in my timeline talk about how

01:25:45 ◼   ► amazing it would be to have one of these.

01:25:48 ◼   ► Why?

01:25:49 ◼   ► Exactly. Like, "Oh, it gets such great battery life!" or like, "Oh man, I would love to just

01:25:55 ◼   ► go back to the simple times of a phone like this."

01:25:58 ◼   ► Would you? Would you really? This is like when people say, "I want to move to the woods

01:26:01 ◼   ► in a cabin."

01:26:02 ◼   ► I tell you what I do, Federico, whenever I see these tweets. I double click the tweet

01:26:06 ◼   ► and see where the tweet was sent. And I think every single one of them that I checked is

01:26:10 ◼   ► sent from Twitter for iPhone or Tweetbot. And I'm like, "Mmm, so you really detach from

01:26:16 ◼   ► your phone there guy huh you're just nice and like stuck away from it you

01:26:20 ◼   ► don't care too much or like what about when you when you put your sim in the

01:26:23 ◼   ► 3310 and you go out into the world and you need a map you can't get a map

01:26:27 ◼   ► anymore like I just don't buy it it's cool this phone this phone is the high

01:26:34 ◼   ► school reunion of phones you do it every once in a while you do it for a

01:26:40 ◼   ► couple of hours in very small doses and you better get a drink or something if

01:26:45 ◼   ► if you want to get through it, but just you cannot do it all the time, man.

01:26:50 ◼   ► You have no apps, so you're shut off from basically any kind of modern communication

01:26:56 ◼   ► system, your banking app is not going to work there, your flight tickets are not going to

01:27:00 ◼   ► be available on there, there's no note-taking app I think, you can use Opera Mini to go

01:27:05 ◼   ► on the web if you want to, and if it loads in a better version than a WAP browser, but

01:27:12 ◼   ► really if you see anyone with a smartphone tweeting that he wants to go back to the simpler

01:27:17 ◼   ► times of the Nokia phones for more than two hours I would seriously question the tweet.

01:27:26 ◼   ► It seems like fishing for likes honestly.

01:27:30 ◼   ► So I tried this like several years ago as you guys may remember I tried using a dumb

01:27:37 ◼   ► phone I made it like two months and then pulled my hair out for all the reasons you just said

01:27:41 ◼   ► Like all the reasons you just said, it was terrible.

01:27:44 ◼   ► And I think if you think you can really switch

01:27:49 ◼   ► to this full time, you're probably,

01:27:51 ◼   ► I mean, you're gonna be in for a surprise.

01:27:55 ◼   ► The thing is, like, A, we should just say off the bat

01:27:57 ◼   ► because people are saying it, the thing is 2G.

01:28:00 ◼   ► So like, using in the US is gonna be extremely difficult.

01:28:03 ◼   ► AT&T is turning off 2G.

01:28:05 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:28:06 ◼   ► I can't put my iPhone SIM card in this

01:28:09 ◼   ► and it work on my AT&T account.

01:28:10 ◼   ► So that's a thing.

01:28:11 ◼   ► - And I mean, I don't think people realize

01:28:13 ◼   ► just how much we depend on smartphones.

01:28:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, but like, so the counterargument here is like,

01:28:21 ◼   ► maybe I want something to like take with me

01:28:24 ◼   ► that isn't as expensive as my phone.

01:28:26 ◼   ► People can still get in touch with me if I need to,

01:28:28 ◼   ► but I don't smash my phone bike riding or something.

01:28:30 ◼   ► And that did cross my mind.

01:28:31 ◼   ► And for $52, it would be, I'd be more serious about it

01:28:36 ◼   ► if I could use it on AT&T more easily.

01:28:40 ◼   ► Now, they may have a separate US version,

01:28:42 ◼   ► and it's still a little unclear at this point,

01:28:43 ◼   ► but as far as we know right now,

01:28:45 ◼   ► that'll be tricky here in the States.

01:28:47 ◼   ► But I do think there are some people

01:28:49 ◼   ► would want something that, you know,

01:28:51 ◼   ► you just want something you could take with you

01:28:53 ◼   ► that, you know, wouldn't get destroyed.

01:28:55 ◼   ► - It's a great burner phone, I guess.

01:28:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a great, if you are selling drugs

01:29:00 ◼   ► and you wanna play Snake,

01:29:01 ◼   ► it's the first buy. - Oh my God.

01:29:03 ◼   ► - But-- - I mean,

01:29:04 ◼   ► we're all thinking it.

01:29:06 ◼   ► Thank you, Steven, for saying that.

01:29:08 ◼   ► It's, you know, yeah.

01:29:09 ◼   ► But I mean, there are Android phones for $99 these days.

01:29:14 ◼   ► You can get them super cheap and there are smartphones with a real browser.

01:29:17 ◼   ► You can install apps.

01:29:18 ◼   ► I mean, if you're going to spend $50, can you not spend $99 and get a smartphone?

01:29:24 ◼   ► That's my point.

01:29:25 ◼   ► You know, and they charge with USB, you know, the actual smartphones with maps,

01:29:31 ◼   ► like with modern things that we as a society have invented since 1997.

01:29:37 ◼   ► just saying, you know. I mean I get the... you know, it's like the NES Mini Classic

01:29:44 ◼   ► from Nintendo. It's a fun thing to buy, it's a fun thing to have. You're not

01:29:49 ◼   ► gonna replace your PlayStation 4 with the NES Mini Classic, you're just gonna

01:29:52 ◼   ► keep it there, play it every once in a while, show it off to your friends, and

01:29:55 ◼   ► reminisce about the old times. And that's fine, but seeing people say "Oh I'm gonna

01:30:00 ◼   ► switch from an iPhone to a Nokia 3310", it's not gonna happen man, you're not gonna do it.

01:30:04 ◼   ► it it's just that's a that's a fun tweet but it's not gonna be the reality yeah I

01:30:11 ◼   ► think you're right if you want to find us all online as a few places you could

01:30:15 ◼   ► do that for today's show notes head on over to relay.fm/connected/131

01:30:19 ◼   ► Federico is at maxlories.net Stephen is at 512pixels.net and he is at

01:30:24 ◼   ► ismh Federico is at vitici v-i-t-i-c-c-i and I am @imikeimyke thanks again to

01:30:32 ◼   ► sponsors this week, Mac Weldon, Encapsulate and Blue Apron for supporting the show and most of all,

01:30:36 ◼   ► as always, thank you for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye gentlemen.

01:30:43 ◼   ► >> Arrivederci. >> Adios.