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Connected

75: Explosion of Glue and Colors

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:06   From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode number 75.

00:00:10   Today's show is brought to you by Ministry of Supply and Igloo.

00:00:14   My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Mr. Steven Hackett.

00:00:17   Hello, Steven Hackett.

00:00:18   Hello, Michael Hurley.

00:00:19   And Mr. Federico Vittucci.

00:00:21   Buona sera to you.

00:00:23   Oh, buona sera, guys. How are you?

00:00:26   I went with that. I have no idea.

00:00:27   That could mean like happy cars.

00:00:29   - That's nice. - For all I know.

00:00:30   Was it good? - No, no, no.

00:00:31   It was good, Myke.

00:00:32   Well done.

00:00:33   - I'm very proud of myself right now.

00:00:35   - Yeah, you should be.

00:00:37   - Let's put a pin in it and do some follow-up.

00:00:39   - In the follow-up section of the show today,

00:00:43   we are returning to a whole smattering

00:00:47   of past topics released, starting off with Sonos.

00:00:51   We got some feedback that we potentially glossed over

00:00:55   how Sonos actually works.

00:00:57   Magic! Next point, please.

00:00:59   So it does stream from your phone if you're using local files like I am. I don't have an Apple Music or Spotify

00:01:10   collection or anything, so it is streaming music from my phone. But if you do use a service like that,

00:01:16   you go into the Sonos app and say, "Hey, play

00:01:18   this album from Apple Music," and then if your iPhone gets smashed,

00:01:22   it can still play because the Sonos is actually talking to those services directly.

00:01:27   and the phone is really just a controller at that point, if that makes sense.

00:01:32   So it's kind of like Chromecast then?

00:01:34   Yeah, it's kind of a hybrid of that and Airplay depending on what you're doing.

00:01:39   Right.

00:01:40   And it's... like the Apple Music stuff is still definitely in beta.

00:01:46   So like what's happening then is you're on your phone in the Sonos app and you're looking at Apple Music, right?

00:01:53   you say I want to play this song and then the Sonos goes to a URL, like you're triggering

00:01:58   the Sonos to reach a URL at Apple's server, right? And then it plays the music.

00:02:03   Right. That's my understanding.

00:02:05   So it's, you're not streaming it?

00:02:06   Right, it's only-

00:02:07   Could you turn it off? Could you turn your phone off and the music keeps going?

00:02:11   I would assume so, yes.

00:02:13   So it's got a mind of its own, that thing.

00:02:16   System audio is completely separate from the Sonos stream. Like you can receive phone calls,

00:02:21   you can watch a YouTube video and the Sonos doesn't care.

00:02:24   So, yeah.

00:02:25   - Well, there you go, magic.

00:02:28   - Yeah, I've been getting some errors personally.

00:02:31   I assume that's just one of the system limitations.

00:02:37   When you download Apple Music Tracks offline,

00:02:40   I try to play them on the Sonos

00:02:42   and it gave me a DRM error.

00:02:45   So, yay DRM.

00:02:47   And the second point I assume is just one of those issues with streaming services.

00:02:53   When you cache a track offline, it's in a protected file type and it cannot be streamed.

00:03:01   I kind of wish Sonos was able to work around this.

00:03:03   Maybe that's the reason why this is a beta.

00:03:05   Maybe eventually they will be able to stream even the cached tracks from Apple Music.

00:03:12   Right now all I'm doing is I just look for a song with a universal search in the Sonos

00:03:19   app, which is really nice now that I've added a bunch of services like SoundCloud and Apple

00:03:25   Music.

00:03:27   Like the other day I was looking for a remix of a song and instead of having to jump to

00:03:34   the SoundCloud app or looking on YouTube, I could have a unified search in the Sonos

00:03:39   app, which is really nice.

00:03:41   Maybe in the future we'll get a proper DRM playback for offline tracks.

00:03:47   Right now I get quite a few errors if I try.

00:03:51   Well it's beta.

00:03:56   We spoke also about the desire to listen to say Overcast or Pocketcast or some other audio

00:04:05   service or app that's not part of the Sonos ecosystem and we're going to point people

00:04:09   to a page over on GitHub. This guy's put together Air Sonos which is basically a

00:04:16   package that you run on your Mac. It has a bunch of dependency stuff. You've got

00:04:20   to install Node.js on your Mac which is super exciting if you haven't done that.

00:04:25   And it basically turns your Mac into an AirPlay device that then streams over to

00:04:33   the Sonos. So in my house I've got this set up on a Mac mini that I have running

00:04:37   and I go to AirPlay on my phone and it says "kitchen Sonos" and it just AirPlays

00:04:41   via the Mac and it gets the job done. There's definitely a delay. It

00:04:47   definitely at times can be a little heavy-handed on the Mac's processor but

00:04:51   it works and so I've been listening to podcasts in the kitchen doing dishes and

00:04:56   that sort of stuff from Overcast and it's not ideal but it's better than

00:05:00   nothing and so yeah if you're after that sort of solution then I think AirSonos

00:05:07   it's definitely the best one that I've tried so far.

00:05:10   - Seems dangerous.

00:05:12   That's for sure.

00:05:13   - It took me a while to install this thing on my Mac.

00:05:18   - Have you tried to do it on your iPhone?

00:05:19   Is that the problem?

00:05:20   - No, no, no, I needed to open the terminal

00:05:22   and type in a bunch of commands.

00:05:23   And they were like all text flowing down the screen.

00:05:27   It was like the matrix.

00:05:28   It was like the matrix, only uglier and without Carol Reeves.

00:05:32   - And more scary.

00:05:33   - And it was like, at some point it gave me an error

00:05:36   because I forgot to authenticate as a super user, whatever.

00:05:40   It's been years since I've been doing this stuff.

00:05:44   Eventually it worked, and it streams fine.

00:05:48   I mean, you just need to open the terminal and type "airsonos" and enter,

00:05:52   and it creates an AirPlay instance.

00:05:55   And the only problem, if you want to call it so,

00:05:58   is that there's like a delay between tapping a track

00:06:04   and getting the stream to play like one to two seconds.

00:06:08   It's no big deal and it works fine.

00:06:10   But you know, I wouldn't expect more

00:06:14   from this kind of work around,

00:06:16   so I would count that as a success, Steven.

00:06:19   Thank you for noticing this.

00:06:22   - You bet, you bet.

00:06:24   I played with a couple things

00:06:25   and a lot of them have been not updated in a while.

00:06:29   One basically would work unless you were running El Capitan,

00:06:32   which was a problem, but it gets the job done.

00:06:36   I feel like if you're nerdy enough to have a Sonos speaker

00:06:38   and want AirPlay, then this is not too far off

00:06:43   the reservation you can try.

00:06:44   So that'll be in the show notes.

00:06:47   Also, talking about Night Shift, we spoke about that

00:06:52   last week in depth, and we got some feedback from people

00:06:55   saying that they tried it in the beta

00:06:57   and then have gone and installed Flux on their Mac,

00:07:00   not realizing how great it was, which I found pretty funny.

00:07:02   But the the new 9.3 developer beta has night shift in control center, which is interesting

00:07:08   It's the first time I believe we've seen control center see really any change in a while

00:07:14   Yeah

00:07:16   I'm on the public beta. So I haven't seen this. Have you guys played with this yet? Yeah

00:07:21   It's nice that you can

00:07:25   control the night shift

00:07:28   Activation from control center. I'm not sure about the design of the icons

00:07:32   It's kind of all over the place right now.

00:07:34   It's creepy.

00:07:35   Yeah, the Control Center design is kind of inconsistent in many, many ways.

00:07:42   I assume there's going to be changes in iOS 10.

00:07:45   I mean, really, Control Center has been, since iOS 7, has been the perfect candidate for

00:07:50   extensions, you know, for developers to be able to say, "I want to offer a toggle for

00:07:55   Control Center."

00:07:57   Right now, you cannot customize anything off Control Center.

00:07:59   I assume it's coming eventually, as I tweeted yesterday.

00:08:03   Right now, the design of the icons at the top, at the bottom, and it's kind of a mixed

00:08:08   bag, I would say.

00:08:10   But it's useful.

00:08:11   I'm not sure about the eye icon.

00:08:16   The lamp that a few tech blogs posted from the Canadian Apple website was much nicer.

00:08:23   I assume that maybe the reason Apple used an eye is because every human being has an

00:08:27   and not every human being has a lamp.

00:08:29   That's my only explanation.

00:08:31   Anyway, it works okay. It works okay.

00:08:33   We'll see how it goes.

00:08:35   I was just playing around with this yesterday evening,

00:08:38   and it was at night, and I hit the button,

00:08:40   so I had night shift on, and I hit the button to turn it off,

00:08:42   and my eyeballs nearly exploded.

00:08:44   Yeah.

00:08:45   As it changed from the orange to blue light.

00:08:49   It really is such a big difference once you get used to it.

00:08:52   It's crazy.

00:08:53   It's crazy when you think about the fact that during the day,

00:08:55   day you see that blue light but as soon as it gets darker it's like "oh my god what are

00:09:01   you doing screen stop it you're too blue" it's like a morph screen really it's awful so yay

00:09:08   for night shift not sure about the icon but whatever as soon as it saves us time I'm okay

00:09:14   with the with the creepy eye. I guess my question is why you know under what circumstances would

00:09:20   you turn it off? And the only thing I came up with was if you're watching

00:09:24   video and it looks strange but you know past that I really don't see me like

00:09:30   going in and turning this on and off a bunch over time but I don't know maybe

00:09:35   maybe that'll prove differently once it's once it's out and especially I'm

00:09:39   not running on the iPad yet maybe on the iPad it's more noticeable but on the

00:09:43   phone I've been perfectly content just to let it do its thing and run on its

00:09:47   own schedule and it's been pretty great so far.

00:09:49   Yeah, I like it.

00:09:52   All right. Myke, there are two things in here I want to talk to you about next. One, this

00:09:59   domain that you were using for your Tumblr. And number two, this post on your Tumblr that

00:10:06   is going to... people are going to have feelings about. So what have you done?

00:10:11   Alright so the best way for me to describe this is to go backwards.

00:10:16   So yeah I bought some stickers.

00:10:20   I think I mentioned this at some point, I was on Sticker Mule, I was looking at their

00:10:23   marketplace and they have a bunch of great designs.

00:10:26   So I bought a big pack of stickers and they arrived yesterday.

00:10:29   And these stickers were specifically purchased for me to put on my iPad Pro because it was

00:10:34   looking a bit barren and I wanted to update it.

00:10:37   So I did that, I took a picture of it, I put it on Instagram but I also put it on my Facebook

00:10:41   my Tumblr blog so I could put some links so people could go get the stickers for

00:10:46   themselves because I figured people would want to do that and then I mean I

00:10:51   I own MykeWasRight.com and I believe if my memory serves it was transferred to

00:10:56   me from Carl's the Grey. If memory serves he bought this domain and transferred it

00:11:03   to me I think maybe I don't know that seems to be at least my own headcanon

00:11:07   that I've created. And when I tweeted the link out to this, I knew that people were

00:11:13   going to get angry about the stickers because some people, basically people either love

00:11:17   them or they think that I'm some sort of devil. So I decided that instead of using the imike.co

00:11:24   domain I would use, in a very subtle trolling way, mikegoesright.com for just that domain

00:11:29   because it would forward. And then I was talking to Casey and he just was kind of like, why

00:11:34   you just embrace it so I have and now my Tumblr blog is mikewasright.com and that's and it

00:11:41   says Myke was right right at the very top I'm embracing my personal brand. Yeah you're

00:11:45   really going for for the brand here Myke. It is very that green is very bright it's

00:11:51   it's very catching. Yeah I like it. So this the sticker deal. Uh-huh. Can we talk about

00:11:59   this picture like the elephant in the room what's going on here Myke? Well what's wrong

00:12:03   of it, it's awesome. Oh, okay. So I think we should have like a sticker made that only

00:12:10   says intervention and then I'm gonna, you know, send it to you. Seriously though, like

00:12:15   I know we're kidding. But I don't know why people get so mad. Because it's messy. No

00:12:21   man, but great. I don't like it when people line all their stickers up. I like the kind

00:12:26   of higgledy-pigglediness and also this device doesn't have one orientation. So you can't

00:12:31   have the stickers in one orientation. They've got to be all over the place. So whatever

00:12:34   way you're looking at it, it kind of all levels out.

00:12:38   You know that I also... I think I'm the opposite as you. For me, having stickers or complex

00:12:46   backgrounds on my phone, eventually it only gives me mental fatigue. I changed my iPhone's

00:12:53   background again to be a simple black wallpaper. Because I don't want to think about the responsibility

00:12:59   of figuring out what's the best wallpaper for me. Similarly, I wouldn't be able to

00:13:03   cope with the idea of which stickers do I like the most and where do I want to place

00:13:09   them. And so to me, looking at, I mean, this sort of collection of stickers, it makes me

00:13:15   anxious. It feels like another thing that I need to manage. And it's fascinating to

00:13:25   me that you're the exact opposite when it comes to, you know, I don't know. I guess

00:13:32   that when people like, I wouldn't say make fun of this, but when people almost can't

00:13:38   believe what you're doing, it's because they come from similar places as I do, which

00:13:44   is I, looking at this visual, how can you say that?

00:13:51   It's like a buffet of colours and imagery.

00:13:55   It's like an explosion of glue and colours.

00:13:59   But you see, this is like me.

00:14:04   This is how I look at this stuff.

00:14:05   So these stickers, these are things that I do, these are things that I love, and I do

00:14:10   and love many things.

00:14:12   And this, like, the sticker thing for me is like it's just a way for me to express myself,

00:14:17   and so that's why I do it.

00:14:18   There's a bunch of things on here, like my iPad, my MacBook has got even more of them, right?

00:14:24   And it's more covered and over time what I expect is you will not see a piece of that grey on the iPad.

00:14:31   I'll cover the entire thing. I stick stickers over stickers.

00:14:34   Like I just, it's for me, it's like this is just stuff about me. This is stuff that I love.

00:14:39   This is an extension of who Myke is.

00:14:42   Yeah, you're one of those colorful persons.

00:14:45   Like there's Sylvia's aunt she has a fridge full of magnets and there's like hundreds of my grandma has on

00:14:51   I have to bring her back a magnet from every place. I visit I just look at the fridge and I worry

00:14:55   Like I don't know. He makes me it makes me

00:15:01   Worry inside. I don't know why yeah

00:15:04   I think this conversation with you is showing me that you are one of the people that complains

00:15:09   But you just don't complain because we're friends. Yeah. No, I don't complain. I love you Myke

00:15:14   You're one of the people that sends me tweets and they're like "what's wrong with you?

00:15:19   How can you live with yourself?"

00:15:21   That's the first type of stuff that I get.

00:15:22   People get really mad.

00:15:23   And I must point everyone back to that Apple ad with the MacBook.

00:15:29   You remember that?

00:15:30   The MacBook sticker ad?

00:15:31   No, it's not that I don't know how you can live with yourself.

00:15:34   As much as I think about myself and what...

00:15:40   I'm curious, you know, what's the process that's happening inside my brain that makes

00:15:44   me anxious when I look at such a picture?

00:15:47   Or the fridge with the magnets?

00:15:49   Like I'm more worried about myself than you, Myke.

00:15:52   The thing is, I think it is a difference in people, just the way that they are.

00:15:55   I am very much a person who likes organized chaos.

00:16:01   So my idea of tidy is different to other people's idea of tidy.

00:16:06   Okay, I think we're going somewhere here, yes.

00:16:09   For me, it's like I know where everything is. That's kind of my idea of tidy, is everything

00:16:14   has its place. But when people look at it, like you look at my desk and it looks like

00:16:18   it's just completely messy, but I know 100% where everything is on this desk because I

00:16:23   have arranged it. There's just lots of stuff on it. To me, tidy isn't nothing, it's just

00:16:29   everything being in its right place.

00:16:31   So every day, either before I start working or before I go to sleep, if the objects in

00:16:39   my house or in my room aren't completely placed precisely on a desk, like, nothing

00:16:48   is out of place, nothing is like in an oblique position, everything has to be either upright

00:16:54   or flat on a desk with no mess. I just feel, I just feel sticky. I just feel like something's

00:17:04   wrong, stressed. I feel very stressed. If like, like I'm looking at my desk right now

00:17:09   and my MacBook isn't precisely upright and it just makes me, I don't know, I feel like

00:17:18   a niche, you know? We are clearly built very differently, but

00:17:23   I have to just note one thing that Steven is conspicuously silent.

00:17:27   Well, I've tried the sticker thing, but...

00:17:32   You were putting stickers on laptops before me.

00:17:36   I was, not to this extent, and I have since recovered from my...

00:17:41   You relapsed though.

00:17:42   Sticker-ing ways.

00:17:43   I have no stickers on my laptop or my iPad.

00:17:46   You will do.

00:17:47   Eventually you will do.

00:17:49   And if I did, I try to be much neater than what you're doing.

00:17:58   So maybe I'm in between the two of you, but what I say, Myke, is that if that makes you

00:18:03   happy then you should do it because YOLO.

00:18:08   And I also just want to say the Vititi Seal of Quality, I don't have any more of those.

00:18:12   I've had people asking me, I don't have any.

00:18:14   I think it might have been my last one.

00:18:16   What a great sticker.

00:18:17   I definitely have like 50 right in this desk I'm sitting at.

00:18:21   - Well I want some, so you gotta give me that.

00:18:23   - I'll make that happen.

00:18:24   And really the question for me,

00:18:28   and I know what the answer is, but just for the record,

00:18:31   if you have a new sticker come into your life,

00:18:36   how do you handle that?

00:18:39   Because, what do you do?

00:18:41   - What do you mean, so I receive a new sticker?

00:18:44   - Yes.

00:18:45   - Well--

00:18:45   - That you want on the iPad.

00:18:46   I put it on. So you just layer it on? Yeah, I'd stack them. You can see they're already

00:18:52   starting to stack. BB-8s over BMO's face, there's a shoe over the POTX logo. Yeah, he's

00:18:56   kinda eating his antenna, which is very concerning to me. Someone called it robot love. It's

00:19:01   true, man, they're scaring it down. What's up with the monkey and the jacket? The monkey

00:19:07   is a CGP Grey sticker. Okay. The jacket is part of that whole little set of Back to the

00:19:12   future iconography. Okay, so the little round robot that's Star Wars. It's BB-8.

00:19:19   Then there's like a fake Game Boy. That's BMO from Adventure Time.

00:19:24   Okay, I don't know what you're talking about. There's like a spaceship. That's the Millennium

00:19:30   Falcon. Well, it depends what spaceship you mean. There's the Space Shuttle and also the Millennium

00:19:33   Falcon. The one next to the Apple. Yeah, it's the Millennium Falcon. I do love the the 3s one,

00:19:39   The Macintosh, the Apple.

00:19:41   Yep. You see that slack one underneath the pen thing?

00:19:43   That's made out of wood.

00:19:44   That's actually wooden. It's raised.

00:19:47   That's pretty crazy.

00:19:49   Yeah, I mean, some of these are really nice.

00:19:51   I love them.

00:19:52   Yeah. And the camera is also from Back to the Future.

00:19:56   The video camera? Yeah.

00:19:58   Yeah.

00:19:59   Yeah. All of those little things around there are from the same stick as that.

00:20:01   So the sunglasses and the cassette player.

00:20:03   Okay, I see. Well, Myke, as long as you're happy.

00:20:07   I am.

00:20:08   I'm also happy for you.

00:20:10   I am. I have to just mention as well, uh,

00:20:12   Kieran, uh,

00:20:14   via Twitter, sent me

00:20:16   a link to something which is completely

00:20:18   in my wheelhouse. It is a sticker

00:20:20   subscription service

00:20:22   called, uh, Slap

00:20:24   to St- well, their URL is

00:20:26   Slap to Stick or something. It's like Slap

00:20:28   Slap Stickers is the name of the company.

00:20:30   They're working with a bunch of great designers that I really

00:20:32   like and I have

00:20:34   signed up for a subscription, so

00:20:36   I look forward to receiving new stickers every single month, which is going to be a horrifically

00:20:40   difficult thing for me to deal with.

00:20:42   You just have to buy another computer.

00:20:45   I'm going to have to, like, I'm not going to put any on my iMac, but I'm going to have

00:20:49   to find somewhere else to put them.

00:20:50   Well, you still have the Mac Pro, you can just cover that with stickers.

00:20:53   Yeah, that'll make it sell easier, right?

00:20:55   Yeah.

00:20:56   Please, if anybody wants to buy a Mac Pro, let me know.

00:21:01   While we're on the topic of crippling sadness, has Google Docs been updated for iOS 9?

00:21:05   What do you think?

00:21:06   Yes!

00:21:07   No, I'm sorry.

00:21:08   Play breaking news!

00:21:09   No, it hasn't, guys.

00:21:10   Why are we even talking about this?

00:21:11   Because we have to now.

00:21:12   It's a tradition.

00:21:13   If nothing ever changes, are you supposed to keep waiting?

00:21:14   Probably.

00:21:15   What else are you going to do?

00:21:16   Just let it go, Myke.

00:21:17   All right.

00:21:18   I hope his friend's in there.

00:21:19   I mean, I'm fine, you know?

00:21:20   I'm fine.

00:21:21   I'm fine.

00:21:22   I'm fine.

00:21:23   I'm fine.

00:21:24   I'm fine.

00:21:25   I'm fine.

00:21:26   I'm fine.

00:21:27   I'm fine.

00:21:28   I'm fine.

00:21:29   I'm fine.

00:21:30   I'm fine.

00:21:31   I'm fine.

00:21:32   I'm fine.

00:21:33   I'm fine.

00:21:34   I'm fine using it, right? Like it annoys me, but I still use it every day, like hooking it by.

00:21:39   I'm working around it, you know?

00:21:42   It just surprises me. You've been putting so much effort into working on the iPad,

00:21:47   and yet you still cope with Google Docs not working...

00:21:51   Well I can't do nothing, right? Because nobody provides...

00:21:53   Yes you can!

00:21:54   No. Who's going to give me the spreadsheet functionality like Google Sheets does?

00:21:58   Excel?

00:21:59   With sharing? And real-time collaboration?

00:22:04   Do you really collaborate with on spreadsheets?

00:22:07   Yes, me and Steven do. Basically every week.

00:22:11   Fundamentally, I have my systems and workflows built around the way that Google Docs and

00:22:16   Sheets and Drive work and I can get by with it. What do they call it? SlideOver? SlideOver

00:22:25   is my friend. I work with SlideOver a lot where I would want to be doing split view.

00:22:30   It's not ideal, but it works for me.

00:22:33   I haven't got another solution which can give me everything

00:22:36   that I need in the way that I'm used to doing it.

00:22:38   And at this point, right now, I don't

00:22:41   want to have to recreate my system somewhere else.

00:22:45   - I told you, I'm weak fundamentally.

00:22:47   And so I started using Quip with Fraser this week.

00:22:51   - Thing is, I've used Quip.

00:22:53   We used Quip for a long time.

00:22:55   And Quip is weird in its own ways.

00:22:57   And I prefer Google Docs.

00:22:59   It works with Splitview.

00:23:00   Yeah, but you know, what are you going to do?

00:23:02   Like, it's not as good as Google Docs,

00:23:04   and it doesn't have spreadsheet functionality.

00:23:06   I want it all in one place.

00:23:09   I'm confident that it is going to be updated.

00:23:12   It just may take another six months.

00:23:15   Yes.

00:23:16   Well, you know, I really don't know what to say anymore.

00:23:22   And it's one of those things you just

00:23:25   keep waiting on the sidelines and appreciate

00:23:29   in a way the sadness of all of it.

00:23:33   I'm going to put a link in the show notes. Serenity Caldwell wrote a great piece on iMore

00:23:37   calling out Google and the kind of ridiculousness that they are putting themselves in right

00:23:45   now. So I'll put that in the show notes so people can go read it.

00:23:48   Yeah.

00:23:49   It's really good. Like they're saying, I love the headline that Google has made itself a

00:23:53   class citizen which is a fantastic way of putting it. They are they're making themselves seem worse

00:23:59   and worse every day. Maybe they don't care, maybe they do. If they do care, fix it. This week's

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00:27:05   Alright, so we've been talking a lot recently on this show about connected home stuff, right?

00:27:11   It started with you guys talking about HomeKit when I was away and then looking at stuff

00:27:17   like the Sonos and stuff like that and all these Hue lights and things.

00:27:22   This is something that is definitely becoming a theme on this show and I'm interested in

00:27:26   this stuff and I'm starting to look into it a little bit more.

00:27:29   One thing that I wanted is I've been thinking about having some kind of system to keep me

00:27:35   connected to my home when I'm away. So a security system of sorts, something that could let

00:27:43   me see the home, so I can see things and see if everything's okay. So maybe something that

00:27:48   could tell me if there's been a fire. These are just little things that everybody worries

00:27:54   about. And I thought, considering how our lives are so different with all this technology

00:27:59   right now, why can't I just get something that can tell me all of this stuff so I don't

00:28:02   need to worry about it, right? So because I'm a weirdo and sometimes like I get

00:28:07   into like the street where my house is and I turn the corner I'm like is the house

00:28:10   burned down? Do you guys ever have this feeling? That the house is burning down?

00:28:15   Just like that like one moment where you're like oh I wonder if the house is

00:28:18   burned down. Do you ever get this? No. I don't have house feelings. There are people out there that have anxiety

00:28:25   problems like I do and sometimes this is stuff that I think about. So now I have

00:28:29   been looking at home security systems. I went to the Apple Store the other day

00:28:32   there's a couple looking at I've been looking at the Canary and the Nest Cam

00:28:36   and so I went to the Apple Store because I was kind of in the morning I was

00:28:41   looking at them they're about the same price they were 150 pounds and the

00:28:45   Canary really seemed to be more of what I was looking for because it has a bunch

00:28:49   of sensors in the Nest Cam doesn't. The Nest Cam is more of a home security

00:28:54   camera while the Canary is more of a like home security system. So I bought

00:28:59   one it's like a tube kind of thing it's really discreet looking which I like and

00:29:05   I've put it in my home and I'm very happy with it. The setup process was

00:29:09   pretty simple so it comes with like a power cable and also a yellow 3.5

00:29:17   millimeter headphone jack cable which I really didn't understand what it was

00:29:20   about. So you download the app and what you do is you plug the audio jack cable, like

00:29:27   the 3.5 cable, into the Canary and into your phone and then that's how they pair initially.

00:29:33   That's cool. So old fashioned really. Yeah, so it pairs like that and then it's Bluetooth

00:29:38   connected from then on. But it sends... So how will you pair with the iPhone 7? Who knows?

00:29:45   I won't. That's when I have to throw my Canary out the window. Or buy like a super expensive

00:29:51   adapter. But anyway, so it does that and then it connects by Bluetooth going forward and

00:29:54   it was like downloading firmware and that sort of stuff, which was cool. And then you're

00:29:58   kind of set up using their application. And so these are the features that I like about

00:30:01   the Canary, right? This isn't an ad, by the way. Canary have been a sponsor on shows.

00:30:07   This is not an ad. I have one. And I know that this sounds like an ad right now. So

00:30:12   Let me tell you about the features of the Canary.

00:30:14   This is what I like about it.

00:30:15   It has three different modes.

00:30:16   Armed, Disarmed and Private.

00:30:18   So armed is like it will alert you to movement.

00:30:21   Disarmed is it will still collect movement information.

00:30:26   The camera is still on, the camera is recording when it notices something.

00:30:29   But it doesn't alert you to it.

00:30:31   And then also Private mode.

00:30:33   So I have it set to Private mode when I'm at home.

00:30:36   Because I don't want the camera collecting things and uploading them to Canary when I'm

00:30:40   at home.

00:30:41   don't want that to happen that doesn't need to happen but it has auto mode

00:30:44   switching so when I leave the house it arms and it does this by location and

00:30:49   Wi-Fi and when you open a canary app so me and Adina both have the app installed

00:30:54   you install the app and then it recognized it has like your face and a

00:30:58   little home icon if you're at home so the device knows that you're there and

00:31:04   also as well like I don't really know too much about this but Adina was doing

00:31:06   more of this sort of stuff when you look you can look through video clips and you

00:31:10   can train it so you can say who the people are so it starts to learn things

00:31:15   and it was pretty cool where one video we had it on playing around with video

00:31:19   clip like Adina went over to it and it collected the clip and we saw it in the

00:31:23   timeline and it recognized that it was her which I thought was pretty awesome

00:31:26   you choose to do this right so you're giving it that information you have a

00:31:31   camera which you can view in the app you can just watch it live at any time when

00:31:35   it's not in private mode and then there's a view that's always available

00:31:38   which shows you your temperature in the house, your air quality in the house and the humidity as well.

00:31:43   Which, you know, it's good to know. The temperature stuff is just there, but it's there in case there's a fire, right?

00:31:49   Like it recognizes big changes and mainly it's through motion. So if I'm away and something moves, I'll get a push notification

00:31:56   which will tell me there's something in the house and then there's a button to press an emergency call or to sound a siren that it has.

00:32:04   I really want to press this button, but I haven't yet.

00:32:07   Please press the button Myke right now.

00:32:10   It's a 90 decibel siren.

00:32:12   That's crazy loud.

00:32:13   Okay.

00:32:14   I'm not pressing the button because it's going to terrify everyone.

00:32:16   And the idea of it is it meant to scare people, which I also quite like.

00:32:19   So I'm pretty happy with this.

00:32:22   They have a great watch app actually.

00:32:24   You can change armed, disarmed and private in the watch app.

00:32:27   And it also shows you a little picture of the last activity that was recognized.

00:32:31   I like that.

00:32:32   And it has a good widget on the iPhone, which does the same kind of thing.

00:32:35   So I'm pretty happy with this system, I'm happy that I just have something that I can

00:32:39   check in on when I'm away.

00:32:41   Because I am away quite a lot on trips and stuff and just having something that I can

00:32:45   just check in on and make sure everything's okay is good.

00:32:48   They have plans that you have, there's like a free plan where I think it keeps the last

00:32:55   day or two of footage and then there's a premium plan which I signed up for which is I think

00:33:00   like £7 a month or something and it keeps a week of footage.

00:33:05   So it uploads stuff that's happening when it's in armed mode or disarmed mode and then

00:33:10   you can go through the timeline and see the events.

00:33:12   I think it's pretty cool.

00:33:13   I like that I have it and this for me is like the start of my Internet of Things type thinking

00:33:20   at home.

00:33:21   So that's the canary.

00:33:22   So what's next for you Myke?

00:33:24   What do you wanna have?

00:33:26   I wanna get some, I don't know who makes them, but something like some switches that I can

00:33:32   control from my iPhone.

00:33:34   So I could turn lights on and stuff, like lamps and things like that.

00:33:37   Yeah, I was thinking about Wemo actually.

00:33:39   But that's probably the next kind of thing that I'm going to look at.

00:33:42   There's a couple of HomeKit options also I think.

00:33:46   You could consider.

00:33:47   I'm thinking like if I get anything like this, then if it's good enough and it has HomeKit,

00:33:52   then I probably will go with that because, I don't know, HomeKit feels like a thing.

00:33:59   Yeah, it's more of a safe bet, maybe. I don't know.

00:34:03   I've been using, since my YTings home camera broke for some reason last year, I've been

00:34:11   using the ManyThing service. I think we talked about this before, it lets you use an old

00:34:17   iOS device as a security camera. And it works okay. The video quality, of course, it depends

00:34:23   on the kind of iPhone that you're using. And they just released version 4 today, which

00:34:28   which I've been testing with the beta, it's very, very much an improvement.

00:34:33   It's faster, so video is really real time at this point, it's like less than a second

00:34:38   of a delay when you're streaming live, and it can record on motion the bunch of new options.

00:34:46   So yeah, I'm a happy ManyThings subscriber, but the Canary mic looks really cool.

00:34:52   The problem seems to be I cannot buy one from Italy.

00:34:57   So yeah, I cannot buy the NESCAM either.

00:35:02   For some reason they're not available to us Italians.

00:35:05   Is there regulation?

00:35:08   That's my only explanation.

00:35:09   I don't know.

00:35:10   I have no idea, Myke.

00:35:13   Because I wonder if mainland continental Europe and the EU stuff like privacy and things might

00:35:20   make these companies a little bit more wary.

00:35:23   Because if we didn't have it set to private mode, and you don't have to, I think they

00:35:28   recommend like Disarmed anyway, it's just recording us moving around the house.

00:35:34   It records sounds as well, like when we came in at home one day before it recognised that

00:35:41   we were home, it heard us downstairs and recorded the motion.

00:35:46   Which is exactly what I want it to do, but in the same vein, I don't necessarily want

00:35:50   all of my life uploaded to their system. Yeah. But I like it. I do really like it. I recommend

00:35:57   it. It looks really nice. Dan Moran has one and I was asking him about it and he says

00:36:01   he thinks it's pretty good. I mean it's not perfect, but it just feels the need that I

00:36:07   have, which is I want to check when I'm not at home if my house has burned down or if

00:36:12   it's been burgled and that's what it does for me and I like it.

00:36:18   So that's the canary. The podcast app has now come to the Apple TV. It has.

00:36:25   There was an update, like this is now out, like iOS 9.1.1. Yeah I thought

00:36:30   it was gonna be a 9.2 because it was in those betas but then it just

00:36:34   dropped publicly yesterday which was strange. It's very much what you

00:36:43   expect from the podcast app that Apple ships on iOS? It is really very similar

00:36:49   in the way that it's laid out and some of the shortcomings that they have there

00:36:53   exist here as well. I don't know, I played with it and I'm not crazy

00:36:58   impressed with it, but I'm honestly not crazy impressed with what Apple

00:37:03   does in their first party app anyways. So I played around with it a little bit before we

00:37:09   well, on the air today. And I like the way it looks. It's very good-looking. It's very

00:37:17   nice when you're browsing. The artwork is massive. I really love seeing our shows on

00:37:22   my TV, right? The artwork for our shows on my TV is real nice. When you select a show

00:37:28   and go into the episodes, like it does that thing where it like pulls out the accent color

00:37:32   and makes the screen a color. Again, I really like that. And the app is kind of okay but

00:37:38   weird in a lot of places. One thing that I noticed is that if you leave the app, the

00:37:42   audio keeps playing, which is great, that's kind of what you want. If you hit the pause

00:37:46   button, it pauses. If you hit the pause button again, nothing happens. You have to go back

00:37:49   into the app to resume playback. It's really difficult to find the scrubber. You have to

00:37:58   kind of go into the Now Playing screen, then click the middle button, then move down, and

00:38:04   then you can move the scrubber around like it just seems really weird and a

00:38:07   lot of the time it's hidden which doesn't make sense like the now playing

00:38:10   screen initially you go to it's just the artwork and you have to do things to get

00:38:14   the scrubber up. Steven, in your piece you mentioned about iCloud sync not

00:38:19   working as well which for playback position which seems kind of weird that

00:38:23   you would have like at least now anyway I think you'd have this right system it

00:38:27   doesn't work and I know why it doesn't work because Apple doesn't have a server

00:38:30   infrastructure built around podcasts. So it's not gonna work. So if you're 15

00:38:37   minutes into Cortex and you sit your phone down and pick it up on your TV, you

00:38:41   have to go figure out how to scrub to get to that 15 minute mark. Yeah. But the

00:38:46   scrubbing I think is a problem. Actually the initial article I put up

00:38:50   said you couldn't scrub because I played with it for 25 minutes and couldn't find

00:38:53   it. I wouldn't have found it unless I would have seen people telling you how

00:38:57   to find it. Yeah some people blew me up about it but it's only

00:39:02   available on Now Playing and that's really like I agree with you it looks

00:39:06   nice especially like it's nice seeing our artwork really big on the TV but the

00:39:11   fact that you've got to go to certain screens to do certain things makes less

00:39:14   sense on the TV than it does on iOS like if you're on my podcast and you know I'm

00:39:20   on the Cortex page listening to episode of Cortex I can see with some fiddling I

00:39:25   I can see the description and everything,

00:39:27   but why isn't it scrubbing there as well?

00:39:29   Why do I have to back out two screens and then over three

00:39:33   to go do something like that,

00:39:36   where the Apple TV interface is obviously

00:39:40   much bigger than the phone, but you have a remote.

00:39:43   You can do more stuff than what you can do

00:39:45   on a single iPhone screen, and it is still very locked

00:39:49   to that sort of feeling that it's on a phone.

00:39:52   really feels like more like a port than than anything else you know the the

00:39:57   video stuff on the Apple TV like the TV and the movie shows there TV shows and

00:40:02   movies there are problems with those apps on the Apple TV but at least they

00:40:05   feel like they were built for the Apple TV and they're not just a straight port

00:40:11   of the video app from the iPad but the podcast that feels like it didn't really

00:40:15   get a lot of attention it just kind of got shoved out the door so it was there

00:40:20   and I hope they improve it, like I'm glad it's there, but for a 1.0 it's got some issues.

00:40:27   Yeah. I haven't turned down my Apple TV in weeks, maybe. I wanted to try it again a couple

00:40:35   of days ago. I went to my TV station, let's call it that. I saw that the HDMI cable was

00:40:44   disconnected from the Apple TV because I've been doing some rearranging with my video

00:40:49   again consoles and it was too much work to find another cable and I just gave up.

00:40:53   So that's my follow-up on Apple TV. I've been using I think about my Apple TV

00:41:01   about three or four times a week which is like three or four times a week more

00:41:07   than I expected I would. For what? I watch, so when I eat my lunch I usually

00:41:14   in the front room, the living room, which is a different room right so I'm

00:41:17   I'm actually moving around the house.

00:41:20   And that's where the Apple TV is set up with the big TV.

00:41:23   And I watch YouTube videos on it.

00:41:26   I watch Netflix stuff on it.

00:41:28   That tends to be what I do with it.

00:41:29   Or I like AirPlay things to it.

00:41:31   That's my main use case for the Apple TV.

00:41:34   And it works pretty well.

00:41:35   The YouTube app's nice.

00:41:37   It's fine.

00:41:38   And I'm watching things on the TV

00:41:39   instead of just on my iPad all the time.

00:41:42   I mean, it's a thing.

00:41:43   It does a good job.

00:41:44   And I watch a lot of streaming stuff on it.

00:41:46   and it works fine.

00:41:48   The one last thing about the podcast

00:41:51   that which I thought was hilarious,

00:41:52   I activated Siri and said,

00:41:54   "Can you please play the Cortex podcast?"

00:41:56   And it just popped up and said,

00:41:58   "I can't help you with podcasts on your Apple TV."

00:42:01   Like, what's wrong, why?

00:42:03   Like this is so, this is like,

00:42:05   the Apple TV is so half-baked

00:42:10   in basically every direction.

00:42:12   Nothing feels finished on the Apple TV, like nothing.

00:42:16   Why can't I search for podcasts? You know, I'm doing it right when I gave that command it capitalized

00:42:23   podcasts so it knew what I was asking for

00:42:26   but it didn't do anything with it and

00:42:29   Siri can do it on the phone

00:42:32   So why can't my Apple TV do it? I just don't understand

00:42:36   I really cannot understand you created a hardware button for this and it can't search

00:42:43   Most of the stuff that I have all use

00:42:46   I don't get it. Very peculiar to me. Yeah it really seems like you know there were

00:42:53   stories when the Apple TV showed up that the software had been done for a while

00:42:57   and then like the whole thing maybe sat while they were trying to run around and

00:43:01   get content deals and you get you kind of can't help but think that like a

00:43:06   small team got the podcast app together and then it's just disjointed from the

00:43:11   rest of the product. That's really like the word I keep coming back to like I

00:43:15   I like the Apple TV, it's a huge improvement

00:43:17   of the old one, we use ours every day.

00:43:19   But it really feels disjointed in places like that

00:43:23   where Siri meets an individual app

00:43:26   or some of the app management stuff,

00:43:28   like they're changing in the beta

00:43:30   the way the multitasking switcher works and looks.

00:43:33   Like, A, who knew there was a multitasking switcher

00:43:35   on their TV, like no one.

00:43:37   Because it's just like, it's all just disjointed and funky

00:43:40   and there doesn't seem to be like one cohesive approach

00:43:44   of this stuff. Like the buttons don't even make sense. Like menu and TV button.

00:43:51   They barely make any sense as to the way that they're set up.

00:43:55   And even Apple's own apps look and work in such different ways that it really feels

00:44:01   like there's a group of small teams or even individuals working on this as

00:44:05   opposed to some big cohesive push. And I hope they can tighten it up. I for one

00:44:11   like, I like podcasts on the TV, like even last night spending time with it, you know,

00:44:16   listening to a show on the TV was nice, and I hope that third-party apps show up now for

00:44:21   this because I think it's a good use case and obviously someone who's highly invested

00:44:25   in the podcast industry, I'm glad they're there, visibility is good, but it could be

00:44:30   so much better and hopefully third parties will step in and round this offering out.

00:44:36   Like I love the overall UI design of the Apple TV, I think it's stunning to look at and like

00:44:41   What did I call that thing with the motion?

00:44:43   What is that called?

00:44:44   The focus engine.

00:44:45   Focus engine.

00:44:46   It's fantastic.

00:44:47   But it's like they really put a lot of work into the design, but like the functionality

00:44:52   and the experience still requires a lot of work.

00:44:57   So, I've been thinking about this.

00:45:00   About why I'm not so excited maybe about the Apple TV as other people are.

00:45:07   Call me old-fashioned, but maybe the reason why is I

00:45:11   Just want my smart TV whether it's from Apple from Samsung or Google

00:45:17   to be as simple and as traditional as my

00:45:22   Normal Italian TV, which is at 1 p.m. There's the news at 8 p.m. There's the news and

00:45:32   and at 2pm there's The Simpsons, and I just need to hit 5 or 6 and my TV turns on.

00:45:39   And I can watch the news or just... I don't necessarily watch TV as much as I leave TV in the background.

00:45:46   It's sort of like a fireplace really, it keeps me company.

00:45:50   Especially when we're eating, me and Sylvia, we don't necessarily pay attention to the news.

00:45:55   But it's nice to have that sort of background and every once in a while we can just glance up

00:46:00   and comment on whatever's going on, you know? And all these modern TVs, they're all

00:46:06   just streaming and apps and games and that's great. But I just want to have... it's like

00:46:12   a really... it feels like home to me to be able to say "oh it's 8 p.m. there's the

00:46:18   news". And I think it's a very Italian thing that a lot of other Italian people

00:46:22   can relate to and I guess it's different if you don't live in Italy. But you know

00:46:26   at 8 p.m. there's the news on channel 5 or channel 1 and all these modern TVs

00:46:33   they don't give you that experience. So when you have... Do you have digital TV in Italy or is it still an analog signal?

00:46:38   It is digital but it's still mapped to these traditional channels you know

00:46:43   there's the national television it's channel 1 2 3 and there's a bunch of

00:46:48   extra ones and then there's like the Berlusconi TV basically which is channel

00:46:52   5, 6 and other ones that you can pay for. But really it's a very communal traditional

00:47:02   thing to do and all these modern devices don't let me do that so that's why maybe I'm lukewarm

00:47:09   when it comes to trying them. It's a different TV experience and it's less

00:47:14   less kind of eloquent and choosing and more like you get what you get.

00:47:21   Maybe I think the Xbox One tried to have the kind of a "you can have your TV signal come

00:47:29   in and we do an interface for you" and that would have been nice on the Apple TV but I

00:47:33   cannot do that. I actually would love that, you know, to be able to have the great UI

00:47:39   of the Apple TV, which I love, but the traditional digital TV stream signal coming. Yeah.

00:47:46   Yeah, I get it.

00:47:48   Still, podcasts! That's great news, I guess.

00:47:53   I didn't test video podcasts, but I assume that they work.

00:47:59   You assume, Myke.

00:48:00   I assume. I assume many things. This week's episode is brought to you by Igloo, the internet

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00:49:58   of this show and really FM.

00:50:03   iPhone 5 SE. Me and Jason were talking about this on upgrade yesterday but I'm really interested

00:50:10   to know what you guys think about this potential new iPhone 5, the special edition. Steven,

00:50:18   does the name invoke some kind of beautiful nostalgia for you or no it didn't for Jason?

00:50:25   - Yeah, I mean, the SE, of course, was a gray Mac,

00:50:29   of which I have two, I think.

00:50:31   But-- - Yeah, of course.

00:50:33   - You know, one doesn't work.

00:50:34   One actually, last time I powered it on,

00:50:36   blew up a little bit, it's fine.

00:50:38   All the smoke came out.

00:50:39   - iPhones do that sometimes.

00:50:42   - Do they? - Probably.

00:50:44   - So, I mean, the bigger thing with the name for me,

00:50:47   like, the 5SE is fine, whatever,

00:50:50   but my big question about this product is,

00:50:55   this a small iPhone 6s or is it a updated iPhone 5s and the difference I

00:51:02   think really is in not only the way Apple treats it but the way that is

00:51:07   potentially viewed so the latest rumor says it's gonna have a 9 and m9 chip

00:51:11   with Siri and Apple pay and and and my photos all the stuff that we've come to

00:51:17   expect from the iPhone 6s and 6s plus but in a in a case that looks not

00:51:24   unlike the 5S, maybe with some design tweaks.

00:51:28   But that phone's gonna look old,

00:51:31   and that's with the 6S being now,

00:51:35   with the 7, assuming around the corner,

00:51:37   I think it's really gonna look old.

00:51:39   And is that Apple's way of punishing people

00:51:42   who buy smaller phones?

00:51:43   Like it just, the case designation

00:51:46   and the name designation makes it feel older than it is.

00:51:49   And I wonder why Apple's doing that.

00:51:51   And if people are gonna notice,

00:51:53   or if people are going to care about that.

00:51:56   Because a lot of phone buying, not the way we buy phones,

00:51:59   'cause we buy phones in the middle of the night

00:52:02   with the Apple Store app, but a lot of people

00:52:05   go into a store and buy a phone,

00:52:07   and it is something that Samsung and other phone

00:52:11   manufacturers have really done well at,

00:52:13   making their phones look good in stores,

00:52:14   and Apple's caught up with that.

00:52:16   But if you go and you're looking at these phones

00:52:19   and you see this old one that looks like the phone

00:52:21   you already have, then I just wonder if it's gonna be

00:52:25   a compelling purchase.

00:52:26   Like take Adina for example, she has a 5S I believe

00:52:29   and would assumely want to upgrade, I think is what you

00:52:34   and Jason spoke about, Myke.

00:52:35   But if it looks the same as her old phone,

00:52:39   that's a thing, that's a thing people care about.

00:52:41   And that is a very curious choice.

00:52:45   - I wonder with this device if the issue is gonna be that.

00:52:49   I agree with you that like a fundamental level people want new things, but the five inch

00:52:55   phone exists because people have small hands, right? Or they have preferences for small

00:53:01   devices. Like that's why like Apple is not getting rid of it and they're not saying to

00:53:06   people, oh, you have to go to the big phones and above. Is it five inch or four inch? It's

00:53:11   five inch, right?

00:53:12   Five inch, yeah.

00:53:13   So I would say that it exists now because there is a need for people who want a smaller phone or need a smaller phone.

00:53:22   So if they do anything to update it, it's better, right?

00:53:25   And it's just kind of like I'm not buying this because I love the way it looks. I'm not buying this because it's brand new.

00:53:30   No, wait. It's a four inch iPhone.

00:53:32   It's definitely four inch. Thank you. I knew I was saying something wrong.

00:53:36   Yeah, it's an iPhone 5 size, but it's a four inch iPhone.

00:53:40   You just get me Apple every time I put in your numbers.

00:53:45   So the 4 inch phone as we have established, because those people need that phone is a

00:53:54   like function over form scenario for them, right?

00:53:58   It's like I don't like the way this looks, this looks old, but I need a new phone because

00:54:03   mine is slow or the battery's crapped out or you know I want these new features like

00:54:09   Apple Pay in my phone and the only choice that I have is the small one so as long as

00:54:15   they do and what I expect we're going to have here is some small cosmetic tweaks. The way

00:54:19   that I envision this is the back of it is the iPhone 5, the front of it is curved glass

00:54:25   right they just get rid of the chamfer on the front. That's kind of how I imagine this

00:54:29   thing looking and that's just kind of what it is and it's like this is the phone for

00:54:34   the people that need that and they'll just keep making that for as long as they want

00:54:37   to. Yeah I mean I agree with you that I think that does make a bit of sense

00:54:45   especially from the technology and sort of infrastructure standpoint that Apple

00:54:49   cares so much about from the operations standpoint I think it makes sense and I

00:54:55   think that day I think the danger is though I think I think people like us

00:54:59   are guilty of this people who spend time you know the tech press it is really

00:55:05   easy for us to sort of write off people who want a smaller phone with people who have

00:55:12   no desire for the latest and greatest. So take somebody who wants a small phone, it's

00:55:18   easy to write that consumer off as someone who just...

00:55:22   They're stuck in their ways. Yeah, or doesn't like, "Oh, it's fine. Maybe

00:55:29   they're still holding onto a 4 or something." And that's why that may be true for some people,

00:55:34   not true for everyone and I think that's a box you can put people in they don't

00:55:39   deserve because their decision-making isn't that way. There are people who just

00:55:43   want a smaller phone and I'd like that Apple is saying you know or that this

00:55:49   rumor is saying at least that this phone will be modern at least for a while and

00:55:54   that you know they go with an A8 it's already going to be a year behind and

00:55:59   September to be two years behind so I like that it is to a degree modern but I

00:56:04   think they could push that further and really release a 6s mini or whatever you

00:56:09   want to call it where it is the it is modern in the design and the spec but it

00:56:17   is smaller and I think if they really want to push that they could update it

00:56:21   yearly like I have no doubt the 5se is gonna go you know another year and a

00:56:25   and a half or two years without being updated

00:56:26   because even Apple has a tendency to put people

00:56:29   who want a smaller phone, to put them behind the technology.

00:56:34   You can still go buy a four inch phone now, but it's old.

00:56:37   And they have not proven that they're unwilling

00:56:42   to break those two things apart.

00:56:44   And I just, that always comes up in my mind

00:56:47   in thinking about this, that there are people

00:56:49   who want something modern and new and powerful,

00:56:52   but also small.

00:56:53   And I think the answer there is a success mini

00:56:57   where they have a new four inch, 4.7, and 5.5 every year.

00:57:02   And yes, it's a lot of phones and a lot of SKUs

00:57:04   and Apple already has a lot of phones and a lot of SKUs,

00:57:07   but if the demand is there, then why not?

00:57:10   And maybe the demand's not there,

00:57:12   Apple knows better than I do, of course,

00:57:13   but it's something to think about, I think.

00:57:16   - I agree completely with that.

00:57:17   - Yeah, yeah.

00:57:18   Because you're kind of putting people who want a smaller phone into a box, right?

00:57:25   And you're like, you guys are behind now, you will always be behind.

00:57:28   And it's kind of like a weird exclusionary thing.

00:57:32   When the reason people like those phones is because you made them in the first place.

00:57:37   You made your phones that size, you made the decision to go larger.

00:57:40   And then you recognize that there is a market for it because you keep trying new things, right?

00:57:46   This isn't the 5C2, this is a brand new thing from what it looks like.

00:57:50   So keep trying new things, I know the market's there, but whilst this is a better step forward

00:57:56   potentially than the 5C was because it was basically just we're gonna put another colour

00:58:01   on it, right?

00:58:03   They're actually putting some new technology into this thing.

00:58:06   It's still not up to date and basically this will be out for like four or five months maybe

00:58:12   before they show off the 7 which will have whatever new stuff it has and then

00:58:16   the 5 SE doesn't even have false touch right it's like behind behind behind

00:58:21   the only counter argument I can think about is whether if Apple were to decide

00:58:26   to go with three iPhones every year if maybe innovation would be slowed down by

00:58:33   having to come up with ways to offer the same features in the smaller iPhone

00:58:36   makes sense makes sense or it would just end up getting completely confusing

00:58:40   right? Because they'd be like "well we can't do this in this one so this feature is only..."

00:58:43   Yeah, so I see that that thinking. Because in an ideal world it would be "okay, it's the same iPhone,

00:58:49   every single model does the same things, you just need to pick a size."

00:58:53   Yeah, because I mean we've seen that that's already the case, right? They can't put optical image stabilization in the 6.

00:58:58   Yeah. Because for whatever reason, so... It's already not possible, and I cannot imagine with another iPhone

00:59:07   how much the differences would increase. So, ideally it would be great. In practice,

00:59:13   history kind of proves us wrong. So I guess we'll see

00:59:17   what happens. I don't understand the 5SC name.

00:59:21   I like it. Special edition. I feel like I'm in a real small club in the fact that I like this name.

00:59:27   Yes, you are. Yeah, it's one of my weirdness things. Yes, you should make a sticker about that.

00:59:34   Really, iPhone 6S mini would just make more sense to me, but maybe Myke will be right once again.

00:59:41   Well, the fact that they're calling it the 5SE tells me that it's gonna look a lot like the 5.

00:59:46   But did you see the leaked picture?

00:59:49   That's... no way that's real.

00:59:50   It's... there was a photo 9 to 5 Mac about basically a small iPhone 6S.

00:59:58   What I found interesting is that I saw someone on Twitter, maybe it was Abdel Ibrahim, he

01:00:06   found a picture that the same guy that shared this iPhone 5SE picture a couple of years

01:00:15   ago also shared a leaked photo of the first iPad Air.

01:00:20   So I don't know.

01:00:23   Yeah I mean my problem with that picture is I don't know why they would move the power

01:00:26   button to the side on a on a 4-inch phone. Yeah. Yeah. Either way it's

01:00:32   interesting and we really haven't seen Apple blend designs before. Like if this

01:00:38   is what's going on the closest thing we've seen is the 5C which was kind of

01:00:44   like the 5 and then kind of like 3G 3GS you know it's ideas from both but. If this

01:00:52   picture is correct then Apple's marketing team need to try and understand why they're

01:00:57   calling this a 5SE. Yeah that's why I told you that. If this is a real photo that doesn't

01:01:04   make any sense at all because it looks just like the 6 it's even got the lines the antenna

01:01:11   lines designed the same that that would be insanity right like why would they be doing

01:01:17   that. If that's the case, I really need a good reason for why this is the 5SE and not

01:01:23   the 6 mini or something else. Or just call it like the 6SE or the 6C or whatever you

01:01:29   want to call it. That doesn't make any sense to me because what does the 6 have that is

01:01:36   more than the 5? What does the iPhone 6 have? It has curved glass, right? It has Apple Pay.

01:01:43   What else does it have feature wise?

01:01:44   Umm... Better camera?

01:01:48   Yeah, right, and they're saying there's gonna be a better camera in it, right?

01:01:50   Yeah, I mean the Force Touch stuff on the new ones.

01:01:54   Yeah, but that's what I mean, so that's why you wouldn't call it like the 6S Mini, you call it the 6 Mini.

01:01:58   I just cannot understand why would Apple introduce the

01:02:03   iPhone 5 design again in 2016.

01:02:06   It just seems odd to me. That is a good point.

01:02:10   This is starting to become a little bit more confusing

01:02:14   than I had initially bargained on.

01:02:19   Now I don't understand what's going on.

01:02:21   I can't work this out.

01:02:22   Because there doesn't really seem to be any route that this kind of makes sense.

01:02:28   If you bring it out and it looks like the 6, why are you calling it the 5?

01:02:31   And if it looks like the 5, why are you still making that?

01:02:36   Because the 5c was different.

01:02:39   So why are you not going down that route?

01:02:41   Why are you going back to the way the 5 looked?

01:02:42   Alright, okay. Part of me still kind of wants a 5C, like I still see those colors sometimes.

01:02:48   Oh, I love it. I love the design of that thing. I'm surprised, Stephen, that you don't own

01:02:54   all of the colors on the 5C. Yeah, that is a surprise. I own zero old iPhones. I always

01:02:58   sell them to bankroll the new ones. You've been slacking. I know. See, you're going to

01:03:01   regret that because you're buying all these old iPods now. You already had the iPhone

01:03:05   collection and you're just letting them go. Ten years from now you will be making old

01:03:10   the iPhone purchases on eBay and you will regret the fact that you didn't keep them

01:03:15   around right now. It's true. I've had this exact train of thought, gentlemen. I bet you

01:03:19   had it with the iPods too, though, right? Like, I bet you had all the ones and you got

01:03:23   rid of them. I only had a handful of iPods. I mean, I had the third gen and then the fifth

01:03:27   gen and then the classic, basically. So, you know, I just bought a YouTube iPod because

01:03:31   reasons, and I never owned one of those. That's one of those things that I pushed you to buy.

01:03:37   should make a video about it!" Yeah, yeah that's that's my new excuse. I was making

01:03:42   video out of it so that's what I've told Andrew. Gotta say man, that

01:03:46   Harry Potter one, that like instantly blew a memory back into my brain. That

01:03:52   Harry Potter collector's iPod. Yeah. My brain, like it was locked away somewhere

01:03:57   in there and as soon as I saw that image it's like "oh I remember that!" I had

01:04:02   totally forgotten about it and I sent Jason, so sometimes I run this stuff by

01:04:06   Jason because he was around doing adult things and all this stuff happened and

01:04:10   he didn't have any recollection of it either and then someone replied to my

01:04:15   blog post about like all these crazy signature editions for a while you'd

01:04:20   have like Madonna signature I remember that too engraved mm-hmm craziness the

01:04:26   Harry Potter iPod is nowhere to be found it dear listener if you have one and

01:04:32   even if you would let me photograph it please let me know because I like to get

01:04:36   hands on one and they are I mean I've looked high and low since discovering

01:04:41   that this was a thing and you're not gonna find it I can't imagine they sold

01:04:44   many of them like they really don't sell like eight or nine months best I can

01:04:49   tell it's actually really hard to tell from the wayback machine when they

01:04:52   stopped being for sale but not very long I don't think they did very well but

01:04:57   anyway so there's only condition it's about that so yeah so I guess we will

01:05:02   see soon enough if the iPhone 5 SE is real, maybe it'll have a Harry Potter edition, you

01:05:09   never know. iPhone 5 Harry Potter, iPhone 5 HP. Maybe there's going, no you gotta think

01:05:15   about modern trends, maybe there will be like a Snapchat edition of the new iPhone. Or like

01:05:21   a... What are the kids into these days? What's the deal with Harry Potter? I don't know,

01:05:25   you see me and Steven both are like, "uh, couldn't think of anything." I don't know,

01:05:29   I don't know what are the kids like? They like their... I don't know.

01:05:32   Star Wars.

01:05:33   Star Wars.

01:05:34   I-Crafts.

01:05:35   Drugs.

01:05:36   Their mockingjay? What is it? Hunger Games?

01:05:37   Hunger Games.

01:05:38   I like that Steven said drugs.

01:05:42   Alright, yep. iPhone 5 Ecstasy Edition.

01:05:46   Wow.

01:05:48   You started it. What do you want me to do?

01:05:51   So who's been DJing here?

01:05:53   Oh GarageBand! Yeah.

01:05:55   Speaking of clubbing and you know that sort of thing.

01:05:59   Drugs. Apple have been a bit crazy so far this year right? Like they're doing a bunch

01:06:04   of like really weird things. Like we had the beta and then there's like oh randomly on

01:06:12   one weekday here is a massive update to GarageBand which we showed you a long time ago and a new

01:06:18   little weird app called Music Melos. Yeah. So I was totally not expecting this so last

01:06:24   This week was on Wednesday, maybe?

01:06:27   There was this new app called Music Memos.

01:06:30   I still get confused, I want to call it Music Notes.

01:06:33   But it's called Music Memos.

01:06:34   It's really a combination of voice memos.

01:06:36   Music Notes is a way better name.

01:06:38   Yes.

01:06:39   And basically lets you record a quick musical idea.

01:06:44   Apple recommends that you either play an acoustic guitar or the piano.

01:06:49   And then it'll save your idea.

01:06:52   You can tag it, you can organize it, you can export it, share it.

01:06:56   But the main feature would be you can have bass and drum lines automatically placed by

01:07:04   the app on top of your track.

01:07:07   So it feels like you can get an idea of what the song would sound like in a studio.

01:07:12   And the app does that by having an intelligent system that recognizes the beat and the chords

01:07:18   and the tempo and all of that and then uses the drummer and the best player basically.

01:07:24   Here's my thing about this app, right? This is really cool. The features seem really awesome.

01:07:32   But this is about as niche as you can get, right? This isn't just people that like music or make

01:07:41   music. This is for people that write songs. It is an app built by Apple. It is a first party

01:07:48   application for people who write music. That is so peculiar. Like Garageband is like, has

01:07:56   a bunch of different things you can do, it's fun to play with, right? You can give it to

01:07:59   a kid and it's like, play the guitar! It's just like whatever, you can play the keyboard.

01:08:04   This is like a specifically built application so you can write music.

01:08:08   Yeah, I mean after Music Memos, I feel it's legitimate to wonder when Apple will make

01:08:14   blogger memos or Twitter drafts.

01:08:19   - It's funny, but like, why not?

01:08:22   Like you're entering into this niche,

01:08:23   why not other niches, right?

01:08:26   - It looks to me like one of those passion projects

01:08:29   from Apple that someone really wanted to do.

01:08:31   And especially, I'm pretty sure

01:08:34   that since the Taylor Swift and Ryan Adams interview

01:08:39   from last year, when they both said we use the Notes app

01:08:44   to voice memos on our iPhones to save new song ideas.

01:08:48   Someone must have noticed, because the interview was

01:08:51   pretty much going around on Twitter and blogs.

01:08:54   - That's a good call.

01:08:55   - Someone must have noticed, and they were like,

01:08:58   let's make this like a small project,

01:09:01   and it'll make people happy, it'll be useful,

01:09:04   we can put it on the App Store, it's not a built-in app,

01:09:07   and we'll see what happens.

01:09:08   Worst case scenario, it's gonna be like the old cards app,

01:09:14   that Steven loved. Man, I used that cars app a bunch. Like that was so great for Christmas.

01:09:18   Did you really? Yeah. I would, that's how I would send like birthday and Christmas cards

01:09:23   to relatives. Wow. You've always been that guy. It's so easy, right? Like I could upload

01:09:31   a picture of me and like my brothers or whatever and I could send a letter pressed card for

01:09:37   like £3 to my grandma. Nice. I worked with a guy for a long time and he and I would just

01:09:43   send each other cards like just randomly.

01:09:46   - It's a dream job right there.

01:09:48   - Like I sent him one, we were in a meeting

01:09:51   and I took a picture of him without him,

01:09:52   like you know, like sneaky cam,

01:09:54   and then I mailed it to him sometimes.

01:09:57   I think it is niche, but I think that that's fine.

01:10:01   Like I think Apple, there's a long history of Apple

01:10:04   caring about music and I think that

01:10:07   they've lost some ground there a little bit,

01:10:11   especially in the music industry maybe,

01:10:14   to some other tools and utilities.

01:10:16   I think they want to be the place

01:10:19   where you go to create whatever,

01:10:21   and not just in the studio,

01:10:23   but the idea of Music Memos is

01:10:25   you're banging out a song idea on a guitar

01:10:27   just in your kitchen or whatever,

01:10:29   and it's real low friction, easy to use.

01:10:32   I think that's great.

01:10:34   I think it's great.

01:10:36   It's not, for me, I don't have that need,

01:10:38   but it's for people who do,

01:10:40   I think it's gonna be a pretty valuable tool.

01:10:42   I mean, even just seeing people on Twitter,

01:10:44   follow musicians talking about this,

01:10:46   like, I really do just use voice memos

01:10:49   and now I can get all this extra stuff.

01:10:51   And I think that's great.

01:10:53   I think I do have concern, like the cards thing

01:10:57   where small iOS applications written by Apple,

01:11:00   even small Mac apps written by Apple,

01:11:02   have a tendency to collect dust.

01:11:04   This one guy was really passionate and wrote it

01:11:07   and then he got transferred or went to Google or something.

01:11:10   - Maybe the Music Memos guy will become a musician

01:11:14   and he will leave Apple because of Music Memos.

01:11:18   Will help him write the next hit song.

01:11:21   Remember when Apple made a poker game for the App Store?

01:11:27   Good times.

01:11:30   - They had it on the iPods before that, it was great.

01:11:32   Yeah, so that sort of thing, right?

01:11:34   these little projects generally don't do super well

01:11:39   at Apple long term, so that's always a concern.

01:11:42   It's always what I think about,

01:11:43   they release these one-off apps of like,

01:11:45   this is gonna be really cool for two years,

01:11:46   and then iOS 11 and the iPhone 8 will break it,

01:11:50   and game over.

01:11:52   But until then, or maybe forever,

01:11:56   I think this is a great tool if you need it.

01:11:59   So yeah, I think it's exciting to see them

01:12:01   do little projects like this.

01:12:03   I think it's great.

01:12:04   GarageBand.

01:12:07   So the big thing here, aside from kind of UI refresh and stuff like that,

01:12:12   is something called Live Loops.

01:12:15   Can one of you succinctly explain what Live Loops is?

01:12:18   I cannot. I really don't understand what's going on.

01:12:22   I tried it. I don't know what's going on.

01:12:23   I played with it and it's really amazing.

01:12:26   Right? You can choose different music styles

01:12:29   and then it presents you with a bunch of just preset loops.

01:12:33   and you can play them at any time,

01:12:36   so you can just click them and change the loops

01:12:38   that you wanna play and kind of build a strange song

01:12:41   and add more in and it, there was an app many years ago,

01:12:45   it's probably still around that I played with

01:12:48   called Fruity Loops.

01:12:49   Have you ever heard of Fruity Loops?

01:12:53   - I think so.

01:12:54   I've played with similar apps like this,

01:12:56   maybe that was one of them.

01:12:57   - It's like an application just like this.

01:13:00   it has like loops and you can just put them in little blocks and make a song out of it.

01:13:07   Right, so what's special about this in GarageBand is that Apple is doing all the heavy lifting to ensure that everything stays in time with each other.

01:13:18   So you can drag new drum kits or drum machines or, you know,

01:13:23   all the whole library of loops basically.

01:13:28   And you can change the pitch and the speed and everything

01:13:31   and you can rearrange them

01:13:32   and you can select different ones.

01:13:34   But GarageBand itself is making sure

01:13:37   that everything plays in time

01:13:38   and to keep it all in the same beat.

01:13:40   And so you can really experiment with the sound itself

01:13:43   and not have to necessarily know a lot about,

01:13:46   you know, the time signature or something else in the song

01:13:48   where GarageBand just handles it for you, which is fun.

01:13:51   I mean, I played around with it with my oldest son, actually.

01:13:54   - The drum and bass mode is amazing.

01:13:57   - Yeah, and it's, like it is fun.

01:13:59   Like, you know, there's a learning curve

01:14:04   to a lot of stuff in GarageBand,

01:14:06   especially in Logic, but not with this,

01:14:08   because you're literally just dragging boxes around

01:14:10   and like turning them on and off.

01:14:12   And it's just a fun way to put something together

01:14:16   and I'm not gonna write the next EDM hit in here,

01:14:21   but it's fun to play with,

01:14:23   and I think, like music, I think that's great.

01:14:26   Apple's good at making this stuff simple

01:14:28   and quite honestly fun to use.

01:14:31   - Steven, you can totally be the next Skrillex.

01:14:35   Just put together some sound effects

01:14:37   from the sounds of the old Mackintoshes,

01:14:41   and have some dubstep effects,

01:14:45   and you can write a dubstep Macintosh song.

01:14:50   - Yeah, a long time ago before Myke fired me from this,

01:14:53   I used to do all the, or a lot of the intro music

01:14:56   to our podcast, and so if you go way back

01:14:59   and listen to some of that stuff,

01:15:01   including the prompting music,

01:15:02   that's also fine in GarageBand,

01:15:03   because all I know how to make in GarageBand is techno.

01:15:06   - I was gonna say, the reason you don't do it anymore

01:15:08   is 'cause we don't need techno everywhere.

01:15:11   If I need a techno song, I'll come to you.

01:15:13   So there's that. Last thing today, because me and Federico have to talk about this. Yes,

01:15:22   game do Crashlands. Oh my god. Crashlands came out this week. It's on iOS, it's on Android,

01:15:28   it's on Windows, it's on the Mac. First thing, which is amazing, is the game, like process,

01:15:36   syncs across all of those platforms. Yep. It's a company called Butterscotch Studio,

01:15:41   Butterscotch shenanigans and they have created their own syncing service.

01:15:47   Which is just first off as incredible same game on all platforms.

01:15:51   It is a story driven crafting RPG.

01:15:59   That's the way it's described.

01:16:00   Crafting actual RPG I would say.

01:16:02   There is like you tap to move around your character, you fight things by tapping on

01:16:07   them you collect resources you can use those resources to craft things there

01:16:11   are like paths and missions that you have to go on and it's written so well

01:16:17   it's really funny it looks fantastic I am addicted to crash lands. I was telling

01:16:24   Myke I have a problem I think Myke has to it's a good problem the game is

01:16:29   fantastic. It has like a progress thing I've played the game for 11 and a half

01:16:33   hours since it came out on Friday morning.

01:16:39   I want to explain why this game grabs me so much.

01:16:45   I feel like whenever I heard it's a crafting game in the past, I've always been kind of

01:16:53   skeptical because when I think of crafting, and of course Minecraft comes to mind, but

01:16:58   also games like Terraria or on iOS I'm pretty sure it was Junk Jack maybe. Whenever I hear

01:17:05   crafting I think about this inscrutable interface, I don't understand what's going on, and

01:17:13   the game just drops me in this procedurally generated land and it's like "ok, whatever,

01:17:20   you're on your own, we don't give you any instructions, you gotta figure out on your

01:17:25   own. You can craft items and once you figure it out it's pretty great, but for now we don't

01:17:31   care. And so when I started playing Minecraft, it's a huge success, but it's probably not

01:17:39   necessarily for me because my, you know, I got to work, I got a lot of stuff to do, I'm

01:17:44   a busy person, and Myke of course is probably busier than me, and it's always a problem

01:17:51   when games like that, at least for me, don't give me anything to get started.

01:17:57   I don't want to say that the game plays itself for me, but to have a guide, to have a story,

01:18:04   or to have boundaries, to have constraints, helps me move forward, because I feel like

01:18:10   I can make sense of the game.

01:18:11   And in Crashlands, it's exactly that.

01:18:15   So it's not a... they don't unlock the entire world for you right away.

01:18:21   You have constraints with the story, with the items that you can craft, but there's

01:18:27   a sense of progress.

01:18:29   And this game speaks to the RPG fan in me because it shows me progress for my character.

01:18:37   It allows me to craft better items that have a direct measurable effect, thanks to statistics

01:18:43   and numbers. And what I like about the crafting is it shows you exactly what you need to make

01:18:49   it and you can even track it on the screen so as you're walking around the world you

01:18:52   know when you've got enough. In terms of mechanics and interface and map design this game is

01:19:01   essentially perfect I would say for my taste because the crafting is exactly what I want

01:19:06   it to be. It tells me what I need, it tells me if it's a resource which kind of items

01:19:12   drop that specific resource, but then it's up to me to explore and collect and do the

01:19:16   actual job. But the interface tells me what I have to do. And so if you've always been

01:19:24   kind of put off by the idea of a crafting game because it takes too much effort or too

01:19:28   much time, I seriously recommend playing Crashlands. Because it tells you what you need to do,

01:19:34   but then it's up to you and you have freedom, you know, to wander around like I did for

01:19:38   two days to ignore the story, do sub quests or just care about the items and the killing

01:19:46   enemies. But there's some constraints that help you not waste any more time and not have

01:19:53   this huge obstacle which is this huge game in front of you. It's more of a gentle guide

01:20:00   and it just plays with my brain so well.

01:20:05   superb. And I love playing it on my iPad with the pencil because it's like a game where

01:20:10   you tap things. Playing with the pencil is brilliant. Love this game.

01:20:15   I'm really excited about this game. It's a paid game on the iOS app store.

01:20:21   £3.99 or something like that in pounds.

01:20:23   There's no, at least that I can see, no in-app purchases.

01:20:26   Nope, none.

01:20:27   So it's a paid game, old school. Maybe the only downside is that there's no support for

01:20:34   game controllers for now? Maybe? Could be? I see that the guys are working on an update.

01:20:41   It's like a tap to click game, right? Game controller support might not be that comfortable.

01:20:45   Yeah, if they ever do a traditional analog stick control system, I'm sure they will consider the idea.

01:20:51   But, you know, it's in the top charts of the App Store, lots of people are liking it.

01:20:56   There's already a lot of Let's Play videos on YouTube, if you want to get an idea, go to YouTube and search for

01:21:02   or Clashlands let's play. But yeah, currently it is my jam as people would say.

01:21:09   Me too. You just gotta try it because it's amazing.

01:21:12   Yes.

01:21:13   If you want to find the show notes for this week's episode head on over to relay.fm/connected/75

01:21:19   If you want to find us online, there's a few places you can do that.

01:21:22   You can find Federico over at maxlories.net

01:21:25   You can find Steven at 512pixels.net

01:21:27   And sometimes I'm at mikewasright.com

01:21:30   You want to find us on Twitter?

01:21:34   Federico's Apertici B-I-T-I-C-C-I.

01:21:36   Steven is @ismh and I am iMyke, I-M-Y-K-E.

01:21:40   Thanks again to Ministry of Supply and Igloo for sponsoring this week's episode.

01:21:44   Most of all, thank you for listening.

01:21:46   Until then, say goodbye guys.

01:21:48   Arrivederci.

01:21:49   Adios.