Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► - Hello and welcome to Connected episode 252.

00:00:11 ◼   ► It's made possible by our sponsors, ExpressVPN,

00:00:14 ◼   ► Hover and Moo.

00:00:16 ◼   ► My name is Steven Hackett and I am joined

00:00:19 ◼   ► by Mr. Federico Vatici.

00:00:21 ◼   ► - Hello Steven Hackett, how are you?

00:00:23 ◼   ► - I'm good Federico Vatici.

00:00:24 ◼   ► - Good to know, good to know, good to know.

00:00:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think everyone's good.

00:00:27 ◼   ► - I'm all right.

00:00:28 ◼   ► joined by somebody else. He is extremely under the weather. It used to be Myke

00:00:34 ◼   ► Hurley. Yeah, it's a husking shell, Myke Hurley. And we have limited Myke to

00:00:40 ◼   ► single word answers. So Myke, how are you? Fine. Good to hear it. We are going to

00:00:50 ◼   ► start the show with follow-up because that's what we do at the beginning of

00:00:53 ◼   ► the show. Good. You weren't asked a question? You will speak when spoken to,

00:00:58 ◼   ► sir. You should just say okay. Okay. I want to start with the MacBook Air. It was revised,

00:01:07 ◼   ► we spoke about it last week. And there were kind of rumors at the time that maybe one way to get

00:01:13 ◼   ► the price down is that Apple shipped it with a slower SSD. And it seems like that that could

00:01:19 ◼   ► be true. So there's an article over on Mac rumors, where someone compared the 128 gig version of the

00:01:25 ◼   ► 2018 and 2019. Right speeds are the same or even faster. But read speeds seem to be up

00:01:32 ◼   ► like 35% slower and it's just tested on the base 128 gig storage is that we have numbers

00:01:39 ◼   ► for the higher capacities. This doesn't really bother me. I mean, these SSDs are really fast,

00:01:45 ◼   ► the T two makes them even faster. Like, I'm not particularly worried about this. I don't

00:01:50 ◼   ► think that you would notice this in practice, like, it's not a big deal.

00:01:55 ◼   ► Especially if you're coming from like an older MacBook Air, the old style,

00:02:00 ◼   ► everything else about this new machine is so much faster than, you know, you're not gonna,

00:02:06 ◼   ► you're not gonna miss that, that percentage. So.

00:02:09 ◼   ► It doesn't sound like a big deal to me. But then again, I don't have a strong opinion about these

00:02:15 ◼   ► things. So it's true. Myke, do you have an opinion about these things?

00:02:19 ◼   ► acceptable

00:02:22 ◼   ► ok good moving on

00:02:26 ◼   ► moving on we also spoke about zoom the voice over IP teleconference you know

00:02:34 ◼   ► phone calls on the internet software and how they had pretty nasty security bugs

00:02:38 ◼   ► including including running a web server on your max

00:02:42 ◼   ► that's what is it is it a bug if it's if it's been done on purpose like no it's

00:02:46 ◼   ► just a bad choice

00:02:49 ◼   ► Really bad choice. It turns out that Zoom software was white labeled to other providers like this.

00:02:57 ◼   ► So there are other companies like RingCentral and a couple in China that basically just bought

00:03:03 ◼   ► Zoom software and they sort of run the service themselves as a competitor, but I guess Zoom is

00:03:08 ◼   ► still getting money from them because they bought their software. Of course, that feature/bug/bad

00:03:15 ◼   ► decision followed that software to all these other all these other places and it now is being patched

00:03:22 ◼   ► as well and sort of the same situation as before these companies like ring central are patching

00:03:27 ◼   ► their software but if you uninstalled their software there's no way to do it because the

00:03:31 ◼   ► web server is still running so apple is using their mechanism to kill the web server components

00:03:38 ◼   ► of these other applications there's a link over on daring fireball that talks about how that works in

00:03:42 ◼   ► in detail, how that is on by default,

00:03:46 ◼   ► it requires no user action.

00:03:47 ◼   ► Like you'd have to go into system preferences,

00:03:50 ◼   ► software update advanced to go in and turn this off.

00:03:55 ◼   ► And I don't think anyone should do that.

00:03:56 ◼   ► I think everyone should leave it on.

00:03:58 ◼   ► Because I really believe that Apple only uses this

00:04:03 ◼   ► in the most extreme circumstances, right?

00:04:05 ◼   ► This is not something, I would imagine that the process

00:04:08 ◼   ► with an Apple to pull this trigger is complex

00:04:12 ◼   ► because they need to make sure that they're not abusing this power. And I think I agree

00:04:17 ◼   ► with Gruber that they seem to have the system done appropriately. Myke, do you think that

00:04:22 ◼   ► Apple is handling these sorts of things appropriately?

00:04:25 ◼   ► complicated

00:04:27 ◼   ► a one word answer that leads to other questions, but we'll never know.

00:04:32 ◼   ► It's I feel like this is exactly the kind of thing that I don't want to think about.

00:04:37 ◼   ► staying up to date on all the security fixes that I'm supposed to do myself.

00:04:45 ◼   ► Like in this case, you're supposed to stop the terminal, stop the server over the terminal and delete the files and make sure it never starts up again.

00:04:53 ◼   ► This is exactly the kind of thing I never want to worry about.

00:04:57 ◼   ► So I absolutely think this is the right approach of like issue this kind of silent update for

00:05:04 ◼   ► extremely bad security bugs and leave everything else for the standard security system software

00:05:11 ◼   ► update. And it feels like, you know, of all companies that may abuse this feature, it

00:05:19 ◼   ► feels like Apple is the one that I should be the least concerned about.

00:05:23 ◼   ► And it's interesting too, because Apple always, as far as we know, I guess, they've always

00:05:27 ◼   ► disclosed when they use this.

00:05:30 ◼   ► Maybe there's a—I mean, we would never know, right, if they've used it and not told us.

00:05:33 ◼   ► But I get the feeling that when Apple feels like they need to go down this road, then

00:05:38 ◼   ► they let people know, which is good.

00:05:40 ◼   ► I kind of want to believe that there's a secret—you know, what's it called?

00:05:45 ◼   ► The president of the United States has the football, right?

00:05:48 ◼   ► Right, the nuclear codes.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Yeah, I kind of want to believe that there's a similar thing for, you know, this kind of

00:05:54 ◼   ► silent security updates. It's like a secret room where you need to be escorted into as

00:05:59 ◼   ► an engineer with your computer, and then you write the code, and then there's a huge button

00:06:04 ◼   ► and Tim Cook looking over your shoulder, and he says something, you know, very dramatic.

00:06:10 ◼   ► I can think of a good phrase right now, but you know, something like "push it off" or,

00:06:16 ◼   ► know. I mean it's not very dramatic that one. Still, you know, I kind of, on a more

00:06:21 ◼   ► serious note, I'm really fascinated by the idea of like engineers working with

00:06:26 ◼   ► top security clearance at Apple. Like I love to be, you know, inside that process

00:06:33 ◼   ► and just see what it looks like. You know, you have these engineers handling source

00:06:37 ◼   ► code for software that runs on millions of computers, like when the whole FBI

00:06:41 ◼   ► thing went down a couple of years ago. Like that stuff is super fascinating to

00:06:46 ◼   ► me. Security and engineers and top level access to this stuff. There should be a TV show about

00:06:53 ◼   ► this. Maybe it should be on Apple TV plus. I have I have a sidebar about system preferences.

00:07:00 ◼   ► I know Frederick, you're going to be super into this. So sure. So software update used to be a

00:07:05 ◼   ► standalone app and they rolled it into system then it was in the App Store, which was dumb. I don't

00:07:10 ◼   ► want to open the App Store to update my OS. Oh, yeah, there used to be a thing. Yeah, weird,

00:07:15 ◼   ► right? Like for years, I mean, like several releases. Yeah. And then in Mojave, they put

00:07:19 ◼   ► it back into system preferences where it belongs. But here's my issue. Soft Why does software update

00:07:26 ◼   ► which lives inside of system preferences use the system preferences icon as its own icon? It's like

00:07:33 ◼   ► those those cogged gears from iOS. It's like that all the way down. And so I have a proposal

00:07:40 ◼   ► that Apple bring back the old software update icon, there is a link in the show notes, you can

00:07:46 ◼   ► go see this icon over in my screenshot library. Is it the globe? Yes. So it is a it is a sphere

00:07:52 ◼   ► with crisscrossing lines. Actually, if you kind of squint it, it doesn't look that unlike the

00:07:57 ◼   ► connected logo, honestly. Oh, maybe. So that's where it comes from. And it has arrows going

00:08:06 ◼   ► around it to indicate movement not unlike the relay logo.

00:08:09 ◼   ► Oh no! Guys, I feel like you need to have a talk with your graphic designer.

00:08:17 ◼   ► We have a problem. And here's the thing, the old logo still exists in Mac OS so again

00:08:27 ◼   ► there's some screenshots. The Xcode command line tools installer is in your

00:08:34 ◼   ► system library right now and it uses this old icon. So there's a screenshot of

00:08:40 ◼   ► that but then, because I was deep in the weeds at this point, then I remembered

00:08:44 ◼   ► the Java Web Start icon. So Federico I want you to look at this if you haven't

00:08:48 ◼   ► already. Open that up in your browser. It is a... if you could describe this please

00:08:53 ◼   ► for the audience. Exhibit B, we are looking at a cup of unspecified brown

00:09:02 ◼   ► beverage. Cup appears to have a handle reminiscent of a tea cup in that the

00:09:09 ◼   ► handle is very big and there are surrounding arrows that encircle the cup

00:09:15 ◼   ► in a clockwise direction. The arrows are gray and have a gradient and inside the

00:09:20 ◼   ► cup again there's a some kind of beverage. It appears to be an American

00:09:26 ◼   ► take on coffee or a very transparent hot chocolate.

00:09:31 ◼   ► So I am not sure what I'm looking at.

00:09:34 ◼   ► What is, is it because Java is like a beverage in English?

00:09:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, Java is related to coffee somehow.

00:09:42 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:09:43 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:09:44 ◼   ► - So if you are looking at this and you zoom in on it,

00:09:48 ◼   ► this is an extremely old school,

00:09:50 ◼   ► this has been part of Mac OS X forever.

00:09:52 ◼   ► It's so skeuomorphic that if you zoom in,

00:09:55 ◼   ► there's like a little half dozen little air bubbles

00:09:58 ◼   ► on the side of the inside of the cup

00:10:00 ◼   ► where the liquid meets the inside surface.

00:10:02 ◼   ► I love that detail.

00:10:04 ◼   ► Why can't icons be good again?

00:10:06 ◼   ► Make icons great again is what we're saying.

00:10:08 ◼   ► I think is what we're saying.

00:10:09 ◼   ► - Oh no.

00:10:10 ◼   ► - So Apple, if you want to replace the system preferences

00:10:14 ◼   ► gears for the software update,

00:10:16 ◼   ► bring the old software update icon back,

00:10:17 ◼   ► and look, we'll even let you use the artwork

00:10:20 ◼   ► because it's clearly so accidentally close to ours.

00:10:23 ◼   ► - Let's play a game, Steven.

00:10:24 ◼   ► You sent us a screenshot of this finder directory.

00:10:29 ◼   ► It's located into system library core services.

00:10:33 ◼   ► I am going to go through five of these

00:10:37 ◼   ► well-hidden Mac utilities.

00:10:40 ◼   ► And in two seconds, or three seconds,

00:10:43 ◼   ► just a very quick sentence,

00:10:45 ◼   ► you need to tell me what it does, each app.

00:10:48 ◼   ► - Oh boy, okay.

00:10:49 ◼   ► Can I be looking at this folder as well?

00:10:51 ◼   ► Or do I need to have it closed?

00:10:52 ◼   ► - Okay, ready?

00:10:53 ◼   ► Okay, image of image events.

00:10:56 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:10:57 ◼   ► Help viewer.

00:11:00 ◼   ► That shows the help files within applications.

00:11:03 ◼   ► Memory slot utility.

00:11:05 ◼   ► That is for the Mac Pro to manage the PCI slots.

00:11:09 ◼   ► NetAuth agent.

00:11:13 ◼   ► That I believe is used to log into remote like if you're using remote home folders, but I'm not sure.

00:11:18 ◼   ► Keychain circle notification.

00:11:21 ◼   ► It tells you about your keychain.

00:11:23 ◼   ► Can you pick the doc? I know what that one does.

00:11:25 ◼   ► Last one, last one, last one.

00:11:28 ◼   ► Jar launcher.

00:11:29 ◼   ► That launches Java applets.

00:11:32 ◼   ► Are you serious?

00:11:34 ◼   ► I think so.

00:11:35 ◼   ► You have an answer?

00:11:35 ◼   ► .jar is like Java applets, right?

00:11:37 ◼   ► Well done.

00:11:38 ◼   ► Jar files.

00:11:39 ◼   ► Sure.

00:11:40 ◼   ► Jar files, yeah.

00:11:41 ◼   ► It's Java stuff.

00:11:42 ◼   ► I knew that. I knew that.

00:11:43 ◼   ► Was a test.

00:11:44 ◼   ► There's some amazing things.

00:11:45 ◼   ► This is a kind of like a catch all folder.

00:11:48 ◼   ► Like there's the app that you use when you add a printer.

00:11:51 ◼   ► That's in here.

00:11:52 ◼   ► you know, the dock is in here. Like if you want to where the dock lives,

00:11:54 ◼   ► it's in core services, all sorts of fun stuff,

00:11:59 ◼   ► spotlights in here. Good stuff. So that's a,

00:12:02 ◼   ► that's a place that we worked. We went today.

00:12:04 ◼   ► I've been told by sources who typed it in the Google document that Myke wishes

00:12:09 ◼   ► that max could install updates on shutdown like windows does because no one

00:12:15 ◼   ► wants to restart their machines.

00:12:18 ◼   ► Do you think that would mean security updates would be installed less often?

00:12:22 ◼   ► More. Okay, we got that covered.

00:12:26 ◼   ► This is like, we have a, we have a, we have like an oracle and the oracle has spoken

00:12:36 ◼   ► single word answers. It's like, hey Mr. Oracle, what do you think about this? Yeah. Good.

00:12:48 ◼   ► So yeah, I mean, Jason's now in big trouble here.

00:12:52 ◼   ► If Apple brings back the six-color Apple logo

00:12:55 ◼   ► and calls it the six-colors edition,

00:12:57 ◼   ► it's gonna be awkward. - It's gonna be awkward, yeah.

00:12:59 ◼   ► - I hope not. (laughs)

00:13:01 ◼   ► I hope they call it like the, you know,

00:13:03 ◼   ► in classic Apple, sort of vintage Apple,

00:13:07 ◼   ► classic Apple, not six-color,

00:13:10 ◼   ► because that could be confusing.

00:13:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is a weird rumor.

00:13:13 ◼   ► So MacRumors has this, and I love this.

00:13:16 ◼   ► In the article, they say this could very well be untrue.

00:13:20 ◼   ► Which is like, is that how they report rumors?

00:13:24 ◼   ► That's great.

00:13:25 ◼   ► - I like that there's a risk component involved

00:13:28 ◼   ► with this rumor.

00:13:29 ◼   ► It's like we're playing roulette here.

00:13:31 ◼   ► - Except there's no real consequences, right?

00:13:33 ◼   ► Like is the logo on the new laptops the colors?

00:13:36 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:13:37 ◼   ► Like the very low stake.

00:13:38 ◼   ► I think it is exciting.

00:13:39 ◼   ► So the rumor says that Apple could reintroduce

00:13:42 ◼   ► its classic rainbow logo to some of its new products

00:13:45 ◼   ► early as this year and they have mock-ups of course of the iPhone XR but

00:13:51 ◼   ► next year's iPhone XR so not without the no this is this year she's got the blue

00:13:56 ◼   ► one in there so rainbow logos on that and then a what is a shockingly shiny

00:14:02 ◼   ► MacBook Pro with no bezels and the back seems to be like a mirrored stainless

00:14:06 ◼   ► steel Apple please do not ship this laptop with a stainless steel lid but if

00:14:10 ◼   ► they put that aside, a glowing rainbow Apple logo on the back. I think these look

00:14:17 ◼   ► awesome. I for a long time, Jason does that did this on his old MacBook Air,

00:14:22 ◼   ► there was like vinyl stickers that you could cut out and put over your Apple

00:14:25 ◼   ► logo on your laptop so it was it was the six color logo. I love this and I think

00:14:31 ◼   ► Apple should do it and you know what I think it's I think it's a good idea.

00:14:35 ◼   ► I would honestly consider one because it looks fun and vintage and I like that

00:14:40 ◼   ► even though I actually never lived through the six-color Apple era, I like to pretend I did,

00:14:47 ◼   ► or that I knew about it, at least. So I would actually consider one, and it could be a fun way

00:14:56 ◼   ► to sort of spice up the lineup a little more. Instead of the classic red and blue and white

00:15:02 ◼   ► that we have now, they could go beyond that and do something a little more extra, something a

00:15:08 ◼   ► a little nicer. So this could be fun. I like it.

00:15:11 ◼   ► Do you think this would be like a special edition or would this just be like how all

00:15:14 ◼   ► the iPhones come?

00:15:15 ◼   ► I think it could be a special edition. I'm struggling to find the kind of special occasion

00:15:21 ◼   ► for that special edition. Maybe there doesn't need to be one. You know, this is the same

00:15:25 ◼   ► company that celebrated the App Store's 10th anniversary on its 11th year with the poker

00:15:29 ◼   ► game.

00:15:30 ◼   ► That's still, that's still, every time I think about that, I die a little inside. Come on,

00:15:34 ◼   ► Apple.

00:15:35 ◼   ► So they might as well celebrate the iPhone, the iPhone's 10th anniversary the next year.

00:15:41 ◼   ► So a couple years off now.

00:15:43 ◼   ► Myke, is this something that you would buy?

00:15:45 ◼   ► Yes.

00:15:46 ◼   ► Good to know.

00:15:47 ◼   ► Good.

00:15:48 ◼   ► Very good.

00:15:49 ◼   ► Before we move on, we are recording this on July 17th.

00:15:51 ◼   ► August is quickly approaching and August, as you may know, is Relay's anniversary month.

00:15:57 ◼   ► The network will turn five years old this August, which is hard to believe.

00:16:02 ◼   ► We're going to do we're doing several things to mark the occasion one you know about we're doing a live show in San Francisco

00:16:07 ◼   ► We would love if you would come out we sell some tickets for sale

00:16:11 ◼   ► We are going to have a wide range of relay hosts doing a whole bunch of different things

00:16:17 ◼   ► So this is not like a live connected

00:16:19 ◼   ► We've done that for this year, and we've put that back in the box for probably a long time because Federico can't get any more tattoos

00:16:26 ◼   ► He's almost out of body space so those are now

00:16:29 ◼   ► You would like to think so. Yeah, sweet sweet neck tattoo, but it's gonna be like a hodgepodge of relay

00:16:35 ◼   ► Content and hosts we're looking forward to that. So there's a link in the show notes

00:16:38 ◼   ► August also is sort of our membership drive

00:16:42 ◼   ► We're gonna be talking about this more in the coming weeks

00:16:44 ◼   ► But every episode does every show does a special members only episode

00:16:48 ◼   ► So we are hard at work on planning those as a lot of fun stuff coming so you can learn more about that at relay.fm/membership

00:16:56 ◼   ► And there's probably some more stuff coming that I can't talk about but it's gonna be awesome

00:17:00 ◼   ► So those links are all in the show notes

00:17:03 ◼   ► We're going to move on to our we basically have a collection of tiny topics this week. It's kind of a weird week

00:17:09 ◼   ► We've got a sort of a grab bag of stuff

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00:18:38 ◼   ► Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of connected and all of Relay FM. Tiny topic number one,

00:18:44 ◼   ► And this is I was I would say inspired

00:18:46 ◼   ► But basically I just ripped it off from another podcast Dubai Friday recently on episode 140 had a conversation about how

00:18:53 ◼   ► They name their devices and I realized in the 26 years of doing the show together

00:18:59 ◼   ► I'm not sure we've ever talked about this and

00:19:02 ◼   ► So Federico, let's start with you. How do you name your devices? Well, I try to

00:19:09 ◼   ► brand my devices with my name as much as possible because I don't have an ego problem.

00:19:16 ◼   ► Therefore my phone is called either "Tichi Max" or "Max Tichi".

00:19:23 ◼   ► Lately I've been playing around with "Max Tichi" more and of course it's camel cased so no space between them.

00:19:30 ◼   ► Sort of like you would write "Max Stories" for example. So "Max Tichi" is the name of my phone.

00:19:37 ◼   ► My AirPods are the T-chipods. So of course, you know, they go well together.

00:19:42 ◼   ► Take a different approach with the iPad for some reason.

00:19:45 ◼   ► Because I have two, I have the 12.9 and 11 inch Pro, I call them Big Pro and Small Pro and

00:19:52 ◼   ► again, camel case, no space. And the Mac Mini is just called Mini so that when I'm on my home network

00:19:59 ◼   ► I can just type in mini.local and it can, you know, SMB or

00:20:02 ◼   ► SSH connects to my Mac Mini like that because it's just called Mini.

00:20:06 ◼   ► I don't have a strong preference for the Apple Watch. I think in previous years I used to rename

00:20:12 ◼   ► Federico's Apple Watch, which is a default name, to like Series 3 or Series 4,

00:20:18 ◼   ► but I haven't done it since my last restore of WatchOS, so I should pay attention to that again.

00:20:24 ◼   ► Again, I'm not too happy with my big pro/small pro naming scheme. I prefer the iPhone one and the AirPods one. It's very fun.

00:20:30 ◼   ► Oh, and the Apple TV? It's called Big TV,

00:20:33 ◼   ► Because it's connected to a big television set like 55 inches. So it's a big TV

00:20:37 ◼   ► And that's how I name things. I feel like your iPad names are probably the weakest part of that system

00:20:43 ◼   ► Maybe you do like big t.t small t.t

00:20:47 ◼   ► You know, I don't know but that but that would imply a big me in a small me, but you have max t.t

00:20:54 ◼   ► So I don't know maximum Federica. Yeah, and that's and that's good. You don't want minimum t.t, right?

00:21:02 ◼   ► Mine is really simple and pretty boring.

00:21:07 ◼   ► I basically just stick my Twitter handle ISMH in front of it. So like my

00:21:11 ◼   ► Mac Pro is ISMH 15. It's 15 inch. My iMac Pro is ISMH Pro. iPad is ISMH 11.

00:21:19 ◼   ► My phone is ISMH 10S. Very boring.

00:21:22 ◼   ► I've done that for years, you know. I used to, if I broke a phone then I would name

00:21:28 ◼   ► its replacement, I would increase the number,

00:21:32 ◼   ► so like ISMH seven plus two, but that got out of hand.

00:21:36 ◼   ► And then every time I saw my phone's name,

00:21:38 ◼   ► I was reminded of my occasional drop damage.

00:21:43 ◼   ► So I got rid of that system because it made me sad.

00:21:46 ◼   ► Myke, in a single word, do you have a naming scheme

00:21:51 ◼   ► for your devices?

00:21:52 ◼   ► - No.

00:21:54 ◼   ► - Do you wish you had one?

00:21:55 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:21:56 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:21:57 ◼   ► on. Federico, tell me what is happening with Airmail. It's happening that

00:22:04 ◼   ► Airmail released a new app on the App Store and I should clarify that

00:22:10 ◼   ► Airmail Zero, which is the new app, is the sponsor of my website this week and it's

00:22:16 ◼   ► a new client that works exclusively with Gmail. I haven't really paid much

00:22:21 ◼   ► attention to this, first of all because I don't handle my sponsorships and second

00:22:27 ◼   ► because I'm busy writing my iOS review.

00:22:29 ◼   ► My understanding is that in doing this and in updating,

00:22:33 ◼   ► they have released a new app,

00:22:35 ◼   ► but they've also updated the business model

00:22:36 ◼   ► for the standard Airmel app experience.

00:22:40 ◼   ► And they, in doing this,

00:22:43 ◼   ► they have rethought some of the decisions

00:22:47 ◼   ► around charging for features.

00:22:50 ◼   ► And so what they're doing now is push notifications

00:22:53 ◼   ► that used to be available

00:22:55 ◼   ► as part of the standard RML purchase until last week,

00:23:00 ◼   ► basically, they now require an annual

00:23:03 ◼   ► or monthly subscription.

00:23:04 ◼   ► So it used to be a free feature,

00:23:06 ◼   ► now it's part of a subscription.

00:23:08 ◼   ► And there has been a lot of outrage

00:23:10 ◼   ► and a lot of pushback from users

00:23:12 ◼   ► and a lot of blog posts all over the web

00:23:16 ◼   ► about this outcry from users about

00:23:19 ◼   ► previously free feature becoming a subscription.

00:23:23 ◼   ► And I think that this whole controversy, it sort of taps

00:23:28 ◼   ► into all of these underlying feelings that people have

00:23:36 ◼   ► about subscriptions.

00:23:37 ◼   ► And I think it encapsulates what people dislike about

00:23:42 ◼   ► subscriptions.

00:23:42 ◼   ► And again, I feel bad for these guys.

00:23:44 ◼   ► First of all, because I know them personally.

00:23:45 ◼   ► They are Italian.

00:23:46 ◼   ► They are a small team.

00:23:48 ◼   ► They won an Apple Design Awards a couple of years ago.

00:23:50 ◼   ► And I met up with them at WWDC.

00:23:53 ◼   ► They are, as far as I know, super nice people.

00:23:56 ◼   ► And again, I don't say this

00:23:57 ◼   ► because they're sponsoring my website.

00:24:00 ◼   ► I just, I happen to know them personally.

00:24:02 ◼   ► They are fun and they obviously care about Airmail,

00:24:04 ◼   ► which I personally used as my client for a long time

00:24:08 ◼   ► before switching to Spark.

00:24:09 ◼   ► But I feel like they made, this is just a bad decision

00:24:14 ◼   ► and it was communicated poorly.

00:24:16 ◼   ► If you're planning to switch the business model

00:24:19 ◼   ► for a feature that people are already using in their apps.

00:24:23 ◼   ► You need to tell them months in advance.

00:24:26 ◼   ► You need to have a plan.

00:24:27 ◼   ► You need to have a blog post.

00:24:28 ◼   ► You need to outline a strategy.

00:24:29 ◼   ► You need to explain why.

00:24:31 ◼   ► You can't just release an update on the App Store

00:24:34 ◼   ► and people, when they next open the app,

00:24:37 ◼   ► they will be presented with a splash screen that says,

00:24:40 ◼   ► oh, and now notifications require a subscription.

00:24:43 ◼   ► 'Cause that is just a bad business practice.

00:24:46 ◼   ► And it wasn't even communicated poorly.

00:24:48 ◼   ► it was not communicated at all, which makes it even worse.

00:24:52 ◼   ► And second, there's an argument to be made for the fact

00:24:54 ◼   ► that this is against apps or guidelines.

00:24:57 ◼   ► In theory, if you were to follow the law exactly,

00:25:02 ◼   ► you're not supposed to take a feature

00:25:04 ◼   ► that used to be part of a paid upfront app

00:25:08 ◼   ► and lock it behind the subscription suddenly

00:25:11 ◼   ► without any previous warning.

00:25:12 ◼   ► Then again, do all developers follow?

00:25:17 ◼   ► Does even Apple follow their own guidelines by the letter?

00:25:21 ◼   ► Not necessarily.

00:25:23 ◼   ► So there's a second argument.

00:25:24 ◼   ► I think the main argument here is the idea of

00:25:27 ◼   ► indie developers are struggling,

00:25:30 ◼   ► and we're talking about $5,

00:25:32 ◼   ► but it's not just the monetary amount of the subscription.

00:25:35 ◼   ► I think it's the practice,

00:25:37 ◼   ► and it's the leaving people with a bad feeling,

00:25:40 ◼   ► because I feel like, and this may sound,

00:25:44 ◼   ► it may sound ridiculous,

00:25:45 ◼   ► But if these developers warned people six months ago,

00:25:50 ◼   ► or last year, and they said, look, very clearly,

00:25:53 ◼   ► we are a small team, running push notifications,

00:25:56 ◼   ► costs us money, we need to start charging for this feature.

00:26:01 ◼   ► And here's what we're gonna do,

00:26:02 ◼   ► and here's how we're gonna handle the transition.

00:26:05 ◼   ► People, and I'm very confident

00:26:08 ◼   ► that people would have even paid $10 or $15,

00:26:13 ◼   ► even more than what they are charging now.

00:26:15 ◼   ► But you catch them by surprise,

00:26:17 ◼   ► you don't communicate at all,

00:26:19 ◼   ► you just bring up a pop-up that says,

00:26:21 ◼   ► "Surprise, now you gotta give us money."

00:26:23 ◼   ► And you just leave people with a bad feeling, you know?

00:26:26 ◼   ► And they get angry and they are frustrated

00:26:29 ◼   ► and they get upset, and now it's a whole mess.

00:26:33 ◼   ► This is my interpretation of the story.

00:26:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I understand their position of,

00:26:38 ◼   ► you need your app to make money so you can keep building it,

00:26:41 ◼   ► and they've tinkered with it over the years,

00:26:42 ◼   ► business model. But so I don't envy that problem. But I think

00:26:47 ◼   ► to your point, there are better ways you could handle this. And

00:26:50 ◼   ► I think all of their errors come down to just the communication

00:26:53 ◼   ► with their users, you know, you can't surprise people with this

00:26:56 ◼   ► sort of thing. If you need to take something that was part of

00:27:00 ◼   ► the app and section it off into a subscription, you know, I would

00:27:05 ◼   ► think, are there other things you could do, you know, if you

00:27:09 ◼   ► you need to pay for the notification server, just for instance. Maybe you can leave notifications

00:27:15 ◼   ► in the app but have new features that are behind some new subscription. But it feels

00:27:20 ◼   ► like taking something that was there and removing it and putting it behind a subscription, I

00:27:26 ◼   ► think that's why people are upset. And I totally understand that.

00:27:29 ◼   ► Yeah, and look, at Max Stories we deal with a lot of indie developers. So we are very

00:27:37 ◼   ► aware of the struggles of the independent developer or the indie development studio

00:27:44 ◼   ► made of two or three people in 2019. But we also need to face reality in that if you want

00:27:52 ◼   ► to survive in the App Store these days, you may be an indie, but you need to behave like

00:27:59 ◼   ► a serious, big studio. Being indie does not excuse you from just charging money without

00:28:07 ◼   ► explaining anything. And this is something that I learned as the owner of an indie website years ago,

00:28:14 ◼   ► that just, you know, slapping this term, being indie, does not excuse you from following basic

00:28:21 ◼   ► business practices that customers appreciate and customers demand. And I feel like in this case,

00:28:27 ◼   ► this is a good example of indie developers thinking, "Oh, you know, the App Store is

00:28:32 ◼   ► is unsustainable, we need to start asking for money and everybody will understand.

00:28:37 ◼   ► And I sort of, I can sort of see how and why this might have passed as an acceptable strategy

00:28:47 ◼   ► years ago, maybe five years ago.

00:28:49 ◼   ► You know, these days when many more apps are based on subscriptions and it feels like every

00:28:56 ◼   ► other day there's a new subscription service or an existing product or app is switching

00:29:01 ◼   ► into subscriptions, even though you're indie, does not mean you don't need to communicate

00:29:06 ◼   ► it beforehand, does not mean you just can't go without outlining your plans. And so, you

00:29:15 ◼   ► know, the situation has clearly changed. Five or six years ago, I remember because I used

00:29:21 ◼   ► to do this, we would have criticized all those people that were upset about the developer

00:29:28 ◼   ► asking for money, for more money. But now, when a developer switches to a subscription,

00:29:34 ◼   ► which is the popular business model these days, it's just common to complain about it.

00:29:40 ◼   ► Because we are, you know, I think everybody has a bit of a subscription fatigue going

00:29:44 ◼   ► on, that's also a factor. So, and you know, there are a lot of arguments to be made about

00:29:50 ◼   ► whether it's Apple's fault, in that Apple is not enabling a more traditional, you know,

00:29:56 ◼   ► upgrade business model, that's a separate discussion, but in this case I feel like,

00:30:00 ◼   ► you know, with all due respect to the Airman folks, because it's a really good app, it's

00:30:05 ◼   ► a bit buggy, but it's always been buggy, we've always said that, but you know, it's got,

00:30:10 ◼   ► it's still got that kind of functionality that you cannot get anywhere else, but in

00:30:13 ◼   ► this case, they should have taken the time to explain what they were doing beforehand,

00:30:19 ◼   ► And they not only, I think they would have avoided all of this, they actually, I think

00:30:27 ◼   ► they would have been able to ask for even more money if they were, and it's not a matter

00:30:31 ◼   ► of being honest, just a matter of being proactive and thinking about it beforehand.

00:30:37 ◼   ► That's at least my take.

00:30:38 ◼   ► Yeah, the idea of having some sort of trust with your users, that is the heart of so many,

00:30:46 ◼   ► you know, the app store is weird, right?

00:30:47 ◼   ► There are a bunch of users who download an app

00:30:49 ◼   ► and they don't understand that there's a person

00:30:52 ◼   ► or a company behind them, right?

00:30:54 ◼   ► A lot of people think these apps come from Apple

00:30:55 ◼   ► or whatever, especially these like, you know,

00:30:58 ◼   ► if you're not Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram,

00:30:59 ◼   ► it's like, oh, I don't know who makes Airmail.

00:31:01 ◼   ► Probably just like some people somewhere.

00:31:03 ◼   ► And I think people, a lot of users just assume

00:31:06 ◼   ► that developers make good livings, and a lot of them do,

00:31:08 ◼   ► but a lot of them really struggle as well.

00:31:10 ◼   ► And I don't know where Airmail is on that spectrum.

00:31:13 ◼   ► But when you are indie and you've like crafted

00:31:16 ◼   ► this persona for yourself in sort of the ecosystem of users

00:31:21 ◼   ► who care about indie development,

00:31:22 ◼   ► like people who read your website or listen to this show.

00:31:25 ◼   ► And you do something to damage that trust,

00:31:29 ◼   ► like that's really hard to come back from.

00:31:33 ◼   ► And I don't think it helps Airmail

00:31:34 ◼   ► that they're in a situation where like,

00:31:36 ◼   ► they've built an app that is in a category

00:31:40 ◼   ► that is full of failure, right?

00:31:41 ◼   ► Like how many good mail clients have come and gone

00:31:44 ◼   ► over the years?

00:31:45 ◼   ► really hard business to be in. And part of me looks at this and

00:31:49 ◼   ► thinks, airmills done like, I don't know that I hope that's

00:31:51 ◼   ► not true. I really I mean, I don't I really don't wish that

00:31:54 ◼   ► on them. But if you're making changes to try to shore up the

00:31:58 ◼   ► business, and you do it in a way that burns a lot of user trust,

00:32:00 ◼   ► like that's a real, that's a bad combo. And I hope they pull

00:32:03 ◼   ► through this I really do. But I just worry about it. So best of

00:32:06 ◼   ► luck to those guys. But I think that hopefully they've learned

00:32:09 ◼   ► their lesson about about communicating clearly with their

00:32:12 ◼   ► users because that's a that's a pretty bad error in my book. Myke, do you think

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00:34:38 ◼   ► Okay, this is going to be tricky because Tiny Topic 3 and 4 are basically about Myke, and

00:34:46 ◼   ► Myke is in full Oracle mode.

00:34:49 ◼   ► So Myke, I know you bought a new Echo show, which for listeners is the Echo with the screen

00:34:56 ◼   ► built into it so you can interact with your voice, but it can also show you stuff like

00:35:00 ◼   ► time, music playing, recipes.

00:35:03 ◼   ► Occasionally you can play YouTube videos

00:35:04 ◼   ► depending on how Amazon and Google feel about each other.

00:35:07 ◼   ► It's a pretty neat device.

00:35:08 ◼   ► The first one was really, I thought, really ugly

00:35:11 ◼   ► but I think they've come a long way

00:35:12 ◼   ► in their industrial design.

00:35:13 ◼   ► But Myke, you had an Echo as well,

00:35:17 ◼   ► I think in your kitchen.

00:35:18 ◼   ► And so have you replaced your Echo with an Echo Show?

00:35:22 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:35:23 ◼   ► - Is that because the Echo wasn't doing something you wanted?

00:35:28 ◼   ► - Old.

00:35:29 ◼   ► It was old, okay, and you can't stand old technology.

00:35:32 ◼   ► I know you get the heebie-jeebies coming in my office.

00:35:35 ◼   ► Or did it have some sort of problem?

00:35:38 ◼   ► - No.

00:35:40 ◼   ► - Okay, and the Echo Show resolves that, I guess.

00:35:42 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:35:43 ◼   ► - You also have--

00:35:44 ◼   ► - Hearing.

00:35:45 ◼   ► - You had a hearing problem?

00:35:47 ◼   ► Okay, this is going to be very exciting to edit.

00:35:52 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:35:53 ◼   ► - You have a HomePod as well.

00:35:55 ◼   ► Are you using the HomePod more or less

00:35:58 ◼   ► than the Echo devices?

00:35:59 ◼   ► Okay. Do you have the Echo devices stood their ground because they do things the HomePod

00:36:04 ◼   ► cannot do?

00:36:05 ◼   ► Yes.

00:36:07 ◼   ► Is an example of that showing recipes?

00:36:09 ◼   ► Yes.

00:36:10 ◼   ► This is difficult. I'm just working through the bullet list. You also, I believe, had

00:36:14 ◼   ► a kitchen iPad. Does the Echo Show replace that as well?

00:36:18 ◼   ► Yes.

00:36:19 ◼   ► Interesting. So you are showing recipes, viewing timers.

00:36:25 ◼   ► Groceries.

00:36:26 ◼   ► Groceries doing your grocery. Oh, yeah, because you use a grocery service that ties in with the echo, correct?

00:36:30 ◼   ► Yes, so the echo shows like a kitchen computer for you, really?

00:36:33 ◼   ► Yes

00:36:35 ◼   ► Okay, does it sound good? I know the original echo show

00:36:39 ◼   ► I was not impressed hardly with any of the hardware, but it didn't sound very good to me

00:36:44 ◼   ► Of course the home pot I think sounds really good. But does the does the echo show sound good?

00:36:48 ◼   ► Basie. Oh

00:36:50 ◼   ► So it drops the bass

00:36:52 ◼   ► Yes

00:36:54 ◼   ► Do you do you throw parties with the echo show no, why not

00:36:59 ◼   ► Boring

00:37:03 ◼   ► Wait

00:37:07 ◼   ► Don't answer this but you're boring or the echo shows. I will just move on from that. Have you found that having the screen?

00:37:13 ◼   ► Improves what you were doing with the echo before

00:37:17 ◼   ► Yes, I also know that the echo show does like digital photo frame stuff

00:37:23 ◼   ► are you utilizing that? Yes. It pulls images from what photo service? Like how

00:37:30 ◼   ► do you get pictures on it? Amazon. So you're uploading photos to Amazon Photos

00:37:36 ◼   ► I guess or whatever they call it? Yes. Okay and you've just uploaded a subset

00:37:41 ◼   ► of images that you really want to see there? Yeah. I don't know this is the

00:37:44 ◼   ► Echo Show a touchscreen device can you touch the screen and it responds? Yeah.

00:37:48 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:37:49 ◼   ► - Are you doing that in the kitchen?

00:37:51 ◼   ► Sometimes?

00:37:53 ◼   ► - Yes, yes, sometimes.

00:37:55 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:37:56 ◼   ► You know, when the HomePod came out,

00:37:58 ◼   ► I think we talked about it on the show,

00:38:00 ◼   ► it was like, well, is there room for Apple

00:38:01 ◼   ► to slap an iPad Mini to the front of a HomePod

00:38:04 ◼   ► and call it the HomePod show?

00:38:06 ◼   ► And I think that is interesting,

00:38:08 ◼   ► but what's so great about Voices is,

00:38:10 ◼   ► in my mind, is that when you're in the kitchen,

00:38:12 ◼   ► your hands are dirty, right?

00:38:13 ◼   ► You've got some sort of meat juice on them

00:38:15 ◼   ► where you're cutting something up

00:38:16 ◼   ► and you don't wanna touch something.

00:38:18 ◼   ► Federico, you have a lot of HomePods, I think like six.

00:38:21 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:38:22 ◼   ► - Do you have one in--

00:38:23 ◼   ► - No, I have three.

00:38:24 ◼   ► - Three, three.

00:38:25 ◼   ► Just remind me, is the, do you have one in the kitchen

00:38:27 ◼   ► for kitcheny type stuff?

00:38:28 ◼   ► - Yes, but it's way up on the shelf.

00:38:33 ◼   ► It's not near the meat juice, Steven.

00:38:37 ◼   ► - That's good.

00:38:38 ◼   ► I mean, the HomePods covered in cloth,

00:38:40 ◼   ► you would never get that out of there, honestly.

00:38:42 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:38:43 ◼   ► - And Federico, you moved from Echo devices

00:38:45 ◼   ► to the HomePod just like I did.

00:38:47 ◼   ► Do you have any anything like in sort of like again like talking in the domain of the kitchen

00:38:52 ◼   ► that the echo did better or that you miss having moved to the HomePod?

00:38:55 ◼   ► Sidviel likes to say that the echo was more accurate in understanding our commands.

00:39:03 ◼   ► I don't see that. I think my accent is always problematic to an extent with this assistance.

00:39:13 ◼   ► I'm trying to think, is there anything that I missed?

00:39:15 ◼   ► I feel like it was fun to play around with the integrations,

00:39:19 ◼   ► with the echo, like you can enable a web service

00:39:23 ◼   ► and you have all these skills to play around with.

00:39:25 ◼   ► But then again, I enabled more skills

00:39:28 ◼   ► than I was actually using.

00:39:29 ◼   ► And it's also hard for me to compare

00:39:32 ◼   ► because since I got a HomePod, was it last year?

00:39:35 ◼   ► I think, by going all in with the Apple ecosystem,

00:39:40 ◼   ► multiple home pods and the watch and using reminders instead of a third-party task manager.

00:39:45 ◼   ► I don't see the advantages of having an Echo at this point. I don't use any services that

00:39:56 ◼   ► cannot be integrated with Siri and I use the Apple TV a lot now. I use Apple Music. Back in the day

00:40:04 ◼   ► when I was using Todoist and Spotify and all these third-party services made sense for

00:40:10 ◼   ► me to have an Echo, but it feels like at this point I don't miss it.

00:40:15 ◼   ► I guess you could say that I miss the -- something that is fun about the Echo, I think, is the

00:40:20 ◼   ► fact that Amazon continuously updates it and just like new models, new versions, new features,

00:40:26 ◼   ► it feels like more of a product in development, whereas the HomePod feels sort of like a mistake

00:40:32 ◼   ► that Apple made and that they've been trying to rectify over time, which is a very different

00:40:38 ◼   ► mindset.

00:40:40 ◼   ► But I guess the Echo has more of a community around it, of all the skills and new models

00:40:47 ◼   ► and new versions and constant updates from Amazon, whereas we're lucky if we get one

00:40:55 ◼   ► software update for the HomePod a year.

00:40:57 ◼   ► So it's very different from that point of view, but otherwise I don't miss the Echo.

00:41:01 ◼   ► pretty much how I feel about it too. I still have an Echo out here in the office just to

00:41:07 ◼   ► keep an eye on it, but I don't really miss the Echos in the kitchen. We have a HomePod

00:41:13 ◼   ► in the kitchen and one in the bedroom, and I have one out here, so I have three as well.

00:41:17 ◼   ► And really the last holdout for me was multiple timer support. And when they added that to

00:41:23 ◼   ► the HomePod, that basically solved my last issue with it, especially in the domain of

00:41:28 ◼   ► kitchen. Like you can name your timers as you can ask it, you know, how much time is left on

00:41:32 ◼   ► this timer or that timer and it keeps up with it all. And I actually, I think I might disagree

00:41:38 ◼   ► disagree with y'all's assessment at home. Like I feel like the HomePod does better under early

00:41:45 ◼   ► better listening than the Echo did. And I know like with the kids, the HomePod seems to understand

00:41:52 ◼   ► them better than it did than the Echo did. I don't, that's a hard to prove. Like I've done

00:41:56 ◼   ► no testing right but it seems to me like my kids when they ask the HomePod for something it gets it

00:42:01 ◼   ► right basically all the time and I feel like the Echo that wasn't true. Yes. Is that true with the

00:42:08 ◼   ► kids in your household Myke? Yes. Do you have any kids in your household? No. Okay just want to

00:42:15 ◼   ► clarify that. So it sounds like okay so Myke on a scale of one to ten, ten being the most happy,

00:42:21 ◼   ► one being the most unhappy. Where do you rate the echo show? Seven. Where would you rank the

00:42:28 ◼   ► old echo that you replaced? Six. Where do you put the home pod? Seven. Okay, wow, that's high praise

00:42:36 ◼   ► for the echo show, I think. All right, so we got through that one somehow. I'm just gonna,

00:42:43 ◼   ► I'm just going to call an audible and cut the next one. We'll come back to Myke and the iPadOS beta.

00:42:49 ◼   ► Yeah, because that was that was painful. Moving on, then there are some more iPhone. I don't

00:42:56 ◼   ► want to say rumors. But it's something so we talked about a second ago about the six

00:43:01 ◼   ► color logo coming back. But there are now some, what do we call these Federico like

00:43:09 ◼   ► production mod? Like what are these dummies production? Dummy, dummy, dummy units? Yeah.

00:43:16 ◼   ► I think so. So these are, they come out this time every year. They are not functioning iPhones,

00:43:26 ◼   ► right? But they are enclosures. I think they're basically designed for case makers to start

00:43:31 ◼   ► working on their products. And so some of these have come out. There's a video in the

00:43:37 ◼   ► show notes of an MKBHD video he posted last night of this, of two or three models. So the

00:43:45 ◼   ► for lack of better naming what we will call the 11, the 11 R and the 11 Max and we've seen the

00:43:53 ◼   ► these renders before where they're you know the the 11s have three cameras the R has two but the

00:44:02 ◼   ► camera bump is the same on both it kind of looks like an Apple watch is like slowly rising out of

00:44:08 ◼   ► the surface of the back of the phone what do you think about this look Federico and what do you

00:44:13 ◼   ► do you think about a third camera what you would want out of that? I love the

00:44:17 ◼   ► idea of a third camera right I think the more especially because I was sort of

00:44:23 ◼   ► not maybe bored with the with 10s and with the you know we've talked about the

00:44:28 ◼   ► pictures that come out from the 10s camera by default so I'm all in with the

00:44:33 ◼   ► idea of let's bring in a third camera and see what we can do so that sounds

00:44:37 ◼   ► fun especially if it's gonna be an ultra light camera I watched the NK BHD

00:44:42 ◼   ► video and it speculates how you may end up shooting like ultra-wide 4k video, which sounds

00:44:48 ◼   ► incredible on a phone. So I'm all into that, right? But this design, I feel like we need

00:44:53 ◼   ► to talk about it because it's not good. I mean, if this is, of course, we don't know

00:44:58 ◼   ► if we're going to get the person says, "Oh, you guys are all talking about, you know,

00:45:02 ◼   ► this is all rumors." Okay, sure. So to that guy, we respond that we are aware of the fact

00:45:08 ◼   ► that we are talking about rumors at this point.

00:45:11 ◼   ► Although they proved to be quite accurate in the past.

00:45:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, very much so.

00:45:17 ◼   ► - I don't, at this stage, I don't like it.

00:45:20 ◼   ► I think it is, there's multiple problems

00:45:25 ◼   ► going on here for me.

00:45:27 ◼   ► So let's just dispense with the mock-ups

00:45:32 ◼   ► that we saw until a few weeks ago.

00:45:35 ◼   ► The ones where there used to, there was a huge camera bump,

00:45:40 ◼   ► the huge camera square, whatever you wanna call it,

00:45:44 ◼   ► tile, I've seen some people call it a camera tile,

00:45:47 ◼   ► which I guess it makes sense.

00:45:48 ◼   ► But the ones with all the trypophobia going on

00:45:52 ◼   ► with the holes, that was terrible.

00:45:55 ◼   ► That was a terrible look.

00:45:58 ◼   ► I couldn't even bring myself to look at those mock-ups

00:46:00 ◼   ► because I very much suffer,

00:46:03 ◼   ► like I think everybody else on Earth,

00:46:05 ◼   ► I suffer from that, you know, the fear of holes.

00:46:08 ◼   ► Do not Google it, trust me.

00:46:10 ◼   ► - So what you're referring to is,

00:46:11 ◼   ► there are kind of two versions of this.

00:46:13 ◼   ► One-- - The older version,

00:46:14 ◼   ► the older version that used to float around

00:46:17 ◼   ► until a few weeks ago.

00:46:18 ◼   ► That was terrible.

00:46:20 ◼   ► - Right, so in that one, the island that the cameras are on,

00:46:24 ◼   ► you know, right now, like on the iPhone X and higher,

00:46:27 ◼   ► the cameras are sunk into black glass.

00:46:29 ◼   ► And so unless you are under direct light,

00:46:31 ◼   ► you can't really see where the lenses start

00:46:33 ◼   ► and the black area begins.

00:46:35 ◼   ► The earlier version of this, that raised section,

00:46:37 ◼   ► instead of being black, was the body color of the iPhone.

00:46:41 ◼   ► So instead of a camera bump, it's all black,

00:46:45 ◼   ► and there's lenses kind of embedded in it,

00:46:47 ◼   ► it was a camera bump in silver or gold or whatever,

00:46:51 ◼   ► and the lens is very noticeably kind of floating

00:46:54 ◼   ► in the middle of it, and it's not good.

00:46:58 ◼   ► I agree with you.

00:46:59 ◼   ► Not a good move.

00:47:00 ◼   ► And now the rumors seem to point to, okay,

00:47:03 ◼   ► It's the same sort of construction of camera bump

00:47:05 ◼   ► that we've had where it's raised,

00:47:07 ◼   ► there's a lip around it, and it's all black,

00:47:10 ◼   ► the surface is all black glass,

00:47:11 ◼   ► and the lenses and the flash and everything

00:47:14 ◼   ► are sort of embedded into that.

00:47:16 ◼   ► It kind of hides the details,

00:47:18 ◼   ► and it avoids the horrific problem that you described.

00:47:23 ◼   ► - I agree though with MKBHD

00:47:26 ◼   ► that the new version of these dummy units

00:47:31 ◼   ► also does not look great in that the camera bump is huge and it really doesn't look nice

00:47:40 ◼   ► because it's not centered.

00:47:41 ◼   ► He compared this camera bump to the one in the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, I want to say.

00:47:51 ◼   ► One of those, anyway.

00:47:54 ◼   ► And that looked a lot more balanced to me.

00:47:58 ◼   ► Because in the Huawei phone, it was smaller and centered.

00:48:02 ◼   ► And I think my greatest issue with these mockups is the imbalance of this huge camera bump

00:48:10 ◼   ► that's tucked all the way into the upper left corner of the phone.

00:48:15 ◼   ► It just looks like, it just looks imbalanced to me from a visual standpoint.

00:48:20 ◼   ► To the point where, you know, phones always had a camera bump in the upper left corner,

00:48:25 ◼   ► But when it was small, when it used to be a small bump, it didn't bother me visually.

00:48:32 ◼   ► It's gotten bigger and bigger progressively over the years as Apple has added a second

00:48:36 ◼   ► camera and made the whole thing, you know, the whole bump bigger.

00:48:41 ◼   ► But there was still like a fine line between the bump is bigger but it doesn't look visually

00:48:47 ◼   ► imbalanced.

00:48:48 ◼   ► And now when you have a square, it looks like half of the phone is one thing and the other

00:48:53 ◼   ► have is another device completely. And so having it be in the upper left corner really

00:48:59 ◼   ► does it for me. I don't like it. And I look at that dummy unit and I look at any other

00:49:06 ◼   ► Android phone including the Huawei one and I'm like, "Yeah, this looks so much nicer.

00:49:11 ◼   ► It looks so much better." If Apple were to go with this design, of course it's not finalized

00:49:15 ◼   ► and all of that. But I look at the Huawei phone that MKBHD had in the video and that

00:49:22 ◼   ► iPhone 11 dummy unit and the iPhone 11 looks terrible to me.

00:49:26 ◼   ► And then you add in things like, it's sort of a boring design because yeah, we get it,

00:49:30 ◼   ► it's the same iPhone 10 look with the notch and all of that.

00:49:33 ◼   ► Not a huge issue for me, but then again, I look at other, you know.

00:49:37 ◼   ► I was recently, I discovered, this is a quick aside, I discovered that in the mall that's

00:49:43 ◼   ► five minutes away from me, they replaced one of the shops inside the mall with a Xiaomi

00:49:50 ◼   ► store.

00:49:52 ◼   ► And the Xiaomi store is basically, it looks like a weird, like a, it looks like a bizarro

00:49:57 ◼   ► Apple store that in addition to phones also sells toothbrushes and like thermostats and

00:50:05 ◼   ► stuff like that.

00:50:06 ◼   ► And I was in the store because I'm actually intrigued by some of the smart home devices

00:50:12 ◼   ► stuff that Xiaomi is doing because I can sort of look it up to HomeKit and sort of make

00:50:16 ◼   ► it act as a bridge for Zigbee, which is another smart home automation protocol.

00:50:23 ◼   ► But that's a different topic.

00:50:26 ◼   ► And I was in the Xiaomi store and I saw the, what's it called, the Mi Note or the Redmi

00:50:30 ◼   ► phone, whatever.

00:50:31 ◼   ► It looks awesome.

00:50:33 ◼   ► It looks futuristic.

00:50:36 ◼   ► It looks new and it looks like the iPhone X looked to me two years ago.

00:50:42 ◼   ► And so I get why some people are saying, you know, Apple is still doing the notch, and

00:50:48 ◼   ► Face ID is better than anything else, but you look at these Android phones, and they're

00:50:52 ◼   ► all screen, and you literally do not see the notch, and you have the hole punch display.

00:50:59 ◼   ► I like that look myself.

00:51:02 ◼   ► So the combination of that, and with this huge camera bump that's not in the center

00:51:09 ◼   ► of the unit leads me to say if it's gonna look like this, not the best design, Apple.

00:51:17 ◼   ► Actually one of the worst that you've done in 12 years of iPhone.

00:51:22 ◼   ► So we'll see what they do.

00:51:24 ◼   ► But if it does look like this, I can already imagine, you know, even though they're obviously

00:51:28 ◼   ► not true, I can already imagine the hot takes of "Johnny Ive is gone, this is what Apple

00:51:32 ◼   ► makes now."

00:51:33 ◼   ► Even though technically this is a "Johnny Ive phone," people are gonna say that, because

00:51:38 ◼   ► that's how people think. So I don't look forward to that. I really hope that Apple

00:51:44 ◼   ► has some big surprise up its sleeve, even though at this point, you know, it's August

00:51:48 ◼   ► basically and we're gonna have an iPhone event in less than two months. It's very

00:51:52 ◼   ► possible. The design is pretty much locked in. The design was locked in months and months

00:51:56 ◼   ► and months ago. And if these dummy units are circulating now, it means that the design

00:52:00 ◼   ► is done and accessory makers have the, you know, all the renders and the CADs to start

00:52:05 ◼   ► making cases and whatnot. So it's probably going to look like that. And it's, I don't

00:52:11 ◼   ► know, it's, it's not nice to me.

00:52:14 ◼   ► I agree with all of what you said. I think it's awkward. I think it looks extremely unbalanced

00:52:20 ◼   ► with all of that to one side. I think being centered maybe would look nicer. But the,

00:52:26 ◼   ► the thing that kind of kills me about this is, and you touched on it, is that the rest

00:52:30 ◼   ► the phone is also just kind of the same. MKBHC actually took issue with something in his video

00:52:36 ◼   ► where he said Apple does a design for the 6 year and the S year and they change it. That used to be

00:52:41 ◼   ► true but it's not anymore. The 6, 6S, 7, and 8 are all effectively the same design. The 8 swapped out

00:52:49 ◼   ► glass for the aluminum back, but even the 10 is a descendant of the 6. It's got the rounded edges

00:52:56 ◼   ► And they've changed it over time, but the XS looks way more like the 6 than the 6 did

00:53:03 ◼   ► the 4.

00:53:04 ◼   ► They have kind of been in this place for a long time.

00:53:09 ◼   ► And I'd love if they went to something sort of inspired by the iPad Pro or the MacBook

00:53:14 ◼   ► Pro, you know, flat edges again.

00:53:16 ◼   ► Yes, that's going back to the 4 or 5 sort of generation.

00:53:19 ◼   ► There's only so many things you can do with these phones, right?

00:53:21 ◼   ► There's only so many things you can do.

00:53:22 ◼   ► I understand that.

00:53:24 ◼   ► But we've kind of been in this slippery bar of soap territory for a really long time,

00:53:28 ◼   ► and now they've bolted this abomination to the back of it.

00:53:34 ◼   ► But I will say this too, I, as you know, guys, and as our listeners know, I for a long time

00:53:41 ◼   ► was a person who did not use a case on their iPhone, and after smashing several phones

00:53:47 ◼   ► in quick succession, I've been using the Apple leather case now basically all the time on

00:53:53 ◼   ► my XS and it does make the whole issue go away a little bit like yeah there's a

00:54:00 ◼   ► there's a bump but look like I got my phone right here the Apple leather case

00:54:04 ◼   ► is this thick or even actually a little bit thicker yeah then the camera bump

00:54:08 ◼   ► and if you have the black leather case which is the one I use or a dark color

00:54:12 ◼   ► it's all going to kind of blend together anyways so like yeah it's really

00:54:16 ◼   ► startling when someone's just carrying a phone without a case but the case I

00:54:21 ◼   ► I think Apple relies on the cases to forgive some of this stuff and like to a degree it works, right?

00:54:27 ◼   ► Like the camera bump on my XS doesn't bother me when it's in the case, but if I carrying it out of the case,

00:54:33 ◼   ► I definitely notice it more and I think that will continue to be true, maybe even more true now that this

00:54:39 ◼   ► camera bump is basically the size of a small planet. I think it's more of a discussion on principle, right?

00:54:45 ◼   ► Yeah, like when you look at the design

00:54:47 ◼   ► in isolation, it doesn't look good. It doesn't look...

00:54:51 ◼   ► It looks like something has been bolted onto the back of the phone and that was it.

00:54:56 ◼   ► It's inelegant. That's, I guess, the word that I would use.

00:54:59 ◼   ► And it's not, you know, if we were to go all

00:55:03 ◼   ► Johnny Ive on it, I would say that it feels like

00:55:07 ◼   ► there's a disconnection in the purity of the object itself,

00:55:13 ◼   ► in that you have the main object, which is the phone,

00:55:17 ◼   ► and then you have this extra sort of this extraneous component that was added to it,

00:55:22 ◼   ► so almost like it was attached to it as an afterthought. That's what it looks like to me.

00:55:26 ◼   ► Again, I really hope that it changes somehow by the final release, but I'm losing hope,

00:55:37 ◼   ► you know, day after day. Myke, do you think this looks good?

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00:57:38 ◼   ► Federico

00:57:41 ◼   ► Apple is rumored to be getting into the podcast

00:57:43 ◼   ► Content business. There's an article over on

00:57:46 ◼   ► Bloomberg is saying that Apple is looking at this to go against

00:57:50 ◼   ► Rivals such as Spotify which of course bought Gimlet media and a bunch of other podcast content

00:57:56 ◼   ► companies and content creators over the last few months

00:58:00 ◼   ► Apple has the largest podcast player in the world. It is the most popular podcast client

00:58:06 ◼   ► And hats off to them for that. It's been a huge success for them

00:58:10 ◼   ► But they've been very hands-off in this particular arena you couple that with the fact that Apple is increasingly a content company, right?

00:58:18 ◼   ► There's Apple TV+ coming they're working with all these directors and famous people

00:58:21 ◼   ► So you can kind of see maybe they'd want to put these two things together

00:58:24 ◼   ► Spotify stock fell 1% on the news

00:58:29 ◼   ► Which you know is probably understandable and I'm curious Federico. What do you think about this?

00:58:36 ◼   ► I kind of a lot of ways we could talk about this

00:58:39 ◼   ► but what do you think about Apple getting into this business that others are already playing with I

00:58:44 ◼   ► wonder if

00:58:46 ◼   ► Exclusives for podcasts can fare better than what exclusives for music did

00:58:56 ◼   ► I'm thinking about you know Apple and both Apple and Spotify and Spotify they've tried to

00:59:02 ◼   ► Entice people to subscribe by having some kind of exclusive

00:59:08 ◼   ► exclusive content

00:59:11 ◼   ► You know Spotify at one point at the Spotify sessions

00:59:15 ◼   ► Going on and Apple was doing you know I think they used to do some iTunes

00:59:21 ◼   ► extras as well or

00:59:24 ◼   ► you know, timed exclusives at least on Apple Music. And I don't think, you know, for the

00:59:29 ◼   ► kind of scale that a music streaming service has, and the kind of demand that there is

00:59:33 ◼   ► for music, I don't feel like exclusivity necessarily plays into adding subscribers. In that, I

00:59:42 ◼   ► feel like whenever I see an exclusive album, you know, a title would be a great example.

00:59:48 ◼   ► There's only frustration around it, and there's, you know, people are upset because they are

00:59:53 ◼   ► unable to listen via the service that they're paying for. That creates a lot of friction

00:59:58 ◼   ► for the artists, it creates a lot of frustration among users, and it's sort of why we've seen

01:00:08 ◼   ► both companies sort of move away from that type of deal, doing the exclusives, because

01:00:13 ◼   ► it didn't benefit the bottom line of adding subscribers after all. And so I have to wonder

01:00:20 ◼   ► if podcasting, which has a smaller scale, smaller audience, doesn't have the kind of

01:00:26 ◼   ► expectation, you know, Beyonce drops a new album and the album is all available on Tidal.

01:00:33 ◼   ► People get upset. And it's a whole discussion of here's where, you know, and I've seen these

01:00:39 ◼   ► articles like here's where you can listen to the new Beyonce album for free or here's

01:00:44 ◼   ► how you can pirate the new Beyonce album. Here's how you can listen on YouTube. If I

01:00:49 ◼   ► If Ira Glass drops a new podcast on Apple Podcasts and it's an exclusive, I don't think

01:00:55 ◼   ► we would see that kind of backlash from people.

01:00:59 ◼   ► You wouldn't see the articles like, "Here's how you can listen to the new Ira Glass podcast

01:01:03 ◼   ► for free."

01:01:04 ◼   ► Like, people, I feel like there's, you know, the smaller scale and the smaller audience

01:01:10 ◼   ► wouldn't create that kind of anticipation.

01:01:13 ◼   ► And so you would be in a situation where, and I'm speculating here, you would be in

01:01:17 ◼   ► situation where maybe 10,000 people or 20,000 people or 50,000 people just hit up and just

01:01:23 ◼   ► hit the subscribe button and sign up and they're listening to an exclusive podcast now. So

01:01:28 ◼   ► I could see why this approach could work for podcasting. On the other hand, as a podcaster

01:01:36 ◼   ► myself, I'm not in love with the idea of, you know, everybody's doing its own custom

01:01:41 ◼   ► thing now, so why not do it for Apple Podcasts as well? We have all these proprietary and

01:01:50 ◼   ► locked down podcast platforms, and I'm very much, if you know me, you know that I'm very

01:01:55 ◼   ► much against the idea of locking down podcasts into silos, just like I'm very much against

01:02:02 ◼   ► the idea of folks who want to have a blog and instead of setting up a blog with their

01:02:09 ◼   ► on domain name, they use Medium or things like that.

01:02:13 ◼   ► So I'm very much against locking the platform, locking an open medium to a closed platform.

01:02:20 ◼   ► Again, though, everybody's doing it, right?

01:02:25 ◼   ► Everybody's doing it these days, and everybody is searching for the YouTube of podcasting

01:02:30 ◼   ► or the Netflix of podcasting, call it whatever you want to call it.

01:02:34 ◼   ► And there's an argument to be made for Apple to, you know, they have the biggest and the

01:02:39 ◼   ► stronger and the strongest platform. They have the built-in app on hundreds of millions

01:02:45 ◼   ► of devices. Anybody who doesn't have a vested interest in the freedom of podcasting, in

01:02:54 ◼   ► the free nature of the RSS spec behind podcasting, would say, "Why are you not doing this yet?"

01:03:01 ◼   ► I can see the arguments on both sides. I'm really fascinated by the idea that exclusives

01:03:07 ◼   ► could work better for podcasts than they did for music.

01:03:10 ◼   ► I feel like there's a discussion there about the podcasts done here, even though there

01:03:18 ◼   ► are super popular podcasts, I don't feel like there are podcasters that can move the kind

01:03:26 ◼   ► of audience that Kanye West or Beyonce or Shawn Mendes, for example, can move.

01:03:32 ◼   ► And so those big artists cannot afford to do exclusives anymore.

01:03:36 ◼   ► And that is why they're making money in a bunch of other ways.

01:03:40 ◼   ► But maybe podcasters can maybe podcasters will would not run into those kinds of problems.

01:03:45 ◼   ► It does feel like if anyone can do this successfully, it's Spotify and Apple and Apple Apple's market

01:03:51 ◼   ► share at least of the of the player is way, way bigger than Spotify's I mean, and the

01:03:57 ◼   ► The Apple podcast app is the app in this world.

01:04:01 ◼   ► Even among shows like ours, where a lot of people use third party clients, the Apple

01:04:05 ◼   ► podcast client is extremely popular.

01:04:07 ◼   ► If you look into podcasting on the whole and other types of shows outside of tech, it's

01:04:13 ◼   ► the vast majority.

01:04:14 ◼   ► It does feel like if anyone could have the number of people, the number of users to make

01:04:22 ◼   ► it even possible, it's Apple.

01:04:24 ◼   ► something where something like Luminary,

01:04:26 ◼   ► like they still have any users

01:04:28 ◼   ► and they're not going to be able to build a business

01:04:32 ◼   ► to make all this work without some sort of critical mass

01:04:36 ◼   ► of listeners and Apple has that, right?

01:04:39 ◼   ► Because their player is so big.

01:04:41 ◼   ► I do agree with you.

01:04:42 ◼   ► I am firmly in the camp that podcasting should be open

01:04:47 ◼   ► to the point where I actually don't consider

01:04:51 ◼   ► like platform specific content.

01:04:53 ◼   ► those aren't podcasts, right?

01:04:54 ◼   ► Like it's audio content.

01:04:56 ◼   ► Podcasting is something that is open

01:04:58 ◼   ► and you can listen anywhere you want

01:05:01 ◼   ► because it's based on the RSS spec.

01:05:04 ◼   ► This in my mind is slightly different.

01:05:07 ◼   ► It may, the content is obviously very similar,

01:05:09 ◼   ► but one thing that makes podcasts special

01:05:12 ◼   ► is that the ecosystem around it is so flexible.

01:05:16 ◼   ► And so I agree with you on all of that.

01:05:19 ◼   ► I do find it interesting that they are looking into this.

01:05:23 ◼   ► Apple TV+ is going to be coming this fall, right?

01:05:28 ◼   ► Apple Arcade is coming this fall.

01:05:30 ◼   ► Apple News is already here,

01:05:32 ◼   ► but that's doing its thing, I guess.

01:05:36 ◼   ► Apple is continuing to push into this world

01:05:38 ◼   ► where they have multiple content offerings,

01:05:43 ◼   ► and we still assume or still hope

01:05:47 ◼   ► that there's gonna be some sort of grouping

01:05:48 ◼   ► of those things, right?

01:05:49 ◼   ► We don't have to pay for them all separately, who knows?

01:05:52 ◼   ► But it feels like this is just in line with that, right?

01:05:54 ◼   ► This feels like a very natural extension to me

01:05:56 ◼   ► of everything else they're doing.

01:05:58 ◼   ► And I could even see Apple leveraging podcasts

01:06:02 ◼   ► in ways to benefit their other content areas,

01:06:07 ◼   ► and not necessarily putting it behind a paywall.

01:06:09 ◼   ► So like, you know, I, for instance,

01:06:12 ◼   ► a show that I really love is "Better Call Saul."

01:06:14 ◼   ► It's, you know, kind of a before the time of "Breaking Bad."

01:06:18 ◼   ► And there's an excellent podcast with the producers,

01:06:20 ◼   ► the writers, the actors, and it's out every week.

01:06:24 ◼   ► And so that's a podcast I've listened to for four years now,

01:06:27 ◼   ► however long the TV show's been on,

01:06:29 ◼   ► 'cause it goes behind the scenes

01:06:30 ◼   ► and talks about the process.

01:06:31 ◼   ► And that sort of content Apple could do with Apple TV+,

01:06:36 ◼   ► or even Apple Arcade,

01:06:38 ◼   ► talking to the creators behind this content.

01:06:40 ◼   ► And they can just put that in the podcast directory, right?

01:06:43 ◼   ► And I'd like, if Apple's gonna do this,

01:06:46 ◼   ► they're gonna have a paywall with audio content,

01:06:48 ◼   ► like whatever, that's fine.

01:06:50 ◼   ► But I would hope that they could also see the benefit

01:06:53 ◼   ► of having open content,

01:06:56 ◼   ► even if it is to benefit their other stuff,

01:06:59 ◼   ► I think people would be really interested in that.

01:07:01 ◼   ► You know, there are a couple of Apple TV+ shows

01:07:03 ◼   ► I'm really interested in watching.

01:07:05 ◼   ► I'd love to hear more about them.

01:07:06 ◼   ► So Apple could use their podcast directory and their size

01:07:09 ◼   ► for more than just making a few bucks.

01:07:13 ◼   ► So it's a very interesting story.

01:07:15 ◼   ► There's also some breaking news about Spotify.

01:07:17 ◼   ► We should squeeze in here.

01:07:19 ◼   ► You guys ready?

01:07:20 ◼   ► You guys sitting down?

01:07:21 ◼   ► - I think I know what it is.

01:07:22 ◼   ► - What is it?

01:07:23 ◼   ► - They support Split View and Slide Over now on the iPad.

01:07:26 ◼   ► - What year did those features come to the iPad, Federico?

01:07:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was iOS 9, so that would be 2015,

01:07:34 ◼   ► which is four years ago.

01:07:38 ◼   ► - Four years ago.

01:07:39 ◼   ► So, yeah, well done, Spotify iOS team.

01:07:43 ◼   ► I look forward to the day in 2021,

01:07:48 ◼   ► when they will support drag and drop.

01:07:50 ◼   ► So looking forward to that.

01:07:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, Spotify doing stuff.

01:07:55 ◼   ► Myke, do you have anything you wanna add to this?

01:07:58 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:07:59 ◼   ► Yes, but he cannot add it now.

01:08:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe it's follow up.

01:08:04 ◼   ► - I think it means that next time we will talk about it

01:08:07 ◼   ► because he has thoughts,

01:08:09 ◼   ► but those thoughts cannot be shared

01:08:11 ◼   ► because of physical reasons today.

01:08:14 ◼   ► - So Myke, will you put this in follow-up for next week?

01:08:16 ◼   ► I'm on vacation, so it's up to you.

01:08:18 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:08:19 ◼   ► - All right, to round out today's episode,

01:08:23 ◼   ► we are here to celebrate World Emoji Day.

01:08:26 ◼   ► Before we get into this,

01:08:27 ◼   ► we've had a lot of tweets about this.

01:08:29 ◼   ► Last year, we had Federico guess the names of the emoji.

01:08:34 ◼   ► We did that based on Apple's full set of artwork.

01:08:39 ◼   ► Apple has shown at this point is a couple of samples and so

01:08:43 ◼   ► Federico is is restraining himself from looking at these things and we're actually not going to talk about the new emoji today because that would be

01:08:50 ◼   ► Spoiling him for the future episode

01:08:52 ◼   ► But that's when we'll do it when Apple unveils the full set that should be in the fall generally

01:08:58 ◼   ► It's with you know a point update for iOS. So maybe iOS 13.1 or 13.2 would have these new emoji

01:09:06 ◼   ► So we'll do that then so it is coming

01:09:07 ◼   ► It's just not today.

01:09:10 ◼   ► There are a couple links in the show notes.

01:09:11 ◼   ► I've only seen one.

01:09:13 ◼   ► Okay.

01:09:14 ◼   ► Actually a couple.

01:09:15 ◼   ► I've seen one because I saw the article on Mac stories.

01:09:21 ◼   ► And we'll talk about it this fall when they actually come out.

01:09:27 ◼   ► But I saw one that almost looked like a robotic Italian gesture.

01:09:36 ◼   ► like a, you know, you're not the, the Italian, the Italian hand, we like the typical Italian

01:09:42 ◼   ► gesture, like in it, like with the, with the, with the hand closed, you know, and the fingers

01:09:48 ◼   ► facing upwards. Yeah. There's a robot making that gesture. So I think that it, that will

01:09:55 ◼   ► be called a Italian robot or Italian robot arm. Yeah. So that, that's my understanding

01:10:03 ◼   ► that it's that, you know, a real breakthrough in emoji design, Italians and robots together,

01:10:11 ◼   ► finally at last. There's others that I just very quickly glanced over, and I will, you know,

01:10:19 ◼   ► I have a couple of months to think about them. I haven't read any of the image captions or

01:10:25 ◼   ► explanations or details, you know. I have blocked Jeremy Bird from my contacts.

01:10:32 ◼   ► It's not actually, I haven't blocked Jeremy.

01:10:35 ◼   ► I haven't blocked Jeremy.

01:10:36 ◼   ► - Actually, I spoke to Jeremy the other night.

01:10:38 ◼   ► We knew this was coming.

01:10:39 ◼   ► I said, "Hey, are they gonna show the whole set?"

01:10:41 ◼   ► He said, "No, no, they just showed the,

01:10:42 ◼   ► "they're just gonna do like what they normally do,

01:10:44 ◼   ► "showing the," 'cause he believed they would show a preview,

01:10:46 ◼   ► which is what they've done.

01:10:48 ◼   ► So we're just gonna park all that until the fall,

01:10:50 ◼   ► so September, October, whenever that happens.

01:10:53 ◼   ► But it is World Emoji Day,

01:10:55 ◼   ► and there's a lot of, a lot of brands are doing things.

01:10:59 ◼   ► Literally, as we're talking,

01:11:01 ◼   ► The university that I went to has a tweet about World Emoji

01:11:04 ◼   ► Day, which is very troubling.

01:11:07 ◼   ► But Adobe went out, and they have performed

01:11:11 ◼   ► this massive study--

01:11:14 ◼   ► I guess is what you would call it--

01:11:15 ◼   ► looking at trends of emoji.

01:11:17 ◼   ► And I found this really interesting.

01:11:19 ◼   ► So I thought, Federico, you and I could talk through it,

01:11:21 ◼   ► and we'll ask Myke some questions.

01:11:23 ◼   ► OK.

01:11:23 ◼   ► So this is looking at users of emoji,

01:11:27 ◼   ► looking at the top three favorite emojis.

01:11:30 ◼   ► And I gotta say, I'm not sure there's many surprises in here.

01:11:35 ◼   ► So one is like the laughing guy with tears coming out.

01:11:39 ◼   ► You know, your laughing's so hard to crying.

01:11:41 ◼   ► Number two is the red heart.

01:11:42 ◼   ► And number three is the little blowing a heart kiss.

01:11:46 ◼   ► You know, like a mwah kinda person.

01:11:48 ◼   ► - Oh, I like that.

01:11:49 ◼   ► Can you do that again?

01:11:51 ◼   ► - Mwah, like that.

01:11:52 ◼   ► - Oh! - Good.

01:11:53 ◼   ► Did that heal you, Myke?

01:11:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, no.

01:11:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:11:59 ◼   ► I'm not surprised by any of those, I don't think.

01:12:01 ◼   ► Myke, are you surprised by any of those?

01:12:04 ◼   ► - No.

01:12:05 ◼   ► So we have LOL guy, heart, and case.

01:12:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:12:12 ◼   ► So we're gonna keep going here.

01:12:13 ◼   ► So a majority, 81% of the emoji users,

01:12:18 ◼   ► believe that people who use the emoji

01:12:20 ◼   ► are friendly and more approachable.

01:12:23 ◼   ► Which like, there's some bias in that, right?

01:12:24 ◼   ► 'Cause everyone views themselves as friendly

01:12:26 ◼   ► and approachable.

01:12:28 ◼   ► Do you think that that's true?

01:12:29 ◼   ► Do you think that people who use emoji say in text messages or in tweets, do they feel

01:12:35 ◼   ► nicer to you, Myke?

01:12:37 ◼   ► Yes.

01:12:38 ◼   ► What about you, Federico?

01:12:42 ◼   ► I've met some real a** for you so much.

01:12:48 ◼   ► Sorry Steven, you'll have to beep this one.

01:12:51 ◼   ► Yeah, fixed.

01:12:58 ◼   ► Let's just talk about Casey less for a second. Casey uses more emoji than any grown man I've

01:13:02 ◼   ► ever met. And I think most people would say Casey's a pretty nice guy. So like, this is

01:13:07 ◼   ► an example. But, uh, that's, that's debatable though. Still. Um, I think, I think, um, generally

01:13:17 ◼   ► speaking, I could see why people who people think that other people who use, you know,

01:13:25 ◼   ► little characters, these little figurines, they have a fun edge to them, maybe. Like,

01:13:33 ◼   ► "Hey, I can be fun. I can use emoji. I can have colors in my text." Whereas some of my

01:13:40 ◼   ► friends, for example, super nice people, right? But I have a friend in particular who uses

01:13:48 ◼   ► punctuation whenever he texts me. It's like, "Hello, period. How are you?" He's a super

01:13:56 ◼   ► fun guy, but he has this punctuation thing going on. I don't know why. He sounds constantly

01:14:02 ◼   ► upset even though he's not. And that's because we come to see proper punctuation as a sort

01:14:09 ◼   ► of looking down upon someone. I don't know, but he just feels... He would never use emoji.

01:14:17 ◼   ► is a fun person in real life. So it's, it's a, I feel like this is a fun type of

01:14:23 ◼   ► study that, you know, somebody should do. My dad does that, but some, for some

01:14:28 ◼   ► reason on his iPhone, he just learned to type, and so he like, types a sentence and

01:14:34 ◼   ► then a space and then the punctuation. So it's like, "Happy birthday," space,

01:14:39 ◼   ► exclamation point. No. It's very upsetting. When asked about emoji's greatest benefits, and the

01:14:47 ◼   ► Federica this is going to be for you. 94% of people said that it makes

01:14:51 ◼   ► communicating across language barriers easier and 90% said that it's it's a way

01:14:57 ◼   ► to instantly share thoughts and ideas. So Federica you live in a world with more

01:15:01 ◼   ► than one language. Does emoji help you cut through that? No one needs a pizza emoji.

01:15:08 ◼   ► Yeah because the egg once again the pizza emoji is wrong it's a it's not we

01:15:13 ◼   ► We don't need to do that.

01:15:14 ◼   ► It's not pizza.

01:15:15 ◼   ► There's an episode of Connected that you can listen to for an explanation about this very

01:15:20 ◼   ► problem that is sadly not fixed in iOS 13.

01:15:24 ◼   ► But I feel like I cannot think of any examples of an emoji that you guys sent me that didn't

01:15:31 ◼   ► make sense to me or that it was culturally different or that I just didn't understand.

01:15:41 ◼   ► I think there is some truth to the fact that they are emojis are sort of like a universal

01:15:48 ◼   ► language. There's I'm sure there are cases of certain characters or objects, meaning

01:15:55 ◼   ► sound something profoundly different in another country or another language. But I feel like

01:16:01 ◼   ► from a from, you know, Western civilization type point of view, Italy and the US are close

01:16:10 ◼   ► enough that I get what the eggplant emoji means. Obviously you want to cook some pasta

01:16:18 ◼   ► and so therefore you need the eggplants. I think it would be interesting to compare common

01:16:25 ◼   ► emoji uses between Italy and India for example, or Greece and Brazil. I bet you would see

01:16:34 ◼   ► some fascinating differences there. So, I don't know, you know, it's a very, again,

01:16:42 ◼   ► very fascinating topic from the point of view of, you know, what it means on a cultural

01:16:47 ◼   ► level to share certain emotions or objects or characters via emoji. Somebody should write

01:16:56 ◼   ► a paper about this.

01:16:57 ◼   ► The second part of that's interesting to me, that you could instantly share a thought or

01:17:03 ◼   ► because I think actually a lot of the emoji are clear but there are definitely

01:17:07 ◼   ► certain examples that are very open to interpretation and then you add in the

01:17:13 ◼   ► fact that you may be texting somebody not on the same platform as you are so

01:17:16 ◼   ► this has gotten better over the years but there are a couple of characters

01:17:20 ◼   ► that on iOS and Android are rendered differently enough where like it could

01:17:25 ◼   ► be confusing so I don't know if I'm in that 90% there I mean lots of times it

01:17:30 ◼   ► does work like a thumbs up or you know the the kissy heart guy or something

01:17:34 ◼   ► like that's like it's a point across but I do think that in certain

01:17:38 ◼   ► circumstances emoji actually add confusion to things so you know maybe

01:17:45 ◼   ► I'm just showing my age a little bit. Alright we're gonna move on we're gonna

01:17:49 ◼   ► talk about emails and brands. Over half, 58% of emoji users are more likely to

01:17:55 ◼   ► to open an email from a brand that has an emoji in the subject line.

01:18:00 ◼   ► Myke, should I include emojis in the subject line of the Relay FM membership newsletter

01:18:05 ◼   ► now?

01:18:06 ◼   ► Yes.

01:18:07 ◼   ► All right.

01:18:08 ◼   ► Can I decide emoji?

01:18:10 ◼   ► Yes.

01:18:11 ◼   ► Oh, no.

01:18:13 ◼   ► Good.

01:18:14 ◼   ► Good.

01:18:15 ◼   ► Very good.

01:18:16 ◼   ► The Oracle has spoken.

01:18:17 ◼   ► 65% of emoji users say they are more comfortable expressing their emotions through emoji than

01:18:24 ◼   ► phone call. I'm gonna keep reading. This is especially true for Gen Z. 83% of

01:18:29 ◼   ► those people say that's true of them. Of course, just to clarify, Gen Z is people

01:18:34 ◼   ► born between 1997 and 2015. Maybe this is me being old, but I can see this, right? I

01:18:44 ◼   ► can see the same way that text is easier than like calling somebody if you need

01:18:49 ◼   ► to share something. But again, like maybe this in my mind plays into the emoji can

01:18:56 ◼   ► be misread and confusing at times. I don't know Federico, like what like if I

01:19:01 ◼   ► ask you this question Federico are you more comfortable expressing your emotions

01:19:04 ◼   ► through emoji than a phone call? Oh phone calls? That's what it says. Really?

01:19:09 ◼   ► Oh, mmm. No. See, I... and I'm not joking here. I have blocked people in my address book because

01:19:22 ◼   ► they call me on the phone too early in the morning. I... yes. I very much despise talking

01:19:33 ◼   ► on the phone. Even though I understand that in some cases it is much faster than coordinating

01:19:40 ◼   ► something over a text message. So I use phone calls, but I always make sure that I can call

01:19:46 ◼   ► somebody beforehand. I don't drop in on somebody and just call them on the phone and be like,

01:19:52 ◼   ► "Hey, let's talk on the phone." No, I don't do that. So I feel like the phone call is

01:19:56 ◼   ► always agreed upon beforehand. I very much prefer to use text or emoji or whatever. What

01:20:05 ◼   ► is it to share emotions? Was that the question?

01:20:07 ◼   ► Yes. Yeah. Are you more comfortable sharing emotion with the emoji or via phone call?

01:20:12 ◼   ► I don't know. Am I supposed to like call my girlfriend on the phone and say, "Love you.

01:20:16 ◼   ► Good night," instead of sending like a heart emoji when I'm away? Like, yeah, we FaceTime.

01:20:22 ◼   ► So like, I don't understand what sharing emotions via emoji involves.

01:20:29 ◼   ► You're too old.

01:20:30 ◼   ► We finally found something you're too old for.

01:20:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess I'm too old for that.

01:20:35 ◼   ► Myke, do you find yourself expressing emotions via emoji?

01:20:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:43 ◼   ► Man, I really love this approach, Steven, where we can just summon, you know...

01:20:52 ◼   ► - It's like a magic eight ball.

01:20:53 ◼   ► - It's like thus spoke, Myke Athustra, you know?

01:20:58 ◼   ► The Nietzsche, thus spoke Zarathustra.

01:21:01 ◼   ► No, nobody study philosophy here.

01:21:03 ◼   ► - No.

01:21:05 ◼   ► - Anyway, moving on.

01:21:06 ◼   ► This is just a reference for two people out there.

01:21:09 ◼   ► What else do we have about emoji?

01:21:12 ◼   ► - So to wrap this up, 78% of emoji users

01:21:17 ◼   ► agree that emoji should continue to strive

01:21:21 ◼   ► making themselves more inclusive, you know, bringing more people in. 73% of

01:21:25 ◼   ► people wish they had more emoji customization options to better reflect

01:21:30 ◼   ► their personal appearance and identity. This has been something that's been going on

01:21:33 ◼   ► the last several rounds of new emoji, right? You can change hair color and skin

01:21:38 ◼   ► tone. In the future there's even more options for this sort of thing and I

01:21:43 ◼   ► think that's awesome because they're, you know, if you're going to send an emoji

01:21:48 ◼   ► to share an emotion, you know, for example,

01:21:53 ◼   ► that emoji should look like you.

01:21:54 ◼   ► You should feel like you identify with it

01:21:56 ◼   ► and the receiver identifies it with you.

01:21:58 ◼   ► And so I think there's absolutely always more work

01:22:01 ◼   ► to do here and so I'm part of the 78% here.

01:22:06 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:22:07 ◼   ► - Little more emoji news.

01:22:08 ◼   ► The most popular of the new emoji that came out last year

01:22:16 ◼   ► The smiling face with hearts. This is the smiling face with the three little hearts sort of in orbit around the face Myke

01:22:24 ◼   ► Is that an emoji that you that you like?

01:22:26 ◼   ► love

01:22:29 ◼   ► Love love just to round out the top list. There's that one. There's pleading face, which I don't think I've ever actually used

01:22:35 ◼   ► There's woozy face, which is very upsetting looking

01:22:39 ◼   ► Overheated where the face is red and the tongue is sticking out like a sweat bead. I find that one kind of funny

01:22:45 ◼   ► Partying face and then freezing face those sort of round out the top six but by far

01:22:50 ◼   ► Smiling face with hearts took this took this away. This is based on page views on the emoji PD a website

01:22:57 ◼   ► Over over the last year. I think it's a great emoji. I think it's uh, it's warm

01:23:04 ◼   ► It makes me feel fuzzy inside. So I think this is a well-deserved award

01:23:08 ◼   ► Myke uses it a lot. I think yeah, I've seen yeah

01:23:14 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. So, uh, nice. This is very nice. Very interesting data points here.

01:23:21 ◼   ► I almost wonder, you know, Apple should participate in this kind of stuff because they

01:23:26 ◼   ► they probably can see, you know, with the whole differential privacy thing that they have on iOS.

01:23:32 ◼   ► I bet they have some interesting data to share, but still, you know, it's fun to

01:23:38 ◼   ► It's fun to to have this kind of data from emoji PDA and Adobe so very nice very nice

01:23:43 ◼   ► so we're gonna round this out a little bit by talking about how emoji are selected it is a

01:23:49 ◼   ► Complicated process through the Unicode committee our friend mark over at welcome to Macintosh

01:23:55 ◼   ► Went through this process a while back and actually

01:23:58 ◼   ► submitted an emoji that got like in the standard so that the yoga emoji that was Mark suggestion

01:24:06 ◼   ► Which is really cool. He's the only person I know who has had an emoji put in Unicode because of his work

01:24:12 ◼   ► If you didn't listen Jeremy, well Jeremy Jeremy infinity emojis that doesn't count. Ah

01:24:17 ◼   ► Yeah, that's two words Myke the yeah. Yeah. So anyways Unicode

01:24:22 ◼   ► Story going on going around

01:24:25 ◼   ► Unicode is making it easier to suggest new emoji. It is still very much a very complicated process. They basically sort of like

01:24:34 ◼   ► Skinned the website a little bit. So there's a lot of work you submit it. It goes to committee people vote on it

01:24:40 ◼   ► Jeremy's part of that committee and

01:24:42 ◼   ► It's it's quite the process

01:24:44 ◼   ► Definitely go check out welcome to Macintosh

01:24:45 ◼   ► If you didn't listen to that like you need to go put that in your podcast client because it is

01:24:49 ◼   ► It was so fascinating to hear the process as someone went through it

01:24:54 ◼   ► It's a great idea for a show. So I think that I think that about does it

01:25:01 ◼   ► Federico and half of Myke it's been a kind of a nutty week with some oddball stuff

01:25:05 ◼   ► But we made our way through it Myke. Do you think the show is time to you think it's time to wrap up the show?

01:25:09 ◼   ► Yes, if you want to find links to stuff we spoke about you can find them in your podcast app of choice

01:25:16 ◼   ► But they're also on our website relay.fm

01:25:18 ◼   ► connected

01:25:20 ◼   ► 252 while you're there you can send us an email with feedback or follow-up or you can do that on Twitter

01:25:25 ◼   ► You can find it Myke. There is I am y ke and Myke is the host of a bunch of shows over

01:25:30 ◼   ► on Relay FM. You can find Federico on Twitter @vittici

01:25:36 ◼   ► and he's the editor-in-chief of MacStories.net. You can follow me on

01:25:40 ◼   ► Twitter as @ismh and find my writing at 512pixels.net. I thank our

01:25:46 ◼   ► sponsors this week, ExpressVPN, Hover, and Moo. And until next time gentlemen, say

01:25:51 ◼   ► goodbye. Adios.