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Upgrade

159: Retcon Incident

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 159.

00:00:13   Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Balance, and Encapsula.

00:00:17   My name is Myke Hurley. I am joined by Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:20   Mr. Jason Snell, we are back to a sense of normality in the Upgrade world now.

00:00:27   Yes, back to our usual schedule after a summer that, while fun, was also kind of off our

00:00:34   normal schedule and plan for this podcast.

00:00:37   But hey Jason, nobody cares about schedules. It's time for #SnellTalk, and our question

00:00:43   this week comes from Dee Lindberg. Dee Lindberg asks, "If you went back in time to 1997,

00:00:52   How would you attempt to explain to somebody that Apple would be the richest company in

00:00:57   the world in 20 years?

00:01:02   Well, that would be…

00:01:04   It would be a Herculean task, I think.

00:01:07   It would be, but I think this is an interesting hypothetical.

00:01:12   I think I would say, you know, Steve Jobs just came back.

00:01:18   He's working his magic.

00:01:20   He's changing Apple's product line, and the products that you see over the next few years

00:01:27   are not the product that pushes Apple to its greatest heights ever, but they are the run-up

00:01:35   to that.

00:01:36   And so just keep watching, right?

00:01:38   Keep watching as Apple becomes more invested in consumer technology and more invested in

00:01:45   and things that are not what you think of now as a computer,

00:01:49   but are a little bit outside because by going broader,

00:01:54   I would also say, remember, you know how you guys

00:01:58   here in the 90s always complain about how Apple is bad

00:02:01   at advertising and marketing,

00:02:02   and if people could just understand

00:02:04   why your Apple products were good,

00:02:05   they would become Apple users, but nobody ever does that.

00:02:09   So just watch because depending on the time of year,

00:02:13   like that Think Different ad you just saw,

00:02:15   that's the first Think Different ad

00:02:17   that came out in like August of '97.

00:02:19   So let's say it's September,

00:02:21   like exactly 30 years ago or 20 years ago.

00:02:24   That's the start of a long run of good ads.

00:02:30   And Apple's also gonna get into retail

00:02:32   where they're going to bring their stuff to stores

00:02:36   all over the country and the world

00:02:38   where people will get to walk in and see them

00:02:41   and do what you've always described,

00:02:44   which is if Apple properly markets themselves

00:02:46   and people can actually see Apple stuff and try it out,

00:02:49   they will like it and they will embrace it.

00:02:51   That was a theory I know back in your time in the 90s

00:02:54   and turns out it's right, it's true.

00:02:57   And Apple's gonna do that.

00:02:59   Plus they're gonna go into new product areas.

00:03:01   So as a time traveler,

00:03:05   I can't advise you on investment decisions, but come on.

00:03:11   you see what to do. I bet this would be a... Also here's who won the Super Bowl. I don't

00:03:16   know. Just throw that in there. And here's that new sound you've been looking for. Your

00:03:21   kids are really gonna love it. Mm-hmm. I bet you could explain this in those terms to somebody

00:03:28   following Apple and you could make them believe you, right? By using the things and like Steve

00:03:33   Jobs has come back and he's gonna fix it and the advertising is gonna get better. I don't

00:03:38   think that it would really be possible to explain this to people outside, right? Like

00:03:42   people that understood enough about technology but didn't obsessively care about Apple, I

00:03:46   feel like you'd really, really struggle to explain it to them. Like people that understand

00:03:51   Apple, you could explain it to.

00:03:52   Well, people who, for somebody who totally doesn't understand Apple and doesn't know

00:03:56   anything about it, in 1997, what I would say is, you know Apple, that company that makes

00:03:59   a weird computer that nobody buys? They're not going to give up on that, but they're

00:04:04   going to make a new product using their technology brilliance. You know how like everybody loved

00:04:08   the Mac when it came out and people were like, "Oh, the Mac," but nobody uses it, but everybody

00:04:12   loved it and talked about it. They're going to do that again in the next decade, twice,

00:04:19   in different categories that aren't computers. And you won't need to use it with a Mac. You

00:04:23   can use it with a PC and people are going to love it and that's what's going to happen.

00:04:26   And I think people would say, "Oh, okay, sure. That makes sense." You know, if I tried to

00:04:30   convince them that the Mac was going to be the most popular computer, they wouldn't believe

00:04:33   which is good because I would be a time traveler who was lying to them. That's terrible. So,

00:04:39   I think that would be the way I would explain it. Apple's going to try again. Apple's going to do

00:04:43   something like the Mac that's revolutionary, but this time it's going to work, and they're going

00:04:47   to do it twice with the iPod and the iPhone. And that would be how I'd explain it to somebody who

00:04:54   doesn't have a closer level of detail on what Apple is like in 1997. If you would like to ask

00:05:02   a question for the beginning of Upgrade. All you need to do is send a tweet with the hashtag

00:05:08   SnellTalk and they go into a document for me to pick from. Be like D. Lindberg and send

00:05:13   in an awesome question and then maybe you can help start off a future episode of Upgrade.

00:05:19   So last week we spoke about the fact that Upgradeian, who is in the chat room right

00:05:23   now, Carl's the Grey, was in the Apple Watch video which is now I believe on Apple's YouTube

00:05:30   channel so I'm going to find a link for that and put it in the show notes so you can go

00:05:33   and watch it. I didn't think they'd published it when we were talking last week. Turns out

00:05:40   that Kyle's was not the only upgrade-ian who was in that exact same video. Stuart Breinigen

00:05:51   was the self-proclaimed standing up in the office guy. If you remember there was somebody

00:05:56   standing up and reading their letter aloud.

00:05:58   Yeah, it's a good laugh too where it's the time to stand and he stands up in the middle

00:06:01   of the office and all of that and that was, that's Upgrading Stewart from Scotland.

00:06:06   Yeah, Stewart wrote in and said, "I was on it too." So there were, of the maybe 10 people

00:06:12   featured in that video, two of them were Upgradians. At least, I mean, who knows, there could be

00:06:21   more.

00:06:22   There could be more, right? But it's just amazing, right? And you know, Myke, I think

00:06:28   I think I might have said this last week, but I'll just say it again. My initial reaction

00:06:31   to this is obviously the screeners didn't ask the right questions. How are upgradians

00:06:38   allowed in the video?

00:06:39   Hey, Jason, they may have been looking for them.

00:06:44   It's possible. They are the most discerning and high quality audience around.

00:06:50   The brightest and most attractive of all of the podcast listeners are the upgradians.

00:06:55   Alright, upgradience, there's no doubt. We know that, it is a complete fact. And none

00:07:00   of you, I'm sure, will disagree with that. I wanted to give some follow up on Apple Watch

00:07:05   cores. Last week I professed how unbelievable I thought it was that our watches are about

00:07:12   to have dual cores with the Series 3. Turns out that the Series 1 and Series 2 watches

00:07:17   that were released last year both had dual core processes in them. The original Apple

00:07:24   which has been dubbed the Series 0 in a retcon incident, had a single core processor in it.

00:07:34   Some further follow up that we've had from many people about the word Qi for the Qi wireless

00:07:41   charging standard. I want to just, Jonas was one of these people that wrote in, to say

00:07:46   that Qi in the context that it is being referred to here with the wireless charging standard

00:07:53   refers to the idea of air, breathing or energy flow. We said on the last episode because

00:07:59   somebody told us in the chat room that "qi" was the Chinese word for seven, which it is

00:08:04   also true that that is the word but apparently it is pronounced slightly differently and

00:08:10   I believe that there's context that would be required for a lot of words. For what I

00:08:15   can gather, Mandarin seems like a tricky language.

00:08:18   Yeah, might be hard.

00:08:20   Might be kind of outside of my realm there.

00:08:22   I've got a dumb joke that only nerds who are comic book, uh, superhero nerds and tech nerds

00:08:27   will get. You want to hear it? Yep. How does Iron Fist charge his, uh, Iron Fist? Oh, that's

00:08:32   pretty good. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I get it. Chi. I like that. That's really good. You should

00:08:38   tweet that. That's it. That is a tweetable joke. Oh no. That is a tweetable joke. Oh

00:08:42   yeah. Come on. That's your wheelhouse. The people following you on Twitter. It's a tech

00:08:46   nerd dad joke is what that is, but there it is. Chi. He just, I imagine he just sort of

00:08:50   lace his hand down on a power pad and lets it get charged up.

00:08:55   So it turns out that's why I mean that makes it a when someone told me it was the Chinese

00:09:00   word for seven I didn't understand why they called it that but now I get why they called

00:09:03   it that. I understand why it's called chi now because energy flowing in the air.

00:09:09   Let's just be honest until this Apple event I literally thought it was called key.

00:09:13   Oh yeah 100% I thought it was called key.

00:09:17   So now we know better thank you everybody.

00:09:19   Why wouldn't you think that?

00:09:21   Alright next week, Myke at the movies Terminator 2, that will be the end of next week's episode

00:09:26   so if you want to be able to listen along between now and the time that you listen to

00:09:31   next week's episode of Upgrade, episode 160, make sure that you have watched Terminator

00:09:36   2 or decide that you don't care about Terminator 2 spoilers, which is probably okay considering

00:09:42   the movie is like 20 years old.

00:09:44   1990 Casey Liss pointed out that this is actually a 90s movie, but as a early 90s movie

00:09:50   That's a sequel to an 80s movie. I am clean. I want to I want to institute a

00:09:54   Subrule of the

00:09:58   Mic at the mic of the movie selection

00:10:01   so the kind of

00:10:03   Unofficial official rule is that Jason for the time being gets 80s movies in Casey gets 90s movies

00:10:10   Even though we do this way more. I mean, I don't know how

00:10:14   Really as well. Yeah, like because we do we watch Firefly together on analog

00:10:19   So Casey is already instituted his own amendment these own like a little rule addendum here

00:10:24   But the this this new rule addendum that I will Institute for the movies portion

00:10:29   Is that if a movie franchise begins in one decade?

00:10:33   It can continue the the I believe that the same show should car

00:10:38   to continue further viewings of the franchise no matter when those movies came out.

00:10:41   It's a fair game. I think that's good. And yeah, Terminator 2 is a classic in a lot of

00:10:50   ways. It is a blockbuster that helped define what summer blockbusters were. It advanced

00:10:59   the game in a lot of ways. I believe that this movie is going to help

00:11:03   me understand why as a child I had an Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator toy. Because Terminator

00:11:11   1 would not answer that question. I'm expecting Terminator 2 will answer that question.

00:11:17   Alright, so next week we'll be back.

00:11:20   Alright, so we obviously spent all of the time last week talking about new products.

00:11:27   So I thought we could maybe go over what we pre-ordered if anything at all. Jason, what

00:11:31   did you pre-order on Friday? I pre-ordered, you know, it's always tricky with me because

00:11:38   sometimes I get things to review and sometimes I have to buy them to review them and sometimes

00:11:44   I buy them to use them and review them but, you know, I have different motivations because

00:11:50   again it's also my living to do this so like I bought a 10.5 iPad Pro because I got a review

00:12:00   unit of the 12-9 but not the 10-5 and I wanted to review both of them. So sometimes my buying

00:12:05   decisions are weird and not directly correlating to what my personal preferences would be.

00:12:12   But anyway, the 4K Apple TV because I, you know, I want one. If I get a review, that's

00:12:19   nice but I want one. I have a 4K TV, I want one, I'm getting that. And I got a cellular

00:12:26   Apple Watch because I want a cellular Apple Watch.

00:12:28   And so I got space gray, so that means the aluminum.

00:12:33   I thought about the stainless.

00:12:35   I always think about the stainless,

00:12:37   but as nice as that black stainless looks like,

00:12:40   because I don't want the silver,

00:12:42   but I think like the silver one very clearly says

00:12:44   this is a pretty stainless steel watch.

00:12:46   And the black one, while nicer than the space gray one,

00:12:48   it's a lot nicer, I think, to my taste anyway,

00:12:52   and a lot more expensive.

00:12:54   So I figure like I'm just gonna keep it going.

00:12:56   I've always had the space gray Apple watch in aluminum

00:12:59   and I'm still gonna get that.

00:13:00   The one difference this time is I have so many bands now

00:13:03   including so many black sport bands

00:13:05   that I went with the Nike plus

00:13:07   and got the anthracite black nice Nike sport band.

00:13:10   - And you get all those special faces.

00:13:13   - I get the special faces and I get that band

00:13:15   and I still got my all my other watch bands.

00:13:17   So I feel like why not do that?

00:13:21   So I pre-ordered the 4K Apple TV because we use our Apple TV every single day and I want

00:13:28   to be able to watch all the 4K HDR movies on my 4K HDR television and I really really

00:13:34   really cannot wait, seriously just cannot cannot wait to stare with my mouth agape at

00:13:40   the screensavers.

00:13:42   I'm so excited about this you cannot even believe.

00:13:45   This is something that my entire household is excited about because we both love looking

00:13:49   up those screensavers, me and Adina, so we're very excited about that. And I got a space

00:13:54   grey 42mm cellular Apple Watch with the Olive Sport Loop. So I want the Sport Loop because

00:14:03   it looks like a kind of a best of all worlds. Last week I thought it was magnets but it

00:14:07   seems to be some kind of velcro material but it seems like it's a good velcro rather than

00:14:14   regular velcro like it's not just your standard velcro it's it's nice apparently.

00:14:18   Isn't the color that I would want the olive one I actually want the black one because the black

00:14:23   one has like these little flecks of color in it which look interesting but I don't think that was

00:14:27   an option they're very restrictive with the color options that come as kind of like buy the watch

00:14:33   get the band. However I love my pride band so much that I can't imagine really wanting to swap

00:14:41   unless these new bands are really amazing. If the new bands are really great then I'll

00:14:46   get maybe the black one at a later date but I'm starting off with the olive one which

00:14:50   is a nice kind of, it says olive but it looks great to me. So, it looks great. I did want

00:14:56   to make a note on pre-orders. Of course, I mean this maybe isn't so weird for you Jason,

00:15:02   but it is incredibly weird for me to have an iPhone pre-order schedule go by and I mostly

00:15:09   just ignored that fact. Isn't it strange? Isn't that a strange feeling? Very weird.

00:15:16   Very weird that it's kind of like, "Oh, you can pre-order an iPhone, but I'm just not

00:15:19   gonna bother." Like, it was a very strange feeling. It made me realize how far away October

00:15:25   27th, pre-ordering November 3rd is. That is a long way away. Like, yeah, that's... yeah,

00:15:34   I'm very sad about this. Also I was kind of keeping my eye on the pre-ordering status

00:15:44   and it seemed that it took basically all day for the 8 and 8+ to get pushed back to about

00:15:53   a 1 to 2 week dispatch in the UK and that seemed to be pretty similar across most territories

00:16:00   from what I could see people talking about. So I guess there's two things from this.

00:16:04   1. They didn't sell out immediately. 2. At least they still did.

00:16:12   I think that's it. I think they don't need… There was no way there was going to be completely

00:16:18   uncontrollable demand for this phone because first off, when looking at what the specs

00:16:23   are, I would think that Apple knows pretty well how to assemble these and make a lot

00:16:26   of them because it's very much like the existing iPhone 7 and 6s and 6 that they make,

00:16:32   right? And they've probably been making them for a while and building up a supply because

00:16:36   they know they're going to sell, but nobody really expected that it would be necessarily

00:16:41   record-breaking because there's another new iPhone model, right? So there's going to be

00:16:45   reduced demand. I think it is encouraging that there appears to be demand for the iPhone

00:16:50   8, and I heard a bunch of people say, "Ah, I'm not going to get the X. iPhone 8 works

00:16:54   for me." And a lot of reasons the price are people like skeptical of any first-gen of

00:16:59   anything, and the iPhone X is definitely first generation in a bunch of different areas.

00:17:05   Some skepticism because nobody has seen in the wild how Face ID works, so I think some

00:17:10   people have professed skepticism about that. And the sensor housing notch thing, right?

00:17:15   Like some people are like, "Ah!"

00:17:16   A lot of people don't like it.

00:17:18   Or at least, you know, and maybe they'll get used to it, and maybe it'll turn out that

00:17:22   it's awesome, but if your initial reaction is like, "All of these things, like the price

00:17:27   and the notch and it's new stuff and it's all that. You know, I've heard from a lot

00:17:31   of people, like, "Yeah, the iPhone 8 is fine." And you know what? Apple's okay with that,

00:17:35   right? Like, Apple wants there to be a spread, especially since everybody's assuming that

00:17:40   iPhone X demand is going to way outstrip iPhone X supply. So Apple's gamble is that they don't

00:17:47   want to kill iPhone 8 sales with the existence of the X. And it looks like that hasn't happened.

00:17:52   I mean, it's hard to divine it just from availability because they are metering their own availability.

00:17:58   They may be making fewer of them in order to meet a reduced demand. But yeah, it is

00:18:05   a funny feeling. Oh, in the chat room, Joe Steele asked us to explain our storage options

00:18:11   on the Apple TV 4K. And my simple answer is, of course, I bought the cheaper one with less

00:18:16   storage because storage on Apple TV is stupid, and it's really only used for apps. And why?

00:18:22   I spend money on something that is dumb. So I thought about making a joke and saying I

00:18:27   went for the 64, but... If you hate the Apple TV you may say, "Why did you spend money on

00:18:32   an Apple TV then?" Because it is dumb, but I like the Apple TV and also I want to know

00:18:38   about it. I don't love it, but I like it, and I'm looking forward to the 4K stuff on

00:18:43   my 4K TV. Another weird little aside about 4K while we're there, which is that iOS 11,

00:18:50   which is coming out tomorrow as we record this, the 19th.

00:18:53   One of the things it does on the new iPad Pros

00:18:56   is it supports HDR video,

00:18:58   and that's live now if you're on the GM.

00:19:01   And I had to quit my TV app and then relaunch it to get it.

00:19:05   And I haven't had time to do like a side-by-side comparison

00:19:08   or anything like that, but it does offer,

00:19:11   they're not 4K, they're 1080,

00:19:12   but they're 1080 HDR versions of movies,

00:19:17   which is really interesting

00:19:19   and suggest, they said when those came out

00:19:22   that the screens were great, they were ready for HDR content

00:19:26   and here is the other shoe dropping there.

00:19:28   - I'm happy they're doing this.

00:19:30   - Yeah. - I think that's good.

00:19:32   - Yeah, it's cool.

00:19:33   - I wanted to share two little just very quick tidbits

00:19:37   of information that I found out since last week

00:19:38   that I thought were interesting to mention on the show.

00:19:41   One which I find to be really disappointing

00:19:43   is that the Apple Watch LTE model

00:19:46   only works in your country of purchase, it will not roam.

00:19:49   LTE. Right. Which is really disappointing for me just because of how much time I spend in the US

00:19:55   and something that I know is likely to happen is I'm hoping that the LTE Apple Watch will help me

00:20:01   develop some new habits in regards to when and where I need my phone with me and I know that I

00:20:07   will develop some habits then I will be on a trip and I will just leave like my hotel leave my phone

00:20:14   in the room and then you know it's gone and it doesn't work and then I'm gonna

00:20:19   be really sad but hey ho this is the first edition but it is just it is a

00:20:24   shame I do consider it a shame the other is that iPad pros and the 256 and 512

00:20:31   gigabyte models they've all been increased by $50 across the board LTE or

00:20:36   not yeah this sounds like as everybody's been speculating this is about storage

00:20:44   costs going up. Yep. That the storage used in the flash storage of

00:20:52   Apple devices is severely constrained because everybody wants that storage for

00:20:58   all of their devices and it's expensive. So all of our dreams of like

00:21:04   SSDs coming down in price it's not happening right now because demand, again

00:21:09   here's that supply and demand thing, kids take your economics class when you're in

00:21:12   school. I keep telling my daughter that. It's like economics, it's kind of important. You

00:21:15   should pay attention. This is a case where there's so much demand because everybody wants

00:21:21   to put this stuff in all the devices they make and I'm sure there are ramping up factories

00:21:28   everywhere, but right now the prices aren't going up and not down and Apple is going to

00:21:33   maintain its margins apparently, so it's passing those prices on to consumers, which is unusual.

00:21:38   Alright, let's take our first break and we should talk about the iPhone X some more.

00:21:45   See how I stumbled there? I got to look it in the document, Jason, and I struggled with

00:21:50   whether to say "10" or whether to say the letter "X", but I went with "10".

00:21:54   iPhone X! There are more lasers if it's iPhone X, but it's not. There are no lasers.

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00:23:36   of this show and Relay FM. So let's talk about the iPhone 10. I did it again. I look at it.

00:23:46   I should just start writing the word 10 down instead because every time I see X I just

00:23:51   want to say X.

00:23:52   Just get your Apple pencil out and get open a new note and just write x equals 10, x equals 10, x equals 10.

00:23:59   So over and over and over again.

00:24:01   Jason, I wanted to focus on three different features of, or at least aspects of the iPhone.

00:24:09   And we're going to talk about Face ID separately in a moment.

00:24:12   But I wanted to focus on a couple of different things with you to see what you think.

00:24:16   Because they're just things that have been playing on my mind especially over the last few weeks.

00:24:21   Overall, I don't know if we really spoke about this too much last time because it was pretty

00:24:28   fresh, but especially as time has gone on and we're like a week removed now, how do

00:24:34   you feel about the notch from a design perspective?

00:24:37   You know, I'm torn. Having held it in my hand, right, like…

00:24:44   And you are in the unique, you know, we should just…

00:24:47   Let's get it out there again, sure.

00:24:48   We should say this, I mean, because it's important.

00:24:50   It is important to underscore this point, I think,

00:24:52   wherever we can, that you are in the unique position.

00:24:57   - Yes, I'm one of a few hundred people

00:24:59   who actually has held an iPhone X in their hand.

00:25:02   - So I am especially interested in your opinion

00:25:05   because of that, sorry to interrupt you.

00:25:07   - So the, when you hold in your hand, right,

00:25:12   like the thing that comes out is that it is,

00:25:15   the screen is pushed as far to the edge as is possible.

00:25:19   And then there's that notch in the top.

00:25:23   And I think Apple is struggling with this too.

00:25:27   Like they obviously had an internal debate

00:25:30   about whether they wanted to make that screen,

00:25:32   the portion of the screen to the sides of the notch

00:25:34   accessible or not to developers,

00:25:36   because they could have said that the notch area

00:25:38   is reserved for status bar and that's it

00:25:40   and to get out of that space.

00:25:41   But what they want actually is for people to,

00:25:45   and this is a phrase that they have used,

00:25:46   embrace the notch, for developers to embrace the notch.

00:25:49   Or they don't say the notch, right?

00:25:50   But that's the message, embrace the notch,

00:25:52   embrace the curvature of the screen.

00:25:54   'Cause it's not just the notch,

00:25:55   it's the edges are curved, edges of the screen are curved.

00:25:58   They're not right angles.

00:26:00   - Yeah, that is important to mention,

00:26:01   'cause I think that a lot of people are focusing

00:26:03   on the notch because it's the thing

00:26:05   that is like right in your face,

00:26:06   but the edges of the display are curved

00:26:10   and that's never been the case before, am I right?

00:26:13   - Yeah, that's right.

00:26:14   So, it's not playing by the rules that iOS has played by before, and, you know,

00:26:24   there are reasons, right? It is following the curves of the device, which is, and

00:26:29   then the curve is reflected again, the notch is also curved, and it's meant to

00:26:35   be like it's trying to get the curved edges thing across to you. And so what

00:26:40   Apple wants developers to do is to have their stuff go, you know, spread out to the sides.

00:26:47   You don't want to put text right up against that edge, but they want to have, like, the

00:26:52   background colors flow out to the edges and things like that. Although there's some really

00:26:56   weird examples of things like Safari in landscape having white bars on the sides, which is,

00:27:03   like, really bad. I think everybody's going to be figuring this out as they go, like,

00:27:07   the right way to do it. So the notch, you know, it has to be there. I think it's an

00:27:11   interesting choice that Apple has decided not to block it out and just make it a status

00:27:14   area because if they'd made a status area with a black background, it would make it

00:27:18   more or less invisible, right? It would be like there'd be an area with no writing on

00:27:22   it, but it would still be like the black background would be consistent and you could you could

00:27:26   fake it, but they decided not to do that and instead kind of lean into the fact that it's

00:27:33   it's there. I think from Apple's perspective it is we've put screen in places where a screen

00:27:37   normally wouldn't go. It's sort of the argument like we could have stopped the screen at the

00:27:42   bottom of the sensor area but we decided not to. We just kept it going all the way to the

00:27:46   edge of the phone. We'll see how it works in practice. I think the screen is beautiful.

00:27:52   I think it's a little bit weird but necessary. I will just as an aside, I don't want to,

00:28:00   know, podcasts are nice because you can't actually hear them but the

00:28:03   counter arguments do get generated when you say things on podcasts. I've seen a

00:28:07   bunch of people say, "Well if you defend the notch and you thought that the flat

00:28:11   tire on the Moto 360 smartphone was dumb, you are being inconsistent." And I get

00:28:17   that argument but I don't think I agree with it because the Moto 360 smartphone

00:28:21   was a round phone and the whole idea was it's a round watch.

00:28:25   Whole idea was it's a round watch like regular watches with a round screen on

00:28:30   it and then the screen wasn't round. Yeah, they called it the 360. Yeah, I mean, yeah,

00:28:35   the screen wasn't round. The iPhone X, yes, it does have a weird thing. It is weird. It

00:28:41   is in the way of it being a completely edge-to-edge screen. I don't think it's as fundamental

00:28:49   to the product as the Moto 360 was where it was like, this is really exciting that they've

00:28:55   managed to do a round screen and then you find out, well, no, they didn't. It's got

00:28:59   a flat part at the bottom with nothing below it, which, you know, I understand why they

00:29:04   had to do it that way, but it really fought against the entire kind of premise of the

00:29:08   product. On this, it's less of an issue, but I know you can see, I know you've seen it

00:29:16   on Twitter too, like developers are struggling with it because there's questions of sort

00:29:19   of like, where do we put things, and they don't have a lot of time, at least they have

00:29:22   more time than if it was shipping on Friday, but they don't have a lot of time to deal

00:29:26   with this. And I know that it's like, you know, I saw some tweets by James Thompson

00:29:30   about like, he put iPhone 10 support in to pcalc when he released it this week. And you

00:29:36   know, I, there was a Twitter thread of like, this is a weird decision. He's like, yeah,

00:29:39   I'm still rethinking things, but you got to start somewhere. And I wanted to be compatible.

00:29:44   So there's a lot of questions of like, do you curve other edges of UI elements? Do you

00:29:47   extend UI elements up to the top, but there's a notch in the way. There's like lots of questions

00:29:52   for designers and developers of apps about how you work around the notch or embrace the

00:29:56   notch and what do you do with it. I think there's questions about lots of apps that

00:30:02   have like overcast as a card metaphor and the card can't go all the way up to the top

00:30:07   because it can't because there's a notch in the way. It's like what happens there? So

00:30:12   I don't know. I think in the end it's probably not going to be a big deal. I think it used

00:30:18   as a status area, I think on the sides it's probably fine, but it is, I feel for all the

00:30:25   app developers who have to kind of ponder what this means to have the curved edges and

00:30:30   the notch on the screen. And I think there's going to be a period of experimentation here,

00:30:37   where everybody is trying to figure out like what feels good to use on an iPhone X. And

00:30:45   now it's all mock-ups in the simulator too because most people don't have one of these

00:30:49   in their hands so I think that's exciting but it's a you know it's definitely I'm sure

00:30:56   Apple would rather it be invisible but they can't do that.

00:31:00   To go through some of your points backwards the Moto 360 thing I understand what people

00:31:08   say that but I always liked the way that watch looked I mean I have a history of saying that

00:31:13   I've enjoyed the look of that device.

00:31:15   I like the rounded part.

00:31:17   And the flat tire aspect of it never bothered me.

00:31:21   My feeling at the time was,

00:31:23   well, that stuff has to go somewhere.

00:31:25   If that's all they could do, it's all they could do.

00:31:27   I think the overall look of it is good.

00:31:29   - My pushback on it would be that I was disappointed in it

00:31:32   'cause I was excited about the idea

00:31:34   that they were doing a truly round watch,

00:31:36   which is very hard to do,

00:31:38   and that they got hit by.

00:31:42   couldn't pull it off and they shipped it anyway and yeah it looked great but it was it's just

00:31:47   really it's really unfortunate because like that was the meaning of that that was the

00:31:51   ideal platonic ideal of the Moto 360 was it's a round screen and it wasn't quite and it's

00:31:56   too bad. Yeah in hindsight the name of the product should have been different. The I

00:32:02   will also say that I think over the last couple of years maybe at least the last year I have

00:32:10   said in many places that I think that Samsung were making the best looking smartphones on

00:32:15   the market. I think that the S7 and the S8 and the Notes, they've all been incredible.

00:32:20   Like as soon as they started doing the edge to edge stuff and the, I've loved all of that.

00:32:25   You know the screens going over the edges and then with the S8 going kind of as far

00:32:29   to the top as they could put it. I've always thought they were incredible. I will say,

00:32:34   For me right now, the iPhone X is the best looking smartphone that I will be able to

00:32:41   buy.

00:32:42   I think this phone is beautiful.

00:32:44   I love it.

00:32:45   I like the distinctiveness of the weird screen shape.

00:32:50   I know it's going to be hard for people to develop for it, but every screenshot that

00:32:57   I've seen of an application that has been optimised I think is just stunning.

00:33:03   And this includes James's with Peacock.

00:33:06   I'll put a link in the show notes to a screenshot

00:33:07   of Carrot Weather running on the iPhone 10.

00:33:09   - Oh, the Carrot Weather one looks great.

00:33:11   And they're using, what Carrot Weather is doing, right,

00:33:14   is they're using the extra space above,

00:33:18   they're embracing the notch as a status location,

00:33:21   where the time and carrier and all that information is.

00:33:26   And, but they're running their background up to the corners.

00:33:33   And so it looks really nice because you see the notch,

00:33:37   but you see the background colors flow up around it

00:33:40   and cover the status area,

00:33:42   which I suspect is going to be the most common way

00:33:45   app developers approach this.

00:33:45   - And I think that's the way it should be done

00:33:48   because it's like,

00:33:49   it makes everything part of the application,

00:33:52   but it's not putting things that you need up there,

00:33:55   but it's making the whole screen,

00:33:57   it's like makes it a kind of seamless experience.

00:33:59   Everything is the application that you're in

00:34:01   at this point of time.

00:34:03   And I think it's beautiful.

00:34:05   I know that a lot of people don't like the notch.

00:34:10   They think it's kind of a compromise,

00:34:13   and it is a compromise, but I think with everything

00:34:16   Apple has had in their hand here,

00:34:18   they made a great compromise.

00:34:20   There's a couple of things that I've been saying,

00:34:21   I said this before the phone launched,

00:34:24   and I'll say it again.

00:34:25   If that would have just been a screen that was black,

00:34:29   I would have felt cheated as a customer.

00:34:32   Because why have you got a screen that is just black?

00:34:37   Right?

00:34:38   Either don't have the screen or use the screen.

00:34:42   And if,

00:34:44   like I know that there are useful things in there

00:34:48   where like status bar stuff, I get that.

00:34:50   But that's not enough of a use case for me.

00:34:52   Just having these two little parts of a screen

00:34:54   that are colored in black,

00:34:55   like I feel like that I'm not being given

00:34:58   the opportunity to use all of the screen that I've paid for.

00:35:01   And I also prefer that Apple has done something

00:35:04   where they're building UI and forcing developers

00:35:09   to customize, or really twisting people's arms

00:35:12   to customize and play around with it

00:35:14   and do things with that screen,

00:35:15   rather than it just being a black bar

00:35:17   and everything starting lower down.

00:35:19   I think that overall this is gonna work out to be great.

00:35:22   And I think that Apple is telling people

00:35:24   to embrace the notch because if they didn't every single developer would just make that

00:35:31   black at the top.

00:35:33   People wouldn't even try.

00:35:34   I mean of course there'd be some but I would really believe that most designers and developers

00:35:40   would take a stand on it or say that it's too tricky to make it work and would just

00:35:45   say like "oh we're just going to colour this in black" and I feel like that would be a

00:35:49   waste at least by Apple putting this in the human interface guidelines.

00:35:54   going to be forcing people to experiment and see what they can do and as always

00:36:00   with any big change like this the stuff that we get on launch day and for the

00:36:05   first month it's not going to be amazing there will be quick things done without

00:36:10   anybody using the devices what you could mock up in simulator it will be in a few

00:36:15   months time from the launch of the phone where we'll see people if there's

00:36:21   anything interesting to be done with this we'll start to see it and I really

00:36:24   honestly believe that there are going to be some kind of new

00:36:30   paradigms, new mechanisms, new user interface things that people are going

00:36:35   to start to do that will then be adopted more widely like there will be some

00:36:39   enterprising individuals who have a really good idea for how to use that

00:36:44   space really effectively and then we'll start to see more people do stuff with

00:36:48   it. So yeah, I'm excited about it. I am. I'm very excited about it. Like let's say for

00:36:53   example, right, like an application like Tweetbot. What if they changed the colour of the UI

00:36:58   up on the top if I had a notification that I hadn't read yet? You know, like there could

00:37:02   be little things that people start to do with the fact that you've got this screen, which

00:37:07   would mostly be colour that you could use of it, that could end up being really cool.

00:37:12   But I think that Apple have to ask people to really really think about it, to force

00:37:17   them into doing it, to force them to push them is maybe a better word than forcing like

00:37:22   to push people towards trying to experiment because otherwise people I think will gloss

00:37:27   over it. But yeah I think that the iPhone 10 I think is beautiful and I just cannot

00:37:32   cannot wait to get one. $999 what do you think about the price of the iPhone 10?

00:37:41   - It's, people are stumbling over it,

00:37:46   but the fact is you've been,

00:37:50   Apple's been inching up the price,

00:37:51   the iPhone plus pushed up the price.

00:37:53   This is, the phones have always been expensive.

00:37:58   They're getting more expensive, it's true,

00:38:00   but there's also a much broader spread of phones available.

00:38:03   And this is at the high end of Apple's product line.

00:38:05   If you look at the price points that they're offering now,

00:38:08   there are lots of them.

00:38:10   And this is, I think I was listening to the ATP conversation last week and Marco said

00:38:19   something that I think is right, which is, you know, Apple's probably never going to

00:38:24   stop offering a phone at $9.99 now, but what this gives them is the ability to spread the

00:38:32   product line even further and offer products that are more expensive to make that maintain

00:38:39   the margins that they want at the high end. And so, you know, I just think this is where

00:38:45   the market's going, is that Apple is always going to be a company that is seeking the

00:38:53   higher end of the market. And the fact is, they have not hit any demand walls by doing

00:38:58   this, that Apple raises the price and they still sell as many as they can make. So they

00:39:04   raise the price again and sell as many as they can make. The argument would be that

00:39:09   while I think maybe making an Apple Watch Edition in gold was a bridge too far, that

00:39:16   pushing this stuff up is... look, I mean, I would much rather that this iPhone X be available

00:39:22   for $699, right? I would totally prefer it at $699 than $999, but knowing what we know

00:39:27   about what's in it and looking at the spread of Apple's product line, I get why it's $999.

00:39:33   It's the same reason that the Apple TV is not $99. It's the same reason the Apple Watch

00:39:37   doesn't start at 149 or 199. It's because it's Apple. They know they can charge more

00:39:43   and sell them and you don't have to like it and you don't have to buy it. I think that's

00:39:47   a lot of arguments about Apple products. This is like just how when people get angry when

00:39:53   the MacBook comes out and it doesn't have ports and people get angry about it. The implication

00:39:58   is well I'm mad because I don't want it. It's like Apple is a kind of company that makes

00:40:03   makes people angry when you can't buy or don't want to buy or not willing to buy a certain

00:40:08   product because you want to want them all, even if you don't buy them all, you want to

00:40:12   want them all. And I get that at this price you might want to just walk away and say forget

00:40:17   it. There was an unsurprising kind of huffy post on the, I want to say the verge, although

00:40:24   it might have been in gadget or gizmodo, I can't remember, and it was basically I'm not

00:40:29   buying an iPhone 10. It's like, "Well, congratulations, sir. Good for you."

00:40:33   It was Paul Miller at the Verge. Paul Miller at the Verge, that's right. It's

00:40:36   like, "Well, yeah, bravo. Let everybody write in and tell us what you're buying and what

00:40:40   you're not buying because that's a personal decision." I had to roll my eyes at that post

00:40:47   because sure, that's his personal decision. He won't buy it and a lot of people won't

00:40:51   buy it and instead they'll buy the iPhone 8, right? So Apple is okay with that and a

00:40:58   lot of people will buy the iPhone 10. So, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't know.

00:41:04   It's the phone economics for a lot of people. It's the most important device that they own.

00:41:09   You most people don't buy a new one every year. And I would say a lot of people I know

00:41:14   who do buy them every year. It's totally worth it for them to buy a new phone every year

00:41:17   and they're happy to spend the money. So I don't see the problem. Honestly, like I don't

00:41:23   I would love for it to be cheaper because I would always love for it to be cheaper,

00:41:27   but Apple knows that they will sell as many as they can make at $999, and so this is going

00:41:34   to probably continue as long as it's successful.

00:41:38   One last thing, I would rather this phone exist at $999 than for Apple to look at the

00:41:43   cost of making an OLED phone with all those sensors and everything in 2017 and go, "No,

00:41:50   it doesn't pencil out and not make the phone, which they could have done and may have done

00:41:55   in the past with some features, right? Where they're like, "Let's wait a year. Everything

00:41:59   will be cheaper in a year." And I would rather this phone exist and be expensive than not

00:42:03   exist for sure.

00:42:06   The iPhone 8 that I would buy would be the 256GB iPhone 8 Plus, which would cost me $949.

00:42:17   iPhone X that I will buy is $200 more. At the point where I'm already spending

00:42:25   $1,000, like $950, I would spend the extra $200. Because I feel like you know you

00:42:32   get to a certain point and it's like well you know what does $200 mean? When

00:42:39   you're already at $1,000 what is another $200? You know like and I understand why

00:42:44   that is a difficult thing for a lot of people, but I think at a certain point the numbers,

00:42:50   the relative numbers start to matter a little less. And you know, bear in mind there are

00:42:55   many different reasons why I have the money that I do to spend on these products. There

00:43:00   are various things that I do in my life and save in my life to make sure I can buy these

00:43:06   phones every year because it's important for me, for many reasons, because I care and also

00:43:10   for what I do for a living. But there are many people that buy an iPhone every year

00:43:17   and I think if you buy an iPhone every single year, maybe a couple of extra hundred dollars

00:43:22   isn't that much of an impact to you. I don't know. I mean your mileage may vary on that

00:43:27   one. But I think $999, a lot of people, most people aren't paying that amount of money

00:43:34   in one big go. There are contracts, there are upgrade programs, right? These are a thing

00:43:39   that exist. Yeah, it's just you're paying, you're gonna pay another whatever, ten dollars

00:43:43   a month over the course of that contract than you did before. And yeah, but I think the

00:43:49   bottom line is, I think a lot of the reaction is people would rather not spend as much money,

00:43:54   which I totally get. Because it is an incredibly large amount of money for something that you're

00:43:58   only gonna keep for a year maybe, who knows? Yeah, maybe, but not if it's two years or

00:44:03   three years necessarily and so I get that and also I know that people feel oftentimes

00:44:10   frustrated when Apple makes something that they want but for whatever reason they can't

00:44:15   have or Apple makes something that they're not going to get when they're somebody whose

00:44:19   identity is tied up in being somebody who's got the latest and greatest Apple stuff and

00:44:24   I get it and I would say that at some point, some price point, this becomes a problem for

00:44:30   Apple but I don't think this is it. I mean, again, because again, first off the price

00:44:37   isn't entirely real because people tend to buy other things too so the starting price

00:44:42   tends to not be the actual price you spend at Apple and second, you know, phones have

00:44:48   already been creeping up there, right? If you get a plus with more storage, you're headed

00:44:53   up toward a thousand already and then do you get a case? Do you get AppleCare? So this

00:44:59   is just, this is, you know, this is the world we live in, is products like this exist, and

00:45:04   your phone, if your phone is fine, you don't have to buy it, and keep that in mind, and

00:45:09   that's, that's the only way. If Apple will change their, if you're really angry and think

00:45:13   Apple needs to change the way they approach pricing, the way it works is if the market

00:45:19   shows that Apple has failed to push the price higher, like, not deferring your upgrades,

00:45:28   buying a new iPhone, gravitating toward the older models that are cheaper and pushing

00:45:33   down the average selling price of the iPhone, if lots of people do that, Apple will change

00:45:39   its behavior, because Apple is, you know, is trying to find the right mixture. This

00:45:45   is their, this is two-thirds of Apple's budget, is the iPhone. They're not going to jeopardize

00:45:52   the iPhone's revenue engine in order to have a high-end product. The high-end product is meant to

00:45:58   complement the rest of the product line. And if they reach a point where it's acting to the

00:46:04   detriment of iPhone sales, they will change their behavior. So, you know, I don't think that's going

00:46:10   to happen at $999 starting for the iPhone X though. I don't think it's going to happen.

00:46:14   No, I don't. Well, but the thing is, Apple need to try and I, as a business, I understand

00:46:22   why they're trying. Like, you need to know if you're, because you don't, look, no one

00:46:26   wants to leave money on the table, right? Like this is their job as a company. If they're

00:46:32   able to make $200 more per person, they are gonna try that.

00:46:38   They're gonna find a way to do that. Well, that's exactly it.

00:46:43   This is what they're here to do.

00:46:45   - Back to the Apple TV.

00:46:46   Like I want the Apple TV to be the base model Apple TV B99, 'cause I wanna see Apple in

00:46:50   there at least trying to fight at a lower price point with the Chromecast and Roku's

00:46:56   and Fire TV's of the world.

00:46:59   And Apple has obviously decided they're okay with the Apple TV being way more expensive

00:47:04   than those because the people who are gonna buy the Apple TV are gonna want it for Apple

00:47:07   specific reasons.

00:47:09   And they're absolutely gonna be willing to shell out another $100 in order to get it.

00:47:13   that makes more money for Apple. And maybe that's the reason the Apple TV exists, is

00:47:17   for Apple, like below a certain point, Apple doesn't want to bother with the Apple TV.

00:47:22   The reason that it exists is perhaps to keep throwing more money in their direction. I

00:47:27   mean, Apple, that is, I think one symbol of Tim Cook's Apple is optimizing ruthlessly,

00:47:34   in some cases, optimizing price points to generate revenue. And it's the reason why

00:47:39   Apple is one of the most profitable and successful companies in the world. But all of us, you

00:47:46   know, this week, I think many, many upgrade listeners and you and I have thrown money,

00:47:51   our own hard-earned money into the Apple vacuum cleaner that sucks our money out of our pockets.

00:48:00   And so, yeah, that's, that's where that huge profit comes from everyone. It's us, right?

00:48:06   they know it and they know they're doing their best to get our money and to make products

00:48:12   that we want to buy. And where it breaks down is if it's a product we don't want to buy

00:48:15   or it doesn't have value at the price. But $9.99 is not going to be it. Somewhere between

00:48:21   $9.99 and a solid gold Apple watch, there's a breakdown, but I'm not quite sure where

00:48:26   that is.

00:48:27   Finally, I wanted to talk about the home button and losing it as a thing.

00:48:36   I think the main concern I have with the iPhone X is that, is the muscle memory thing.

00:48:45   The idea of pressing a circle on the bottom of my device to wake it up, to go to home,

00:48:52   all of these things, that has been the last 10 years for me, has been doing that, pressing

00:48:59   that button and going back home, or double tapping that button and going into multitasking.

00:49:06   And I hope that the fact that the gestures being basically the same as the ones on my

00:49:11   iPad will help it settle in, but I think that there's going to be some real time that it's

00:49:18   going to take to break the muscle memory that we have for going home?

00:49:26   You know, I'm going to play, I've got it for another month, I'm going to play my trump

00:49:32   card of having used the iPhone X for a little while, for 30 minutes or whatever, less than

00:49:38   that probably 15 minutes while people are over my shoulder looking, staring daggers

00:49:41   at me because I'm using it, they want to use it.

00:49:47   the I think it's not going to be much of an adaptation period. I really don't. I think

00:49:53   you hold it in your hand. The way it worked for me, I hold it in my hand, I move my thumb

00:49:57   down to where I'm just again non-thinking. I'm moving my thumb down to the button to

00:50:01   tap the button. Hey, guess where my thumb is? It's down at the bottom of the screen.

00:50:06   What do I do? I put my thumb down and instead of pressing, I flick. That's it. Like the

00:50:12   The gesture is, first off, pressing the button is a gesture.

00:50:17   Right, it's a gesture UI.

00:50:19   It's more obvious because there's a button there

00:50:21   with a circle for you to press,

00:50:24   but it's still gestural UI.

00:50:25   - Especially when the buttons stop moving.

00:50:28   - So it's already gestural UI,

00:50:30   and this gesture is so close to that gesture

00:50:33   that I think it will take very little time.

00:50:36   And I'm just gonna come out and say it.

00:50:38   I think it's past time,

00:50:42   and I think it's time for the home button to go

00:50:44   and I am happy for the home button to go.

00:50:46   I have all this summer I've been thinking about this

00:50:49   as we've been doing, you know,

00:50:50   as the rumors have been out there

00:50:51   about a buttonless iPhone and all that.

00:50:53   I think it's been 10 years that we've been using this UI.

00:50:57   As comforting as a hardware button is to go back to home,

00:51:02   the fact is that's a simple gesture.

00:51:04   It's gonna be visible everywhere

00:51:06   with a little line thing that they're gonna do.

00:51:09   There are still other hardware buttons on the device,

00:51:11   but for that one, I'm okay with it.

00:51:13   I feel like Apple is driving iOS

00:51:16   to a new lexicon of gestures.

00:51:20   I think people will be able to get the basic gesture

00:51:22   of flipping up from the bottom to go home.

00:51:26   And the more complex gestures like flipping up

00:51:29   and holding to switch apps,

00:51:32   like not everybody's gonna get that, but that's okay,

00:51:35   'cause not everybody needs to get that,

00:51:36   'cause flipping up to go home

00:51:37   will get you back to your list of apps,

00:51:39   and then you can find the next app you wanna launch.

00:51:41   So I'm kind of a believer in it.

00:51:44   I'm okay with it going everywhere

00:51:45   on every iOS device over time.

00:51:47   And I do actually think that's gonna happen.

00:51:49   I think that the home buttons days are numbered now

00:51:52   because it takes up a lot of space

00:51:55   on the bezel of every device

00:51:56   because it's not just where the button is.

00:51:58   You have to make room for that button.

00:51:59   And that means unless you wanna do a notch

00:52:01   around the button, don't do that.

00:52:02   It's a bad idea.

00:52:04   Just get rid of it.

00:52:05   That's a button that can be gone.

00:52:06   You can't get rid of the sensors.

00:52:07   You can get rid of the button.

00:52:08   So yeah, I think it works, I think it's fine.

00:52:12   And I think that it's the start of a new chapter for Apple

00:52:18   in terms of their gestures.

00:52:20   And I get that it's not obvious in the way

00:52:23   that a physical button is obvious

00:52:25   and that there's some user experience issues there.

00:52:29   But I think in the grand scheme of things,

00:52:31   we're at a very different place

00:52:32   in terms of who uses touchscreen devices

00:52:34   than we were 10 years ago.

00:52:35   And I think Apple can get away with it.

00:52:37   And I think it's better.

00:52:38   In the end, I think it's better because just like getting rid of the hardware keyboard

00:52:43   on the original iPhone, because that space could be better used as something that was

00:52:48   touchscreen and could be anything underneath instead of just a keyboard.

00:52:52   This is the same story, which is there's still a home gesture at the bottom of the screen,

00:52:56   but now all that space that was just nothing except a button is now a gestural area that's

00:53:03   programmable and I think it's better.

00:53:05   So as you were saying in your Macworld column this week, it's like the design ideal, right?

00:53:11   Like this is, this is, you know, the button was there because it was what we needed, it

00:53:15   was what was thought was required, but as time has gone on, the idea of design for the

00:53:20   iPhone is just a screen, so you need to let go of the chin, and if you let go of the chin,

00:53:25   you have to let go of the home button too.

00:53:27   Yeah, that was, Johnny Ive said it in the video right, he said, the screen, just a screen

00:53:35   has been what weve been working on for more, for ten years. Ten years the iPhone had just

00:53:40   come out right, so the clear implication there is, from the beginning, the design ideals

00:53:45   of the iPhone were as much screen as possible on the front. The screen, everything else,

00:53:51   said this back in 2007, everything else about the device should fall away and you should

00:53:57   be interacting with the screen. That was always the idea. And everything since then has been

00:54:05   how do we get closer to that ideal. And I feel like, and this is why I wrote about it

00:54:09   on a Mac for last week, I feel like this is the closest they've gotten. Obviously the

00:54:13   final ideal is that all of that other space, including the whole notch and all the sensors,

00:54:19   some way where they can make it that those are not visible and that it's just all screen,

00:54:25   but they can't get there yet. But I feel like this is Apple reaching the edges. Like this

00:54:31   has been all along, it's been a battle at Apple to make an iPhone where the screen reaches

00:54:36   the edges of the face of the device and that this is the phone that does that. So in some

00:54:42   ways it's an important milestone. Just like how I feel that the Apple Watch always was

00:54:50   headed toward having cellular connectivity, and that it kind of met its milestone of its

00:54:56   design ideal with the Series 3, because it's finally got that last piece that—not that

00:55:02   these products aren't going to evolve and grow and change, but like a fundamental thing

00:55:07   that was obvious that it needed to go there, it reached it. You know, minus the notch in

00:55:13   the case of the iPhone X, but it reached the edges everywhere else, which is, I think that

00:55:17   was the goal all along. And so it fits. It fits. But at the time, they felt that they

00:55:24   needed that tactile button. We're not giving you a whole keyboard, but we're going to put

00:55:29   a button down there and in emergencies you can press it to go home. And I don't think,

00:55:33   Apple doesn't think that's needed anymore,

00:55:35   and I think they're right.

00:55:36   I think they're right.

00:55:37   - I'm excited about this phone for some of these reasons.

00:55:43   Like whilst I'm a little bit apprehensive of the change

00:55:48   and wondering how that's gonna feel,

00:55:50   my ultimate feeling is excitement

00:55:52   because this is going to be the most new feeling iPhone

00:55:57   in a very, very, very long time

00:55:59   for all of these reasons, right?

00:56:00   Not just because it looks different,

00:56:02   not just because the screen is different,

00:56:04   but because there are brand new ways to interact with it,

00:56:06   ways that are completely different to any other iOS device.

00:56:11   It is very intriguing.

00:56:13   - 2017, I'm gonna say as a, I don't know,

00:56:17   one of a small group of unofficial iOS historians,

00:56:21   I guess, right, watching this for a long time,

00:56:23   paying close attention.

00:56:25   I feel like, obviously the design milestone

00:56:28   where they threw out the the skeuomorphism is a milestone of iOS.

00:56:33   Yeah, iOS 7. But this this year I think is going to go down as a almost like

00:56:41   volume 2 like of iOS conception where Apple's rolling out a bunch of things

00:56:46   that are redefining fundamental parts of iOS and I a lot of them are manifest in

00:56:53   the iPhone 10 and the rest of them are manifest in the iOS 11 interface on the

00:56:58   iPad. And I think that they go hand in hand. I think they were all designed

00:57:02   together. I think they're all in lockstep. I think they are all about Apple driving

00:57:08   some certain gestures forward and having things be more consistent and different

00:57:12   than they were before across iOS devices. And so big year 2017 between the

00:57:21   iPhone 10 and iOS 11 for Apple redefining what it means to use iOS.

00:57:27   and I think it's good and I think it's gonna kick off more changes that are

00:57:31   gonna stem from these changes and are gonna advance the ball in the in the

00:57:35   future but the big steps forward because because right I mean the iPhone I mean

00:57:39   the iPad running iOS 11 is also a very different feel just like the iPhone 10

00:57:44   is going to be a very different feel from previous iPhones and and so both

00:57:48   sides of the iOS equation have are getting these you know refinks this year

00:57:52   it's exciting. I turned on my old 12.9 inch iPad Pro to wipe it or to restore

00:58:00   it because I'm selling it to a friend and I was like what is this? Just seeing

00:58:05   that iOS 10 home screen with the big dock and everything it was like wow okay

00:58:12   I've really gotten used to this over the last three months. So what is this this

00:58:16   wasteland here that I have? It was a strange feeling. We could talk about iOS

00:58:22   11 next week though in more detail of course we yeah because it comes out

00:58:26   tomorrow comes out in the 19th so we're gonna talk about more detail next week

00:58:31   because we still have more iPhone stuff to talk about this week's episode is

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00:59:59   the continued support of this show and Real AFM. Face ID. Craig Federighi has been on a bit of

01:00:07   damage control I believe I feel over the last week namely giving an interview to

01:00:14   Matt Pansarino at TechCrunch and appearing on episode 200 congratulations

01:00:19   John Gruber of the talk show if you can call it an episode I mean it was only

01:00:25   30 minutes long yeah episode of the talk show really this is that a fifth or

01:00:29   something yeah it's a frat it's a fractional episode of the talk show it

01:00:34   It was a segment. It was a segment of the talk show broken out into its own episode.

01:00:40   I am not surprised about this though. I had a family gathering over the weekend. It was

01:00:45   my mom's birthday and me and my uncle. My uncle works in the telecoms industry. So we

01:00:52   really have a great time talking about this type of stuff. So we're talking about the

01:00:56   iPhone 10. And my 80 year old grandmother turns to us and says, "That was the one that

01:01:02   didn't work on stage, right? So she knows. Because they showed up in the news. So everyone

01:01:11   knows that Face ID in its very first iteration, in its very first demo I should say, failed.

01:01:19   So they have been spending some time over the last week, at least Craig Federighi has,

01:01:26   at least in the places where the most ferocious users are. You know, so they go into the talk

01:01:34   show, go into TechCrunch.

01:01:35   MATT ROWE - Answering emails.

01:01:36   JAY WONG answering, yeah, answering emails from developers,

01:01:39   which MacRumors had, which I'll put a link to that in the show notes too. It's not a

01:01:43   good look, right? Like, this isn't what Apple want to happen.

01:01:47   MATT ROWE - No, I mean, obviously it was a mistake. It wasn't

01:01:50   actually a failure. They explained that it wasn't a failure. But, because apparently

01:01:57   what happened was there was a setup tech and they did lift, you know, they raised to wake

01:02:03   and then they were looking at the phone and it was trying to do face ID on them. And after

01:02:07   a certain number of scans, just as with touch ID, it fails and goes back to inputting the

01:02:11   password. And they didn't realize that that happened or could happen. And nobody else

01:02:18   checked before the event to make sure that the phone was ready to go for face ID. And

01:02:24   so, you know, it wasn't a failure of face ID. It was a failure of setup preparation.

01:02:30   Yeah, it was, it was locked needing a password and then it worked right on the other, on

01:02:37   the other line, but it's tough, right? What a time for a demo fail. And there it was,

01:02:41   there was a demo fail and Craig and Craig didn't understand it. Didn't understand what

01:02:45   he was doing because obviously he's got his mind on doing his presentation. He didn't

01:02:48   realize that what he was looking at was the add password or enter password screen which

01:02:53   he could have done and then locked it and then done the demo too but he didn't realize

01:02:58   that either. So now they have to recast and it's just it's tough because this is your

01:03:01   big moment and it had a false start.

01:03:05   If you ever wanted proof to the conspiracy theory that all of these demos are staged,

01:03:12   this is it, right? Because what they should have done in hindsight, you know, like if

01:03:18   they believe it works and know it works to assure that it's going to work, change the

01:03:24   code in this build on this phone so it would definitely authenticate him.

01:03:29   Well, I guess so. I guess that would be the way to do it. Hard coded for Federighi face

01:03:35   and just…

01:03:36   Exactly. And unlock every single iPhone. But in a way, I'm happy that they don't, that

01:03:41   this did happen because it shows that they don't do that, right? Which is always a question

01:03:45   in my mind of like, you know, I know this stuff works but like it's not ready yet, like

01:03:50   do they do anything to kind of to massage things? But anyway, I'm keen to understand

01:03:57   how this works in Myke Hurley's life. Like, what was happening to their phone? What was

01:04:04   it doing, right? So they're saying that like, you know, the reason this happened is that

01:04:09   the phones were being handled and it was trying to scan faces.

01:04:13   It was waking up. I mean that's the key thing is if you tap, if you can tap to wake or lift

01:04:17   to wake, it was waking up and then trying to do a scan and failing. And in normal use

01:04:23   they must feel, Apple's also, another thing, talk about the damage control, another thing

01:04:28   they've done is they've kind of rustled up other people, Apple employees who've been

01:04:33   using the iPhone 10 and those people have been talking to people they know and saying,

01:04:37   oh, I've been using this for months and it's fine.

01:04:39   Don't worry about it.

01:04:40   Just to get that, just that I've seen several people say,

01:04:42   oh, I've talked to the people I know at Apple

01:04:44   who've been using this and they say that it's fine

01:04:46   and it works great, right?

01:04:47   So that's also happening here, whether organically--

01:04:50   - Send the birdies out, let them fly.

01:04:52   - Whether organically or whether somebody is like,

01:04:53   yeah, you should mention that to your friends in the press

01:04:55   that it works fine.

01:04:57   But yeah, it's, the problem here is we don't know

01:05:02   because we haven't used it.

01:05:03   And even the press at the event,

01:05:05   I was lording it over you earlier, you know,

01:05:08   but I can't on this.

01:05:09   Like face ID is one per,

01:05:11   nobody was training their faces at the event, right?

01:05:14   So I have to take it on the word of the Apple employee

01:05:16   who I saw use face ID.

01:05:18   And that's at a kiosk in a crowded demo center.

01:05:21   It's not day-to-day use.

01:05:22   So nobody has any personal experience with this.

01:05:25   We have to take Apple at its word.

01:05:27   And guess what?

01:05:28   People are always gonna be skeptical of new stuff,

01:05:30   even from Apple, especially from Apple, who knows?

01:05:33   But they're always gonna be skeptical.

01:05:34   Now I look at it and think,

01:05:35   everybody was skeptical about Touch ID,

01:05:37   and how did that work out?

01:05:38   It worked out fine.

01:05:39   Doesn't mean this will work out fine,

01:05:41   but it does mean the skepticism is not fundamentally

01:05:45   because this is likely to fail.

01:05:49   It's because it's new

01:05:51   and we haven't experienced anything like it.

01:05:53   And so we don't understand,

01:05:55   and until we see it and how it's implemented

01:05:57   and how it works for ourselves,

01:05:59   we're gonna be skeptical of it.

01:06:01   And that's, I think, totally fair.

01:06:03   Now, the problem with the failure or the demo failure,

01:06:07   if not technology failure, is that it plays into that fear.

01:06:10   So, Apple's not gonna be able to solve this

01:06:15   until they get reviewers writing about how the face ID works

01:06:19   and then people actually use them.

01:06:20   And it's gonna be telling the value of having people

01:06:23   write about and talk about technology

01:06:25   is we can talk about our personal experiences

01:06:28   and tell the story of like,

01:06:29   well, I used it in my everyday life

01:06:31   and this is what I found and this is how it worked

01:06:33   and have it be credible perhaps in a way

01:06:36   that an Apple, you know, somebody paid by Apple,

01:06:40   an Apple employee is not gonna be as credible about it.

01:06:42   But a lot of people are just gonna need to see it

01:06:44   for themselves or hear it from a trusted source.

01:06:46   And that's just where we are with it.

01:06:50   And there will be, we talked about this a couple weeks ago,

01:06:52   there are gonna be issues.

01:06:53   There are gonna be things where people are like,

01:06:54   "Oh, did you know that it didn't do this?"

01:06:56   Or, "Oh, I found a funny, they always said

01:06:58   "that my sister and I looked alike

01:06:59   "and turns out that she can unlock my phone.

01:07:01   "Oh, isn't that funny?"

01:07:03   I mean, we're gonna get those stories.

01:07:04   They're gonna be weird quirks,

01:07:06   things we learn about failures and successes

01:07:10   and false positives and all of that is gonna happen,

01:07:12   but we don't know yet.

01:07:13   And so we've got a vacuum and you know what happens

01:07:16   when there's information about Apple

01:07:18   and nobody actually knows the facts

01:07:19   is that the noise fills the gap.

01:07:21   - Yeah, I'm really intrigued to see how it plays out.

01:07:29   I think that measured skepticism is a healthy practice.

01:07:34   Don't just believe it's gonna work because Apple made it,

01:07:37   but don't believe it's not gonna work because Apple made it.

01:07:39   You know, I feel like you can,

01:07:41   that there is a measurement

01:07:43   that everybody should follow with this, right?

01:07:46   I'm confident that they wouldn't have made this decision

01:07:49   if it didn't work as good as Touch ID or Close To,

01:07:53   but I don't necessarily think

01:07:54   that just because Apple have added this

01:07:56   that it's better than anything else.

01:07:58   I'm going to wait to see on that one personally.

01:08:01   There were some clarifications that came out

01:08:03   in these two places and some additional information

01:08:05   that we didn't have before.

01:08:07   And so I kind of wanted to run through

01:08:10   a couple of these things.

01:08:12   Wearing sunglasses will work fine in most instances

01:08:15   because the IR camera, the IR scanner

01:08:18   can see through sunglass lenses.

01:08:22   There are some instances where like there are some kinds

01:08:24   of coatings that can block IR.

01:08:27   and obviously they wouldn't work

01:08:29   because of the attention detection, right?

01:08:31   So it's not just scanning your face,

01:08:34   the iPhone X has to see that you're looking at it.

01:08:37   But you can turn off attention detection if you want to.

01:08:40   So it's just scanning your face,

01:08:42   so Apple has this as an accessibility option for people.

01:08:45   Blind people is obviously one of them,

01:08:47   who may not be able to look at the screen.

01:08:49   - Shelley Brisbane, who writes a lot about accessibility,

01:08:51   was on download last week and we talked about this.

01:08:52   And yeah, that is a,

01:08:54   it's not surprising given Apple's attention to accessibility

01:08:57   that they would be accessibility features in face ID.

01:09:00   And this is one of them where if you're incapable

01:09:03   of being scanned as having your attention

01:09:08   being given to face ID, you can turn that off.

01:09:11   And similarly, if you are incapable of moving

01:09:16   your head or neck for multiple face scans,

01:09:20   you can actually have it only do a single scan.

01:09:24   So there is definitely accessibility

01:09:26   built into this, Apple has tried to make this as accessible a feature as possible.

01:09:31   So if you have a favorite pair of sunglasses and you're unwilling to change them because

01:09:37   they're your favorites and you're going to be spending a day at the beach you can just

01:09:40   turn off the attention detection for the day. So it still scans your face but it doesn't

01:09:44   need to see your eyes which is a good feature to have of course. Also as well, this is good,

01:09:51   I'm happy for this change. I think we've spoken about this or you know, I've heard it in many

01:09:56   places by now that iOS 11 includes this mode where you can hit the lock button 5 times,

01:10:03   the sleep/wake button 5 times and it enters a kind of a mode which serves many purposes.

01:10:10   One is emergency mode right, to bring up the emergency calling so you can dial an emergency

01:10:15   number and you can have it automatically call an emergency service if you want which is

01:10:18   very similar to what exists on the Apple Watch right now but it does a couple of other things

01:10:23   and one of them is to turn off biometrics,

01:10:27   so it turns off touch ID.

01:10:28   So then to be able to enter a phone,

01:10:31   you have to put the passcode in.

01:10:32   And this can be really good for if you're in a situation

01:10:36   where you don't trust an enforcement official,

01:10:39   maybe you're going through customs, maybe, you know,

01:10:41   and you just don't want to be in a situation

01:10:43   where somebody can compel you to unlock your phone

01:10:46   without having legal representation nearby.

01:10:49   Well, on the iPhone 8 and iPhone 10,

01:10:53   you don't need to hit the button five times, you just grip the phone pressing both buttons

01:10:57   for down for a period of time and it will enter this mode and I think that's a way better way of

01:11:03   doing this than hitting the button five times because I could do that through my jeans,

01:11:08   right? Like I could do that and then you squeeze it, you just go squeeze the buttons and it's,

01:11:13   you know, you can feel them especially how big the new buttons seem to be on the

01:11:16   on the 10 especially and you get a haptic feedback to confirm that it's entered into the mode. I

01:11:21   I think this is really great. I hadn't seen this mentioned anywhere else except for in

01:11:25   these two places in this article with Matt Pansarino and on the talk show episode 200.

01:11:33   It's really good. I like that this feature is going to exist and I like that they've

01:11:39   made it easier on these new devices.

01:11:44   One and then just a couple of other things I wanted to just pull out real quick from

01:11:46   TechCrunch article which is much much longer and went into more depth. Apple took well

01:11:53   Federighi took great steps to reiterate the lengths that Apple took to ensure privacy

01:11:57   on the devices. Confirmed that there is no light shone in your face. I don't think that Apple's

01:12:04   marketing is helping them here. I initially thought that there was some kind of light

01:12:09   shone in your face like that your face was illuminated by the phone in some way to scan

01:12:15   because all of their marketing shows that and I know what they're just trying to show you how it

01:12:19   works but I think a lot of people are confused by this. I'm sure that they debated this and I had

01:12:27   the same thought you did and knowing how it works I'm watching them describe it and thinking oh man

01:12:33   people are going to think that you actually are illuminated by these sensors and things like that

01:12:38   when it's actually all happening in infrared and I know they tried but I felt like as I was watching

01:12:43   and I thought you should have set this up better.

01:12:45   - They didn't do a good job of defining it initially.

01:12:47   - You should have set it up as all of this happens

01:12:50   in infrared, so you never see anything.

01:12:53   And then even like on the slides where they show

01:12:55   the person's face illuminated, like show it not illuminated

01:13:00   and say, this is what it looks like to you.

01:13:02   But in infrared, it looks like this

01:13:04   and we use that information and just like lean into it

01:13:07   because a lot of people ended up reading it as,

01:13:10   well, I look at my iPhone and a beam of light shines

01:13:13   all over my face and little dots dance around

01:13:16   and then my phone up, it seems like a little showy

01:13:18   to unlock a phone that way, but okay, I guess.

01:13:20   - My face goes purple for a few minutes

01:13:21   and then here we go.

01:13:23   And then a couple of other little details.

01:13:26   Apple will be releasing a Face ID security white paper

01:13:29   and Federighi also did some further clarification

01:13:36   on what angle you need for the phone

01:13:39   to be able to see your face,

01:13:40   which I knew was a thing that everybody

01:13:42   was spending a lot of time thinking about before the phone was released. What angle

01:13:47   does the phone need to be at? How much of your face does it need to see to authenticate?

01:13:52   Do you need to perform a selfie action every time you want to unlock your phone?

01:13:57   So I'll read a quote, "It's quite similar to the ranges that you'd be at if you put

01:14:01   your phone in front facing camera mode." As if you were taking a selfie picture. "Once

01:14:06   your space from your eyes to your mouth come into view, you would be at the matching range

01:14:12   so it can work at fairly extreme angles. If it's down low because your phone is in your lap it can

01:14:18   unlock it as long as it can see those features. Basically if you're using your phone across a

01:14:23   natural series of angles it can unlock it. I really like the way that this was described,

01:14:27   if you can take a picture that has your eyes and your mouth in at whatever angle that may be,

01:14:35   the phone should be able to unlock. So I think that that's going to work. Basically my thinking

01:14:41   was like if I'm looking down at my phone, right, without like really leaning into it, will it unlock?

01:14:47   And yeah, it turns out it will. So I thought that that was really good and I appreciated that,

01:14:52   I appreciated that clarification. Well, if you think about like, can you see the screen of your

01:14:56   iPhone? Or can you see the screen of your iPhone? If you can see that, you're most of the way there.

01:15:02   It would then need to be that the space, somehow the space between your eyes and your mouth is

01:15:07   blocked by something. So which I like the idea the natural series of angles. Again,

01:15:12   we're going to find people everybody's going to try this and say, oh, well, it worked here

01:15:15   and it didn't work there and all of that. But I have seen a lot among the fear, uncertainty

01:15:21   and doubt spreading around face ID. One of the ones I have seen is I don't want to pick

01:15:27   up my phone and look at it to unlock it. It's like, well, shouldn't really have to do that.

01:15:31   And in fact, the way it should work is you should be able to pick up your phone and it's

01:15:37   unlocked or you should be able to, if it's in the right angle, just flick it

01:15:41   open on the table and it's unlocked because it can see you.

01:15:46   Now there are going to be cases where that's not the case, but, um, but that's

01:15:50   the, that's the ideal here is pick it up, flick and it's, and it's unlocked.

01:15:54   Um, and in fact, somebody, uh, I read somebody said, I would really love to

01:16:00   have it where if I unlock it, it just automatically goes to the home screen.

01:16:04   I don't know if Apple's gonna add that as an option,

01:16:06   but it's not bad.

01:16:08   Like if I look at my phone, it unlocks and takes,

01:16:12   like takes, yes sir, I take you to the home screen

01:16:14   right away, sir.

01:16:15   And one time you glare at it.

01:16:17   But yeah, that's how it's supposed to work.

01:16:19   So we'll see how it works in practice.

01:16:21   - Could be an accessibility option, right?

01:16:23   There is the one in the current phones, right?

01:16:25   Where it will just go straight home

01:16:28   once Touch ID is authenticated, like that's the thing.

01:16:32   - Well, if that's a thing, then presumably

01:16:33   that will still be an option and you can flip that on and then when you look at the phone

01:16:36   it will just take you to the home screen without a flick which is fine. Great.

01:16:41   Yeah, I don't know what the, I mean I know that was a thing, I don't know if it still

01:16:46   is a thing, I believe so, I believe so. You know, remember when they changed it from the

01:16:51   raise to wake? Yeah, rest finger to open. Open iPhone with touch ID without having to

01:16:56   press the home button. So you would raise. Yeah, so it's possible.

01:17:00   So there are ways around it, but we'll see.

01:17:02   I mean, we'll see, I'm not sure.

01:17:05   You wanted to mention a product

01:17:06   that we didn't get any time to talk about

01:17:08   last week, surprisingly.

01:17:09   - Yeah, it's another Apple accessory

01:17:12   and it's kind of boring.

01:17:14   And yet I think it's really interesting.

01:17:16   So for $100, for $99, 'cause again,

01:17:19   it's not just a 999 phone,

01:17:21   it's everything that you buy for it.

01:17:23   But this is the first time Apple has done this on the iPhone.

01:17:25   It is an iPhone folio case.

01:17:28   that means that it's got a cover

01:17:30   and it's actually got a slot for you to put like

01:17:34   money or credit cards or whatever.

01:17:36   But the thing that's different is you flip it open

01:17:41   and your iPhone wakes up and you flip it closed

01:17:44   and your iPhone goes to sleep,

01:17:45   which has been the case on the iPad forever,

01:17:50   but has never been supported on the iPhone before.

01:17:55   And the iPhone 10 apparently supports it.

01:17:57   the iPhone 10 has a magnet in it.

01:17:59   - Yeah.

01:18:00   - This was found in the GM leak that came before the keynote.

01:18:03   - Yep.

01:18:04   Yep, so this is the result is presumably

01:18:07   all the third party case makers will be able to do this too,

01:18:09   but Apple has a folio case and I think it's good.

01:18:13   It's not for everybody.

01:18:14   I think it's not for most people,

01:18:15   but I definitely know people who really like

01:18:18   having their iPhone with a cover on the case.

01:18:22   And of course right now you flip it open

01:18:25   and then you've got to wake it up

01:18:27   because it doesn't have that iPad experience

01:18:29   and this one does and this is a product from Apple

01:18:31   'cause Apple builds what Apple wants to build for itself.

01:18:34   And it's good.

01:18:37   I'm happy to see it,

01:18:38   even though I'm not in the market for it.

01:18:40   - Yeah, I think this is a weird product.

01:18:42   I know--

01:18:43   - Oh, totally weird product.

01:18:45   - I mean, there's just a couple of things

01:18:46   that I find funny about it.

01:18:47   One of them is that it has space for cards in it,

01:18:51   which is hilarious considering the fact

01:18:54   that Apple Pay exists as a thing.

01:18:56   and that this would cause problems in places where you use contactless cards

01:19:02   like you'd have to open the the wallet every time you couldn't just press your

01:19:06   wallet against it because it would be trying to read either the Apple Pay

01:19:09   sensor or the card or both so you'd have to open it up every time but yeah if

01:19:16   this is a type of thing that you want you probably already know that which

01:19:19   means you most likely already own one of these and sure if Apple makes one great

01:19:24   but it does cost $100 so you know that's on you but yeah it is this is a I do find it a

01:19:31   strange product to debut now like it just seems like if you haven't done this already

01:19:37   why are you doing it now but they are and if you want it it's available for you

01:19:43   yep all right today's show is also brought to you by our friends over at Squarespace and to offer

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01:21:39   You'll never guess what is back!

01:21:45   After a summer break, it was rested, it's tanned, rested, and ready, Myke. It's ready

01:21:49   to come back. It's #AskUpgrade.

01:21:51   Alright, I have like a billion questions, so we're gonna do as many as we can do within

01:21:58   the time that we have left. So maybe we can lightning round these, let's see.

01:22:02   Is this, sure, okay, let's see. What's the segment like, Myke? Is this like Ask ATP?

01:22:07   No, this is a trademark

01:22:09   Ask #askupgrade

01:22:13   Jay asked which would you prefer Apple watch with LTE or an always on watch face?

01:22:19   So we have Apple watches of LTE available now

01:22:22   But if given the choice would we choose to have an always on watch face over LTE?

01:22:26   I think Apple watch with LTE is like I said earlier a fundamental change in the usefulness of the Apple watch

01:22:33   And so I would always prefer it

01:22:35   I would really like it if I could select a face or let it do a like a low power face that was always on

01:22:43   And and like fade it up

01:22:46   I feel like they must be getting close to that that maybe next year's watch OS update will do something like that because

01:22:51   Yeah, I would like I would like to be able to glance at my watch and sometimes it doesn't wake up and still see the time

01:22:59   and

01:23:00   You can't do that now. So I would like that but the LTE that is a core

01:23:05   That's why I'm buying a new Apple watch. It's like that's gonna be awesome

01:23:08   I agree with you completely, you know

01:23:10   both of these features would have a

01:23:12   Significant impact on battery life and I believe Apple is deciding to tackle them one at a time based on what they think is the most

01:23:18   Important and I'm surprised if you would asked if you would ask me when the Apple watch was announced

01:23:23   Whether in 2017 with watch OS 4

01:23:26   They would have figured out how to do enough battery savings to do an always on watch face

01:23:31   I would have said of course and they haven't and so that's disappointing

01:23:35   But if you would ask me if they'd have a an LTE version by 2017

01:23:39   I would have said maybe right and they do so that's good

01:23:43   Justin wants to know do you think that the inductive charging?

01:23:47   capabilities on the new iPhones will allow Apple or third parties to make new battery cases that are smaller in profile I

01:23:56   So I would love somebody who has knowledge of the Android accessory market to tell us if these cases exist for Android.

01:24:04   Because if they do, then the answer is yes.

01:24:07   And if they don't, the answer is, I guess there's a reason why that doesn't work.

01:24:13   Because you would think one of the nice things about inductive charging would be you could make a battery case that doesn't have to be plugged into the device, right?

01:24:21   It just goes on the back and the power flows into the device.

01:24:26   But I did a quick search and I couldn't find any,

01:24:31   that doesn't mean there aren't any.

01:24:34   So I'd be curious for people who will come

01:24:36   from the Android world where there's been wireless charging

01:24:38   for quite a while about whether this is a thing or not,

01:24:41   because I like that idea, right?

01:24:43   The idea that you could have a case

01:24:46   that is not extending below your phone

01:24:49   and plugging up the lightning port,

01:24:52   that it's just a hump on the back with battery

01:24:56   and it just magically charges your phone

01:24:58   and gets out of the way of your ports.

01:25:00   That's awesome.

01:25:01   Like when you're traveling, you could have longer life

01:25:03   without if you're listening on a set of headphones

01:25:07   using the lightning adapter

01:25:08   and you can't charge your device, right?

01:25:10   But you could via the inductive battery pack.

01:25:13   But my guess from what my cursory Googling has shown

01:25:18   is that maybe there are issues with this,

01:25:21   that the kind of power that needs to be provided

01:25:23   to an inductive charger is not efficient enough

01:25:28   or strong enough to be something

01:25:30   that can come from a battery pack, but I don't know.

01:25:31   I'd love to hear that.

01:25:33   - My guess is that the technology required

01:25:38   is too physically large.

01:25:43   - Too big, too big, that could be.

01:25:45   - And that's why there haven't been any yet.

01:25:47   and/or still too early to get a little bit too worried about cases exploding in pockets.

01:25:55   Yeah, but I would love it. I mean, I would really love it if there was an inductive

01:25:59   charging thing. I'm still a little bit surprised that Apple didn't do something like the smart

01:26:04   connector that is completely low profile and not a port, but that you could put a case on and it

01:26:11   it would feed battery into it. Although not fast, right? The smart connector is inductive

01:26:17   and it's very slow. But if you leave the case on all the time, then it just sort of will

01:26:23   keep refilling the battery. But I don't know. I'd love to hear.

01:26:28   Tony asked, "Does anyone know what's going on with AirPlay 2? It was conspicuously absent

01:26:33   from the iPhone event. Saving for the HomePod event?"

01:26:36   So here's one thing I just want to say, Tony. Thank you for the question. I don't think

01:26:40   it was conspicuously absent. I think it was kind of mostly not worth bringing up in an

01:26:46   event that was already super packed. Mostly because there isn't too much to say right

01:26:51   now as there aren't products that will support it. There are many speaker manufacturers have

01:26:56   signed on and Apple has provided a list of these somewhere, lots and lots and lots of

01:27:01   speaker manufacturers, all of the big names. To make devices that will include AirPlay

01:27:06   after iOS 11 launches. I expect there will be some PR releases about it at some point

01:27:11   over the next few weeks. There might be like a newsroom article about "hey look at these

01:27:16   AirPlay 2 devices" and if there is a HomePod event maybe they would talk about it then,

01:27:21   maybe but I'm not convinced there even will be a HomePod event. But I just don't think

01:27:26   that it's too important right now.

01:27:28   Yeah this was not an iOS 11 event right? This was an event for the hardware. iOS 11 already

01:27:33   got a lot of time in June at WWDC. It is shipping, which is great. Shipping tomorrow. So this

01:27:39   week we may even see the all the press releases about now supports AirPlay 2 blah blah blah

01:27:43   because you can't really sell AirPlay 2 speakers when it's not officially supported by any

01:27:48   Apple devices. But as of iOS 11 it will be and I would imagine that there will be announcements

01:27:53   and launches and press releases and then it'll all start kind of happening. But I'm not surprised

01:27:59   and I'm with you, I think it's unlikely we'll see another Apple event this year.

01:28:03   Doesn't mean it can't happen, but like the HomePod already got announced.

01:28:06   Everybody knows what it is. It just needs to ship and it's not gonna,

01:28:09   I don't think they're gonna do an announcement that, you know, like an event saying,

01:28:12   "Hey, it shipped!" Like that's, they don't need to do that. So I'm still in the camp of

01:28:17   no more, um, no more events this year. We'll see.

01:28:20   Rajiv wants to get our opinions now, our early predictions, um, on future iPad models. Do we

01:28:28   think that Touch ID will be on future iPad models? Could Face ID come to the

01:28:35   iPad and along with it a super slim bezel version? Feels like an eventuality

01:28:42   to me like yeah you could then charge even more for the iPad Pro which I'm

01:28:48   sure Tim would love to be able to do. I think my gut feeling is that they can

01:28:53   get there they they will start getting rid of the home button like I said

01:28:56   earlier. I don't know whether that'll happen next year or not, but it could. The advantage

01:29:01   of getting rid of the home button is they can either make the screen bigger or they

01:29:03   can make the device smaller and creep toward the edges of the display even further. Face

01:29:12   ID is going to be the killer, right? Because if you get rid of the home button, now you

01:29:18   need to do face ID.

01:29:19   >> Yeah, you have to. It has to.

01:29:21   >> I mean, this is the same argument as face ID on the Mac, right? Which is there's more

01:29:25   space to put this stuff. You don't need a notch, right, because these devices are so

01:29:30   much larger than the iPhone that you can just leave some space for the sensors. So I do

01:29:36   think it's inevitable that Face ID will exist on the iPad, but whether it's a 2018 thing

01:29:41   or a 2019 thing, I don't know. I think that would be great. OLED on the iPad is the other

01:29:49   answer and I think it's just going to be really hard to make an OLED screen that big and have

01:29:54   that's gonna be a really expensive device

01:29:57   and the iPad Pro is already pretty expensive.

01:29:59   It's gonna get even more expensive if they do that.

01:30:01   I think they wanna do that, right?

01:30:03   I think you look at the iPhone X,

01:30:04   it's like this is stuff Apple wants in all their products,

01:30:06   but it's gonna take a while to get there.

01:30:08   So I'd say it's less likely in 2018.

01:30:13   I think if I was a betting man about this,

01:30:15   I would say less than 50% for Face ID and stuff

01:30:19   in the iPad in 2018.

01:30:21   Also, we'll see, maybe the iPad is going its own way

01:30:24   in a lot of different ways, but I think Apple would be happy

01:30:27   to get the home button off the iPad,

01:30:30   and that would mean putting Face ID in.

01:30:32   - If I was gonna put a bet on it,

01:30:35   I would say that the next iPad Pro will go this way,

01:30:40   but that may not be in 2018.

01:30:43   Maybe two years.

01:30:46   - Interesting.

01:30:47   - Is the iPad Pro refresh rate now.

01:30:49   - Could be.

01:30:50   - And it may just be one of them that has it.

01:30:53   could be that would be that would be your iPad 10 basically I mean they're

01:30:56   not gonna call it that because I think they've got a they're in a happy place

01:30:59   now with the iPad but it would be in the iPad Pro right and it might be in it

01:31:04   might be in one it might be in both who knows but yeah I think that's right but

01:31:07   20 you may be right I I'm skeptical about 2018 if there was an iPad Pro in

01:31:13   the fall of 2018 it's possible but we'll see I think it's my gut feeling is it's

01:31:19   less likely but it's not impossible.

01:31:21   Edie wants to know, "Do you think Touch ID will reappear once technically possible?"

01:31:26   Nope.

01:31:29   No. Except for one condition. That at scale, Face ID fails terribly.

01:31:36   That's the only way we see Touch ID come back.

01:31:38   I suppose. If Face ID doesn't work, then sure, they're going to have to go back to Touch ID,

01:31:44   but I think Apple's confident that Face ID will work, and that'll be the end for Touch ID.

01:31:50   I agree. Reed wants to know, "What do non-optimized apps look like on the iPhone X? Are they cut off

01:31:56   at the corners in the unibrow?" The wonderful James Thompson, I asked him this question because

01:32:01   I knew he'd been spending quite a bit of time in the simulator because as we spoke about earlier,

01:32:05   he's done some work with his fantastic app Peacock, which by the way, you need to try the

01:32:13   the new about screen/AR mode of Peacock.

01:32:17   - Oh my God. - Like you just have to.

01:32:19   I'm gonna put a link in the show notes

01:32:21   to a write up that you did at Six Colors, Jason.

01:32:24   James is wonderful.

01:32:25   - It's an about screen, AR mode, and a game.

01:32:28   - And a game. - It's also a game

01:32:29   where you drive a truck around.

01:32:31   - Or you could just drop bananas onto the Peacock icon.

01:32:34   Like, it's just sublime and amazing and wonderful

01:32:38   and fantastic and you have to just have to do it.

01:32:41   James wants to support every piece of hardware that exists,

01:32:44   so which is why there's Peacock for the Apple TV,

01:32:46   which is, yes, he knows it's absurd, but he doesn't care.

01:32:50   And he likes to support every feature,

01:32:51   so like drag and drop is supported

01:32:53   in the new version of Peacock,

01:32:54   and that because the code is shared,

01:32:55   it's now drag and drop on the Mac too,

01:32:58   which is kind of funny.

01:33:00   So iOS driving Mac features there.

01:33:02   And then, but then like you're a developer of a calculator

01:33:05   and there's all this great 3D and AR stuff

01:33:07   in the operating system, what are you to do?

01:33:10   And the answer is, yeah, he put an AR mode in.

01:33:13   - Yep.

01:33:14   - And you can throw dice and globes and bananas

01:33:17   into an AR space and watch them bounce around

01:33:20   and change the lighting.

01:33:21   - I was testing this probably like you

01:33:23   throughout the whole summer.

01:33:25   And it just got more and more absurd as the time went on.

01:33:30   When he was like, when he added the little car

01:33:32   and I was like, what are you doing?

01:33:34   (laughing)

01:33:36   - But yeah, I think what he said was,

01:33:38   I think I may have accidentally made a game.

01:33:40   - Yep, and you can connect a Bluetooth-enabled gamepad

01:33:46   to the device and drive the little car around if you want to

01:33:49   because the gamepad code is all in there

01:33:51   from when he supported the Apple TV.

01:33:53   Peacock is an amazing application.

01:33:56   We're spending time on this now

01:33:57   because you should buy it if you haven't.

01:33:58   But see, the thing is about James is

01:34:00   I know that he's not just wasting his time.

01:34:04   He implemented the drag and drop code incredibly quickly

01:34:07   and that was basically the only thing in iOS 11

01:34:10   that his app could take use of functionally.

01:34:13   So then he decided to play around with this other stuff

01:34:16   and then made something fun with it.

01:34:18   Right, like all it was at first was he'd spent so much time

01:34:21   to making these amazing additional icons

01:34:24   that you can get now, that he wanted to just render one

01:34:28   in SpriteKit in the about screen.

01:34:30   And then he did that quicker than he expected.

01:34:32   And then it just was just a trail of things

01:34:34   that he thought, I'll try this

01:34:36   and just kept doing them faster than he thought.

01:34:38   So he built an entire game inside of the app,

01:34:40   which is in itself kind of genius

01:34:42   because now we're spending so much time

01:34:43   talking about an update to a calculator.

01:34:45   Anyway, in the show notes is some screenshots

01:34:50   that James put together for me

01:34:52   of what a non-optimized app looks like.

01:34:56   And it's basically an iPhone app in the middle of the screen.

01:34:58   There is a big black bar at the bottom

01:35:00   and a big black bar at the top.

01:35:02   That's what it does.

01:35:03   For as much as the simulator can show you anyway.

01:35:05   - Yep, so that's what they look like.

01:35:07   So I hope that lots of apps support them quickly

01:35:09   because I would prefer not fantastic UI

01:35:14   to just black bars, right?

01:35:15   Like just give me the first round of them

01:35:18   and just make all the apps full screen

01:35:19   as much as you can do and then work it out later.

01:35:21   All right, couple more questions.

01:35:24   Travis wants to know, what other Apple products

01:35:26   could incorporate Qi charging?

01:35:29   Maybe the next Apple TV remote or the Magic Mouse?

01:35:31   So I agree with both of those.

01:35:33   They would work quite nicely.

01:35:35   But an Apple pencil enabled, like an Apple pencil wireless G charging would be fantastic.

01:35:43   I would love that. That would be really great.

01:35:45   The Apple pencil is the first one that came to mind for me, beyond the AirPods and the

01:35:49   Apple watch and the iPhone is, I mean, the iPad presumably will gain wireless charging

01:35:56   because why not? They've got the room. I think that'll happen. And, but the pencil, right,

01:36:01   charging it is so ungainly now that I think that that's a natural too and the

01:36:06   mouse the charging is really bad too because you got to flip it over so I

01:36:10   think those are those are two examples I assume somebody makes a Qi mouse pad

01:36:17   right yeah I was thinking about that and I came to is it's kind of at that point

01:36:24   you may as well just have a USB mouse but like sure if you want to have your

01:36:29   mousepad plugged into the wall or your computer and then your wireless mouse on top of it

01:36:33   then go for it. I'm sure there's a thing. Or you know you could just get one of those

01:36:38   IKEA things and like because IKEA, okay so IKEA have a vast selection of products already

01:36:46   available with Qi charging built into them but you can also just straight up buy a wireless

01:36:54   charging unit that you can bury into a desk. They just sell the little units or pads that

01:37:02   you can just screw a hole into, like a large hole into a desk and just drop one in. That's

01:37:07   where you can buy some of that stuff by the way if you are interested in playing around

01:37:10   with it. They make a selection of products already.

01:37:14   And the last question comes from Kian and Kian wants to know what are our thoughts on

01:37:18   the current state of the iPhone SE? Do we think that Apple will keep it around the 6s

01:37:24   revise it in the spring or kill it off? What do you think Jason?

01:37:27   um if I had to predict I would say the iPhone SE will get an update next spring

01:37:35   and it will be with iPhone 8 bits that's my guess that's my guess is that the same

01:37:45   uh well that's that's the question I think the easiest thing to do maybe it's iPhone 7 bits and

01:37:51   and not 8 bits, but like relatively recent iPhone,

01:37:54   because then they're gonna wanna keep it around

01:37:55   for a couple of years.

01:37:57   I think they may keep it the same.

01:37:58   It wouldn't shock me if they tried to do a new design,

01:38:01   but the easiest thing to do is just to keep that design.

01:38:03   And the fact is the new iPhone looks more like the SE

01:38:08   than the last iPhones did.

01:38:11   So in terms of metal band,

01:38:14   and so, yeah, I think it's most likely to look like a new

01:38:20   likely to look the same and I would not be surprised if there was an update in

01:38:24   the spring just to bring it up to modern standards and keep it alive because I

01:38:30   think they found that it's a successful part of the product mix down at the low

01:38:34   end and that there's an audience for people who want the small phone and so

01:38:38   why not. If you would like to send in your questions for the end of the show

01:38:43   where we talk about the we try and clarify things for you and answer your

01:38:47   questions about technology as much as we can just send in a tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade

01:38:54   just tweet that into the ether or you can send it to us it doesn't matter either way

01:38:58   we get them all and also if you want to send in a question for me to ask Jason at the start

01:39:03   of the show #SnellTalk for that. I want to once again thank our three sponsors for this

01:39:08   week that is Squarespace, Balance and Incapsular. If you'd like to find Jason's work online

01:39:14   I'm going to give you a few places to go. Go to SixColors.com for Jason's work on writing

01:39:18   along with his help from the wonderful Dan Moran. Poor Dan. I know it's not how he said

01:39:26   that, but I like saying it that way. I know that his name is Dan Moran, but I feel like

01:39:31   Dan Moran is like his Hollywood name that I like to give him because he's a big time

01:39:37   published author now. So that's his stage name, Dan Moran.

01:39:41   By Dan's book, yeah.

01:39:42   Yep, you should go do that. The Caledonian Gambit is the name of Dan's book. If you are looking to

01:39:48   find it, you can do that. That is the Googleable information you will require. You could also go

01:39:54   to the incomparable.com for Jason's podcasts. And of course, Jason hosts a vast selection of

01:40:00   shows at relay.fm as well. You can go to find download and you can go find free agents and

01:40:07   and

01:40:29   on the internet.

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