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160: A Helipad on Your Table

 

00:00:00   [

00:00:12   Today's show is brought to you by PDF Pen from Smile, Blue Apron, Encapsula, and Mac

00:00:18   Walden.

00:00:19   My name is Myke Hurley, I'm joined by Jason Snell.

00:00:21   Howdy, Jason Snell.

00:00:22   Howdy, Myke Hurley.

00:00:23   We're in a very busy time right now, I feel like.

00:00:26   There's so much stuff going on, we've got an action-packed show today, we already have

00:00:31   things for next week, it's a busy, busy time.

00:00:34   It is.

00:00:35   There is so much going on.

00:00:37   We could dive into the details of how we have to schedule these episodes.

00:00:42   Nobody cares about that, Jason!

00:00:44   Because it's time for #SnailTalk.

00:00:46   Today's question comes from David.

00:00:49   David says, "By now, we know Jason's favorite food, favorite beer, and favorite Star Trek.

00:00:53   What is his favorite board game?"

00:00:58   Childhood edition is probably Sorry, or as they say in Canada, Sorry.

00:01:03   And adult, probably Carcassonne, if that counts as a board game, it's sort of you have to

00:01:09   build the board, but I like that one.

00:01:11   It has a board, right?

00:01:13   Every time we do family game night, I want to play Carcassonne, and that's not allowed

00:01:16   because we have to play other games too, but yeah.

00:01:19   If you would like to submit a question to open the show, can be as obviously we have

00:01:24   gone over many times, basically about anything, just send a tweet out into the world with

00:01:29   the hashtag SnellTalk, it goes into a document, I will pick them up and maybe your question

00:01:35   will be asked on a future episode. Thanks to David for that question this week.

00:01:39   So should we do some follow up? Last week's show we spoke about battery cases a bunch.

00:01:46   Yes, we were wondering why, if induction charging exists and all you have to do is just touch

00:01:52   the phone to something, why were there no induction cases that we could find? We couldn't

00:01:58   find any for the iPhone. Apple isn't selling one even though they stopped selling the battery

00:02:02   case that they had. Where are all the induction cases? So a few people sent this in and a

00:02:09   guy called Myke was the first person to send it in, thank you Myke, to a Samsung page.

00:02:14   Samsung make a wireless charging battery pack for the Galaxy S7 and it just looks like a

00:02:20   thick phone case. So this is it, right? This is the thing that we were looking for. You

00:02:27   you just drop it in and you're ready to go. For some how, some reason that makes me raise

00:02:33   an eyebrow, this is currently $20, $70 off on Samsung.com. Maybe people aren't buying

00:02:42   it, I don't know, but that is, I think that is an interesting, I guess because it's the

00:02:46   S7, right? Everybody wants the S8 now. I guess that's what it is, right? Because it's an

00:02:51   old phone. So that would make sense.

00:02:55   sounds like there are physics, this may be an example of something that was created because

00:03:00   somebody thought this was a good idea but that there are physics issues. My understanding

00:03:04   is that the transfer is inefficient, you need to have an inverter in order for this to work

00:03:11   and as a result like you would waste, it would be bulky and you would waste a lot of the

00:03:17   batteries power in the transfer and so it's inefficient. And the fact that this is not

00:03:23   But a common thing suggests that there are lots of really good reasons.

00:03:27   Now Apple doing inductive charging suggests that perhaps we will see another few companies

00:03:33   try to get on this bandwagon even if the products are bad.

00:03:37   So that's something to watch for, right?

00:03:39   Like if there's an inductive charging case that comes out for the iPhone 8 or 10 and

00:03:43   we look at it and it's like, "This sounds too good to be true."

00:03:47   It may well be and that may be why there aren't so many of them.

00:03:50   It's too bad because it's a fun idea, but yeah.

00:03:53   I have some late breaking news as well.

00:03:55   Mophie, they have a product that is on their site right now, but is not ready to be released.

00:04:01   It's currently unavailable for the Samsung S8, which is a wireless charging case.

00:04:07   And this one looks fantastic.

00:04:09   I expect it is really tricky though, as you say.

00:04:12   So I'm interested to see how this goes.

00:04:16   This is like a brand new thing that they have.

00:04:18   So I'm intrigued to see how this ends up working out.

00:04:22   So they have a whole thing called charge force, it's like this thing that they're building.

00:04:27   But it looks like it's not as simple as you would expect.

00:04:30   There's this big pack that you have to put onto it.

00:04:33   It all looks a little bit complicated to be honest.

00:04:35   But it seems like something that is starting to become more and more of a thing, but it

00:04:39   doesn't seem like it is as easy as just putting a case on the phone.

00:04:46   There are some issues with it.

00:04:48   So I'll include a link to that in the show notes.

00:04:50   The Mophie one doesn't look as efficient as the Samsung one does, but for whatever reason

00:04:56   it doesn't look like Samsung have made one for the S8, so maybe it was just a tricky

00:05:00   product to make as you say.

00:05:05   I was in an Apple store like a week or two ago and I heard something really strange and

00:05:13   I don't know about this.

00:05:14   We're going to talk about the iPhone later on today, but I heard one of the Apple store

00:05:18   employees say that for the, um, for the wireless charging to work, you have to

00:05:25   have a specific case for it.

00:05:27   Like the old cases won't work is what they said.

00:05:30   Like the new cases for the iPhone 8, they've been designed so that the power

00:05:35   can pass through easily, but that the iPhone 7 cases won't work.

00:05:39   I don't know if that's the case, but I heard a store employee say that.

00:05:42   Hmm.

00:05:43   That's the case you say?

00:05:45   Yeah.

00:05:46   Interesting.

00:05:47   So I don't know, I don't know, I don't want to spread force facts here, but that was just

00:05:52   something that I heard.

00:05:53   And I wondered, is this one of those things that Apple Store employees say, but they don't

00:05:58   actually know?

00:05:59   Like, I wasn't sure, but I overheard a conversation.

00:06:01   The phone wasn't out at this point.

00:06:02   Well, it certainly could be an issue, right?

00:06:04   Could be an issue that there are either certain materials used in cases that prevent the transfer,

00:06:09   or you need to put certain materials in a case in order to facilitate the transfer.

00:06:13   And even then it may be that the case reduces the effectiveness or speed or something of

00:06:19   the charge.

00:06:20   I don't know anything about that, but it's possible.

00:06:23   Something we're all going to have to learn, I suppose.

00:06:25   So at the end of the show today, we're going to be doing Myke at the movies Terminator

00:06:29   2.

00:06:30   That's going to be the end of the show, but we had something we wanted to include as follow

00:06:34   out right now because you put something together for the Blade Runner fans.

00:06:38   Yeah, there is a on the Myke at the movies feed on the incomparable, the incomparable.com/Myke.

00:06:43   you can get a new episode that is the Blade Runner Director's Cut. It is

00:06:50   basically our conversation with John Syracuse and it's preceded by two

00:06:55   minutes of new footage, exclusive new footage, that is essentially Myke and I

00:07:01   when we were done with the show and stopped recording, he stopped recording. I

00:07:04   kept recording and we talked about Blade Runner for like two minutes and I said

00:07:08   "Oh you should put that in the show" and he said "No, I already stopped recording."

00:07:12   But that's in there.

00:07:13   And I think that fulfills the dream of Blade Runner

00:07:16   as a thing that keeps getting revisited with new material.

00:07:20   So we did it ourselves, and that's in that feed.

00:07:23   And if you ever want to go back and listen to a Myke

00:07:25   at the Movies--

00:07:26   we do them time delayed a little bit,

00:07:28   but they all live there just the Myke

00:07:29   at the Movies parts of the various analog and upgrade

00:07:32   episodes where Myke talks about movies and occasionally TV

00:07:35   shows.

00:07:36   And there is the occasional standalone Myke

00:07:38   at the Movies episode that goes into that feed, which

00:07:41   We don't publish anywhere else.

00:07:43   So like if you look through there,

00:07:44   you'll see some additions that I've done in the past.

00:07:47   I have two more booked for this year.

00:07:50   So there are gonna be at least two more this year

00:07:53   of episodes that are only in that list.

00:07:56   So for example, My Cousin Vinny is in there,

00:08:00   which I spoke about with Tiff and Marco Arment.

00:08:03   So that was kind of last year sometimes.

00:08:05   So yeah, there are little things

00:08:06   that pop in every now and then.

00:08:07   And I have two of these with two special guests

00:08:11   coming before the end of the year. So you can go subscribe to that, the incomparable.com/mike.

00:08:15   If you enjoy that segment, there's more of it.

00:08:17   - Yeah, a little more. And I had one piece of follow out. Somebody emailed me and they

00:08:25   were very nice to do so about, and it's a listener, about this fellowship program that

00:08:30   I think we actually even maybe have mentioned on the show, which is the idea of getting

00:08:34   people who are savvy about technology to go to Washington, DC on a fellowship for a year

00:08:39   and try to get members of Congress up to speed on technology and so that we can have better

00:08:47   technology legislation and we can have representatives who understand the issues of technology. So

00:08:56   it's the Congressional Innovation Fellowship and this is the last week for applications

00:09:04   next year's fellowships. So I think it's pretty cool. We mentioned it because

00:09:11   security expert Chris Segoian, who is a former Apple AppleScript guy, Sal Segoian's

00:09:17   nephew actually, was one of the he was at the EFF or no he was at the ACLU and then

00:09:23   he went to this fellowship. So you might be upgrade listener you might be

00:09:29   somebody who could apply there's a there's a stipend for the year and you

00:09:33   spent a year in Washington DC educating the people in power in the United States about

00:09:42   technical issues because they need the help. And the whole idea here is to get them up

00:09:47   to speed because differences of opinion politically is one thing, but illiteracy essentially of

00:09:54   technical issues or simplifying to the point where our representatives are making decisions

00:09:59   that they shouldn't because they don't understand the issues involved. That is a problem. We

00:10:05   need to get them educated and that's one of the things that this program does. So applications

00:10:10   are open through the 28th and we'll put a link in the show notes for people to check

00:10:15   it out.

00:10:16   So on today's show we're going to talk about the iPhone 8 and the Apple Watch Series 3

00:10:22   of which we both have watches and you have an iPhone as well so we're going to talk about

00:10:26   those and give our kind of thoughts on those products. But as we record today

00:10:30   High Sierra, Mac OS High Sierra is being released. Is there anything, I mean I

00:10:36   didn't even really have this in my topic list at all Jason, because from what I

00:10:40   can gather there kind of isn't really much there. Yeah that's about it. It is

00:10:47   like Snow Leopard in the sense that it's Snow Leopard if you want to

00:10:54   cast your mind back to 2009, followed Leopard and Apple basically said, "Well, we're making

00:10:59   a lot of improvements under the hood, but there's not a lot for users." And that is

00:11:03   High Sierra. High Sierra, a lot of the stuff that they're doing is, it's like Metal 2,

00:11:07   new version of Swift, and VR support, but that's like the highest end currently shipping

00:11:15   iMacs, and the new iMac Pro and the Mac Pro will benefit from that when it arrives, whenever

00:11:20   that is and you know and you know new version of Swift is you know great for

00:11:24   compatibility reasons but it's not something you see new file system is not

00:11:28   something you generally see although we can actually have some it's a transition

00:11:31   that can have some impacts there's questions about how well documented is

00:11:34   for third parties who are dealing with it and you don't have a choice if you're

00:11:38   running flash storage only internally on your Mac it'll get updated to the new

00:11:44   file system

00:11:45   There's improvements to photos. A lot of it is just compatibility improvements. They make changes on iOS and they want to bring those across.

00:11:53   But there are very few direct user-facing features in High Sierra to the point where I feel like the smartest thing for most people to do is probably to wait and see.

00:12:05   And make sure that everything kind of shakes out and there aren't security issues and there aren't disk utility issues.

00:12:12   and you know eventually we live in a world where eventually you're going to

00:12:16   have to update because there'll be a critical security issue that doesn't get

00:12:19   shipped to Sierra but gets shipped to High Sierra and if you're upgrading a

00:12:24   relatively recent phone to iOS 11 you're going to need to and you sync with

00:12:29   photos and iCloud photo library you're going to need to turn off the new file

00:12:34   formats the HEVC and heif if you want to see those files on your Mac because

00:12:39   Apple has chosen to not make Sierra compatible with those formats that's

00:12:43   high Sierra yeah I haven't turned on the heath yeah or HEVC because I don't plan

00:12:49   on upgrading my Mac for a little bit so I've left those off on my on my current

00:12:54   iPhone 7 plus yeah so it's one of the you know I guess I would say it is the

00:13:00   least compelling update to the Mac OS in those eight years probably it's not a

00:13:08   a must update. You will need to go eventually for compatibility reasons, but there's nobody

00:13:14   pushing you to do it today. And so waiting and seeing might, given all the under the

00:13:19   hood stuff that's changing and that there's not a lot of direct user benefit on the top,

00:13:24   that may be the best thing to do is just wait for a while. And so I'd say this is one of

00:13:28   the least compelling updates in the near term for users. I think it'll pay off. A lot of

00:13:35   this stuff is going to pay off over time to the platform and to features that will come

00:13:39   in the future. But as I, you know, I once said to a developer who released a paid upgrade

00:13:45   to their product that had almost no new features because they spent the last year and a half

00:13:50   building all of these incredibly necessary things under the hood to keep the product

00:13:53   running and for the future of the product, you know, what I said was, I, you know, how

00:13:59   do I recommend that people pay for nothing? That's that you know and I know

00:14:05   it's not really nothing there's stuff happening underneath but if you're a

00:14:08   user the changes Apple's making now for next year like that's a very inside

00:14:17   baseball Apple thing of Apple changing this stuff for the user there's no

00:14:22   direct benefit so why so just don't go unless you do see a direct benefit for

00:14:27   something like wanting the HEAF and HEVC stuff to work on iCloud photo library

00:14:34   directly but there are very limited use cases. I think people who are

00:14:40   really heavy users of Photos, Photos is the app that changes the most in High

00:14:44   Sierra because it's a very young app and it has a lot of changes. I'm unclear, I

00:14:50   need to check, there are a bunch of Safari changes but Safari 11 which is

00:14:56   the new version, Apple always makes the latest version

00:14:58   of Safari available for the two previous OS releases.

00:15:01   So you can install Safari 11 on Sierra and on--

00:15:06   - It's currently available for Sierra,

00:15:08   like you can get it right now.

00:15:09   - Yeah, you can get it on Sierra and also El Capitan.

00:15:12   Even if you're two versions back, you can get it.

00:15:14   And I think it's got like the video autoplay blocking

00:15:16   and all that stuff in it.

00:15:17   So you don't, if the new Safari is what you want,

00:15:20   you can just download it.

00:15:21   You don't need to update to High Sierra to get that.

00:15:23   So again, yeah, so that's my short version of High Sierra.

00:15:28   Maybe we'll talk about it later, some other week,

00:15:30   but I don't know, maybe not,

00:15:31   because there's not a whole lot there.

00:15:33   Honestly, it's about the future and that's great.

00:15:36   And it's about compatibility and that's fine,

00:15:38   but it doesn't make it one of those things

00:15:40   where the day it comes out,

00:15:41   everybody's gonna get some great thing,

00:15:43   you know, at their fingertips immediately,

00:15:46   'cause that's not what this update is.

00:15:48   - Okay, Jason, let me take our first break

00:15:50   of this week's episode,

00:15:51   and then we'll move on talking about new hardware.

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00:17:48   So you have the iPhone, iPhone 8?

00:17:55   - I do, I have iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone 8 here.

00:18:00   - Okay, so did you go to your local Apple store?

00:18:04   Where did you get these things from?

00:18:06   - No, these are review.

00:18:07   These are review units from Apple.

00:18:09   - So you took another trip to the spaceship?

00:18:12   - I did, I took another trip to the,

00:18:14   I got my briefing in the Apple Store.

00:18:19   - Oh, oh, interesting.

00:18:22   I guess they have like what is being called

00:18:24   the boardroom type thing, like a room in the Apple Store.

00:18:27   No, okay.

00:18:28   - This was literally, I'm told that there are briefing rooms

00:18:33   at the Steve Jobs Theater, although it's unclear

00:18:35   like what other briefing areas they will have.

00:18:40   But for this, since the Apple Store isn't open,

00:18:42   I was literally just in the Apple store.

00:18:45   They gave me an Apple Watch briefing

00:18:46   at the Apple Watch table in the Apple store

00:18:48   and then they gave me an iPhone briefing

00:18:50   at the iPhone table at the Apple store.

00:18:51   Yeah, I know, right?

00:18:52   - Yeah, I guess it makes sense

00:18:53   'cause I'm thinking obviously the store isn't open

00:18:55   so it's actually probably a really good environment

00:18:58   'cause they probably had all the stuff there, right,

00:18:59   ready for it to be good to go.

00:19:01   So that's actually a pretty cool environment

00:19:03   to have a briefing in and amongst the store and the products

00:19:06   the town hall, town center, town hall,

00:19:09   was it town center or town hall?

00:19:10   I forgot, whatever one it is.

00:19:12   That's where you were to get your briefing,

00:19:15   to get your products.

00:19:16   - I'm not sure it was either of those things,

00:19:18   but it was, yeah, it was just their briefing center

00:19:20   is where it used to be.

00:19:21   They have a briefing center.

00:19:23   - So what devices exactly do you have?

00:19:26   What colors are they?

00:19:27   - These are white fronts,

00:19:33   and it's a silver and a gold.

00:19:37   - You have the gold, okay.

00:19:40   - Again, as always, it's really difficult

00:19:42   to ask you these types of questions,

00:19:43   but do you have any opinion on the gold color?

00:19:46   - No.

00:19:47   - No, okay.

00:19:48   - I mean, I can tell you, the problem is,

00:19:52   is that the gold and rose gold kind of gradation

00:19:56   involves a light amounts of red hue that I can't see.

00:19:59   - Which you can't see, that's such a shame.

00:20:01   - So what I would say is, what I've been told,

00:20:04   and it seems right, is that there is a,

00:20:08   Well, you know, I can see some differences,

00:20:10   but it's not, it's a level, it seems so subtle to me,

00:20:13   and I know it isn't subtle to other people,

00:20:15   but what I would say is the new gold is neither

00:20:18   the old gold or the old rose gold,

00:20:20   but somewhere in between. - Yeah, somewhere in between.

00:20:22   Yeah, 'cause the thing that interests me about that,

00:20:24   from all the pictures that I've seen

00:20:25   and all the videos I've seen and stuff like that,

00:20:28   is the back of it.

00:20:29   Like, the back of it is this interesting, like, muted color.

00:20:33   Like, it's not white, it's not silver,

00:20:36   and it's not necessarily the same color as the band that goes around the outside.

00:20:41   It looks different and I think it looks kind of attractive.

00:20:44   I think I really like the way that that looks with the glass and the slight color that they've

00:20:49   got on the back of it.

00:20:50   So I think that's really cool.

00:20:52   But yeah, I'll have to go to a store and look at it myself because I understand that you

00:20:57   can't provide me with the description that I require right now.

00:21:00   - It is fair to say that the back is not white.

00:21:05   Like there is a color cast to it.

00:21:08   It is a much warmer back than the silver white back, right?

00:21:12   The silver white back is more bluey

00:21:15   and there's definitely more of a, it's more of a,

00:21:18   I mean, it's not blue,

00:21:19   but it's like, it feels like a white white or a blue white.

00:21:22   And the other one feels like a really warm white

00:21:25   or you could say it's sort of like taupe or tan or something.

00:21:27   There's definitely, it's picking up,

00:21:30   you know, it's meant to complement the gold

00:21:33   around the frame of it.

00:21:35   So it's not one white for all, it is a different kind.

00:21:40   - Do you have any accessories?

00:21:43   - I do, I have the, I have a charger and I have some cases.

00:21:50   - When you say a charger, do you mean a wireless charger?

00:21:54   - Yes, I do.

00:21:55   - Cool, we'll talk about that in a minute then.

00:21:57   going back to the look and feel of the device,

00:22:00   how does it feel to have a glass back back on the iPhone?

00:22:03   How does that feel?

00:22:04   - It doesn't feel that different to me,

00:22:05   but that's because I used the iPhone 7

00:22:07   with the jet black covering.

00:22:09   - That's good to hear though.

00:22:10   - The jet black coating is basically the same.

00:22:14   The jet black coating is,

00:22:16   it's got the same feel to me as the glass back.

00:22:20   I feel like that was a preview of at least tactilely

00:22:23   what the 8 feels like.

00:22:24   So if you heard people talk about,

00:22:26   "Oh, you know, there's gonna be,

00:22:29   I can take my case off."

00:22:32   'Cause that was the case for me,

00:22:33   is I used a case on the 6 and the 6S,

00:22:35   and I stopped with the 7

00:22:36   because I got the jet black finish.

00:22:38   The glass is unlikely to get micro abrasions,

00:22:40   like the jet black, although I never,

00:22:42   the micro abrasions on the jet black

00:22:44   did not bother me one bit,

00:22:45   but it's less likely to happen on the glass back.

00:22:49   But yeah, it's that feel.

00:22:52   it feels very much like that phone's feel.

00:22:57   It was so, it was very familiar to me.

00:23:00   I guess if you're coming from a more,

00:23:02   a traditional anodized iPhone 6 or 7,

00:23:06   you're going to notice that.

00:23:08   And it's hard to describe it, but it is,

00:23:10   it's like the equivalent of,

00:23:12   if you put your finger on a piece of glass and you pull,

00:23:15   and you can feel that the glass is kind of pulling back

00:23:17   at your fingertip and it makes, it impedes your movement.

00:23:21   That's what it feels like.

00:23:22   It's, and it's the same, apparently it's the same glass,

00:23:25   it's the same oleophobic coating on both sides.

00:23:28   Like they're, you know, it is a two-sided glass thing,

00:23:30   but in practice it feels very much like the jet black.

00:23:33   It's definitely more tacky.

00:23:36   I mean, not like sticky, but like it is easier to grip it

00:23:39   because it's exerting some force on your hand, on your skin.

00:23:44   - Okay, okay, that's good to hear.

00:23:46   I mean, that's kind of what I was hoping because,

00:23:49   I mean I've been very much in the case club for a while, like I've had cases on my phones

00:23:54   since, I mean I mostly always have, but especially since the 6 design because it was pretty slippery.

00:24:01   But I would ideally not, you know, I think I would actually prefer to not have a case

00:24:07   on my phone and I'm hoping that for the 10, the glass back and all that is going to feel

00:24:13   really good because as well, that phone looks so good I kind of don't want to put a case

00:24:17   on it. So maybe the glass will be enough. I'm willing to try it out but I do know and

00:24:23   I have seen many reports that to replace the backs on these is actually pretty expensive

00:24:29   because all of the induction stuff is built into the glass on the back so if you do break

00:24:35   it it's actually pretty expensive to get that replaced. More expensive than it has been

00:24:39   to even get screens replaced in the past so that's something to bear in mind I think.

00:24:45   So having had these phones for a few days now, Jason, what do you think about the design?

00:24:55   I mean, it's an iPhone. I hate to be so blase about it, but it's an iPhone. They call it

00:25:04   8, but you know, 6, 7, 8, it is all of a kind. I think the backs obviously are different

00:25:14   because they've got the glass back,

00:25:16   which also enables the wireless charging.

00:25:18   I think the anodized aluminum around the edges

00:25:20   is really nice.

00:25:21   I think they look great.

00:25:23   As somebody who used that jet black iPhone before,

00:25:25   it's like, yeah, this is good.

00:25:27   This is the kind of look and feel that I like.

00:25:30   I would choose the black again

00:25:32   because that's my personal preference.

00:25:33   And I know that people are sad who are fans of the rose gold,

00:25:37   although the gold may satisfy them.

00:25:39   But it is recognizably

00:25:42   an iPhone in the design style that we've had for a few years now.

00:25:48   You could tell at a glance if somebody's using an 8 if they don't have a case on it, right?

00:25:54   Because that back is so different. It's distinctive.

00:25:57   It is still a flat surface, like the old flat surface, and the shape of it and all is the same.

00:26:03   What about the display? Have you noticed anything in there? I mean, it has True Tone in it now.

00:26:08   how does this iPhone's display compare?

00:26:12   - Looks good, looks really good.

00:26:14   I was looking at both models.

00:26:17   I haven't done any like head to head.

00:26:20   It's very much like my thoughts about the seven

00:26:22   and then switching over to the eight and using it.

00:26:25   But it looks good.

00:26:27   The True Tone is really nice to have.

00:26:28   I would argue the way that I use my phone,

00:26:31   I'm less likely to be using my phone

00:26:34   when I'm inside at home,

00:26:35   which is when the lighting is pretty different.

00:26:37   and I haven't been out to a restaurant or something,

00:26:40   so I feel like True Tone on the iPad first

00:26:42   was the right thing to do,

00:26:44   because I think the iPad is in that context

00:26:46   of shifting light, indoor light especially.

00:26:49   - And it's also probably more of a long-form reading device,

00:26:53   which True Tone really lends itself to, right?

00:26:55   Like, there are a lot of reasons

00:26:56   that you would put that technology in an iPad first, I think.

00:26:59   - Yeah, no, I think they made the right call there,

00:27:03   but it's nice to see it,

00:27:05   because it is a nice feature for most people.

00:27:10   The idea that your white point,

00:27:14   end result is that a lot of light indoors is warmer

00:27:19   than white points on devices are

00:27:23   and that makes the device seem really harsh

00:27:25   and blue and glarey.

00:27:28   And you don't really think about it,

00:27:29   it's just like how the screen is

00:27:31   until it is compensating for it, which is what it does.

00:27:35   and then it looks a lot nicer.

00:27:36   Although I'll point out, I mean,

00:27:38   if you've got the white ring around it,

00:27:40   that ideally those work in tandem, right?

00:27:43   Because the light is also bouncing off of the white

00:27:46   of the frame on the front of the camera

00:27:48   or on the front of the device.

00:27:49   And so, what you want is white to be white

00:27:53   and not have it be like, well, this looks,

00:27:56   this is yellow and this is blue and why are they mismatched?

00:27:59   So that's the goal.

00:28:00   And it's a good goal to have.

00:28:02   I like it.

00:28:04   It's not one of these earth-shattering features.

00:28:05   I would not get a new device just for True Tone,

00:28:08   but it's nice.

00:28:10   And that's, it's a very Apple feature in that way,

00:28:12   which is just sort of like, yeah,

00:28:13   if you're in a room with warm lighting,

00:28:15   shouldn't the iPhone's lighting be warm too?

00:28:17   And it should, it's true.

00:28:19   That's the right call most of the time.

00:28:20   And you can turn it off if you don't like it.

00:28:22   - So these phones feature the A11 Bionic chip.

00:28:26   In some of the reviews and stuff that came out

00:28:27   in the last week or so,

00:28:29   it's been interesting to see that like Apple have admitted

00:28:32   to the fact that they're giving them these names purely for marketing purposes now like

00:28:36   the Fusion and the Bionic because just A and a number doesn't sound good so they're giving

00:28:42   them names like how you have like Snapdragon or whatever which I'm fine with like it doesn't

00:28:47   make a difference but like having a name to it is more evocative from a branding perspective.

00:28:53   Now this phone is monstrously fast like these early 11 Bionic chips they are monsters right

00:29:00   like it's it's unbelievable you know there are reports of them being faster

00:29:05   is it single core or multi core than the current shipping 13-inch MacBook Pro of

00:29:10   Geekbench scores like just really really powerful stuff you've got it you've got

00:29:16   a phone that's as powerful as a as a good not not cheap good laptop and that

00:29:22   is that's where we are I think the always the question is what do you do

00:29:26   with it? And the answer right now seems to be things like games and AR and all of those

00:29:31   things right? And that's good and it gives room for developers to throw more processing

00:29:38   power at things. Obviously the Bionic chip is also powering specific phone features on

00:29:46   the 8 and the 10 that are doing things like the machine learning and face recognition

00:29:52   and things like that in the 10.

00:29:53   So there's other parts of it,

00:29:55   but just like the raw processing power

00:29:56   that's available to apps,

00:29:58   because you've got the six cores

00:30:02   that are accessible simultaneously if need be,

00:30:05   instead of the two switchable cores

00:30:07   on the Fusion in the last generation,

00:30:10   that if it needs to crank things up

00:30:12   and bring all the power possible to bear, it can do it.

00:30:15   And it can function like a powerful laptop at that point.

00:30:20   I think there's an argument about whether people

00:30:23   are actually using that power.

00:30:24   I'm sure Apple is, and I'm sure game makers will do it.

00:30:27   And the Apple design GPU is part of this too.

00:30:31   But I feel like we may have reached the point

00:30:35   with smartphones where for general purpose performance,

00:30:38   it kind of doesn't matter.

00:30:39   Like they're fast, they're gonna be fast for a long time.

00:30:43   They're fast enough for most things.

00:30:46   And it's the specific purpose.

00:30:47   And you see this in Apple making their specific things

00:30:51   that are built into the CPU for specific features,

00:30:55   that's more of what it's about now

00:30:58   is signal processing for video and stills,

00:31:02   and it's machine learning stuff.

00:31:05   It's like, and the GPU and things for AR

00:31:08   and all of the like purpose built stuff,

00:31:10   rather than having it just be general purpose performance,

00:31:13   'cause it's great on general purpose performance.

00:31:15   like how I'm not sure, I mean, again, never say never,

00:31:19   over time on an infinite timescale, right?

00:31:22   You always want a faster device,

00:31:24   but it seems like Apple is already shifting

00:31:28   to having lots of things that are, you know,

00:31:30   purpose built things in the Silicon

00:31:32   that let them do very specific things a lot faster

00:31:35   and enabling those features that they need

00:31:37   because they can afford to do that

00:31:39   because the base general processing power

00:31:42   that's available is so strong that, you know,

00:31:47   they don't, you know,

00:31:49   they don't need a hundred percent speed boost next time.

00:31:52   Right?

00:31:53   They don't, they really don't.

00:31:55   They probably need speed boosts in specific areas instead.

00:31:58   I don't know.

00:31:59   It's just, it just struck me as funny that, yeah,

00:32:01   it's fast as a MacBook Pro, but what does that get you?

00:32:04   It very rarely is an iPhone being used to do things

00:32:08   that a MacBook Pro is doing when it's stressing itself out.

00:32:12   Like very rarely is it in coding video or things like that.

00:32:16   It is doing some super stressful things for AR, for example.

00:32:19   And that's sort of what, you know, it's been built for.

00:32:23   - Yeah, I've noticed playing with some AR apps

00:32:27   on my current iPhone, that it gets hot

00:32:30   and it really affects the battery.

00:32:31   And there are points where like it's struggling

00:32:34   to do things.

00:32:35   And I'm assuming that all of this stuff is better

00:32:38   on the newer hardware, which is more purpose-built

00:32:41   for these types of things, has better chips in them.

00:32:43   Like I'm imagining that whilst the experience is great

00:32:47   on the current models, it's even better on the next ones.

00:32:50   And I guess part of that is also in the cameras as well,

00:32:55   because there are things in the cameras

00:32:57   which are being used to take advantage of this stuff.

00:32:59   I wondered if you've noticed anything about the cameras

00:33:02   and if you've been able to play around

00:33:04   with the new portrait mode stuff,

00:33:06   and what your opinions are of these features.

00:33:08   - Little bit still early.

00:33:10   portrait mode stuff is is interesting I mean it benefits from it benefits from

00:33:16   the right lighting I mean that's the irony of it is it benefits from the

00:33:19   right lining because there is only so much that the algorithm can do

00:33:23   especially for the the spotlight right you need to for it to be at its best it

00:33:29   needs to be well lit in a certain way and then it can do its magic but but

00:33:34   it's fun to play with. The-- I think the radial UI for the different portrait modes is really

00:33:43   weird especially since the regular camera interface has the swipe to move between modes.

00:33:51   So you swipe to move between still and video and portrait and then you tap on the little

00:33:55   cube and now you're doing this kind of like it's like moving radially instead. It's like

00:34:01   I'm not sure what the it just seems weird to me I'm not I'm not maybe I just

00:34:06   need to get used to the interface but it seems a little bit strange but the the

00:34:09   the portrait mode stuff is interesting again I think when reality hits what

00:34:16   Apple's doing in its promos you'll find that you want a good shot and then a

00:34:22   good shot of a good subject then that stuff can really enhance it but you need

00:34:26   to you still need to do that you can't just like pull out your phone and take a

00:34:30   picture you know in a moment in bad lighting and have it become a magically

00:34:35   beautiful it's not it's not that it still needs to be composed and you still

00:34:40   need decent lighting I haven't tested low light performance yet I I shot some

00:34:46   video in 4k 60 frames per second that was amazing I watched on my 4k TV it

00:34:51   looked great the video quality is great you know it's a it's a it's a good camera

00:34:57   Apple's always pushing forward with cameras and this is another step forward.

00:35:01   I mean, I hate to say it, but so many of the stories of new iPhones is Apple

00:35:06   pushed everything forward another step. And if you're only one step behind, is it

00:35:10   a must-buy?

00:35:11   Probably not, but if you're two steps or three steps behind, then you get all of

00:35:15   the steps last year and all the steps this year combined and that's better.

00:35:19   Like, my wife is on a six and she's going to get an eight and that's going to be

00:35:24   great, right? Because she's going to get all the success and seven and eight

00:35:27   improvements all rolled into one and that's a that's a massive upgrade. That's

00:35:31   amazing. And that's I think those are more common than people going from the

00:35:36   seven to the eight where everything is you know the increments it's just you

00:35:40   know everything's better but rarely is it one of those moments of like oh my

00:35:45   god I can't believe how much better this is because it's more just Apple just

00:35:49   keeps pushing the ball forward and relentlessly every year.

00:35:52   Matt Pansarino at TechCrunch had a really good review of the phone where he focused on it being a camera primarily.

00:35:59   And I put this in the show notes because there's one feature that I'm really really impressed with and looking forward to, which is the performance of the flash.

00:36:07   So there is a new type of flash technology.

00:36:10   Yeah, it's slow sync flash, which I always have loved on point and shoots before.

00:36:18   and the idea there is it's a great feature in certain circumstances it

00:36:26   really makes your photos better and Apple hadn't done it hasn't done it

00:36:29   before and the idea there is you flash the flash but you leave the shutter open

00:36:34   longer outside of the flash and it basically lets you increase the dynamic

00:36:40   range of your shot because if you just open the shutter when the flash is

00:36:45   illuminating, you're going to get that bright foreground, that person in the

00:36:49   foreground who's been flashed. And because that's a small shutter time,

00:36:56   you're going to get them and they're going to be clear, but the background,

00:37:01   because the background is dark and the shutter was not open very long and

00:37:05   the flash didn't illuminate the background very well, they drop out.

00:37:10   And everybody's seen these photos where it's a flash photo and it's

00:37:13   like somebody's in space or you can't see very much behind them but

00:37:17   they're in relief. The slow shutter keeps the shutter open so the

00:37:23   flash goes but it also is collecting light for longer behind, you know, around

00:37:28   that person. The darker stuff is more visible and it can make for great like

00:37:33   like if you're taking a picture of somebody at sunset and the sun's going down it's

00:37:37   pretty dark behind them but the sunset is there and it's spectacular.

00:37:41   spectacular. If you take a flash photo of them standing in front of the sunset, you

00:37:45   get them and no sunset, right? But with the slow shutter, you get them and the sunset

00:37:50   because you get the light collected off of them from the flash, but then the shutter

00:37:54   stays open and collects more light from the scene behind them. And sometimes it looks

00:37:59   a little weird, depends on the timing, and I think Apple's probably doing a lot of very

00:38:03   clever algorithms to try to make this work better. But I've taken some amazing slow shutter

00:38:09   shots with my point-and-shoot over the years in those, you know, vacation situations and

00:38:15   things like that where you've got a beautiful background but you've got to light the foreground.

00:38:18   So yeah, Panserina's article is great because it's basically a review of the iPhone 8 as

00:38:22   a camera first, which I think is a, I think it's smart, I think, because the truth of

00:38:28   it is one of the most important functions any smartphone has is as a camera.

00:38:33   I also noted from reading stuff around that the iPhone 8 line and I guess the 10 will

00:38:40   be the same.

00:38:41   By default HDR is on and always on and it doesn't save the other image in your camera

00:38:47   anymore and you can make these changes if you want to.

00:38:52   But yeah, and also you can switch this all on in iOS 11 on your current devices but Apple

00:38:57   believes that they've done a good enough job with HDR now that it will produce a better

00:39:01   picture basically every time. Yeah, Apple is confident that their HDR mode is

00:39:07   going to get you the best picture so they don't even bother to save the other

00:39:11   version and this has to do, you know, the way the HDR mode works is it's

00:39:15   bracketing two shots. It's taking a shot that's capturing the dark stuff and

00:39:19   it's taking a shot that's capturing the bright stuff and then it is using

00:39:22   algorithms to merge them together into a single photo that has a wider range

00:39:27   that's what dynamic range is between the bright and the dark and they've been

00:39:30   doing this for a long time and it started out and it worked sometimes and then it worked

00:39:35   better and it's worked better over time and of course the more data they can collect faster,

00:39:41   the less risk you have of the HDR shot being weird because in the gap between shot one

00:39:48   and shot two people moved and stuff like the faster you make that the easier it is for

00:39:53   this all to get put back together again and they're obviously yeah they're confident enough

00:39:57   about this now, and they want to save space and not have you taking two of everything.

00:40:02   They think the HDR picture is good enough that by default it just saves you an HDR picture,

00:40:07   and that's all you get.

00:40:10   Have you had any time to test out wireless charging in any detail? Like, what are your

00:40:14   opinions of wireless charging?

00:40:18   It's funny because it's going to be, for people who have been using wireless charging on Android,

00:40:22   it's going to be like opinions from five years ago or something like that. And I'm sure that

00:40:26   there'll be a new brand, a new set of chargers that are made for, specifically for Apple

00:40:33   because the stuff that's out there now is obviously like, "Hey, we've got a Qi charger,

00:40:39   let's use it." I think that's what the two that are out there now. Maybe there'll be

00:40:42   a new, things designed more to fit in with like the look and feel of Apple's stuff. I

00:40:48   don't know. Everybody's going to take advantage of the fact that Apple's doing this now. So

00:40:51   there'll be new accessories.

00:40:52   - Which is great. It's great for everyone.

00:40:55   fine. I'd say it's nice. You've got to-- I think there are specific use

00:41:02   cases where you think I'd much rather lay this thing down on the circle than to

00:41:07   plug in the cable that's right next to it. You know, the circle still needs--

00:41:12   still has a wire and that wire still needs to be plugged in somewhere and it

00:41:15   doesn't come with like a USB plug, it comes with a power plug. So if you've got

00:41:18   a USB outlet like I do, that's not going to work. You need to plug it into an

00:41:22   outlet and then you've got a cable so like my area that has cables coming from

00:41:26   the USB plugs on in my wall to where you can plug them in for the phone now

00:41:32   there's also a cable running across there from power plug to this little pad

00:41:37   which needs to stay visible so that I can put my phone onto it so it's not a

00:41:41   it's not a miracle it is still just you know it's an it's a different wire in a

00:41:47   different place but you have to plug in the wire you still also have to plug

00:41:50   your phone, you have to land your phone properly on the circle. A little

00:41:55   light goes on on the charger saying that it's charging as well as some

00:41:59   interface change on the screen when it says it's charging. It's really easy to

00:42:03   not lay it down properly and not charge it. I did that more than once. I think

00:42:09   it's easy for somebody else to jostle things and have it like come off of the

00:42:14   charger and then it's not charging. So you know, I think wireless

00:42:19   charging is not a miracle, oh my God,

00:42:21   everybody's gonna love it,

00:42:22   everybody's gonna have this everywhere.

00:42:24   I think it's very much like, how do you use your devices?

00:42:28   Where do you charge them?

00:42:30   When do you charge them?

00:42:32   And where are your plugs and all of that

00:42:34   to make it worth the, you know,

00:42:38   'cause what we're really saying is,

00:42:40   I don't wanna have to plug in a cable.

00:42:41   I'm not sure that landing an iPhone

00:42:46   on a little helipad on your table

00:42:51   and confirming that it's actually charging

00:42:54   is less cognitively challenging

00:42:58   than plugging in a lightning cable.

00:43:00   And the lightning cable is more efficient

00:43:02   and more foolproof.

00:43:05   Still could be unplugged on the other end,

00:43:06   it's possible, it's happened.

00:43:07   And so I don't know, I guess it's a nice option,

00:43:14   but I think that you should not,

00:43:17   people out there who haven't tried it,

00:43:18   don't assume that you're absolutely gonna wanna do it,

00:43:22   and it's gonna be the best thing ever,

00:43:24   because I think for some people it will fit their lives,

00:43:28   and for other people it'll be like,

00:43:30   why do I have this?

00:43:33   Now instead of having a little white cable,

00:43:36   now I've got a plastic puck sitting somewhere.

00:43:40   And again, will it be better if it's like a little mat

00:43:44   in your car or it's something that doesn't look like a shiny plastic disc but it's more

00:43:51   subtle and all that. Sure, there are lots of different scenarios, there are lots of

00:43:55   different ways that this could work better, but my initial response is it's cool and all,

00:44:02   but I'm not sure I would choose it over just--I think plugging in my phone is fine, honestly.

00:44:08   used it for a few days. It's like, it's novel to land it on the little puck, but I, you

00:44:15   know, it's, it seems more foolproof and not any harder to just plug in a lightning cable

00:44:21   at that point.

00:44:23   When Phil Schiller introduced the air power thing on stage, he specifically called out

00:44:28   travel as a thing. Like when you go traveling, you don't want all the cables. I could see

00:44:33   myself wanting to have the air power thing for travel, right? So I just have this one

00:44:37   thing that I put on the nightstand wherever I go and it charges everything. I don't know

00:44:42   if I really want this at home because I have some really nice docks that I use. I use the

00:44:46   Studio Neat Docks and I like them. I like them because they stand everything up and

00:44:50   they keep it all in place and I don't know if the wireless charging for those reasons

00:44:54   is going to be that helpful to me because then I'm still going to need two things right

00:44:58   because I can't wirelessly charge my Apple Watch so I'm going to need something for that

00:45:02   for now. So yeah, I feel like it's good that it's there as an option now, but I'm

00:45:08   also pleased that they didn't take away the Lightning connector.

00:45:11   Yeah, yeah. I don't think you can. I've heard a couple podcasts speculate about like,

00:45:20   "Well, you know, is it only a matter of time before the Lightning connector goes?"

00:45:24   Like, I don't think so. I think you gotta have one way into these devices. I think that

00:45:28   Apple Watch shows that it's everything gets way more dangerous when you lose

00:45:33   all connection to the outside world because it's much more easy to to brick

00:45:36   something and not get it back.

00:45:38   It's the reason there's no public beta for watch OS right because there's no

00:45:42   way to just plug it in somewhere and reset it if it dies it's dead and you

00:45:46   gotta take it into the Apple Store basically at that point so I'm skeptical

00:45:50   about that.

00:45:51   It's a it's a nice feature and over time yeah if there are Qi related things

00:45:55   everywhere like the car is a good example where if there's a place if I

00:45:59   could you know there's a place where I can lay my phone naturally in the car

00:46:02   that I would anyway and it just everything magically happens I guess

00:46:05   that's great if the if a hotel room has something like this I think that would

00:46:10   be great. Coffee shops, you know all those things. It's good for that stuff. I think honestly I think

00:46:16   wireless charging is more convenient outside of the home and and so yeah

00:46:21   because the good part about it is you don't need to give everybody a different cable,

00:46:28   right? Like that's the idea is everybody uses the same standard and that is a better situation than

00:46:33   the one that we currently have where you need to have cables or bring your own cable. The idea of

00:46:37   anyone being able to put their phone, you know, whether you have a Samsung or an LG or an iPhone

00:46:41   and you just put it down in one place and it starts to charge like that's great. That's great

00:46:45   for everybody but in the home, maybe not so much. So I'm assuming that you're going to be using the

00:46:51   regular size 8 until the 10 comes out? Would I be right in assuming that?

00:46:55   Yeah I think so. I had the same thought about I've got a little bit of time here

00:47:02   maybe I maybe I spend more time with the plus model. The camera is great the

00:47:08   second I you know I took it to the football game on Saturday and took some

00:47:12   pictures with it. It looks great the camera is so nice the having the

00:47:16   telephoto lens is fantastic. But I think for me, bottom line, I use my phone one-handed

00:47:27   most of the time and I can't use that plus one-handed. I just can't. It's just too big.

00:47:35   And so the plus size is not ever going to work for me. It's just never going to work

00:47:39   for me because of the way that I use, the benefit that I would gain. Because I thought

00:47:43   about it also because of the Apple Watch, right? Like, if you've got a cellular Apple

00:47:47   Watch, you don't need to take your phone everywhere. You don't need to take your phone running.

00:47:50   You don't need to do any of those things. So you could have a huge phone, because in

00:47:56   times when you need ultra-portability, you just don't bring your phone, and you just

00:48:00   bring your Apple Watch. I thought about that. But then, in the end, it came back down to,

00:48:04   it's not comfortable in my hand, I can't reach things on the screen, it makes me have to

00:48:08   use the other hand in order to do stuff because, and I don't like that, that's not

00:48:13   how I use my phone. My iPhone is largely something I hold in my left hand

00:48:17   and do interface stuff with my thumb most of the time and then occasionally

00:48:23   you know I'll change hand positions to type something or all that, but a lot

00:48:28   of it is just scanning things in one hand and I can't hold the plus

00:48:33   comfortably and it hurts me because the screen is beautiful and that camera is

00:48:38   beautiful but the good news is Apple is also going to make a phone that's sized more like

00:48:44   the iPhone 8 and has both cameras so that how about that so that is that's that's what

00:48:50   I'm hearing but here's so you've actually not yet you're leading this quite nicely towards

00:48:55   the end of the discussion here which is the poor fate of the iPhone 8 this is I think

00:49:03   a much bigger jump phone to phone than the 7 was to the 7S, maybe even the 6S to the

00:49:09   7 in some instances. The amount of features, the change in design, the change in materials,

00:49:15   it's a really good update. I think it is giving the customer more, especially than the 7 did.

00:49:23   And the 7S, sorry, the 7 did. We didn't have a 7S. Did we? No, we didn't have a 7S. 6S

00:49:29   to the 7. Oh my gosh.

00:49:30   gosh. The 8 is the 7S. Yeah something like that. So I'll rephrase that from the 6s to

00:49:37   the 7 I think that the 7 to the 8 is a much much better upgrade but it is getting completely

00:49:44   overshadowed by the fact that the 10 is coming and I feel sorry for the iPhone 8 because

00:49:51   I wished that this was the phone that I got for my previous generation because I remain

00:49:59   that like my 7 is fine but I don't really feel like I got that much out of it you know

00:50:04   I lost things you know like I lost the headphone jack and I lost the 100% reliable home button

00:50:11   with no reason really for why that came out don't @ me there's no reason and I think that

00:50:19   the 8 is great like there is a lot of really interesting things in this phone but the 10

00:50:25   is just around the corner and it's like this huge X that is like shadowing over

00:50:31   the 8 is how I imagine it right and it's just there's nothing that can happen

00:50:35   every review talks about the 10 yeah but a lot of people for a lot of people the

00:50:40   10 is not the phone for them right there there are this is my do believe right

00:50:43   like it this is a great phone but it just keeps getting overshadowed and it's

00:50:48   a shame because I mean I've seen so many of my friends by the 8 and they're super

00:50:50   happy with it which I'm really pleased about because this is a this is a great

00:50:54   phone that exists for people that don't want or can't afford or have no interest

00:50:59   in the other one. Yeah, I feel like the people who buy a new iPhone every year

00:51:09   there what we're gonna do is we're gonna see a split in the market of people who

00:51:16   buy the latest and absolutely greatest from Apple and people who just want an

00:51:21   iPhone update. And the fact is, if before, when the 7 came out, like, there were

00:51:28   people upgrading from the 6s who want the latest and greatest, and there are

00:51:31   people upgrading from the 6 and the 5s and the 5 who just want a new iPhone,

00:51:35   and this is the latest iPhone, so they'll get it. And some of them might even have

00:51:39   chosen the 6s at that point from the 5 and save a little bit of money, right?

00:51:44   That was always there. What the existence of the 10 does is create this extra

00:51:50   option and my suspicion is that everybody who is on the every year phone

00:51:56   I want the latest and greatest I'm a huge fan of Apple all these things

00:52:00   they're going to be lining up for that 10 but if you're coming from like my

00:52:05   wife if you're coming from the 6 or the 6s and you look at the 8 like the 8 is

00:52:11   great it's a great update and the 10 is new and expensive and you know unlike

00:52:18   anything they've seen before and some of those people will probably be like "yeah, no,

00:52:21   let's do it, I'm all in." But I think this leads to why this the the 8 is less

00:52:26   exciting is the 8 is less exciting because it's slotting into a price

00:52:30   category. It is the next generation of the last four years of phones and it

00:52:36   slots in at its point in the price hierarchy with a couple of phones below

00:52:41   it and now one above it and that means that it is reliable and a strong update and will sell a lot

00:52:50   to people who are upgrading from phones made two, three, four years ago and will be profitable for

00:52:55   Apple but what it's not going to have is the excitement of the brand new or the any specialness

00:53:05   of it being at the top of the line. And I think that's okay, but it's also just a fact.

00:53:12   Like, it's just a fact that it's not, it never got, well, it got half an hour in the keynote

00:53:19   where it was the king of the castle, and we all knew that the 10 was coming anyway, right?

00:53:24   So it's just a solid product that iterates on the previous generations and that will sell a

00:53:31   lot of them and make a lot of money for Apple at that price point, but it's not

00:53:35   the best iPhone right and it's never gonna be I do think that there is I mean

00:53:42   I agree with you most I do think that there is a little bit of a split which

00:53:46   if of the people that want the latest and greatest that just don't want the 10

00:53:51   for whatever reason you know and in a way that it hasn't been before you know

00:53:55   I feel like the latest and greatest crowd has always just bought the latest

00:53:58   and greatest but now there is a split between like latest and preferred right

00:54:04   which is maybe different to how it has been before,

00:54:08   but I do agree that I think that the majority of people

00:54:12   that have wanted to get the new phone every year

00:54:14   will wait for the X, but there is like a group

00:54:18   which is significant enough, which is like,

00:54:21   for whatever reason, design, price, whatever it is

00:54:25   that are staying away from the X for now.

00:54:27   But yeah, the eight line, it's very attractive.

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00:56:38   So the Apple Watch Series 3. I think we'll start off because we both got them. We both

00:56:43   have opinions on them I'm sure but there's been a lot of mixed reviews for this device

00:56:47   which has been really interesting and it all seems to come down to the connectivity.

00:56:51   There's been lots of positive reviews and some negative reviews as well in a way that's

00:56:55   interesting for Apple products. I don't think you really see negativity as such like as in

00:57:01   this doesn't work but there's been a bunch of those to the point that Apple have released

00:57:07   some statements saying that there are some issues with the LTE Apple Watch which has kind of

00:57:13   actually been an issue with the Apple Watch in general since it came around, but they've

00:57:17   never really been surfaced at scale since the LTE Watch.

00:57:23   Effectively what's happening is, the Apple Watch is trying to connect to open WiFi networks

00:57:30   that you need to enter passwords for. So you know you go to Starbucks and you connect to

00:57:34   Starbucks and it pops up on your phone or your tablet or your Mac or whatever, hey put

00:57:38   this password in or press this button and you can connect. Well obviously the Apple

00:57:43   Watch with no browser, no interface for that cannot connect to these. So the device believes

00:57:49   it's connected to Wi-Fi because it connects to a network but it has no internet connection.

00:57:54   And the reason this is coming up more is because to save battery the Series 3 Apple Watch will

00:58:00   connect to Wi-Fi as much as it can when the phone's not around. Well the point of this

00:58:07   device is the phone shouldn't be around. Yeah, and this is, you know, the existing

00:58:12   Apple Watch would do that, the previous ones, if you're on a previously joined Wi-Fi network,

00:58:18   it would, you're at the supermarket or something, and it's not cellular, but it sees a Wi-Fi

00:58:24   network it recognizes, it would try to get on it, right? Because then it can get data

00:58:27   and it can update your stuff, and that's great. But obviously something happened in

00:58:32   in watchOS 4 that caused this to happen in networks that it hadn't successfully connected

00:58:40   to before with captive portals that it can't possibly log into and then it would just sit

00:58:46   there on the dead Wi-Fi and that meant your phone. I mean I've had that happen with other

00:58:51   devices too, right? I had to have them with a Nintendo Switch at a hotel where it was

00:58:56   a captive portal and the switches web UI which it does have but sometimes on some corporate

00:59:03   Wi-Fi networks or hotel Wi-Fi networks it won't slide up the login panel no matter what

00:59:08   you do and you just can't get on that Wi-Fi network it's just impossible and and it's

00:59:13   a little bit like that here where it just you know there's nothing that the the watch

00:59:17   can do at that point and it's not smart enough to say either don't connect there or I need

00:59:24   to not be, I can't get an internet connection on the Wi-Fi,

00:59:27   so I'm gonna bail back to cellular.

00:59:29   And Apple said they're gonna do a software update,

00:59:31   but that's on Apple.

00:59:32   I experienced some issues with the Apple Watch 2,

00:59:37   I have the Apple Watch Series 3 with cellular,

00:59:40   and it definitely feels like there are software,

00:59:44   it feels to me like in certain circumstances

00:59:47   and once everything is set up and running,

00:59:49   that it works pretty well.

00:59:52   The problem is what people found about the Wi-Fi,

00:59:56   where they said the cellular didn't work,

00:59:58   it's not really accurate.

00:59:59   What was happening is that it was connecting

01:00:00   to Wi-Fi networks that shouldn't be.

01:00:02   When I'm not near any of those,

01:00:04   I haven't seen that feature at all,

01:00:05   but when I'm not near Wi-Fi or something,

01:00:07   cellular works great.

01:00:08   I had an issue where I set up the watch.

01:00:11   The next day I went out on a bike ride

01:00:15   with just the watch, listening to music,

01:00:17   and it worked pretty well,

01:00:19   And then it rebooted.

01:00:22   Like, Apple logo on the screen.

01:00:25   - Yeah, so this is a thing that you're gonna notice more.

01:00:28   - Ding ding in my AirPods, in my AirPods,

01:00:31   as like, oh, I've lost the connection,

01:00:33   and the watch is gone and the music stopped.

01:00:35   And then I got it going again, and it did it again.

01:00:39   - So I have noticed with my Series 2,

01:00:42   that every now and then I'll catch the Apple logo.

01:00:45   The watch seems to reboot quite frequently,

01:00:49   but you maybe don't notice it.

01:00:51   - I had a workout going,

01:00:52   and when the phone came back after the reboot,

01:00:54   or who knows if it's a full reboot

01:00:56   or if it's losing the UI.

01:00:58   - Springboard or whatever it's doing.

01:00:59   - Whatever is happening, but it's showing the Apple logo,

01:01:01   and in fact, it was showing the dim Apple logo,

01:01:03   then the brightness comes up and then it comes back.

01:01:06   But the workout timing continued, like,

01:01:09   "Oh yeah, no, you've been working out this whole time.

01:01:11   I've totally been paying attention to you."

01:01:12   I'm not sure that it actually had,

01:01:13   but it kept it going, so I might've missed it.

01:01:16   And except that my music stopped,

01:01:18   and the AirPods de-paired with,

01:01:21   or disconnected from the device.

01:01:23   And so that was something.

01:01:26   I also had a case where Bluetooth just disconnected

01:01:29   my AirPods spontaneously.

01:01:32   So that was not good.

01:01:34   And then the weird thing is, then I came home

01:01:36   and I noticed also that my bike, the bike computer,

01:01:38   you know, on the workout, wasn't measuring distance

01:01:42   or speed, which doesn't make any sense, right?

01:01:44   And I get home and keep in mind,

01:01:46   this is 24 hours after I set this thing up.

01:01:49   And I get a flurry of permission requests

01:01:55   where it's like, I would like to track your location.

01:01:59   The activity app would like to track your location.

01:02:02   The weather app would like to track your location.

01:02:04   Oh, I also noticed that the weather app

01:02:06   thought that I was in Salt Lake City,

01:02:08   which is super weird where I was a month ago.

01:02:14   So it feels to me like the watch got stuck in,

01:02:19   after being set up and it wasn't, it's a new watch.

01:02:22   So it came with watchOS 4.

01:02:24   After it got set up and restored my data and all of that,

01:02:28   it got stuck in a weird place where it should have been

01:02:32   asking for permissions for location and stuff like that,

01:02:36   but it didn't, it got stuck.

01:02:37   And I wonder if that might've actually had something to do

01:02:41   with the reboots, is that it was in a weird state

01:02:44   where it was restored, but it wasn't restored all the way.

01:02:47   I can theorize it about all I like.

01:02:49   The fact is I went out for a workout with listening to music

01:02:53   and it failed me three times, twice by rebooting.

01:02:57   Since that got unstuck and it asked me

01:03:00   all the locations, permissions,

01:03:03   everything's been fine.

01:03:06   All the data has been right,

01:03:07   the locations have been right,

01:03:08   the activity data measures distance,

01:03:10   and I haven't had a reboot.

01:03:13   which is why I'm saying like,

01:03:14   I wonder if this is one of those issues

01:03:17   where they really tested the watch in use,

01:03:20   but didn't test it quite as much in setting up from zero

01:03:24   and migrating from a backup.

01:03:26   - Hmm, okay, so maybe it gets better over time.

01:03:29   - Right, so that's just a theory

01:03:31   'cause I haven't seen those behaviors since then.

01:03:34   But let me tell you, if I had had to write a review

01:03:36   after workout number one with a new Apple Watch,

01:03:39   it would not have been good because it was like useless.

01:03:42   it was rebooting and completely unstable.

01:03:45   And yet since then it's been fine.

01:03:48   So that's my gut feeling is that they've got bugs

01:03:50   and they've got stuff that they didn't adequately test.

01:03:52   And the reason they thought that it was fine

01:03:55   is probably because the stuff that they were looking for

01:03:59   was while it was all set up and going

01:04:02   and not maybe the onboarding process.

01:04:04   But, so I don't know, I've got more to report.

01:04:06   I've got more times I need to take it out untethered.

01:04:09   I've done that a few times.

01:04:10   I love being able to do that,

01:04:12   but you gotta rely on it in those cases

01:04:15   and you can't have it.

01:04:16   If this thing is sold as we preloaded your music,

01:04:20   you can listen to your Apple music on your AirPods

01:04:22   and record your workout.

01:04:24   So go do that and you'll still be in touch.

01:04:26   And I called Steven Hackett at one point during that too.

01:04:28   And that worked.

01:04:30   Great.

01:04:31   If I try that and it fails multiple times,

01:04:33   that's not so great.

01:04:34   So I need to try it some more,

01:04:35   but the initial,

01:04:37   I think it was in some kind of messed up state

01:04:39   and that's on Apple.

01:04:40   This is just, it's not doing, there are bugs happening in the setup.

01:04:44   That seems to be the case.

01:04:45   Yeah.

01:04:46   That's the definite, right?

01:04:47   There are going to be bugs with this product.

01:04:49   It's a new thing.

01:04:50   It's a weirdly difficult thing, I'm sure, to try and make this thing work.

01:04:55   But in regards to the Wi-Fi issue, the connectivity issue that some reviewers were seeing, Apple

01:05:00   released a statement and they were like, "We know this is a problem and we're going to

01:05:03   try and fix it in a software update later."

01:05:07   It seems like a lot of these problems came to light once it was starting to be reviewed,

01:05:13   because there were maybe people in high traffic areas like in New York City, where a lot of

01:05:19   these publications are, or like in downtown San Francisco, where there are a lot of open

01:05:23   Wi-Fi networks that need these captive networks, they're called, where you have to do something

01:05:28   and it's starting to see these problems.

01:05:29   So now Apple needs to try and fix this and I don't know how they're going to do it and

01:05:33   it's going to be interesting to see how they do it.

01:05:36   - I think they already had this behavior

01:05:38   and then it isn't working in watchOS 4.

01:05:40   'Cause the whole idea is that if you can't,

01:05:42   if the watch hasn't connected before to that network

01:05:47   and it appears open, but it can't get data out,

01:05:52   then it needs to just be like, nope, I can't do that.

01:05:55   And move on. - Right.

01:05:57   - And it isn't.

01:05:58   So they should be able to fix this.

01:06:00   And like I said, I think they have code

01:06:02   that already addresses this, that's in watchOS 3.

01:06:06   and something happened and it's not working right

01:06:08   in watchOS 4.

01:06:09   So I'm hopeful that this will be a pretty easy fix,

01:06:11   but yeah, whoops, ouch.

01:06:15   That said, there's a lot I like about it.

01:06:18   You've got one too, right?

01:06:19   - Yeah, I do.

01:06:22   I got mine on Saturday.

01:06:23   - Yeah, so there's a lot I like about it

01:06:26   now that it's up and running,

01:06:27   but it was a rocky setup process.

01:06:30   - So I will say that I was actually impressed

01:06:32   with the general setup flow, right?

01:06:35   Like I know that you have problems like initially.

01:06:37   - Totally.

01:06:38   - But the actual setup of the product itself

01:06:41   was one of the nicest that I've used in a while.

01:06:45   - So let's, one of our episodes that got a lot of acclaim

01:06:48   a couple of years ago was when we talked about

01:06:51   the upgrade experience, right?

01:06:52   And we really kind of ripped into Apple

01:06:55   about how setting up Apple TV was hard,

01:06:58   setting up a new iPhone is hard,

01:06:59   getting a new iPhone should be one of the happier days

01:07:02   of your year, right?

01:07:03   It's like, yay, new stuff to play with.

01:07:05   This is awesome.

01:07:06   Hooray.

01:07:07   And instead you get frustrated

01:07:08   because it's like taking forever

01:07:09   and it's confused about what apps it can download

01:07:12   and apps download stall out

01:07:14   and you have to enter in your password a million times

01:07:16   and approve a bunch of different screens.

01:07:18   And we really rightfully, I think,

01:07:21   gave Apple a lot of stick about that.

01:07:23   They are way better at it now than they used to be.

01:07:27   If you had an iPhone running iOS 11

01:07:31   and you updated to a new iPhone this time,

01:07:33   so you updated your old iPhone to 11

01:07:35   and then you bought a new iPhone.

01:07:36   You get to use their new transfer technology,

01:07:40   which is very much like the Apple Watch setup,

01:07:41   where you take a picture of the screen of one from the other,

01:07:44   you put in your passcode,

01:07:45   a whole bunch of your data comes over automatically,

01:07:48   and it dramatically reduces the amount of time

01:07:50   you spend fiddling with settings on your new phone.

01:07:54   There's still some stuff you gotta re-input and authorize

01:07:56   and all of that, but it's so much better than it was before.

01:07:59   The Apple Watch onboarding, similarly,

01:08:01   they did a very good job.

01:08:04   there was not a lot of fiddling I had to do, not a lot of messing around with details because

01:08:08   it restored from a backup that was my other Apple watch. And, you know, the, you know,

01:08:15   I had issues later where it seemed to get in a weird state, but the actual walkthrough

01:08:19   was fine. And the Apple TV 4K, because I got one of those this weekend too, that's again,

01:08:24   same deal. They have the, you know, bring a phone near it. And they had that, I think,

01:08:31   year too, and it copies off a bunch of the settings so I don't have to deal

01:08:34   with it anymore. So in all of these cases Apple has done a lot better on the

01:08:40   onboarding than they had two or three years ago and they deserve

01:08:46   our appreciation for that, like they have made a lot of strides there

01:08:51   because that was an area that needed a lot of help and they've done a pretty

01:08:55   good job, especially on the iPhone, but the Apple Watch is a good example too. So

01:08:59   So fair, I think, for us to mention that.

01:09:03   Yeah, I really like that all I did was I had my Apple Watch.

01:09:07   I took it out of the box.

01:09:08   I turned it on.

01:09:09   And because my phone was close by, it was like,

01:09:11   do you want to set this up?

01:09:12   I was like, yeah, I do.

01:09:15   Thanks.

01:09:15   And the backup had already been completed

01:09:18   from the previous watch, so it was already there.

01:09:20   Something that I was blown away by, right?

01:09:22   I'm setting up Apple Pay.

01:09:24   And I ask for them to text me a code,

01:09:27   my bank to text me a code.

01:09:28   the text comes through, the code that was in the text was automatically pre-filled when

01:09:33   the text came in. So there's something going on with machine learning, I'm sure, that read

01:09:38   the text message and put the code in for me. I was like, "Oh my god, this is amazing!"

01:09:44   Yeah, it does that sometimes when it knows that it's receiving its own verification code.

01:09:50   It just knows, "Oh, that's mine," and it takes it.

01:09:53   And then I really liked that they've added this, I assume this is an OS4 thing.

01:09:58   When the watch is setting up, because it takes some time, right, like it's got that spinning

01:10:02   thing like it is filling up, there was this new kind of like Apple Watch basics guides

01:10:06   thing which teaches you about what they call to press firmly on the screen, so it's not

01:10:11   called 3D touch or force touch, like you should press firmly for more options, it tells you

01:10:15   about the digital crown and a side button, it just explains what they do, so you can

01:10:18   actually do something while the watch is doing whatever it's doing.

01:10:22   I assume it's back. It's like restoring from the cloud is what it's doing.

01:10:25   For the LTE stuff, I was really surprised about this.

01:10:29   I get six months of unlimited data for free with EE and then it's five pounds a

01:10:34   month for 10 gigabytes of data on my watch after that.

01:10:38   But I'm on no contract with them. It's a 30 day rolling contract so I can cancel

01:10:43   it whenever I want. But six months for free. It's pretty nice.

01:10:47   I don't know if this is the same for everybody. I think it is. But like,

01:10:50   I was really, really pleased about that.

01:10:51   I mean, actually, it is the same.

01:10:53   I looked it up.

01:10:54   Yeah, it is the same for everyone.

01:10:55   - Better deal than in the US where it's--

01:10:56   - Much better.

01:10:57   - $10 a month.

01:10:58   Although it's part of my pool,

01:11:00   so it's part of my data pool.

01:11:01   It doesn't have any specific data limitations.

01:11:04   Although Apple is trying very hard

01:11:05   to reduce how much data it uses.

01:11:07   I think more for power consumption reasons than anything.

01:11:12   Where it is aggressively like looking at your,

01:11:16   if you use Apple Music,

01:11:17   it is aggressively looking at your Apple Music

01:11:19   like things that you play a lot, playlists you play a lot,

01:11:23   the algorithmically generated playlist

01:11:26   that Apple Music does based on your preferences.

01:11:29   And it is automatically syncing those overnight

01:11:33   when your watch is charging,

01:11:35   because it wants to preload as much data as it can

01:11:39   so that you don't have to use data.

01:11:42   Not for the data caps so much

01:11:44   is because that cellular radio obviously

01:11:47   drains the battery dramatically.

01:11:49   So they're trying to be very aggressive about having it not used very much.

01:11:52   And you can't really use a lot of that storage for much anyway,

01:11:55   so why not fill it up with music and purge it when something's needed?

01:11:58   Exactly.

01:12:00   I tried, like you, I sent text messages, I made some calls.

01:12:04   In my home, I have one bar of coverage, but this is normal.

01:12:08   Like I don't get great cell reception in my house, but it was able to do it all.

01:12:12   I went outside and it was fine.

01:12:14   The speaker's much louder.

01:12:16   Like everything was fine with that.

01:12:17   Like I haven't done like extensive testing in central London and I will do that and I

01:12:21   will try it and I will report back if it's a problem.

01:12:24   But what I've had so far was great.

01:12:26   I just threw my iPhone into airplane mode.

01:12:29   I confirmed that it wasn't connected to Wi-Fi but you know, because you can scroll up and

01:12:33   I can see it had the little dots indicators for the cell stuff and it was working great.

01:12:38   I did test a bunch of third party apps, stuff like FantastiCow, Joo, Carrot Weather, AirMail.

01:12:43   None of these apps could get any data over LTE.

01:12:46   were all asking to where's the phone right so I thought I wonder what was

01:12:51   going on here and if there was something that could be done so I spoke to our

01:12:55   good friend underscore David Smith because I know he has a lot of knowledge

01:12:59   of working on watch development and I asked him like what is the situation

01:13:03   here so he kind of said to me that like the way that the watch apps have been

01:13:08   done before and the past has been knows they've always needed the phone to

01:13:11   piggyback on for any kind of information so they just look for that so all of the

01:13:15   watch apps that we have, they're looking for the phone because that's how they're developed,

01:13:19   but it doesn't need to be this way. So it is possible to have watch apps talk to data

01:13:25   in the cloud, talk to servers, but this isn't something that anybody's done previously because

01:13:30   it wasn't required. The phone always had to be there. So I could, well, this is, well,

01:13:35   okay, so this is a quote from underscore. He said, "To make a watch app work well on

01:13:39   its own, it has to be treated like a peer of the phone app and synced directly to the

01:13:43   server rather than just leeching on the phone's data. So it is possible to do stuff to talk

01:13:49   to a server, like so something like Fantastical could pull from a server, but it takes a lot

01:13:53   of work and this will take work from developers that they haven't needed to do before and

01:13:57   I'm keen to see if this is something that people are going to put effort into.

01:14:01   So watchOS 3 let the watch independently connect to Wi-Fi networks without the phone around.

01:14:08   developers were told at the time like you can use this feature. I think the

01:14:12   the right way to say it would be to say that was such a rare use case that there

01:14:20   there was no reason to completely rebuild a watch app to operate

01:14:25   independently for the circumstance where you happen to be on an open Wi-Fi

01:14:30   network with only your watch and your and your phone not around right yeah

01:14:34   Whereas now with the cellular, the use case is dramatically expanded.

01:14:39   And which is why, so it's not as if developers couldn't have done this last year,

01:14:44   it's more that they had no good reason to.

01:14:47   And the cellular capability gives them a reason to.

01:14:49   I may not have phrased it very well, but it's more just the case of like,

01:14:53   it is possible to talk to the cloud, but apps don't do it because there hasn't been a requirement.

01:14:59   - Well, and because initially the only way these apps worked is by talking to their buddy on the iPhone, right?

01:15:04   And now, you know, now things have advanced to the point where...

01:15:08   But you can see, I mean, to people out there, what Myke said really makes sense if you think about it this way,

01:15:13   that you have to re-envision your watch app to be more independent and behave as like an app,

01:15:22   instead of just behaving as a client that sucks data

01:15:27   out of the iPhone app that goes with it.

01:15:31   And that's like a big shift in,

01:15:34   if your Fantastic Cal is a good example,

01:15:36   like there's a big difference between asking your buddy app,

01:15:40   give me calendar data and saying,

01:15:42   I need to connect to Google Calendar

01:15:45   and pull down the data directly from Google Calendar.

01:15:47   It's a, I'm not saying that that's necessarily

01:15:50   what Fantastic Cal is doing,

01:15:51   but it's a big paradigm shift.

01:15:53   And the watchOS 3 stuff with wifi,

01:15:56   I think was clearly a suggestion by Apple

01:15:59   that this is where the watch platform was going.

01:16:01   But again, how many people were doing that

01:16:04   versus now where people are gonna have these cellular watches

01:16:06   and are being encouraged to leave their iPhones behind.

01:16:08   Makes a big difference.

01:16:09   - Yeah, in my experience,

01:16:10   none of the third party apps that I use could work

01:16:13   without the phone being attached to it.

01:16:16   So I think it's gonna be interesting

01:16:18   to see what happens here

01:16:19   because there is more of a use case than ever for developers to do this.

01:16:23   But are they going to like is this time investment going to be worth it

01:16:27   for their watch apps?

01:16:28   I think it's going to be a case of waiting and seeing.

01:16:30   I think that Siri is good. Siri works good.

01:16:33   It speaks back. The voice sounds good.

01:16:35   You know, I don't think I'm going to use Siri any more than I used it

01:16:39   before for my watch, which is basically I'm probably not going to do it.

01:16:43   But it's there if I need it and it's better.

01:16:48   Mm-hmm general performance feels much nicer. It was way snappier some animations

01:16:53   So like, you know every now and then I get a notification now dismiss the animation on it

01:16:56   Like I'll dismiss it like the animation on that dismiss is much smoother and I'm noticing that when I'm when I'm seeing it

01:17:02   What do you think of the red dot?

01:17:04   on the crown

01:17:06   Not a fan. Okay, you have this you have the space gray like me. I'm assuming I'm assuming

01:17:11   Yeah, because that's what we both had before I have it too. I don't love it

01:17:16   I don't hate it but I would prefer it if it wasn't that way but I'm not kind of tripping

01:17:21   over myself to get a sticker to put on it.

01:17:24   I'm fine with it because I actually don't see it most of the time.

01:17:28   The crown's click feels different to me though.

01:17:31   I'm noticing that.

01:17:32   The clickiness of the crown feels different.

01:17:35   But yeah I think I'm with you in that I don't love the red but I don't know how you feel

01:17:41   like would you want to cover it up but it doesn't bother me that much.

01:17:45   I bought some stickers.

01:17:46   You did?

01:17:47   Okay.

01:17:48   Interesting.

01:17:49   I want to know what they're like.

01:17:50   If you find any that you like, let us know on a future episode so we can include links

01:17:54   in the show notes if you're happy with them.

01:17:57   This watch has more heart rate sensing stuff and I know this is something that you were

01:18:01   frustrated about.

01:18:02   We've spoken about it over the last couple of weeks.

01:18:04   Do you have any tales of heart rate monitoring?

01:18:08   that I went to the football game on Saturday and there was a particularly exciting part

01:18:17   where we were standing, we were shouting and standing and cheering and I got my first heart

01:18:22   rate alert that said, "You seem to have an elevated heart rate while not doing a workout."

01:18:27   And I was like, "Well, yeah, I'm at a football game shouting and it's really exciting." And

01:18:31   I was like, "All right, fair enough. Like, yes, I'm not surprised my heart rate is elevated

01:18:36   there's a reason for it, it's fine. But it was a funny moment to have that be my

01:18:40   moment of elevated heart rate and accurate, totally accurate.

01:18:45   Yeah I don't do anything so I haven't got one yet.

01:18:48   Well just wait for it.

01:18:50   I'm happy with this device in general. I like it for all of the things that I liked about the

01:18:55   Series 2, right? Like it's faster, it's more capable, the battery life feels

01:19:00   exactly the same to me because I never had any problems with battery life anyway.

01:19:04   And I'm more, I'm keen to see how over time,

01:19:09   if and how attitudes of mine will change

01:19:12   towards my phone on my watch

01:19:14   and how they work in conjunction and apart.

01:19:15   Like I think that this is a long-term thing

01:19:18   to see if this is something that I pay attention to.

01:19:21   I'm keen to see how that is over time.

01:19:23   But I think this is something

01:19:27   that's going to take time to realize.

01:19:29   And one of those things for me is

01:19:31   that I hope that third-party apps will integrate to work better with the fact that they can

01:19:37   connect on their own independently now. And I hope that that's something that we start

01:19:41   to see more of over time because that would really make it good for me. Because there's

01:19:45   a few apps that I use a lot on my Apple Watch and I would want to be able to keep using

01:19:49   them when I'm outside of the home. And I hope that a lot of that stuff gets addressed. Like

01:19:54   for example, Overcast. I want Overcast and Marco wrote a blog post last night which I

01:19:59   just include in the show notes, which just talks about all of the things that he would

01:20:03   need to be able to build a good overclass client. And it feels like more than is going

01:20:08   to come before WatchOS 5. If within the next couple of years it seems like a lot of stuff.

01:20:14   So I hope that these things can be addressed because I think that this is a great device

01:20:18   with a lot of promise, but it's a version one and it feels like that. And that's fine,

01:20:24   but I want to see more as time goes on.

01:20:26   Well, I think most importantly, it's very clear that the hardware hardware pace is now outstripped the software pace.

01:20:31   Which is good though. I mean, yeah, because I agree with you completely and I think that's good, but I want to see the software catch up now.

01:20:37   I mean, I'm happy to see the hardware is is pushing forward at a good clip, but I want to see the software support going in tandem now.

01:20:46   Yeah, well, I mean, and it does speak the hardware as nice as this is like if the promise of cellular is not fulfilled

01:20:53   because the apps can't do what they need to do.

01:20:57   And Marco, you know, Marco's got one particular use case

01:21:00   he's looking for, but boy, you know,

01:21:02   when you hear him talk about what,

01:21:04   or him and David on Under the Radar talk about

01:21:08   what they can't do and all the hoops

01:21:12   they have to go through and how little

01:21:14   they're able to access in watchOS,

01:21:20   it starts to feel like the, you know, all the promise,

01:21:25   with all the promise of the Apple Watch cellular,

01:21:29   unless you're Apple and you've built it into watchOS,

01:21:32   basically it's not delivered.

01:21:34   And, you know, they can do more, like we said,

01:21:38   to make the apps access data better,

01:21:41   but it's, listening to developers,

01:21:45   it sounds like this is on Apple,

01:21:47   that watchOS is just not good enough for these apps to do what they need to do

01:21:51   to take advantage of the hardware. And that means, you know, that lessens the

01:21:56   impact of the hardware. That makes it less likely that it's worth it for you

01:22:00   to get an Apple Watch with cellular right now because outside of the stuff

01:22:05   that's on the device, the third-party app stuff is not that great a situation

01:22:09   right now. And like the podcast is a perfect example. Marco is trying

01:22:14   desperately to find a way to play podcasts on watchOS on cellular and

01:22:18   can't really do it. And Apple, despite having the podcast app on iOS, has shown

01:22:23   no desire to do it either. So if you listen to podcasts while you run, the

01:22:28   cellular watch won't help you and so you won't buy one. And so that's on Apple.

01:22:32   Like, Apple needs to fix up its developer story on watchOS and it's a shame that

01:22:38   the reality is that probably we're gonna have to wait a year for that to happen.

01:22:42   It'll be a whole year until watchOS 5 comes out that maybe addresses some of this.

01:22:48   Maybe.

01:22:49   That's too bad.

01:22:50   All right, it's time for Ask Upgrade.

01:22:53   #AskUpgrade and today Ask Upgrade is brought to you by our friends over at SMILE and today

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01:25:22   Okay, it is time for #askupgrade.

01:25:26   So you can send in your questions as always

01:25:28   with the #askupgrade and we'll get to them

01:25:30   at the end of the show

01:25:31   and these tend to be our technical questions.

01:25:33   today we're starting off with Lennart and Lennart asks is it a matter of time until

01:25:39   Apple builds a Qi charger into the iMac display or like into the stand you know the little

01:25:44   foot that's on the iMac or the external displays that could maybe allow us to charge our magic

01:25:49   mouse a keyboard or phone that'd be a nice place to put one.

01:25:53   Right in the little foot there what do you think?

01:25:56   Yeah I don't know.

01:25:58   I mean it would be nice whether they would do it or not I think it would be a nice thing

01:26:01   to have.

01:26:02   I'm sure it would be nice whether Apple would build,

01:26:06   cause keep in mind then that that piece of metal now needs to be a piece of

01:26:10   hardware, like electronic hardware.

01:26:13   And they have to connect it when the foot is attached, you know,

01:26:17   they have to have power.

01:26:18   And it would be thick, right?

01:26:20   Yeah.

01:26:20   And then they putting it in everyone expecting that people will use it.

01:26:25   I think, I think it's not likely personally.

01:26:32   Rajeev asked, "In iOS 11, how can you tell if an app is universal on the App Store?"

01:26:38   The universal badge has a little plus sign, which I'll show you is universal. I think

01:26:42   that's gone now, but there are ways. It's actually better than ever before in the new

01:26:45   App Store. So on any device, on any iOS device, there is a label underneath the screenshots

01:26:52   that says what platforms. So it will say like offers iPhone, Apple Watch, offers iMessage,

01:26:58   App Store, Sticker Pack, or whatever, it has all of them there. Whatever the device, whatever

01:27:04   this application can be supported on, it has it all listed. And then you can also tap on

01:27:08   that and see screenshots for each version of the application on all of the platforms.

01:27:13   So that's all there within those new screens, which is really great. I love those new App

01:27:17   Store listing pages. I think they look really good, really good. Having all of the reviews,

01:27:23   like I like the fact that the reviews are a number now, that makes more sense to my

01:27:26   brain. I like that you can see what like everything else that a developer has. It's all laid out

01:27:31   so much cleaner. I really like the new App Store a lot. And the pages are for each application,

01:27:38   each developer are nice, nice additions. Benjamin wants to know, Jason, how to pronounce correctly

01:27:46   the new file formats for images and videos on iOS and macOS.

01:27:51   Well, it is clearly "hife" and "hevick."

01:27:56   Oh, no!

01:27:57   You should always say them that way.

01:27:58   "Hife" and "hevick."

01:27:59   "Hef" and "hevick."

01:28:00   "Hef" is also—

01:28:01   "Hef"?

01:28:02   "Hef" or "hife," and "hevick" or "heevick."

01:28:06   "Hevick."

01:28:07   No, it's "heef."

01:28:09   "Heef."

01:28:10   Apple insists "heef."

01:28:11   That's what they say.

01:28:12   "Heef."

01:28:13   "Heef."

01:28:14   So, guess—sure.

01:28:15   And "hevc."

01:28:16   Read the letters.

01:28:17   Great.

01:28:18   letters.

01:28:19   Right. I go back to my English classes. Right? Heath. Heathcliff.

01:28:25   So yeah, that's me. Okay, so Heath and H-E-V-C.

01:28:28   It's like a Heath bar.

01:28:30   Okay. I don't know what they are, but...

01:28:33   You don't know what a Heath?

01:28:34   Nope.

01:28:35   Like, how about if you're out in the countryside on the Heath?

01:28:40   Yeah, like Heathcliff. It's in the mall. Anyway, Heath. Is it Heath? Heath, right? With an

01:28:46   F.

01:28:47   Heath.

01:28:48   Okay, so I'm pleased I asked this question because now Chris has a question about those.

01:28:55   Chris wants to know, Jason, can you please explain compatibility related to HEIF and

01:29:00   HEVC photos when sharing or backing up to a Mac or PC?

01:29:06   Boy, can I. I wrote a whole article in Macworld about it that I'll link in the show notes.

01:29:14   the device should detect what your compatibility is

01:29:19   with Heath and HEVC and will transcode on the fly.

01:29:28   So if you're using, if you're running Sierra

01:29:33   and you try to import photos shot on an iPhone 8

01:29:38   with HEVC and Heath, photos and videos,

01:29:41   when you download them, they will come out cross

01:29:44   as JPEGs and H.264s, and it will do the conversion for you.

01:29:49   And it's doing, there's a setting to turn that off

01:29:52   and give you your originals regardless,

01:29:56   but what it's going to try to do is be compatible.

01:29:59   So Apple wants this to be invisible.

01:30:02   If you're on a system that it knows,

01:30:04   'cause it knows what it's connecting to,

01:30:06   this works for AirDrop too, and other sharing,

01:30:08   like if it knows for certain you can see a HEIF file,

01:30:12   it'll send you the HEIF file.

01:30:14   If it doesn't know for certain, it won't.

01:30:16   It'll send you a JPEG.

01:30:18   - With Photos app then, if I turn on Heath on my iPhone,

01:30:23   what does my Mac get on Sierra?

01:30:25   Like what does it get?

01:30:26   - It gets a preview image that's a JPEG

01:30:32   that I forget what they call that.

01:30:34   Apple has a word for it.

01:30:36   It's the derivative preview.

01:30:39   - Okay.

01:30:40   - It's not editable.

01:30:42   There'll be a little symbol when you go in to view it,

01:30:45   that a little alert symbol that says not editable,

01:30:49   and you can't edit it.

01:30:50   However, here's a cute thing that the Apple has done.

01:30:53   If every Mac attached to your Apple ID

01:31:00   is not yet on Hi Sierra,

01:31:08   it will just sync a compatible version instead.

01:31:13   - Oh, oh my God, that's so confusing though.

01:31:17   - Well, no, but it's confusing in the details,

01:31:19   but in life it should actually work okay.

01:31:23   And the idea here is if you don't have High Sierra yet,

01:31:26   it's not gonna sync High Sierra only files

01:31:29   to iCloud photo library

01:31:31   because it knows you can't do anything with them.

01:31:34   But if you do have a Mac running High Sierra,

01:31:36   one is all that's required, then it will.

01:31:39   - Okay.

01:31:40   - So it's trying to do its best to never send you something

01:31:43   you can't edit somewhere.

01:31:45   But yeah, if you've got a Mac,

01:31:47   like I've got my Mac that stores all my photos on it

01:31:51   and it's running Sierra.

01:31:52   And then I've got my iMac and it's running Hi Sierra.

01:31:55   And on the Hi Sierra Mac,

01:31:57   I can take those he files and I can edit them.

01:31:59   On the Mac that stores them, that's running Sierra,

01:32:02   it sees them, it will show me that preview,

01:32:05   but mark it as being uneditable.

01:32:08   It actually is, since it's set to download all the files,

01:32:10   it has downloaded that .heaf file in the background

01:32:13   and put it in its library,

01:32:15   but it can't do anything with it

01:32:16   'cause it's an incompatible format.

01:32:18   So it's trying to do all the right things.

01:32:20   This is one of those cases where

01:32:22   I think if you don't pay attention to it, it's all fine.

01:32:26   But if you're one of those people,

01:32:28   and our listeners are these people

01:32:30   and we are these people who are like,

01:32:32   but wait, what about this?

01:32:33   What about that?

01:32:34   What about this?

01:32:35   about that, then it's like, "alright, let me explain what about all those things,"

01:32:37   but I think if you're not paying attention and you're just like "do do do do

01:32:40   take a picture, there it is," I think you won't notice it. I think it'll

01:32:44   just all kind of work right, because I think Apple's done a very good job of

01:32:47   trying to anticipate all of these things. If you're obsessed with never wanting

01:32:51   the transcoded versions, then yeah, you're going to want to either set the

01:32:54   setting that always transfers the originals, which is in the settings on iOS,

01:32:59   and you're going to want to update a Mac somewhere. If you use photos, you're going to

01:33:01   to want to update a Mac somewhere to High Sierra

01:33:03   just so that you can see those files.

01:33:04   'Cause Apple has chosen, chosen, it's their choice,

01:33:08   not to do something to update Sierra

01:33:11   to support those file formats.

01:33:12   I'd imagine other apps will.

01:33:13   I'd imagine that like Acorn or Photoshop

01:33:16   or something like that will eventually support

01:33:18   those file formats and those might actually work on Sierra.

01:33:21   But Apple has said, "Nope, that's a High Sierra thing.

01:33:24   You gotta update in order to see it."

01:33:26   If you double click otherwise in the Finder

01:33:27   or do a quick look, it's just like not there.

01:33:29   It doesn't work.

01:33:31   Dylan asked, I don't have a 4K TV.

01:33:34   I have no plans to get one.

01:33:35   I currently have a third gen Apple TV.

01:33:37   Is there any reason not to just go get the fourth gen Apple TV?

01:33:40   So the fourth gen is not the 4K, right?

01:33:45   I'm thinking correctly in that one.

01:33:46   Fourth gen is the previous Apple TV, the one you can still buy that's cheaper.

01:33:51   I recommend getting that one.

01:33:53   If you have no plans to get a 4K TV,

01:33:56   the 4K Apple TV is useless to you.

01:34:01   - It'll be faster, but I wouldn't, yeah, I wouldn't.

01:34:04   Unless you plan to get one, right?

01:34:06   If you plan to get one in the next couple of years

01:34:07   and you need a new Apple TV now, then sure, get it,

01:34:10   and then you'll have it and it'll work with your new TV

01:34:13   when you buy it.

01:34:14   But if you have no plans to get a 4K TV,

01:34:17   then you don't need the 4K Apple TV.

01:34:19   - Okay, so that is #AskUpgrade for this week.

01:34:24   As I said, you can send in your questions to us

01:34:26   with the #AskUpgrade, and they go into another lovely sheet.

01:34:29   I have many sheets, they have many hashtags

01:34:31   that pull in lots of information,

01:34:33   and then we can answer your questions

01:34:36   on a future episode of the show.

01:34:39   At this point, we are going to fire off

01:34:41   the spoiler horn right now, I think.

01:34:44   I'm just gonna do it now for fun,

01:34:46   because after this break, we're gonna--

01:34:47   - Yeah, we have a break first.

01:34:49   - Well, I wanna fire it now.

01:34:51   - I have some real-time follow-up.

01:34:52   - Okay.

01:34:53   - From Joe Steele, who wants to,

01:34:54   it's a real-time correction for you,

01:34:55   they didn't lower the price of the old Apple TV,

01:34:57   it still costs what it costs,

01:34:58   just added a new 4K Apple TV that's more expensive.

01:35:00   - There you go.

01:35:01   There.

01:35:02   Interesting. - Thanks, Apple.

01:35:03   - Good to know.

01:35:04   Good to know.

01:35:04   So we're gonna talk about Encapsula now,

01:35:07   but then we have Terminator 2 with Myke at the movies.

01:35:10   So the spoiler home won't leave me in.

01:35:12   And I wanna take a moment to thank our friends

01:35:15   over at Encapsula for supporting this week's episode.

01:35:20   Encapsula have the website security tools

01:35:23   and content delivery network that you need

01:35:25   to make your website safer, faster and more reliable.

01:35:29   You need this stuff because websites can be attacked every single day. Criminals will

01:35:32   use botnets to scrape website content. They will try and smash into databases like a T1000

01:35:38   and bring sites down with denial of service attacks. Encapsular's network holds 3 terabits

01:35:44   per second of on-demand scrubbing capacity and can process 30 billion attacks per second.

01:35:50   This is why Encapsular's network has successfully defended some of the largest website attacks

01:35:56   on record.

01:35:58   If you're attacked, Encapsular's powerful CDN ensures that your content is delivered

01:36:02   to your customers fast.

01:36:03   You don't want people bailing on your site when they come to it, and with Encapsular

01:36:06   they wouldn't have to because no one would even know that something bad was happening.

01:36:10   And you can see any attacks as they're happening on the fly and adjust your security policies

01:36:14   along with them.

01:36:15   It's all in their wonderful dashboard that they have.

01:36:18   As a listener of this show you can get one whole month of service for free, just go to

01:36:22   encapsula.com/upgrade.

01:36:27   You'll find out more about Encapsula's service here and claim your free month as well.

01:36:31   Thank you so much to Encapsula for their support of this show and Relay FM.

01:36:36   Alright I need to get my other notebook now Jason because we're going to talk about Terminator

01:36:39   2 Judgement Day.

01:36:44   Okay, do you wanna- I had some real difficulties today, Jason.

01:36:48   Yeah?

01:36:49   Couldn't find the movie.

01:36:50   Oh!

01:36:52   It's readily available on the US iTunes store.

01:36:55   Is it?

01:36:56   Oh yeah.

01:36:57   Like, have you checked within the last couple of days?

01:37:00   Because-

01:37:02   I literally like, bought it last week.

01:37:05   So frustrating. It's not on iTunes here, every other Terminator movie is.

01:37:08   I think I know why though, because it's just been in cinemas.

01:37:13   They did a 3D re-release of Terminator 2 at the end of August.

01:37:21   And I think that is why it has been, I was unable to find it to buy or stream anywhere

01:37:27   on the internet today.

01:37:29   There are three different versions of it available on the US iTunes store right now.

01:37:33   Absolutely nothing in the UK.

01:37:35   Every other Terminator movie is there except Terminator 2.

01:37:39   So I did some googling and unfortunately I had to come across some website that was just

01:37:43   streaming it. Like it was just there. There was nothing I could do because I had today

01:37:49   to watch the movie and I usually don't have a problem because we pick movies that are

01:37:53   like 20 or 30 years old so it tends to not be an issue. But it was an issue today so

01:37:59   I had to do that.

01:38:01   Casey List ended up coming through with a Plex version for me but I was already halfway

01:38:06   through movie at that point. This is a long movie. This is a longer movie than I was expecting.

01:38:10   So like two hours and 40 minutes. I was not expecting that.

01:38:13   Mm. There's a, I mean, there's a special edition that adds some scenes, which is maybe the

01:38:20   one that you got. Who knows, but I saw a movie that was like

01:38:23   two hours and something. It was two hours and change. Long movie.

01:38:27   Two, two and a half hours. Yeah. It's, that's too long. The regular edition is shorter.

01:38:31   Okay, well I saw this one for whatever. I will say that I really like this movie. It is

01:38:41   as big of an action blockbuster movie as you can get. It is petaled to the metal all the time

01:38:50   constantly for this movie. There are just huge car traces and explosions in the first 15 minutes.

01:38:58   Yeah, it has a huge opening and then it stops for a little while to get you the character and

01:39:02   like there's a whole section that is like characters and and all of that and then there's

01:39:09   the huge action piece at the end like it's interestingly structured in that way where it

01:39:13   really is just like huge action 25 minutes of characters or half an hour of characters and then

01:39:19   back to huge action for the rest of the movie. I will wonder though I wonder if you know we've

01:39:24   We've done these for quite a while now. We've watched many movies together but not together.

01:39:29   Can you guess the main thing that I didn't like about this movie?

01:39:34   Huh. The CGI Terminator?

01:39:42   No, actually, I thought the CGI was really good.

01:39:47   It is, and it's groundbreaking in its way.

01:39:49   Like really, really held up. And I was really pleased with that.

01:39:52   The kid?

01:39:53   Okay. Edward Furlong's performance as John Connor, I really didn't like it. I thought

01:39:59   it was a not good performance. I know that like child acting can always be difficult,

01:40:05   especially when they have a role which is as important to a movie as John Connor's role.

01:40:10   Like he is in basically every single scene, all of the important moments, like he is there.

01:40:17   I didn't like him. Like I just thought that he was an annoying kid. Yeah. When I'm thinking

01:40:23   I'm supposed to relate to him but I also just didn't like the performance. It took me out

01:40:31   of a few scenes, there were multiple instances where I'm like "this kid's really annoying"

01:40:35   like a scene which I expect is supposed to be like, you know, fantastic, the "Hasta la

01:40:39   vista" baby moment right when he teaches him that and it's like "oh my god this kid is

01:40:43   so annoying" like everything he's saying, the way he's saying it, like I didn't like

01:40:48   that I didn't like his performance but overall like I did I did think that this

01:40:53   was a great movie like this was what I was hoping it to be like this big action

01:40:57   movie there are just there are funny like I really love the way in a stupid

01:41:02   like in a really stupid way that they they set up why our needs now the hero

01:41:07   like it's so dumb I reprogram me like what more do you need I mean what I know

01:41:14   - I think the moment when James Cameron thought,

01:41:18   and presumably it was him or somebody told him either way,

01:41:21   like here's what we do in Terminator 2.

01:41:23   We send back a Terminator, the Terminator program

01:41:26   to save John Connor from a worst Terminator

01:41:29   who is now trying to come and kill him.

01:41:31   And like such a good idea

01:41:33   because that's what makes this movie work

01:41:35   is that now Schwarzenegger still the ruthless killing machine

01:41:39   but now he's got to take orders from John Connor.

01:41:43   And that leads to some great moments,

01:41:46   like he tells, John Connor realizes that,

01:41:50   the kid realizes he can give him orders, right?

01:41:52   Which is fun.

01:41:53   And he does terrible things with that momentarily

01:41:56   and causes those two guys who were trying to save him

01:41:59   to be horribly maimed.

01:42:01   That's a tough one.

01:42:02   But then it does lead to some amazing moments

01:42:06   where he's like, "No, you can't kill people."

01:42:07   And then he shoots people in the legs instead.

01:42:11   And he's like, "What are you doing?"

01:42:12   and he's just, "They'll live."

01:42:14   Just like, "Oh my God, no."

01:42:15   'Cause he's still the Terminator, right?

01:42:17   He's still gonna try to kill people.

01:42:18   - I love, love the fact that the movie is this way

01:42:21   and that the Terminator's now a good guy.

01:42:24   But I really kinda just laughed

01:42:27   when the way that they just do of it.

01:42:28   Like, "Ah, reprogram me."

01:42:30   - He reprogrammed me.

01:42:31   (laughing)

01:42:32   - It really made, I was just like, "Okay."

01:42:34   I mean, that is the easiest way to get there.

01:42:36   But I thought it was very funny.

01:42:39   and like I wrote down in my notes "LOL merchandise" was what I wrote down.

01:42:44   The beginning of the movie is trying very hard to make you wonder like is

01:42:50   Schwarzenegger there to kill Hiddigan? Who's good, who's bad, right? Like I really like that

01:42:55   setup and I imagine if you don't know anything about this movie like especially

01:42:59   when it came out like that was a really tense moment like oh my gosh already

01:43:03   like he's already going to kill John Connor and I like the setup of that like

01:43:07   the whole thing of them meeting in the hallway, and then all of that was really good, and

01:43:11   I liked it.

01:43:12   Yeah, yeah, and there's the, um, the action set piece in the mental institution is pretty

01:43:18   amazing. I mean, the one, there's the early one where he meets John where they're at the

01:43:23   mall and then they're going through, like, the LA River and all of that, that's pretty,

01:43:27   that's pretty good and fun with the motorcycles and the big rig and all of that, but for my

01:43:32   money the one that is the most amazing is the, at the mental institution because it's

01:43:36   the like multiple characters are doing multiple things. She's escaping, they're coming to the

01:43:43   institution, the bad Terminator is coming there, she's gotta make her escape, but then as soon as

01:43:50   she's going there she sees him, but then the bad Terminator is also there and then they have to run

01:43:56   and like and that goes on for a very long time and it's just all exciting and action-packed and

01:44:03   Just, uh, it's very well done. Incredibly well done.

01:44:05   Yeah, I really like the opening to this. I mean, of course, then it goes into, like, this

01:44:10   crazy, um, action sequence, right? The, um, what are they? Storm drains or something? What are they?

01:44:18   That's the LA River, believe it or not. That's what they call the LA River, but there's not much.

01:44:23   It's just concrete and all that. But that's where they're chasing. He gets out of the mall,

01:44:28   basically where he's at the arcade. Have you seen this boy? It's Robert Patrick. The movie that made

01:44:35   Robert Patrick famous as the evil Terminator and he does a good job. He's basically like your stock

01:44:41   policeman, evil policeman basically. I love that he keeps the police in uniform for the whole movie.

01:44:47   Right, like he can wear anything he wants but like just keeps the police. I mean I know that it makes

01:44:51   sense in a lot of scenarios to wear it but like when they're in like the warehouse at the end

01:44:56   right and it's just like they're all fighting it's like he's still wearing the policeman's

01:44:59   uniform which is like okay why not the uniform's part of him right that's one of the things that

01:45:04   i think is really smart and consistent about this movie is that he can't make machines so like he

01:45:09   has to he duplicates the security guard at the at the mental institution but he has to take his gun

01:45:16   and then he tries to go through the bars and the gun doesn't come through with him and he has to

01:45:20   like pull it through the bars instead it's like it's very consistent about the rules of like what

01:45:24   what the liquid metal Terminator can do and can't do.

01:45:27   Which I think is good, 'cause you wanna have--

01:45:29   - Right, but that's it, effectively.

01:45:32   - Yeah, and he can't fire from a distance.

01:45:33   If he wants to attack you from a distance,

01:45:35   he has to get a gun or something,

01:45:36   because he can't do that.

01:45:37   And that's, again, if you're gonna have

01:45:39   fantasy characters like this,

01:45:41   giving them some rules to follow is always really useful.

01:45:45   - And it's like the liquid metal that he's made of

01:45:48   is not regenerating.

01:45:49   Like if he loses some of it, he's lost some of it,

01:45:52   and he would be smaller.

01:45:53   Like you can't grow it.

01:45:55   - Well, right, so he has to go,

01:45:56   when they shoot part of him off,

01:45:58   it like bubbles back into his shoe at one point.

01:46:00   - He has to collect it.

01:46:00   - To get it back, yeah.

01:46:02   - Which sets up that scene later in the movie,

01:46:03   which is maybe my favorite special effects scene

01:46:06   when he's frozen in the liquid nitrogen

01:46:08   and he's like walking forward

01:46:09   and pieces have been breaking off.

01:46:11   It's like, I love that.

01:46:12   That was so cool. - Isn't that great?

01:46:13   - And then he's just getting shorter.

01:46:14   - And he's like, "Oh, we got him."

01:46:15   - Yeah.

01:46:16   - And they shoot him and he breaks into pieces

01:46:18   and it's like, "Ah, we win."

01:46:19   And it's like, "Nope, he is falling."

01:46:21   This movie does suffer from that in the same way that the original Terminator does, in

01:46:27   the same way that a lot of superhero movies do, where it's like, how many times can you

01:46:32   kill the bad guy?

01:46:34   We can kill him like six times, but every time it just gets stronger.

01:46:39   That stuff gets a bit frustrating to me after a while, when they're in the 45 minutes that

01:46:45   they spend in the final scene, where it's just like they keep finding new ways to kill

01:46:50   both of them, right? Like, they terminate and get smashed to literal pieces. But oh,

01:46:54   he has a power reserve, right? And it's just like, how many times will these characters

01:46:59   die? Like, to be honest, I honestly thought that the end of the movie was gonna be like,

01:47:03   Shredder and Teenage Ninja Turtles type deal when he, like, his hand comes out of that

01:47:08   vat at the end is what I was expecting, right? Like, he was never dead at all and that's

01:47:12   how they set up the third one. Like, that was kind of what I was expecting to happen.

01:47:15   It's like that that stuff - it does grind on me a little bit, but I did like the the final action sequence more

01:47:22   In Terminator 2 than in the original Terminator

01:47:25   like yeah, it was it was there was just more stuff going on and Terminator vs. Terminator is

01:47:29   Intrinsically more interesting than Terminator vs. Human

01:47:33   Yeah, well it amps it up a little bit

01:47:36   Although they go back and forth right then he he starts to go for the people because he's incapacitated the Terminator

01:47:40   But then the Terminator, you know Schwarzenegger comes back

01:47:43   because he'll always be back.

01:47:45   And

01:47:47   yeah, that there's a lot of interesting stuff in there.

01:47:50   I do I do laugh at the ludicrousness of it of the setting where it's like first off

01:47:54   Convenient liquid nitrogen truck, right? Of course

01:47:56   It's a liquid nitrogen truck and then where are they they're in the steel mill where all the steel workers have run away

01:48:01   But they've left all of the equipment still going and moving and stuff

01:48:05   So that they can have a molten place in order to drop it

01:48:08   Although that one at least I kind of believe the Terminator was going toward that

01:48:12   he felt like that was that was his ultimate out was I need to go someplace

01:48:16   where I can melt down this guy and I so I'm willing to accept that but it's

01:48:20   still like you know so often the the climactic fight scene in a movie is set

01:48:26   in the steam factory where it's just like atmospheric and lots of equipment

01:48:31   and it doesn't really make sense that that's where they are but but still yeah

01:48:36   it's it's it's good I like this movie a lot I hadn't seen it in a while and

01:48:42   And this really was a definitive summer blockbuster

01:48:45   of whatever, 1991, I think.

01:48:48   It is a definitive, like this was huge

01:48:53   and nobody had seen the first movie, right?

01:48:55   Everybody saw this first.

01:48:57   First movie was very obscure and this was a gigantic,

01:49:00   everybody saw "The Terminator 2" in 1991.

01:49:04   And the CGI is really good of the metal Terminator.

01:49:08   They leaned into the fact that they couldn't really

01:49:10   textures in CGI very well, so he doesn't have textures. He's like a silver blob. It's like

01:49:16   perfect. It's exactly what they were capable of doing, so they have him be a murderous

01:49:20   silver blob. And he's scary, right? He doesn't really talk other than to get questions and

01:49:25   information, and he seems indestructible, like you can fire bullets and shotguns at him,

01:49:31   and he just kind of reforms, and so the whole movie he just brings menace. If he finds you,

01:49:36   how do you even get away from him? And that I think that's really powerful too.

01:49:40   And I really like the time travel part of this too. I'm wondering, since you like Back to the

01:49:44   Future so much, I really like how they go, they find the guy who invented Skynet who doesn't

01:49:49   realize that he's doing it, and they go to his house basically, and Sarah Connor terrorizes him,

01:49:56   and then the Terminator and John have to stop her. But I like that whole part of the story,

01:50:05   that they find the creator. And did you notice the bootstrap paradox? It's one of the best things in

01:50:10   this movie too is the Terminator, Skynet is created because of the piece of hardware that the original

01:50:17   Terminator left behind which was sent from Skynet. So it's a completely circular story which I just,

01:50:24   I mean, I love it. It doesn't make any sense. I love it. Yeah, I like it but it is silly.

01:50:30   Those sort of time travel things are frustrating,

01:50:34   but they can be really,

01:50:36   like I think it's well done here,

01:50:37   but just like that conceit is frustrating,

01:50:40   that like something didn't exist,

01:50:41   but it exists because it existed, but nobody made it.

01:50:44   It's like, I don't, it's very,

01:50:46   it sends you through a loop, right?

01:50:48   Because it's like how was he there in the first movie?

01:50:51   - That's right.

01:50:52   - Right, like it's very confusing, but it's good.

01:50:55   There was a little bit of exposition about all of that,

01:50:57   which just gets a bit difficult at points.

01:51:01   - Yeah. - 'Cause it's like sometimes

01:51:02   in trying to explain it,

01:51:04   you actually make it more confusing.

01:51:06   (both laughing)

01:51:08   - Yeah, I like that, I like Dyson.

01:51:10   That is a good character that the guy,

01:51:13   Joe Morton who plays Dyson, he's really likable.

01:51:15   He doesn't do what a lot of scientists do

01:51:17   in movies like this,

01:51:19   which is when you reveal that he is in the future,

01:51:21   his thing that he's creating is going to,

01:51:26   is gonna be, just gonna destroy the world.

01:51:28   They tend to be like mad scientists

01:51:31   who are evil themselves,

01:51:32   and they know that their thing is evil

01:51:34   because they're evil and they will fight you.

01:51:36   And in this movie, first off,

01:51:37   he's portrayed as human the whole way.

01:51:39   He's obsessed, he's got a wife, he's got kids,

01:51:41   he needs to take them to the water park.

01:51:44   It's quite horrifying when Sarah goes there.

01:51:46   I wanna talk about that more in a second,

01:51:48   but when she goes there and shoots him

01:51:50   and is trying to kill him

01:51:51   and the kids are trying to protect him,

01:51:52   it's like very human portrayal of him.

01:51:53   And when they sit him down, and there's that scene with a voiceover where they say,

01:51:57   "We told him what was going to happen," he's very upset, and then his response is,

01:52:02   "Let's destroy my life's work. We can't let this happen." And I love that. He's in, and in the end,

01:52:08   he sacrifices himself to ensure that the—after he's shot many times, he's probably going to die

01:52:14   anyway—but he makes sure that his entire life's work is blown up so that this armageddon doesn't

01:52:22   come to pass. And I don't know, I felt like that's pretty rare for that kind of scientist character.

01:52:26   Usually they're portrayed as being bad in some way, fundamentally bad, and he's a decent guy

01:52:32   who didn't know what he was doing when he was making this stuff or didn't think about it.

01:52:36   - Yeah, I wanted to, before we get to that part, I want to talk about Sarah for a moment.

01:52:42   - Yes.

01:52:44   - Because they do something with her that I really like and I thought they were gonna screw up,

01:52:49   which is the way she deals with and relates to Arnold Schwarzenegger to

01:52:57   terminate him. So first off when she first sees him she just loses her mind

01:53:01   right which is like the right way to do it because the last time she had seen

01:53:05   this person this person was trying to kill her and

01:53:09   has sent her into a mental like into a psychiatric

01:53:12   hospital like she is there because of everything

01:53:16   that happened because naturally nobody will believe

01:53:18   her right because the government has covered it up and no one is you know and

01:53:22   these two agencies are not related in any way right like they just think that

01:53:26   she has lost her mind and is saying all this stuff and etc etc but then like the

01:53:33   the risk is like oh okay so they have she's been saved by the Terminator she's

01:53:39   now gonna love the Terminator but no she tries to kill him right she tries to

01:53:43   destroy the computer chip yeah which is a cutscene that's not in the special

01:53:48   Edition. Oh, okay. But it's in the special edition. It's not in the original where she's

01:53:54   going to smash the computer chip and all of that. I like that scene because it furthers

01:53:59   her character and also something that I really noticed this time that I guess I've noticed

01:54:02   in the past but I really noticed this time is this movie does something really interesting

01:54:06   with Sarah. She is really broken. She is unsurprisingly right but she's really broken. She spent her

01:54:12   time with the survivalists. She got institutionalized. She's been away from her son. She's had her

01:54:17   whole life uprooted if you think back to that waitress in the beginning of the first movie.

01:54:22   She is now a lean, mean fighting machine, right? And she's obsessed with Armageddon,

01:54:27   she has visions, she has dreams of the end of the world, and she's got to try to protect

01:54:31   her son and save the world, and she's been institutionalized. Like, she's messed up.

01:54:37   And what I really like is, I don't love Edward Furlong's performance, but I like him later

01:54:42   in the movie when he's put in opposition to Sarah, and I like what they do with a character

01:54:47   especially, where he's the grown-up. Like, he's showing that he's a leader. And in that

01:54:53   scene, which is cut from the original movie but is restored in the special edition, he

01:54:57   basically says, "You say I'm going to be this great leader in the future and you won't listen

01:55:02   to me now? We need him." And he's been spending time with the Terminator and knows that he

01:55:07   is a valuable ally and she's just blinded with her rage about the last movie basically and all

01:55:13   of everything that's transpired since then and he's the grown-up. She's just an agent of destruction

01:55:19   at that point because her life has been so messed up by what's happened and he's the one who is

01:55:24   going to it's very clear in that moment he's the one who's growing up and becoming a leader and

01:55:29   is going to save the world and needs to be saved and I really like that. I really like that Sarah

01:55:35   Sarah doesn't get broken out and become the superhero

01:55:39   who can save her son with the help of the Terminator.

01:55:41   She's an action hero here too, but she's the action part.

01:55:45   And the kind of more grown-up decision-making part

01:55:50   is her son, is John, which is,

01:55:52   you gotta see a flash of that, right?

01:55:54   If he's just a dumb kid,

01:55:56   then why is he gonna grow up to be a leader?

01:55:58   And I think in those scenes with his mom,

01:56:00   when they go and they stop her from killing Dyson,

01:56:03   you're seeing him being the grown-up,

01:56:06   because she's just so bent on violence

01:56:09   and revenge and protection and all of that,

01:56:11   that she's not thinking as clearly as he is.

01:56:15   So I like that scene where she's gonna smash the CPU

01:56:19   of the Terminator, and I really like

01:56:22   that Jon talks her out of it.

01:56:23   In the original version, he just says,

01:56:26   'cause they're supposed to turn on his learning.

01:56:28   In the original version, he says,

01:56:29   "Oh yeah, but yes, I can learn."

01:56:32   And the special edition is like, no, I can't, they turn,

01:56:34   they turn the learning off and they have to take the chip out and turn the

01:56:37   learning on. And then he starts to learn the

01:56:38   Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. Like I liked that scene.

01:56:42   I'm pleased it was there. Cause if I wasn't in the scene,

01:56:44   that scene would have been frustrated by like,

01:56:46   she just is totally okay with him. Right? Like I feel like it needed that,

01:56:51   like for like just a furthering of the idea that she doesn't trust him because

01:56:57   she shouldn't because that's, it's like, is the same person,

01:57:01   isn't the same person right time wibbly wobbly timey wimey but like she doesn't

01:57:05   see it any other way right she's she all she knows is like she had to watch that

01:57:10   face be crushed in a you know hydraulic press it seemed like he wouldn't die and

01:57:15   now he's back right just run that a logical standpoint like oh no he's back

01:57:19   how does he back I thought I destroyed him yeah and like now he's out skin on

01:57:22   him again right like she should she should hate him and so she never really

01:57:27   seems to reconcile it, which I like. Like even at the end.

01:57:31   Until the end.

01:57:32   She doesn't super-protest it, though, right?

01:57:36   Well, I view that she comes to respect him as like her. She's a Terminator, right? For

01:57:45   a cause. Her life has narrowed down to, she's an expert with weapons, she can get all these

01:57:51   high explosives, like, that is what she is. And that's what he is, and they're both protecting

01:57:56   and she knows that that's what he's doing.

01:57:58   So I feel like at the end,

01:57:59   it's almost like this professional respect

01:58:02   that she has for him as a protector

01:58:05   and as an agent of violence on the force of good.

01:58:08   But yeah, she has no fondness for him

01:58:10   because it's the face of the monster, right?

01:58:12   But there's that moment of like, as he's going,

01:58:14   you need to lower me down into the molten lava

01:58:17   and Jon doesn't want him to go, right?

01:58:19   But she knows what needs to be done

01:58:20   and he knows what needs to be done.

01:58:21   He knows he can count on her to do it.

01:58:25   And that's that mutual respect that I think it really works.

01:58:28   It's a nice trio.

01:58:30   They are, it actually reminds me,

01:58:32   it's not quite like the trio in Star Trek,

01:58:34   but it reminds me of that a little bit

01:58:36   where you've got the,

01:58:37   'cause like John with the Terminator's

01:58:39   a little bit like Kirk and Spock

01:58:41   in the sense that it's sort of a,

01:58:43   a logical, doesn't understand your human emotions

01:58:46   kind of guy.

01:58:47   And then the very human,

01:58:50   'cause it's like, come on, you can laugh.

01:58:52   And then I also like the,

01:58:54   his relationship, Jon's relationship with Sarah,

01:58:56   and then Sarah's relationship with the Terminator

01:58:58   and Terminator's relationship with Jon.

01:59:00   It's like a, it's a nice triangle of character interaction.

01:59:03   I think it makes the characters much more interesting

01:59:06   how they bounce off each other.

01:59:08   - Yeah, I think I enjoyed this more than Terminator.

01:59:12   - Oh, it's a way better movie than Terminator

01:59:13   on so many different levels.

01:59:15   - This was a really fun movie

01:59:17   and I liked a lot of the stuff that they did with it.

01:59:19   I think they pushed it into interesting directions

01:59:22   And overall, I think they crafted something

01:59:24   that's really good.

01:59:25   Like it's just like a really good action movie

01:59:27   of a great story

01:59:27   and some really good like personal relationship stuff.

01:59:30   - So one of the things I wanted to ask you about is,

01:59:32   how did you feel about the ending?

01:59:34   Because the ending here is it's a shot of like a road.

01:59:39   It's actually a reused shot from earlier in the movie.

01:59:44   And there's a voiceover and she basically says,

01:59:50   "Nobody knows what the future will hold.

01:59:52   it's echoing a voiceover that happens earlier,

01:59:54   and it sort of leaves it all like,

01:59:57   have they changed the future?

01:59:59   What have they done?

02:00:01   And it's just totally open-ended,

02:00:02   like who knows, we'll have to write our own future, the end.

02:00:06   Did you like that?

02:00:07   Did you like that kind of open-ended ending?

02:00:09   - It feels like it's the only thing

02:00:12   that the characters could have known.

02:00:15   Like they have literally no idea

02:00:18   if they've made any change at all.

02:00:20   There's no way they can know.

02:00:22   And so I think that it is the right way to end the movie

02:00:25   if you're gonna end it from the character's perspective.

02:00:28   - Like I always thought it was weird

02:00:30   that it's the shot of the road and the voiceover.

02:00:32   And what I found out later

02:00:34   is that there was an original ending,

02:00:36   which is like 40 years in the future

02:00:40   and Sarah's an old lady and John is a Senator

02:00:42   and she's watching kids playing in a playground

02:00:44   and there is no Armageddon and everything's fine

02:00:47   and they did it.

02:00:47   - Nah, I would have hated that.

02:00:49   - And James Cameron decided, no,

02:00:54   I wanna leave this open-ended.

02:00:55   It fits with the themes that you need to make your own future

02:00:59   and that the future isn't written.

02:01:01   And also it would create yet more bootstrap paradoxes

02:01:04   'cause now there's nobody to send the terminators back,

02:01:08   which is also funny.

02:01:11   But I agree, I think this is the right ending.

02:01:17   My problem with it is knowing now what I know,

02:01:20   it explains why they reuse a scene of road.

02:01:23   - Yeah, 'cause it's like way better.

02:01:25   - As the last shot.

02:01:26   And it's like, I wish, 'cause it obviously,

02:01:28   it happened so late in the process,

02:01:29   like all the effects were made,

02:01:31   that like the whole thing was done

02:01:32   and scored and everything apparently.

02:01:34   And then Cameron was like, "Nah, I don't like that ending,

02:01:36   "we're gonna change it."

02:01:37   And he couldn't shoot something new.

02:01:39   Like the first movie ends with her like going out,

02:01:42   she's gonna be driving to Mexico or whatever.

02:01:44   and there's a storm coming and all of that.

02:01:47   And that's a really good ending.

02:01:48   And this one, that's the one thing that sticks with me

02:01:52   that I wish was better, is I wish the end,

02:01:54   I like the voiceover, but I wish it wasn't just,

02:01:57   I mean, like literally it's the same shot

02:02:00   from about 20 minutes before,

02:02:02   except they don't pan up, they cut it before it pans,

02:02:04   because they were trying to come up with something.

02:02:07   And I'm not even sure that the shot before,

02:02:09   they may have inserted a voiceover there

02:02:11   just to make it parallel the voiceover at the end? I don't know. So there's some

02:02:15   weird stuff in it, but I still thematically I like it. I like it

02:02:18   better that the road stretches on and who knows what will happen next. Perhaps

02:02:21   there will be more sequels, there will. But this is the end of the

02:02:27   James Cameron with the original, you know, with the two original leads doing this.

02:02:33   I will say news broke last week that they're going to make a Terminator movie

02:02:37   that Linda Hamilton is going to be in and that is her first appearance since

02:02:42   this movie as Sarah Connor which is kind of interesting so I wonder if they will

02:02:47   tread on ground sort of like the like the cut scene from this where they're in

02:02:54   the future and things are are maybe good but there's still some force that's

02:02:58   trying to attack them from the future or something who knows if it'll even come

02:03:01   off but but this is the but but you don't need to watch Terminator 3 I

02:03:05   I actually kind of like Terminator 3, but you don't need to watch it.

02:03:07   Like this is James Cameron's take on it with these two actors and that's the end, basically,

02:03:14   as far as you should probably be concerned in terms of essential Terminator.

02:03:17   Because I like the open-endedness of it because, in my mind at least, in theory, when they

02:03:25   kill-- when the scientist guy-- what was his name?

02:03:32   Dyson.

02:03:33   Dyson, Dyson, that's it, like the vacuum cleaner company. When he blew everything up,

02:03:40   like in theory, the Terminator should have disappeared. Like it was in my mind,

02:03:46   I was like, why is he still here? Shouldn't that, shouldn't this close the loop?

02:03:51   Right? Like, but yeah. But it's already a bootstrap paradox, right?

02:03:55   But it's like, it's so confusing. But it's like, so that's why I like the open-endedness of it,

02:03:58   because like, well, that's why the Terminator stuck around, because,

02:04:02   you know, like, even though they've done all of this stuff, it doesn't change the fact that they're still going to be there in the future.

02:04:08   Because it always felt like a stretch for me to be like, just this one guy was the only person who had any idea about this technology.

02:04:17   Right, and they hadn't taken notes about it that are available as well.

02:04:21   I will, without, without, just, I'll tell you the premise of Terminator 3, which is, guess what?

02:04:28   Now John Connor's an adult and he's got a girlfriend and I forget whether Sarah is dead

02:04:36   or she's just off screen but Linda Hamilton's not in it, but basically another super-powered

02:04:41   Terminator is sent back and they send another Arnold Schwarzenegger model back to protect

02:04:47   him again and they just do it again.

02:04:49   And the idea is no, it didn't work.

02:04:51   There are still things, you know, they are still finding ways to exist and they push,

02:04:57   I think the premise in that movie,

02:04:58   'cause it's 1997 is when Judgment Day is supposed to happen.

02:05:00   So basically they say they pushed it back,

02:05:03   but it still happens.

02:05:04   And it's like, you get the idea that John Connor

02:05:06   just can't escape this.

02:05:07   Like you can delay it, you can't escape it.

02:05:11   And I won't reveal more about Terminator 3,

02:05:14   but I kind of like it, there are parts of it.

02:05:16   It's not great, but it's not bad.

02:05:17   And then they made other Terminator after that

02:05:19   that I haven't seen and I don't know anything about.

02:05:22   - So that's it, that's Terminator.

02:05:24   That's Myke at the Movies.

02:05:25   And we're done for this week.

02:05:26   If you want to find our show notes, go to relay.fm/upgrades/160.

02:05:31   Thanks again to our lovely sponsors, Mac Weldon, Encapsula, Blue Apron and Smile.

02:05:36   Thank you for listening. If you want to find Jason's work online, go to sixcolors.com.

02:05:41   He is @jsnell on Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E, and we'll be back next week.

02:05:49   Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell.

02:05:52   We'll be back.

02:05:53   Hasta la vista, Jason.

02:05:55   Adios!

02:05:58   That's my Stephen Hackett impression.

02:06:00   That was good.

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