Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:06 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode number 98. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace and Ring.

00:00:15 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Steven Hackett.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Hey buddy.

00:00:20 ◼   ► How are you?

00:00:21 ◼   ► I'm good, how are you today?

00:00:22 ◼   ► I'm very good. Since the two of us right now, there is a rumor on the streets that Federico partied really hard for the 4th of July.

00:00:29 ◼   ► He ate lots of hot dogs, I think lots of pineapple pepperoni pizza, stuff like that.

00:00:37 ◼   ► So he's going to be joining us a little bit later on in the show, which is good because

00:00:40 ◼   ► that gives us a clear path to talk about Hackintoshes.

00:00:44 ◼   ► So that's on the way.

00:00:47 ◼   ► That's coming.

00:00:48 ◼   ► And everybody just hit pause and it was like, we're done, we're done.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Where's the Federico section?

00:00:53 ◼   ► No, Hackintosh is a little later on in the show today, which is not a thing I thought

00:00:58 ◼   ► we'd be discussing in 2016, but here we are.

00:01:00 ◼   ► - TLDR.

00:01:01 ◼   ► - Exactly, but before any of that,

00:01:04 ◼   ► you sent me an iMessage yesterday

00:01:06 ◼   ► about a weird dream that you had.

00:01:09 ◼   ► Or was it this morning?

00:01:10 ◼   ► Who knows, time is irrelevant.

00:01:12 ◼   ► And I figured that you should tell this story

00:01:15 ◼   ► to our audience because it's kind of amazing.

00:01:18 ◼   ► - I told it to my wife as well,

00:01:19 ◼   ► and she just sort of looked at me

00:01:21 ◼   ► as if I may have been hit in the head with a brick.

00:01:24 ◼   ► - It's probably not the first time.

00:01:26 ◼   ► - I am one to have dreams.

00:01:27 ◼   ► know about you Myke, you know, I think like my kids don't really remember their dreams

00:01:30 ◼   ► but I dream vividly and remember them. And tell me them. Most of the time. And tell them

00:01:37 ◼   ► to you. And since it's July and there's no tech news, and this is a tech-related dream,

00:01:41 ◼   ► we're gonna talk about it. Federico is never going to miss another episode after this.

00:01:45 ◼   ► He's like, "What am I letting them do?" So I had a dream that I was at the Apple store

00:01:52 ◼   ► and had to have an iPad repaired and they needed me to remove my SIM card, which is

00:01:58 ◼   ► bogus because they could just do it themselves. Anyways, so I was invited to the back of the

00:02:01 ◼   ► store to do that because I'm a very important person at the Apple Store apparently in my

00:02:05 ◼   ► dream and I discovered that the new Apple Store in Memphis includes an Apple Museum

00:02:12 ◼   ► and my brain, this is really what's interesting, my brain populated the shelves of this dreamland

00:02:18 ◼   ► Apple museum with models and machines on my wish list.

00:02:24 ◼   ► So basically my brain is cruising eBay at night, I guess is what's happening now.

00:02:30 ◼   ► I think the thing that is the most interesting to me about this is that like your brain has

00:02:35 ◼   ► internalized that wish list.

00:02:38 ◼   ► You know, like deep down in your subconscious somewhere that entire list is written out.

00:02:42 ◼   ► To be fair I looked at it like just a couple of days ago because I have a new machine coming

00:02:47 ◼   ► my way thanks to a reader who's sending me a computer. And so I was actually just on

00:02:54 ◼   ► that list because I was marking it off the list. And so I guess it just got absorbed

00:02:58 ◼   ► into the part of my brain in charge of dreamscapes and fired it up a couple days later.

00:03:03 ◼   ► What are you getting now? An original MacBook Air. It's not a good computer.

00:03:10 ◼   ► Any specific reason that you want? Why was that on your wishlist? It wasn't even really

00:03:15 ◼   ► a good computer.

00:03:16 ◼   ► super strange and has a little flappy door, which is fun. And they didn't make them very

00:03:21 ◼   ► long and it only runs three operating systems, 10.5, 10.6, and 10.7. Just an unusual computer

00:03:26 ◼   ► and you know it's definitely like a archetype for designs that were to come.

00:03:32 ◼   ► Flappy door sounds like my game follow-up to 123 Notetaker.

00:03:36 ◼   ► Yeah, flappy door.

00:03:40 ◼   ► Based on the original MacBook Air and you just have to keep tapping the screen to get

00:03:46 ◼   ► get the door to open and close and then like whilst it's open before it closes

00:03:49 ◼   ► up again on its own you have to try and like throw a USB in there or something.

00:03:53 ◼   ► And it gets the longer you use it the hotter it gets until it shuts down. Yeah

00:03:57 ◼   ► exactly you have limited time before the MacBook just singes your legs which

00:04:03 ◼   ► happened to my brother with that exact computer by the way. That's not good at

00:04:08 ◼   ► all. Yep and he drove that thing into the into the absolute ground. We do have a

00:04:14 ◼   ► little actual follow-up. We had email from... Let's go with Yuri.

00:04:20 ◼   ► Yuri? I was going to go with Yuri. You're learning but I just feel like I just want to help you.

00:04:25 ◼   ► I don't want to put you in the situation where you say "jiri".

00:04:28 ◼   ► Yeah. You know? "Jiri". "Jiri" sounds like how people from South Carolina say "jerry".

00:04:34 ◼   ► Goodbye South Carolinians. Anyways, they write in to say iOS 10...

00:04:39 ◼   ► talk about iOS 10 international keyboards. So Federico was talking about

00:04:44 ◼   ► this in the last episode that you can now switch between multiple languages on

00:04:49 ◼   ► the keyboard and iOS 10. Obviously a huge addition for somebody like Federico who

00:04:53 ◼   ► works in English but lives his life in Italian. So Yuri wants to use this with

00:04:58 ◼   ► an English keyboard and with a Czech keyboard but he can't because the Czech

00:05:03 ◼   ► keyboard does not support predictive typing which seems to be a requirement

00:05:07 ◼   ► for iOS 10 to use this bilingual setup.

00:05:11 ◼   ► Yeah this required a little bit of research from me and you today because

00:05:15 ◼   ► we had this follow-up come in and Yuri basically just said "oh I can't use it

00:05:20 ◼   ► because of predictive typing" and we were like "it doesn't make any sense"

00:05:24 ◼   ► so we did some looking around and apparently I didn't know this the

00:05:28 ◼   ► predictive typing in iOS I guess that came with 9?

00:05:32 ◼   ► I think so.

00:05:33 ◼   ► It only supports a handful of languages really.

00:05:36 ◼   ► It's like English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese,

00:05:40 ◼   ► Russian, Spanish, Thai and Turkish. That's all it supports.

00:05:43 ◼   ► When like language support is like three times that amount so

00:05:47 ◼   ► interesting.

00:05:48 ◼   ► Yeah so there's a big page, we're going to link to it in the show notes right to the

00:05:52 ◼   ► section we're talking about

00:05:54 ◼   ► but if you scroll up and down this page it's basically

00:05:56 ◼   ► iOS feature availability based on language so like spotlight suggestions

00:06:01 ◼   ► are only again in a handful of countries

00:06:04 ◼   ► Of course the music stores in a lot of countries TV programs are only available

00:06:10 ◼   ► in six Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the UK and the USA.

00:06:14 ◼   ► I knew that their features were based regionally but I didn't know there

00:06:19 ◼   ► was a single page on Apple's website that explained all of it so it's super

00:06:22 ◼   ► fascinating and to Yuri's point there seems to be some sort of conflict with

00:06:28 ◼   ► this new system and predictive type and so I don't know if predictive type is

00:06:31 ◼   ► coming to more languages which obviously would be a huge win for international

00:06:37 ◼   ► users or maybe that you know you're in users like you're just going to kind of

00:06:42 ◼   ► be stuck where because the features aren't fully there in the other language

00:06:47 ◼   ► that they can't fully take use of what iOS 10 has to offer but either way it's a

00:06:52 ◼   ► really interesting page and one that I like you not aware of until today.

00:06:57 ◼   ► No. And these things, I assume, they come to other languages, but I think when you have

00:07:02 ◼   ► languages that have smaller populations, they unfortunately, I suppose, just get deprioritized.

00:07:09 ◼   ► Oh, absolutely.

00:07:11 ◼   ► Sorry Czechoslovakians.

00:07:12 ◼   ► Yeah, it's rough. I've been to the Czech Republic.

00:07:15 ◼   ► Good.

00:07:16 ◼   ► It's a lovely country.

00:07:18 ◼   ► So you've done a great thing this week. You've done an incredible thing. You've joined, maybe

00:07:26 ◼   ► if only temporarily definitely temporarily maybe if only temporarily the

00:07:31 ◼   ► multi-pad life style which is fantastic I would like to welcome you of open arms

00:07:36 ◼   ► to the world of multiple iPad pros congratulations I'm not sure it counts if

00:07:41 ◼   ► the big one is like in a box somewhere because I'm moving like still counts

00:07:46 ◼   ► it's not it's been off for a week doesn't matter still counts so so I've

00:07:51 ◼   ► been spending time with the 9.7 inch iPad pro this week and talked a little

00:07:55 ◼   ► bit on Twitter the other night but it's

00:07:58 ◼   ► really, I mean, as you guys have already

00:08:00 ◼   ► discovered it is a great device and the

00:08:02 ◼   ► thing that I am sort of rediscovering is

00:08:04 ◼   ► that 9.7 inch size because when I went

00:08:08 ◼   ► to the 12.9 in the fall I haven't really

00:08:12 ◼   ► even picked up an Air 2 since then. My

00:08:14 ◼   ► wife has one so one's in the house but

00:08:16 ◼   ► you know at most I'm picking it up to like

00:08:18 ◼   ► fix her iCloud backups when they explode

00:08:20 ◼   ► every six weeks. Not using it whatsoever.

00:08:23 ◼   ► you know it's it's way more portable than the big one the trade-off of course

00:08:28 ◼   ► is that multitasking especially when you have the software keyboard up is just

00:08:33 ◼   ► um you know a lot it's difficult it's cramped just like what I was saying last

00:08:38 ◼   ► week you end up with kind of two quarters of applications yeah yeah it's

00:08:43 ◼   ► uh that's a that's a little rough but I gotta say it's it's way more portable

00:08:48 ◼   ► and I'm not one to use an iPad at my desk like Federico is I mean I'm using

00:08:52 ◼   ► it up and around through the house but

00:08:54 ◼   ► it's great and the true tone is

00:08:58 ◼   ► amazing and at this point I only have a

00:09:02 ◼   ► couple of days left with this I'm really

00:09:04 ◼   ► kind of borrowing it from somebody. At

00:09:08 ◼   ► this point if I had to choose I may

00:09:11 ◼   ► choose the 9.7 moving forward but I don't

00:09:13 ◼   ► know what I'm going to do I'm not doing

00:09:15 ◼   ► both I can't justify it but I wanted

00:09:18 ◼   ► to understand why you guys spoke about

00:09:21 ◼   ► about it so highly and I definitely have done that.

00:09:24 ◼   ► I feel like over the history of this show and the prompt, you have done this about a

00:09:30 ◼   ► billion times.

00:09:31 ◼   ► I like to just fill things out.

00:09:33 ◼   ► You change sizes of devices constantly.

00:09:36 ◼   ► You go from 15 inch to 13 inch to 15 inch and then you go from big iPad to iPad mini

00:09:41 ◼   ► to 12.9 inch iPad now to 9.7.

00:09:44 ◼   ► Very indecisive.

00:09:45 ◼   ► Very indecisive.

00:09:46 ◼   ► It's true.

00:09:47 ◼   ► you also buy 13 colors of iMacs because you can't pick the one you like the most.

00:09:51 ◼   ► As each morning I can choose which anti-computer I want to do my work on.

00:09:56 ◼   ► So you have the multi-Mac life I guess right? Is that your thing? I guess that's your thing.

00:10:01 ◼   ► We hadn't thought of that before.

00:10:02 ◼   ► I'm the only one doing it.

00:10:04 ◼   ► Well you and nobody else would. So about the 9.7 again like I will underscore this,

00:10:09 ◼   ► like I said this to you the other day. This is I believe the best all-purpose computer

00:10:15 ◼   ► you can buy today. Like if you just are a person that wants to surf the web and do some email

00:10:22 ◼   ► and maybe check a calendar like this is the computer with the keyboard especially I think

00:10:28 ◼   ► it is like the ultimate computer for someone these days like I know a lot of people including you

00:10:33 ◼   ► have laughed about Phil Schiller saying like this is that the 9.7 is the perfect replacement for

00:10:38 ◼   ► somebody who's looking to move from Windows to a new personal computer I believe it I'm so in on

00:10:44 ◼   ► it. I'm, you know, everybody knows this by now, but like I think it is just a fantastic

00:10:49 ◼   ► multipurpose all around machine that you can do basically anything with if you put your

00:10:55 ◼   ► mind to it. And most people don't have to put their minds to it because the things that

00:10:59 ◼   ► they want to do are very simple. And I hope that Apple can continue to try and crack this,

00:11:05 ◼   ► like this nut, but they really have to attack their own devices before they can do this.

00:11:10 ◼   ► I'm not confident they're gonna go that far.

00:11:14 ◼   ► - One thing that really has surprised me

00:11:17 ◼   ► is the smart keyboard on the 9.7 is totally usable.

00:11:21 ◼   ► I wrote this big thing before they shipped it

00:11:23 ◼   ► saying this is gonna be janky.

00:11:25 ◼   ► - Everyone, like Jason said the same, right?

00:11:27 ◼   ► Like he had absolutely no hopes for it, but you use it.

00:11:30 ◼   ► And it's like, oh, this is perfectly fine.

00:11:33 ◼   ► - It's not as, I don't think it's as good

00:11:35 ◼   ► as the 12.9 keyboard.

00:11:37 ◼   ► I prefer the larger one.

00:11:38 ◼   ► In fact last night I was using both.

00:11:40 ◼   ► Okay, I've been using the small one for like a week.

00:11:43 ◼   ► - Oh, I thought it was in a box.

00:11:45 ◼   ► - Ah, box it.

00:11:46 ◼   ► - Sneaked out of the box, ah, yeah.

00:11:48 ◼   ► - It's nuts, back in the box.

00:11:49 ◼   ► The smaller keyboard is not as good,

00:11:53 ◼   ► but it's perfectly serviceable,

00:11:55 ◼   ► and definitely a lot lighter.

00:11:56 ◼   ► You pick up the little one,

00:11:58 ◼   ► and then you pick up the big one,

00:11:59 ◼   ► and you're like, holy moly,

00:12:00 ◼   ► this one is made of lead and concrete.

00:12:02 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:12:03 ◼   ► - Anyways, so that's going on.

00:12:05 ◼   ► I will follow up with what I decide to do.

00:12:07 ◼   ► keep both iPads.

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00:14:49 ◼   ► So some news broke last week, which is not big news, but I think it kind of follows on

00:14:54 ◼   ► for a bunch of things that we've spoken about in the past, which is Evernote has announced

00:14:58 ◼   ► some new pricing tiers.

00:15:02 ◼   ► It's kind of a bit tricky, I think, to understand what's happening here, which is part of the

00:15:07 ◼   ► problem.

00:15:08 ◼   ► Like if you're going to announce some pricing changes, make them clear, and at least I don't

00:15:11 ◼   ► feel very clear on this.

00:15:14 ◼   ► Do you have a handle on what's going on?

00:15:16 ◼   ► Yeah, they're discharging more.

00:15:18 ◼   ► Alright but there's also like the free plan now you can only have

00:15:23 ◼   ► certain amount of devices or something like that.

00:15:25 ◼   ► So it's really two things so the the if you just sign up and sync it for free you are now limited to two devices

00:15:33 ◼   ► so if you are using a phone and six iPads and a computer like you are you have to pay

00:15:40 ◼   ► and if you are paying those prices have now gone up a noticeable amount.

00:15:46 ◼   ► It's actually the second time I think that Evernote's bumped pricing in the last 12 months.

00:15:51 ◼   ► You know they've...

00:15:54 ◼   ► I think the bigger more interesting thing is here is like how is Evernote doing as a business?

00:15:58 ◼   ► And my guess is not super well.

00:16:02 ◼   ► I think anytime you put up prices like this it's because you need the money.

00:16:06 ◼   ► Yeah and...

00:16:08 ◼   ► Something isn't balancing right? Which is why you put up the price.

00:16:10 ◼   ► And you know they've let some people off which is always hard to see and

00:16:15 ◼   ► got a new CEO and you know Evernote is in the unicorn club of the valuation

00:16:23 ◼   ► over a billion dollars but a lot of people have speculated I think including

00:16:27 ◼   ► us that they may be the first of those companies to to not make it and I think

00:16:32 ◼   ► that the the reasoning is that you know they are now competing in a space that

00:16:39 ◼   ► has many more options than it did when they launched and Evernote has

00:16:44 ◼   ► not focused on in my opinion not focused

00:16:46 ◼   ► on the things they need to focus on to

00:16:48 ◼   ► stay ahead where if they had made their

00:16:51 ◼   ► clients better and had worked on

00:16:54 ◼   ► importing and exporting and worked on

00:16:56 ◼   ► syncing without conflicts multiple

00:16:58 ◼   ► people as opposed to a weird retail

00:17:01 ◼   ► business then maybe they wouldn't be in

00:17:04 ◼   ► this place but many Apple people at

00:17:05 ◼   ► least including myself have completely

00:17:08 ◼   ► moved to notes which is built in and

00:17:09 ◼   ► free and works with iCloud and does

00:17:12 ◼   ► everything I needed out of Evernote

00:17:13 ◼   ► except for sharing and now that's coming this fall.

00:17:16 ◼   ► So they have increased competition, they haven't focused on what made them great, and now I

00:17:21 ◼   ► think they're suffering for it, which really stinks.

00:17:24 ◼   ► I hope them well.

00:17:28 ◼   ► And I hope that they can figure it out, but it just really seems like it may be too little

00:17:31 ◼   ► too late.

00:17:32 ◼   ► So I am an Evernote subscriber and I'm very confused.

00:17:36 ◼   ► This is part of the problem.

00:17:37 ◼   ► I don't know what's happening here.

00:17:38 ◼   ► So I've not got any email from them about this yet.

00:17:42 ◼   ► And I am currently on Evernote Premium,

00:17:45 ◼   ► and I pay three pounds 99 pence a month.

00:17:48 ◼   ► But when I look at their subscription plans,

00:17:50 ◼   ► that's what Plus is now, and Premium is a different price.

00:17:53 ◼   ► So I have no idea what's gonna happen.

00:17:55 ◼   ► Like I'm kind of a bit confused

00:17:59 ◼   ► as to what is happening with my Evernote account.

00:18:02 ◼   ► And I'm happy to pay, like, I mean, even now,

00:18:04 ◼   ► like I'm looking at like $3.99 a month

00:18:06 ◼   ► when I honestly use it a few times a year.

00:18:09 ◼   ► And I'm thinking about trying to see

00:18:11 ◼   ► if I can migrate stuff away from Evernote.

00:18:13 ◼   ► What I use Evernote for now

00:18:15 ◼   ► is just to email travel documents to.

00:18:18 ◼   ► So when I book rooms and I book flights,

00:18:21 ◼   ► I like to save the PDFs basically somewhere.

00:18:25 ◼   ► And I've always done it in Evernote.

00:18:26 ◼   ► So then, you know, they're not PDFs,

00:18:28 ◼   ► but like they're full rich text,

00:18:30 ◼   ► like forwarded versions of the emails, which I do.

00:18:32 ◼   ► and that requires plus or premium to be able to do that and

00:18:36 ◼   ► Also because I have so many devices I would have to have plus or premium now

00:18:40 ◼   ► $3.99 a month like I'll keep playing that for now like if that's what it's gonna be

00:18:45 ◼   ► But if they want to put up my pricing which they've may very well

00:18:49 ◼   ► And I don't know if it's like because I pay through iTunes or something like they're struggling to get in contact with me

00:18:54 ◼   ► I don't really know what's going on

00:18:56 ◼   ► But if they're gonna put it up

00:18:58 ◼   ► I don't know how I feel like I might stick with $3.99

00:19:02 ◼   ► But it's making me think like I'm moving a lot of stuff away like so when I take a trip now

00:19:07 ◼   ► I make like a plain text note of all of this stuff like all of my confirmation

00:19:11 ◼   ► Numbers and all of my addresses and stuff because I like it all to be in the notes app

00:19:15 ◼   ► but I'm considering

00:19:18 ◼   ► changing and as

00:19:20 ◼   ► In an out land says in the chat room

00:19:22 ◼   ► Maybe this will be one of the key features of one two three note taker is to allow all of this

00:19:26 ◼   ► Rich text import clearly that I can pull this in there and then I don't need Evernote at all

00:19:30 ◼   ► But it's making me rethink it simply because like Evernote has now popped themselves back into my brain again

00:19:36 ◼   ► Where previously they were kind of just like a dumb silo, but now it's like oh company's here forgot about you

00:19:41 ◼   ► And now I don't know I'm thinking about it

00:19:44 ◼   ► Like I really wished that Apple would have some kind of I don't know like

00:19:48 ◼   ► Way to make this work for me in the notes app like take an email and save it there and maybe I just need to

00:19:53 ◼   ► Find a new like locker of some description, you know

00:19:56 ◼   ► I use airmail and airmail could turn those into PDFs super easily.

00:20:00 ◼   ► So maybe I just have to take these PDFs of these emails that I get and save them

00:20:05 ◼   ► to something else that stores this stuff. I don't know.

00:20:08 ◼   ► Yeah I make PDFs and just save them to Notes directly because you can

00:20:13 ◼   ► double tap them and open them as full screen PDFs.

00:20:17 ◼   ► That's a good point. Maybe I should just do that.

00:20:18 ◼   ► That works really well for me.

00:20:19 ◼   ► Yeah I hadn't thought of that. I always forget that the Notes app can handle PDFs.

00:20:23 ◼   ► Yep, it's great. So that's how I do it. And so I had a WWDC notebook. I actually

00:20:31 ◼   ► just got rid of it the other night. And so there was a note for flights, a note for

00:20:34 ◼   ► Airbnb, and I could go in there, I could open the PDF, and it was, you know, straight

00:20:39 ◼   ► from my Expedia account telling me, you know, all my flight information. Not as

00:20:44 ◼   ► seamless as forwarding an email, but it's pretty quick. And, you know, for me, we've

00:20:49 ◼   ► talked about when it came out, I wrote a big thing on it, notes is really good. And

00:20:53 ◼   ► And there are a few things that bug me,

00:20:55 ◼   ► especially in the Mac client,

00:20:56 ◼   ► but a lot of those, including the font size,

00:21:00 ◼   ► are actually fixed in Sierra.

00:21:02 ◼   ► And so they have continued to work on it,

00:21:04 ◼   ► and adding sharing is a huge thing.

00:21:07 ◼   ► And they're slowly chipping away at these other services,

00:21:11 ◼   ► but seeing Evernote struggling to make sense

00:21:16 ◼   ► of a business model in a world

00:21:18 ◼   ► where that particular business model

00:21:22 ◼   ► not be relevant anymore is hard to watch and it'll be interesting to see if they

00:21:28 ◼   ► can pull it off and maybe they can do this and the hardcore

00:21:31 ◼   ► event people will stay and it's enough maybe they have to continue to tinker

00:21:36 ◼   ► with it but either way it was it was disappointing to see and difficult to

00:21:39 ◼   ► see because I used it for years and and really did enjoy it I just you know have

00:21:46 ◼   ► have moved on. Yeah for sure. So talking about moving on. Hackintosh's. Why are we

00:21:55 ◼   ► talking about hackintosh's again? Because it's 2009. I forgot about that. No so this guy

00:22:04 ◼   ► Myke Rundle. Myke Rundle wrote a medium post. We'll put a link to it and my

00:22:12 ◼   ► article in the show notes. Basically Myke put together a $1200

00:22:18 ◼   ► hackintosh and he writes all about it in this medium post. He goes into like a

00:22:22 ◼   ► lot of nerdy detail about the processor and the RAM and power supply, all

00:22:26 ◼   ► the stuff. He has a picture of like these boxes from Newegg with all of

00:22:31 ◼   ► his computer guts in it and he puts it together and it runs OS X. And I found it

00:22:37 ◼   ► really interesting for a couple of reasons.

00:22:39 ◼   ► firstly I did this back in 2009 on a couple netbooks and back then it was

00:22:45 ◼   ► the Dell Mini 9. It was super simple to do. You basically just put a disk in and

00:22:52 ◼   ► had your drivers and you were you were good to go.

00:22:55 ◼   ► And I kind of assumed when I left that behind that it had sort of faded away

00:23:00 ◼   ► and you would hear every now and again about it but building a cantoshes is

00:23:05 ◼   ► like still going on and really in a big way. And so there's this website he

00:23:12 ◼   ► Myke links to it and talks about it called tonymacx86.com that has tutorials

00:23:17 ◼   ► and forums and updates and like parts lists that they put together every month

00:23:22 ◼   ► so like they keep up with all these different parts you can use and so if

00:23:26 ◼   ► you just want to go and like go down their shopping list and buy all these

00:23:28 ◼   ► parts put your own computer together.

00:23:31 ◼   ► Well what's most interesting to me is why people do this.

00:23:35 ◼   ► I think there are primarily two reasons, and I'm curious Myke to see what you think about

00:23:39 ◼   ► these.

00:23:40 ◼   ► The first is I think that people just like to tinker.

00:23:42 ◼   ► There's something that people find really attractive about putting their own anything

00:23:48 ◼   ► together, especially computers, right?

00:23:49 ◼   ► That knowing every component, knowing every connection, being able to go in and take a

00:23:54 ◼   ► part out and replace it with something new.

00:23:57 ◼   ► That is very enjoyable to a lot of people and I totally get that.

00:24:03 ◼   ► I have things in my life that I am that way about, just not my Macs.

00:24:08 ◼   ► But I think too, and I think that Myke writes about this, is that I think some of this comes

00:24:13 ◼   ► from a frustration with the stagnation of Mac hardware.

00:24:17 ◼   ► I feel like on the Mac rumors buying guide everything is lit up red.

00:24:21 ◼   ► The Mac Pro hasn't been updated in about 72 years.

00:24:25 ◼   ► And there are people who need high-end Macs that Apple can't service because their stuff

00:24:30 ◼   ► is all aging.

00:24:32 ◼   ► And you know maybe we're right around the corner from all this stuff being updated.

00:24:35 ◼   ► I surely hope so.

00:24:38 ◼   ► But you know if you need a custom built computer for like a very particular thing then maybe

00:24:45 ◼   ► hackintosh is the way to go where you can squeeze a lot more CPU out of a machine running

00:24:50 ◼   ► OS X than anything you can buy from Cupertino.

00:24:53 ◼   ► And if you are in that situation and you're willing to take the trade-offs, which we can

00:24:59 ◼   ► talk about in a second, then maybe it's a viable thing.

00:25:02 ◼   ► I don't know, what do you think, Michael?

00:25:04 ◼   ► How do you feel about the tinkering thing in particular?

00:25:07 ◼   ► I don't feel it.

00:25:10 ◼   ► For hardware products, I just don't get it.

00:25:14 ◼   ► The idea of...

00:25:16 ◼   ► The reason I'm a Macintosh owner is because I don't want to build a PC.

00:25:20 ◼   ► One of the clear reasons that I love my Macs is because I don't have to think about buying

00:25:26 ◼   ► the correct graphics card, buying the right RAM that will work with the CPU that I'm buying.

00:25:31 ◼   ► I just don't, I've never really had a feeling for that.

00:25:33 ◼   ► I've never built a PC.

00:25:35 ◼   ► It's just not something that I'm interested in doing.

00:25:37 ◼   ► But I know that there are people that want to do it.

00:25:39 ◼   ► And I guess for people that were PC users maybe in the early 2000s and used to build

00:25:45 ◼   ► their own gaming PCs and stuff, and then they've moved over to the Mac because they like OS

00:25:50 ◼   ► 10. I can see how it is a thing that you might be difficult to let go of, so you might want

00:25:55 ◼   ► to get back into it. And I don't really think that's why Myke Rundle did this. He seems

00:26:00 ◼   ► to be more in the camp of "I'm upset of how long I'm waiting to buy this hardware that

00:26:06 ◼   ► is more expensive and then it just sits on the shelf and gets old." And I can understand

00:26:12 ◼   ► that, but I know this will upset the people that feel this way. I just feel like that's

00:26:18 ◼   ► part of what you're doing here. This is just something you need to accept if you're in

00:26:23 ◼   ► the Macintosh world. That products are updated maybe once every couple of years and sometimes

00:26:30 ◼   ► you're going to be on something that's not so great for you. And I know that there's

00:26:33 ◼   ► been a lot of discussion on ATP recently about the Mac Pro and trust me I get it. There are

00:26:37 ◼   ► certain computers that Apple makes that just fall by the wayside and if you're the type

00:26:43 ◼   ► of person that wants hardware to be at the bleeding edge, you shouldn't be buying a Mac

00:26:48 ◼   ► Pro, maybe the iMac is the right machine for you because it does get updated more frequently.

00:26:55 ◼   ► But I can see how it can lead someone down the path of wanting to build their own computer

00:27:00 ◼   ► because then they can dictate how fast it is and they can upgrade it as they want to.

00:27:05 ◼   ► And I know that was why the cheese grater was so popular with a lot of people because

00:27:09 ◼   ► it was expandable.

00:27:10 ◼   ► And whilst the Mac Pro is kind of to a point, the current one, a lot of the parts that people

00:27:16 ◼   ► want to be able to upgrade they can't because either it's one that is not upgradeable or

00:27:22 ◼   ► is a very specific type of part that just isn't really made right like there are some

00:27:26 ◼   ► weird connectors and stuff that people don't really make a lot of stuff for am I right

00:27:30 ◼   ► in thinking that? Yeah I mean everything is like custom inside

00:27:36 ◼   ► that the new trash can design and Apple's point of view is like if you want to expand

00:27:41 ◼   ► do whatever Thunderbolt was like great no one wants to do that so it definitely

00:27:46 ◼   ► was a big step backwards from the the cheese grater design where you could

00:27:50 ◼   ► open it and put you know like Syracuse is still in life support with a new

00:27:54 ◼   ► graphics card and you can put SSD in over the PCI bus so you can do lots of

00:27:59 ◼   ► stuff in it that you just can't do even in the current one and it's you know

00:28:04 ◼   ► it's something to think about when when you're buying a system of when was it

00:28:09 ◼   ► last updated and and I generally am one

00:28:12 ◼   ► to say if you need a computer go buy a

00:28:13 ◼   ► computer and fine print by the most

00:28:17 ◼   ► computer you can afford like my macbook

00:28:18 ◼   ► pro is almost decked out I didn't do the

00:28:22 ◼   ► dual GPU thing but other than that like

00:28:25 ◼   ► the biggest SSD I could put in it like

00:28:27 ◼   ► because I'm going to use it for a long

00:28:29 ◼   ► time right and I know that if I spend a

00:28:32 ◼   ► little money on the front end I'm gonna be

00:28:33 ◼   ► happier in the long run because because

00:28:34 ◼   ► I can't open it and put a bigger drive

00:28:36 ◼   ► anymore but what's where these people are falling into the pressure point is

00:28:43 ◼   ► that I need a computer to do X right these these high-end applications and

00:28:48 ◼   ► Apple's hardware is just just languishing and that's really frustrating

00:28:53 ◼   ► if you need to get work done on something that you know just can't just

00:28:57 ◼   ► can't cut it anymore but it's kind of the other side of this is all the the

00:29:03 ◼   ► trade-offs right so you can go you can go build something. Well part of it is in

00:29:07 ◼   ► trying to actually put OS X on these machines. OS X people may remember this

00:29:13 ◼   ► from the the Intel switch there was a lot of hubbub about it then there's

00:29:18 ◼   ► actually in the hardware of a Mac there are checks that OS X looks for and says

00:29:26 ◼   ► am I running on a valid Macintosh computer yes or no and so you have to

00:29:30 ◼   ► fake that. Apple uses some weird stuff with the Broadcom Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

00:29:37 ◼   ► chipsets for like continuity and handoff that are really difficult to to mimic

00:29:44 ◼   ► with third-party hardware. And the holy grail in this article is iMessage. I

00:29:49 ◼   ► didn't know this till I read this. iMessage apparently is tied to your

00:29:53 ◼   ► computer's like serial or MAC address and so they like spoofing that is very

00:29:59 ◼   ► difficult and there's some people have figured it out but it seems super

00:30:02 ◼   ► sketchy. If you're going to build something like this you have to be aware

00:30:06 ◼   ► that you are doing something outside the bounds of what Apple says you should do.

00:30:10 ◼   ► And so some things aren't going to work. Things like software updates are going

00:30:14 ◼   ► to be your enemy. You can't just run you know the new version of El Cabotan if

00:30:20 ◼   ► it comes out you know 10.11.6 or whatever because it could explode your entire

00:30:24 ◼   ► thing and so you're waiting on the community to say this update is safe if

00:30:28 ◼   ► you run these components, you may need this patch file to run it, login to change your

00:30:34 ◼   ► GPU driver, there's all these little things and there are people who, if you're into this

00:30:40 ◼   ► then that's fine, right? But this is not, like what I'm getting to, this is not a casual

00:30:45 ◼   ► users type solution. It also isn't really the solution for the

00:30:51 ◼   ► the majority of Mac owners. The majority of Mac power users aren't interested or in this

00:31:01 ◼   ► camp at all.

00:31:03 ◼   ► There are people that do this, and all of the things that don't work are flat out one

00:31:09 ◼   ► of the reasons I wouldn't do this. I don't want any of that stuff to not work. I don't

00:31:12 ◼   ► want graphics card issues, I don't want audio issues, I don't want iMessage problems. But

00:31:16 ◼   ► even just like the steps that Rundle runs down and how you actually install OS X onto

00:31:22 ◼   ► the computer, it's like, no. It makes me remember when I, you know, would unlock the bootloader

00:31:28 ◼   ► on an Android phone. It's like here is like ten steps where you don't fully understand

00:31:33 ◼   ► what you're doing and you just got your fingers crossed that you put everything in the right

00:31:35 ◼   ► order because otherwise it's all going to explode into a ball of flame. You know, I

00:31:40 ◼   ► am not criticizing anybody that does this. It's just merely pointing out that like there

00:31:45 ◼   ► is no bone in my body that wants to be involved in this. Especially like, I can't imagine

00:31:50 ◼   ► making the stuff that I need to make to earn my living on a computer that is sketchily

00:31:56 ◼   ► put together. I would be so scared that like at any moment it's just gonna stop.

00:32:01 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I agree. And when I was doing it back in 2009, that was not my main system.

00:32:07 ◼   ► I had a MacBook Pro, then I had this little Dell Mini 9 that was adorable with a leopard

00:32:12 ◼   ► on it that I would take the class and take notes on and knowing that you know

00:32:16 ◼   ► updates would would break it and that the battery life wasn't very good and

00:32:21 ◼   ► sometimes audio didn't work until you reset the PRAM like all this you know

00:32:25 ◼   ► all this stuff. It's interesting though that it's still a thing right that's

00:32:31 ◼   ► like the whole underlying thing of my post about it was like I had just assumed

00:32:34 ◼   ► this had all gone away but clearly it's still a a vibrant community and it'll be

00:32:41 ◼   ► interesting to see what happens in this community long term. I don't think Apple is

00:32:45 ◼   ► playing cat and mouse with this like they did with iOS jailbreaking

00:32:50 ◼   ► back in the day. Like do you remember like it's a jailbreak would

00:32:55 ◼   ► come out and then Apple would update just to block that jailbreak and to go back

00:32:58 ◼   ► and forth. And for a while Palm was sinking the PalmPourri through iTunes

00:33:02 ◼   ► and then cat and mouse it. Like I don't think Apple's doing that here. Maybe if

00:33:06 ◼   ► you run one of these you feel differently but from the outside my

00:33:09 ◼   ► My guess is that Apple just doesn't pay attention to this very much and that they're gonna do

00:33:13 ◼   ► this stuff for their hardware and if it breaks, Hackintosh is too bad, but if it doesn't,

00:33:17 ◼   ► then, you know, this very small community got off lucky.

00:33:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, the thing is, I think Apple probably feel about it now, is like, we know

00:33:25 ◼   ► we're gonna break this.

00:33:26 ◼   ► Like, people that do this, they're not like setting out to do it, but yeah, this is definitely

00:33:31 ◼   ► gonna happen, it's gonna break.

00:33:33 ◼   ► Right.

00:33:34 ◼   ► And what will happen to this community if Mac switched to ARM processors? Like, if

00:33:41 ◼   ► the MacBook ends up running the A12 system-funded chip from Apple instead of an

00:33:47 ◼   ► Intel chip, like, what happens in this community? Is it going to be even

00:33:54 ◼   ► possible to do? I guess it's no, or that it'd be much more difficult. And so it's, you

00:33:58 ◼   ► know, this community really didn't exist in the PowerPC days. It is a byproduct

00:34:04 ◼   ► product of Apple switching to Intel for the most part and what happens if Apple

00:34:08 ◼   ► switches away from Intel at some point and you know this is gonna be a thing

00:34:12 ◼   ► that is just locked to this period in the Mac's history but anyways still a

00:34:16 ◼   ► thing today I learned. What do you think about the idea of the Mac's going to ARM?

00:34:25 ◼   ► It's complicated I am looking at something like the MacBook you know the

00:34:33 ◼   ► the Intel Core M is just so slow could Apple deliver a faster MacBook for it

00:34:37 ◼   ► right on ARM then it would be a win for the MacBook.

00:34:43 ◼   ► If Apple could build ARM chipsets that were powerful enough for the MacBook Pro, the iMac, the Mac Pro

00:34:50 ◼   ► let's just say that's possible.

00:34:52 ◼   ► There's still a lot of trade-offs you have obviously you have another developer transition

00:34:58 ◼   ► even though they handled power PC to Intel really well. We'll put a link in the

00:35:02 ◼   ► show notes, actually just wrote a thing about that. It was fun reliving that.

00:35:06 ◼   ► There'd be a developer transition to deal with, but also you would lose

00:35:12 ◼   ► compatibility with Windows and while a bunch of us don't care about that,

00:35:17 ◼   ► people do need to run Windows and virtualization, they need to run

00:35:23 ◼   ► boot camp for things like cross-browser

00:35:26 ◼   ► development. You know, Casey Liss, our good

00:35:30 ◼   ► friend of the show, used to work on the

00:35:33 ◼   ► Microsoft stack. So he had a MacBook Pro

00:35:36 ◼   ► that he ran Windows on to get his work

00:35:37 ◼   ► done and he had to do that at work. It

00:35:40 ◼   ► was his job. And so what about all those

00:35:43 ◼   ► people? You know, all those people would

00:35:44 ◼   ► lose out because running Windows on a

00:35:47 ◼   ► virtualizing Windows on an ARM-based Mac

00:35:49 ◼   ► wouldn't work. It would be, you know, you'd

00:35:52 ◼   ► have to do all sorts of crazy stuff like we used to have to do in the PowerPC days. So

00:35:56 ◼   ► they're trade-offs. My hope is that Intel and Apple can work through these issues they

00:36:01 ◼   ► seem to be having and that we can stay on Intel because there are lots of benefits.

00:36:06 ◼   ► Why put developers to a transition on a platform that already is seeing developers slow down?

00:36:12 ◼   ► So you know what I mean? Why put a tax on Mac developers? You should be making Mac development

00:36:20 ◼   ► easier than ever. No, I didn't think of that. Mac development is slow now anyway. Imagine

00:36:27 ◼   ► what would happen if all of your Mac apps had to be re-engineered to run on the new

00:36:34 ◼   ► architecture. How many of them just wouldn't come with it? I think of all the tiny little

00:36:41 ◼   ► things that I use, like the streaming software that we use and stuff like that. I just can't

00:36:46 ◼   ► imagine a lot of that surviving. And that was true when they switched

00:36:52 ◼   ► until 11 years ago. A lot of stuff died off because a lot of developers had older

00:36:58 ◼   ► power PC apps that maybe they carbonized so they ran on OS X and all those just

00:37:02 ◼   ► kind of went away and a lot of them were replaced with new stuff right there's

00:37:05 ◼   ► always new developers who are foolish enough to get into it but it's like I

00:37:10 ◼   ► I just don't see the strategy tax being worth it.

00:37:17 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:37:18 ◼   ► I hope that they stay on Intel.

00:37:20 ◼   ► I hope that Intel can figure it out.

00:37:21 ◼   ► I hope the MacBook gets better.

00:37:24 ◼   ► If Apple switches to ARM, am I going to light myself on fire?

00:37:27 ◼   ► No, of course not.

00:37:28 ◼   ► We'll work through it as a community.

00:37:30 ◼   ► But either way, I don't think they're close.

00:37:32 ◼   ► There could be a ton of benefits, right?

00:37:35 ◼   ► Just a huge amount of benefits if they did do it.

00:37:39 ◼   ► if you remove all the bad stuff. Right, well they would have, they'd be able to do it in-house,

00:37:46 ◼   ► assumably, and Apple clearly likes that. They could really fine-tune it for what they

00:37:51 ◼   ► need. You know, a lot of the product decisions that go into the MacBook that people just

00:37:55 ◼   ► get mad about, there's a product decision that's dictated by the Intel chipset they're using.

00:37:59 ◼   ► Right, people are like, "Why is this in a Thunderbolt?" Well, the Core M doesn't support

00:38:02 ◼   ► Thunderbolt, so you don't get it. Like, Apple is working within the framework set up by

00:38:07 ◼   ► And yes there are things, yes chat room I'm aware of Rosetta, like there are things that could

00:38:13 ◼   ► that could ease this transition but I think that it'd still be too big of a

00:38:19 ◼   ► hurdle for a lot of people to do to jump on their own. Irrespective of something

00:38:26 ◼   ► like Rosetta existing, Rosetta went away. It did. You cannot run PowerPC code

00:38:34 ◼   ► anywhere. I think it went away in... I think in Lion.

00:38:39 ◼   ► And also like there's nothing to say that something like this could exist.

00:38:43 ◼   ► Right? Like I don't know about the architecture and why it could work, right?

00:38:48 ◼   ► Like the virtualization and that sort of stuff, but you know, there might just be not a way

00:38:51 ◼   ► to do it. You could run Windows on an ARM Mac but it would be like running

00:38:55 ◼   ► Windows on a PowerPC Mac way back in the day. It's gonna be very slow because you're

00:38:58 ◼   ► actually virtualizing the processors and everything as opposed to just creating a

00:39:02 ◼   ► virtual machine that runs on the same hardware. But I mean going back to the

00:39:06 ◼   ► the benefits for a second you know you would have something really fine-tuned

00:39:11 ◼   ► for the system you would have something where you control all the parameters you

00:39:14 ◼   ► would have something where assumably you could you could tune up for like the

00:39:20 ◼   ► right things so if you wanted a system that was really all about battery life

00:39:24 ◼   ► you could build a system with that in mind if you could look at the Mac Pro

00:39:28 ◼   ► and say we just need something that has more GPU power than anything else you

00:39:31 ◼   ► could build something to serve that. So

00:39:34 ◼   ► there are opportunities for Apple to

00:39:37 ◼   ► sort of more be more flexible with the

00:39:39 ◼   ► Mac hardware if they control the entire

00:39:41 ◼   ► thing but is that benefit worth the cost

00:39:45 ◼   ► to users the cost of developers the cost

00:39:49 ◼   ► to Apple in doing this like I have no

00:39:51 ◼   ► doubt that no doubt at all

00:39:54 ◼   ► the Mac OS Sierra is running on our Mac

00:39:55 ◼   ► somewhere now at Apple. They did it they

00:39:58 ◼   ► kept it up from next step to Tiger when

00:40:01 ◼   ► they switch to Intel, no doubt someone is doing that but there's a great cost in

00:40:08 ◼   ► making that change. I just don't know if Apple would see it was being even worth

00:40:11 ◼   ► it for the Mac at this point. I'm kind of hoping that the Mac's relative

00:40:16 ◼   ► popularity to iOS means that Apple's going to kind of leave the Mac alone in

00:40:19 ◼   ► this regard and just let it keep doing its thing and because you know while we

00:40:23 ◼   ► have stress right now about no updates

00:40:25 ◼   ► overall the Mac line is really good and it's better than it's ever been.

00:40:29 ◼   ► You look at something like the iMac you're sitting in front of now, Myke.

00:40:32 ◼   ► It's one of the best computers Apple's ever made. It's hands down.

00:40:35 ◼   ► Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm very happy with my iMac.

00:40:40 ◼   ► And I'm hoping that the next MacBook Pros would make me very happy too, right?

00:40:45 ◼   ► Yeah, me too.

00:40:47 ◼   ► I mean, so there's lots of opportunities for the Mac to continue to be great running on Intel.

00:40:53 ◼   ► They've got to get Skylake figured out. They've got to get stuff shipping again.

00:40:57 ◼   ► So I don't see this being a thing that we gotta worry about anytime soon.

00:41:01 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. I do feel like we would probably sooner be all iOS than Apple switching to ARM

00:41:10 ◼   ► for the Mac. I just don't see it, right? I just don't see that those two things are gonna happen

00:41:17 ◼   ► right other than that. I just feel like we'll be... iOS will be the dominant platform before

00:41:23 ◼   ► Apple makes a huge change from Intel to ARM for the Mac.

00:41:26 ◼   ► That's how I feel about it.

00:41:27 ◼   ► It would be interesting to see if I'm proved wrong,

00:41:30 ◼   ► but it just doesn't feel like it's gonna happen to me.

00:41:33 ◼   ► It just feels like a lot of work for the smallest platform.

00:41:38 ◼   ► - Well, yeah.

00:41:40 ◼   ► - In sales, in current sales now, right?

00:41:42 ◼   ► Like what they, I know that I kind of upset a lot of people

00:41:46 ◼   ► there, but like if you look at what's being sold, right?

00:41:50 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, no, no, no, no, I'm not upset about that.

00:41:52 ◼   ► I was going to make a watch OS joke.

00:41:54 ◼   ► Hey, we don't know, man.

00:41:55 ◼   ► Maybe they're selling more watches.

00:41:57 ◼   ► They're not selling more watches.

00:41:58 ◼   ► But maybe they are.

00:41:59 ◼   ► We don't know.

00:42:00 ◼   ► That would make me sad.

00:42:01 ◼   ► Oh, can you imagine?

00:42:03 ◼   ► If they sold more watches than they sell iPads, I would cry.

00:42:06 ◼   ► At that point, we can all just quit.

00:42:08 ◼   ► Me, you, Federico, we're done at that point.

00:42:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:42:11 ◼   ► So that's a--

00:42:13 ◼   ► I mean, I did not expect to talk about ARM versus Intel

00:42:16 ◼   ► today with you.

00:42:17 ◼   ► I don't feel like I'm sufficiently qualified

00:42:19 ◼   ► to have that discussion.

00:42:21 ◼   ► I apologize to you.

00:42:23 ◼   ► - It's called John.

00:42:24 ◼   ► So it's, anyway, so the hagintoshing is still a thing.

00:42:27 ◼   ► People are still doing it.

00:42:29 ◼   ► I don't have any desire to round all this out.

00:42:33 ◼   ► I don't have any desire to do this,

00:42:34 ◼   ► even though it would seem on paper

00:42:36 ◼   ► like this is right up my alley.

00:42:37 ◼   ► How I closed my blog post was like,

00:42:39 ◼   ► this is a young man's game.

00:42:41 ◼   ► Like I'm with you, I need my Mac to be rock solid every day.

00:42:45 ◼   ► And even though my MacBook Pro has like sketchy old

00:42:47 ◼   ► Intel stuff in it, that makes me a little sad.

00:42:50 ◼   ► it is reliable and it is consistent and that's what I want out of my Mac. I want

00:42:56 ◼   ► to be able to open it each day, I want to come up to my desk and wake it up and I

00:42:59 ◼   ► want to get my work done on it. I don't want to have to worry about a software

00:43:05 ◼   ► update that ran overnight and broke my audio driver because I'm a podcaster I

00:43:09 ◼   ► need that to work and you know for me like as great as this is and it's like

00:43:13 ◼   ► part of my brain is really tempted like buy a bunch of parts and build a computer

00:43:17 ◼   ► I need my Mac to be a workhorse and I don't have time or the like patience

00:43:26 ◼   ► patience or like the ability to be distracted enough to to deal with all

00:43:32 ◼   ► the sites if they would come with it.

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00:45:29 ◼   ► Federico you've returned! I have. I'm alive. I'm here. We told the world that you party

00:45:35 ◼   ► too hard for 4th of July, so they all know now, so you can't hide the secret.

00:45:39 ◼   ► Why would I do that?

00:45:41 ◼   ► Exactly! Why would you do that? It doesn't make any sense.

00:45:43 ◼   ► No, it was just an ISP thing, and I know that now Steven's gonna make a joke about ISP on

00:45:50 ◼   ► fire, but yeah, ISP travels again, but now it sort of works, but I'm still waiting for

00:45:59 ◼   ► Anyway, I don't party for the 4th of July.

00:46:02 ◼   ► I just watch the tweets go by with the pictures of the fireworks and hamburgers and whatever

00:46:09 ◼   ► it is that Americans do.

00:46:11 ◼   ► Flags, I guess.

00:46:12 ◼   ► That sums it up.

00:46:13 ◼   ► I watched the John Cena video, which was pretty awesome.

00:46:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I freaking love that video.

00:46:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:19 ◼   ► I'm back just in time, guys, for a change.

00:46:25 ◼   ► And that change is the second beta of iOS 10, finally.

00:46:28 ◼   ► Yeah, so that's out now. We have the second beta and there are some changes that are notable

00:46:35 ◼   ► that I think might be worth mentioning today. One of them is a bunch of changes to messages.

00:46:42 ◼   ► And a lot of it is focused around stickers. So over the weekend, in the actual app store,

00:46:51 ◼   ► the current app store, the sticker packs started popping up quite randomly. And I think unexpectedly,

00:47:00 ◼   ► right? We had Smiley's, Hans and the Hearts and the classic Mac sticker packs pop up.

00:47:05 ◼   ► Which didn't really make any sense. And if you downloaded them, and if you do download them on

00:47:10 ◼   ► iOS 9, kind of nothing happens. Like you just press download and then it says the word "add"

00:47:16 ◼   ► and then you press the add button and nothing happens to them, which I really like.

00:47:21 ◼   ► And it's cool to see that they put these in there and that we can see now that they've put them in

00:47:26 ◼   ► because there has been I think a bit of an overhaul of the stickers and the iMessage stuff

00:47:30 ◼   ► in beta 2. It's still buggy of course but it is now responsive. I think you would agree with me

00:47:38 ◼   ► Federico that in beta 1 a lot of the sticker stuff was it was basically not worth using.

00:47:43 ◼   ► It was awful, just unusable. They wouldn't scroll, they wouldn't load, and it was just terrible.

00:47:49 ◼   ► I was trying to send stickers to John, an iMessage, and I was trying to send a bunch to you, but it was just terrible.

00:47:58 ◼   ► It wouldn't work. So I just installed iOS 10 on my beta 2 on my iPhone. They do work now, it's still not great, and still clearly not finished.

00:48:10 ◼   ► And it's obviously a beta. And the scrolling is all janky. And opening the bottom drawer

00:48:16 ◼   ► to view the currently installed apps, it's also kind of buggy. Sometimes the... I mean,

00:48:23 ◼   ► all of the issues that you would expect from a beta. And rest assured, we have filed radars

00:48:28 ◼   ► already. And when you go to the App Store, there's some crashes. But I feel like the

00:48:35 ◼   ► basic idea is in there right now, which is you can tap on this grid icon in the bottom

00:48:41 ◼   ► left to open this panel, which is sort of like a whole new home screen just for iMessage,

00:48:46 ◼   ► and with that concept comes also the ability to rearrange these icons on this new home

00:48:52 ◼   ► screen. So you can tap and hold and you can move them around.

00:48:57 ◼   ► It does a weird thing for you to get out of this view though, which is, it's strange to

00:49:01 ◼   ► me that once those little iMessage icons are jiggling, the way that you stop them jiggling

00:49:06 ◼   ► is to press the home button, but you don't go home?

00:49:10 ◼   ► Nice private API used by Apple. I don't think any other app has done this

00:49:14 ◼   ► before, right? Like, you can press the home button and something else happens.

00:49:18 ◼   ► I don't think you can. I mean, like, even an Apple app.

00:49:23 ◼   ► Probably not an Apple app. Maybe the only instance I can think of would

00:49:28 ◼   ► be when you configure Touch ID and if you accidentally click the home button, it tells

00:49:32 ◼   ► you "Oops, you clicked the home button, maybe you're just supposed to rest your finger."

00:49:36 ◼   ► There you go. So the API exists, right? Yeah.

00:49:39 ◼   ► They just haven't used it before and now they use it for this. And it is kind of weird because

00:49:43 ◼   ► when I was trying to stop them from jiggling, I didn't know how to do it. And I was pressing

00:49:47 ◼   ► the home button because I was going to go and force quit the application, and I was

00:49:51 ◼   ► like "Oh, that's how it works!" So I would say that the most notable changes

00:49:57 ◼   ► that are going on and that will continue to happen, I think, is in the images app, which

00:50:05 ◼   ► lets you look up images and videos.

00:50:07 ◼   ► These images are both static images and pictures from Tumblr and Bing, as well as, if you try

00:50:15 ◼   ► beta 2, if you send a GIF to someone else, it says that they come from Giphy.

00:50:20 ◼   ► So we don't know yet if it's a partnership, if maybe Apple has teamed up with Giphy, which

00:50:25 ◼   ► would make sense because a lot of people actually have teamed up with Giphy and other companies

00:50:30 ◼   ► such as RifC. You know, companies are actually paying money to these other GIF companies

00:50:36 ◼   ► to access their databases. So it would make sense for Apple to team up with these folks.

00:50:40 ◼   ► But the interface is kind of terrible because it doesn't tell you when you search for an

00:50:44 ◼   ► image, it doesn't tell you if you're about to choose a static image or if you're about

00:50:48 ◼   ► to choose a GIF.

00:50:49 ◼   ► A 10 megabyte GIF, like the one you sent me.

00:50:52 ◼   ► multiple ones in fact. What is nice is, what I've sort of discovered is you can mix and

00:51:00 ◼   ► match these images and even animated GIFs with stickers. So as I tested with Myke, you

00:51:07 ◼   ► can sort of come up with your own personal creations of GIFs combined with the stickers,

00:51:13 ◼   ► with the Apple Hands and the Apple Smiley stickers, which can lead to some interesting

00:51:20 ◼   ► results. So I wouldn't be surprised if people will kind of have fun combining and mixing

00:51:26 ◼   ► these images and the GIFs and the stickers and whatever. Still, the feeling that I get

00:51:32 ◼   ► is that conversations in iMessage, if people start using all of these effects and the stickers

00:51:39 ◼   ► and the apps, can get quite busy. You know, there's a lot of stuff going on.

00:51:44 ◼   ► And also the reactions, which I forgot was there until today?

00:51:47 ◼   ► Tapback, which is also not a good name. But yeah, that's basically Slack reactions.

00:51:55 ◼   ► That's also kind of strange the way that it's implemented so far, because if you tap and

00:52:00 ◼   ► hold on a message that has text, but also a sticker, when you tap and hold, you get

00:52:06 ◼   ► both the reactions and the menu to open the sticker details. So it's crammed into a single

00:52:12 ◼   ► I'm not sure if that's the best choice.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Anyway, this beta 2 sort of confirms the fact that iMessage is going to be the highlight of iOS 10,

00:52:23 ◼   ► if only because there's so much stuff going on.

00:52:25 ◼   ► As of today as well, if you send any of the rich stuff in iMessages to an iOS 9 user, it now displays.

00:52:33 ◼   ► So previously, if you sent a sticker to someone, they just wouldn't see, you would have no idea.

00:52:37 ◼   ► have no idea. But now the stickers show up as PNG files. And when you send through things

00:52:44 ◼   ► like the effects, so if I send a slam, it will send a second message after the first

00:52:50 ◼   ► message that says sent with slam effect in brackets. And also the digital touches, if

00:52:56 ◼   ► you do a digital touch thing where like you maybe take a photo and you draw on it, or

00:53:00 ◼   ► if you send a heartbeat, they all come through as videos. So I think that this is really

00:53:05 ◼   ► interesting like what had to happen behind the scenes in between these two times that

00:53:10 ◼   ► means that this now works right that's an interesting thing to me where like nothing's

00:53:14 ◼   ► happened to iOS 9 in that time period but something has happened now.

00:53:20 ◼   ► On the server maybe.

00:53:21 ◼   ► Or the Mac I mean I got those on the Mac when you were texting me earlier got a little parenthetical.

00:53:26 ◼   ► Yeah it's the same on iOS the same on Mac it's it's it's just interesting that now we've

00:53:30 ◼   ► got this there's something happening in the background.

00:53:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I really hope that Apple changes the way that the behavior of rich links was in

00:53:39 ◼   ► the beta one, which is you need to confirm that you want to load the preview the first

00:53:44 ◼   ► time and then after that the rich links load with the rich preview by default.

00:53:50 ◼   ► And I really think there shouldn't be any confirmation of loading the rich preview.

00:53:55 ◼   ► I really can't think of a downside of having rich links with the preview on by default,

00:54:00 ◼   ► Besides the fact that they make the message bigger, I guess, or maybe that there's some

00:54:04 ◼   ► people who really want to see the raw link instead of a rich preview.

00:54:10 ◼   ► Or it may be that you don't want people, maybe it's like a privacy thing, you don't want

00:54:14 ◼   ► people sending things to your phone that you can't control.

00:54:18 ◼   ► Maybe that could be, or you don't want to waste data loading the featured image on a

00:54:25 ◼   ► cellular connection.

00:54:26 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a good point.

00:54:27 ◼   ► Yeah, that could be.

00:54:28 ◼   ► That could be.

00:54:29 ◼   ► taking notes from my review right now. Thank you Steven. It was very productive.

00:54:34 ◼   ► I really like that you can watch videos in the little preview. It doesn't, you know,

00:54:39 ◼   ► it just plays in line, at least on the iPad. I like that.

00:54:42 ◼   ► Yeah, with YouTube and Vimeo I think it works. Yeah, it's very nice. I almost wish that

00:54:48 ◼   ► Apple would have some kind of more serious partnership with YouTube to have like custom

00:54:52 ◼   ► controls for these video previews in iMessage, but I know that's never going to happen,

00:54:57 ◼   ► So not getting my hopes up too much, but it would be nice.

00:55:00 ◼   ► That ship has sailed.

00:55:01 ◼   ► Yeah, I know, it just loads the HTML video and that's it, but still, you know, in my

00:55:06 ◼   ► dreams that can happen.

00:55:08 ◼   ► There's a bunch of new widget stuff, so I'm so happy that they've made this change.

00:55:14 ◼   ► So with iOS 9 came news in the... what was it called when you said swipe over on iOS

00:55:21 ◼   ► 9?

00:55:22 ◼   ► Is it Spotlight Suggestions?

00:55:24 ◼   ► I want to say Proactive page.

00:55:26 ◼   ► Yeah, proactive. I think it's proactive. It would show news headlines at the bottom.

00:55:31 ◼   ► And the only way that you could remove these news headlines if you didn't want to see them

00:55:37 ◼   ► was to disable Siri suggestions, which meant that when you typed in names for people and stuff,

00:55:42 ◼   ► it didn't search Wikipedia or anything like that. So you just lost that functionality if you didn't

00:55:46 ◼   ► want to see the news. Like, I just don't want to see those headlines. Now, that is a news widget

00:55:51 ◼   ► that can be removed, which is fantastic.

00:55:54 ◼   ► So now I can get those Siri suggestions

00:55:56 ◼   ► without having to see the new stuff.

00:55:58 ◼   ► So that makes me very happy.

00:56:00 ◼   ► Widgets can now be accessed from anywhere again,

00:56:02 ◼   ► just from swiping down on Notification Center

00:56:05 ◼   ► and then across.

00:56:06 ◼   ► That would have been removed in certain parts of iOS,

00:56:09 ◼   ► but that's now uniform across everywhere.

00:56:11 ◼   ► And there's a Notes widget that's really cool.

00:56:14 ◼   ► It has your recent notes, and you can see to show more,

00:56:17 ◼   ► and it shows you your three recent,

00:56:18 ◼   ► and you can add new notes from there as well.

00:56:20 ◼   ► I like that, I can see myself getting a lot of use out of a notes widget.

00:56:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm really a fan of the whole breaking up all of these widgets,

00:56:31 ◼   ► all of these features from iOS 9 into standalone widgets in iOS 10.

00:56:36 ◼   ► And there's a lot of considerations to make about the design,

00:56:41 ◼   ► the behavior of the compact and expanded modes,

00:56:44 ◼   ► but I feel like it's better if maybe we wait until further betas,

00:56:48 ◼   ► because everything is in a state of flux right now, so even the design of the widgets and

00:56:54 ◼   ► the functionality and the way that legacy widgets can adapt to iOS 10, I feel like that's

00:57:00 ◼   ► going to change down the road.

00:57:02 ◼   ► But from my use over the past few weeks, I've started to use widgets a lot more, if only

00:57:08 ◼   ► because they show you more stuff and because Apple has way more useful system widgets.

00:57:15 ◼   ► For example, the weather one, I use it all the time now, when I'm on the lock screen

00:57:18 ◼   ► and I want to check on the forecast, I can just swipe over and take a look at the weather.

00:57:23 ◼   ► Or I can view the favorites, so I put in a bunch of shortcuts to call my mom with a normal

00:57:30 ◼   ► phone call or with FaceTime audio, and even to send an iMessage to Silvia.

00:57:35 ◼   ► So I feel like Apple has done a good job with the new system widgets, but I want to see

00:57:39 ◼   ► how developers will react and adapt to the new design and the two different presentation

00:57:46 ◼   ► modes.

00:57:47 ◼   ► I think it would have been kind of nice if you could just have these widgets on the first

00:57:51 ◼   ► screen rather than having to swipe to see them.

00:57:55 ◼   ► Like on the home screen?

00:57:56 ◼   ► Yeah, no, like on the screen that you see when you turn your device on or pick your

00:58:02 ◼   ► device up.

00:58:05 ◼   ► What about notifications?

00:58:06 ◼   ► Well, you could find a way to make that work.

00:58:08 ◼   ► Like notifications come in and push them down or something

00:58:11 ◼   ► and you scroll or notifications show in a different way.

00:58:14 ◼   ► But like there is utility there which would be kind of nice.

00:58:16 ◼   ► Like the weather one, for example.

00:58:18 ◼   ► Like the weather one could just live next to the clock

00:58:20 ◼   ► and it'd be no problem.

00:58:22 ◼   ► - I mean, my guess is they want apps to still be the focus.

00:58:27 ◼   ► But all of this work to make them accessible

00:58:31 ◼   ► from a swipe over or a swipe down,

00:58:33 ◼   ► like so much work is being put into making them

00:58:36 ◼   ► nearby, why not just put them on the home screen?

00:58:39 ◼   ► It seems like they're just refusing to do that,

00:58:41 ◼   ► but getting closer and closer to it.

00:58:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree.

00:58:45 ◼   ► It's like, if they wanna keep pushing this,

00:58:49 ◼   ► next, that's what it has to be, right?

00:58:51 ◼   ► Like, the I get the notes widget on my home screen.

00:58:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree.

00:58:55 ◼   ► - It feels like by now, they are trying so many ways

00:59:00 ◼   ► to do this without doing that, right?

00:59:03 ◼   ► Like the notes widget, for example, looks very similar to how a widget would look on

00:59:09 ◼   ► Android.

00:59:10 ◼   ► A couple of recent ones and then some quick action buttons.

00:59:13 ◼   ► Like Evernote widgets and stuff, that's how they look and they live on your home screen.

00:59:17 ◼   ► But they're like getting so close but they just won't take that final step.

00:59:22 ◼   ► And right now it feels like a principle thing, like to not disrupt the sanctity of the home

00:59:26 ◼   ► screen.

00:59:27 ◼   ► Yeah, that's more on principle really at this point because they truly believe in having

00:59:33 ◼   ► the app icons and all the other information separate.

00:59:37 ◼   ► I can see how maybe in the future this wall will come down.

00:59:42 ◼   ► But right now it's more useful than what it used to be.

00:59:46 ◼   ► But if you know how it works on other platforms, it can be awkward.

00:59:51 ◼   ► Because as you say, once you know, you start thinking, why is this not on the home screen?

00:59:58 ◼   ► Why do I need to swipe over?

01:00:01 ◼   ► I feel like we'll get there eventually and this looks like a first step. Or maybe a second

01:00:07 ◼   ► one.

01:00:08 ◼   ► App Store, Federico, is now enabled for Split View.

01:00:14 ◼   ► Well finally. I mean every time I'm putting together the newsletter and I need to switch

01:00:20 ◼   ► from my text editor to the App Store to look up an app description, I cry inside very much

01:00:28 ◼   ► on iOS 9. And now I saw a screenshot someone tweeted that the App Store can be used in

01:00:33 ◼   ► SplitView which makes me very happy. And I have reason to believe that last year it simply

01:00:38 ◼   ► wasn't done because they didn't have the time to update Apple Music and the App Store

01:00:42 ◼   ► with SplitView. So I guess they found it. So good news on the people who found the time

01:00:48 ◼   ► to make this happen. Thank you.

01:00:50 ◼   ► And just a couple of last quick, very quick points from 9to5Mac. Apple News is now a removable

01:00:56 ◼   ► application and the keyboard click sound has now reverted to the previous version

01:01:02 ◼   ► no why I didn't like the sound oh it was really funny no the sound didn't need to

01:01:09 ◼   ► change this is why we can have nice things the sound didn't need to change

01:01:13 ◼   ► why do you people you nerds and your crazy ideas this is the problem well I

01:01:19 ◼   ► would say the crazy idea was changing the sound you gotta turn those sounds

01:01:22 ◼   ► off turn them off it was lovely I have them off why would you keep it off it's

01:01:28 ◼   ► so nice because when I'm typing on my devices at two o'clock in the morning in

01:01:32 ◼   ► bed oh well I got okay sure but what about during the day what's the point in

01:01:37 ◼   ► having them on during the day it's it's feedback my devices are always on mute

01:01:44 ◼   ► no you don't need to hear the feedback because you're such a good typist

01:01:48 ◼   ► Look at you.

01:01:49 ◼   ► Wow.

01:01:50 ◼   ► It's a sick burn.

01:01:51 ◼   ► I don't know how to deal with that so we might as well just move on.

01:01:54 ◼   ► Federico, when these new betas come out, how does it affect the work that you've done?

01:01:58 ◼   ► I hope it ruins it.

01:01:59 ◼   ► I don't really know.

01:02:01 ◼   ► Wow.

01:02:02 ◼   ► It kind of does.

01:02:04 ◼   ► So thank you for reminding me.

01:02:06 ◼   ► So what happens then?

01:02:07 ◼   ► So like you've written a bunch of stuff knowing there's going to be more betas and the new

01:02:11 ◼   ► betas come out and then you have to go and change it.

01:02:14 ◼   ► Like what does that do to you?

01:02:16 ◼   ► Well the tricky part is trying to understand what's going to be a big idea, a big concept

01:02:27 ◼   ► that's not going to change and what is a small detail or a decision that can be reversed.

01:02:33 ◼   ► So during the writing and the research process what I struggle with all the time is trying

01:02:39 ◼   ► to put it all on the table, all of the features, all of the big and small ideas and separate

01:02:45 ◼   ► them into things that are big themes, core changes to iOS that are not gonna go away,

01:02:52 ◼   ► like the Siri API is not gonna disappear, or the seven features that are enabled for

01:02:58 ◼   ► Siri, those are not gonna change, but maybe everything else can be, smaller decisions

01:03:06 ◼   ► can be reversed, or can gain different settings, or can maybe an option is on by default, then

01:03:14 ◼   ► a later beta itself by default. So trying to separate those two aspects is what takes

01:03:20 ◼   ► a lot of my time. I'm going to give you a few examples. So I've started writing from

01:03:26 ◼   ► the introduction to the first sections of my review, which are going to be about the

01:03:34 ◼   ► lock screen and about the first things that you see, so the setup and unlocking a device.

01:03:40 ◼   ► And I had this section, or this mini section inside of the whole unlocking discussion in

01:03:50 ◼   ► the review, where I was talking about the behavior of the lock screen in iOS 10, and

01:03:56 ◼   ► how you need to click the home button, and how you can just rest your finger on the TouchID

01:04:02 ◼   ► sensor, and you can see a lock in the status bar, and it's a different process from iOS

01:04:07 ◼   ► 9, because it's now a two-step process.

01:04:10 ◼   ► can authorize without unlocking a device. And in beta 2, the behavior is still the same,

01:04:16 ◼   ► but there's a new option that I don't think is fully working yet, inaccessibility to unlock

01:04:22 ◼   ► a device just by resting your finger, which it's not clear what it does yet, but potentially

01:04:28 ◼   ► that will require me to update my review. And the status bar is also different now,

01:04:33 ◼   ► because besides the lock icon, there's also a message and a new animation. Or, for example,

01:04:38 ◼   ► I had another section that I wrote today, I was writing about lock screen widgets.

01:04:43 ◼   ► And I was covering how legacy widgets from iOS 8 and iOS 9 would be cut off in iOS 10

01:04:52 ◼   ► if they didn't update for the new design, which requires developers to have compact and expanded modes.

01:04:57 ◼   ► When you say cut off, do you mean that they would be shrunk?

01:05:00 ◼   ► Actually cut off.

01:05:01 ◼   ► Or do you mean like they won't exist anymore?

01:05:03 ◼   ► No, no, cut off visually. Like a long list, cut off in the middle.

01:05:07 ◼   ► example, like the fantastical widget if you have a lot of events and reminders, or the

01:05:14 ◼   ► workflow widget if you need to view a long list in a workflow inside the widget, it would

01:05:19 ◼   ► be cut off in the middle because the widget defaults to showing you compact mode.

01:05:24 ◼   ► And now it looks like there's some changes in beta too.

01:05:27 ◼   ► So I had a whole section talking about legacy widgets and the transition from old design

01:05:34 ◼   ► into a new design, and it looks like there are some changes in beta 2 which make legacy

01:05:41 ◼   ► widgets behave better, so they're no longer cut off, even if they don't support compact

01:05:46 ◼   ► mode, at least based on a few tweets that I saw and some tests that I ran on my iPhone.

01:05:52 ◼   ► So that will require me to update that section.

01:05:55 ◼   ► But see, it's one thing for a detail like that to change, because I have two paragraphs,

01:06:01 ◼   ► or maybe even just one, where I talk about this transition and what Apple could have

01:06:05 ◼   ► done to ease developers and users and their widgets into this new design, but that's no

01:06:11 ◼   ► big deal, right? Because I can just rewrite a single paragraph. What would be a problem

01:06:17 ◼   ► would be if a whole section, a whole feature changes in a major way, such as it's no longer

01:06:24 ◼   ► possible to start workouts with Siri. That's gonna be a problem. Or if Apple completely

01:06:30 ◼   ► changes the multilingual keyboard for example, and it turns out by beta 4 "well guys, sorry

01:06:36 ◼   ► we made a mistake, it's no longer possible to type in two languages". That's another

01:06:40 ◼   ► section that goes away. So I need to be careful picking the sections that I stopped writing

01:06:46 ◼   ► before. I felt comfortable starting from the lock screen, because I feel like what you're

01:06:51 ◼   ► gonna be able to do is pretty much gonna stay until the very last few betas, but as we saw

01:06:57 ◼   ► there can be some minor changes occurring between now and September, and I need to be aware of those.

01:07:03 ◼   ► But as long as those are minor changes, such as widgets no longer cut off, or there's a new status bar message,

01:07:10 ◼   ► or there's a new option in accessibility, that's okay.

01:07:15 ◼   ► It's of course a waste of time, in a sense, because I need to redo something that I've already done,

01:07:22 ◼   ► But if the final product is more complete, is more precise, there's a better explanation, I don't mind.

01:07:30 ◼   ► I would be upset if Split View in Safari goes away.

01:07:34 ◼   ► Well, that's a problem, right? Because it's a whole feature, a whole section that needs to be deleted or changed.

01:07:40 ◼   ► So, I would say... This is a very long answer, I'm sorry Myke.

01:07:45 ◼   ► No, I wanted to hear it.

01:07:46 ◼   ► I would say that the hardest part of this writing process is not the writing itself,

01:07:52 ◼   ► it's the decision behind the writing. It's the choosing which features are not going to change

01:07:57 ◼   ► and which ones are subject to potential improvements or reversals and whatever Apple does.

01:08:06 ◼   ► But now though, these changes to the home screen, you're not going to write them up now,

01:08:10 ◼   ► are you? You'll wait because now you know it's in flux.

01:08:12 ◼   ► Which ones specifically?

01:08:16 ◼   ► Any changes that happen on a home screen, like the way it unlocks, there's been an accessibility thing in there.

01:08:21 ◼   ► Like you can see, and the widget stuff, you can see so many things are going to change.

01:08:26 ◼   ► So I assume now you wouldn't make those changes now because there's potential for them to change as the further beta goes on.

01:08:34 ◼   ► So now, right, I have to leave that alone, I'll come back to it in beta 5 or whatever.

01:08:38 ◼   ► Exactly. So what I did is, as soon as I saw these changes, I opened my sheet, the section in Ulysses,

01:08:47 ◼   ► and I added a comment with my comment syntax in the document saying "see if the behavior has changed again in future betas".

01:08:58 ◼   ► Double check this setting. Or make sure that the option is still there.

01:09:02 ◼   ► And I do this all the time. When I come across something that I feel like is going to change,

01:09:08 ◼   ► or if I know that Apple is going to introduce a setting, or if maybe I see a lot of people

01:09:13 ◼   ► complaining about a change in beta 3 or beta 4, I make a note and I revisit by beta 5 or

01:09:19 ◼   ► the GM. I do that all the time.

01:09:22 ◼   ► Yeah, that makes sense. When a beta like this comes out, do you just spend a ton of time

01:09:27 ◼   ► just poking around in the corners?

01:09:29 ◼   ► Yeah, basically what I do is I... So a lot of people tweet at me about the changes, which

01:09:35 ◼   ► I really appreciate, by the way. Don't feel bad about tweeting at me with screenshots.

01:09:38 ◼   ► I love them. And so I fave those tweets.

01:09:42 ◼   ► Saves you work.

01:09:43 ◼   ► Exactly. I'm crowdsourcing the research. So I fave those tweets. I take a look at what

01:09:51 ◼   ► the blogs and the forums are saying around. I spent a lot of time on Reddit, a lot of

01:09:56 ◼   ► different blogs, just even to get an idea of what other people think, because it's my

01:10:02 ◼   ► job with the review is not just to talk about my experience, it's also to describe the potential

01:10:08 ◼   ► changes for a lot of different people and what they mean. So I take a look at a lot

01:10:13 ◼   ► of different sources, a lot of different places, and also what I do is I have a note in the

01:10:18 ◼   ► Notes app where I jot down stuff quickly, such as when Steven was telling me about stuff

01:10:24 ◼   ► that I needed to... we were talking about iMessage. So I made a note in the Notes app

01:10:29 ◼   ► just because it's faster, but then I move everything back into my iThoughts mind map.

01:10:35 ◼   ► By the way, yes, I moved from mind node to iThoughts because every year I do this, iThoughts

01:10:40 ◼   ► just works better for me. Still, mind node is excellent, so it just works better for

01:10:44 ◼   ► the review.

01:10:45 ◼   ► Why don't you just start with iThoughts if you always do this?

01:10:49 ◼   ► See, sometimes you think that you want to do things differently, but eventually just

01:10:53 ◼   ► go back to the old way. So I move everything back into the mind map, which is a huge mind

01:11:01 ◼   ► map at this point, with all kinds of different branches and sections. And when I spot a change,

01:11:09 ◼   ► I make a new node in the map. Then what I do is I collect all of these different tweets

01:11:15 ◼   ► and nodes and screenshots, which the screenshots I also save in the mind map for later, and

01:11:21 ◼   ► I write down like screenshot of Apple Music Beta 2.

01:11:25 ◼   ► Then if it's different in Beta 3, I also add the screenshot of Apple Music in Beta

01:11:29 ◼   ► 3 and I follow the entire process.

01:11:31 ◼   ► Because I also want to understand the reasoning of the designers and the developers at Apple,

01:11:36 ◼   ► I want to see what they think.

01:11:37 ◼   ► And keeping track of the betas is a good exercise in that.

01:11:41 ◼   ► And finally what I do is I download the release notes documents from the Apple website, save

01:11:47 ◼   ► it as a PDF and I highlight the differences and I make a note of like if Apple says that

01:11:54 ◼   ► this stuff is broken then I'm not going to write that section because it says so in

01:11:58 ◼   ► the release notes.

01:12:01 ◼   ► Thank you for another look into your review. I find this very fascinating.

01:12:06 ◼   ► I'm pleased to hear that. I hope it's not too boring.

01:12:09 ◼   ► So that's Beta 2 everyone. Steven do you have anything you want to add?

01:12:13 ◼   ► I was gonna say, I'm not running it so I'm being quiet in this section.

01:12:17 ◼   ► Do you guys feel like it's, obviously it's brand new, but does it feel like it's ready

01:12:23 ◼   ► for more people?

01:12:24 ◼   ► Does it feel like it's getting close to where a public beta is possible?

01:12:28 ◼   ► Or do you still think that's gonna be a dev beta 3 like it was last year?

01:12:32 ◼   ► I would say beta 3.

01:12:33 ◼   ► I would be surprised if a public beta comes out tomorrow.

01:12:36 ◼   ► I would be really surprised.

01:12:38 ◼   ► I feel like I poked around for 10 minutes.

01:12:41 ◼   ► I've tried on my iPad Pro and on the iPhone and I don't feel like it's ready for a public beta.

01:12:46 ◼   ► A lot of the things that I've tried are more stable, but it's still super shaky.

01:12:51 ◼   ► Right, like the messages stuff is like way better, but it still needs some work.

01:12:56 ◼   ► And the more I poke around of it, the more and more stuff that seems to be missing on the iPad,

01:13:02 ◼   ► like that was there before.

01:13:03 ◼   ► Like, it just seems like there's just, there's like leaking holes all over the place still,

01:13:08 ◼   ► which is kind of what you'd expect.

01:13:10 ◼   ► But this time the beta itself, even a beta one

01:13:14 ◼   ► was more stable than usual,

01:13:16 ◼   ► but it's still not like, it's still not public beta ready.

01:13:19 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

01:13:20 ◼   ► - As Federico said.

01:13:21 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:13:22 ◼   ► - If you wanna catch our show notes for this week,

01:13:24 ◼   ► head on over to relay.fm/connected/98.

01:13:28 ◼   ► Thanks again to our sponsors for this week's episode,

01:13:31 ◼   ► Ring, the Video Doorbell and Squarespace.

01:13:34 ◼   ► If you wanna find Federico online,

01:13:36 ◼   ► He's over at MaxStories.net and he is also on Twitter.

01:13:40 ◼   ► He's @Vittucci, V-I-T-I-C-C-I.

01:13:42 ◼   ► Steven is @ismh and he writes at 512pixels.net.

01:13:46 ◼   ► And I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E.

01:13:49 ◼   ► We'll be back next time.

01:13:50 ◼   ► Until then, thanks so much for listening.

01:13:52 ◼   ► Say goodbye, guys.

01:13:53 ◼   ► - Arrivederci.

01:13:54 ◼   ► - Adios.

01:13:55 ◼   ► [ Silence ]