0:00:00[Music]
0:00:08From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 161. Today's show is brought to you by
0:00:15Squarespace, Away, and Timing. My name is Myke Hurley, I am joined by the wonderful Mr. Jason
0:00:21Snell. Ciao, Jason Snell.
0:00:23Hello, wonderful Myke Hurley. How are you?
0:00:26I'm very well, how are you?
0:00:28Pretty good, pretty good, you know, it's getting toward fall and that brings my thoughts to
0:00:35things like Thanksgiving and turkeys and dinners and other things that'll have to be made.
0:00:40Well this is good, because whilst nobody cares about that, well maybe some people do, but
0:00:45I don't want to cast aspersions upon people's feelings of Thanksgiving, so you really set
0:00:49me up for it.
0:00:50Usually you team me up for a really good one, but today I couldn't be so excited because
0:00:54I didn't want to say that nobody cared about a big American holiday.
0:00:56But we have #SnellTalk and today's SnellTalk question comes from Gary and Gary's question
0:01:03is kind of related.
0:01:05Gary wants to know, "What is the best gravy flavor, Jason?"
0:01:13Why did you pick this question, Myke?
0:01:17I wondered what the best gravy flavor would be, you know?
0:01:21Gravy flavor.
0:01:22Gravy flavor.
0:01:23Gravy flavor.
0:01:24It's fun to say.
0:01:25The answer, you want to know my answer? Like my legitimate answer when I saw this? I squinted
0:01:32at the screen and I went, gravy.
0:01:34Perfect. Well, I mean there's onion gravy, there's sausage gravy, you know?
0:01:39I suppose.
0:01:40So what is gravy to you? What's gravy to you, Jason?
0:01:45I don't want to turn this into robot or not now. I don't know, gravy is kind of a thick
0:01:52brown kind of liquid that is put on mashed potatoes or biscuits or other things that's
0:02:00hearty and it's made from flour and maybe some sort of meat juices of some kind but
0:02:06not necessarily. But I don't know, I mean, yeah, my mom used to make a ham gravy that
0:02:11was sort of sweeter. There were turkey gravies and all that. I don't know. I don't, I think
0:02:17Gary the answer is that I don't have an opinion about gravy flavor, gravy flavor, gravy flavor.
0:02:22It's just gravy.
0:02:24I like sausage gravy and onion gravy.
0:02:26They're my favorite gravies.
0:02:28I don't know if I've had onion gravy.
0:02:30Isn't that just gravy with onions in?
0:02:33Well, it's a gravy that you make using on--
0:02:35this is-- we're not a cooking show,
0:02:39but there's many flavors.
0:02:40Thank goodness for that.
0:02:41There's many gravy flavors.
0:02:43Sorry, Gary, for the--
0:02:45Sorry, Gary, gravy flavor.
0:02:47If you want to send in a #SnailTalk question
0:02:50to maybe get a better answer than what poor Gary did. Just send us a tweet with the hashtag
0:02:56SnellTalk and it will go into a big list that I can pick from. Sometimes I pick questions
0:03:00that Jason doesn't want to answer. Sorry, Gary. Today's follow-up section begins with
0:03:06just a note about a watch app. Shazam. You familiar with Shazam? This is the application.
0:03:13I'm pretty sure everybody knows by now. It identifies music. You can have your phone
0:03:19or whatever device you have Shazam on, listen and it will listen to the song and identify
0:03:24the song for you. It's really cool. Siri can do this too but Shazam I have found in my
0:03:29tests to be better at picking this stuff out. They have redesigned their Apple Watch app
0:03:34so now it no longer needs the phone. What it would do before would be like trigger a
0:03:38background process on the phone which would help identify the song. It doesn't need that
0:03:44anymore because the Shazam app is fully independent. So now you can open the watch app, you ask
0:03:51it to listen, you can even put your arm down and it will give you a haptic when the song
0:03:55has been identified. Because previously as well, like with a lot of watch apps, for it
0:03:58to be running you had to have the screen on but now you don't necessarily need to do that
0:04:02and the Shazam app has done this. The reason I bring in all this up is because the Shazam
0:04:06app, now that it's fully independent, works over LTE. So we were talking about this last
0:04:12week about applications that can be updated, what can they do? Well, Shazam has done that.
0:04:17So now you can use the Shazam app whether you have a connection or not. And this is
0:04:22just an example I guess of a big application moving to support all of the stuff that has
0:04:28been available in watchOS for a while but nobody's really taken advantage of because
0:04:31there wasn't much of a reason to. But now the LTE watch is here and it doesn't need
0:04:35to be attached to the phone, you can get these benefits. So I thought that was really cool,
0:04:39This is an example of a good watch app supporting LTE stuff.
0:04:43Yeah, it's important.
0:04:45We had a couple people write in about how their concern is like they rely on a feature
0:04:54that is basically like a synced notification, you know, a linked notification from the phone.
0:05:01And this is definitely one of these areas where the Apple Watch is needing to evolve
0:05:07because what you need with a cellular Apple Watch
0:05:10is independence.
0:05:11You need the apps on it to work independently.
0:05:15Although I did have a thought,
0:05:16which is Apple could use iCloud
0:05:19to distribute notifications across all devices,
0:05:22in fact, 'cause you do get your notifications
0:05:24on other devices.
0:05:24So some of your notifications from your iPhone
0:05:27could also go to your Apple Watch
0:05:28even when they're not together,
0:05:29because that is the case when your phone
0:05:31and your iPad are not together.
0:05:34They can get the same notifications.
0:05:35- Yeah, I feel like I'd be in a weird middle state
0:05:37with that though.
0:05:38Like I would maybe wanna do something and can't,
0:05:41you know, et cetera, et cetera.
0:05:42- Yeah, exactly right.
0:05:45But it's just, it shows you the adolescence of this.
0:05:47It goes back to what we said last week,
0:05:48which is Apple Watch hardware has outpaced the software
0:05:52and now the software has to catch up.
0:05:53And that's not just the third party apps,
0:05:56because as we know from hearing from some app developers
0:05:58and listening to Marco Arment talk about his issues
0:06:00with Overcast, that there are places where watchOS
0:06:04just doesn't really provide a lot of power
0:06:06that they're accustomed to from iPhone development.
0:06:09And so this is a case where Apple's hardware people
0:06:11have really pushed the hardware with the Apple Watch,
0:06:14which is great, but the software is now needing to catch up.
0:06:17And hopefully, I think we'll see more apps take advantage
0:06:21of this as much as they possibly can this year,
0:06:23but it also sounds like that there's gonna need
0:06:27to be some advancements in watchOS
0:06:28to really enable the app developers to take it even further.
0:06:32And that unfortunately will probably be next year.
0:06:34- Yeah, I went swimming a couple of days ago
0:06:40and it was nice to have my watch on to track my swimming.
0:06:44I love that, one of my favorite features
0:06:45that came with the previous watch
0:06:47that it can do swimming tracking.
0:06:49But it was nice because I was in the pool
0:06:51and my phone was locked away
0:06:52and I was still getting like iMessage stuff.
0:06:54And if I take a break from swimming for a few minutes,
0:06:56I could respond to some messages by speaking into my watch.
0:06:58It was pretty good.
0:06:59Like I liked it a lot
0:07:01and I hope that more and more and more stuff happens
0:07:03with this, so yeah.
0:07:05I'm seeing in the chat room people saying
0:07:07that the Siri integration, you know,
0:07:09when you say, "Hey Siri, what is this?"
0:07:11They're apparently using Shazam servers.
0:07:13That's great, but you know,
0:07:15I don't know if the watch can do it,
0:07:17I don't know how well the watch does it,
0:07:18and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
0:07:20- I've never gotten that feature to work reliably.
0:07:23- There you go, so what are you gonna do?
0:07:24- So through Siri, yeah.
0:07:27- I've heard this as well, I mean,
0:07:28I don't try it a bunch myself,
0:07:30but I've heard people say that the Siri integration
0:07:32isn't as good, even though it's using Shazam's information
0:07:34somewhere, it maybe isn't as optimized.
0:07:36- We have a really quick bit of follow up.
0:07:39We were talking about cases and Qi charging,
0:07:44and there was, I think, an ask upgrade about old cases
0:07:48and charging and things like that.
0:07:50And we heard from a few people,
0:07:51it sounds like we heard from a few people
0:07:52who actually work in Apple stores,
0:07:54who said, as far as they know,
0:07:56the old cases work just fine.
0:07:58we had somebody who has an old case and put it on their iPhone 8 and was able to charge
0:08:04just fine through the case. So I think, you know, we don't want to say it absolutely will
0:08:08in all circumstances that all of your iPhone 7 or 6 cases will work if you lay it on a
0:08:15Qi charger, but I think it was worth mentioning because we had somebody who said that, who
0:08:20reported that they were told that they wouldn't work and that seems to not necessarily be
0:08:25Last week I mentioned during the Myke at the Movies segment that there was some stand-alone
0:08:31Myke at the Movies planned for the rest of this year and yesterday we released one of
0:08:35those. Me and John Siracusa watched both Kill Bill volume 1 and volume 2 and discussed those.
0:08:42So you can find that at the incomparable.com/mike but of course there will be a link in the show
0:08:48notes. As we said there are some stand-alone Myke at the Movies and this is one of them so you can
0:08:53and go and take a listen to that if you want.
0:08:56No spoilers for how I felt about the movies
0:08:58or why they were picked,
0:09:00but I think it's worth listening to
0:09:01just to hear the rules that I had from John,
0:09:05which were fantastic.
0:09:06Actually really great, like he gave me some guidelines
0:09:08about how I should watch and when and why,
0:09:09et cetera, et cetera.
0:09:11And I actually really, really enjoyed our discussion
0:09:13about these movies.
0:09:15We had a, I think it came out really well,
0:09:16so you can go check that out.
0:09:18And in case you're wondering,
0:09:19no, it's not longer than the two movies combined.
0:09:21It's like an hour long.
0:09:22So we didn't hit the John Siracusa trait of longer than the movie because I wasn't going
0:09:27to allow that to happen because we're not going to talk for six hours.
0:09:30>> BRIAN KARDELL being instructed on how to consume particular kind of media.
0:09:34Welcome to my, by John Siracusa.
0:09:35>> MATT PORTER Oh, really?
0:09:36Does he do this for you too?
0:09:38Interesting.
0:09:39>> BRIAN KARDELL Oh, whenever we do, whenever we do, like,
0:09:42anime or miyazaki or like things where Professor Siracusa is assigning us the work, he will
0:09:50instruct us on what we, how we need to watch those things or at least give a strong opinion.
0:09:55So...
0:09:56Geoff - Now I followed the rules. I followed the Sir Gucci rules and I think they enhanced
0:09:59the experience.
0:10:00Myke - As you should.
0:10:01Geoff - Yeah, I recommend going to listen to this. It was a great discussion. And so,
0:10:05yeah, go check it out. I'll put a link in the show notes.
0:10:08Myke - Yeah, that's great. And that feed is fun for if you don't regularly listen or you
0:10:12don't always have time for the segments that we do here and that you do with Casey on analog.
0:10:16That's a fun feed too because it just collects them all. So when you're in the mood to listen
0:10:19to Myke talking about movies and TV shows and things. It's all in one place. That's
0:10:23why it exists.
0:10:25So Jason, can you tell me some defining features of Twitter?
0:10:33Well let's see, so you have each post is 140 characters.
0:10:39Wrong! As of a few days ago, Twitter doubled the character limit for tweets to 280 characters
0:10:48in a bunch of regions depending on the language. One of these languages that they have adapted
0:10:54this for is English. So if you're in the United States or the United Kingdom or any other
0:11:00English speaking country and you have your language set to English on Twitter, you may
0:11:05be part of a potential test/roll out/I think it's actually happening but they're calling
0:11:10it a test for some reason and be enabled for 280 characters available to tweet. Now I still
0:11:17have 140 characters, which is weird because I don't want 280 characters, but I also don't
0:11:24want to be the guy who doesn't have it, right? I'm in this kind of weird sense right now
0:11:29where like I don't necessarily want to have 280 characters at my disposal, but I don't
0:11:35have it and I'm like, "Well, why don't I have it? I feel like I should have it. Everybody
0:11:38else is getting it." But that's kind of where I am.
0:11:41Yeah, it's that moment where you see a long tweet and you're like, "What, that jerk has
0:11:44280 characters and I don't?"
0:11:46- Not me.
0:11:47(laughing)
0:11:49I assume you only have 140 characters.
0:11:51- Why don't I have 280 characters?
0:11:53What's wrong with me?
0:11:55Why didn't they want me?
0:11:58- So are you still in the 140 Club?
0:12:01- Oh yeah.
0:12:02- This is weird.
0:12:04- #140Club.
0:12:05- #140Club, 140 forever baby.
0:12:07I'm seeing these tweets in my timeline.
0:12:11I used Tweetbot, I assume you're seeing them the same.
0:12:14- Yeah.
0:12:15It looks weird, right? Like it looks really peculiar to see these tweets.
0:12:20Yeah, they're very long. They're so long. It seems wrong.
0:12:25I know what Twitter is saying. Like I've read their blog posts. You can go and read the
0:12:29blog post. And you know, it's the idea of like people want to be able to express themselves
0:12:34and I'm sure they're trying to curb some of the tweet storming type stuff and/or the screen
0:12:39shotting, right? People posting screenshots. Like I think Twitter want that to be text.
0:12:43want it to be there.
0:12:44Right, those 30 tweet long threads will now be 15 tweets long instead I guess?
0:12:50I would assume that they've done some data analysis and have worked out that by increasing
0:12:56it to 280 there will curb a lot of what's required.
0:12:59People instead of posting three tweets might post one now because they can get it all in
0:13:04if they just squeeze it into what would be 280 characters.
0:13:07You catch one, you catch two, maybe three, and maybe it stops people from doing that,
0:13:13and/or stops people from having to post these screenshots of the notep.
0:13:17>> I think that's a good one.
0:13:18The argument, and Gruber made it again this week, we've had this discussion before about
0:13:22that Twitter could just create a text attachment type, where you can just, your 140-character
0:13:28tweet introduces it, and then you have a text attachment that's readable, and it's accessible
0:13:32in a way that a screenshot isn't.
0:13:35they chose not to do that. But we see this, I actually wrote a piece about it, like how
0:13:39everybody takes a screenshot of the Notes app with text in it and posts that to Twitter
0:13:43or Instagram or Facebook because they don't have enough text in Twitter in order to get
0:13:49it out there. So this is better, and maybe it will cut down on using the Notes app, but
0:13:56it's still in this interim place where it's not like unlimited nor is it super limited.
0:14:03just a little bit less limited, which is kind of strange. I mean, I think it's okay. I think
0:14:10a lot of the criticism I've seen has been more meta Twitter criticism, which is Twitter
0:14:15has lots of problems with harassment on their platform and with awful people and also bots
0:14:20that are trying to manipulate public opinion on their platform. And so when they announce
0:14:26this, everybody says, "Why are you rolling out a new feature that is not addressing the
0:14:31the problems on your platform and their answer is well we're also addressing
0:14:34those and people don't believe them and they get angry and I think maybe
0:14:37rightfully so but if they are doing stuff for that they definitely don't
0:14:41make as big a song or dance about it as they did this right like if they're
0:14:44doing things they don't talk about them that's because this is easy I mean this
0:14:49is this is something that Twitter just needs to want to change the other stuff
0:14:54is hard so they of course they make a press release about this and a blog post
0:14:59and all of that. But yeah, it has the potential to change the platform and not necessarily
0:15:04for the better, not necessarily for the worse, but I do think that some level of outrage
0:15:09about this was inevitable because it's changed and that's just, people are going to be outraged
0:15:13about it. In the end, I would wager that most tweets are not going to break the 140 barrier
0:15:20because most of them probably don't get close now, but that it will cut down on threads,
0:15:25which I think are annoying. Now we could argue again that Twitter could do a better job with
0:15:32addressing the need that people have by making these giant Twitter threads, that they could
0:15:36do something else because again, a 10-tweet thread does not get solved by going to 280
0:15:43characters. It doesn't. It makes it a 5-tweet thread, maybe. But that's it.
0:15:47So I would say I am definitely in the camp of, I don't want text attachments to tweets.
0:15:54I don't want it because then it becomes like a recess reader.
0:15:58It's a blogging platform at that point.
0:16:01Because the thing is with threading and with threads which I also do find frustrating sometimes
0:16:06because of the way Twitter works.
0:16:08I'm reading this conversation, it's like it's upside down.
0:16:13I'd rather have a feature that addresses threads, right?
0:16:16That let's somebody make 20 Twitter posts that are all interlinked and that are collapsed
0:16:21by default to a single one and then the API and the web interface and all that lets you
0:16:27open it up and see all of those and some threads in some clients, in some instances, on some
0:16:35platforms you can do that now. The problem is that if you're following somebody who's
0:16:39doing a tweet thread you don't see tweet one and a click to see the whole thread. You see
0:16:44all the tweets and it fills your timeline.
0:16:47even with doing that, you're still gonna be back into square one of making it a blogging platform, right?
0:16:53Like as soon as you take away the thing from someone of like, "hmm, maybe I shouldn't spam a timeline," right?
0:16:59Then people try and cut it down, I think?
0:17:01Maybe so, I mean, I think the challenge though is what do the users want?
0:17:05Obviously the users want to post this stuff, and they're going to find a way to do it.
0:17:08And if you're the platform owner, you don't want to distort what your platform is,
0:17:12but at the same time you don't want to, ideally you want to address the motivation behind
0:17:17why users have behaved this way. The thread thing is still out there because I don't think
0:17:23280 makes much of a difference for it.
0:17:25>> No, I mean I will say for my own personal usage, 280 will be beneficial for some things
0:17:31that I do. I find that very frequently I'm either perfectly fine or I need two tweets.
0:17:38whatever it is I need it's either one or two that's all I ever need but this
0:17:43happens to me a lot like if I'm announcing a new thing or like we've got
0:17:47a big episode or something I want to promote it's always like 150 is the
0:17:53exact minimum that I can post and it's always so frustrating so being able to
0:17:57go to 280 will help me a lot in that but I don't want to become more verbose and
0:18:04and I don't necessarily feel that everybody else needs to because I'll be frank, most
0:18:10of the tweets that I've seen that are 280 characters don't need to be. But people now
0:18:14have the space to do it. Part of the reason that has made this platform great is that
0:18:19it's short and it's quippy. And of course, yes, it's getting broken by the fact that
0:18:24people are posting just like 60 tweets in a row to talk about a thing. Basically that
0:18:30content just shouldn't be there but it's what people want to do. That content should
0:18:34exist in the place that content should exist which is on a blog like that's where that should be but
0:18:39people don't want to do that and if people don't want to do that you can't stop them
0:18:41but i don't i don't i mean i can see the situation that twitter are in is like how do you fix this
0:18:47for some reason they've done this i don't know if they needed to do that i don't know if this
0:18:51is going to help them as you said because all it does is just half it but like it still is going
0:18:54to occupy the exact same amount of space on a screen but this is the the route that they've
0:18:59chosen to go down and it just looks weird it just looks weird and i don't know if this is
0:19:04is gonna help the platform in any meaningful way, right?
0:19:08I can't imagine that people are gonna be like,
0:19:10"Well, now I'll sign up."
0:19:12Like, you know, it's a strange, it's a strange thing.
0:19:15- Yeah, it is weird.
0:19:17Yeah, I have the same thing as you,
0:19:19which is I have accounts, like I find this more relevant
0:19:22for something like my, for the incomparable Twitter account,
0:19:26where I like to list, I like to mention everybody
0:19:28who's in an episode and I have panels of many people.
0:19:31And once you do that, you've run out of space
0:19:34to describe what the episode's about.
0:19:36It's like new with these people, link, and then you're done.
0:19:40And then I'll have a little more time to like,
0:19:42a little more space to explain that a little bit further.
0:19:45That'll be fine when that happens,
0:19:46when I get 280 on that account.
0:19:49But, you know, I don't know.
0:19:51It does seem weird.
0:19:53I don't think it's fundamentally good or bad.
0:19:57And I think that it could just be fine.
0:19:59The problem that I have with it is very much the problem.
0:20:02It's some of the stuff you've mentioned
0:20:04and that I mentioned earlier,
0:20:05which is it has a little bit
0:20:07of a rearranging deck chairs feel about it.
0:20:09Like of all the things happening on the platform of Twitter,
0:20:13this is what you choose to do.
0:20:17And I know maybe that you choose to do it because it's easy,
0:20:21but this seems like not where your focus should be
0:20:26when you've got challenges of reaching new audiences
0:20:29and challenges of harassment and potentially counter, you know, anti-cultural attacks by
0:20:39bots run by governments trying to stir up unrest in other countries. There are lots
0:20:50of things going on that are not the length of a tweet. So that's my issue with it. I
0:20:58I think fundamentally it's not necessarily a bad move, it's just like, seems like a beside
0:21:04the point move.
0:21:05Yeah, it's like Twitter, if you want to implement a feature that people might like, edits.
0:21:09This is, you know, whether you want that or not, I think there is a more of a user desire
0:21:15for tweet editing than double the length tweets.
0:21:20Sure.
0:21:21It can work, I'm sure that's a very difficult thing to try and work out, but that would
0:21:25maybe be met with a little bit more praise from your users than doubling.
0:21:30There are issues with edits, like you'd need to show the edit trail and you'd need
0:21:33to limit when the edits happen.
0:21:35It's a hard problem, yeah. But that would, you know, work that out. Do a basic version
0:21:39of that. Whatever it would be, that's going to be met with, if you want good PR for this
0:21:45stuff on a wider scale, that's going to be met with more hurrahs. I mean, yes, of course,
0:21:50way to make the incredibly difficult problem of the harassment stuff better.
0:21:55Right, like I don't know I don't know how you do that, right, like I have no answers
0:21:58for you. There are lots of people that have lots of great ideas. Listen to those
0:22:02people, right, there are things you can do but you know I'm sure the reason that a
0:22:06lot of that stuff doesn't get done is because there are accounts that are active
0:22:09but this is a whole big issue for another time maybe. Yeah. Want to get rid of those
0:22:14monthly active users, Jason? No, no. I don't want to do that. No, why would you want to do that?
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0:23:26I love the flexibility that the four wheels gives me because I can choose to maneuver
0:23:30my case in whatever way I want depending on how heavy it is.
0:23:33They also have a patent pending compression system inside which is great if you're an
0:23:36over packer and a removable washable laundry bag so you can separate your clean clothes
0:23:41from your worn ones which is genius.
0:23:43I absolutely love this feature as well.
0:23:45Just so when you get to a hotel, you just take out the little bag.
0:23:48That's where all the dirty clothes go.
0:23:50And then you just put it in the suitcase, all zipped up when you're done, take it home,
0:23:53empty it into the washing basket.
0:23:54Job done.
0:23:55Love it.
0:23:56They're all of their carry-ons are compliant with major US airline sizes and they have TSA
0:24:01combination locks built right in.
0:24:03Travel smarter with the suitcase that charges your phone.
0:24:06To find out more about Away, go to awaytravel.com/upgradepodcast and use the code
0:24:12Upgrade Podcast, one word, at checkout and you'll get $20 off their suitcases.
0:24:17Any of them in fact.
0:24:18Go to awaytravel.com/upgradepodcastcode, Upgrade Podcast for $20 off.
0:24:23Thank you so much to Away for their support of this show and Relay FM.
0:24:27I'll be packing my Away suitcase later today.
0:24:32Apple have published a white paper for Face ID.
0:24:35I think this is something that they promised to do on stage, I believe, or at least during
0:24:39the introduction stuff, they said that they would have a security white paper out, which
0:24:42is out. And it also came alongside a revamped privacy page that Apple put together at apple.com/privacy,
0:24:50which talks about the way that Apple feel about privacy. I want to talk about some tidbits,
0:24:54some little pieces of information about Face ID that could be pulled out of this white
0:24:58paper. One of them, this is something that we'd heard about, but like just an implicit
0:25:03confirmation from Apple that developers don't have to make any changes to their apps to
0:25:08use face ID where touch ID was used. If you use touch ID then it was fine, right?
0:25:14But then if you now you can open an application and instead of a touch ID
0:25:19thing you're shown a face ID thing. So you can show your face.
0:25:22That's standard security. It's nice because this is the idea of planning
0:25:27ahead and saying look we're gonna have a biometric authentication system and you
0:25:31hook into it this way and then you as an app walk away and let the system verify
0:25:36and then it'll come back and say, "Yep, that is that person."
0:25:40And so if you're 1Password, you know,
0:25:42and you're unlocking your vault with a thumbprint,
0:25:46now guess what?
0:25:48It'll unlock with a face ID, and it's all the same to you,
0:25:51'cause it's just biometric validation.
0:25:53That's very cool.
0:25:54- So it's a great thing for developers
0:25:56that they don't have to do anything, right?
0:25:57Like you already did the hard work.
0:25:59- Isn't that the best?
0:26:00Because that suggests that everything that's underlying,
0:26:03When something is really built with a good foundation,
0:26:07Apple can change parts of the underlying system
0:26:13and apps just work right with the new whatever it is
0:26:16that's changed, new hardware of some sort,
0:26:19new approach to software, like that's always the best, right?
0:26:24If the developers don't have to do anything
0:26:27and it just works, that doesn't always happen,
0:26:30but this is an instance where Apple should be able
0:26:32to literally just swap in face ID for touch ID and nobody should be the wiser in terms
0:26:38of software development.
0:26:40Every time you unlock an iPhone X, face ID takes data of the face in front of it. Now,
0:26:47this is either a face ID scan, so it's accurately identified via face ID scan, or if you try
0:26:54and scan and it doesn't work, or if you unlock and then you unlock your phone with a pin,
0:26:58it will take that information because it will believe at that point that if you have unlocked
0:27:04it and it looks at your face and has a particular rate that it believes it might not be you
0:27:09but isn't like enough for them to unlock it, right, like it's hitting within some certain
0:27:13parameters, it will take that data and update the profile it has of you and it does that
0:27:17every time the phone is unlocked. And this is how Apple builds the way that your face
0:27:22changes over time.
0:27:24- Right, it's clever too because they're doing it
0:27:26within a range where like if I have,
0:27:29so my wife and I have our own like passwords
0:27:32for each other's phones and stuff, right?
0:27:34And 'cause occasionally you need to unlock
0:27:36the other person's phone and do something,
0:27:37they're busy or whatever.
0:27:39And so what you don't wanna have happen is
0:27:42Lauren unlocks my phone with a password
0:27:46and it scans her face and goes, oh, that's who Jason is now.
0:27:50- Jason had an operation today
0:27:52and now this is what he looks like.
0:27:54- He looks very, very different.
0:27:56And then I come back to my phone and they're like,
0:27:59"Nope, I don't know who you are
0:28:01because that lady unlocked your phone."
0:28:03And so that's who I belong to now, right?
0:28:06Like it's, I don't even remember who you are.
0:28:10I'm with the new person now, goodbye.
0:28:12- Who your face has belonged to us.
0:28:14- It doesn't do that.
0:28:15Ideally what you've got is it looks
0:28:17and it's looking for a high enough percentage
0:28:22that it thinks, yeah, that probably was you,
0:28:24but I wasn't sure enough to auto unlock.
0:28:27And then it uses that as a hint, it learns from that,
0:28:30and it kinda like puts that into the context that it uses.
0:28:35And they describe this as being the method
0:28:38by which they can track differences in facial hair
0:28:41and makeup for dramatic, I think they said differences
0:28:46in facial hair and makeup,
0:28:47and still know what's the same person is.
0:28:49So if you are, you change your look,
0:28:52but are still obviously you and you unlock your phone
0:28:55because it doesn't recognize you with your changed look,
0:28:57it actually uses that as a cue to update its training
0:29:01because it knows you look different now.
0:29:03And that the next time it should actually recognize you,
0:29:06which is, yeah, this is a nice feature
0:29:09and it shows you the level of steps and the complexity here
0:29:12that Apple is going through in terms of
0:29:14trying to get a user experience that works,
0:29:16but also have a secure system
0:29:19because the way that the data is collected is secure.
0:29:24You didn't mention the infrared dot mapping thing.
0:29:29The dot pattern is different based on the hardware.
0:29:33Every phone's dot pattern is different,
0:29:34so you can't take a dot pattern,
0:29:37take an infrared camera and measure a dot pattern
0:29:39on somebody's face from one iPhone
0:29:41and then use that to spoof another iPhone
0:29:43because the patterns won't match,
0:29:45which is really interesting.
0:29:46And then like the encryption, how they take the data
0:29:49and it's like, you know, it's signed and encrypted
0:29:53and then it is thrown away in certain circumstances
0:29:56after time or on a restart.
0:29:58And then you have to re-enable it.
0:30:00Like there's a lot going on here in terms of the details
0:30:03of how they're securing this data.
0:30:06And of course the basic misconception
0:30:08that a bunch of people had when this was announced,
0:30:10which is, you know, it doesn't leave the phone.
0:30:12And in fact, it's reduced to a mathematical equation.
0:30:15It's not even the dots anymore.
0:30:18It's just a mathematical equation that is,
0:30:23I think it's very much like cryptography.
0:30:25It is representing what the measurement was
0:30:28so that if you take a new measurement,
0:30:30you can say that it matches,
0:30:31but it's not the same as having
0:30:33the original measurements still around.
0:30:35There's a lot going on here.
0:30:37- So like there's even an enhancement to ARKit,
0:30:40which includes facial recognition and mapping onto a face.
0:30:43You know, like they demoed the Snapchat stuff
0:30:45and how Animoji does it as well.
0:30:47But third party applications that use this part of ARKit,
0:30:51they don't actually get the face data.
0:30:53Like they don't get it.
0:30:54So it's all, you know, so even then, right?
0:30:57So it's not just not Apple, nobody.
0:31:00Nobody gets that information,
0:31:01which is again, very cool, very clever.
0:31:04A big question that a lot of people ask is like,
0:31:06how will payment authorization work?
0:31:07Like, do I just look at my phone and the money leaves?
0:31:10Well, to authorize payments via Apple Pay,
0:31:12you double click the side button first,
0:31:14then look at the phone.
0:31:16So it's a slight change.
0:31:17So like even if you hold it to a reader,
0:31:19you still have to do the double click things.
0:31:21There is a slight change here.
0:31:23I will say that personally,
0:31:25I never with Apple Pay hold the device, then authorize.
0:31:28I always pre-authorize.
0:31:30Like I double click the home button,
0:31:32hold my touch ID and then it's ready.
0:31:34So I'm not going to do it in the line.
0:31:35And then I just hold the device, right?
0:31:37Like I never do the waiting thing
0:31:38'cause I find that takes too long for me.
0:31:40It's frustrating. Plus I know I'm going to do the Apple Pay thing. So I do that.
0:31:43It also seems like, no, they talk about making payments in apps. Now I'm assuming, my read on
0:31:50this is this applies to both Apple Pay inside of apps and in-app purchases. This is how I read this.
0:31:55That to make payments in applications, you confirm intent by also doing the double click
0:32:01of the side button and then the face scan. So all payments are done with a double click and
0:32:06and a face scan. That's how it works.
0:32:07This is probably why the side button is so large
0:32:11on the new device.
0:32:12It's to make it easier for you to get to
0:32:14because you're going to be clicking it more, right?
0:32:16Like, yeah.
0:32:18- And anybody who's used an Apple Watch
0:32:19already knows that this is a gesture
0:32:21that Apple has been using for Apple Pay
0:32:23because that's how the Apple Watch payment flow goes
0:32:27is you double tap on the side button and then scan,
0:32:30you know, and then tap your Apple.
0:32:32- So it's actually going to feel really natural for me
0:32:34because I would say 90, 95% of the times that I use Apple Pay,
0:32:39I use my watch, I don't use my phone.
0:32:40- Yeah, yeah, well, I mean,
0:32:42and what I was gonna say is to be honest,
0:32:44this is really interesting, but I'm not sure how much more
0:32:46I'm going to really use Apple Pay on the device.
0:32:48Most of the time I'm using Apple Pay on my watch,
0:32:50but for people who don't have an Apple Watch,
0:32:52this is the way that you'll pay.
0:32:54- I care more personally about like,
0:32:56how do I authorize an App Store purchase, right?
0:32:59Like how does that work?
0:32:59And it seems like it's the same thing.
0:33:01It does the face ID scanning instead of touch ID
0:33:04for like the confirmation, but to confirm the intent,
0:33:06you do the double click, which makes sense.
0:33:08I mean, there are facial gestures they could do,
0:33:11but I don't wanna do any of those, you know,
0:33:13like I wanna do the double clicking.
0:33:14You know, I've heard people say like,
0:33:16well, if you winked at the phone, I don't wanna do that.
0:33:18I don't wanna wink at my iPhone.
0:33:20That's not a thing that I wanna do
0:33:22to confirm a payment to be made or to be unlocked.
0:33:25Like I have no desire to do that kind of stuff.
0:33:28- What if you get something in your eye
0:33:29and you accidentally, then it's a Seinfeld episode, right?
0:33:32like I'm just yeah I'm not I'm not willing to do that double click is like a it is a
0:33:36thing it makes sense to me it is a second level it's like a two-factor right like it's
0:33:41my face and my thumb doing the job and they do it together.
0:33:44Isn't that a Seinfeld episode where George gets something in his eye and he everybody
0:33:48thinks he's winking?
0:33:49Yep yep but I can't remember the payoff but yeah.
0:33:52Horrible horrible misconceptions happen because of that yeah so you know you would last thing
0:33:56you want to do is to do that.
0:33:57If you're under the age of 13, your facial features may not be distinct enough for FaceID
0:34:03to work.
0:34:04Is that interesting?
0:34:05You're just a… if you're not a teenager, the iPhone just thinks you're an undifferentiated
0:34:10blob.
0:34:11Just a blob.
0:34:12Just a human blob.
0:34:13Whatever.
0:34:14Human.
0:34:15Maybe human.
0:34:16Maybe even not.
0:34:17I don't want to speak to the way that people live their lives, but I don't think at this
0:34:21point a 13-year-old should have one of these phones.
0:34:24Like I just…
0:34:25I mean, I'm sure there are going to be many, right?
0:34:27many, many 13-year-olds in the world that will have an iPhone X.
0:34:30And in two or three years, even more of them will have them when they're handed down.
0:34:35So my hope would be, honestly, that Apple can make it better. I mean, I don't know if
0:34:39it's just a limitation of the technology or they just haven't gotten good enough yet or
0:34:43if it's purely a 13-year-old or a 12-year-old or an 11-year-old, their face can never be
0:34:48detected but we'll see about that. My hope would be that they would make it better if
0:34:52they want to roll it out because it's not like a 9-year-old, "Oh, your fingerprint
0:34:56isn't distinct enough yet. I'm sure there are going to be many 13 year olds in the world
0:35:07that are going to be upset when the face ID doesn't work for them.
0:35:18The one thing I am frustrated about is one face per device. You mentioned this, you and
0:35:23Lauren share passwords. Me and Adina, we have our thumbs registered on each other's phones.
0:35:28Your mileage may vary with this, right? Like personally, but that works for me and her. Like,
0:35:33this is just a thing. We're totally cool with that. I don't have my phone locked because I
0:35:38don't want her to see it. I have my phone locked in case I drop it on the bus. And again, like,
0:35:42people's privacy. I'm not saying you're doing something wrong because that's not how it is.
0:35:46People are private about their stuff in their own way. You know, no judgment, right? This is
0:35:51a judgment-free zone. But I am frustrated about that, like, that she's gonna need to
0:35:56put the pin in or whatever, so I'm gonna have to tell her my pin, she's gonna have to remember
0:35:58the pin, and it's like, ahh. It was way easier when we could just touch ID on the devices.
0:36:04I've gotta think that at some point this will change, but I wonder if this is a hardware
0:36:09limitation, like, not the camera, but like, what all they're storing, if it's just too
0:36:15complex for more faces to be stored or whether it's something that they could update with
0:36:22software down the road. Because yeah, it would be nice if there were a couple of distinct
0:36:26faces.
0:36:27That chip can only take one and then maybe it needs like two chips to add more so they
0:36:31may never do it, right? Like it may always be now like it's one face per device. It
0:36:37may be the way it is but I would hope that they're able to change that over time. I
0:36:41I guess unless you're a twin,
0:36:43then you could have multiple faces per device, I guess.
0:36:45Is that how that works?
0:36:47That's the only way you get more than one face per device,
0:36:49I guess, is have somebody who has the exact same face as you.
0:36:53I guess, maybe, I don't know.
0:36:54But there you go.
0:36:55That's the Face ID white paper.
0:36:57Again, this is still on the long road ahead
0:37:01that we have for this.
0:37:02We're a month away, month and a bit away,
0:37:04month and change from the phones being in people's hands,
0:37:06possibly, if you can get one.
0:37:09So yeah, we're on the long road to the iPhone X.
0:37:12I'm excited for it,
0:37:13like I cannot wait to get one of these things.
0:37:16I'm pumped, I'm very excited, very excited.
0:37:18Talking about new hardware, Apple TV 4K.
0:37:22We didn't get to it over the last week or two.
0:37:25- It's true, there's so many things to talk about
0:37:27and write about and you can't get to it all.
0:37:30- And unfortunately, the poor baby of the Apple TV 4K
0:37:34fell at the bottom of the list
0:37:35of the things that were deemed the most important.
0:37:38But I wanted to just talk about a couple of things,
0:37:40about my setup and my experience.
0:37:42You have one too, right?
0:37:44So I guess we can go, we can chip in together on this.
0:37:47You do have one. - Yeah, absolutely.
0:37:49I know, in fact, let me tell you my story
0:37:50'cause it's really funny.
0:37:51I pre-ordered the day after the orders went up.
0:37:55I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna get up at midnight.
0:37:57And then I was like, yeah, well, I'll get a 4K Apple TV
0:37:59and I'm probably not gonna get a review unit
0:38:00to test anyway, so I'll get one.
0:38:02So I placed an order and they said,
0:38:03well, you'll get that probably about October 8th.
0:38:06It's like, all right, well, that's dumb, but okay.
0:38:08And then I thought, a few days later, I had this thought,
0:38:11which was, I wonder if they're in stock
0:38:14at my local Apple store.
0:38:16Yeah, they were in stock there.
0:38:18And which made me think to myself,
0:38:20why, I think Apple needs a better system, right?
0:38:23I think Apple needs a system where they can say,
0:38:25hey, I know you are waiting two weeks to get an Apple TV,
0:38:30but if you like, we could shift this
0:38:33to be a pickup order at your local Apple store.
0:38:36I think they don't do that because what they want is
0:38:38they want to allow people who don't think about buying
0:38:41online to wander in, to drift into an Apple store
0:38:43and get one, like they don't wanna cross the streams there.
0:38:46- They have to have store stock, they have to have it.
0:38:49- Right?
0:38:50- You can't ship, I mean, I understand,
0:38:51you can't just ship the online orders,
0:38:53you have to have store stock as well.
0:38:55- You have to have some store stock, yeah.
0:38:56So I understand it and yet at the same time as a customer,
0:39:00I was told to wait three weeks for something
0:39:02that I could drive.
0:39:03five minutes to pick up, right?
0:39:06And I finally just, that's what I did,
0:39:09is I went and I got one.
0:39:10- I feel like they should tell you, right?
0:39:11Like, you know, you place an order and send you an email
0:39:13and they're like, "Oh, hey, buy the way."
0:39:15- Yeah, I think, and they might,
0:39:17there might be something to that because of course,
0:39:19I ordered it, I think before it was in stores.
0:39:22- Yep.
0:39:23- And so they're like, "All right, well,
0:39:24it's gonna be three weeks."
0:39:25And if I had ordered it when it was in stores,
0:39:28it might've said, "This is available for pickup
0:39:30at Corta Madera."
0:39:31- It does do that.
0:39:32It does do that.
0:39:32If you're buying after pre-order time, it shows you both options.
0:39:36It shows, hey, available to pick up today.
0:39:38But it would be nice if they could do it retroactively.
0:39:40So they could say to you, oh, by the way, right now there is stock in store today.
0:39:46We don't know what it will be like when you get there, but check.
0:39:49Yeah, the problem is that that ruins their store stock because then you're diverting
0:39:55all of your, or at least some of your pre-orders to store stock.
0:39:58Yeah, that is frustrating.
0:40:01But when it's out three weeks and it's in stock at your local store, that's pretty dumb.
0:40:05Anyway, so I did cancel my online order and place an order for pickup and one hour later
0:40:12I had the Apple TV 4K.
0:40:14So I did get it in the end.
0:40:16So I found Setup Simple, not as simple as the Apple Watch, but simple, right?
0:40:20You just hold the phone near the device and it transfers over like Wi-Fi information and
0:40:24account information.
0:40:25I still had to enter my iTunes password once and I had to re-authenticate Netflix and YouTube.
0:40:30and stuff like that, but they're actually,
0:40:33YouTube is really simple to do.
0:40:35I love the way that YouTube does their activation thing,
0:40:38where it just shows an eight digit code,
0:40:40and it says just go to youtube.com/activate on the device,
0:40:43type this code in, and it's done.
0:40:45So you don't have to sit and put in passwords, I love that.
0:40:47- Lots of apps, lots of apps do that.
0:40:49I have that for a lot of the different video apps,
0:40:53where they want me to authenticate
0:40:55either with my cable provider,
0:40:59or with my just my login.
0:41:02And those are my favorite ones when they work
0:41:04because then I do need a separate device
0:41:07but I also am not laboriously entering in a passcode.
0:41:10- So I will say to Apple's credit, right?
0:41:12Like Netflix doesn't do this.
0:41:13Netflix wants my username and password.
0:41:15But when I go to that, they get to that screen
0:41:18a notification pops up for me to enter in text.
0:41:21And I was able to go to another application
0:41:24and went to one password, got my password
0:41:26and the notification just remained persistent
0:41:28in the notification center.
0:41:30So I just hit it and paste it in the password.
0:41:32So it's like, yeah, you thought of this, right?
0:41:35Like I'm feeling now, like especially with this Apple TV,
0:41:38that Apple's gotten to a point where like they're showing
0:41:40that a lot more thought has gone into this product
0:41:43than when it was initially introduced, right?
0:41:45Like it is way more put together as a thing
0:41:48than it was initially.
0:41:49And there were many rumors about that,
0:41:51about like the idea of like it sat on the shelf for a while,
0:41:54it wasn't touched and it was a ship of old software,
0:41:56which is why like Apple music wasn't on it, et cetera, et cetera.
0:41:59But now it does feel better. Um,
0:42:01I have a 4k HDI TV and I could instantly see a change
0:42:06in the menus, crisper, richer color.
0:42:08And the thing I was most excited for totally paid off.
0:42:11The screen savers are amazing. They look so good.
0:42:17They do. They do. They look really good.
0:42:19Really frustrating for me that you cannot watch 4k YouTube videos.
0:42:25This is really annoying.
0:42:28- Yeah, and this is Apple's decision to not support,
0:42:32Google is pushing the VP9 codec and saying,
0:42:354K is only, they're not gonna bother doing H.265 encoding
0:42:40of 4K videos, they're only gonna do VP9.
0:42:44And Apple's like, well, we're not gonna support VP9.
0:42:46And it's this little passive aggressive game they're playing.
0:42:49This is the same reason why you can't watch
0:42:514K YouTube videos in Safari on a Mac, but you can in Chrome because it supports the
0:42:59codec. So this is a little adversarial thing between Apple and Google, but it makes Apple's
0:43:10product worse in this case.
0:43:13Apple need to give in on this one in my opinion. I like something that Daring, Mr. Daring,
0:43:19John Gruber said during Fireball, "unlike the iPhone and iPad, Apple TV doesn't have
0:43:28enough market share to force Google's hand. I think Google can stick to its VP9 guns and
0:43:33it will be Apple that pays the price." Completely agree, and I would say, I think Apple needs
0:43:37to say for the Apple TV 4K, they will support this codec. They don't need to do it anywhere
0:43:41else. But this is a TV device that has 4K HDR support and one of the biggest video sources
0:43:48in the world, probably with the most 4K content, they don't support.
0:43:55I watch videos constantly from YouTubers that publish in 4K.
0:44:01My TV can do it.
0:44:04So my TV has smart apps, and it has 4K support in the YouTube app.
0:44:10So if I want to get that content, I still have to go back to the TV app, which is one
0:44:15of the things I was hoping from getting this device and then eventually there being Amazon
0:44:19is that I only ever had to use this now. But if I do for whatever reason want to watch
0:44:23a video in 4K, I then still have to go to the clunky smart app on my TV.
0:44:28Well look, I mean Google, I think that Google is being jerky here by not also embracing
0:44:34H.265 or HEVC because that is also a standard. But Google has their own thing that they're
0:44:42pushing which is VP9 and it's this format war kind of thing that's happening and it's
0:44:47dumb I will admit it is burdensome to YouTube to have to encode 4k videos in both of those
0:44:56formats for compatibility reasons but you know it's one of those things where we could
0:45:01argue that the right thing to do ultimately is for YouTube to offer 4k video in whatever
0:45:07formats people are consuming them in, but the reality of the situation is Apple is making
0:45:13a 4K TV box that can't play 4K YouTube videos, and we can say, "Well, YouTube should just
0:45:19change," but it's Apple's product and Apple can control whether it's better by including
0:45:25that support, and they have chosen not to do it. And I think, you know, to John Gruber's
0:45:31point and your point, Apple TV probably needs 4K YouTube videos more than YouTube needs
0:45:38Apple TV to play videos in 4K.
0:45:40Yeah, because you know what will? Chromecast.
0:45:44Everything else will.
0:45:45Yeah, yeah, so it's like, you know, and we're going to talk about Amazon stuff later, but
0:45:50the Amazon Fire TV 4K, that'll do it. And you know what? That thing costs $70 now. 4K
0:45:574K and HDR support for $100 less than Apple's.
0:46:01Yeah. But I do really love my Apple TV.
0:46:05The Siri remote, right? It should be better.
0:46:09They didn't really do a lot. They added that ring around the menu button.
0:46:13Honestly, for me, that has made it better. It's not a better remote
0:46:17but it's better than it was. Because now I can pick it up
0:46:21and I know what way it is and I know what button I'm touching.
0:46:25because I can do it in proximity to the little ring. It's like touch typing on a keyboard,
0:46:29right? You look for the little notches on the keys. It feels like that to me. Not that
0:46:33I know how to touch type, but I understand what that means. But, you know, it's like
0:46:36it's not a... The remote is still bad, but it is better bad than the bad it was before.
0:46:43Like, it has been improved, it should be better, but if this is what they were going to do,
0:46:49then fine.
0:46:50wasn't wasn't it was I think maybe Marco Arment who said it's literally the least they could do if
0:46:56it wasn't him it was somebody I heard say it's like literally the least they could do was put a
0:47:00white ring around the menu button um yeah I think the trackpad is still just a problematic interface
0:47:09and I use it a lot and I still get in situations where I'm like no don't don't go there don't do
0:47:16that or where they put some clever sort of like flick up to get more things and I flick
0:47:21up and it's like nope that didn't work, that didn't work, you gotta get the right gesture.
0:47:25And you push exactly right and you push it a little too hard now you've clicked and now
0:47:29it's gone away somewhere, you accidentally clicked. Yeah it's still not, it's one of
0:47:34these things that Apple is trying to reinvent the remote and doing, you know, it's a mediocre
0:47:41job that maybe there is a reason remotes are the way they are. But, you know, yeah. This
0:47:47is the whole story with the Apple TV is like there are parts of it that are pretty good.
0:47:51In isolation, I actually think it's a pretty great product. It's got issues, but for video
0:47:59watching, like the apps that I use are all pretty good. There are some exceptions, but
0:48:04I think they are not Apple's fault so much as the provider's fault. It can do some good
0:48:09The challenge is that there are areas where Apple has made the product less, like not supporting VP9, so not supporting 4K from YouTube.
0:48:19And there is the competition, right? All of us know that there are other devices that do this for $100 less.
0:48:28And the challenge is, is Apple providing an experience $100 greater than Amazon's 4K Fire TV?
0:48:37And, you know, well, what are they doing that the Amazon box isn't?
0:48:42And it is, well, AirPlay, you know, screen mirroring and access to iTunes content.
0:48:49And that's about it.
0:48:51I mean, is it, is it, is that enough for the, the, the difference?
0:48:56And, you know, part of me thinks that Apple is, is not too concerned because
0:49:01they just don't think that it is an important enough market, um, for it to
0:49:06matter, especially since 4K HDR TVs are kind of expensive, and so I think they may figure,
0:49:12"Look, if you can afford a 4K HDR TV, you can afford a $170 box to get access to Apple's
0:49:17stuff," and maybe they're right about that, but that's part of my frustration, is like,
0:49:24it's an okay video streamer, it's just way more expensive than the competition, and it's
0:49:29disappointing that it isn't better, and some of that is not Apple's fault. Well, some of
0:49:33that is sort of Apple's fault in the sense that Apple
0:49:35and the content providers have had issues
0:49:39and Apple doesn't wanna roll over on them,
0:49:41but the content providers also don't wanna get taken
0:49:43by Apple and so you end up with breakdowns
0:49:46and things single sign-on not being fully supported
0:49:48and stuff like that.
0:49:50I don't know, I don't mind using it, I enjoy it
0:49:55and in fact, I like it better than the Amazon Fire TV
0:49:57I've got which has its own interface issues
0:50:00and I like it better than the interface on my television
0:50:02which the TV apps are not particularly great.
0:50:05They're really generic and weird.
0:50:07But all that said, it could be better,
0:50:11and I wish it was cheaper to get into the Apple TV line.
0:50:15And that's something we talked about a couple of weeks ago,
0:50:18which is I'm surprised that the base model Apple TV
0:50:21isn't under a hundred now,
0:50:23now that they've got this 4K model.
0:50:25But it's not--
0:50:26- What are they selling?
0:50:27Are they selling the Razer or are they selling the Bladez?
0:50:29What is the point of this product?
0:50:32Do they want people to be buying content or do they want people to be buying the boxes?
0:50:37I would argue that surely it's the content, right?
0:50:40They want people buying TV shows and movies.
0:50:42And locking them into the ecosystem too, right?
0:50:45That's part of it.
0:50:46It's not, yes, locking them into the ecosystem sells a more expensive box, but also buying
0:50:51the more expensive box and making it easy to buy more movies locks you further into
0:50:55the ecosystem.
0:50:56It goes both ways.
0:50:57and it's a weird, yeah, I wonder what the strategy is here
0:51:02or if they're just kind of like groping around in the dark
0:51:05and maybe some of it is this video strategy,
0:51:08like what are they gonna do?
0:51:10There's a whole other topic that we've talked about
0:51:13on my podcast that I do with Tim Goodman
0:51:15from the Hollywood Reporter TV Talk Machine,
0:51:17you can get it at the incomparable.com/TVTM.
0:51:20We talk about it a lot there
0:51:21and we're gonna talk about it more, I think this week,
0:51:24which is what is Apple strategy
0:51:27for how it rolls out its video service?
0:51:29It's got high profile video or TV executives now
0:51:33talking to the creative people in Hollywood,
0:51:37and it's got a big checkbook.
0:51:39But what it doesn't have is a story about
0:51:42where their shows are going.
0:51:44Like what is that service?
0:51:47Is it available everywhere?
0:51:48Is it only on Apple TV?
0:51:50Is it just,
0:51:53just gonna keep throwing things on Apple music? Are they gonna have a clearly
0:51:55defined video service on top of it? And the problem with signing a big name and
0:52:00having and and saying you know yeah we're gonna throw you a lot of money and
0:52:03creative control to do this thing that you want to create. That big name one of
0:52:08the things they know is like if they go to Amazon or Netflix they know where
0:52:12their show is gonna be seen and who's gonna see it. And with Apple it's like
0:52:16they're not like we don't have an answer there yet. So I wonder sometimes if that
0:52:22is part of this kind of like what is the role of the Apple TV is like Apple
0:52:26hasn't decided what the role of the Apple TV is because Apple hasn't decided
0:52:30exactly what it's going to do with his video service like is it is it available
0:52:34everywhere is it only available on this box if it's only on this box do they
0:52:37raise the price or they keep this high price of the box in order to drive
0:52:40hardware sales or do they lower the price in order to drive subscribers to
0:52:44make it easy for people to get access to their stuff I don't know it's a hard
0:52:48question there are lots of different ways they could go and they seem to have
0:52:51like not committed to any of them right now so I don't know.
0:52:59All right so Apple TV 4K it's got some frustrations to it which is exactly what I expected but
0:53:06it's the upgrade that I guess I was looking for mostly.
0:53:09Yeah 4K looks good I have a 4K TV that doesn't do HDR but I will get one at some point here
0:53:19but 4K looks can look good. The screensaver is as funny as it is to talk about, "Oh, the
0:53:25screensaver is just so great." But like those screensavers are so detailed that they really
0:53:29do show off the 4K like they are impossibly detailed.
0:53:33And I find them entertaining to watch. I like watching them. Like, you know, they're on
0:53:37in the house.
0:53:38Watch the little cars, cars going around and all of that. And yeah, like when is that,
0:53:43is that, is that car going to go off that exit in Dubai or is it going to stay on the
0:53:47road? We don't know. You have to watch and find out.
0:53:49That's right. Is the sun going to set behind London or not? We don't know.
0:53:53We have to wait and see if there will be a cloud or if we'll see the sunset.
0:53:57And the Netflix 4K stuff is great. I'm looking forward to the Amazon app because they've got a lot of 4K stuff.
0:54:04And I currently have to watch Amazon--I currently have to watch all the 4K stuff through my TV.
0:54:10Now I can watch Netflix 4K on the Apple TV instead of through the dumb TV app.
0:54:14I'm looking forward to getting Amazon out of the TV app and just using Apple TV instead
0:54:20because it's a lot easier to navigate to. And now what I'm finding, and this is kind
0:54:27of funny, is I'm like a 4K, like a seeker of 4K now, 4K in HDR, where it's like, "What
0:54:36do you got?" Like, I've got some movies that do 4K now. That's fun. Some of my movies got
0:54:40upgraded so I can watch like the later Star Trek movies in 4K and there's some other movies
0:54:46in 4K. It's great. But I look at like HBO Go and I think, "Come on, HBO. You got 4K
0:54:54versions of your shows, right? You should roll that out." And CBS All Access, I had
0:55:00that because the new Star Trek show started last week and it's on streaming and it's on
0:55:06Netflix in the rest of the world, but in the US it's on CBS All Access and it's like it's
0:55:10provided in 1080 and it's provided with in stereo or like it's not even in 5.1
0:55:15it's like get your act together guys give us a 5.1 audio track and if you've
0:55:20got a 4k version of the show I want to see it
0:55:23I don't know if the version on Netflix around the world is 4k or if it's just
0:55:271080 but I am finding myself doing that thing of like is this a 4k no it's not
0:55:31for all all these apps so obviously every video provider is being pushed to
0:55:37provide 4K shows and movies. So it's gonna happen. And HDR. And, you know, making your
0:55:45videos look better is a good thing. It's not the—you know, most people probably on a
0:55:48smaller HDTV cannot tell the difference between 4K and 1080 HD, but HDR is more noticeable,
0:55:56and people will get that on iPad Pro now, and yeah, it's all good, but it's just I find
0:56:00it funny, like, the moment that I get the Apple TV 4K attached to my TV, I start looking
0:56:04for 4k stuff like and being disappointed when it's not.
0:56:08Exactly, exactly like I'm looking for that content now more and more.
0:56:13Oh I also switched it to 24 frames per second
0:56:16to test that out and I am happy to report that I think my
0:56:22TV does a pretty good job of the pull down thing where it
0:56:25tries to do the right thing to make the film content not look
0:56:31juddery, but I think at 24 frames a second on the Apple TV it did look better. It does
0:56:39take my TV about a second to change between those formats, which is the reason that Apple
0:56:43doesn't do it on the fly, because Apple doesn't like that it blinks out for an undetermined
0:56:48amount of time while your TV changes its settings. But it did look good. The problem is that
0:56:54the user interface looks ridiculous at 24 frames per second. It looks like you've gone
0:56:59to the old, like you're using an old-timey Apple TV that can barely draw
0:57:03on the screen if you do it at 24 frames per second. So this is that idea that
0:57:08John, it's the John Syracuse feature right, which is to be able to say look
0:57:12give me output to the TV in the proper format for the video that you're
0:57:17presenting. So if it's not HDR, don't present it in HDR because apparently
0:57:22that doesn't look very good. If it's not 4k, don't present it in 4k, present it in
0:57:281080 or 720, and if it's 24 frames a second, present it at 24 frames a second, not at 60
0:57:36frames a second. And Apple has chosen to this point not to do that. You can set it to lots
0:57:41of these different video settings, but you can't do what my TiVo, I think, actually has
0:57:47this setting, which is pass-through, which is basically like, just do the native of whatever
0:57:52the content is and switch on the fly. And you get a lot more of those kind of blank
0:57:56moments where your TV blinks and then comes back in, but it's always in the preferred
0:58:02format for the content. I have some hope that Apple will just make that a setting for people
0:58:08who care and nobody else will use it and it'll be fine.
0:58:13Today's episode is also brought to you in part by a new sponsor and that is Timing,
0:58:19the automatic time tracking app for Mac. Time tracking, I know that many people find it
0:58:24Hey, I have a show where we talk about time tracking quite a bit. I know that some people
0:58:28find it boring. You have to start and stop timers, it can interrupt your work, and sometimes
0:58:33quite a lot of the time if you're me you forget to do it. But why should you do all of that
0:58:37work? Timing for the Mac automatically tracks how much time you spend on each app, document
0:58:44and website. This means that you never have to worry about starting or stopping a timer
0:58:48I love the idea of documents and websites, I don't have that kind of granularity in
0:58:55manual tracking.
0:59:02Because timing collects more data than a regular time tracker, its use extends far beyond billing
0:59:07hours.
0:59:09It shows you exactly when you were using which Apple website, maybe when you were taking
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0:59:20going forward. But your work doesn't just happen on your Mac, right? And that's why
0:59:23Timing's timeline automatically makes suggestions for filling gaps in your timeline and can
0:59:28ask you what you did offline every time you return to the Mac. This way you'll never forget
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0:59:38over the summer and the fact that it was logging things automatically for me was amazing. I
0:59:44I am pretty bad at doing manual tracking, especially when I'm outside of my usual environment,
0:59:49so it's perfect for me on my Mac Pro.
0:59:52When I'm doing other things, I just completely forget to do any type of time tracking.
0:59:56Yup, it's like time tracking amnesia or something, where it's like you get out of context and
1:00:02it's gone, it's lost.
1:00:03I'm not in my office, so that means that I don't do this anymore.
1:00:07So what I love about timing is that it just does it for me.
1:00:10So all of that stuff is just entered in automatically, it's fantastic.
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1:00:28Timing.
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1:00:35Thank you to Timing for their support of this show.
1:00:38It's funny that you, you're talking about time tracking and stuff.
1:00:42talked about this before on this show which is my concern that you go too far deep down
1:00:46into something like this and you're wasting more time than you're saving because you you
1:00:51become kind of obsessed with the mechanics of time tracking and I know you and gray have
1:00:55talked about this stuff too and that's one of the for me that's like the best feature
1:01:01in timing is that it you can do that if you want you can obsess if you want but it's got
1:01:06enough intelligence to try and like intuit what and based on rules you can set up and
1:01:11then because I've been using it for a while now and that's what I like about it is that
1:01:16I don't fuss over it I don't I don't I'm not my hobby is not time tracking right it's just
1:01:22happening it's better.
1:01:26Sure is all right so out of nowhere last week Amazon had a surprise press event where they
1:01:32They unveiled a large selection of new Echo devices.
1:01:36Surprise!
1:01:37They embargoed the existence of the event.
1:01:41What?
1:01:42I don't know.
1:01:44It's just whatever.
1:01:46Tell your family you're going to Seattle to see a friend.
1:01:50The friend is Jeff Bezos.
1:01:52He's your friend now.
1:01:53He's your family.
1:01:54You loved him.
1:01:55Anyway, but a couple of days before that, there was some news that was interesting.
1:01:58I just wanted to touch on real quick that Google have pulled YouTube off of the Echo
1:02:04Show.
1:02:05Yeah, I can't watch YouTube videos on my Echo Show anymore.
1:02:08And there are two statements from The Verge, one from Amazon, one from Google/YouTube.
1:02:13Amazon say, "Google has chosen to no longer make YouTube available on Echo Show without
1:02:18explanation and without notification to customers."
1:02:21Google have said, "We've been in negotiations with Amazon for a long time.
1:02:26Jason's implementation of YouTube on the Echo Show violates our terms of service, creates
1:02:30a broken user experience. We hope to be able to reach an agreement and resolve these issues
1:02:36soon. I don't think that this is coming on to the device for a while, it sounds like.
1:02:41That is really frustrating. Like if you are somebody who bought that device, hello Jason,
1:02:45one thing that you're supposed to be able to do on it is watch videos.
1:02:48Watch YouTube videos.
1:02:49Where are all the videos?
1:02:50- Cooking videos while you're cooking.
1:02:52Yeah.
1:02:53It, on one level, I think a lot of these statements
1:02:56from both these companies is accurate, right?
1:02:58Like, although without explanation is interesting
1:03:01because that's like, so were they in negotiations?
1:03:05And then Amazon made some sort of response
1:03:09and YouTube was like, okay, we're out of here.
1:03:11We're just, we're going.
1:03:13- If you were in negotiations,
1:03:14someone's explained to you why at some point, right?
1:03:17- Exactly. - You must be aware.
1:03:18- Yeah, so without explanation seems a little bit weird,
1:03:21but I would say Amazon's implementation of YouTube
1:03:24on the Echo Show violates our terms of service,
1:03:27creating a broken user experience.
1:03:29We're gonna have to analyze this,
1:03:31and unfortunately now I can't launch YouTube
1:03:33on the Echo Show and see what they're talking about
1:03:35because it's gone,
1:03:36but there's a lot of speculation about this.
1:03:39You know, this is similar to some of the problems
1:03:42that Apple has had with video providers,
1:03:44including Amazon, ironically,
1:03:46because it has to do with who owns the data,
1:03:49what's the user experience that you're defining in your app.
1:03:53Like Google has an idea of what its user experience is
1:03:56across all its apps.
1:03:57And I've complained about that from time to time
1:03:59that sometimes a Google app on iOS
1:04:01doesn't behave like an iOS app should.
1:04:04And it's like, guys, I know you're Google
1:04:06and you want all your apps to look the same.
1:04:07But when you're making, like at one point they'd share,
1:04:10there was all the Android share icons.
1:04:12And it's like, I don't even know what that is.
1:04:13like every other share icon on iOS looks this way
1:04:17and you have it look a different way.
1:04:19It's confusing to me, right?
1:04:20And they've made progress there.
1:04:22And I like the Google unified interface in a lot of ways.
1:04:25It's very nice.
1:04:26But here, like what is Google saying?
1:04:29They're probably saying like,
1:04:30we want you to respect our autoplay.
1:04:34We want you to display our overlays.
1:04:37Like all of these things that are,
1:04:39that and I wanna be clear here
1:04:41that YouTube considers part of the YouTube user experience.
1:04:46And I have to phrase it that way, right?
1:04:48Because I mean, you do a podcast with a YouTuber.
1:04:50Sometimes the YouTube experience is not what the customer
1:04:56or the video creators want the experience to be.
1:05:00So it may be that what Amazon's saying is,
1:05:02"Well, we just want you to play the video you want,
1:05:04and then we're done,
1:05:07and then you can instruct us about where we go next."
1:05:09and YouTube's take is no, no, no, no, no, no.
1:05:13We always are pushing somebody to the next video
1:05:16and doing all these things 'cause that's what we do.
1:05:19And Amazon is put in a position
1:05:21where they're potentially like Apple in saying,
1:05:22we don't actually think that's a good user experience
1:05:24for our customers, we don't wanna do that.
1:05:26And you're now in this push and pull where it's like,
1:05:28but they're our customers, but they're our customers.
1:05:30No, they're our customers 'cause they're YouTube users.
1:05:32Like no, but they're really Echo Show users
1:05:34viewing a video on YouTube.
1:05:37And this is when the negotiations break down.
1:05:41I feel like that is what's going on here.
1:05:44And it's too bad because you could argue
1:05:46that the Echo Show is, the reason it exists
1:05:50is for things like YouTube videos.
1:05:51In fact, the thing that I am most disappointed by so far
1:05:54in having the Echo Show is that it should be
1:05:57way more video-centric than it is.
1:05:59It should be super easy.
1:06:00Like, they need Netflix on there.
1:06:02They need, you know, they need everything on there.
1:06:04And I know they wanna push Amazon Prime Video.
1:06:06I'm a Prime user, I've got Prime Video,
1:06:08but there are shows that aren't on Prime Video.
1:06:11And then I find myself putting my iPad in the kitchen
1:06:13while I'm making dinner, showing a Netflix show,
1:06:15and I'm looking at that Amazon Echo Show screen
1:06:18and thinking, that would be a perfect place
1:06:21to play this Netflix video.
1:06:23So with YouTube being gone,
1:06:25it's like pushing that product in the wrong direction.
1:06:27And that may also be part of this, is Google saying,
1:06:30look, we are creating a huge amount of value
1:06:33for your piece of hardware by being on your product
1:06:37and you need to do what we say.
1:06:38So it's the giants, they're wrestling, they're angry.
1:06:42- So they had an event and I'm gonna run through real quick
1:06:48these devices 'cause there were a lot of them.
1:06:49There is the new Amazon Echo.
1:06:51So this device replaces the current standard Echo.
1:06:55It's smaller, comes in a variety of finishes and colors.
1:06:58Amazon says it has better audio with Dolby processing.
1:07:02It is unclear if there are any big advancements at all
1:07:05with the audio hardware inside of the new Amazon Echo.
1:07:09- Yeah, great deal of skepticism about whether it's
1:07:12actually better audio hardware
1:07:13or if it just sounds better. - Sounds different.
1:07:16Yeah, it's hard to tell.
1:07:18Amazon is pushing the multi-room audio with this product.
1:07:22They give you a $50 discount if you buy three of them,
1:07:24but that's still really expensive.
1:07:25It's like $280, something like that.
1:07:29- It's cheaper than Sonos,
1:07:30So it's like a cheap way to do multi-room audio.
1:07:33- But Sonos has really good audio hardware, right?
1:07:35So it's like, who knows?
1:07:36- Yeah.
1:07:37- You can attach speakers to this one though,
1:07:39via the inclusion of a 3.5 millimeter jack
1:07:41in the back of the Echo.
1:07:42Previously only the Echo Dot had that.
1:07:44Now the Echo has it.
1:07:46The new Amazon Echo is kind of like
1:07:49a mix between the old Echo and the Dot,
1:07:52because it has all the buttons on top.
1:07:55Like it has the volume up and down buttons,
1:07:57which the original Echo doesn't,
1:07:59but the Dot has and it has the 3.5 millimeter audio jack
1:08:02which the Dot has been.
1:08:03- Because Amazon is based in Seattle,
1:08:04I'd like to put it this way,
1:08:05which is the original Echo was a Venti
1:08:09and the Dot was a tall
1:08:11and the new Echo is a Grande.
1:08:14It's in the middle.
1:08:15- Sure is.
1:08:16- It also looks a lot like the Google Home, doesn't it?
1:08:19- It does 'cause it's got the cloth covering on it.
1:08:22- Yeah.
1:08:23And it's that mid-size, that squat size.
1:08:25- This is $99 though.
1:08:28$99. The previous echo was 149, 179, something like that. So yeah, it's much cheaper. I ordered
1:08:35one of these for home. We're going to replace the one in the kitchen. So we ordered the
1:08:40one with the metal finish, because the cloth finish probably doesn't feel right for the
1:08:46kitchen. I feel like it might get a bit not good over time. So we went with one of the
1:08:51metal finishes and I don't like the wood finishes. So then we're going to do some house shuffling.
1:08:56I'm going to put the big echo in here and then we're going to put the dot in the bedroom
1:08:59and then we got them everywhere then.
1:09:02Echo Connect, $35 device, it plugs into a phone line to let US based customers make
1:09:07phone calls through their echo speakers and the calls are tied to the owner's phone number.
1:09:12This is a device I think to try and get the echo line of products into the home of older
1:09:20people.
1:09:21I can't really get my head around this one so much.
1:09:24a phone, it's a loudspeaker that has the assistant built into it. I don't really get this one
1:09:32so much, Jason, but it's only $35, so great. Yeah, it's a phone connection kit thing. You're
1:09:42right, this is for people, I mean, what's funny about it is it's basically a landline
1:09:47utility, which is of limited use, but you're right, I think some of this is, I want to
1:09:53to talk with grandma on Echo and this way we can just call her or something like that.
1:10:02I don't know because you could also use the internet to do it. It's interesting. This
1:10:07seems like a really weird niche product but it gives your, it gives, also you could do
1:10:12it via IP right? You could just do it on a virtual line but instead it's like connecting
1:10:17to your actual phone line. I don't know. It's strange. What a strange product. We'll see.
1:10:21- Yeah, so it just looks like it's you that's calling.
1:10:24Does it have, all right, okay, I wanna just say this now.
1:10:28We're going into a real big Amazon segment.
1:10:31We're gonna say the name.
1:10:32We're gonna say it, all right?
1:10:35So if you have an Echo nearby, go ahead and press the button
1:10:39'cause this is gonna be too much work otherwise.
1:10:42Does this thing have Alexa built in?
1:10:44I think it does, but I can't find out
1:10:47a definite yes or no on that.
1:10:48- I don't think it does.
1:10:51I don't think it does. I think this is an accessory to connect to your internet and
1:10:58your phone line and then your Echo is the thing you talk to and listen to.
1:11:04So this is an accessory.
1:11:07With Echo Connect and a compatible Echo device, you can ask Alexa to call anyone using your
1:11:12phone landline at home.
1:11:14Okay.
1:11:15Exactly.
1:11:16Weird. This is a weird, weird product.
1:11:18It is a weird product.
1:11:20Because I do not have a phone landline in my home.
1:11:24I don't have one.
1:11:25So it's, you know, I don't need that.
1:11:28But I know I'm sure the chat room is pointing out.
1:11:30It does.
1:11:31It does work over VoIP too.
1:11:33But I think the idea here is that you're attaching it to a bridge.
1:11:38So you get both, right?
1:11:39Because the Echo can already do these Echo to Echo calls and they can make some VoIP or
1:11:43whatever.
1:11:44But like this is so you get both.
1:11:45you plug your phone jack into it,
1:11:48and then you can receive calls as normal.
1:11:50And when you make calls, it looks like the phone number.
1:11:52Like it's like a bridge between the two worlds.
1:11:56The Echo Plus, this is,
1:11:58it's weird to say this is the bigger Echo
1:12:01because it's the same size as the one
1:12:03that was on sale before.
1:12:04- Yeah, that's the weird thing is they've redefined
1:12:06the old Echo style as the plus style now.
1:12:10It's become a plus size.
1:12:12Like I would have, again, to use the Starbucks metaphor,
1:12:14I used to think it was a Grande,
1:12:16but it turns out it's a Venti.
1:12:17It's bigger than, it's now the big Echo.
1:12:20- Oh yeah, no, it goes tall Grande Venti,
1:12:22which is mind bending.
1:12:24Okay, so bear with me on this one.
1:12:27It took me a long time to understand what this product did.
1:12:31Like, I'm kidding, I'm not kidding,
1:12:34like 45 minutes of trying to work out
1:12:36exactly what this product does.
1:12:38The Echo Plus looks like the current tall Echo
1:12:40and is much and much exactly the same.
1:12:43Yeah, I think it has better microphones in it, but there's like a second gen
1:12:48microphone system or whatever, but it's much much the same.
1:12:50It features more powerful smart home integration and it's intended to be a
1:12:56smart home hub. And I already hear you say, Myke, what are you talking about?
1:13:00My current Echo is a smart home hub.
1:13:02Well, yes and no.
1:13:04Okay, so the Echo Plus features what's called a Zigbee radio in it, which is a
1:13:10low power wireless protocol that's used in a lot of smart home devices. Not all, but
1:13:18lots. I think over 100 right now that Zigbee supports. So what this means is you do not
1:13:24need a bridge device and you don't need to install any skills or apps to support a variety
1:13:30of products for smart home. So when you plug in the Echo Plus, you just say "Alexa, search
1:13:38for devices and it will connect to whatever it can find. Now this includes Hue lights.
1:13:44Now to me to get Hue lights to work with everything in my home I have to have this little box
1:13:48that's plugged in to my router. You don't need that with this. And to go one step further
1:13:55in the brilliant way that Amazon does this stuff, each Echo Plus comes with a Philips
1:14:01Hue bulb in the box. Genius. Because then you get to see the benefit of these devices,
1:14:08Right? Like, first hand, if you buy one of these, you just screw it in and you can then control that light.
1:14:14And you're like, oh, OK.
1:14:15Like, and then you start to like get get your idea around it.
1:14:17So the device, I think that this device, it signals something about what Amazon is trying to do here.
1:14:25I mean, like previously, it's been like, you know, we want to have everyone and write the skills.
1:14:30And I don't think they're going to stop that.
1:14:32Right. Because it's just this one device right now.
1:14:35But I think what it signals is that maybe they are trying to do what Apple has done
1:14:42and what Google has done, and they're like maybe trying to not necessarily build a
1:14:47platform, but be a more seamless experience like HomeKit is, right, where it's just like
1:14:52it finds the stuff.
1:14:53Or like when you have these bridges, they just find the devices.
1:14:56It's a weakness of the Echo ecosystem where you have the, you have to deal with these
1:15:02skills and all of that. And regardless of the devices having a built-in hub, I feel
1:15:07like there's two issues here. There is the built-in hub stuff where it's like, now you
1:15:10don't need to buy that $40 thing that you put on your Ethernet network and plug into
1:15:15a wall and just leave it under a table somewhere and all it does is talk to your light bulbs.
1:15:19Like that's kind of dumb, right? But they have to do it because they have to have some
1:15:22piece of hardware that acts as a bridge. Well, the Echo Plus does that now. So that's good.
1:15:27That's a direction I think that a lot of these products need to lead, like go in. If there
1:15:31there's a challenge with the different standards and all that, but like that
1:15:34would be a good thing for the HomePod to do and for the Apple TV to do as well is
1:15:39say, "Well, what if I don't even need one of those things because I can talk to it
1:15:44directly?" So that's good. And then there's the software side, which is, are these
1:15:47devices smart enough on their own to talk to this stuff or is there a more
1:15:53complicated kind of procedure that you have to go through? Because that's
1:15:56how I feel about my smart home stuff on the Echo now is that the simplest stuff is pretty
1:16:03doable and then you get up above a certain level and you're like, I don't even like I've
1:16:07got I should be able to I should rephrase this. I know I can set my Echo up so that
1:16:14I can tell it to do something and have it dim the lights in my living room and turn
1:16:18on the television and open up Netflix and you know I know I can do that but for the
1:16:27life of me I don't know how and that's a challenge with this stuff it all needs to get better
1:16:32in terms of what they can control. They did announce as part of all of this that coming
1:16:36soon is the ability for like for developers for scenes and also to have like multi-step
1:16:42things so like they're improving everything right and something that we should mention
1:16:47now is something that I have complained about and Dan Morin has complained about, I know
1:16:50on Six Colors a lot, which is, guess what? For the first time, Alexa skills can now generate
1:17:00notifications. So you have to opt in, you have to opt in, but that one of my complaints,
1:17:07and again, I don't want to be bugged by my lady in a canister, but like, if I choose
1:17:12an app and say, "Hey, app, let me know when the baseball game is starting." You can't
1:17:19do it. Like in the current conceptions, like it doesn't go that direction. It doesn't come
1:17:23from the internet into your device, right? And the first time they did anything like
1:17:27this was with the calls, right? Where all of a sudden your Echo is lighting up and saying,
1:17:31"You've got a call from Steven Hackett." And it's like, "What is happening?" Right? Well,
1:17:34now with this new generation of skills, the skills can do that. So the skills can actually
1:17:40ping you and say that thing that you, you know, that gum you wanted is back in style
1:17:45or whatever, they can do that for you. The baseball game is about to start. And that's
1:17:49a big step forward for them too. So they are making a bunch of other announcements here.
1:17:54It's just the skill stuff, I don't know, I mean you've got, you've got echoes too. The
1:17:57skill stuff is so squishy, it's like, it's, because it's a voice device, like there's
1:18:02no, there's no real good way to access it on the device and then you're in the Echo
1:18:08app or the Alexa app and it's not very good in terms of skills like this is one of those
1:18:12cases where like I look at the App Store and I'm like oh yeah the App Store is better at
1:18:17this than Amazon is at getting this stuff together because I feel like it should be
1:18:21way more discoverable and easy to enable this stuff and instead most of the Amazon Echo
1:18:30skills that I enable are coming from the other direction where like any list sends me an
1:18:35an email that says, "Oh, we now support the shopping list on the Echo and click here
1:18:41to turn that on."
1:18:43Because their store is a junk design. It's like, just junk. It's like, Amazon, fix
1:18:49that. Right? Like, it looks terrible.
1:18:51Yeah, right? Because that needs to be better.
1:18:53It's so user hostile. It's a nightmare to use. I was just looking around at them
1:18:57while you were talking and it's like, this is just like a horrible design.
1:19:01- No, it reads like a lot of stuff that is early on
1:19:04in the smart home world where somebody slaps something
1:19:07together and put it up and it's like they designed it
1:19:10when there were only 20 of them and they were mostly garbage
1:19:12done by hobbyists and a couple of different hardware
1:19:14partners and it was like it's good enough to ship it.
1:19:16But now you've got a lot of these devices out there
1:19:19and you've got a lot of these kind of skills
1:19:21and they're coming from different locations
1:19:23and it's like the experience needs to be a lot better
1:19:26than it is right now.
1:19:27- All right, two last things.
1:19:30Echo Spot, it's like an echo alarm clock, it's a small device of a 2.5mm screen, it
1:19:36also features a speaker and a camera, it's like the bedroom version of the Echo Show.
1:19:392.5 inch screen, it's bigger than that 2.5mm screen would be very small.
1:19:43Wow, 2.5mm, where did that come from?
1:19:46Yeah, 2.5 inch screen.
1:19:48It's a little like a little round blob that you're supposed to put on your nightstand.
1:19:522.5mm screen!
1:19:53It's a light, basically, a light, that's what you described.
1:19:57That you can barely see.
1:19:58It also features a speaker and a camera. It is like a bedroom version of the Echo Show.
1:20:02$130 shipping in December in the US. It's an interesting product. Like, I would maybe
1:20:09consider one of these. It's got little information that shows on the screen for you. This feels
1:20:14like a more sensible use of a touchscreen for me than the show. I just feel like it
1:20:20makes more sense for me personally. When they come to the UK, I'll consider it.
1:20:24I like the ambient nature of this.
1:20:25I mean, it's 130 bucks, it's not cheap,
1:20:28but I like the ambient nature.
1:20:29I've mentioned on the show before
1:20:30that one of the things that I have repurposed
1:20:33my old SqueezeBox music players to do
1:20:35is show the time and temperature
1:20:38and put those in a few places in my house
1:20:41because it's nice to have the time and temperature visible.
1:20:44And I've got the weather station,
1:20:45so the temperature is readily available.
1:20:47And this is one of those examples where
1:20:49like having ambient information from the internet around
1:20:53is nice, like just ambient, like it's just a screen.
1:20:57And surprisingly hard, like surprisingly hard to get that.
1:21:00So I look at the Echo Spot and I'm like,
1:21:02oh, that's really nice 'cause it's not cheap,
1:21:04but you could put one of those somewhere
1:21:06where people are looking from time to, or know to look,
1:21:10whether it's in bedroom, living room, wherever.
1:21:12And you can, at a glance, you could see, you know,
1:21:14time and temperature or news headlines
1:21:16or whatever you would put on there.
1:21:18I would say that knowing what I know about the Echo Show,
1:21:21I have some skepticism about what's gonna be
1:21:23on the screen of the Echo Spot because the home screen of the Echo Show is very
1:21:27limited in what it's able to be customized to be and it needs to be
1:21:31better at that. It's kind of a hodgepodge right now and it needs to be
1:21:35better and the Echo Spot with the limited screen real estate of that thing
1:21:40it needs to be that much better in terms of letting you choose what you need to
1:21:45see on it but it's an interesting product. And the last thing which is not
1:21:50important thing but it's a weird thing. Echo buttons which is the first of what they're
1:21:54calling Alexa gadgets which is a $20 set of buttons that you can use to play trivia games
1:21:59with and the Echo will answer questions and then people can press their buttons and then answer
1:22:04back. It seems like a fun little game to play. I feel like this would be a great stocking stuffer
1:22:10when you buy your grandma her first Echo for Christmas, right? Then the whole family can
1:22:15sit around the Echo and play a trivia game? Fine. So there are so many devices here and
1:22:22I guess that what Amazon is doing is trying to just fill every need which is, I don't
1:22:30know if this is good or bad, it is a strategy though, right? Like it is a strategy.
1:22:34It is Amazon realising that the Echo has some traction and that it needs to go all in on
1:22:44this. And not all of these products are going to work. I mean, I'd imagine that they've
1:22:48got a lot of, there's no company with an access to more rich, like consumer data analysis
1:22:56than Amazon, right? Just because of their sheer scale of what they sell and how many
1:23:00people they sell to. So they've made some guesses about, informed guesses about use
1:23:06cases for this stuff, but it's also the case where they are shipping a bunch of stuff and
1:23:11seeing what happens. And while part of me thinks maybe fewer devices that are more focused
1:23:18would be better, the fact is they have a new, what we thought of as the main Echo, they
1:23:24have a new one that does a whole lot more, and they have a cheaper one that is now the
1:23:28new main Echo, and it does more and has some different looks. And they've still got the
1:23:34small one, and they've got the video one, and they've got the bedside, like small screen
1:23:39So, you know, it's really interesting.
1:23:44And in the end, we'll see where people want
1:23:47to integrate this stuff and where they don't.
1:23:48But it's very clear that Amazon is not going to let Apple
1:23:53and Google slide on in here and take over leadership
1:23:57in this without a fight.
1:24:00And this is Amazon fighting.
1:24:02And full credit to them.
1:24:04I think their challenge is that they don't have parts
1:24:07of the ecosystem that Apple and Google have,
1:24:10that they have shopping and they have some video content,
1:24:14but with the YouTube thing, we can see that they are reliant
1:24:17on companies that have been more partners than competitors,
1:24:22and now are kind of competitors.
1:24:24So that's one of their challenges.
1:24:27But the Echo was a hit, right?
1:24:30And they're going in, they're leaning in on the Echo.
1:24:35And I think that's great.
1:24:36I think some of these products may flop, and that's okay.
1:24:39I think if they flop, they'll just walk away
1:24:41and try something new.
1:24:42I think that's true.
1:24:43- Amazon is not shameless about that.
1:24:45They've had many failed products, right?
1:24:47Like they don't, you know, not that they don't care,
1:24:49but like they don't cower when they fail, right?
1:24:53Like they'll just keep going.
1:24:54- They seem very much one of these fail fast kind of places
1:24:57where that's what Ed Catmull said that about Pixar.
1:25:01Like if you're gonna fail, fail fast.
1:25:03Just get it over with and move on.
1:25:05And so like the Echo Connect doesn't work.
1:25:07Like obviously the Fire Phone failed
1:25:09and they're like, all right, that's it.
1:25:10And it was gone and that was it.
1:25:12Echo Connect, who knows if there's any market for that.
1:25:15Echo Spot will people like that.
1:25:16The Echo, that the one that they already have,
1:25:20that's the Echo Look, is that it?
1:25:21Which is supposed to be your like fashion companion.
1:25:24We haven't even mentioned that,
1:25:26but that's a weird product that may or may not make it.
1:25:28But they're trying. - They didn't do anything
1:25:30with that one, right?
1:25:31That just stayed as it was.
1:25:32And we mentioned the Fire TV, right?
1:25:34got the new Fire TV with the new features it has and it's $70 compared to Apple's
1:25:38170. The Echo is $99 and the HomePod will be $399. Now, your mileage may vary as to
1:25:45what you consider to be a better product, but how is it going to be four times as good?
1:25:52It might be twice as good, it may be three times as good. Will the HomePod be four times
1:25:57as good as the Echo? I don't know that question.
1:26:00- And we'll see what Sonos,
1:26:01Sonos I think is doing an announcement this week
1:26:03and we'll see what that is because that may be in,
1:26:07it's possible that there's some echo integration
1:26:10in a Sonos level kind of set of speakers
1:26:12and if that's the case,
1:26:14then that will be an interesting comparison with HomePod
1:26:17because HomePod is justified by its sound
1:26:21as being the higher price
1:26:24and that'll be interesting to see how,
1:26:28where Sonos is in that space,
1:26:30because it may be that Amazon is pricing
1:26:33for the mass market,
1:26:34and then Sonos is gonna have Amazon or Alexa integration,
1:26:39but it's going to be priced for their market,
1:26:42which is people who care much more about audio quality.
1:26:45And none of these echoes is going to be threatening Sonos
1:26:50or probably HomePod, right, in terms of audio quality.
1:26:54So that'll be interesting to see where that fits in,
1:26:57because you're right there's a there's a real question about that $300
1:27:02difference in price like I'm sure that the home pod will sound way better than
1:27:07that than any of these echo sound but what if nobody hears it because nobody's
1:27:14going to spend or very few people will spend $400 on that home pod and they'll
1:27:18buy an echo for $99 and play music on it and say it's fine because for a lot of
1:27:23people it may just be fine and that's the I think that's a big risk Apple takes
1:27:27with a HomePod at 400 bucks is what if they have built a product that people don't actually
1:27:36find value in, right? Because there's—Apple can charge more because people perceive a
1:27:41value in their products and in the quality of their products, and that's going to be
1:27:47the question with HomePod is what is that perceived value? How does Apple get that out
1:27:50there? Because a lot of people—I mean, Sonos has felt this too, I'm sure—a lot of people
1:27:55get one of these $100, $150 Amazon boxes with "bad sound" and love playing music on it and
1:28:05don't really care how it sounds.
1:28:06Hello, I'm one of those people.
1:28:08Right?
1:28:09And that makes it a lot harder for you to justify charging three times as much for better
1:28:12sound if the sound is fine.
1:28:15And right?
1:28:16Because then for them, your differentiator doesn't matter.
1:28:18And that's yeah, we'll see.
1:28:20Because it really is like, I don't care too much.
1:28:23We don't play music in the house so much that I need the best.
1:28:26We just have it play as a usability.
1:28:31If I really want to have great audio, I'll come in here and use my multiple $100 setup
1:28:36that I have with an audio amp and incredible headphones and all that stuff.
1:28:40The Echo's facility is to just play music loudly.
1:28:43That's what it's to do.
1:28:44I don't really need anything else to do.
1:28:45Yeah, while I'm making dinner or something, yeah.
1:28:48And so really like I don't know how great the home pods gonna be for that.
1:28:52Like just so I like I'm not really interested in that product.
1:28:56But Amazon, they're firing on all cylinders.
1:28:58Whether you Yeah, it might be too many cylinders, but they're firing on all of them.
1:29:02But some of those cylinders, they're just gonna throw away like, yeah, it's gonna pop
1:29:04out the engine.
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1:30:41So first one today comes from Ayan, and Ayan asked what 4K TVs we own and if they have
1:30:47HDR.
1:30:48So you already mentioned earlier on in the show that yours doesn't have HDR.
1:30:53My TV has both 4K and HDR and is a Panasonic TV.
1:30:59I'm going to put a link in the show notes to an Amazon page for this because TVs have
1:31:03the worst names.
1:31:06You can find it on your own.
1:31:07So for example mine is the TX-50DX700B, although actually I think mine is a 42 inch which it
1:31:14doesn't look like it's available on Amazon anymore so it's probably a different thing.
1:31:17I think there is a newer model of this TV now.
1:31:20So I'm just going to give you, just for comparison's sake, that's the TV that I own.
1:31:24I really like it.
1:31:25It's not too big and it has 4K and HDR.
1:31:28Do you know what your TV is?
1:31:30Yeah, it's a Vizio, I think it's a 2015 4K model, 50 inches, and 4K but not HDR.
1:31:43Maybe it's the P-series, I'm not sure, but it's like literally the 4K...
1:31:51Yeah, our TV broke a couple years ago, it just died, and we went to Costco and I bought a TV,
1:31:58and this is the one I bought. And it's fine. It's not great, but it's fine. And it does
1:32:024K, which is kind of more of an oddity, but it does do it. So one of these days I'll get
1:32:06a bigger TV, but what's holding me back is that the reasonably priced good HDR 4K TV
1:32:13is a 55-inch model, which would be five inches diagonal, bigger than the one that I've got.
1:32:19But I feel like if I'm going to buy a new TV, I might want a bigger TV than that. I
1:32:23might want to go like up into the 60s and put it on the wall and have it be properly
1:32:28and those are more expensive so it's making me hesitate we'll see.
1:32:34Adam asks a great question how will the later release of the iPhone 10 affect upgrade
1:32:39program holders in 2019 because of the payment requirements right so you'll be
1:32:44getting this phone in November what about when September comes around it's
1:32:47not been a year so I've done some digging on this there are a couple of
1:32:51things one you only need to make 11 payments right so it's 12 months but 11
1:32:54payments or you know kind of whatever. When you trade your phone back in you
1:32:59can get credit upgrade credit which can knock off some of that money but you can
1:33:02also end the plan at any point just by paying the remaining months. So you can
1:33:07upgrade early you just have to just pay what's left for the finance portion of
1:33:10the phone but you can also get trading credit when you take your phone in to
1:33:15upgrade it to the next one so then you can work it out that way. So it's totally
1:33:18possible there are many routes around this if you go on the upgrade program
1:33:21you won't have to wait until November. You can and then you know it might be
1:33:25easier but you don't have to you can end it early so simple to do. There you go.
1:33:31Good to know. Nice and easy. Aviv asked will the watch series 2 work with Qi
1:33:37charges or only apples? Series 2 isn't gonna work with Qi charging at all.
1:33:44Does Aviv mean series 3? But I don't know about series 3 doesn't work
1:33:50of Qi charging. So none of them do. Yeah, so series 012 don't work with anything but
1:33:55the Apple inductive charger that comes with it. Series 3 will work with the AirPower thing
1:34:02that Apple's going to come out with. So it may work in the future with other kind of
1:34:05extensions of Qi that involve the larger kind of thing that Apple's trying to do with the
1:34:12AirPower stuff. But even that won't work with a standard Qi charger. Oh, so that was interesting
1:34:16because I figured that all of the watches would work with the AirPower, Matt. I didn't
1:34:22necessarily think that it was just the Series 3.
1:34:24Matt: Well, okay, I don't know that 100%, but I think that's the case. I think it's
1:34:28just the Series 3 that has been changed, that that's one of the things. If, I mean, AirPower
1:34:35doesn't exist yet, right? So who knows, maybe, but that was my read on it was that it wasn't
1:34:40going to work with the other ones. But, you know, they're all inductive charging, right?
1:34:44So they all theoretically could.
1:34:47- So here's what it says on Apple's website.
1:34:49Just lay up to three compatible devices
1:34:51like the latest iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods
1:34:54anywhere on the surface to charge them.
1:34:57So it may be that it needs the latest.
1:34:59- Of course, that's the AirPods in the new case
1:35:01that you're gonna have to get that works with it.
1:35:04- We'll have to wait to see definite confirmation
1:35:06of which is which, right?
1:35:08But it just says requires iPhone, Apple Watch, or AirPods.
1:35:14and then it says AirPods with wireless charging capabilities to come in 2018.
1:35:18That's in like the small print.
1:35:19So we're gonna have to wait and see what watches exactly will work with this,
1:35:23but it may be safe to assume that it's Series 3 only.
1:35:27I think so.
1:35:28Rajeev asked, "Which platform has a more vibrant and active App Store?
1:35:31TV OS or watchOS?"
1:35:33Woof.
1:35:35I'm gonna say TV OS because watchOS—
1:35:37does watchOS really have an App Store?
1:35:39WatchOS just feeds apps from your iPhone apps.
1:35:41No, there's an App Store. It's in the Watch app.
1:35:43- I always forget that. - Yeah, but it's not,
1:35:45but it's just a filter on the iOS app store.
1:35:47There's no like watch apps that don't have iOS apps, right?
1:35:52- That's true.
1:35:54Yes, there has to be both.
1:35:56- So I say tvOS because tvOS,
1:35:58you can just have an app that's an app,
1:36:00that's a tvOS app and watchOS is all like,
1:36:04well, I mean, you could say it either way, right?
1:36:05You could say the watchOS app store
1:36:07is way more vibrant and active
1:36:08because it just kind of piggybacks on the vibrancy
1:36:11and activity of the iOS app store,
1:36:13whereas tvOS is off on the side.
1:36:15I think a better question would be tvOS or Mac App Store.
1:36:19Which one is more vibrant and active?
1:36:21I'm not sure I have an answer for that one either.
1:36:23Do I have to choose?
1:36:24- No. - Can I choose none?
1:36:25- You can choose none.
1:36:26The answer is C, none.
1:36:28The story so far in the chat room
1:36:29has given us a link to a MacRumors page
1:36:31which has like a breakdown as tech specs
1:36:33and series three Apple watches have supports
1:36:36air power mat in the technical specs.
1:36:39The series one doesn't.
1:36:40I'm gonna assume the series two and the series one
1:36:42are in the same boat on this.
1:36:44- I assume so.
1:36:45- And finally today, Josh asked,
1:36:48is there a method to convert my existing
1:36:51massive photos library to Heath?
1:36:54I could do with the extra space.
1:36:55Do you know, is there a way to do this?
1:36:57- Well, if there isn't, there will be at some point
1:37:02because with Heath encoding built into modern hardware,
1:37:06somebody, you know, if the fat cat software people
1:37:09who do power photos haven't already done this, they will,
1:37:12You might be able to do an export, although even there,
1:37:15I think Apple, look, Apple doesn't want you to do this.
1:37:19And the reason is it's lossy.
1:37:23You are losing your original and replacing it with a,
1:37:28you know, a changed copy.
1:37:33And they're both lossy formats.
1:37:37So you're double-lossing your original photo.
1:37:40you're gonna lose information on your original photo
1:37:43by doing it.
1:37:44So Apple is not, I think, going to support this.
1:37:48And if you're syncing with iCOD photo library,
1:37:51it's even more complex, right?
1:37:52Because you would have to like export them and convert them
1:37:56and then delete them from the photo library
1:37:58and then re-upload them.
1:37:59So I'm sure there will be a third party tool
1:38:05that will look at your photos library
1:38:07and convert them all and delete the originals.
1:38:10but I don't recommend it because your photo originals are important.
1:38:16And the JPEG is the closest you can get to reading off the sensor, right?
1:38:21It's the device when it took the picture, it encoded the JPEG,
1:38:25and that's what you've got.
1:38:26And if you encode it as a heaf, you are now double encoding it,
1:38:31and you're going to lose information along with saving some storage space.
1:38:37So I don't recommend it either.
1:38:39but I'm sure there will be a third party that will do it,
1:38:41but I don't know of one right now.
1:38:42- Okay.
1:38:43So yeah, I mean, it seems like a risky thing too.
1:38:50Like, I don't know if I would want to put everything through.
1:38:52I guess you could convert like a second batch,
1:38:55but then like, you're going to check them all.
1:38:56I don't know, like it feels like a tricky thing to do.
1:39:00And I guess if you're going to do it, wait,
1:39:03like just wait a little bit, I think would be,
1:39:06would be my advice to you.
1:39:08Okay if you want to get our show notes for this week head on over to relay.fm/upgrades/161
1:39:14I want to take a moment to thank again our fine sponsors this week Squarespace, Away
1:39:18and Timing. Please go check them out and support the show. If you want to find Jason's work
1:39:23online you can go to sixcolors.com and the incomparable.com and Jason is @jsnell on Twitter
1:39:28we're in the #140club. I am also in the 140 club and I am iMac, I M Y K E. Most of all
1:39:35as always thank you for listening if you want to participate in the show a couple
1:39:39of ways you can do that you can send in a question for us to open the show with
1:39:42the hashtag #snowtalk or you can send in questions for us to close the show with
1:39:46the hashtag #askupgrade and I'm sure that you as an intrepid listener know
1:39:50the difference between the two types of questions and everyone does a pretty
1:39:53good job with that I think on the whole people don't tend to get those two
1:39:56things mixed up which I'm very proud of our listeners because I know there's
1:40:00lots of tweets and lots of hashtags and we're happy that you and also I love
1:40:05people send this stuff in as well like thank you for participating and sending these questions in
1:40:09to us. It is really really useful and we're very I'm very happy that every time I open the document
1:40:15there's always more stuff than I can use so it's great so thank you very much as always.
1:40:19And we'll be back next week until then Mr. Jase is now say goodbye. Goodbye everybody.
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