Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► I got the episode number right.

00:00:01 ◼   ► I'm gonna get the person right.

00:00:03 ◼   ► I'm gonna do it correctly.

00:00:04 ◼   ► - You haven't started talking yet.

00:00:05 ◼   ► How do you know you got it right?

00:00:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, you don't know.

00:00:08 ◼   ► You might get it really wrong now.

00:00:09 ◼   ► You're gonna get all up in your head about it.

00:00:11 ◼   ► - Now you're gonna get it wrong for sure.

00:00:13 ◼   ► - Again. - You're gonna say 286.

00:00:15 ◼   ► Think of 286. - Stop.

00:00:16 ◼   ► - While you're saying 285.

00:00:17 ◼   ► - Think of 286 and you're joined by Jason and John.

00:00:21 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:28 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Connected episode 285.

00:00:32 ◼   ► It is made possible this week by our sponsors,

00:00:34 ◼   ► Pingdom, Direct Mail, and Indeed.

00:00:37 ◼   ► My name is Stephen Hackett,

00:00:38 ◼   ► and I am joined by Mr. Myke Hurley.

00:00:40 ◼   ► - I'm so proud of you.

00:00:41 ◼   ► You did it. - Thank you.

00:00:42 ◼   ► - Well, this far, you got this far.

00:00:44 ◼   ► - And we're joined by Federico Vittucci.

00:00:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm locked inside.

00:00:47 ◼   ► I'm at home, have been at home for a few days.

00:00:49 ◼   ► - Yep, self-quarantine.

00:00:51 ◼   ► Well, actually. - Well, not self.

00:00:52 ◼   ► - You're not in self-quarantine, are you?

00:00:54 ◼   ► You're in full on, you're not allowed to leave your house.

00:00:56 ◼   ► - Government imposed. - The government said so.

00:00:58 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. It's not really self-imposed at that point, is it?

00:01:01 ◼   ► Well, I was, I was like before the Thailand government told us that the entire country

00:01:08 ◼   ► was a, was on lockdown. We were, my girlfriend and I were already trying to stay at home

00:01:14 ◼   ► as much as possible, like as a precaution, but now it's official so we have to, we can

00:01:18 ◼   ► go out for like the daily essentials. Like if you need to go buy groceries or if you

00:01:26 ◼   ► need to go to work, which we don't because we work from home, or if you have an emergency.

00:01:31 ◼   ► You can walk the dog outside but it's a short walk and try to avoid people basically and

00:01:38 ◼   ► everything else is pretty much forbidden right now.

00:01:41 ◼   ► Are people avoiding each other? Like do people cross the street and stuff like that?

00:01:45 ◼   ► Yeah, you can tell.

00:01:46 ◼   ► That's good though, that's what you want.

00:01:49 ◼   ► We were able to go to the grocery store yesterday and obviously everybody was wearing face masks

00:01:56 ◼   ► which we try to buy, but basically every pharmacy or online store is sold out at the moment?

00:02:02 ◼   ► It doesn't help you, right? You know that, right? Like, well, that's the thinking. It's

00:02:06 ◼   ► for people who are sick, it's not for people that are healthy.

00:02:08 ◼   ► Sort of peer pressure situation, right?

00:02:11 ◼   ► I would, in your situation, I would try and buy one too, right? But like, I don't think

00:02:17 ◼   ► it's worth panicking if you can't. But like, if everyone around you is wearing one, you

00:02:22 ◼   ► would feel like you were the sick person if you were.

00:02:25 ◼   ► Exactly. So yesterday I went to the grocery store and everybody was wearing them, both

00:02:30 ◼   ► the staff and the, you know, the, the customers. And I was not because I, I don't have one

00:02:36 ◼   ► and I felt so out of place. It was like this eerie situation of everybody wearing face

00:02:40 ◼   ► masks and I wasn't. And so I was like, nope. The next time I go, I got to make sure that

00:02:46 ◼   ► I have one because I felt so out of place. Do you have anything at home that you could

00:02:50 ◼   ► like fashion into one, you know, like so you could, it looks like you're pretending.

00:02:54 ◼   ► Without like using a scarf or something, but I'm not sure. So in any case, we're at home

00:03:01 ◼   ► and we're fine, we're just, you know, lots of time to clean the house and reorganize

00:03:07 ◼   ► my shortcuts or play video games, get some writing done, you know, all the, you know,

00:03:12 ◼   ► got plenty of time here, so.

00:03:13 ◼   ► I would like to at this point make my official petition to Nintendo to release the Animal

00:03:20 ◼   ► Crossing early. Animal Crossing is due out on the 20th, they should release it now so

00:03:25 ◼   ► we can all play it and then our quarantine is fine. That's just my official petition

00:03:30 ◼   ► at this stage.

00:03:31 ◼   ► I agree with that. Steven, what do you think of the Animal Crossing?

00:03:34 ◼   ► I'm so pumped.

00:03:35 ◼   ► Yeah. What are you going to do first in Animal Crossing?

00:03:38 ◼   ► I think it's probably going to be peaceful because you guys will be busy and I won't

00:03:41 ◼   ► any text messages to answer. So I'm gonna enjoy some relaxing time.

00:03:45 ◼   ► No, but like, when you get Animal Crossing, because you know all about it, what will be

00:03:50 ◼   ► the first thing that you do in Animal Crossing?

00:03:52 ◼   ► Well, honestly, I'm probably just gonna try to catch them all.

00:03:55 ◼   ► Ah, right, okay.

00:03:57 ◼   ► All the bugs, because you can catch bugs, like butterflies and fish.

00:04:02 ◼   ► Well, make sure you open a radar, because that's the only way you can report the bugs.

00:04:06 ◼   ► Wow.

00:04:07 ◼   ► Oh, wow.

00:04:08 ◼   ► Wow.

00:04:09 ◼   ► That is not even a dad joke anymore. That's just a sad nerd joke.

00:04:14 ◼   ► It's a Steven joke.

00:04:15 ◼   ► stevensjokes.com

00:04:17 ◼   ► I'm not buying any more domains.

00:04:19 ◼   ► .com

00:04:21 ◼   ► Federico, I think I told you this, my mom called me to check onto you.

00:04:24 ◼   ► So you have lots of people concerned.

00:04:27 ◼   ► And we're glad that you're okay and we hope that it turns around.

00:04:30 ◼   ► I was telling my wife the other night that if it comes to that here,

00:04:34 ◼   ► where people have to stay at home and work from home,

00:04:37 ◼   ► that's really no difference for me.

00:04:39 ◼   ► I know will be like quote working from home and I'll just be out here making podcast keeping the podcast empire running

00:04:45 ◼   ► It's a great time to have signed a lease on a studio space. Oh my just perfect time

00:04:51 ◼   ► To have done that just whenever one's supposed to stay at home. So so going great. Oh, yeah

00:04:59 ◼   ► Well, look, let's cheer everybody up and talk about the home pod. Oh

00:05:02 ◼   ► Is that your definition of cheering everybody up? Okay?

00:05:06 ◼   ► Pandemic or the HomePod like the HomePod is not great, but it's better than a pandemic. Can we agree on that? Sure

00:05:11 ◼   ► Yes, I'll go with that. So we've been speaking about

00:05:14 ◼   ► use of HomePod and

00:05:17 ◼   ► Siri and voice assistants in multilingual homes

00:05:21 ◼   ► And we have this really interesting email from Eric who wrote in

00:05:24 ◼   ► Saying that they live in Belgium where Dutch and French are both spoken

00:05:29 ◼   ► but they speak English at work and they use English on Eric uses English and all of their devices and

00:05:36 ◼   ► I think he is confirming what we sort of thought is that English, he says English

00:05:41 ◼   ► Siri seems to be triggered by French easily thinking that maybe you know Siri

00:05:48 ◼   ► in different languages is tuned for different things and it doesn't tune out

00:05:52 ◼   ► you know the English or the French phrase if it's set in another

00:05:56 ◼   ► language. I think it's what we were saying but it's just interesting that it

00:05:59 ◼   ► seems to be an issue other places as well. It's good to get more anecdotal

00:06:04 ◼   ► evidence of this thing. But like I think that is it, right? Like it is while Siri is accidentally

00:06:11 ◼   ► triggered a lot everywhere, it may have been particularly worse for Federico because it

00:06:17 ◼   ► couldn't understand, like it was getting triggered by words it wasn't trying to filter out, I

00:06:22 ◼   ► guess.

00:06:23 ◼   ► But also lots of listeners wrote in, they sent me messages and tweets saying that, as

00:06:28 ◼   ► As I mentioned last week, also, their series was being accidentally triggered by a dog's

00:06:35 ◼   ► name or a partner's name at home. So the anecdotal evidence is sort of mounting up over here,

00:06:44 ◼   ► especially with dog names. So that's a really fascinating data point. It's really surprising

00:06:50 ◼   ► to me that Apple got this wrong. Like, we live in a multilingual world and I know that

00:06:55 ◼   ► the vast majority of Americans don't speak multiple languages, but in Europe lots of people do.

00:07:01 ◼   ► And I think that's... The argument that could be made was like, well, they didn't release it in

00:07:05 ◼   ► Italy, but that's then also saying that there aren't people in America that speak Italian at

00:07:10 ◼   ► home. Right, it's just... Right? It seems, I don't know, but it seems to be like that sort of like

00:07:14 ◼   ► American bias that we've mentioned many times on the show before. Like, it's not like the rest of

00:07:21 ◼   ► of the world is like California where most people only speak English. Like a lot of people

00:07:25 ◼   ► speak multiple languages at home and maybe watch, I don't know, maybe watch TV shows

00:07:30 ◼   ► in different languages that is not English. So it's very surprising to me, honestly, the

00:07:36 ◼   ► more the more I get tweets from people and messages from people about this, I'm really

00:07:41 ◼   ► surprised. Also, it's the one week update that Siri has been off on our home pods. Oh,

00:07:48 ◼   ► We're fine, we're fine. So very famously Sylvia listened to the episode last week, she was very pleased.

00:07:54 ◼   ► She mentioned...

00:07:55 ◼   ► Finally a good episode, I think was her tweet.

00:07:58 ◼   ► Come on Sylvia, throw us a bone here, you know? There must have been at least one good one.

00:08:03 ◼   ► No, she will not throw any bone.

00:08:05 ◼   ► No? Okay.

00:08:07 ◼   ► It's been a week and we are very happy. No more accidental activations here.

00:08:14 ◼   ► We've been using the HomePods as music speakers.

00:08:17 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:08:17 ◼   ► We haven't really noticed the absence of Siri.

00:08:21 ◼   ► I've been using it on my phone and it's okay.

00:08:24 ◼   ► - I do want to add before we move on

00:08:25 ◼   ► that Eric is using the HomePod in Belgium

00:08:28 ◼   ► and it doesn't seem to be sold there.

00:08:30 ◼   ► So it's an imported HomePod like yours is.

00:08:32 ◼   ► And I want to hear from somebody who, you know,

00:08:35 ◼   ► maybe lives in a supported country.

00:08:36 ◼   ► Maybe that's, I don't know.

00:08:38 ◼   ► I feel like it's just that Siri's bad.

00:08:40 ◼   ► That doesn't really matter if it's imported or not.

00:08:42 ◼   ► But if you have this issue, please let us know.

00:08:44 ◼   ► Real quick, before we leave, follow up,

00:08:46 ◼   ► I just want to point people to stephensmerch.com.

00:08:50 ◼   ► - Dot com.

00:08:51 ◼   ► - Dot com.

00:08:52 ◼   ► - It's one week to go,

00:08:53 ◼   ► and those T-shirts will be gone forever.

00:08:55 ◼   ► Seven days left from this recording.

00:08:57 ◼   ► So if you're listening to the next episode,

00:08:59 ◼   ► you've already missed the window.

00:09:01 ◼   ► Also, you're in the future, so congratulations

00:09:04 ◼   ► for making it another week.

00:09:05 ◼   ► But I'd love if people go check that out.

00:09:07 ◼   ► All right, Myke, I had a very strange morning.

00:09:10 ◼   ► I was, you know, living my life, doing my things, and suddenly I get a bunch of emails

00:09:16 ◼   ► that someone in London is logging into a bunch of Relay FM Twitter accounts.

00:09:21 ◼   ► I assume it was you and that we haven't been hacked.

00:09:24 ◼   ► I just am now asking you about this, so I guess if we've been taken over it's too late.

00:09:29 ◼   ► What's going on, buddy?

00:09:30 ◼   ► So I was woken up this morning with no alarm.

00:09:33 ◼   ► My alarm didn't go off this morning because my iPhone was just stuck on the Apple logo

00:09:38 ◼   ► screen.

00:09:39 ◼   ► That was why that was just my phone this morning.

00:09:42 ◼   ► I knew what to do then, right?

00:09:47 ◼   ► You reset the phone, you do the button thing,

00:09:49 ◼   ► the up, down, hold, right?

00:09:51 ◼   ► I did that three times, did not work.

00:09:55 ◼   ► It would not come back to life.

00:09:57 ◼   ► Like, I would even watch the phone reboot,

00:10:00 ◼   ► like it would have the Apple logo there for a while,

00:10:02 ◼   ► and then it would redo it again, right?

00:10:04 ◼   ► Like the screen would go black for a second,

00:10:06 ◼   ► so it was like trying to bring itself back to life.

00:10:09 ◼   ► Side note, it's crazy that Apple doesn't have the top Google search result for resetting iPhones.

00:10:14 ◼   ► Is it iMore?

00:10:15 ◼   ► It's everyone else except them, right? Like, depending on the words that you use,

00:10:20 ◼   ► sometimes they're like at the bottom of the first page. So that just seems wild to me that they

00:10:25 ◼   ► haven't worked that out somehow. But so time for recovery mode was my morning. So I plugged my

00:10:33 ◼   ► iPhone into my Mac. iTunes first got stuck downloading an iOS update. It said zero seconds

00:10:40 ◼   ► remaining for a while so then I had to quit iTunes. As soon as I quit iTunes, the update

00:10:45 ◼   ► that iTunes needed to do then completed, which was weird, although it jumped to two minutes

00:10:52 ◼   ► before completing and then downloaded. I plugged it in and it said try and do an update. I

00:10:58 ◼   ► tried to do the update and I was just given the fun error of your iPhone cannot be updated,

00:11:02 ◼   ► must restore to factory settings. So I did the restore back to the Apple logo,

00:11:07 ◼   ► waited for 20 minutes, nothing happened, my Mac wasn't doing anything, nothing was

00:11:12 ◼   ► happening, so I restored again. Then I'd never heard of activation lock before

00:11:17 ◼   ► but that's a clever feature where if you have activation lock on then somebody

00:11:23 ◼   ► else can't just set up your iPhone, it needs your iCloud information so that's

00:11:27 ◼   ► cool I guess. So yeah, I did two restores then the phone came to life. I didn't have

00:11:35 ◼   ► another iPhone to do the quick setup feature because the iPhone was my iPhone. So I used

00:11:41 ◼   ► my iPad, you know, you do the quick like when you use the camera and it has that little

00:11:45 ◼   ► Apple watch like orb thing, you know? So I did that. It was funny because it then turned

00:11:50 ◼   ► assistive touch on on my iPhone because I have it on on my iPad. I got the option to

00:11:55 ◼   ► do an iCloud restore. So I did that, but I still had to set everything up, right? So

00:11:59 ◼   ► Apple Pay, Face ID, all that stuff. And then iCloud restore began and it's been restoring

00:12:05 ◼   ► all day. And I hate it because I'm not prepared for this, right? Like just an iCloud restore

00:12:11 ◼   ► in your life is frustrating when it's not new phone time because you're not ready for

00:12:16 ◼   ► it. So like, I have apps that have lost their data. I have apps that need that had downloaded

00:12:21 ◼   ► stuff that needs to be redownloaded. Everything's getting messed up. I have to log back into

00:12:25 ◼   ► everything back into one parser, back into all my email accounts, back into my calendar.

00:12:30 ◼   ► Like I have to log back into everything. And what I hate most about all this kind of stuff

00:12:35 ◼   ► is that you don't realize what's gone wrong on your phone until you encounter it when

00:12:40 ◼   ► you're trying to use it. And I hate the stuff like why does Apple music not just redownload

00:12:46 ◼   ► my music. Why do I have to manually re-download music again? Anyway, I hate it. I'm now having

00:12:52 ◼   ► to reset preferences for apps because now apps are doing things I don't want them to

00:12:55 ◼   ► do. And I have no idea why this happened because I don't have, uh, I do manual updates. Like

00:13:02 ◼   ► I don't know why this happened. So that was my morning. My phone blew up.

00:13:06 ◼   ► And you don't know why. That's the worst part.

00:13:09 ◼   ► No, I have no idea. I absolutely no idea. The only thing that I knew was going on was

00:13:14 ◼   ► was that my Apple Watch was scheduled for an update.

00:13:17 ◼   ► But that shouldn't basically,

00:13:19 ◼   ► and I know everybody loves this, brick my phone.

00:13:21 ◼   ► The thing is, I know this isn't the world's biggest problem

00:13:23 ◼   ► or whatever, but if I was catching a flight today,

00:13:28 ◼   ► I just wouldn't have woke up.

00:13:30 ◼   ► - What you need is a little baby face mask for your phone.

00:13:34 ◼   ► - To stop the bugs, stop the viruses?

00:13:36 ◼   ► Yeah, you're probably right.

00:13:37 ◼   ► But anyway, I don't really have anything to say

00:13:39 ◼   ► other than one, I hated that this happened,

00:13:41 ◼   ► and two, I really wish the iCloud restore was better.

00:13:43 ◼   ► Yeah, that's really upsetting because now like part of you is never going to trust that

00:13:47 ◼   ► phone again.

00:13:48 ◼   ► No, I mean, well, at the moment I don't trust it because like I know stuff's not signed

00:13:52 ◼   ► in properly, right?

00:13:54 ◼   ► So like what data that I need to have access to will I not have access to because I wasn't

00:14:00 ◼   ► thinking about it, you know?

00:14:01 ◼   ► Well, even beyond that, like, is it going to randomly do this again?

00:14:05 ◼   ► Like, exactly.

00:14:06 ◼   ► Like so now the next time I need to, like, I've like, oh, you must be up at this time

00:14:10 ◼   ► or something terrible is going to happen.

00:14:13 ◼   ► I'm going to have this in the back of my head now.

00:14:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm so excited about all my banking apps.

00:14:18 ◼   ► I sign back into all of those, which is like the worst thing in the world.

00:14:22 ◼   ► Like resigning back into banking apps.

00:14:25 ◼   ► It's terrible.

00:14:26 ◼   ► They ask you for like a PIN code and all that sort of like. Yeah.

00:14:30 ◼   ► Which are usually generated by your previous device.

00:14:34 ◼   ► Well, but I don't have one.

00:14:36 ◼   ► It's this one.

00:14:37 ◼   ► It's been a was a fun and unexpected morning for me.

00:14:41 ◼   ► That is terrible.

00:14:43 ◼   ► is my conclusion.

00:14:45 ◼   ► Yes.

00:14:45 ◼   ► - Yep, I have nothing to say on it except I just hated it

00:14:48 ◼   ► and I just had to share it somewhere so I told you.

00:14:50 ◼   ► - Thank you for sharing that with us.

00:14:53 ◼   ► - We have a lot to get into this week.

00:14:55 ◼   ► The rumor wars are heating up,

00:14:57 ◼   ► but we're gonna take a break

00:14:58 ◼   ► and talk about our first sponsor.

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00:16:14 ◼   ► Our thanks to Pingdom from SolarWinds

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00:16:19 ◼   ► Right, so like we said, it is rumor war.

00:16:22 ◼   ► Nine to five Mac and Mac rumors have people in the field.

00:16:25 ◼   ► - Bowing it out. - They've got Mac books.

00:16:27 ◼   ► They're blogging.

00:16:29 ◼   ► They're hitting each other with iPads.

00:16:31 ◼   ► It's very messy.

00:16:32 ◼   ► It seems that there is some,

00:16:34 ◼   ► at least one early version of iOS 14 floating around,

00:16:37 ◼   ► somehow obtained a bill from December.

00:16:40 ◼   ► There's a lot of this stuff.

00:16:43 ◼   ► We can't possibly cover all of it today in depth.

00:16:46 ◼   ► We're going to talk about kind of what's been going on

00:16:48 ◼   ► the last couple of days, and there's some other topics

00:16:50 ◼   ► that we're going to get to more in coming episodes.

00:16:54 ◼   ► I think we all have a lot to say,

00:16:55 ◼   ► for instance, about cursor support on iPad OS.

00:16:58 ◼   ► We will get to that, just not today.

00:17:00 ◼   ► We're going to kind of deal with what's the newest stuff

00:17:02 ◼   ► as we're recording this on March 11th.

00:17:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause there's probably still,

00:17:06 ◼   ► may potentially still more to come, right?

00:17:08 ◼   ► I think first off, let's talk about iMessage.

00:17:10 ◼   ► So this is a super interesting one. This one came from MacRumors.

00:17:13 ◼   ► Effectively, it seems like, again, we will just take it presumed that all of this stuff is coming to iOS 14

00:17:21 ◼   ► so we don't have to put like presupposing on every single thing, right?

00:17:25 ◼   ► It's like, maybe if such and such, I don't know, just assume we are aware that it might not ship.

00:17:31 ◼   ► For the time being, we will assume that all of this is going to be in iOS 14.

00:17:36 ◼   ► So it looks like Apple is trying to turn iMessage groups into a much more useful tool,

00:17:43 ◼   ► which is great. And this is all stuff that I have wanted for iMessage groups. So @mentions

00:17:48 ◼   ► and group threads, which would be great. So I could be like @federico and he would get a

00:17:52 ◼   ► notification, which would mean that they may be beefing up the way that notifications or

00:17:56 ◼   ► do not disturb works for group threads and iMessage, because then it might be more Slack

00:18:01 ◼   ► like in that you could say you know only alert me to this thread if my name is mentioned which would

00:18:07 ◼   ► be great i would love that uh while you're at it apple give me a way to change the way that i'm

00:18:13 ◼   ► alerted for when people use tapback stuff don't need push notifications for every thumb up on a

00:18:19 ◼   ► message don't need them don't need that it's not necessary but so anyway the ability to retract

00:18:25 ◼   ► messages with UI showing a message has been retracted. This is very interesting.

00:18:31 ◼   ► Not sure why particularly they would add this but it's a guess it's a cool

00:18:36 ◼   ► feature to have. Typing indicators inside of group threads I would like this a lot

00:18:41 ◼   ► so you get this at the moment right where you get like the bouncing three

00:18:44 ◼   ► dots of doom right when you're waiting for a message to come in. Oh it's the

00:18:47 ◼   ► worst one then they go away? Oh yeah. Oh no they're rethinking it. This is a big

00:18:52 ◼   ► thing for the kids Steven. Oh I know! I hang out with youth. Oh. Do you? I see them. Sometimes.

00:19:00 ◼   ► Ok that's good. So this would be I guess maybe Steven's icon would pop up and there would

00:19:05 ◼   ► be a typing indicator next to it. Maybe they will have a many people, several people are

00:19:09 ◼   ► typing which is one of my favourite Slack things by the way. Several people are typing.

00:19:13 ◼   ► It's just like a very good, it's very good. I think that's the name of their company blog

00:19:17 ◼   ► as well. It is very clever. Yeah. And then this is a weird one enhancements to the slash

00:19:24 ◼   ► me command. Steven is the resident old man. Could you explain what that is to the youth

00:19:29 ◼   ► listening? Yes. So if you did, if you're in messages on the Mac and you type forward slash

00:19:35 ◼   ► me with no space and then type creates notifications for Myke, then it goes in the thread as you

00:19:43 ◼   ► know, Steven Hackett creates notifications for Myke. You just did. You just did that.

00:19:47 ◼   ► I did. And it shows up in our group thread with Federico and John. And it's not like

00:19:52 ◼   ► I sent the message. It's kind of in line with the time. It's a holdover. And I want to talk

00:19:57 ◼   ► about this in a second from the I chat days, but it never made it to the iOS versions of

00:20:01 ◼   ► messages. So you can do this on the Mac, but you can't send them from iOS.

00:20:07 ◼   ► So I think that's that's kind of it from the report. But this is all stuff that I would

00:20:12 ◼   ► I think all of us would love to see. Making group threads more powerful and useful would

00:20:19 ◼   ► be great. I would greatly love that because I have a couple of threads that I use every

00:20:24 ◼   ► single day and they can get a bit messy.

00:20:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, these features are like the absolute basics to make sure that iMessage

00:20:33 ◼   ► can live on the same, like, on the same playing field as, you know, WhatsApp or Telegram or

00:20:41 ◼   ► Messenger, all these features are the very basics for any group, modern group conversation.

00:20:47 ◼   ► And the fact that iMessage, it got apps and stickers and a bunch of enhancements.

00:20:53 ◼   ► The new search, for example, in iMessage, that lets you find all images and links and

00:20:58 ◼   ► documents, that's amazing, and I use it very frequently.

00:21:01 ◼   ► But in terms of the actual transcript, the actual conversation and controls around messages,

00:21:08 ◼   ► leaves a lot to be desired still, especially when you compare it like, I'm on a bunch of

00:21:13 ◼   ► WhatsApp groups and the kinds of controls that you get, like the ability to delete messages and

00:21:18 ◼   ► to have a thing that says this message was deleted. Those are the very basics and

00:21:23 ◼   ► notification settings, mute settings, it needs to offer more because competing apps are doing more,

00:21:32 ◼   ► people are flocking to those messaging apps and I don't think it's something that Apple wants.

00:21:37 ◼   ► I think Apple, especially because iMessage is so popular with the kids,

00:21:41 ◼   ► I think they need to make sure that those kids, and eventually when they grow up,

00:21:46 ◼   ► they keep using iMessage because it's more secure, because Apple has control and all.

00:21:52 ◼   ► Especially in a world where there may be options for new default apps.

00:21:58 ◼   ► It might be that Apple might feel like, and I hope they would,

00:22:02 ◼   ► that they have to actually compete more, that they don't just get to be the messaging app

00:22:07 ◼   ► because they are the built-in messaging app. That if people could then choose, say, WhatsApp

00:22:13 ◼   ► to be their default messaging app or whatever, that they might have to do a little bit more,

00:22:17 ◼   ► you know, to actually beef up the application. That's a very good point, yes, absolutely.

00:22:23 ◼   ► Like I expect to see that kind of thing, like maybe not so much in Messenger but in a lot

00:22:27 ◼   ► of other apps over time, I expect to see that Apple will do more feature parity than they've

00:22:31 ◼   ► done before because they want people to continue using their applications but

00:22:36 ◼   ► there will be less of a less of a like a requirement to do so like people won't

00:22:42 ◼   ► won't have to anymore and I think that will make a change. Looking at you mail

00:22:48 ◼   ► team. I mean mail is the actual real poster child for this right it's like

00:22:54 ◼   ► people like mail because of it's built into the system it runs well it looks

00:22:58 ◼   ► nice and stuff, but it is incredibly under-powered compared to other types of mail applications.

00:23:05 ◼   ► And whether you're an email purist like Casey List or not, it's still something that people

00:23:09 ◼   ► want to see some more of these features coming in.

00:23:11 ◼   ► I did want to talk about Messages, Roots, just for a second, because even now, before

00:23:16 ◼   ► they add anything else to it, there are a bunch of features of iMessage that aren't

00:23:21 ◼   ► on the Mac, that are just on iOS and iPadOS.

00:23:25 ◼   ► Mostly it's silly stuff like the effects and that sort of thing.

00:23:28 ◼   ► But it really points out that Messages on the Mac is living inside the dead skin of

00:23:35 ◼   ► iChat.

00:23:36 ◼   ► It moved in and kicked AIM out and now it's reanimated it.

00:23:41 ◼   ► It's a very upsetting metaphor.

00:23:42 ◼   ► That is quite the image, Stephen.

00:23:45 ◼   ► Kept going with that one.

00:23:46 ◼   ► You know what you said about Messages on the Mac serve as much as Messages on iOS.

00:23:52 ◼   ► It goes both ways though, because Messages on the Mac you can use with other chat clients,

00:23:57 ◼   ► So I mean, it's not a great feature, but it's you can you can sign into like aim and stuff,

00:24:02 ◼   ► right on message.

00:24:03 ◼   ► No, that's all gone. That's all been gone for a long time. Well, not not on my version

00:24:07 ◼   ► of Mac OS. Well, aim itself is gone. So you're not signing into anything. Well, you know

00:24:11 ◼   ► what I'm saying? I Google Talk or whatever. Yeah, that's gone now to on. Okay, you got

00:24:17 ◼   ► on your Mac, man. It's I don't wanna well, especially still running snow leopard over

00:24:22 ◼   ► Leave me alone.

00:24:23 ◼   ► And it's just, it's time, I mean, messages is so important to Apple.

00:24:27 ◼   ► Like one thing we haven't really touched on, but it is related to the default apps thing

00:24:32 ◼   ► is iMessage is a huge reason for iPhone lock-in, right?

00:24:36 ◼   ► A lot of people stay on the iPhone because of iMessage, which is why I think they're

00:24:40 ◼   ► never going to bring it to Android.

00:24:42 ◼   ► It would only make sense to extend that to the Mac, but so far messages is like, like

00:24:46 ◼   ► I said, it's like some sort of zombie inside of iChat controlling its arms and strings.

00:24:50 ◼   ► And it would make sense to me if they're going to bring new features to do it all at once.

00:24:56 ◼   ► And maybe that means that Mac, the Mac app goes catalyst.

00:25:00 ◼   ► And so it really is the same application.

00:25:02 ◼   ► And that would be a bummer in some ways because the Mac app does do some things except nice

00:25:07 ◼   ► multi windows support.

00:25:08 ◼   ► You can address it with Apple script, it has some cool stuff that maybe we wouldn't get

00:25:12 ◼   ► with catalyst.

00:25:13 ◼   ► But I think if they're going to make a big features move with messages, I really hope

00:25:18 ◼   ► that we see it across all their platforms and not just the iPhone and iPad.

00:25:22 ◼   ► They would be creating more work for themselves if they didn't.

00:25:25 ◼   ► It just feels like at a certain point it's easier for all of these applications to come

00:25:29 ◼   ► together because they're just doubling up the work, surely.

00:25:34 ◼   ► We haven't seen Apple...

00:25:36 ◼   ► They've launched some Catalyst apps, but they haven't replaced any apps with Catalyst.

00:25:40 ◼   ► I mean, you could kind of argue that Podcast is, because it's Catalyst and that was a section

00:25:44 ◼   ► of iTunes, music and TV are based on the old iTunes thing.

00:25:48 ◼   ► So they haven't really replaced a system app with a catalyst version and I would argue

00:25:53 ◼   ► that messages would probably be a pretty good first candidate if all this other work is

00:25:58 ◼   ► going on.

00:26:00 ◼   ► Pencil kit rumors.

00:26:01 ◼   ► So there's a pencil kit is the software underlying the Apple pencil on the iPad.

00:26:08 ◼   ► There is...

00:26:09 ◼   ► Oh, underlining.

00:26:10 ◼   ► Sure.

00:26:11 ◼   ► It's good.

00:26:12 ◼   ► It's like a...

00:26:13 ◼   ► Oh.

00:26:14 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I didn't mean that but that's funny.

00:26:17 ◼   ► A new feature that allows for OCR recognition of handwritten text in text fields.

00:26:24 ◼   ► So in theory, this also came from MacRumors, that you would be able to use an Apple pencil

00:26:32 ◼   ► and just draw something out and the system will convert it into text which you could then send to somebody.

00:26:38 ◼   ► It seems like this could be available anywhere that you can use text input, but that there

00:26:45 ◼   ► would also be functionality inside of Pencilkit for third-party developers to integrate into

00:26:50 ◼   ► their app somehow.

00:26:51 ◼   ► That part is a little unclear for me.

00:26:53 ◼   ► If you can do it anywhere there's text, why does there also need to be a third-party tool?

00:26:58 ◼   ► But maybe that would be for other uses of it.

00:27:01 ◼   ► I don't know, but that you'd be able to turn handwriting into text more easily, which would

00:27:07 ◼   ► be lovely.

00:27:08 ◼   ► a really interesting feature to add now, but it's something that I have wanted in the past,

00:27:14 ◼   ► so I think that would be really great. I mean, so right now developers can use the Pencilkit API

00:27:19 ◼   ► to, like, if they want to offer like a drawing screen and they can just basically use the same

00:27:26 ◼   ► annotation UI that you see in Apple Notes or in Markup, for example, with the standard, like,

00:27:32 ◼   ► blank page and the palette of tools and colors at the bottom. So it wouldn't surprise me if

00:27:38 ◼   ► if it becomes like a new, like different PencilKit API

00:27:40 ◼   ► where a text field can either be typed into the keyboard

00:27:44 ◼   ► or the software keyboard, or if you have a pencil,

00:27:46 ◼   ► it automatically does its own OCR thing.

00:27:49 ◼   ► Right now, there is Pencil OCR support in Notes,

00:27:55 ◼   ► but in the sense that when you hand write in Apple Notes,

00:27:59 ◼   ► that handwritten text becomes searchable

00:28:04 ◼   ► after a few seconds,

00:28:05 ◼   ► with... Yeah, results can be questionable, I think.

00:28:10 ◼   ► Yeah, searchable OCR and taking your handwriting and turning it into text

00:28:15 ◼   ► are two very different problems, right?

00:28:17 ◼   ► There are two very different problems.

00:28:18 ◼   ► There's some shared tech, of course, under the hood.

00:28:23 ◼   ► Like, you still got to recognize whatever the user just wrote with a pencil.

00:28:29 ◼   ► But in one case, you got to make it searchable.

00:28:31 ◼   ► the other you gotta actually insert it as text into a field.

00:28:35 ◼   ► I mean like your error rate is different there, right? Like you can be way less accurate if

00:28:43 ◼   ► people are searching text because you've only got to match X percentage of words for somebody

00:28:48 ◼   ► to be able to get what they're looking for, but if you are saying that you're going to

00:28:51 ◼   ► take handwriting and turn it into text, your error rate has to be way different, like way

00:28:56 ◼   ► less.

00:28:57 ◼   ► But Steven...

00:28:58 ◼   ► Right, and that's a big, big thing.

00:28:59 ◼   ► you Stephen, wasn't this a feature of the Newton before?

00:29:06 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean that was the idea of the Newton. You would use handwriting for input and it would turn

00:29:10 ◼   ► your handwriting into text, so it would do all this stuff. To mix results, I would point people to

00:29:16 ◼   ► my podcast Flashback, episode one, where we talked about the Newton.

00:29:20 ◼   ► stephensmerch.com

00:29:22 ◼   ► But also Flashback episode one.

00:29:24 ◼   ► Oh, sorry, sorry.

00:29:25 ◼   ► Listen to it while wearing your new shirt.

00:29:28 ◼   ► Yeah. And it's not just the Newton, like Windows pin based PC stuff has been around forever. Again,

00:29:35 ◼   ► I'm not saying it's good or bad, but this is a thing that's been in the world. Apple is not

00:29:40 ◼   ► inventing this, but boy, it would be cool to be able to use your Apple pencil anywhere there's

00:29:45 ◼   ► text and it convert it for you. It's not necessarily for me, I find typing much faster than writing,

00:29:50 ◼   ► but I know a lot of people I think would like to use this or just to make things like note taking

00:29:56 ◼   ► more useful down the road. We're like, yeah, I hand wrote this, but now I actually need

00:30:00 ◼   ► text out of it to email it to somebody like all that stuff. This unlocks when you have

00:30:06 ◼   ► a tool like this. And if Apple does it in pencil kit, third party developers can put

00:30:10 ◼   ► it in their own app. So you could see a world where you can use this in GoodNotes or PDF

00:30:14 ◼   ► pen or a bunch of those other types of apps, not just Apple Notes, which I think would

00:30:19 ◼   ► be really key for this unlocking sort of a new experience for a lot of people. And now

00:30:24 ◼   ► every iPad supports the pencil, right? Even the mini? Is that right?

00:30:27 ◼   ► Yes, they all do, yeah.

00:30:29 ◼   ► They all do the latest ones, and most of them support the Apple Pencil 1, of course,

00:30:33 ◼   ► the Apple Pencil 2 still. iPad Pro only, but still. Basically the same stuff, yeah.

00:30:38 ◼   ► I want to get a new iPad mini with flat sides that works with the Apple Pencil 2.

00:30:45 ◼   ► That's what I want, because that just seems like a fun product.

00:30:48 ◼   ► Yeah, good luck with that.

00:30:50 ◼   ► Why?

00:30:51 ◼   ► I mean, I think it would be cool.

00:30:53 ◼   ► Wait, only last week we were talking about a new iPad Mini with Mini LED.

00:30:57 ◼   ► Yeah, we were.

00:30:58 ◼   ► I know.

00:30:59 ◼   ► I think it would be cool, but the Mini is like the... because it's cheap and at the

00:31:03 ◼   ► bottom of the list, I just don't see it getting that anytime super soon.

00:31:06 ◼   ► Maybe in a couple of years.

00:31:07 ◼   ► Oh, well, I want to see it.

00:31:09 ◼   ► It doesn't mean I need to see it this year.

00:31:11 ◼   ► It'd be like a super sweet reading device.

00:31:15 ◼   ► I would totally get one with the flat sides because I thought about getting an iPad Mini

00:31:19 ◼   ► when they were refreshed last year.

00:31:21 ◼   ► And then I realized, no, it's got,

00:31:22 ◼   ► and I think we actually mentioned this on the show.

00:31:24 ◼   ► Like I said, no, it's got the old design.

00:31:26 ◼   ► I don't want to get an iPad mini.

00:31:27 ◼   ► I want to get, I'm going to use the 11 inch iPad Pro,

00:31:30 ◼   ► like the basic one, like basic storage,

00:31:33 ◼   ► no cellular as my reading device,

00:31:35 ◼   ► because like it's got the modern look

00:31:37 ◼   ► and I don't want to use an iPad mini

00:31:39 ◼   ► that already looks old.

00:31:40 ◼   ► Even if I like, I buy a new iPad mini

00:31:42 ◼   ► and it looks already old to me,

00:31:43 ◼   ► like that feels like a waste of money.

00:31:45 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:31:46 ◼   ► So I absolutely agree with Myke.

00:31:48 ◼   ► I want to see an iPad mini with the flat sides and the pencil support.

00:31:52 ◼   ► Like that would be sweet.

00:31:53 ◼   ► Because I will assume that naturally all of the iPads will get flattened sides

00:31:58 ◼   ► to work with the Apple Pencil 2.

00:32:00 ◼   ► I guess eventually.

00:32:01 ◼   ► As the Pro gets an Apple Pencil 3, whatever that would end up being.

00:32:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:05 ◼   ► But you know, the Apple Pencil 2 is so much of a better product than Apple Pencil 1.

00:32:10 ◼   ► I can't imagine Apple going any other direction with it into the future.

00:32:14 ◼   ► Like we might be a couple of years away from that being in the rest of the line, but history

00:32:19 ◼   ► has shown that Apple will move the iPad Pro features down because it's just on a bit of

00:32:27 ◼   ► a delay, like a couple of year delay.

00:32:29 ◼   ► But every iPad except the mini now works of not only the Apple Pencil, but also a smart

00:32:34 ◼   ► keyboard.

00:32:35 ◼   ► Like it's the thing that they will do, but it just takes its time.

00:32:39 ◼   ► Which is exactly the same as it's been on laptops and desktops, right?

00:32:43 ◼   ► you establish a feature, the feature becomes normal, they come up with new features, so

00:32:48 ◼   ► they move the pro features down the line. It's just how you advance the technology, right? So

00:32:53 ◼   ► I expect it will happen within the next couple of years, but I would be really surprised if

00:32:59 ◼   ► the iPad mini still looks as it looks right now if they put that mini LED screen into it. I would

00:33:05 ◼   ► just be very surprised about that, but we have other rumors later on which could suggest that

00:33:13 ◼   ► Apple won't mind keeping some technology around for a while.

00:33:16 ◼   ► Anything else on pencil kit?

00:33:17 ◼   ► It's doing there's another thing that it's doing where it will do automatic filling of

00:33:22 ◼   ► shapes.

00:33:23 ◼   ► So you could draw a circle and it would automatically fill the circle with a color.

00:33:26 ◼   ► Oh, that'd be cool.

00:33:27 ◼   ► All right.

00:33:28 ◼   ► Let's take our second break.

00:33:30 ◼   ► How does that sound?

00:33:31 ◼   ► Sounds great.

00:33:32 ◼   ► Mm hmm.

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00:34:51 ◼   ► We have some 9 to 5 Mac rumors. Well, we've spoken about I think everything we've got

00:34:57 ◼   ► from Mac rumors that we're going to talk about today. The rest are from 9 to 5 Mac who've

00:35:00 ◼   ► been publishing more this week they kicked it all off. One of them is some

00:35:06 ◼   ► changes to the iOS 14 home screen. Believe it or not that is a thing that

00:35:10 ◼   ► seems like it could actually be happening with the biggest change being

00:35:14 ◼   ► a different way to see your apps with a possibility for listing your

00:35:20 ◼   ► applications in maybe alphabetical order there'll be some sorting options but

00:35:25 ◼   ► this is much more akin to the way that the Android app picker works, or maybe your Apple

00:35:32 ◼   ► Watch or something like that.

00:35:34 ◼   ► I've got the Watch in that list view. It's fantastic.

00:35:37 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, you use it with the ListView?

00:35:39 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, I hate the Honeycomb deal.

00:35:41 ◼   ► Me too.

00:35:42 ◼   ► Huh, interesting. I still use the Honeycomb because I don't really like looking at a list

00:35:47 ◼   ► of apps. I prefer looking at the icons myself, but I think the idea of a home screen on iOS

00:35:55 ◼   ► the iPad potentially is interesting for a bunch of reasons. The first one, 9to5Mac mentions

00:36:01 ◼   ► that you will be able to have multiple sorting options and maybe even serious suggestions.

00:36:07 ◼   ► So the combination of, for example, let me see the apps that I use the most or maybe

00:36:11 ◼   ► the apps that are frequently used and put them at the top of the list and everything

00:36:16 ◼   ► else.

00:36:17 ◼   ► Or new. Newly installed.

00:36:18 ◼   ► newly installed, you would be able to get different visualizations of your apps.

00:36:25 ◼   ► And if you're somebody with a lot of apps installed, like maybe John Voorhees comes

00:36:29 ◼   ► to mind, he's got like 600 apps on his phone, you will be able maybe to manage those apps

00:36:35 ◼   ► more quickly.

00:36:36 ◼   ► Like imagine if you can use ListView and display them by frequently used and then scroll to

00:36:43 ◼   ► the bottom, have a select button, select, select, select, and then delete a bunch of

00:36:47 ◼   ► apps all at the same time. Like that would be amazing. But also I was thinking

00:36:53 ◼   ► about the iPad and how maybe a list option could be a potential solution for

00:37:00 ◼   ► iPad multitasking, like as an application picker for... because you know we've been

00:37:05 ◼   ► talking about the complexities of the current drag-and-drop system for using

00:37:10 ◼   ► split view and slide over on the iPad. Maybe a list that shows you apps in a

00:37:15 ◼   ► more compact view with different sorting criteria, that could be maybe a potential solution.

00:37:23 ◼   ► Isn't that what we basically had though in the early days? Like how would this be different?

00:37:28 ◼   ► Not quite, because in the early days of iOS 9 it wasn't really a list, it was like a column of

00:37:34 ◼   ► like these cards, like these tiles. Three at a time, right? Yeah, it was in an order that no

00:37:41 ◼   ► human being could get their head around.

00:37:42 ◼   ► It was in a weird order of icons.

00:37:47 ◼   ► And it wasn't really compact because you could only see three at a time.

00:37:51 ◼   ► And it wasn't searchable either. Whereas here we're talking about an actual list.

00:37:55 ◼   ► So like the information density will go way up and with multiple sorting options.

00:38:01 ◼   ► And I am guessing search like in the mix as well.

00:38:05 ◼   ► So that would make it like, you know, fairly basic deal.

00:38:09 ◼   ► It's not it's nothing revolutionary.

00:38:11 ◼   ► It's a list, but maybe that's what it needs to be.

00:38:14 ◼   ► Like it's a basic list of your apps and you can sort them however you want

00:38:18 ◼   ► and you can find them quickly.

00:38:19 ◼   ► Maybe that's what it needs to be.

00:38:21 ◼   ► I mean, I've always used Android phones, but using a little bit more recently.

00:38:24 ◼   ► I like that I don't have to organize every single application. Right.

00:38:30 ◼   ► I have the apps that I want on like my first screen

00:38:34 ◼   ► and then everything else is just in an alphabetical list in the drawer.

00:38:37 ◼   ► Right, because I'm kind of fed up at this point of having to find a place for every application.

00:38:44 ◼   ► You know, like I just want them to be some like away somewhere, right? Because it's like and I

00:38:50 ◼   ► have to try and break it out of my brain because I search for every app anyway. So why do they need

00:38:54 ◼   ► to have places? Because it's kind of like, well, they're allowed to have places. So why shouldn't

00:38:58 ◼   ► they have a place? And it's just like, I can't, I just don't want to do it anymore. So being able

00:39:03 ◼   ► to just have one screen and then everything else just in like a drawer which is the way

00:39:09 ◼   ► that the system will do it that's what I want.

00:39:11 ◼   ► Like I know I could put everything else in just one big folder but I don't I just don't

00:39:16 ◼   ► like that like I would prefer there to be like just this list of everything and I open

00:39:21 ◼   ► up from the list like that I think that that would be really really good and I would be

00:39:25 ◼   ► very happy with that especially if it did do stuff like hey what about this one that

00:39:29 ◼   ► just installed or what about this stuff thing that you use all the time like at the top i think that

00:39:35 ◼   ► would be really great i hope for this another report is of this is very interesting the ability

00:39:42 ◼   ► for applications to be able to change your wallpaper so they'd be in a kind of a new

00:39:47 ◼   ► extension type of like wallpapers that you could uh download from the app store you see these

00:39:53 ◼   ► applications a lot and they're actually typically scam apps or they're like hey check out this

00:39:58 ◼   ► wallpaper pack and like but you you still have to just it's just a bunch of images that you save and

00:40:03 ◼   ► then you choose the one that you want but in theory this would uh enable somebody to be able

00:40:07 ◼   ► to create an application that would have a pack that you would be able to um would able to like

00:40:13 ◼   ► i don't know have cycle through or choose the one that you want and it automatically be assigned

00:40:17 ◼   ► but what i was thinking which i would like is you know to be able to say maybe download an app i

00:40:22 ◼   ► Apple have a system feature where I point at an album and it cycles through them.

00:40:27 ◼   ► Like I would like my home screen to stay static but my lock screen to maybe cycle

00:40:32 ◼   ► through images that I enjoy, you know? So like every time I pick up my phone is a

00:40:37 ◼   ► different image. I think I'd be kind of cute. I think I would like that. So we'll

00:40:42 ◼   ► see. I mean what do you guys think about this? So if I had to guess I would say

00:40:45 ◼   ► that Apple wants the wallpaper section of settings to become a place that can

00:40:51 ◼   ► be extended via third party apps.

00:40:54 ◼   ► So I wouldn't be surprised to see

00:40:56 ◼   ► like a new category of extensions

00:40:58 ◼   ► that can be wallpaper extensions.

00:41:00 ◼   ► And so you download apps from the App Store as before,

00:41:03 ◼   ► they contain an extension,

00:41:04 ◼   ► that extension shows up in settings wallpaper.

00:41:07 ◼   ► And there you will be able to browse wallpaper by app.

00:41:10 ◼   ► So you will have the default Apple stuff,

00:41:13 ◼   ► which according to 9to5Mac will be organized

00:41:16 ◼   ► with new categories like flowers and nature,

00:41:19 ◼   ► like that kind of stuff.

00:41:20 ◼   ► and you will also get third-party apps.

00:41:23 ◼   ► So I can imagine, like two things come to mind.

00:41:27 ◼   ► One, I can imagine that the shortcuts action

00:41:31 ◼   ► that we saw last year, the set wallpaper action,

00:41:35 ◼   ► this is how it will come back.

00:41:37 ◼   ► It was removed during the iOS 13 beta cycle.

00:41:40 ◼   ► There's a quite fun backstory there

00:41:43 ◼   ► that maybe we'll be able to share someday, but not today.

00:41:46 ◼   ► So it disappeared.

00:41:47 ◼   ► Maybe this is how it comes back

00:41:49 ◼   ► as an actual system feature of iOS 14

00:41:52 ◼   ► that ties into like which wallpaper do you wanna set?

00:41:56 ◼   ► Like you can choose a folder, you can choose a category,

00:42:00 ◼   ► and I can imagine like that action coming back

00:42:02 ◼   ► thanks to this new feature.

00:42:04 ◼   ► Second, and I guess you guys will laugh at me

00:42:07 ◼   ► for mentioning this, but I think this is what,

00:42:10 ◼   ► if this is true, right, and if developers can provide

00:42:12 ◼   ► their own wallpaper packs for iOS 14

00:42:15 ◼   ► and they actually show up at a system level.

00:42:17 ◼   ► This has the potential to do what iMessage stickers

00:42:22 ◼   ► and like didn't do.

00:42:24 ◼   ► Like the idea-- - I agree.

00:42:27 ◼   ► - Like because, you know,

00:42:28 ◼   ► the deep and open iMessage framework

00:42:31 ◼   ► and all that kind of stuff. - Oh my God.

00:42:32 ◼   ► - But the idea was that with--

00:42:34 ◼   ► - Deep and open wallpaper framework.

00:42:36 ◼   ► - With the stickers,

00:42:39 ◼   ► so the stickers were initially like advertised

00:42:42 ◼   ► as an opportunity for artists and creatives

00:42:46 ◼   ► to be able to share something that people could use

00:42:48 ◼   ► every day in iMessage conversations.

00:42:51 ◼   ► And to an extent that was true,

00:42:53 ◼   ► but the whole system was kind of clunky

00:42:56 ◼   ► and it was never updated and managing sticker packs

00:42:59 ◼   ► and iMessage apps was terrible,

00:43:00 ◼   ► so it didn't really catch on.

00:43:03 ◼   ► - And really it's just like Bitmoji

00:43:04 ◼   ► and nothing else, I think, for most people.

00:43:06 ◼   ► - But I think for wallpapers,

00:43:07 ◼   ► which is something that people obviously care a lot about,

00:43:11 ◼   ► that is something so personal,

00:43:13 ◼   ► like it changes the whole look of your device

00:43:15 ◼   ► and your home screen, your lock screen.

00:43:17 ◼   ► I think this has the potential to do even more

00:43:19 ◼   ► than I messaged stickers.

00:43:20 ◼   ► So I can imagine like if you're an artist

00:43:22 ◼   ► and if you make, I don't know, 3D wallpapers

00:43:25 ◼   ► or 2D wallpapers, or if you're a photographer,

00:43:27 ◼   ► you should be able in theory to make a wallpaper utility,

00:43:30 ◼   ► make it available on the App Store

00:43:32 ◼   ► and get paid for it, right?

00:43:35 ◼   ► So I think they should--

00:43:36 ◼   ► - Feels like the perfect subscription app.

00:43:38 ◼   ► - Yes, yes, like I was thinking about it,

00:43:40 ◼   ► like, imagine like you subscribe like one dollar a month and you get a new wallpaper

00:43:45 ◼   ► package month. Like, that would be amazing. And so I think they should do this. They should

00:43:49 ◼   ► absolutely do this. They should let creators monetize this, all this stuff. Like, let me

00:43:55 ◼   ► pay for good quality original and properly attributed wallpapers. And they also should

00:44:04 ◼   ► restore the shortcuts integration that was awesome last year and then it disappeared.

00:44:10 ◼   ► Nobody knows why. I know that a bunch of people, they still have their shortcuts with the set

00:44:16 ◼   ► wallpaper action from last year's beta. And now, of course, the action in iOS 13.4 says,

00:44:23 ◼   ► and in 13.3 for that matter, it says, "Action not available." And people, whenever a new

00:44:28 ◼   ► beta comes out, they open that shortcut and they check if the action has been restored.

00:44:34 ◼   ► I know that people on Reddit do this. It's sort of become like a meme. Every time there's

00:44:38 ◼   ► a new beta, people are like, "Yeah, no set wallpaper action yet." But they should do

00:44:44 ◼   ► this. They should make a comeback and have it be integrated with this system stuff.

00:44:50 ◼   ► I think that this is one of those features that really on the face of it seems relatively

00:44:57 ◼   ► simple but I think is something that a lot of users would want. It feels like a thing

00:45:03 ◼   ► that people will get and they'll be like, "Oh yeah, this is great. I want this." And

00:45:07 ◼   ► think one of the reasons it maybe makes a little bit more sense than sticker

00:45:11 ◼   ► packs is everybody needs a wallpaper. Like you have to have one, you know? So

00:45:20 ◼   ► like there is an inbuilt desire for people to be like "I don't know what I

00:45:24 ◼   ► what I want" or like "I want this picture of my family" or whatever but wouldn't it

00:45:28 ◼   ► be even nicer if you could have multiple pictures of your family that scroll

00:45:32 ◼   ► through like that's that's kind of what I want right so like I want my lock

00:45:36 ◼   ► screen to be like a bunch of pictures of family stuff or memories right and they

00:45:44 ◼   ► just scroll through so I have to just choose one I can have a bunch and like I

00:45:48 ◼   ► talk about this a lot I know I talk about this a lot but it's a feature

00:45:51 ◼   ► I've come to really love about my echo show that I can just have those photos

00:45:55 ◼   ► cycling through all the time and it's nice whenever I'm in the kitchen and I

00:45:59 ◼   ► see it like and me and Idina were talking about it today because I told

00:46:01 ◼   ► about this feature. And she was just like, "Oh, I feel like when I was younger and I'd

00:46:06 ◼   ► hear about digital photo frames, I thought they were stupid, and I also did." But she

00:46:10 ◼   ► says, "Oh, but I suppose it's now because I've taken way more pictures that I like this

00:46:16 ◼   ► kind of feature." But as I said to her, which is what I think it is for both of us, we're

00:46:20 ◼   ► getting older and we're getting more nostalgic for things that we love in our lives or the

00:46:24 ◼   ► nice experiences, so we enjoy looking at photos more. I think it's more that than the technology's

00:46:30 ◼   ► gotten better because I think that's what it is about myself where like I now look back at moments

00:46:36 ◼   ► in my life and look at them more fondly because I think that's just something that happens to you as

00:46:41 ◼   ► you get older but I think it'd be a great feature. I know that probably some people will not like

00:46:47 ◼   ► this but I'm going to say if they are doing this and they are opening up the App Store to wallpaper

00:46:53 ◼   ► utilities. If they want to combat the potential, you know, piracy aspect, they should make

00:47:00 ◼   ► these wallpapers a custom format that is not like a JPEG that you can extract and share

00:47:06 ◼   ► with people. And if they're the custom format, not only for that, but in a way that allows

00:47:13 ◼   ► wallpapers to support both light mode and dark mode. Because right now the default Apple

00:47:19 ◼   ► wallpapers they support that. I believe that's possible thanks to the . . . heave file format.

00:47:29 ◼   ► That's how they do it on the Mac, too. The default wallpaper on Catalina is actually

00:47:33 ◼   ► like six or seven images that it moves through throughout the day.

00:47:36 ◼   ► Right. And they should do the same on iOS. And on iOS, of course, you wouldn't be able

00:47:42 ◼   ► to get to those files anyway because of sandboxing.

00:47:46 ◼   ► So they should do that and allow like super easy in Xcode,

00:47:51 ◼   ► like even if you're not a developer,

00:47:54 ◼   ► just with sticker packs before, right?

00:47:55 ◼   ► You could use JPEGs or PNGs or animated PNGs.

00:48:00 ◼   ► And in this case, if you go with that approach,

00:48:03 ◼   ► you could say this wallpaper,

00:48:05 ◼   ► it switches automatically between light mode and dark mode.

00:48:08 ◼   ► So that would be nice.

00:48:09 ◼   ► - I do wonder what else they could do with this.

00:48:11 ◼   ► I think the light and dark mode thing is a super smart idea. And I think being able to rotate through a gallery

00:48:18 ◼   ► This is a smart idea again things you can do on the Mac things you can do on other platforms

00:48:23 ◼   ► But I would like to see them explore more with live photos

00:48:27 ◼   ► I mean so you can't set live photos as a wallpaper now

00:48:30 ◼   ► I don't know. I don't I haven't done it, but you can do it and you can set your own

00:48:35 ◼   ► But I think it would be cool if that format could also be smarter, you know for a long time

00:48:40 ◼   ► they've had the wallpaper that has like the, the circles and they kind of move around.

00:48:46 ◼   ► And I don't think that responds to like the accelerometer or anything in the phone.

00:48:49 ◼   ► Maybe it does a little bit but like what if live photos or something else like that could

00:48:54 ◼   ► make these more like interactive or lively?

00:48:57 ◼   ► Yeah, in a way just like subtle animations that looped or I mean something just to bring

00:49:01 ◼   ► it to life a little bit more.

00:49:02 ◼   ► I think it could be a fun way for creators to explore and create new things.

00:49:07 ◼   ► while we're on it I mean if these are built into applications could things

00:49:12 ◼   ► that I do in my life or with my phone change the wallpaper like if I leave my

00:49:18 ◼   ► house could I have a different wallpaper that right stuff or it starts like red

00:49:23 ◼   ► and then as you get more tasks done it slowly turns green that'd be fun I would

00:49:29 ◼   ► genuinely like something like that right so yeah like I think that kind of stuff

00:49:34 ◼   ► could be a lot of fun.

00:49:36 ◼   ► Like maybe you could have a wallpaper

00:49:38 ◼   ► that has a little colored ring around the edge

00:49:39 ◼   ► and that changes throughout the day or something.

00:49:42 ◼   ► Like if it was tied to applications

00:49:45 ◼   ► and applications could change the wallpaper

00:49:47 ◼   ► based on different parameters,

00:49:50 ◼   ► which doesn't seem outside of possibility,

00:49:52 ◼   ► like that could be kind of nice.

00:49:55 ◼   ► - Or they could even tie it into the memories thing, right?

00:49:57 ◼   ► So like we all give those notifications of,

00:49:59 ◼   ► hey, you know, you went to this party two years ago,

00:50:01 ◼   ► here are a bunch of pictures.

00:50:02 ◼   ► Make those a wallpaper.

00:50:04 ◼   ► It's my anniversary, every time I pick my phone up, I want a different picture of my

00:50:07 ◼   ► spouse.

00:50:08 ◼   ► You know, like, there's so much they could do to make this more interesting and more

00:50:11 ◼   ► personalized.

00:50:13 ◼   ► I'm excited about the possibilities.

00:50:14 ◼   ► Who'd have thought?

00:50:15 ◼   ► You're in the 14th version of it, you got to do something, and this seems like a fun

00:50:19 ◼   ► way to extend what you're doing elsewhere.

00:50:21 ◼   ► Man, sticker packs, that could have been a thing.

00:50:24 ◼   ► I mean, I use sticker packs every single day, but I just use one of them.

00:50:28 ◼   ► The same one.

00:50:29 ◼   ► The same one that I didn't pay for.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Like Stephen with the skeleton one.

00:50:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean they come out every now and then but it just wasn't the artistic magic bullet

00:50:39 ◼   ► that people were hoping for.

00:50:40 ◼   ► Remember when we used to have in our newsletter the sticker pack section?

00:50:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:50:46 ◼   ► Oh what, the John Voorhees series of sadness that it became?

00:50:50 ◼   ► John was increasingly losing his mind covering the-

00:50:54 ◼   ► It was good to watch his mental state deteriorate through the sticker packs that he was picking.

00:51:01 ◼   ► This sticker pack is called "Desperation".

00:51:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:04 ◼   ► Toward the end of the section, he would say something like "I'm not sure why I'm picking

00:51:08 ◼   ► this sticker pack, but here we are."

00:51:15 ◼   ► I'm being forced against my will to look at sticker packs.

00:51:18 ◼   ► Yeah, that section is no more.

00:51:20 ◼   ► Maybe he'll become the wallpaper expert.

00:51:22 ◼   ► Maybe we should do the wallpaper corner of the new city.

00:51:26 ◼   ► Sorry, John!

00:51:27 ◼   ► I mean, honestly, when we were talking, I thought if it's easy to do, I would put one

00:51:31 ◼   ► out of all my Apple hardware photos that I've taken over the years.

00:51:34 ◼   ► Oh my god, yes! Like all the iMac? You could just do an iMac pack?

00:51:39 ◼   ► Yeah. That's a great idea.

00:51:41 ◼   ► Maybe we should do what all the developers are doing these days. Launching a Kickstarter

00:51:46 ◼   ► for Steven to make an app that's only a wallpaper app. And you're gonna ask people for money

00:51:52 ◼   ► to do so. Is that a thing people are doing now?

00:51:54 ◼   ► Some developers are. I'm gonna need 80 grand.

00:51:58 ◼   ► Wow. Exactly. Exactly.

00:51:59 ◼   ► That was unexpected.

00:52:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it needs emotional support through all this.

00:52:04 ◼   ► I gotta buy a more powerful Mac Pro for development.

00:52:08 ◼   ► And a new camera to take the pictures.

00:52:11 ◼   ► And all new iMacs.

00:52:12 ◼   ► And a developer license, you know.

00:52:15 ◼   ► Yeah, that's up.

00:52:16 ◼   ► WWDC ticket, right?

00:52:19 ◼   ► Any day now, right?

00:52:20 ◼   ► Yep.

00:52:21 ◼   ► And there's the pain and suffering of using Xcode, that's worth something.

00:52:25 ◼   ► That's up.

00:52:26 ◼   ► That's what I'm saying.

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00:53:40 ◼   ► and Relay FM.

00:53:42 ◼   ► - So any version of iOS will naturally have in it

00:53:46 ◼   ► references to the hardware

00:53:47 ◼   ► that it's going to be running on, right?

00:53:49 ◼   ► So if you're imagining a version of iOS 14, it's going to have references to hardware that will be

00:53:56 ◼   ► out by the time that iOS 14 is out in theory, which is why we have a bunch of little details

00:54:03 ◼   ► about hardware that we're expecting that came out as part of this selection of leaks and stories.

00:54:10 ◼   ► So I guess we should start with the iPad Pro. So it includes what we think, the wide angle,

00:54:17 ◼   ► like a new camera unit which includes a wide angle lens, an ultra wide lens and a telephoto,

00:54:22 ◼   ► so just like the current iPhone Pro, but also the time of flight sensor which we've been hearing

00:54:27 ◼   ► about for a while which we know by now will be useful for AR app stuff and there was another leak

00:54:34 ◼   ► which referenced a new AR project in the works from Apple. It is an application that you will

00:54:41 ◼   ► use to help you get information about things that are out in the world so apparently they're

00:54:46 ◼   ► testing this out in Apple stores and Starbucks right now. So inside of a store you would

00:54:51 ◼   ► open the app on your phone, hold it up to products and you'd be able to get info about

00:54:55 ◼   ► these products. This would work via maybe QR codes, Bluetooth and what is that technology

00:55:01 ◼   ► that they made?

00:55:02 ◼   ► Eye beacons.

00:55:03 ◼   ► Can you help me?

00:55:04 ◼   ► Eye beacons.

00:55:05 ◼   ► Eye beacons, yeah. So it could be a combination of all of this stuff. It's in testing right

00:55:08 ◼   ► now and it's being developed in these two locations, right? So Apple stores and Starbucks,

00:55:14 ◼   ► there would be a third party SDK so other companies would be able to use it.

00:55:19 ◼   ► This is the dream right of being able to hold up your phone to stuff and it could point

00:55:22 ◼   ► things to you, show you where they are.

00:55:25 ◼   ► Clearly all of this is in preparation for AR glasses but Apple is approaching that product

00:55:31 ◼   ► in I think the right way.

00:55:33 ◼   ► So if you could, is to try and whenever they do launch this product already have an ecosystem

00:55:40 ◼   ► underpinning it right.

00:55:41 ◼   ► we've been talking about this for a while, but this is definitely one of these things,

00:55:44 ◼   ► right? Not just mapping the world, but mapping the things inside of buildings. That's what's

00:55:49 ◼   ► going to be really useful if we are in this AR glasses future. So this iPad Pro references

00:55:56 ◼   ► the time of flight sensor, which would be important for the development of stuff like

00:55:59 ◼   ► this. Obviously that app will run on all iOS devices when you would assume that a time

00:56:04 ◼   ► of flight sensor will be in the next round of iPhones. We can come back to all these

00:56:08 ◼   ► things if you guys have stuff to say, but I'll just run through the other two products

00:56:10 ◼   ► that are mentioned iPhone 9. So this is the iPhone SE 2 effectively, which was probably

00:56:18 ◼   ► going to be replacing the iPhone 8 in size. So to make this more confusing, the iPhone

00:56:23 ◼   ► 6 design language will feature Touch ID with Express Transit support. So Express Transit

00:56:30 ◼   ► support is that thing where you can just hold your Apple Pay device up to say the London

00:56:36 ◼   ► underground and you don't have to do any authentication when you're boarding the trains, it just accepts

00:56:42 ◼   ► it very fast. I think this works in the New York subway, I think it's in Japanese metro as well.

00:56:47 ◼   ► I think it started in Japan, I believe was the first place that it was used, but I absolutely,

00:56:53 ◼   ► this is like a long-term follow-up, I absolutely love this feature. It's so fantastic, it's so fast

00:56:59 ◼   ► you don't have to wait, you just hold it up and it just immediately authenticates.

00:57:03 ◼   ► it's taken away my biggest frustration with Face ID, which was that it took too long to authenticate

00:57:09 ◼   ► these purchases like Apple Pay, but really the only problem for me was trying to get through

00:57:15 ◼   ► barriers at train stations and I don't need to use Face ID anymore, so that's great. So they're

00:57:19 ◼   ► adding this support into the iPhone 9 with Touch ID, but they're not really doing much more to the

00:57:25 ◼   ► design of the phone. It's going to be the phone for people that don't want to let go of Touch ID.

00:57:31 ◼   ► Side note, I bet lots of people in the world are getting frustrated with their iPhones

00:57:35 ◼   ► when they're wearing face masks.

00:57:37 ◼   ► Uh huh.

00:57:37 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:57:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:57:39 ◼   ► Right?

00:57:39 ◼   ► What a terrible time for face authentication.

00:57:41 ◼   ► And then the other thing is, in Apple TV, new hardware of some description with references

00:57:46 ◼   ► to a new remote of some kind.

00:57:48 ◼   ► Don't get too excited.

00:57:50 ◼   ► This might not be much more than some small changes.

00:57:54 ◼   ► I saw Benjamin Mayo reference on Twitter that this has happened before, but if you remember,

00:58:00 ◼   ► they just put a white ring around one of the buttons.

00:58:03 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:58:03 ◼   ► So like a new remote doesn't necessarily mean that you're

00:58:07 ◼   ► going to get the remote of your dreams.

00:58:09 ◼   ► It might just mean a change of some kind to the Apple TV

00:58:13 ◼   ► remote hardware that we're used to.

00:58:14 ◼   ► Insert the insert the insert the Michael Scott no GIF here.

00:58:20 ◼   ► Oh, God.

00:58:22 ◼   ► No, God, please, no, no, no, no.

00:58:29 ◼   ► What if the one thing they change in the Siri remote is the whole remote?

00:58:32 ◼   ► Think about that. That's Galaxy brain level stuff.

00:58:34 ◼   ► They only change one thing, but it's everything.

00:58:37 ◼   ► Yeah, that'd be nice.

00:58:38 ◼   ► But that does sound like an Apple tagline.

00:58:40 ◼   ► The one thing we changed in the new iPhone is everything.

00:58:44 ◼   ► My biggest problem with the Apple TV remote is its inconsistency.

00:58:51 ◼   ► It's not the functions.

00:58:52 ◼   ► It's the inconsistency.

00:58:53 ◼   ► Like we're watching we're rewatching Patriot and Amazon Prime,

00:58:57 ◼   ► which is a fantastic television show if you've never seen it, like so good.

00:59:01 ◼   ► Very good.

00:59:01 ◼   ► And you know, like something happens and I want to go back

00:59:04 ◼   ► and I click the side of the remote and just nothing happens.

00:59:07 ◼   ► Like it just brings up the little scrubber, but it won't go back 10 seconds.

00:59:11 ◼   ► It's like I don't understand what I'm supposed to do.

00:59:13 ◼   ► I'm giving you what you want.

00:59:14 ◼   ► That's my biggest frustration with the Apple TV remote is the what I find like

00:59:19 ◼   ► inconsistency so often with trying to get it to do the functions

00:59:23 ◼   ► that it's supposed to do.

00:59:24 ◼   ► But yeah, so that's that's some hardware referenced in iOS 14.

00:59:27 ◼   ► Okay. That, that, that all sounds,

00:59:30 ◼   ► I think basically in line with what we've heard elsewhere,

00:59:34 ◼   ► except maybe the fully fixed, completely new Apple TV.

00:59:38 ◼   ► Brand new full of hardware buttons remote that you want.

00:59:42 ◼   ► Just buttons everywhere. Just cons, just like it's just all buttons.

00:59:46 ◼   ► Are you getting it yet? It's all buttons. It's all buttons.

00:59:51 ◼   ► It's not one remote, it's four remotes, one button each.

00:59:54 ◼   ► - And we just tape them together.

00:59:57 ◼   ► - One just has the menu button.

00:59:59 ◼   ► If you lose that, you can't go back, too bad.

01:00:01 ◼   ► I am increasingly interested about this iPhone 9.

01:00:04 ◼   ► I'm sticking that by that as the name,

01:00:06 ◼   ► which we talked about a long time ago.

01:00:08 ◼   ► There were so many people out there with an iPhone 6,

01:00:11 ◼   ► 6S or 7 that Apple wants to move forward.

01:00:14 ◼   ► And those people don't want a phone that's bigger.

01:00:18 ◼   ► They don't want face ID.

01:00:19 ◼   ► They don't want to learn something new.

01:00:20 ◼   ► And an iPhone 9, you know, the iPhone 8 body

01:00:24 ◼   ► with the 11 guts, I think would meet their needs really well.

01:00:28 ◼   ► I've got one of these people in my marriage

01:00:30 ◼   ► who's using an iPhone 8 and wants a better camera

01:00:32 ◼   ► but doesn't want face ID.

01:00:33 ◼   ► I won't say who.

01:00:34 ◼   ► - One of these people in my marriage.

01:00:37 ◼   ► That's, that's an interesting one.

01:00:39 ◼   ► - It's not me.

01:00:40 ◼   ► - Who knows who it could be?

01:00:41 ◼   ► - I think this will do well, just like the SE did well.

01:00:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:00:45 ◼   ► - And you know, people liked the size

01:00:47 ◼   ► and it brought forward what was good

01:00:49 ◼   ► but partnered it with good, you know, modern tech.

01:00:52 ◼   ► So I think the 9 could do really well,

01:00:55 ◼   ► especially if it comes in at 400 bucks or something,

01:00:58 ◼   ► you know, it comes in cheaper

01:00:59 ◼   ► because they're using that old design.

01:01:00 ◼   ► They don't have the most expensive parts in it.

01:01:03 ◼   ► I think that it could be a good deal for those people.

01:01:06 ◼   ► Like there are a lot of iPhone 6s and 7s

01:01:08 ◼   ► running around still, like they're just everywhere.

01:01:11 ◼   ► And I think Apple wants to get those people.

01:01:13 ◼   ► - Real time follow up from Zach in the chat room.

01:01:15 ◼   ► - Real time follow up.

01:01:16 ◼   ► - The tagline for the iPhone 6s

01:01:18 ◼   ► was the only thing that's changed is everything.

01:01:21 ◼   ► - Oh, that's what I saw before. - Oh, yes!

01:01:24 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:01:25 ◼   ► Oh, boy.

01:01:26 ◼   ► - I wanted to say something about AR.

01:01:28 ◼   ► - Uh-oh.

01:01:29 ◼   ► - Not necessarily about the iPad Pro,

01:01:30 ◼   ► because I mean, sure, give me a new iPad Pro,

01:01:32 ◼   ► but you mentioned we could follow up on that stuff.

01:01:36 ◼   ► I am increasingly skeptical of these potential use cases

01:01:40 ◼   ► for augmented reality.

01:01:42 ◼   ► I believe that for certain scenarios,

01:01:46 ◼   ► like the following directions,

01:01:48 ◼   ► So like I'm in a new city and I need to understand

01:01:52 ◼   ► where to go, like having the maps overlay

01:01:56 ◼   ► on top of the camera, that would be super amazing.

01:01:59 ◼   ► I believe Google Maps is already doing this on certain phones.

01:02:02 ◼   ► So that's incredible.

01:02:04 ◼   ► Following directions indoors, like also that would be cool

01:02:08 ◼   ► like in airports or like if you're looking

01:02:10 ◼   ► for a specific store or if you're a supermarket,

01:02:13 ◼   ► the supermarket you're looking for a specific shelf,

01:02:15 ◼   ► Like, yes, I believe that's the way that it should go.

01:02:20 ◼   ► Like all these other things, like in this example,

01:02:23 ◼   ► I'm at the Apple store and I'm at the table with the iPads

01:02:27 ◼   ► and I need to like get my phone and point at the iPad

01:02:30 ◼   ► to understand what I'm looking at.

01:02:32 ◼   ► Why not just touch it or ask somebody

01:02:35 ◼   ► for additional information?

01:02:37 ◼   ► So like, it just feels like if you're there,

01:02:40 ◼   ► if the iPad is in front of you,

01:02:42 ◼   ► Why should you grab your phone and point the camera at it?

01:02:46 ◼   ► You're looking at it already.

01:02:48 ◼   ► And it's very likely that there's

01:02:49 ◼   ► like an info pamphlet next to it or like an employee.

01:02:53 ◼   ► Just ask the person, like, hey, how much RAM is in--

01:02:57 ◼   ► they're not going to tell you, but at least you

01:02:59 ◼   ► can ask the question.

01:03:00 ◼   ► Wait, does that come up a lot in the supermarket, how much RAM

01:03:03 ◼   ► is in these potatoes?

01:03:05 ◼   ► No, and exactly.

01:03:06 ◼   ► I was going to mention the supermarket.

01:03:09 ◼   ► And I see these concepts, right, all the time,

01:03:12 ◼   ► like these fake AR apps. It's like, "Oh, imagine this. You're at the supermarket, and you finally

01:03:18 ◼   ► found the shelf that contains all the cereal options. Okay, fine. That's cool." And then

01:03:24 ◼   ► you grab the box, and you point your phone at it, and you get all these overlays telling

01:03:29 ◼   ► you the nutritional data for the cereal. I mean, dude, you're holding the cereal box.

01:03:35 ◼   ► There is literally a nutritional label on the cereal box. Look at it with your eyes.

01:03:39 ◼   ► Why do you have to use your phone and AR to understand how much protein you got in your

01:03:47 ◼   ► cereal?

01:03:48 ◼   ► Oh man.

01:03:49 ◼   ► Like, all these additional, like, I get it, it's fancy, right?

01:03:53 ◼   ► It's incredible.

01:03:54 ◼   ► It makes for a good demo.

01:03:55 ◼   ► It makes for a good portfolio type of video.

01:03:59 ◼   ► But like in real life, do you really want to depend on AR to replace your eyes when

01:04:05 ◼   ► and you got your eyes already,

01:04:07 ◼   ► and you can just look at things in real life

01:04:09 ◼   ► and you don't, there's no latency, right?

01:04:12 ◼   ► Your eyes, your physical eyes have no latency.

01:04:15 ◼   ► You're looking at a box, the box has the info that you need.

01:04:18 ◼   ► And sure, maybe the AR utility can make a bunch

01:04:22 ◼   ► of additional connections for you

01:04:24 ◼   ► because it's connected to the internet.

01:04:26 ◼   ► So like you can know that that specific serial

01:04:28 ◼   ► comes from Brazil and Brazil is well known for the carnival.

01:04:32 ◼   ► Okay, sure, you got all that information from Wikipedia,

01:04:35 ◼   ► but I'm also buying a cereal box.

01:04:36 ◼   ► You see, Federico, I think the thing is you clearly don't mind talking to people?

01:04:43 ◼   ► No, it's not that, because the cereal example, I'm just holding a box and I'm looking at it.

01:04:50 ◼   ► I think that there are...

01:04:51 ◼   ► But like, yes, do we really want technology to help us be more isolated and not talk to people?

01:05:00 ◼   ► Is that really the goal?

01:05:01 ◼   ► Right, well, that's it, isn't it?

01:05:02 ◼   ► It's like, it depends on where you're coming from this.

01:05:04 ◼   ► because, okay, so like, let's imagine one use case for this is like, now you're in a store,

01:05:10 ◼   ► you can be like, where's the bread? Right. And it can take you to the bread. It's like, okay,

01:05:14 ◼   ► here's the thing. That's useful, but it does also stop you from saying,

01:05:20 ◼   ► hey, shop assistant, where's the bread? And depending on your outlook in life,

01:05:24 ◼   ► you either see that as good. Basically, if you see that as utopian or dystopian, like that's your

01:05:31 ◼   ► outlook in life. I agree with you that like all of these things are inherently designed in a way

01:05:38 ◼   ► that would isolate us from other people but I think it is everybody's own decision on whether

01:05:47 ◼   ► they want that. I can't tell you what the right thing to do is. I don't know what the right option

01:05:55 ◼   ► is but it does come back to this this conversation we have had with an increasing frequency and we'll

01:06:01 ◼   ► will continue to have as to whether AR is good or bad, like AR glasses are good or bad

01:06:06 ◼   ► because there are, I think, very legitimate arguments on both sides, arguments that we

01:06:11 ◼   ► did not consider with smartphones, right? Like we just let that happen and it's been

01:06:17 ◼   ► good but it's also been really bad in certain ways, right? It's like smartphones, best thing

01:06:23 ◼   ► to happen in technology. Also one of the worst things to happen in social interactions, right?

01:06:30 ◼   ► the way that information is spread, like things that we could not have imagined when smartphones

01:06:35 ◼   ► became popular. I hope that there is a little bit more thought around AR in our faces and

01:06:44 ◼   ► how that could impact society before we all just adopt it. Because I don't think we had

01:06:49 ◼   ► that caution with smartphones.

01:06:51 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm afraid that as soon as we're going to see like all the, you know,

01:06:57 ◼   ► the bells and whistles and like the fancy stuff, oh, this is incredible. We're just

01:07:00 ◼   ► gonna go for it because it's new you know because it's... So here's the thing I

01:07:04 ◼   ► think that we will be excited about it like we are all technology but we are

01:07:09 ◼   ► having I mean we speak for the three of us at least we are having this

01:07:13 ◼   ► conversation now right these conversations which is more has a little

01:07:18 ◼   ► bit more trepidation to it I know I didn't feel this way before the iPhone

01:07:22 ◼   ► like when the iPhone was rumored it was like come on come on come on give me

01:07:25 ◼   ► give me give me it wasn't like what is this going to do for the fate of

01:07:29 ◼   ► of humankind. Right? We're not having those conversations. But we maybe are a little bit

01:07:36 ◼   ► more about AR.

01:07:38 ◼   ► I have some real-time follow-up. Apple has closed all retail stores in Italy. All of

01:07:45 ◼   ► them. Used to be three of them. Now it's all of them.

01:07:50 ◼   ► But WWDC is still happening.

01:07:52 ◼   ► I mean, how is it possible that there's still no announcement?

01:07:58 ◼   ► They're just not ready. Everything's taken care of, right? There are good social reasons

01:08:04 ◼   ► to explain it. Santa Clara County has made it illegal if they even wanted to do it.

01:08:08 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:08:09 ◼   ► Everything is lining up the way that it needs to. They just haven't yet announced what they're

01:08:16 ◼   ► going to do. There is literally zero doubt in my mind about what's happening with WWDC.

01:08:23 ◼   ► It is not happening.

01:08:25 ◼   ► It is not a case now of if they're going to cancel it, it's just when and how they're

01:08:30 ◼   ► going to cancel the in-person event.

01:08:34 ◼   ► They just, Apple just haven't done it yet, right?

01:08:36 ◼   ► Because it is a difficult thing and they may be awaiting until like they have a bit of

01:08:41 ◼   ► space because everyone knew E3 was going to get cancelled today.

01:08:47 ◼   ► So I guess it's kind of just a case of like giving them the space that they want and about

01:08:52 ◼   ► when they do it.

01:08:53 ◼   ► do it at the end of the week because it's a considerate bad news or do they do it in

01:08:57 ◼   ► the middle of a week or at the start of a week because they want to dress it up as good

01:09:00 ◼   ► news like it's a big marketing thing for them and how they're gonna handle this but we'll

01:09:06 ◼   ► see but there is no question right like if you out there listener is still wondering

01:09:11 ◼   ► if WWDC is gonna happen Myke Hurley is telling you right now it won't right like I will put

01:09:17 ◼   ► money on this they are not doing it they're not doing it no they're not doing it no they

01:09:23 ◼   ► They cannot do it anymore. Like everything else is cancer.

01:09:25 ◼   ► They can't do it. It's irresponsible to do it. You can't at this point,

01:09:30 ◼   ► when today the World Health Organization has classified coronavirus as a pandemic,

01:09:35 ◼   ► you can't be like, "Uh, ignore that."

01:09:40 ◼   ► Yeah, let's just gather like 5,000 people and talk about...

01:09:43 ◼   ► But like the government of their county said it is illegal, so like they can't do it. They're

01:09:50 ◼   ► They're not allowed anymore, but yeah, they just haven't announced it.

01:09:54 ◼   ► So like like it's not even their choice anymore.

01:09:57 ◼   ► Like they just have to cancel it.

01:09:59 ◼   ► I think that had a date range on it.

01:10:02 ◼   ► But yeah, but that date range will keep getting pushed, though, right?

01:10:05 ◼   ► Like it will keep being like nudged along until this virus is under control.

01:10:10 ◼   ► But which is not right now.

01:10:11 ◼   ► All right. Let's let's talk about HomeKit.

01:10:13 ◼   ► Let's let's cheer people up with HomeKit.

01:10:16 ◼   ► Also in a nine to five max reporting talking about some new features coming in homekit with iOS 14

01:10:22 ◼   ► one feature being night shift for lights so you could homekit could automatically adjust the light

01:10:29 ◼   ► color temperature in a room throughout the day so the hue light bulbs i have on the lamps on my desk

01:10:36 ◼   ► you know i can set the color temperature i have them set to daylight most of the time

01:10:40 ◼   ► But I could, with iOS 14 I guess, tell it "Hey, warm those lights up" as I edit and

01:10:47 ◼   ► logic into the evenings, which is a thing that I do sometimes.

01:10:50 ◼   ► Also in this report...

01:10:51 ◼   ► Real time follow up, NAB just got cancelled.

01:10:54 ◼   ► Okay, that's another one.

01:10:56 ◼   ► Just wanted to... it's not important, but I just wanted to throw that out there.

01:10:59 ◼   ► It's all getting cancelled.

01:11:01 ◼   ► Like two days ago they were like "Come on down to NAB!"

01:11:03 ◼   ► We were talking about it and I messaged like "What are you doing?"

01:11:05 ◼   ► I got an email about it today, that like podcast movement is doing an NAB thing and they emailed

01:11:12 ◼   ► me today to try and get me to go. Like no, do you know where I'm definitely not gonna go right now?

01:11:17 ◼   ► Las Vegas! Right? Like of all the places! You could get a pandemic in Las Vegas any time.

01:11:23 ◼   ► Anyways, HomeKit Secure Video is supposed to get people or like facial recognition,

01:11:32 ◼   ► So it could send notifications if a stranger comes to your door, but when your kid comes home,

01:11:38 ◼   ► not send you a notification or vice versa or whatever. I would say that home kids

01:11:42 ◼   ► care video should work in the first place before they start adding features, but that's just me.

01:11:47 ◼   ► And lastly, HomePod and Apple TV, a lot of people use HomePods for the audio output for

01:11:53 ◼   ► their Apple TVs, including you, Myke, right? Every single day. And every single day,

01:11:58 ◼   ► Every single day.

01:11:59 ◼   ► It drives me absolutely mad that I have to toggle the settings.

01:12:02 ◼   ► So it seems like they could maybe fix that in iOS 14, that a user could permanently select

01:12:08 ◼   ► HomePod stereo pairs as the default audio output.

01:12:11 ◼   ► I genuinely think this is the very best use of a HomePod pair, is to use them with Apple

01:12:16 ◼   ► TV speakers.

01:12:17 ◼   ► They are very good TV speakers.

01:12:20 ◼   ► Like really good.

01:12:22 ◼   ► There's no latency problems because it buffers the content for a few seconds before it begins,

01:12:27 ◼   ► So you just press play just a couple of seconds and it starts.

01:12:30 ◼   ► And you know, it can get out of sync and that's when, because yes, when you have to do the

01:12:35 ◼   ► switching around or whatever, and that's really frustrating, but like a little improvement

01:12:39 ◼   ► here or there to this function would be great for me because this is how, this is our major

01:12:43 ◼   ► use of HomePods at home more than music because we watch TV content every day.

01:12:48 ◼   ► We don't listen to music at home every day.

01:12:51 ◼   ► And I genuinely really love it because it gives you a sense of multi, you know, like,

01:12:57 ◼   ► not like surround sound, but more than just stereo, right?

01:13:02 ◼   ► Because there is like placement.

01:13:04 ◼   ► It feels really good sometimes, right?

01:13:06 ◼   ► Sometimes it feels like things are not just to the left, but to the left and behind, you

01:13:09 ◼   ► know, because it's doing whatever it's doing to try and do that full room sound stuff.

01:13:14 ◼   ► So yeah, really, like it's a very good feature.

01:13:16 ◼   ► And I would be happy to see that they're going to put some additional work into this.

01:13:22 ◼   ► And Zach points out in his article that he thinks this would be a good opportunity for

01:13:27 ◼   ► smaller less expensive home pods.

01:13:29 ◼   ► So you don't have a $600 speaker set hooked up to your TV, which would be cool.

01:13:35 ◼   ► So you know, I think all this makes sense.

01:13:37 ◼   ► I again, just like HomeKit Secure Video, I want to use it.

01:13:41 ◼   ► It's not good enough, not anywhere near enough.

01:13:44 ◼   ► So hopefully there's more to this than just adding additional features on.

01:13:48 ◼   ► But home gets one of those things too that I mean, it's one thing I understand that we're

01:13:53 ◼   ► going to get messages upgrades with iOS 14.

01:13:56 ◼   ► But it feels like homekit is big enough where they could roll these updates out separate

01:14:00 ◼   ► from a big iOS version.

01:14:02 ◼   ► And maybe they need it for the marketing reasons.

01:14:04 ◼   ► Like why can't we just do this in 13.4 like homekit should be getting better all the time,

01:14:08 ◼   ► not just once a year.

01:14:10 ◼   ► to five Mac today reported the inclusion of a new international Apple watch face

01:14:17 ◼   ► that sets a bunch set your flag country's flag as the background of your

01:14:22 ◼   ► watch that's cool if you're super into your country you can do that you could

01:14:26 ◼   ► just if you were that into your country that you wanted this as a watch face you

01:14:30 ◼   ► could just set it as a photo watch face look Casey's gonna run the beta just for

01:14:34 ◼   ► this so to get the USA flag let him have his moment okay I mean there's still a

01:14:39 ◼   ► whole other conversation to be had that like all watch faces should be more

01:14:42 ◼   ► flexible and more customizable. I assume this one will follow like a lot of the

01:14:46 ◼   ► image based ones where maybe you get one or two complications. I still do wish for

01:14:50 ◼   ► a better more flexible watch face system or heaven forbid third-party watch faces.

01:14:55 ◼   ► But I don't think that's happening this year. Maybe one day. Yeah it's not gonna

01:15:00 ◼   ► happen because that's definitely something we would have heard about

01:15:02 ◼   ► right like there are gonna be other watch faces like apparently there's like an

01:15:06 ◼   ► Infograph Pro watch face come in, right? And some stuff about like sharing watch faces

01:15:11 ◼   ► and all that kind of stuff. I don't really get the country flag one personally. Like

01:15:15 ◼   ► it doesn't really make any sense to me. A friend of the show, Kyle Le Grade, was talking

01:15:21 ◼   ► about like the Olympics, but this would already have, like the Olympics would have, well,

01:15:26 ◼   ► okay. If the Olympics are going to happen at the time.

01:15:30 ◼   ► Are there going to be the Olympics?

01:15:32 ◼   ► I mean, that's an interesting one, isn't it? Because like the Olympics are supposed to

01:15:35 ◼   ► happen beginning in July. So who knows, right? Like it might be okay then probably won't

01:15:42 ◼   ► be, uh, but they'll move it. I don't know what they're going to do, but in theory, this

01:15:46 ◼   ► would make sense for the Olympics. iOS 14 would be too late for the Olympics, but maybe

01:15:50 ◼   ► this would ship before, or maybe it's got nothing to do with the Olympics at all.

01:15:53 ◼   ► Well, if you want to find links to the stories we spoke about, head on over to the website,

01:15:58 ◼   ► While you're there you can email us with feedback or follow-up or you can become a member to

01:16:06 ◼   ► support the show directly.

01:16:07 ◼   ► You can also find us all on Twitter.

01:16:09 ◼   ► You can find Myke there as @imyke.

01:16:12 ◼   ► Myke is the host of a bunch of other shows here on Relay FM, including his newest show

01:16:17 ◼   ► The Test Drivers with Austin Evans, which you should go check out.

01:16:21 ◼   ► You can find Federico on Twitter as @vittici, V I T I C C I, and he is the editor-in-chief

01:16:27 ◼   ► of max stories.net home of the best iOS sticker pack coverage on the web.

01:16:32 ◼   ► Maybe years ago,

01:16:33 ◼   ► you can find me online as ISMH and my writing at five 12 pixels.net.

01:16:40 ◼   ► I think our sponsors this week, Pingdom direct mail and indeed,

01:16:44 ◼   ► and until next time, gentlemen, say goodbye.

01:16:47 ◼   ► Cheerio.