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Connected

237: All the Different Flavors of iCloud

 

00:00:00   (upbeat music)

00:00:02   - Hello and welcome to Connected, episode 237.

00:00:12   It's made possible this week by our sponsors,

00:00:14   Hello, Hover, and ExpressVPN.

00:00:17   I'm Stephen Hackett and I am joined by Mr. Federico Vittucci.

00:00:21   - Hi, I thought Myke was going to be introduced first.

00:00:25   - Yeah, like what number is 237 divisible by, huh?

00:00:29   Not too.

00:00:30   Like, you made us agree to these rules and now I feel bad for Michael because this was...

00:00:35   I was getting ready for my triumphant statement of like "Haha!

00:00:39   It is finally an odd episode so I am back at number one!"

00:00:42   And then you just yanked the rug out from underneath me.

00:00:45   You ruined everything.

00:00:46   This is why you created this rule in the first place because otherwise this is the episode's

00:00:51   start and such anger.

00:00:53   It's right there in the document at the very top, in Comic Sans, what more do you want?

00:00:57   in a way the only thing he cares about is the odd number. I'm sorry Myke. Well, well hi Stephen.

00:01:04   Hey buddy. Myke's here too and he seems upset so. Nah, I'm out of here. You'll get to go first

00:01:11   again in two weeks. Well that's a lot of good isn't it? Probably. Okay so we have a lot of

00:01:17   things to talk about but up first a reminder that we still have a very few tickets left for our WWDC

00:01:24   show Wednesday, June 5th in San Jose. There's a link in the show notes. There's some seats

00:01:30   left in the balcony. Myke has been tweeting a picture that we took from the balcony last

00:01:35   year that I think will be in the show notes as well. Awesome seats up there. And so please,

00:01:40   we'd love everybody to go check those out. Like I said, just a few left. I expect them

00:01:44   to be gone real soon.

00:01:46   Don't wait on this. Get a ticket. Otherwise, you'll regret it because it's going to be

00:01:50   a great show and everyone's going to talk about how great the show was and how entertaining

00:01:54   fun it was. And you would be like, "Oh man, if only I would have bought that ticket." Well,

00:01:57   you can buy that ticket. You can buy it right now. This is Myke from the future telling you to go buy

00:02:03   a ticket. Myke from the future, can I ask you other questions? Yes. Is AirPower out? No. Okay.

00:02:10   Never will be. We'll talk about that later on. He is from the future. All right, we have some

00:02:16   follow-up, but we have to start, as all tech podcasts do, with some Shakespeare. So, Myke,

00:02:22   Myke, do you want to take this?

00:02:24   Yeah, so we had a bunch of people write in to tell us about the Rosencrantz reference

00:02:29   and why that came up with the heads and tails when we were doing our incredibly dramatic

00:02:34   coin flipping in the last episode.

00:02:37   Some would say the most dramatic thing to ever happen on our show, and I would say that

00:02:41   they were right.

00:02:42   So David wrote in to say, "The Rosencrantz reference from series, only indirectly from

00:02:46   Shakespeare.

00:02:47   It is directly from Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, which gets its

00:02:52   title from the line in Hamlet in the play one of the characters which one is

00:02:56   Rosencrantz and which one is Guildenstern is left unresolved possibly

00:03:00   spoilers gets heads every time he tosses a coin so I am assuming because I was

00:03:06   thinking why did Steven ask me to to do this follow-up and I am assuming it's

00:03:11   because you didn't want to say the names that is true but also it felt like you're

00:03:15   in London seemed like the right thing to do but yeah I was gonna butcher all

00:03:19   those names. Also, you ruined Hamlet for people, so you have to live with that.

00:03:25   No, it's the ruined Hamlet. This is the secondary play, the adaptation.

00:03:30   Okay, I blacked out there for a minute. That's behind us.

00:03:34   I also just wanted to note that you said that I'm in the UK, Hamlet wasn't based in the

00:03:38   UK, Hamlet was actually.

00:03:39   But the globe is like across, it's just right there in London.

00:03:43   You guys seem to know a lot about theaters.

00:03:47   I know nothing about the editors.

00:03:49   I am an English boy. I know a lot about Shakespeare because we learn a lot about Shakespeare

00:03:54   when we study English. Plus I took English, like extra English, like I did a lot of English.

00:04:00   So Hamlet would be the thing with the skull and to be or not to be, right?

00:04:05   Yeah, that's it. That's Hamlet, yeah.

00:04:06   Cool. Okay.

00:04:08   Okay. Federico, you have had a banner week on Twitter. Just incredible. Tell us what's going on.

00:04:16   Well, I guess the highlight would be that iDownload's blog called me out.

00:04:21   That was my personal highlight. You're being attacked, you're being personally attacked

00:04:28   by iDownload blogs.

00:04:30   No, I mean this is kind of awesome, they did an article about tips for dealing with multiple

00:04:37   Apple watches, and their tweet says "Living the multi-watch lifestyle like Vittici" and

00:04:45   mentioned me via their Twitter account. They have 155,000-7,000 followers, so that's fine.

00:04:57   But yeah, they had this article about how to deal with the auto-switch setting in the

00:05:04   watch app, and here's what I'm gonna say. It tends to work pretty well.

00:05:10   I had no idea that this setting existed.

00:05:12   Yeah, so once you pair multiple Apple Watches, you gain this ability to tap on the watch

00:05:18   and enable the auto-switch setting.

00:05:21   There's something so funny about that, right?

00:05:23   That like, once you have arisen to the point where you can afford to buy more than one

00:05:28   Apple Watch, you, more on Earth, new setting options!

00:05:31   You've just descended to a new level of capitalism.

00:05:35   Congratulations!

00:05:36   What I noticed though is that it gets slightly

00:05:40   annoying where we all know right that updating the software of the Apple watch is a pain now imagine when you're dealing with

00:05:49   Multiple Apple watches so what happens here is that here's the is a what it gets kind of tricky

00:05:55   When you need to update the Apple watch at some point

00:05:58   Your iPhone will say you need to put your Apple watch on the charger

00:06:03   and it has to have at least 50% of battery left.

00:06:08   But if I put my watch on the charger,

00:06:12   I instinctively put the second Apple watch on my wrist.

00:06:16   But if auto switch is enabled, software update pauses

00:06:19   because then I'm not wearing that first watch anymore.

00:06:23   So what I need to do is before I take the watch off,

00:06:28   the first one, I need to go into the settings

00:06:33   and disable auto switch, so that when I put the first watch on the charger,

00:06:37   it still looks like my iPhone is still paired to that watch.

00:06:43   So every time I need to update, I need to remember to disable auto switch.

00:06:47   Otherwise, if I put the watch on the charger and I wear the second Apple Watch,

00:06:52   the software update process will pause.

00:06:54   So that's my teacher tip for the many, many people who wear multiple Apple Watches

00:06:59   who also listen to Connected.

00:07:02   Yeah.

00:07:02   Mm-hmm.

00:07:03   Including my buddy Tim Cook, because now we're friends.

00:07:06   You are friends now.

00:07:08   What happened? Tim, Tim, he slid into your DMs, right?

00:07:13   Is that what happened?

00:07:14   Yes, that's, yeah, we were chatting about multiple Apple Watches.

00:07:17   No, basically what happened is, last week, yeah, last week,

00:07:23   WatchOS 5.2 came out, and I was just chilling.

00:07:27   You know, it came out, it was like 11 p.m., and I didn't want to get,

00:07:31   I was in bed and watching TV with Sylvia and I didn't want to get up and report on the

00:07:36   news. So I was like, Ryan, when you wake up tomorrow morning, you can write about it.

00:07:40   There's no rush. Just, you know, do some kind of overview.

00:07:43   You were being a kind boss, basically.

00:07:46   Yeah. It's like John was not available because he traveled for like five months. And Ryan

00:07:52   was also not available. I was like, write about it tomorrow. It's fine. But then I thought,

00:07:55   you know what? I'm going to share some hot takes on Twitter. And because I genuinely

00:08:00   believe... Like every good blogger does. Exactly. So I was like, I can compensate for the lack

00:08:05   of content on my website by sharing tweets instead. And I think I sent like a couple

00:08:12   of tweets about, you know, because I've talked about this before, the ECG stuff on the Apple

00:08:17   Watch, I truly think it's a transformative thing to give to people for free in a watch.

00:08:23   And I shared this positive tweet about it. And that was it. And I woke up the next day,

00:08:31   had my breakfast, and at some point, at a very specific moment, I started receiving

00:08:38   all kinds of messages. Because Tim Cook retweeted with a comment. So he quote-tweeted my tweet,

00:08:46   saying "Thanks Federico!" We are thrilled that our new heart health features are now

00:08:53   available in Europe and Hong Kong. And that was pretty awesome because, I mean, it would

00:08:58   have been awesome if it just quote tweeted my tweet, but to have "Thanks Federico"

00:09:04   that's like the additional touch that makes it extremely nice.

00:09:08   One of those things he had to like check you spell it right.

00:09:12   Exactly. That's exactly.

00:09:14   Can you imagine, T.G., if he would have called you "Frederico"? Can you imagine like the

00:09:19   The level of like excitement to absolute devastating heartbreak, like the rollercoaster that you

00:09:25   would have gone on if he would have done that.

00:09:27   Hold on, because there is a precedent to this. Let me politely here my Evernote account.

00:09:36   My Good Memories notebook.

00:09:38   Do you want to work chat? I can work chat with you real quick.

00:09:40   No, no. I have a notebook called Good Memories.

00:09:43   Good Memories. It feels like this might not be as good a memory as the book.

00:09:46   And it's a good memory, but it's the exact example that you were referring to a few years

00:09:52   ago when I wrote my life after cancer story. Got tweeted by Phil Schiller, but he misspelled

00:09:59   my last name. And so he wrote Federico, but he wrote Vittici. He wrote V-I-T-T-I-C-I.

00:10:09   And I've done that though. Yeah. Like, I mean, Gruber did that a bunch of times as well.

00:10:16   It's, I guess, the American spelling that comes more natural to English-speaking people.

00:10:21   I don't know.

00:10:22   But yes, at least Tim Cook, you know, he used my name, but he checked and he actually used

00:10:30   the right spelling.

00:10:32   So that was pretty awesome.

00:10:33   I was very excited about that.

00:10:36   I like the fact that a bunch of people sent me congratulations, like, "Oh, looks like

00:10:41   you made it."

00:10:42   Like I thought that was kind of funny.

00:10:45   I don't know what kind of idea of success people have in terms of making it.

00:10:53   I think it's awesome.

00:10:54   I wouldn't say that I made it because I got tweeted by Tim Cook, you know?

00:11:00   But I think it's still a pretty awesome thing that happened.

00:11:04   So that was very nice.

00:11:06   I feel like in our little, in our sphere or like amongst your peer group, one of the,

00:11:14   people who write about Apple, the CEO of Apple, to tweet about something that you did is like,

00:11:18   or like to just acknowledge you to, well, you did have that like magical hug with him

00:11:23   that one time.

00:11:24   Yeah, I guess, I guess, yeah, I guess it doesn't, I mean, it was awesome, but it's, you know,

00:11:29   I wrote about this, um, four years ago. I actually, I have spoken to Tim Cook personally,

00:11:35   so it's like being retweeted. It's like that it's pretty cool, but like,

00:11:40   I mean, but come on, it's nothing like having a conversation with the guy, am I right?

00:11:45   Yes, exactly.

00:11:46   So, it's still pretty awesome and I was very happy.

00:11:49   Especially because it was such a positive message.

00:11:51   I like that it was, you know, of all the things, even if it was not a Max Stories article that got shared by Tim Cook,

00:11:58   I think the fact that he shared a positive message about a health feature,

00:12:03   That's sort of, I think, that kind of is a good example of my presence online or whatever,

00:12:13   like the kind of message that fits me perfectly, so I'm very happy about that.

00:12:17   Yeah, I tried the ECG thing with Deanna's watch.

00:12:22   It's really cool.

00:12:24   I was really pleased that it didn't tell me that my heart was in trouble.

00:12:26   So that was good news.

00:12:28   Same here.

00:12:29   First time I did it, I didn't put it on properly and I was really worried about the

00:12:33   animation because it was like every now and then like it would just fly off the scale and I was

00:12:38   like oh god is this what is this why that's it off we go done just uh i've read enough of those

00:12:47   stories by now to know that's how it begins at least you get a cool blog post out of it at the

00:12:51   end of the day that's worth that's probably worth the trip to the hospital that is true that is true

00:12:55   maybe i would have got a tim cook tweet that way if i if i would have had it it doesn't even have

00:13:00   You could guest post on 512 again, it'll be fine.

00:13:04   We spoke about, at some point in the past, about Apple Music extending to include things

00:13:11   like concert tickets and merchandise, and it looks like maybe there's some people playing

00:13:17   with that.

00:13:18   Federico, what is the story about this secret merch?

00:13:23   Are you avoiding names again?

00:13:25   Come on, say the name!

00:13:26   Just give it a go!

00:13:27   I don't even know who it is!

00:13:29   I'm not cool enough to know your fancy musicians.

00:13:31   That's why it's more fun.

00:13:33   There's this very famous artist, her name is Billie Eilish.

00:13:38   Right now she is considered to be one of the most important people in music.

00:13:41   This is no joke.

00:13:42   Yes.

00:13:43   Literally, have not heard of her until this moment.

00:13:46   This is her debut album as well, so it is fine that you haven't yet heard of her until

00:13:51   right now.

00:13:52   Yeah, call me when it's on vinyl, you know what I'm saying?

00:13:54   Just kidding.

00:13:55   I bet it is.

00:13:56   Probably is.

00:13:57   She did a bunch of EPs before and she's been collaborating with Apple.

00:14:02   She was one of the first up next artists on Apple Music.

00:14:05   You can buy it on vinyl, man.

00:14:07   Sorry, you can.

00:14:08   It's the only real way to listen to music, am I right, Casey?

00:14:16   She also did the song for the last Apple Christmas commercial.

00:14:22   The one with the dog about creativity.

00:14:25   What's it called?

00:14:27   No, what's going on? Oh, come on. Don't hide. That song about, you know, sharing your creative

00:14:35   work. Anyway. She's like the one of the top artists right now and everybody's sort of

00:14:42   paying attention to this album because of the very peculiar sound and lyrics. And I

00:14:47   mean, you can search for a name online. You will see it sort of the articles that you

00:14:52   can find, even Pitchfork was kind of positive about her. They managed to give her 7.5, which

00:15:00   is, you know, for this kind of music in Pitchfork. I mean, it's quite an accomplishment. Anyway,

00:15:08   what I noticed, I was just, I saw this tweet about this Billie Eilish merch available via

00:15:17   Apple Music and it was a kind of weird processing that I had to

00:15:23   click this link on Twitter that took me to an Apple Music page. This Apple Music

00:15:29   page was not available on the artist profile page or by searching. I had to

00:15:34   reach the page by following a link from Twitter or Instagram too I guess. And

00:15:40   once I found this page there was a button to... it was like a custom page that

00:15:45   collected the Billie Eilish merch link and the upcoming album so that you could pre-add

00:15:53   the album and bunch of playlists and Beats 1 interviews. So I clicked on the merch link

00:15:59   and it took me to this, I guess it was like a branded Shopify store in Safari where you

00:16:05   could, the song, thank you John Voorhees for the real-time follow-up was called "Come

00:16:11   out and play the Billie Eilish song from the Christmas commercial.

00:16:17   So anyway, I actually put in an order for this Billie t-shirt that was designed... it

00:16:22   was a very cool collaboration, it was designed by streetwear artist Don C, and it features

00:16:28   the artwork from Takashi Murakami.

00:16:31   He's done a bunch of really cool and colorful artwork before, and the entire process was

00:16:38   very smooth, you could use Apple Pay or you could just fill in and use your credit card.

00:16:43   But the idea of... now this is an extremely poor implementation in that you had to make

00:16:50   sure that you followed Billie Eilish on Twitter. It eventually got retweeted and reshared by

00:16:55   the Apple Music account, but still you could not find this merch link in the profile page.

00:17:01   Maybe that was by design because it was a limited sort of exclusive deal, but I think

00:17:06   the idea is very interesting of Apple collaborating with artists and giving them a way to embed

00:17:13   merchandise in Apple Music. Now, I could easily see how this in the future might grow in a

00:17:19   way that maybe you never leave Apple Music to buy this merch, you don't have to open

00:17:23   Safari but you just use Apple Pay or your credit card right in Apple Music. Maybe you

00:17:27   don't have to use Shopify. I guess the big problem would be that Apple would have to

00:17:33   to take care of logistics, if the process excluded Shopify

00:17:37   or any other service that takes care of shipping

00:17:40   and dealing with customer support, for example.

00:17:43   But I think it's fascinating that Apple is sort of opening

00:17:46   up to that idea of maybe in Apple Music,

00:17:49   we can feature more than just songs that you can stream,

00:17:52   but maybe we can go beyond that and offer merchandise

00:17:55   and I don't know, maybe concert tickets

00:17:57   or sort of these extra content that super fans

00:18:02   may be interested in and get exclusively viable music.

00:18:07   I mean they could do a partnership with a company like a Shopify or whatever,

00:18:11   right, like to do this stuff or it could just be a case of just giving people the hooks to be able

00:18:17   to set up their own platform but it would be nice if they could do it at some point.

00:18:21   There is a funny aside about Billie Eilish which is that Federico noted this to me, her album has

00:18:27   some really really heavy bass on it and it sounds terrible on the HomePod. It's like

00:18:33   it just does not work. Yeah you need a good pair of speakers or headphones to not get

00:18:40   the kind of effect that you get from one of the songs. It's super weirdly distorted, which

00:18:45   might be what she's going for. She's going for that, she's going for that effect but

00:18:50   it's not fully rendered I think via the HomePod. And it's not really just a problem on the

00:18:55   the HomePod. I shared this on Twitter and people have tried with Sonos once, for example,

00:19:04   or other speakers. Like even my car speakers, I have a JBL system inside. They cannot...

00:19:09   This is not a song that is meant to be handled. So she went, she and her brother, her brother

00:19:14   Finneas, he actually takes care of the production and, you know, actually writing the music.

00:19:19   But I think they went specifically for this effect that is so distorted that it's meant

00:19:26   to blast your speakers or headphones.

00:19:28   It's almost uncomfortable to listen to.

00:19:29   It is uncomfortable.

00:19:30   Yeah.

00:19:31   It's very interesting.

00:19:32   I wonder how the iPod Hi-Fi would take it.

00:19:35   You should give it a go.

00:19:37   You can be the person to answer this question.

00:19:39   Yeah.

00:19:40   It's only one way to find out.

00:19:41   So it's up to Jason, not me.

00:19:45   I wanted to share a little bit about the current iPads.

00:19:49   I had to go to Apple Store yesterday to pick something up.

00:19:51   And the new iPad Mini and the new iPad Air were out.

00:19:55   And I feel like a lot of people, myself included,

00:19:58   are kind of intrigued by returning to the Mini size.

00:20:02   Or like Jason spoke about this as well.

00:20:05   If you're going to do more than one tablet,

00:20:07   maybe the Mini makes sense as the second one.

00:20:09   And I was like, OK, let me reacquaint myself

00:20:12   with the iPad Mini.

00:20:12   My kids have one, but it's in this giant case.

00:20:14   And boy, it is all bezels.

00:20:17   Like it looks, it looks so old.

00:20:21   I was sort of surprised at my reaction to it.

00:20:26   I could see a future of the iPad mini eventually gets the new design within

00:20:31   bezels. It would be really nice,

00:20:33   but it is of a previous era and then boy,

00:20:38   it is, it's rougher than I expected.

00:20:41   I don't mean to pick on it, but it really surprised me.

00:20:46   It's a lot more noticeable on a smaller device than something like the iPad air,

00:20:50   which I mean, really looks just like a 10.5 inch pro or like a stretched out

00:20:55   9.7 inch iPad, it's a very familiar shape and size to me, at least having, I have

00:21:00   a 10.5 inch pro still in the house.

00:21:02   But the, the mini really looks like it's from a different era and

00:21:07   that's, that's a little bit of a bummer.

00:21:08   I wasn't particularly tempted by it as a second.

00:21:11   Uh, iPad, you know, as a reader and sort of, you know, walk around the house with

00:21:16   type thing, but I can see why people would be because there is something kind of nice

00:21:20   about that size. But the design sort of put me off on it more than I expected. So I don't

00:21:27   know, it just really struck me. So I wanted to share that. Have you guys thought about

00:21:32   an iPad me and Federico you that's kind of where you started with your iPad lifestyle?

00:21:38   Just something you're tempted by?

00:21:40   I don't think I want to spend some money just to play around with it. And I think it's just

00:21:45   something that I need to check out at the Apple Store. So I think I'm mostly fine with

00:21:50   my current setup of the 12.9 and the 11 inch iPad Pro.

00:21:55   I have been purposefully avoiding the Apple Store.

00:22:00   So as not to walk away with one?

00:22:02   Yeah, yeah. Because I think that ultimately it would be something that I would think I

00:22:09   would use more than I would use. I already have two iPads. I think that it is a really

00:22:15   good entrant into the like the multi-pad lifestyle for somebody right like if you have a big

00:22:21   one you have the biggest one and you have the smallest one like that might even make

00:22:24   more sense than what I do but I definitely don't need to be using three and I wouldn't

00:22:30   right something's gonna fall by the wayside in that situation so yeah I've kind of stuck

00:22:35   away from it.

00:22:36   I think that's fair.

00:22:38   I think if they had redesigned it right like imagine if it was a world that they that they

00:22:43   kind of gave it a pro treatment, then I would already have one.

00:22:48   I will say the length of the pencil being as long as the iPad is tall feels really strange.

00:22:53   Yeah, not a good seems weird to me. That seems very weird to me. It's a little weird. But

00:22:57   uh, it's out there and I think people are excited by it. People who were like the iPad

00:23:02   Mini, it has gotten a new lease on life, at least at least for now. Who knows what the

00:23:06   future holds, but it's here now. So I also wanted to do some follow out to upgrade 239

00:23:13   as well as a Mac Word article that came out today.

00:23:16   Jason Snell has been spending time

00:23:18   with the high-end regular iMac,

00:23:20   and of course he has a base model iMac Pro

00:23:23   as his daily machine, the same as I do.

00:23:25   And he and I kind of been talking a lot about,

00:23:29   you know, at what point do you make the jump

00:23:31   to the iMac Pro?

00:23:33   I had some concerns about the high-end iMac

00:23:35   that it seems like Apple may have addressed

00:23:37   in this generation, it seems like the fan curve is gentler.

00:23:40   You're still gonna hear it a lot more than the iMac Pro,

00:23:42   it seems like it's better behaved, which is really good. And I think Jason kind of makes

00:23:47   the lays out the argument really well that the iMac is a great machine. But if you have

00:23:53   certain types of tasks, the iMac Pro is still better, even though the iMac is or can be

00:23:59   in the same class of performance for less money. A lot of pro apps that rely on a lot

00:24:06   of multi multi threaded work, the iMac Pro is still going to smash that iMac into the

00:24:11   ground. So go check that out. If you're looking for a new desktop, I think it's,

00:24:15   I think it's harder to choose between these two than it was. But my,

00:24:19   my sense is that if you're an iMac pro person,

00:24:23   you're going to know that and, and your workflow will dictate it.

00:24:26   And if you're kind of on the fence, um, go check out what,

00:24:30   what he's been writing and talking about. Uh, Myke, I was going to ask you too.

00:24:35   I know you've said that you're looking, uh, to see what the Mac pro is like,

00:24:39   Does this new iMac change your thinking on what your next desktop may be as your iMac

00:24:46   - you know your iMac's got some years on it but still running strong - has this changed

00:24:49   your outlook on that?

00:24:52   I think maybe.

00:24:53   I don't know.

00:24:54   It might mean that I - when I - because I've kind of been waiting for the Mac Pro, right,

00:24:58   to see what that's like before I make my final decision, but like I've figured oh I'll definitely

00:25:03   get an iMac Pro but maybe now I don't need that.

00:25:06   maybe I could just replace this iMac with another kind of like comparable iMac to the to the one

00:25:12   that it would be replacing. Yeah. Right? Because I think mine at the time was pretty close to top-end

00:25:18   but I don't think I can, well I definitely didn't max it out in all directions, but like there might

00:25:22   be a one like maybe one of the top of the line configs of maybe some more RAM in and then that

00:25:29   would probably be enough for me because I've not needed an iMac Pro yet and I'm sitting with a 2015

00:25:35   iMac here. So I definitely don't need an iMac Pro. And the only reason I would go to the

00:25:40   Mac Pro is if it was, you know, there was a version of it that was, I felt was cost

00:25:46   effective for my use case. And also like, because for me, it's like, I then want to

00:25:50   keep that computer for 10 years, right? Like that's my vision of it. But like to do that,

00:25:56   then it needs to be really expandable. And we don't know what that means yet. So that's

00:26:02   kind of that's kind of my thinking on it because you know I will have I had this

00:26:05   machine for like getting close to five years right by the time that that Mac Pro

00:26:11   comes out so there's nothing to say that I couldn't then have a machine for ten

00:26:16   if I can change the parts in it when I need to absolutely and that that's what

00:26:20   I'm looking forward to seeing as well of what does that upgradeable and

00:26:24   expandable what are those words mean in 2019 or 2020 like it's I don't think

00:26:30   going to like release a new cheese grater. I don't think it's that, but you know, what does it mean?

00:26:35   And something John Sircuses talked about is like upgradeability and expandability is great

00:26:40   only if there's parts, right? So even in the cheese grater days and people are still using

00:26:46   those and upgrading them, like your video cards were pretty limited in what you could do. So like,

00:26:51   can you just pop in any card as long as you can find a driver, like all those, like the Mac Pro

00:26:55   is going to be made or broken for me in the details. And I think it's the same for you.

00:27:00   We have a lot more talk about keyboards, headphones, magazines, YouTube videos,

00:27:08   airpower, lots of stuff. But first, I want to tell you about our first sponsor. This

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00:28:20   fancy enough for a pillow menu. And now that's my life goal.

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00:28:28   sort of pillow would you like tonight? And I would say buck

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00:28:41   on it's like, okay, it's it's a little tall for what I want. And

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00:29:43   Now our thanks to hello for their support of this show and relay FM pillow menu guys.

00:29:49   What is that?

00:29:50   It's not the world I live in.

00:29:51   Well, we can find that well for you.

00:29:54   Well, not if we spend all of our money on logitech keyboards, which I think is the plan

00:29:58   for Federico maybe, or maybe it's not.

00:30:01   I don't know.

00:30:02   Federico, what's the deal here?

00:30:03   Are you going to be buying more keyboards?

00:30:06   I'm not buying them.

00:30:07   I honestly hope that Logitech can send me a review unit.

00:30:11   There it is.

00:30:12   The keyboard menu.

00:30:13   You want a keyboard menu is what you want.

00:30:16   You want to wake up and say, "What keyboard do I feel like today?"

00:30:18   Exactly.

00:30:19   Exactly.

00:30:20   That's the kind of life that I want to have.

00:30:21   Your keyboard butler brings you the keyboard.

00:30:23   Keyboard butler.

00:30:24   I want to have a keyboard button.

00:30:26   Keeves!

00:30:27   Oh my gosh.

00:30:28   What's his name?

00:30:29   Come on.

00:30:30   Keeves, not Jeeves.

00:30:31   He's Keeves.

00:30:33   Come on.

00:30:34   That's our new character for the show.

00:30:36   the keyboard butler. But is Jeeves a famous butler? Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. He was in

00:30:43   Star Wars. Jeeves and Wooster. But then also Ask Jeeves. Remember Ask Jeeves? I have no

00:30:50   idea what you're talking about. The search engine? You don't know Ask Jeeves? I think

00:30:53   you mentioned this before, I don't know it. That's interesting. But yeah just, okay you

00:30:57   have to take it that Jeeves is a... So it's a typical butler name. Yeah yeah. Oh it's

00:31:03   - It's based upon a fictional character.

00:31:05   - Kind of like Ambrogio in Italy.

00:31:07   - Exactly like that one though.

00:31:08   - Yeah, exactly like that one.

00:31:10   - Cool. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:31:11   - Made that up. - Cool.

00:31:13   No, I didn't.

00:31:14   Anyway, Logitech has a new line of,

00:31:19   what's the name here?

00:31:21   Keyboard folios.

00:31:22   Are they calling them the Slim Folio or something?

00:31:25   It's available in the 11 inch and 12.9 inch flavor.

00:31:29   For both iPad Pros, here's the deal.

00:31:32   it's not a smart connector keyboard.

00:31:34   So it's a keyboard case, it's got a plastic case,

00:31:37   you need to put your iPad into this plastic case,

00:31:40   and you need to connect via Bluetooth.

00:31:42   Now Logitech says it's Bluetooth LE,

00:31:44   and the battery lasts up to three months,

00:31:47   and you can recharge it using USB-C.

00:31:49   - It also has a clever thing where it turns off and on

00:31:52   based upon the iPad being in the case,

00:31:55   which is quite clever,

00:31:56   so when you put it in the keyboard mode, it will connect,

00:31:59   and when you take it out of the keyboard mode,

00:32:00   it will disconnect.

00:32:01   That's cool.

00:32:02   That is clever.

00:32:03   And of course, being a Logitech keyboard, this means you get backlit keys, you get media

00:32:09   keys for functions like controlling playback and going back to the home screen or triggering

00:32:15   spotlight search and tweaking the brightness of the backlight of the keyboard.

00:32:21   You know that's not where I thought you were going.

00:32:22   I thought you were going to say, you know, being a Logitech keyboard, it's chunky and

00:32:25   heavy.

00:32:26   It's also that it's very chunky and heavy.

00:32:30   It is.

00:32:31   Alright, so Logitech, they have been improving their keyboards.

00:32:37   The first create cases for the first iPad Pros were really bad and we talked about those.

00:32:44   I feel like it's been a bit of a rollercoaster ride for them to be honest.

00:32:48   Yeah, yeah.

00:32:49   Because the very first one for the first iPad Pro, the keyboard was decent, but the plastic

00:32:53   case and the stickers that you got to cover the buttons, they were terrible.

00:32:59   were terrible. And then they had a second generation one that was kinda okay for the

00:33:04   big iPad Pro, but then they did the small one that you really didn't like, Myke. We

00:33:09   talked about this on the show and we got a bunch of feedback. Now this one is chunky

00:33:14   and heavy, but it looks kinda okay. I mean, it's got a fixed viewing angle, like the Apple

00:33:19   keyboard. I mean, the Apple keyboard at least has two angles. I think this one is just one.

00:33:24   But it supports a bunch of modes that you don't get with the Apple SmartKey portfolio,

00:33:30   like a typing mode for touch.

00:33:34   And it's also got this interesting magnetic clasp for the pencil, so you can actually

00:33:39   store the pencil, but also charge it at the same time.

00:33:43   It looks fine, it's also cheaper than the SmartKey portfolio.

00:33:47   It costs $120 for the 11-inch version, and $130 for the bigger one.

00:33:53   So I don't know if, again, I don't want to buy this for myself.

00:33:57   I would rather wait for Logitech to send me one so I can play with it and send it back.

00:34:01   Also because my girlfriend has been complaining about the number of keyboards that have been

00:34:06   accumulating in our apartment.

00:34:07   So I would like to test this, but I don't feel like buying one myself.

00:34:14   So I think it's in, you know, I've seen Jason complain about the fact that it's a plastic

00:34:19   case that you need to put your iPad into.

00:34:22   And I understand the complaint there, but also some people, some folks want a more rugged

00:34:27   you know, type of setup for their iPad Pro.

00:34:30   So I can understand why some people prefer the plastic case approach.

00:34:33   If I'm gonna put a keyboard onto my iPad that's gonna make it weigh as much as a laptop, I

00:34:39   want laptop-like functionality, which is why I'm interested in the Brydge keyboard.

00:34:44   Like I want an adjustable hinge, right?

00:34:46   Like I want it to be built out of aluminium so it's super strong and sturdy, right?

00:34:50   So I like it's got a strong base when I'm using it in my lap.

00:34:53   And I just feel like that this is not that this is just like a more beefed up version

00:34:57   of Apple's product.

00:34:59   And that's not for me because I like the smart keyboard folio because it's nice and like

00:35:05   it's not it's not light per se, but it's the lightest.

00:35:08   Right.

00:35:09   And it's got the smart connector.

00:35:10   So I never need to charge it.

00:35:11   I would I don't really feel for me that what you do get, which is the backlighting and

00:35:17   the media keys, that is not enough for me to counterbalance the weight, no pun intended,

00:35:25   and the fact that you're putting it in this case all the time. That's not what I want.

00:35:31   Still waiting on those bridge keyboards.

00:35:32   What are they shipping? Pretty soon, right?

00:35:34   They said April, and I think the last I heard is that they were still on track, but I'll

00:35:40   be honest, I don't know.

00:35:42   I don't have nothing to say about these keyboards. I'm pretty happy with the Apple one. It has

00:35:47   the right capability for the size, I guess. Like, yes, I would love backlit keyboard and

00:35:51   stuff, but it's fine.

00:35:53   Okay. I have a confession here. I wrote about the SmartKey portfolio months ago. I wrote

00:36:01   that I didn't like it and that I couldn't get used to it. I've been using the SmartKey

00:36:07   portfolio for the past three months at this point, and I kind of love it. And at some

00:36:16   point I guess something changed and I've grown to, and I think I know what it is and I've

00:36:22   read about it on Mac, sorry. But now basically like I've been trying different solutions

00:36:28   like different cases that support the Magic Keyboard and I feel like it's kind of hard

00:36:33   to go back to something that is not as easy and integrated as the Smart Keyboard folder.

00:36:38   Like I keep thinking the same things that I wrote months ago like it's not backlit,

00:36:44   doesn't have media keys but it's also so easy to use. It works.

00:36:48   It works and you can spill water or breadcrumbs on it and it's fine.

00:36:54   Nothing happens. You could just wipe it over and clean it. I've

00:36:59   gotten used to it and I feel kind of bad about it because I was a

00:37:05   smart keyboard hater and then I changed my mind. You've seen the light. That's fine.

00:37:10   I think people overlook the smart connector,

00:37:13   but that's the genius of it for me.

00:37:14   I don't want to fiddle with Bluetooth and batteries

00:37:17   and everything else.

00:37:18   I just want them to connect and work

00:37:20   and Apple wins that hands down.

00:37:23   - So Logitech have always used the smart connector, right?

00:37:27   - Yeah.

00:37:28   - Why do you think that this one isn't?

00:37:29   Do you think Apple's stopping them?

00:37:31   Do you think that there's something that's changed

00:37:32   about the smart connector that they can't get

00:37:35   what they want out of it?

00:37:36   What do you think?

00:37:37   - I don't know.

00:37:39   That was also interesting to me. Honestly, I have no idea.

00:37:42   Logitech were the only company making small-connects accessories.

00:37:46   They made that terrible charging stand, remember? It charged it over 18 hours or something.

00:37:50   The Logitech base? That review that Jason did is so much fun.

00:37:53   Now we're gonna hear from people who say, "Oh, I love my Logitech base."

00:37:56   Cool, that's okay.

00:37:57   I have nothing to say to you if you like the Logitech base. I have nothing for you.

00:38:01   I have nothing for you.

00:38:02   Wow. I was gonna say, we can disagree on things, and it's fine, but Myke, you just took it

00:38:07   a different direction.

00:38:08   I'm just, I say I have nothing for you. I had nothing. I had no something I can say.

00:38:12   It doesn't seem like a good product to me.

00:38:14   Okay. So I do have to wonder though if it's a problem of, I don't know,

00:38:20   about power delivery of the smart connector, that maybe something changed in the new iPad Pros and Logitech.

00:38:25   You know, they wanted to do backlight again and maybe there's a different way that the new iPad Pros deliver power via the smart connector.

00:38:35   Logitech was like no no that's not enough for us anymore so well it is also

00:38:39   possible and you know this idea makes sense to me Apple made it something that

00:38:43   people could develop for right and nobody did so now they're just like well

00:38:48   screw it let's just keep it as a competitive advantage yeah maybe maybe

00:38:51   let's talk from let's go from keyboards to headphones we spoke about the power

00:38:56   beats Pro they were rumored and leaked and I was 12.2 like a week ago or so so

00:39:02   These are wireless beats headphones.

00:39:04   So there's one for each ear and they're, they're workout headphones.

00:39:07   So they have a little arm that goes over your ear.

00:39:10   So they kind of stay in place.

00:39:11   Now they have been officially announced as of today, they come in several colors.

00:39:16   They have, uh, four different ear tips sizes.

00:39:20   You know, the AirPods are one size fits all unless they don't fit you.

00:39:23   And then you're.

00:39:24   Left in the cold.

00:39:25   I think these are customizable, but I think these are those ones that go in your

00:39:30   Right, and I can't I can't abide by those. There's so uncomfortable for me

00:39:34   But yeah that it does allow for more I guess more different fits

00:39:39   Right nine hours of listening time, which is better than the air pods

00:39:44   24 hours total when you use the battery case

00:39:48   So just like the air pods the case has a battery in it

00:39:50   It charges by lightning and this uses the h1 chip as we discussed this will be rolling out

00:39:56   I guess to more and more things. I think they look pretty good

00:39:59   I'm not sure they look two hundred and fifty dollars good

00:40:02   Even with physical buttons and you know some niceties that like the beats x-half but 250 is a little steep for me

00:40:10   I think I got pro in the name. That's true. What more do you want? That just means their keyboards will fail

00:40:16   Oh, that's a different thing. Hey, yeah

00:40:18   Don't the wave of buttons. Maybe the buttons won't work. Yeah, it can't get crumbs in them

00:40:22   Mm-hmm. I mean, I'm just excited that Apple's having more options with this technology

00:40:27   You know air pods aren't for everyone I had years ago

00:40:31   I had the old versions of these that had the wire in between them just like the beats X do now

00:40:36   And actually it's kind of nice actually having something that like clips over your ear

00:40:40   Or if you need to take one out you can clip it like you know on the neck of your shirt or something like

00:40:44   It gives you some convenience that air pods

00:40:47   Don't have a friend of mine just got air pods his first set this week actually and you know

00:40:52   He was telling me about him and I was like, here's the number one rule

00:40:55   Never take one of them out of your ear and sit it down anywhere like the second you let go of it

00:40:59   It's gone forever and with these they're a little bit bigger you have something you can do with that little loop

00:41:04   So, you know again, I'm excited just to see options for this

00:41:08   The inside airport air pods for a couple of months or whatever and I just keep finding them just around

00:41:15   She takes them out and just puts them down both of them. She just puts them both on the table

00:41:20   I put him in the case. She's like, I'll pick him up tomorrow. I'm like, what is this? No

00:41:24   Just I have no concept of the way that you're using this product. She just takes them out,

00:41:28   both of them out, and just puts them down next to each other, like on the table. It's

00:41:32   like I don't understand what you're doing with this. It's very strange to me. I don't

00:41:36   get it.

00:41:37   That's super strange.

00:41:39   People use technology in weird and wonderful ways, says the guy who covers all these products

00:41:43   in stickers.

00:41:44   I wanted to say that Silvia is really intrigued by this new Powerbeats Pro, of course. She

00:41:51   She as a dancer and all of her friends, they tend to like this type of Beats products because

00:42:00   they are more comfortable when you're dancing or when you're rehearsing a choreography and

00:42:03   that type of stuff.

00:42:04   So I explained to her the benefits of the new model with the Siri integration, with

00:42:10   the better audio quality because of the new chip, and the fact that they don't have a

00:42:15   wire anymore.

00:42:16   So she's really intrigued, she's thinking about whether she wants the new AirPods or

00:42:20   the new AirPods or these Powerbeats Pro. So I guess we have a few weeks to think about it before we

00:42:26   make a decision and go to the Apple store or buy them online. I don't know.

00:42:30   I do wonder what this means for the future of the Beats X product. You know, I mentioned on the show

00:42:36   that my wife has been through several pairs of them as they just tend to die. And we had a bunch

00:42:41   of feedback from people saying, yeah, I'm on my third, fourth, fifth pair. So clearly there's some

00:42:46   sort of reliability problem with the beats x and now with these I just wonder if Apple

00:42:51   needs both or if they can, you know, upgrade the beats x with the h1 and make it however

00:42:57   they're failing, make them better, make them more robust. So they last longer because,

00:43:02   frankly, burning through a pair every nine months is just unacceptable. So I do kind

00:43:07   of wonder like, what's the future of that product now that these are here and I guess

00:43:11   I guess time will tell. As far as I know the beats x was still for sale and they haven't

00:43:15   been upgraded. So maybe they will, or maybe they'll be reimagined somehow to be better,

00:43:20   which would be great. We also want to talk a little bit about Apple news. Plus there's

00:43:24   an article in the New York times talking about how it's, how its launch has gone. Of course,

00:43:31   we spoke about some of the problems they had at launch with the apps crashing and they

00:43:35   got that fixed server side, but then the Mac app, you can just like go and like strip out

00:43:41   the PDFs, which is super, super bad. It's a little messy. But this New York Times article

00:43:47   is interesting. It says that 200,000 people signed up for Apple news plus in the first

00:43:54   48 hours. And of course, all these people are on the trial, just like Federico and I are.

00:44:00   So no one's paying yet. There's no money moving through the system. I have no idea if 200,000

00:44:07   is a good or bad number. Like I just don't know.

00:44:09   The New York Times thing says it's more than texture had. So like, but again, is that good or

00:44:15   bad? Probably not that. I mean, how many did they have? If they had 190,000, then it's not that

00:44:20   great.

00:44:20   On the Vergecast this week, Nilo Patel interviewed Peter Kafka from Recode Media. It was a great

00:44:25   episode.

00:44:25   I was listening to that.

00:44:27   Yeah, talking about Apple News and Apple News Plus. And it says something really smart of like,

00:44:32   these big companies can accidentally have successful products that aren't very good.

00:44:36   I was like, there are so many iPhones,

00:44:39   you're going to have some people just wander

00:44:40   into this product because it's the default,

00:44:43   because it's there on the home screen.

00:44:45   And clearly, News and News Plus will benefit from that.

00:44:48   But yeah, what I'm really curious to see

00:44:52   is once this trial is up, when's the first time

00:44:54   they tell us how many people they have

00:44:58   paying the $10 a month?

00:45:00   That's really what I wanna see.

00:45:01   I wanna see reports of, hey, this is how much

00:45:03   we're actually making as a magazine.

00:45:05   because there's really good arguments on both sides

00:45:09   of the debate of like, is this good for journalism or not?

00:45:12   Like, you know, I don't know.

00:45:13   Like I have a journalism degree, that's my background.

00:45:15   I don't know if it's good for magazines and newspapers yet.

00:45:19   I feel like it could be,

00:45:20   but then I also feel like it could be a disaster.

00:45:22   I just don't know.

00:45:23   And so the proof will be in these numbers

00:45:25   and you know, who knows when Apple will tell us

00:45:28   when they say, oh, we have half a million people paying

00:45:30   or whatever it is, whenever it is,

00:45:33   I'll be keeping an eye out.

00:45:34   But you know, it's there.

00:45:36   I could tell you already I'm using it way less than I was.

00:45:40   I just don't think it's,

00:45:42   it's probably just not for me ultimately.

00:45:44   You know, we'll see if it sticks.

00:45:45   But at this point I'm not using it very much,

00:45:47   to be honest with you.

00:45:48   - Interesting.

00:45:49   I'm using it a bunch.

00:45:51   Actually, I've been catching up on some articles from Edge,

00:45:55   the video game magazine.

00:45:56   I've been checking out Retro Gamer

00:45:57   and the New Yorker and of course the Wall Street Journal.

00:46:03   And in fact I have a funny story for you guys. Have you ever tried to cancel a subscription

00:46:10   to the new, to the Wall Street Journal? Not yet. No. Okay. So I tried and it turns out

00:46:18   that you can sign up. You can't! You can. You cannot online. You can sign up online.

00:46:27   They're very happy to take your credit card and make you create an account. But then when

00:46:30   you want to cancel, you need to call them on the phone. Well, first of all, you're told

00:46:37   that you need to find your account number. And to find your account number, I suppose

00:46:44   you need to go to your account page. And on your account page, there's a little tool that

00:46:50   asks you, "Let us find your subscription." And basically the website was telling me,

00:46:57   your subscription does not exist, even though I've been charged twice already.

00:47:02   So I tried to call him on the phone.

00:47:05   First, I tried a US number, but I was told that it was too early in the morning

00:47:12   because I was in Italy, of course, and I needed to try European line.

00:47:16   Then I tried and that was yesterday.

00:47:18   Today, I tried this Italian phone number.

00:47:21   But actually, a very nice lady from the UK answered.

00:47:26   And she had me check my account info. Of course you can imagine the spelling for my address and my name and last name.

00:47:35   And then after five minutes of doing this kind of spelling and making sure that they have my records correct, she told me,

00:47:41   "Oh, but no, you actually created an account for the US website. So you need to... I would have you transferred to the US line, but it's too early right now.

00:47:54   so you need to call later.

00:47:56   I was like, all right, fine, I'll call later.

00:47:59   And earlier this afternoon, a few hours ago,

00:48:02   I tried to call the US number.

00:48:05   But I was told that the line was busy

00:48:07   and that they could not answer my request.

00:48:10   I was very upset about this.

00:48:12   So what I did, as anyone would do,

00:48:14   is I googled, is there any way to cancel WSJ online?

00:48:20   And I found this tip from somebody on Reddit.

00:48:24   So thank you, unnamed person, who shared this piece of life wisdom with other users, in

00:48:32   that due to regulations in California, the Wall Street Journal is obligated by law to

00:48:38   allow you to cancel your subscription if you change your billing address to any address

00:48:43   in California.

00:48:44   So, of course, as you might imagine, I changed my billing address to 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino,

00:48:50   And I cancelled my subscription without having to call anybody. Because screw phone calls,

00:49:00   who wants to have a phone call to cancel your subscription?

00:49:03   That's just a good tip for in general, right? I bet it's not just the Wall Street Journal

00:49:07   that works with.

00:49:08   So California wins once again best state in the United States. I don't know if it's the

00:49:14   best state really, I just like it because it's sunny. But yeah, so change your billion

00:49:20   address to California, you can use whatever you like, and you will gain this very handsome

00:49:26   red button that says "Cancel Subscription". That's great. Now, also, secondary teachy

00:49:33   tip for this, once you cancel the Wall Street Journal from Safari, from basically the online

00:49:40   subscription because you just pay for Apple News Plus and you're fine with the limitations

00:49:45   of Apple News Plus, when you land in Safari on any Wall Street Journal article, and you're

00:49:52   like "well, now I cannot access the article in Safari because Safari doesn't have my Apple

00:49:58   News Plus info because I no longer have an actual Wall Street Journal account", well,

00:50:03   what you can do is you can tap the share icon in Safari, open the share sheet, and find

00:50:08   "Open story in Apple News", and that will redirect and it will open that article you're

00:50:14   looking at that has a paywall in Safari, it will show you the fully unlocked article in

00:50:19   Apple News if you subscribe to Apple News+.

00:50:21   Wow.

00:50:22   So, yeah.

00:50:23   That seems like a bug.

00:50:24   No, it's an actual extension that Apple makes to let you jump from articles viewed in Safari

00:50:30   to articles viewed in Apple News.

00:50:32   That's an interesting problem though, like the paywall issue, like if you have an account

00:50:36   online Apple News doesn't know about it.

00:50:38   It's really messy and confusing in places, which I think is one reason I'm a little turned

00:50:42   off from it.

00:50:43   So, Apple news, and a very long story about the Wall Street Journal, but yeah, I'm gonna

00:50:50   continue paying because now I finally have a way to read the Wall Street Journal in a

00:50:55   much cheaper way alongside a bunch of other video game and music magazines.

00:51:00   So that's fine, yeah.

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00:53:33   I was dead. Told ya. You were right. I was right. If only there were a hashtag for that,

00:53:43   what would that be? Hashtag MykeWasCorrectAgain. MykeWasn'tWrong. MykeWasn'tWrong. Yeah. Yeah,

00:53:51   I think that's it. Well, yeah. Now we can say that all those signs were just leftovers from...

00:54:01   Can I, can I, I feel like I, the one thing that I really want to impress upon both you Federico and everyone else is this idea that Apple's so perfect that their packaging can't be wrong.

00:54:12   No, you don't need to, you don't need to convince me how bad it is.

00:54:15   This is one of those things where it's like everyone's like, oh, there's no way they would get the packaging wrong. Yeah, well they did, didn't they? Multiple times over multiple years.

00:54:23   years, they're not as perfect as you think they are, right? And that's fine. They are

00:54:27   a big company, right? The team who's designing the packaging probably thought it was still

00:54:32   coming because they're like me and you, right? So no one was telling them. They're just making

00:54:37   the packaging, right? So like whatever, right? And it just goes to the printer and the printer

00:54:41   prints it and they made the boxes and the boxes sat in a warehouse for six months where

00:54:45   they were deciding what to do with it all. Like they are a company that is possible to

00:54:51   make mistakes and they can fail to like they have with this product because this is like

00:54:57   I hope you know like you have to wait like 20 years to get stories I really want to know

00:55:01   what happened to this yeah yeah me too how did they go from we're so confident we're

00:55:06   going to put it on stage to two years later canceling it my thought is I mean yeah like

00:55:11   the boxing is weird but my thought is that that shows that this was like still a possibility

00:55:16   until fairly recently when they're putting those AirPod boxes like who knows when those

00:55:21   actually came out and my guess is that future AirPod boxes at some point will not contain

00:55:26   that stuff that will get those out of the system.

00:55:29   But that means at some point in 2018 this was still a possibility.

00:55:35   So what what happened when did that change?

00:55:38   Did that were they making progress and they hit a wall like I agree with you I so badly

00:55:42   want to know what happened here.

00:55:44   I just am itching for that tell-all report at some point.

00:55:47   - I do wanna say something about this.

00:55:51   Of course I'm sad that this product will not exist

00:55:55   and I've been acquiring some wireless chargers

00:55:59   over the past few weeks.

00:56:02   - At what point does Silvia have to tell you

00:56:05   you have too many wireless chargers?

00:56:07   Are you getting there yet?

00:56:09   - Yes.

00:56:10   (laughing)

00:56:13   And we... I've been trying to explain the benefits of the convenience.

00:56:20   So I think of, you know, I've received this first Nomad base station,

00:56:30   but the one without the Apple Watch charger, because that's super backordered.

00:56:35   I hope that I will be able to write about that soon, but we'll see.

00:56:40   So today, for example, I got the Nomad wireless charging pad at the base station that charges up to two Qi devices.

00:56:48   And what's nice about it is that you can put the iPhone on it, you can put the AirPods case on it, but it's also got in the back a USB-A port and a USB-C port.

00:56:58   So that single lightning cable that we still need to keep around for Sylvia's old AirPods and the iPad Pro that she uses,

00:57:05   We can have in the same pad both wireless charging and a lightning cable that comes out the back.

00:57:12   So that's nice.

00:57:13   And now I'm looking at sort of putting a wider

00:57:17   charging pad

00:57:19   basically at the base of the ultrafine display that I have. Right now

00:57:23   I have a single round Qi charger from Native Union, and I'm looking at a more like rectangular pad where I can actually store two devices.

00:57:30   So I've been filling the house with a bunch of these pads.

00:57:33   But the argument that I want to say is I think you can be sad and bummed and disappointed about air power not existing

00:57:43   without losing your mind about Apple.

00:57:46   I don't think... I think people read too much

00:57:51   into air power as a way to

00:57:58   Guess what the state of Apple is. I don't think cancelling their power means Apple is doomed

00:58:04   No, it means that something is wrong

00:58:08   But it doesn't mean that it's so wrong that it's going to affect everything the company does. Yes, and I've seen I

00:58:13   Mean I've seen such extremes on Twitter from people saying that Tim Cook or Johnny Ive should be fired because of this power

00:58:21   People said about anything at this point. It's it's it's like a meme right now. It's mad

00:58:26   But no, but seriously though, like you can see when people say that...

00:58:30   I know, no, but I mean like it's not a good meme, right? Like it's a thing that just keeps coming up.

00:58:34   Yeah, and it's not like the iPhone got cancelled. It's not like the iPad Pros had to be recalled.

00:58:41   Now I understand people making a fuss about the MacBook Pro keyboards.

00:58:46   Now that's something worth getting upset, you know, about that. That's a real failure.

00:58:52   But to say that because AirPower was cancelled, it's a sign of Apple's mismanaged whatever,

00:58:59   like come on.

00:59:00   That feels like too much.

00:59:03   Yes it's a failure, yes it's a disappointment, and one day hopefully we'll get the full story,

00:59:09   but I think people, some people, take things a bit too far in terms of... and it's not

00:59:18   like I'm saying people shouldn't be critical of Apple. That's totally not what I'm saying,

00:59:23   but in this very specific instance, for this very specific product, um...

00:59:29   An ultimately unimportant product. Yes, I mean, you can be sad about it, you

00:59:33   can be disappointed. It is a disappointment, but it's not like, you know, now suddenly

00:59:39   you need to return your AirPods or do something crazy as that. Like, you can just grab any

00:59:45   Qi charger and it's fine.

00:59:47   Yeah, I mean, and it's probably like a, in some ways, like just fundamentally flawed

00:59:52   product.

00:59:53   Like, depending on the Apple Watch strap that you use, you might not have even been able

00:59:56   to use this product.

00:59:57   Yeah, exactly.

00:59:58   Right, because every image shows the Apple Watch face down.

01:00:01   Now, if you don't have a strap where it can be unbuckled or whatever, then you can't use

01:00:06   this product in the first place.

01:00:07   And you might be better off with one of the products where it's got like that kind of

01:00:11   built-in Apple Watch charger that stands up a little bit, right?

01:00:15   So, you know, it's it and it's also just like

01:00:18   Alright, you can put it anywhere on the mat. Like it's not that incorrect. Like it's fine. Right? Like it's fine

01:00:25   And also how often I mean I've been thinking more about this right like how often do you need to charge them all the exact same

01:00:32   time anyway

01:00:33   Now maybe at night maybe yeah

01:00:35   But like do you don't even need to charge your air power your air pods every day?

01:00:39   And when you do need to charge them, it takes like 10 minutes to get what you need

01:00:43   Something else that I've noticed lately, I don't know if you guys picked up on this,

01:00:47   but it feels like we've been doing this podcast for a few years, right?

01:00:51   And we've seen various waves of sort of these Apple memes and like the expressions that the mic hates,

01:01:00   like certain ways of thinking about Apple.

01:01:03   And it feels like for a few years there were people playing analysts on Twitter.

01:01:12   That was a thing that people would do, like make charts and pretend to be experts about numbers.

01:01:17   And something that I've noticed lately is the figure of the supply chain expert.

01:01:23   Like, folks playing at being experts about how operations work in China.

01:01:30   Like, it's like I'm perfectly comfortable saying I write about Apple for a living,

01:01:37   and I don't know a single thing about supply chain, how it works.

01:01:41   I can guess, but otherwise I can just refer to other folks.

01:01:44   But I see a lot of people on, you know, it used to be the the armchair analyst,

01:01:49   now it's the armchair supply chain expert. That feels like a new thing that I'm seeing on Twitter.

01:01:54   Like everybody talks about, you know, components and these very specific things from China.

01:02:04   Like where did you gain this knowledge? Sometimes I wonder. I don't know, it's just a thing that I

01:02:09   that I notice in my timeline. Maybe I follow the wrong people. Maybe that's a sign that

01:02:14   I should curate my following list a bit more. I have not seen people doing this, so yeah,

01:02:20   I think you need to start cutting some of that list down, my friend.

01:02:24   I've seen people talk very specifically about coils and plastic compilations. Do you have

01:02:32   like a catalogue where you know where all these things come from? It's like, well, you

01:02:39   know.

01:02:40   Too many coils, man. Too many coils. That is the problem though, right? Like that's

01:02:46   the kind of the agreed upon understanding is just, it was just too much. And I think

01:02:50   this was what I was saying for a while, like why I like would have guessed the product

01:02:55   was late is they were trying, having it be two different charging technologies in one

01:03:01   pad and they have to have multiple charging coils in the one pad. No wonder the thing

01:03:06   was overheating. I actually imagine this future where it would have a little fan in it. That

01:03:10   was the way they were going to deal with it. They just put a little fan in there. That'd

01:03:14   be nice. Nice soothing fan sound to help you go to sleep at white noise.

01:03:18   It could be a combined white noise and charger device.

01:03:21   Yeah, two in one.

01:03:23   So Stephen Hackett, as the historian.

01:03:25   It's me.

01:03:26   When was the last time this happened? Like straight up cancellation of a product. Do

01:03:30   you know?

01:03:31   was released. There's not much in recent history. You've got Copeland back in like the 90s,

01:03:38   the software project that was Save Apple and then it failed so they had to go buy Next.

01:03:42   That's probably the biggest one, honestly. But it's very rare and it's rare because they

01:03:48   don't usually pre-announce things. And I bet you a dollar that it's a while before they

01:03:54   do that again because this is going to be seared into them for a while, I think.

01:03:59   they've had like really bad production problems like the the good historic

01:04:03   example of that is the white iPhone 4. Yes. Which came out a long time after

01:04:09   right? Yeah and remember the 4s was the first phone that went from summer to a

01:04:13   fall release so the iPhone 4 was out like five quarters is like the new top

01:04:16   iPhone and it was very close to the end. Did it come when the Verizon didn't it

01:04:22   go the white one come out when the... No it was after that. After that it was after

01:04:25   Because that was like the glue was making it go yellow or something.

01:04:28   Yeah, there's all sorts of stories about what happened or maybe the white glass let too

01:04:32   much light in around the camera lens, all sorts of stuff.

01:04:36   You know, AirPods, they struggled to get them out.

01:04:40   The iPad Mini was, the original one was out pretty late in small quantities.

01:04:44   They've had issues.

01:04:46   Canceling something that's been preannounced is a very small class of things.

01:04:50   And Copeland and AirPower I think are probably the biggest two at this point.

01:04:54   Right.

01:04:55   there's no hardware that you can recall in recent memory, not in recent memory. No,

01:05:00   I'm trying to like think back and you know, maybe there was something in the 90s somewhere, but

01:05:03   nothing of importance. Really. I mean, the closest thing and is Steve Jobs like and the power Mac

01:05:12   g5 is going to be at three gigahertz next year. And that just didn't happen. And when they

01:05:16   introduced the Intel transition, he said, Look, I promised you this, we've been unable to do it.

01:05:23   we're moving to Intel. And the Mac Pro, the first Mac Pro, its top configuration, 3 GHz.

01:05:31   So that's kind of an example. They promised it, they couldn't do it.

01:05:34   That's a change to a product, really, though, right?

01:05:37   Such a change in processor.

01:05:39   Like, "Oh, we just killed the iMac now because we can't do that anymore."

01:05:43   It's weird.

01:05:44   Who knows? Maybe the Mac Pro will be the next one, right?

01:05:46   Stop! No, don't say that!

01:05:48   Maybe the Mac Pro's the next one.

01:05:50   Hush, hush, hush.

01:05:52   at least it was never shown. So they got used to it now. So they're just like, oh, we'll just

01:05:56   cancel them all. What does it matter? It's cancel them all. Anytime. Matt pansarino tweets so that

01:06:00   he's been at Apple getting news. I'm going to be really nervous now. Thanks. Thanks for that. Yeah.

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01:08:08   of Connected and Relay FM.

01:08:10   So we're going to have our second entry in the Federico Vittucci class of,

01:08:15   uh, Apple cloud services as we, as we roll up towards WWDC.

01:08:20   So we're going to be focusing on a bunch of stuff that Apple's doing and things

01:08:25   like that, that have got some kind of service bent to them.

01:08:27   And today we're going to talk about iCloud,

01:08:31   specifically our cloud drive, right?

01:08:34   Yeah. I wanted to mainly talk about like our drive,

01:08:38   but also mention a few other things

01:08:41   about the generic iCloud service, if that's okay.

01:08:45   But primarily iCloud Drive, yes.

01:08:46   - Yeah.

01:08:47   - First of all, I think it's important that we separate

01:08:53   all these different flavors of iCloud.

01:08:55   We got iCloud Drive, which is different from CloudKit,

01:08:59   which is the iCloud-based API

01:09:01   that developers can use in their apps.

01:09:04   Like if you use Bear or, you know,

01:09:07   the, I think, agenda, maybe all these other apps based on iCloud, but they don't actually

01:09:12   show you.

01:09:13   From a user perspective, CloudKit is great, right?

01:09:17   So many apps that I use now use this, and it seems to be fine for me.

01:09:22   Yeah, totally.

01:09:24   And there's also the fact that iCloud Drive is built into the Files app on iOS and the

01:09:30   Finder on the Mac, but I want to talk specifically about the improvements to the service.

01:09:37   not necessarily to the Files app because I feel like there's a whole bunch of other features

01:09:41   that I want to see in the Files app that do not belong necessarily to Eiklo Drive, but

01:09:47   maybe could be applied for Dropbox or these other providers.

01:09:50   So I want to talk about...

01:09:51   That's how you want to do things, but I desperately need to voice two major complaints for Files.

01:09:55   I just need to do it because these happened to me today whilst I was preparing for this

01:10:00   show.

01:10:01   Wow.

01:10:02   It won't remember favorites.

01:10:03   Yes, that's true.

01:10:04   favorites just disappear. And then today I tried to re-add the favorites and I would drag it in and

01:10:08   they would just disappear in front of my eyes. So that's great. Well, it's like they're your

01:10:12   favorites all the time. They're just your favorite fleeting moments. It's whenever me and files agree

01:10:19   that something is a favorite and the struggle to download files where you tap on a file and the

01:10:26   spinner just spins. And I am watching a spinner just spin on a 40 kilobyte numbers sheet and it

01:10:33   doesn't download sometimes to the point that I have to restart my entire device

01:10:37   that's fine to be able to download this file and what makes it worse is when

01:10:41   apps like numbers will only work this way right so it's not like I can't do

01:10:47   anything I can't download it I can't save it and then other times where it's

01:10:50   like okay well now if I want to upload a file because of the way that the files

01:10:55   that works I can't get to Dropbox directly anymore so I just have to wait

01:10:59   or just sit and deal with this it's maddening and I need to put those two

01:11:02   things on the record as much as I possibly can and here they are.

01:11:06   I've had those problems before so especially if you try to add favorites from a third-party

01:11:13   provider I think that's when it fails. Anyway I have a whole list of complaints about iCal

01:11:21   Drive but I think I picked four of them. Yes four main areas that I would like to discuss.

01:11:28   This one, this is kind of obvious.

01:11:32   I don't know why Apple hates folders.

01:11:35   They hate folders in shortcuts.

01:11:38   They hate folders in iCloud Drive.

01:11:40   I want to be able to share folders

01:11:42   with an iCloud Drive link.

01:11:44   I've been doing this with Dropbox for ages.

01:11:48   It is the single reason why John and I, for example,

01:11:53   for App Stories and Mac Stories, we have to use Dropbox.

01:11:56   I would rather use iCloud Drive.

01:11:58   I use iCloud Drive for a bunch of personal things,

01:12:00   but I have to keep using Dropbox and pay for it

01:12:05   because I need to be able to share folders

01:12:07   and subfolders and entire directories

01:12:09   of containing other folders.

01:12:12   This is one of the most obvious features

01:12:16   of a file sharing service, which iCloud Drive is

01:12:19   because it does let you share individual files.

01:12:23   I'm just surprised that it still does not

01:12:25   that you share folders?

01:12:26   This is a cornerstone

01:12:32   of collaboration, right?

01:12:33   Folder sharing.

01:12:35   This is something that so many people

01:12:37   do. Like, I'm a big fan of Dropbox,

01:12:40   so it would take a lot for me to want

01:12:42   to move what I do in Dropbox to

01:12:44   iCloud Drive.

01:12:45   But this is like foundation step one.

01:12:47   Like, I will never move

01:12:49   my stuff to iCloud Drive primarily

01:12:52   if they can't do this.

01:12:53   Right? Like, this is like table

01:12:55   stakes for me. Like you have to be able to let me share a folder with someone

01:13:01   rather than me needing to share files with them every time. So I am not, or

01:13:04   nobody is a bottleneck in a collaborative process, right? Where it's

01:13:07   like, if I had to, every time I upload to Dropbox, send a link to Steven, like it's

01:13:13   already hard enough for me sometimes to remember to upload the file, right? Like,

01:13:17   you know, like I do that, like let alone me having to then send a link to him

01:13:21   every time. The fact that I put it in a folder on my desktop and he can have it

01:13:24   on his desktop, like that is one of the best parts of Dropbox and iCloud Drive not having

01:13:29   this functionality means that there are so many people who are like me that wouldn't

01:13:33   be able to move to it.

01:13:34   Yeah, and there's so many nice touches about Dropbox, especially when you access it from

01:13:40   a web browser, like for example the fact that you can request files from other people, like

01:13:47   that's such a handy feature when you just want to make sure that...

01:13:49   That file request thing is excellent.

01:13:50   That is when you have a group of people, like you're doing a podcast with like four other

01:13:53   people and you want to make sure that everybody contributes to the same folder, you can just

01:13:57   issue a file request and that's it.

01:13:59   And it's that kind of added flexibility that I would like to see in Echoladrive starting

01:14:06   with folders.

01:14:07   A second feature that I think should be enabled at a service level and then of course also

01:14:13   reflected in the Files app is the proper support for versions.

01:14:17   So versions of files.

01:14:21   This has been possible for years in the Mac OS finder, I think since maybe it's in all

01:14:27   the effort, Steven, the UI to browse versions of the same document.

01:14:32   Yeah, somewhere, or a line I think, but yeah, in there somewhere.

01:14:37   Can I ask, is this different to Time Machine?

01:14:41   Or is that the same thing?

01:14:43   It is based on local Time Machine snapshots, I believe, but it's when they screwed up the

01:14:49   save as and duplicate thing. To this day I don't know how it works in some apps. It was

01:14:56   all tied in there, but yeah man, it has saved my bacon on Dropbox more than once over the

01:15:02   years, definitely.

01:15:03   EOIN; Oh, so many times. Again, I have things in shared folders, which sometimes I need,

01:15:08   but somebody else in the folder has deleted. I know this isn't exactly the same, because

01:15:13   you're probably going to talk about restoring deleted files in a minute, but like

01:15:16   Yeah, that's my next point, but we can we can talk about them together.

01:15:19   Sometimes when I'm editing with Cortex, me and Gray share a folder

01:15:24   and we actually keep the logic project in there.

01:15:26   Oh boy. It was once where I it actually works better than you would expect.

01:15:30   Once I screwed it up so bad, I was able to use

01:15:34   a different version of the logic project in Dropbox to fix it.

01:15:38   It was like the only way I could think to do it.

01:15:40   And there may have been different ways to do it.

01:15:42   But that was just the thing that jumped to my mind.

01:15:44   and I was able to save the project that way.

01:15:47   I've had a bunch of stuff like that myself too,

01:15:49   where the version has been great,

01:15:50   as well as the restoring of deleted files.

01:15:53   - Yeah, yeah.

01:15:54   So restoring versions and restoring deleted files.

01:15:58   The second one, the deleted files

01:16:00   is a very strange limitation in that

01:16:02   it is actually possible already,

01:16:05   but you need to go to icout.com with a browser to do it.

01:16:09   - Nothing.

01:16:10   - Nothing should exist there only.

01:16:12   for the feature because it's well hidden.

01:16:14   And also, of course, you have this odd situation

01:16:19   where the company that says that the Appet Pro is a computer

01:16:26   also has a website that if you go from an iPad

01:16:31   says that you need to use a computer, like a Mac, to use it.

01:16:36   - I mean, what is a computer, really?

01:16:39   - Really, that adds such a meta message.

01:16:44   I love that message.

01:16:46   Really wants a computer.

01:16:48   So yeah, iCab.com, you need to request desktop mode

01:16:52   if you're doing this from an iPad,

01:16:54   or you need to use iCab with a user agent

01:16:57   for Safari for Mac or Chrome for Mac.

01:17:00   - Who doesn't know that?

01:17:01   That's just so easy to, that's ridiculous, Apple.

01:17:04   - Any iPad power user knows what iCab can do for them.

01:17:08   we've all been in those situations.

01:17:10   Exactly.

01:17:10   If you find something that you cannot do in Safari,

01:17:13   just download iCab.

01:17:14   And spend--

01:17:14   I can always do it.

01:17:15   Spend a couple of hours searching for the setting,

01:17:18   and you will find it.

01:17:19   [LAUGHTER]

01:17:20   That's easy.

01:17:22   Who doesn't want to have kiosk mode on their iPad browser?

01:17:25   [LAUGHTER]

01:17:26   That sounds like an App Store editorial gold rush just

01:17:30   waiting to happen.

01:17:32   Great app.

01:17:32   We love these apps with kiosk mode.

01:17:36   Trying to log into iCloud.com?

01:17:38   Check out this.

01:17:39   ICAB is amazing.

01:17:40   It is.

01:17:41   Yes, it is.

01:17:42   Overkill in every possible way.

01:17:43   Yes.

01:17:44   I needed to download a few gigabytes of FLAC files from my 7 digital account.

01:17:51   Sure.

01:17:52   And of course...

01:17:53   It doesn't need that.

01:17:54   So much to do this for this afternoon.

01:17:56   They were just a bunch of zip files, okay?

01:17:59   That I needed to download all at once.

01:18:01   And you as the make user may say, "Well, easy.

01:18:03   Just click on the buttons and add them to the download manager."

01:18:06   No, because Safari on iOS does not have a download manager. What is this advanced feature

01:18:12   you're referring to? A download manager. You know, imagine this wild concept of a pop-up

01:18:18   that contains your downloads. Oh my God. Do you know what the iCab Apple Watch app can

01:18:26   do? It can show you articles. It is a remote control for the iOS version.

01:18:34   You can switch tabs, open bookmarks, scroll and navigate using buttons on the Apple Watch.

01:18:42   Anyway, I used iCab to download the 10 zip archives and it was totally... and then you

01:18:47   find those zip archives in the files provider.

01:18:50   Like I mean, Apple just hired the iCab person and put him in charge of the Safari team.

01:18:56   Maybe not in charge, but put him on the...

01:18:57   Zach in the chat room is saying that you can get an iOS 6 theme for iCab in the app.

01:19:03   like in the theme settings. I love everything about this application, including its inscrutable

01:19:08   nature, it's brilliant.

01:19:10   And kiosk mode, which is really handy for all those who run kiosks. So anyway, you shouldn't

01:19:17   be forced to go to icoud.com to restore a deleted file when that website does not work

01:19:23   in Safari for iPad. Also, fun fact, I do believe that iCloud actually supports a versioning

01:19:30   API already, because apps like IE Writer, which is my text editor of choice, or MindNode,

01:19:38   actually do use iCloud versions. So there's an API, but it's not well documented, and

01:19:45   most developers do not know about it, and it's not available in the Files app. So make

01:19:49   it happen, Apple. Finally, so Myke also mentioned restore the files. More controls over shared

01:19:58   links. There's some options that you can configure right now. You can...

01:20:05   I forget that you can even get Share Links for files in

01:20:05   I forget that you can even get Share Links for files in

01:20:08   Yeah, it's a very kind of strange menu. Like, first you need to choose the destination

01:20:14   where you will be sharing the link and then you can see the actual link.

01:20:18   That's kind of backwards.

01:20:20   That's like Apple Notes, right?

01:20:21   Yeah, but it's like if you were to send the letter to somebody, first you would write the address

01:20:27   and then you write the letter. Like, the process is not... this is not the way that it's supposed

01:20:34   to work. Always start with the envelope. Always start with the envelope. Or you can only write

01:20:39   the address down when you're standing in front of the postbox. This is not the way that it's...

01:20:44   anyway, at least it's possible. What I would like to see is at least the ability to set

01:20:52   an expiration time for a link or to add like a specific password to make sure that not

01:20:58   only people with the link but also people with the link and who also know the password

01:21:03   can access the content behind the link.

01:21:05   Two-factor link sharing is what they call it I think.

01:21:08   Yeah, so I think Dropbox has these features.

01:21:12   Box, you know, because they're really enterprise and you know serious users today they have

01:21:16   these features.

01:21:17   So these four options, so sharing folders, versions,

01:21:23   restore deleted files, and more controls over shared links,

01:21:27   I would like to see this stuff in iCloud Drive as the service.

01:21:30   And of course, there should be a UI in the files app

01:21:34   or in other places where iCloud Drive is

01:21:37   integrated on iOS and Mac OS.

01:21:39   Is there anything else you guys want to add before I mention

01:21:42   a few other iCloud things?

01:21:44   I don't think so, not for iCloud Drive.

01:21:46   I think that you were right.

01:21:47   are of course lots of more esoteric things but like as you said these are the basic features

01:21:52   that it needs to be a truly collaborative and like robust file storage solution rather

01:22:01   than just a convenient one which it is I think for most people right now.

01:22:05   Yeah I think the other thing I would add is that on Mac OS iCloud Drive just still feels

01:22:11   really bolted on like it doesn't feel integrated in a way that you would expect it to like

01:22:17   yes, some apps can just read and write to their containers. And those are all folders

01:22:20   now, which is nice. And yes, you can sync your desktop and documents. You shouldn't.

01:22:25   But why can't I like select things on my Mac to back up to iCloud storage? Right? Why can't

01:22:31   why can't it work with time machine to back up certain things? It's just, it's not as

01:22:36   fully fleshed out as it is on iOS. And I think it would be more useful to more people if

01:22:42   it could just like, do more like I have all this data saying

01:22:46   is you want to get rid of finder and put files in him that is not what I'm saying

01:22:53   oh sorry not like that finder actually compared to files finder is a dream yes

01:23:01   yeah but you know something like I have all this data why can't I easily back up

01:23:06   to it that was a thing in like the dot Mac days you could there was actually an

01:23:10   app called backup and it was hey you know what I want to put these files in

01:23:13   my iDisk and so they're safe and sound. You can do all that manually. You're talking like a grandpa.

01:23:18   Oh I have backup and I want to put this in my iDisk. It was a great feature in the day. I have

01:23:27   all the side cloud storage I pay for. Like I have 1.6 terabytes free in my iCloud account. Why can't I

01:23:32   easily do more with it? Apple should build more tools on the Mac to connect to it and use it.

01:23:40   Yeah, backup was awesome man. There'll be a link in the show notes for young people.

01:23:44   Can you remind me the icon? Was it an umbrella?

01:23:47   It was, it was an orange umbrella.

01:23:48   Came from my memory kids. See? Who's a historian now?

01:23:53   I wrote about it in 2015 and I'm going to put this in the show notes right now.

01:23:57   I'm sure that's why Myke remembers that because he's such an avid reader of all blogs.

01:24:02   I wrote in my blog, don't you remember everything I write?

01:24:05   Sure.

01:24:05   I remember all of them.

01:24:07   Sure you do.

01:24:07   All of them.

01:24:08   Sure you do.

01:24:09   So the next few things that I would like to mention are, and I realize that now, extremely a case of

01:24:17   first-world problems, and very specifically teachy problems in one instance. So, home screen sync.

01:24:24   Now, before you make fun of me, Apple has this feature for Apple TV. It is a thing that they

01:24:33   they considered, because Apple TVs are used in schools or in certain shops or other offices,

01:24:40   you have multiple Apple TVs, you want to make sure that you sync the apps that you have

01:24:45   on those Apple TVs.

01:24:46   And so there's a feature in tvOS called Home Screen Sync that allows you to keep the same

01:24:52   set of apps and the same order for those apps.

01:24:56   It's kind of like syncing shortcuts, but the order actually works.

01:25:00   No, no, no.

01:25:01   I mean it's fixed now.

01:25:03   Is it fixed?

01:25:05   It is fixed.

01:25:07   So I can turn it on now?

01:25:09   Yes you can.

01:25:11   Please do it now in the air.

01:25:13   All my devices are all over the place.

01:25:15   I can hear your suffering.

01:25:17   I would like as someone who is part of the multi-pad lifestyle supergroup,

01:25:23   which consists of me and Myke I guess.

01:25:29   Right now it's an ever-changing and evolving group.

01:25:32   People come in and leave.

01:25:34   But right now, definitely me and you are in there.

01:25:36   Yeah.

01:25:36   So I would like to be able to sync apps between my iPads.

01:25:41   Even though I mentioned in the past that I like to keep separate sets of apps,

01:25:45   there may be times, maybe this summer, you know, when I need to use multiple iPads to test iOS 13.

01:25:54   And I can already imagine that in that case, I would want to have the same apps in the same order.

01:26:00   And I can already imagine myself going crazy that I need to install the same app and put it in the

01:26:06   same position twice. So home screen sync would be nice with iCloud. And of course, as somebody who

01:26:14   wears multiple Apple watches during the day, I cannot tell you how annoying it is to say yes,

01:26:24   install this watch app and yes, put this app in my dock on the Apple watch. Like reset

01:26:30   the same thing over and over because I have two Apple watches. So just like it works on

01:26:36   the Apple TV, make it work for people who have multiple iPads, for people who have multiple

01:26:41   Apple watches and even for those freaks who have multiple Macs. Uh, like, yeah, they're

01:26:46   - They're the real outliers.

01:26:48   - Yes.

01:26:49   Speaking of which, I would like to have

01:26:52   some kind of preference sync.

01:26:57   So being able to sync settings between iOS devices.

01:27:01   And because I feel like, again, I have an iPhone

01:27:06   and I have two iPads, and it feels like I'm constantly

01:27:10   changing the same setting three times,

01:27:12   because I actually am.

01:27:14   Like, I wanna be able to choose, like, for example,

01:27:16   my Safari settings, sync them to the same settings

01:27:19   to the iPhone and the iPad,

01:27:21   because I always wanna see the favorites bar,

01:27:23   and I always wanna open tabs in the background.

01:27:26   Instead, I'm changing the same setting

01:27:29   on all of my devices individually.

01:27:31   Not to mention, adding a new account for Apple Mail.

01:27:37   - That's the worst.

01:27:39   - And especially if you have five or six Gmail accounts,

01:27:42   and you need to do that every single time on every device.

01:27:45   Like, I'm not a security expert.

01:27:48   I don't like to throw around words

01:27:51   like those supply chain people do,

01:27:53   but you know, there's encryption these days.

01:27:56   Let's make it happen.

01:27:58   Make it so you have my email account, my credentials,

01:28:02   and they are also encrypted somehow.

01:28:04   I don't know if it's possible, but it's definitely, or at least-

01:28:06   - Does an airmail do that?

01:28:08   - Well, yes, but you're also trusting airmail

01:28:11   and their servers.

01:28:12   They store a token-

01:28:13   - Spock do it too, I think.

01:28:15   But like, if there's a way that Apple can make this even easier,

01:28:18   I mean, I would be fine to just re-enter my password.

01:28:22   At least store my email address and just simplify

01:28:26   how I can re-add the password for each account.

01:28:29   But do not let me start the process from scratch every single time.

01:28:33   And also, if you cannot make it work for mail,

01:28:35   at least make it work for Safari

01:28:37   and all these other preferences that I want to keep the same

01:28:40   across multiple Apple devices.

01:28:43   And finally, again, possibly for the same security reasons,

01:28:47   but I would like to actually have access

01:28:49   to my health kit data on my iPad,

01:28:52   because it feels like I've been collecting this data

01:28:56   for years now, and I would like to have some kind of charts

01:29:01   or graphs on that bigger screen,

01:29:04   instead of squinting at my iPhone's display

01:29:08   to try and see trends and actual stats and numbers.

01:29:12   I realize why Apple, you know, there may be a security argument, but also your health

01:29:17   kit data is actually stored in iCloud now.

01:29:19   It's encrypted and stored in iCloud, so why can it not be on the iPad?

01:29:24   I would be fine with health on the iPad just being a visualizer for things that you collected

01:29:29   on the iPhone.

01:29:30   Do you know if it, like, if you had two iPhones?

01:29:33   Well, I'm not at that point.

01:29:37   Would it work, do you think?

01:29:39   should ask Dave Morin, I guess. Not me. That poor man. I feel really bad for him.

01:29:47   Well, I guess I could try this maybe this summer? I don't know. I'm gonna be doing

01:29:55   a bunch of testing, you know, between 12 and 13. So I do suppose that if you store

01:30:02   your Hellkit data in iCloud that it will actually merge and sync across

01:30:07   multiple iPhones. That is just my suspicion. Please do not try this at home without having

01:30:13   heard from Apple if it actually works. Do not take my word for it. I don't want to reset your

01:30:17   health database, you know, with data from an empty iPhone. I do believe it will work.

01:30:23   Yeah. So that's it for my...

01:30:28   I have two iPhones, one for day and one for the night. When the day phone runs out,

01:30:32   the night phone takes over. I never have to worry.

01:30:34   That is exactly your reasoning for the Apple Watch.

01:30:37   Like 100%.

01:30:38   It was not.

01:30:39   I could say, quote from Federico Fattucci,

01:30:42   "I have two Apple Watches, one for the day and one for the night.

01:30:45   When the day watch runs out, the night watch takes over.

01:30:48   I never have to worry."

01:30:49   Well, at least I didn't start a social network, all right?

01:30:52   Not yet.

01:30:53   [laughter]

01:30:55   Yeah, all right. Let's have more storage, please, for iCloud.

01:30:58   More iCloud storage for free for everybody.

01:31:02   Uh, and just make that better.

01:31:04   Yes.

01:31:05   More than five gigabytes.

01:31:06   Come on.

01:31:07   Yeah, that's insulting.

01:31:10   So if you want to find links to stuff we spoke about, including the handful of

01:31:15   tickets we have left for our live show in San Jose, uh, check out the links for

01:31:21   this episode there in your podcast, apple choice or on the web at relay.fm/connected/237.

01:31:29   While you're there, you can get in touch via email.

01:31:33   But if that's too old fashioned for you,

01:31:34   you can give us feedback on Twitter.

01:31:37   Myke is there as I-M-Y-K-E. Myke is

01:31:40   the host of a bunch of great shows here on Relay FM

01:31:43   as well.

01:31:44   You can find Federico online at Vitici, V-I-T-I-C-C-I.

01:31:48   And he's the editor in chief of MacStories.net.

01:31:52   You can find me on Twitter as ismh,

01:31:54   and I write 512pixels.net.

01:31:56   And also, all of us are on a bunch of shows at Relay.

01:31:59   Who are we kidding?

01:31:59   have multiple projects. Um, so you can check all those out as well.

01:32:04   I'd like to thank our sponsors this week who made the show possible. Hello,

01:32:08   hover and express VPN until our next episode. Gentlemen say goodbye.

01:32:13   I leave that to cheerio. Adios.