Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► In the edit, I'm going to add a pause under this.

00:00:02 ◼   ► Or if you all want to applaud while I do this, that's fine.

00:00:04 ◼   ► Just do it off mic.

00:00:05 ◼   ► - Nope, don't want to do that.

00:00:06 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:13 ◼   ► (audience applauding)

00:00:14 ◼   ► - Thank you for coming.

00:00:15 ◼   ► We're very excited to have all of you in Chicago today.

00:00:19 ◼   ► We have literally two things to announce.

00:00:22 ◼   ► So sit back and enjoy the show.

00:00:24 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, Chicago man, it's the weather.

00:00:28 ◼   ► The weather, it's rainy. It's rainy today. That's too bad. And the pizza, yeah, yeah.

00:00:35 ◼   ► You know, everybody, everybody in Chicago, in Chicago in March, it's a tradition to eat

00:00:41 ◼   ► pizza every single day of the week. Everybody from Chicago knows that. So we've been eating

00:00:48 ◼   ► pizza. We are here in Chicago, right? In the center of the city, a very famous place, and

00:00:55 ◼   ► We are eating pizza, but that's what we're doing.

00:00:57 ◼   ► I'm recording a podcast.

00:00:59 ◼   ► - We're just so inspired by everything.

00:01:01 ◼   ► We're excited about everything,

00:01:03 ◼   ► as long as you have $299 to spend per student.

00:01:07 ◼   ► - This is gonna be fun.

00:01:09 ◼   ► Can we do some follow up before we get to that?

00:01:10 ◼   ► - We should, but first we should thank our sponsors

00:01:13 ◼   ► for this episode, Squarespace, Smile, and Audible,

00:01:16 ◼   ► and we should introduce ourselves.

00:01:17 ◼   ► I'm not Tim Cook.

00:01:17 ◼   ► I know I sort of sound like Tim Cook, but I'm not.

00:01:20 ◼   ► My name is Stephen Hackett,

00:01:21 ◼   ► and I'm joined by my European co-host.

00:01:25 ◼   ► I have on one side of me, Michael Hurley.

00:01:28 ◼   ► Myke, how are you?

00:01:29 ◼   ► - I'm very good.

00:01:30 ◼   ► It's a good side.

00:01:31 ◼   ► - And on the other side, I have Federico Vittucci.

00:01:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, stop touching me, man.

00:01:36 ◼   ► We're in Chicago and it's kinda awkward.

00:01:38 ◼   ► You don't need to put your hand on my shoulder

00:01:40 ◼   ► when you do the intro.

00:01:42 ◼   ► It's kinda weird.

00:01:43 ◼   ► Yeah, hi.

00:01:44 ◼   ► How are you?

00:01:46 ◼   ► Why would I ask you how are you if we're together?

00:01:48 ◼   ► There's no point. - I'm good, I'm good.

00:01:50 ◼   ► You already know.

00:01:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm fine.

00:01:53 ◼   ► I just introduced a new iPad, I feel great.

00:01:56 ◼   ► So, WWDC lottery has happened.

00:01:58 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:01:59 ◼   ► - Federico, did you get in?

00:02:00 ◼   ► - I did, and that completes the trilogy,

00:02:02 ◼   ► which I decided now it was going to be a trilogy.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Since the beginning, I retroactively decided

00:02:09 ◼   ► that my tickets are a trilogy.

00:02:11 ◼   ► So, the trilogy is complete, and now,

00:02:14 ◼   ► I suppose there must be some kind of Star Wars joke here,

00:02:18 ◼   ► But having only seen one Star Wars movie,

00:02:24 ◼   ► so I don't think I can make that joke.

00:02:28 ◼   ► But yes, I got in.

00:02:29 ◼   ► I'm very excited.

00:02:30 ◼   ► I want to go--

00:02:31 ◼   ► I'm happy to be going to San Jose again.

00:02:36 ◼   ► I had a great time last year.

00:02:37 ◼   ► And I want to meet all the developers.

00:02:39 ◼   ► I want to try all the new APIs.

00:02:40 ◼   ► I want to talk to people.

00:02:42 ◼   ► So I'm really excited.

00:02:44 ◼   ► Myke and I did not get in, but we did not enter.

00:02:46 ◼   ► So it's not a huge loss, I guess.

00:02:48 ◼   ► If you purchased Space Gray Magic Keyboard

00:02:53 ◼   ► or Magic Trackpad when the iMac Pro came out,

00:02:55 ◼   ► remember these were on eBay for like hundreds

00:02:57 ◼   ► and hundreds and hundreds of dollars?

00:02:59 ◼   ► If you had just waited, you can now get them

00:03:02 ◼   ► for $149 a piece directly from Apple.

00:03:07 ◼   ► That is $20 more than the silver boring models.

00:03:12 ◼   ► You pay 20 bucks for that Space Gray.

00:03:14 ◼   ► But they're available.

00:03:15 ◼   ► Does this interest you, Myke?

00:03:16 ◼   ► Are you interested in getting a space gray Magic Trackpad or Magic Mouse or keyboard?

00:03:23 ◼   ► I thought about it until I saw the prices and like I don't I don't particularly care

00:03:29 ◼   ► that it's $149 but I do when I'm just thinking about buying it for the fun of it right like

00:03:37 ◼   ► if I'm if I need any Magic Trackpad then I may pay the extra $20 to get the space gray

00:03:42 ◼   ► one because it looks cool, but I don't need to buy one so I'm not gonna buy one.

00:03:48 ◼   ► Right?

00:03:49 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:03:50 ◼   ► Like, I just don't need it.

00:03:52 ◼   ► I don't need to pay $149 for a space grey Magic Trackpad, but it does look good.

00:03:57 ◼   ► It does look good.

00:03:58 ◼   ► I got mine out of the box because I use the tenkeyless version without the number pad.

00:04:04 ◼   ► So the number pad puts the mouse too far out of the side for me where it's uncomfortable.

00:04:08 ◼   ► And I got it out yesterday and I'm like, it looks really good, I just can't use it.

00:04:11 ◼   ► So it's in the box.

00:04:12 ◼   ► So I'm using my regular Magic Trackpad and my regular Magic Keyboard and a mouse.

00:04:18 ◼   ► So things are good here.

00:04:19 ◼   ► But they're available.

00:04:20 ◼   ► I know some people were excited about this.

00:04:22 ◼   ► The mouse is 99 bucks as opposed to 79 for the silver.

00:04:25 ◼   ► So again, you just have that $20 tax to get the darker color.

00:04:30 ◼   ► People had a lot of thoughts in my Twitter about the price bump for the darker.

00:04:40 ◼   ► Myke informed me yesterday, as I was busy trying, what did you text me Myke? Like congrats

00:04:46 ◼   ► on the MKBHD retweet? Yeah MKBHD retweeted your tweet about the

00:04:55 ◼   ► keyboard being available so then you were subjected to like 3 million people. So you

00:05:02 ◼   ► know I'm sure it was a bit of a dumpster fire in the old mentions yesterday.

00:05:06 ◼   ► I tried to go back and look at one point, it was like, you know, it's just too much.

00:05:11 ◼   ► And there's so many, so many bad people, honestly, like saying really ugly offensive things.

00:05:19 ◼   ► So yeah, that's unfortunate.

00:05:21 ◼   ► Because, you know, there will be people that kind of scale that kind of like, just follow

00:05:28 ◼   ► him to complain about literally everything that he'll say, right?

00:05:31 ◼   ► Like that's just kind of what they're waiting to do.

00:05:34 ◼   ► They're just waiting.

00:05:35 ◼   ► And then the problem is people don't care who they're responding to, they just press

00:05:39 ◼   ► the reply button and just send it.

00:05:42 ◼   ► So yeah, look at that, 549 retweets, 5.6 thousand favorites.

00:05:49 ◼   ► That's incredible.

00:05:50 ◼   ► So you just got bombarded.

00:05:54 ◼   ► But there's not just Space Gray, there's also color, there's also color poured all over

00:05:58 ◼   ► our devices.

00:05:59 ◼   ► There are pink and blue.

00:06:01 ◼   ► What is that thing called?

00:06:02 ◼   ► The leather case for the iPad Pro?

00:06:06 ◼   ► What is that called?

00:06:07 ◼   ► The leather sleeve for the iPad Pro.

00:06:10 ◼   ► The leather sleeve.

00:06:11 ◼   ► It's like a nice blue and pink color and there are new leather and silicone cases as well

00:06:16 ◼   ► as the Apple Watch bands that we spoke about.

00:06:18 ◼   ► Was it last week, I think?

00:06:20 ◼   ► Which I bought two of them, by the way.

00:06:23 ◼   ► Which the cases or the bands?

00:06:24 ◼   ► The bands.

00:06:25 ◼   ► They're coming tomorrow.

00:06:26 ◼   ► I just got a notification.

00:06:27 ◼   ► I got the the Nike, the black and white one. What's the name? Black and platinum band or something?

00:06:34 ◼   ► The spilt loop one?

00:06:36 ◼   ► No, I got the Nike Sport, the black and one, and the Nike Sport Loop, the black and red.

00:06:43 ◼   ► Red and crimson, I think it's called?

00:06:45 ◼   ► Which is my first sport loop, which I'm really, really curious to try.

00:06:52 ◼   ► I like the sport loops. I haven't got any of these ones yet because I want to...

00:06:57 ◼   ► I tend these days to like to just go to a store and look at the colors and just see how they look

00:07:02 ◼   ► because so many times like they never look exactly right you know like sometimes better or sometimes

00:07:09 ◼   ► worse on the store than they do kind of when you're looking at them but I'll expect I'll buy

00:07:13 ◼   ► one like I really really like the sport loops so you know I wouldn't mind another one and the color

00:07:19 ◼   ► options the red one looks kind of cool I want to see what that looks like the red and black one

00:07:22 ◼   ► that looks kind of cool I like it but yeah there's there's also they've matched some of those colors

00:07:27 ◼   ► and got some new colors.

00:07:29 ◼   ► There's an orange leather case, which I like the look of,

00:07:32 ◼   ► but I think I like the silicone ones too much.

00:07:35 ◼   ► - I didn't buy anything.

00:07:36 ◼   ► Sorry. - No, I didn't expect

00:07:37 ◼   ► that you would have, honestly.

00:07:39 ◼   ► - Bring it down, bring it down.

00:07:41 ◼   ► All right, before we move on, we do have a reminder

00:07:43 ◼   ► that we will be at WWBC doing a live show

00:07:48 ◼   ► the evening of Wednesday, June 6th.

00:07:51 ◼   ► - 6th. - And there are tickets

00:07:53 ◼   ► still available, they are going quickly.

00:07:56 ◼   ► So if you're listening to this, I would not wait.

00:07:58 ◼   ► Just five bucks, it goes to a good cause

00:08:01 ◼   ► to support AltConf that does really great work

00:08:04 ◼   ► in our community, so go check that out.

00:08:06 ◼   ► And if we're not enough for you,

00:08:08 ◼   ► there's also ATP on Monday night.

00:08:10 ◼   ► We're kind of doing a podcast festival together,

00:08:12 ◼   ► so you can see those guys on Monday,

00:08:14 ◼   ► and they come back and see us on Wednesday.

00:08:15 ◼   ► So that link is in the show notes,

00:08:17 ◼   ► and like I said, I would not wait.

00:08:19 ◼   ► They're going quick.

00:08:20 ◼   ► - All right, today's episode is brought to you by Squarespace.

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00:09:40 ◼   ► So the March event, the March education event,

00:09:44 ◼   ► it has come and gone.

00:09:46 ◼   ► Both me and Steven have recorded other shows

00:09:50 ◼   ► going into I think more detailed analysis.

00:09:52 ◼   ► So you can check out query episode 27 and upgrade episode 186 because both Serenity

00:09:59 ◼   ► and Jason were at the event.

00:10:02 ◼   ► So that's good to kind of get the opinions of people that were there and have got that

00:10:06 ◼   ► kind of information.

00:10:07 ◼   ► But we wanted to kind of take some time to look at some larger themes and larger questions

00:10:13 ◼   ► that have arisen because of the event.

00:10:17 ◼   ► Stephen joked at the beginning about having two things to announce because really, the

00:10:21 ◼   ► was a couple of announcements and then because we have everybody's eyes on this, let's talk

00:10:27 ◼   ► about some of the other things in education that we do. Some stuff that has been around

00:10:31 ◼   ► for literally years at this point, like the multi person, like what is it called where

00:10:37 ◼   ► multiple people can sign into an iPad?

00:10:39 ◼   ► Shared iPad?

00:10:40 ◼   ► Yeah, which has been around since 9.3. So like, you know, some of this stuff has been

00:10:45 ◼   ► around for some time but it was used as part to tell a larger story about about education

00:10:51 ◼   ► and there are a few different things I think we all kind of have our pet questions and our pet

00:10:56 ◼   ► thoughts about this. Why don't we start talking about the the iPad, the star of the show,

00:11:02 ◼   ► the thing that they announced the the new bottom of the line 9.7 inch iPad which has

00:11:08 ◼   ► upgrades in a bunch of different areas from the original iPad including an Apple Pencil support.

00:11:15 ◼   ► I think you know when I was initially seeing it I was like oh this is like a pro but it's not like a pro

00:11:19 ◼   ► It is it is way closer to the original iPad than the pro

00:11:23 ◼   ► Steven we spent a bunch of time last week talking about the mythical e-pad that you dreamed up the education

00:11:31 ◼   ► iPad is that this

00:11:33 ◼   ► No, I don't I don't think it is I think the idea behind behind that mythical like that whole thought experiment was what if Apple

00:11:42 ◼   ► changed direction from the consumer product and made something just for education and

00:11:46 ◼   ► As Federica is gonna talk about in a second. This is a device that still very much

00:11:50 ◼   ► Exists in two worlds consumer and education so it you know, it doesn't

00:11:56 ◼   ► Change anything with the form factor to make it more rugged

00:11:59 ◼   ► It doesn't include a pencil let alone a way to store the pencil does it come with some sort of integrated keyboard?

00:12:04 ◼   ► Options, it's no cheaper than it was before

00:12:07 ◼   ► So I think this is Apple continuing the course of we're gonna have one device that

00:12:13 ◼   ► we think satisfies the needs of schools and the needs of

00:12:17 ◼   ► Sort of like the broad consumer market who you know people who aren't interested in the iPad Pro

00:12:22 ◼   ► So I don't think that's a change in direction at all really. I don't think it's a it should be considered an iPad Pro

00:12:29 ◼   ► but at the same time I also think it

00:12:32 ◼   ► It allows Apple to move the iPad Pro line even further

00:12:37 ◼   ► because you could argue that the Apple Pencil is possibly the most interesting

00:12:42 ◼   ► feature from a consumer standpoint of the former iPad Pro line and being

00:12:48 ◼   ► exclusive to the iPad Pro prevented many users from enjoying the benefits of the

00:12:53 ◼   ► Apple Pencil and I think of all the features that this iPad does not

00:12:58 ◼   ► offer such as promotion for the higher display refresh rate and True Tone and

00:13:04 ◼   ► more RAM and the A10X variation of the A10 chip or even just niceties like the laminated display.

00:13:12 ◼   ► Exactly. Right, like which is just a nice thing to have. Of all these features, I think that the

00:13:19 ◼   ► Apple Pencil is the most interesting one for the general public, for folks who want to use an iPad

00:13:25 ◼   ► but don't want to work or be pro users with an iPad. And so while it is not an iPad Pro

00:13:35 ◼   ► for education or basically an iPad Pro, I think it's a good decision to expand what

00:13:44 ◼   ► the Pencil is, what the Pencil can do by bringing it further down the line and unlocking these

00:13:49 ◼   ► new education use cases and just letting more people, not even people, users in schools,

00:13:55 ◼   ► just the general public that goes to apple.com and wants to buy an iPad for $300 and now

00:14:01 ◼   ► you can get one that also supports the Apple Pencil. I think that's a good decision.

00:14:05 ◼   ► I'm in agreement with you. I think that a lot of people take notes with pen and paper in their jobs,

00:14:15 ◼   ► right, in their meetings and that kind of stuff. And I think that whether it would be a better

00:14:19 ◼   ► experience for people or not, I think it's something that people want, right? Like they

00:14:23 ◼   ► see an iPad with an Apple pencil and can imagine themselves just taking their notes on a device

00:14:29 ◼   ► and not having to carry around pen and paper anymore. Right. Like I can see that as a thing

00:14:33 ◼   ► that people would want, even if it would be good for them or not. You know what I mean? Right. Like

00:14:38 ◼   ► a lot of people I think would try that and would prefer to go back to pen and paper because

00:14:43 ◼   ► it's not perfect. Right. Like there are you have to get a good app for it. Or I think a lot of

00:14:47 ◼   ► people imagine that like, oh, all I need to do is just handwrite it and then I'll have text.

00:14:52 ◼   ► You know, like I think that there is a lot and you can get part of the way of a lot of those things,

00:14:57 ◼   ► but it's not like as good as it could be in the future. But I think that it is one of those things

00:15:01 ◼   ► where people see it and they're like, oh, I would like a digital notepad instead of instead of having

00:15:06 ◼   ► to carry around this notepad and losing my pen all the time. So I think that there is a I agree

00:15:11 ◼   ► with you Federico. I think it is more it is more interesting, I believe, to the general public than

00:15:16 ◼   ► of smart keyboard, even though honestly a smart keyboard is actually more useful, but

00:15:21 ◼   ► if you're trying to use the iPad more seriously, but you won't know that until you try it.

00:15:27 ◼   ► But as a marketing tool to sell iPads, the Apple Pencil is the perfect fit for that to

00:15:34 ◼   ► serve that purpose.

00:15:36 ◼   ► For someone like me, I don't use my pencil very much at all, but I bought one and even

00:15:42 ◼   ► Even watching this event, I watched the video this morning, I felt inspired.

00:15:47 ◼   ► Like, yeah, I should draw.

00:15:48 ◼   ► I should take notes on it.

00:15:50 ◼   ► You want to use it because it's fun.

00:15:52 ◼   ► And I think they did a really good job of tapping into that in the event.

00:15:56 ◼   ► And I don't know how many of these things are going to sell to schools, but I think

00:15:59 ◼   ► that schools that do decide to spend the $89 for a pencil, the education price, I think

00:16:06 ◼   ► it will make a difference.

00:16:07 ◼   ► I think that kids will be able to do things with it that are exciting and new.

00:16:12 ◼   ► So yeah, I think if you're going to bring one quote-unquote "pro" feature down to the

00:16:18 ◼   ► consumer iPad, this was the one to do.

00:16:21 ◼   ► So let's look at the next big question.

00:16:24 ◼   ► Was this iPad and everything shown on stage a proper response to Google?

00:16:28 ◼   ► I think it is widely considered that Apple have decided to refocus on education again

00:16:35 ◼   ► publicly and internally because of how much of the market share Google is grabbing with

00:16:41 ◼   ► Chromebooks and Chrome OS. Was this a proper response to that?

00:16:45 ◼   ► I feel like the Apple's argument boils down to maybe three factors. The App Store ecosystem,

00:16:57 ◼   ► Apple design and privacy. I feel like those were the three themes that they tried to push

00:17:03 ◼   ► forward as the value that you get by going iPad instead of, I think they said, other

00:17:09 ◼   ► web-based solutions or something like that. But they really insisted on the idea of you're

00:17:15 ◼   ► using real apps, you're using native apps, you're using full iPad experiences that take

00:17:22 ◼   ► advantage of the right now display, multi-touch and the pencil and all of that. And you can

00:17:26 ◼   ► go to the App Store and now we have this API that developers can use to integrate classroom

00:17:32 ◼   ► and schoolwork, whatever it's called, with ClassKit into third-party apps, which of course

00:17:38 ◼   ► is something that can be done because of the App Store and the way that iOS works.

00:17:44 ◼   ► My question would be, if this is what Apple thinks, that their advantage is the iPad design,

00:17:50 ◼   ► so hardware and software, and the App Store ecosystem, and the privacy approach that they

00:17:55 ◼   ► take, is this argument valuable enough for schools that are tight in terms of budget

00:18:01 ◼   ► or they just prefer a web-based solution because maybe it's easier to manage.

00:18:05 ◼   ► I want to understand whether these three advantages that Apple claims they have

00:18:12 ◼   ► are actual advantages from the perspective of institutions and educators.

00:18:17 ◼   ► I mean, there are advantages if you have the money, right?

00:18:21 ◼   ► Like, all of those things are really nice, but you have to have the money.

00:18:25 ◼   ► And I think that, of course, there are school and education institutions

00:18:30 ◼   ► that can afford this stuff, we know it exists. We have, you know, first hand knowledge or

00:18:34 ◼   ► second hand knowledge when you look at someone like Fraser Spears, right? Like he works for

00:18:38 ◼   ► a school that can afford to do this stuff, that can afford to have an iPad push student.

00:18:43 ◼   ► But there are many, many, many schools, I was talking about some upgrade, including

00:18:46 ◼   ► the one that I went to, that could not and would not be able to afford to do this. Now,

00:18:52 ◼   ► I went to a very big school, there was nearly 2000 pupils at my school. There is no way,

00:18:57 ◼   ► There's just absolutely no way that that school would have, one, been able to afford it, or

00:19:02 ◼   ► two, prioritized this over other things.

00:19:05 ◼   ► And I know that there are places that can do it, and Apple can serve those if they want

00:19:08 ◼   ► to, but they're not changing the entire world with this current suite of products, and I

00:19:12 ◼   ► think we all need to accept that.

00:19:15 ◼   ► Of course, I finished high school 11 years ago at this point, but I strongly doubt that

00:19:21 ◼   ► my high school would be able to ever afford this kind of solution.

00:19:26 ◼   ► And I mean, I went to a public school with, I guess, about a thousand students.

00:19:32 ◼   ► And sometimes, like, the budget was always tight.

00:19:37 ◼   ► And sometimes the desks or the chairs were broken and needed to be replaced.

00:19:43 ◼   ► And there were other issues besides, you know, getting the fancy computer or now getting

00:19:48 ◼   ► the fancy tablet with the stylus.

00:19:50 ◼   ► I think our, you know, the current situation in Italy, and of course it's different in

00:19:54 ◼   ► in other countries.

00:19:55 ◼   ► It's different in the UK and the United States.

00:19:57 ◼   ► But our budget for getting elementary schools

00:20:02 ◼   ► and high schools into premium priced pieces of technology,

00:20:08 ◼   ► I don't think it's there.

00:20:11 ◼   ► It's just not there.

00:20:12 ◼   ► I cannot imagine not even a one-to-one program, because that

00:20:16 ◼   ► is just unthinkable to ask a school to spend 350

00:20:21 ◼   ► euros per student to get an iPad and a pencil and maybe a keyboard so that

00:20:26 ◼   ► would be around 400 euros but not even 10 iPads per classroom. I think that

00:20:33 ◼   ► would be that would be difficult for my high school to to achieve and so I it

00:20:38 ◼   ► feels to me I even looking at the event itself so that the the setup so this

00:20:43 ◼   ► Lane Tech school which in theory is public but John Voorhees is from

00:20:49 ◼   ► Chicago, he knows the school very well. He told me it's a "public school", you need to

00:20:55 ◼   ► apply to this school. And he believes that parents of course make big donations to the

00:21:00 ◼   ► school and all of that. So it looks like a private school. It looks like a very high-end,

00:21:07 ◼   ► semi-public institution that has the funds to buy a lot of Mac computers and have fancy,

00:21:13 ◼   ► beautiful looking classrooms and all of that. My school, it needs the walls to be repainted

00:21:21 ◼   ► to give you some context. And I think it's the same situation is true in other parts

00:21:25 ◼   ► of Italy, in other parts of Europe, and in other parts of the entire world. So it's great

00:21:32 ◼   ► that some schools, some high end schools can afford the iPad, especially the private ones,

00:21:37 ◼   ► especially the public ones that use this mixed system of you still need to apply and a lot

00:21:43 ◼   ► of parents make donations. I think it's great. But I struggle to say, well, of course, Apple

00:21:49 ◼   ► is now changing the world of education. They are changing parts of education, part of it

00:21:55 ◼   ► somewhere, but it's not a, I think the blanket statement of saying Apple is changing education

00:22:00 ◼   ► is not true. What do you think on that, Steven?

00:22:05 ◼   ► - I totally agree.

00:22:06 ◼   ► I had access to technology in high school

00:22:10 ◼   ► solely because I was on the student newspaper.

00:22:13 ◼   ► Everyone else I went to school with didn't.

00:22:17 ◼   ► There was a Mac or two in every classroom.

00:22:19 ◼   ► The teacher had one, they did all their stuff on,

00:22:21 ◼   ► and there was maybe one for students to use.

00:22:24 ◼   ► My high school didn't really have a computer lab,

00:22:30 ◼   ► even really, it was always tied in with something else,

00:22:32 ◼   ► with typing or again, like the newspaper or the yearbook.

00:22:37 ◼   ► And granted, that was a long time ago,

00:22:39 ◼   ► but I think that a lot of schools are still there.

00:22:42 ◼   ► After, for a while, I worked as a consultant

00:22:45 ◼   ► in K through 12 on behalf of Apple.

00:22:47 ◼   ► We'd go into schools and do these deployments.

00:22:50 ◼   ► We would deploy a MacBook one to one,

00:22:54 ◼   ► or we would put a bunch of iMacs in libraries

00:22:56 ◼   ► and classrooms and stuff.

00:22:58 ◼   ► And that's been 10 years now,

00:22:59 ◼   ► but even then, the schools that we were going into

00:23:04 ◼   ► were more fluent, and it was pretty obvious.

00:23:07 ◼   ► And that gap still exists today,

00:23:11 ◼   ► that there are a lot of students that don't have access

00:23:13 ◼   ► to iPads in the classroom, but also don't have access

00:23:16 ◼   ► to Chromebooks or anything even less expensive,

00:23:18 ◼   ► 'cause the bar is still too high, unfortunately,

00:23:21 ◼   ► for too many school districts and too many schools

00:23:24 ◼   ► and too many classrooms.

00:23:25 ◼   ► Apple didn't do anything to address that with this.

00:23:28 ◼   ► I was really hoping that they'd announce it all

00:23:30 ◼   ► and they said, "Hey, it's $329 for consumers

00:23:33 ◼   ► "and for schools if you buy 10 or something or more,

00:23:38 ◼   ► "it's $249 or less than where they were able to put it."

00:23:43 ◼   ► And I guess on the flip side of that,

00:23:45 ◼   ► the other side of the argument as well,

00:23:47 ◼   ► it's the same cost as it was,

00:23:48 ◼   ► but it's a much better product.

00:23:50 ◼   ► Well, it is a much better product

00:23:51 ◼   ► if you spend the other $89 for a pencil

00:23:53 ◼   ► and you get a keyboard.

00:23:55 ◼   ► It's still an expensive product.

00:23:57 ◼   ► I think what Apple did here, I think the big picture

00:24:00 ◼   ► of Apple versus Chromebooks, I think what Apple's doing

00:24:04 ◼   ► is saying the price is what it is,

00:24:08 ◼   ► and if you can't meet that, then we're sorry,

00:24:11 ◼   ► but you can't meet it.

00:24:13 ◼   ► But if you can, if the iPad is a viable option

00:24:15 ◼   ► for you financially, they want the iPad to set apart

00:24:20 ◼   ► from Chromebooks based on what a student can do with it.

00:24:24 ◼   ► And they mentioned Chromebooks, they mentioned

00:24:25 ◼   ► web-based apps, which is a shot at Chrome OS.

00:24:29 ◼   ► And I think they built the case,

00:24:31 ◼   ► I think they did a pretty successful job of it

00:24:33 ◼   ► with things like the Everyone Can Create curriculum.

00:24:37 ◼   ► If you want your students to be working in multimedia

00:24:40 ◼   ► with video and music and you want them to be

00:24:43 ◼   ► annotating things and dealing with custom textbooks,

00:24:47 ◼   ► the iPad is the only way to go.

00:24:49 ◼   ► That they are, instead of getting in the mud on pricing,

00:24:53 ◼   ► they're saying we are gonna be more expensive,

00:24:55 ◼   ► But for that, you get a device with really great battery life

00:24:59 ◼   ► that students are really comfortable using touch devices.

00:25:03 ◼   ► And they can use it to create all of this stuff.

00:25:05 ◼   ► And you can't do that with a Chromebook.

00:25:07 ◼   ► And you can't even really do it with a Mac.

00:25:09 ◼   ► I mean, there's stuff that--

00:25:10 ◼   ► like, Clip's got a ton of stage time.

00:25:12 ◼   ► And teachers actually seem really excited about Clip's.

00:25:14 ◼   ► It's really surprised me that it seems to have taken off,

00:25:18 ◼   ► at least in some classrooms.

00:25:19 ◼   ► But I can totally see why, because it's a fun, easy way

00:25:21 ◼   ► to do video.

00:25:22 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like, I never would have expected it.

00:25:24 ◼   ► but as soon as I see it, I'm like, yeah, okay,

00:25:26 ◼   ► I can see how that makes sense.

00:25:27 ◼   ► - Totally.

00:25:28 ◼   ► And so yeah, you can edit in GarageBand

00:25:31 ◼   ► and iMovie and stuff on a MacBook,

00:25:32 ◼   ► but an iPad makes it more fun and easier to deal with,

00:25:37 ◼   ► and you don't have to deal with file stuff,

00:25:38 ◼   ► right, 'cause it's all just in iCloud.

00:25:40 ◼   ► And so I think that's where they're going with this.

00:25:42 ◼   ► I think Apple wants to change the argument

00:25:44 ◼   ► from pricing first, which is hard,

00:25:46 ◼   ► because that is the truth of this market,

00:25:49 ◼   ► is that pricing is a huge factor.

00:25:51 ◼   ► But I think what they're saying is,

00:25:53 ◼   ► If you can't afford us, then this

00:25:55 ◼   ► is what you get for that additional cost.

00:25:57 ◼   ► And I don't know if that argument's

00:25:59 ◼   ► going to work or not, but I do think

00:26:01 ◼   ► that they closed the loop on that argument

00:26:03 ◼   ► really well in this keynote.

00:26:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:05 ◼   ► I think you're right.

00:26:06 ◼   ► So also Logitech got a lot of time again.

00:26:10 ◼   ► So if you cast your mind back to the original iPad Pro

00:26:14 ◼   ► introduction, it was announced that when that product came

00:26:17 ◼   ► about that Logitech had made a keyboard case, right?

00:26:20 ◼   ► That they were on stage.

00:26:21 ◼   ► Obviously Logitech had a relationship with Apple that they got to see this stuff first

00:26:27 ◼   ► and it's happened again because there are two products.

00:26:30 ◼   ► There is a new version of the rugged combo case which is funnily enough like it's like

00:26:36 ◼   ► basically Logitech built their own case of a smart connector on it for a keyboard which

00:26:41 ◼   ► is kind of hilarious that they did that considering this device doesn't have one.

00:26:45 ◼   ► But the real thing that is more interesting is Logitech Crayon, which is a cheaper and

00:26:52 ◼   ► differing in function version of the Apple Pencil.

00:26:57 ◼   ► Federico, what do you think of the Logitech Crayon and also kind of a wider level, the

00:27:05 ◼   ► way that Logitech and Apple seem to be working together on this stuff, basically to create

00:27:09 ◼   ► the stuff that Apple doesn't want to make it seems?

00:27:11 ◼   ► Yeah, that's exactly my point.

00:27:13 ◼   ► I think it's fascinating that Apple is sitting in control to Logitech to make these accessories

00:27:19 ◼   ► that arguably Apple used to make, you know, keyboard cases, different types of accessories

00:27:27 ◼   ► for the same device, but now it appears to be Logitech's job to come in and say, "Okay,

00:27:33 ◼   ► what it is that you guys are not doing, we'll take care of it." And I think it's a -- I'm

00:27:38 ◼   ► not sure if I like it because on one hand I'm all for third-party companies being able

00:27:43 ◼   ► to manufacture accessories to give me more choice, but on the other, I'm still waiting

00:27:49 ◼   ► for an Apple backlit keyboard for the iPad Pro that is not made by Logitech. So there's

00:27:55 ◼   ► pros and cons there. And the Crayon, I think it's super interesting to me. So essentially,

00:28:00 ◼   ► this uses the same technology inside the Pencil. So the same framework that works with the

00:28:07 ◼   ► digitizer in the app it's display to detect touches,

00:28:11 ◼   ► to make guesses for the predictive touch API,

00:28:17 ◼   ► to basically guess where the line is going to be drawn.

00:28:20 ◼   ► It uses the same system, the same framework,

00:28:22 ◼   ► and of course it works with all the apps that currently

00:28:26 ◼   ► support the Apple Pencil.

00:28:27 ◼   ► But they needed to make some concessions

00:28:30 ◼   ► to make this happen.

00:28:31 ◼   ► So it does not support pressure sensitivity.

00:28:35 ◼   ► It only supports tilt.

00:28:37 ◼   ► So you can draw at an angle and the thickness of the line will change.

00:28:43 ◼   ► And from a design perspective, and also it does not use Bluetooth, but it uses some kind

00:28:49 ◼   ► of single frequency pairing that does not force you to do the manual pairing with Bluetooth,

00:28:58 ◼   ► but it's also not like the pencil that you can plug into the lightning port and it's

00:29:03 ◼   ► connected.

00:29:04 ◼   ► press a button on the crayon and a green LED flashes and then you wait a couple of seconds

00:29:11 ◼   ► and it's paired. Although we don't have any details as to...

00:29:16 ◼   ► It doesn't make sense how this works right now. Except for if you consider that considering

00:29:22 ◼   ► it only works with this iPad, that there is something in this iPad that it's connecting

00:29:27 ◼   ► to.

00:29:28 ◼   ► Yeah, but I saw someone, I think it was Fraser on Twitter, say "How is this going to work

00:29:32 ◼   ► in terms of proximity. So if I have 20 iPads in a classroom and all the crayons look the

00:29:38 ◼   ► same, how do I know which one is paired with which iPad if I cannot plug it into the iPad

00:29:46 ◼   ► itself?

00:29:47 ◼   ► Yeah, but I guess it doesn't matter if it's super quick to repair it.

00:29:50 ◼   ► I guess.

00:29:51 ◼   ► So like if you touch it down and it doesn't work, you just press the button and it works.

00:29:55 ◼   ► Or Logitech makes lots of accessories. You know when you go to the bank and the pen is

00:30:00 ◼   ► like on a little ball chain that's like attached to the counter. They just do that with this.

00:30:04 ◼   ► It's just like a little chain. You just stick it into the lightning port and then you chain

00:30:09 ◼   ► it up on the other end. Perfect. This is a very interesting product because it's doing

00:30:13 ◼   ► a bunch of things very differently. Like it's made of aluminium and it's not round, which

00:30:18 ◼   ► I think is really great. It has some rubber sections to it. What do you think about the

00:30:22 ◼   ► design itself? I think it looks exactly as I would assume an Apple pencil for kids to

00:30:27 ◼   ► look. Right? Like it is simple, it is blocky, it is brightly coloured in places, it looks

00:30:34 ◼   ► nice and comfortable to hold. You know, I think it's fine. If this was the Apple Pencil

00:30:40 ◼   ► I would have been disappointed, but as a third party product I think it's fantastic. Does

00:30:46 ◼   ► that make sense? If this was the product that Apple gave me, I would be a bit like "Really?

00:30:50 ◼   ► Is this the best you could do?" Because it does look, it looks childlike, it looks like

00:30:55 ◼   ► a device for kids in a way. So I think it's perfectly fitting the bill. I think it has

00:31:01 ◼   ► some interesting features. I think that the very quick pairing is kind of cool. A lot

00:31:05 ◼   ► of people are super excited about the fact that it doesn't have an Apple, it doesn't

00:31:08 ◼   ► have a lightning port built into it because apparently that's horrific design. Let me

00:31:12 ◼   ► just, let me just rephrase stuff that is something I've said a million times. If you use the

00:31:16 ◼   ► Apple Pencil, the very best thing the Apple Pencil has is the fact that the lightning

00:31:21 ◼   ► port is built into it. So no matter where you are, you can always plug it into the Apple

00:31:25 ◼   ► iPad you're using to get power. I know it looks awkward, I know it looks weird and

00:31:30 ◼   ► "ah, Johnny Ive!" but that was genius design. If you would, because you build it like

00:31:35 ◼   ► this, when this thing runs out of battery somebody has to go plug it in somewhere.

00:31:38 ◼   ► You have to go find the charger and it is way easier to be able to just plug it

00:31:44 ◼   ► into the device that has infinitely more power on it and just charge it for 30

00:31:48 ◼   ► seconds and then just use it again. Right, it works way better that way. I know it

00:31:52 ◼   ► looks awkward, I know it looks weird, and if you don't use the Apple Pencil on a frequent

00:31:55 ◼   ► basis, then this isn't a thing that you come across. But if you do use the Apple Pencil

00:32:00 ◼   ► on a frequent basis, then you're happy for the fact that it can be charged immediately.

00:32:05 ◼   ► But this product doesn't have that, which I assume is a cost-cutting saving thing, and

00:32:09 ◼   ► I've seen a few people mention about this, right, like, in schools, devices are plugged

00:32:13 ◼   ► in at the end of the day, and this has an eight-hour battery life, so it's not necessarily

00:32:17 ◼   ► going to be a problem. But I think this is really interesting. I think this is clearly

00:32:23 ◼   ► Logitech get given the contract to build the products that Apple want but don't, but don't,

00:32:30 ◼   ► can't make for many reasons. But the main one being that the one that they would make

00:32:35 ◼   ► is twice the price and they know they can't do that.

00:32:39 ◼   ► Johnny doesn't want to design it. Yeah, like they don't want to design it. They don't want

00:32:43 ◼   ► manufacture it and they might as well have somebody else do it. And I understand that,

00:32:47 ◼   ► right? Because all these Logitech products are never going to sell in the volumes that

00:32:50 ◼   ► Apple sell, and they don't look particularly nice, and/or they have functionality that's

00:32:56 ◼   ► kind of janky and weird, but is needed in some instances, so why not give it to a third

00:33:01 ◼   ► party to build, rather than building it yourself and charging too much for it?

00:33:05 ◼   ► It's interesting though that these arguments can be made only for small niches, like pro

00:33:12 ◼   ► users, well Apple is gonna let Logitech make smart keyboard alternatives. Or education,

00:33:18 ◼   ► well Apple is gonna let Logitech make a crayon. But the same argument cannot be applied to

00:33:25 ◼   ► products with a wider appeal. For example, Apple is not letting Logitech make W1 chip

00:33:31 ◼   ► powered headphones. Because AirPods are just so damn popular and Apple wants to control

00:33:36 ◼   ► all of that pie, essentially. So when it comes to these small categories, sure Logitech can

00:33:43 ◼   ► come on board and make a third-party version, but only Logitech for some reason, which almost,

00:33:49 ◼   ► I mean the smart connector could be easily renamed the Logitech connector at this point.

00:33:56 ◼   ► The Logi connector. The Logi connector.

00:33:59 ◼   ► Because they are called Logi as well. They are.

00:34:02 ◼   ► Outside of the US, the company is actually called Logi.

00:34:05 ◼   ► My camera is called the Logi Circle. So yeah, Logi.

00:34:09 ◼   ► I got the Logi Create. I didn't get the Logitech Create.

00:34:13 ◼   ► Is that a Europe thing? I didn't know it was a Europe thing.

00:34:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's everywhere outside of the US. I think they're still called Logitech

00:34:21 ◼   ► in the US, and they used to be called Logitech here, but they rebranded a couple of years

00:34:25 ◼   ► ago to Logi. And they're called Logi everywhere else. So I mean, I think that this is a good

00:34:30 ◼   ► I hope that one day I'm able to try an Apple as a logi logi crayon somewhere

00:34:37 ◼   ► They are obviously of course only available to schools. It is a good product

00:34:41 ◼   ► But you know, I want my Apple pencil like that's the product that I want but I like that this one exists and I cannot

00:34:47 ◼   ► Under I cannot think why a school would pay $89 for an Apple pencil

00:34:52 ◼   ► It almost feels like there was no point in even giving that discount

00:34:56 ◼   ► Because you may as well just get the $49 Logitech one which basically has everything, right?

00:35:01 ◼   ► It seems a bit strange to me to even to even have done the $10 discount because who's gonna buy it

00:35:06 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know even if even if you apply the discount to ten students you're saving a hundred dollars

00:35:14 ◼   ► Which is you know, it's it's not much. It's not it's nothing, right?

00:35:18 ◼   ► It's like it's not it's not it's not enough when there is a $50 product available every nine students

00:35:24 ◼   ► you get one free Apple Pencil.

00:35:27 ◼   ► It's a big offer.

00:35:29 ◼   ► - Steven, what about the Mac?

00:35:31 ◼   ► There was no Mac stuff, really.

00:35:32 ◼   ► There was no Mac stuff of note.

00:35:34 ◼   ► Is this a concerning thing for you?

00:35:36 ◼   ► Did you expect it?

00:35:37 ◼   ► - I remember that computer.

00:35:38 ◼   ► I really liked it.

00:35:39 ◼   ► - It was nice.

00:35:42 ◼   ► - I think what I said on query is that

00:35:45 ◼   ► I've always been a little confused

00:35:47 ◼   ► by Apple's two-prong approach in education,

00:35:50 ◼   ► that they have the MacBooks

00:35:52 ◼   ► and they have the iPads, and look,

00:35:56 ◼   ► the MacBook Air is never gonna be the cost of an iPad.

00:36:01 ◼   ► It's just not the company that Apple is.

00:36:04 ◼   ► Maybe they should be, but they're not,

00:36:05 ◼   ► and it's not gonna change.

00:36:07 ◼   ► And with that in mind, I think this event helped clarify

00:36:11 ◼   ► for me what Apple's education strategy may be,

00:36:15 ◼   ► that it is iPad first, that they really believe

00:36:18 ◼   ► the iPad is the future of computing,

00:36:21 ◼   ► that a lot of young people are sort of like touch first now.

00:36:26 ◼   ► We sort of struggle to think about typing an essay

00:36:30 ◼   ► on a piece of glass, but there are probably kids doing that

00:36:33 ◼   ► at some point.

00:36:34 ◼   ► If they're not now, they will be in the next couple years,

00:36:36 ◼   ► I think.

00:36:36 ◼   ► - Federico used to write all of his articles that way.

00:36:39 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, and he was a kid then, so that's perfect.

00:36:41 ◼   ► - People do it, is my point, people do it.

00:36:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, but it breaks my brain to think about it.

00:36:46 ◼   ► So the iPad meets kind of the future looking needs,

00:36:50 ◼   ► They get all the multimedia stuff.

00:36:52 ◼   ► It's cheaper than a MacBook.

00:36:54 ◼   ► So I think Apple's strategy here is

00:36:55 ◼   ► the iPad is our answer for education,

00:36:58 ◼   ► but we have the Mac as well if you have those needs.

00:37:01 ◼   ► And so what a lot of school districts do,

00:37:04 ◼   ► actually I was talking to a reader

00:37:07 ◼   ► over email last night about this.

00:37:08 ◼   ► He's in IT in a really large school district

00:37:10 ◼   ► that does elementary, middle, and high school.

00:37:12 ◼   ► And so kids don't necessarily stay on an iPad forever.

00:37:18 ◼   ► So like what they do is they have iPads

00:37:20 ◼   ► in elementary and middle, but in high school

00:37:22 ◼   ► they use a mix of Chromebooks and MacBooks

00:37:25 ◼   ► because their needs shift a little bit

00:37:27 ◼   ► and they feel like a laptop form factor

00:37:30 ◼   ► makes more sense for those older students.

00:37:33 ◼   ► So this isn't like, the iPad doesn't have to win

00:37:36 ◼   ► Apple's education strategy and the Mac doesn't have to lose.

00:37:39 ◼   ► Like it's a mix, but clearly it is iPad first now.

00:37:42 ◼   ► And they have the Mac if you need it

00:37:44 ◼   ► and you're still gonna see iMacs in classrooms

00:37:46 ◼   ► and in labs and in libraries and that sort of stuff.

00:37:50 ◼   ► But I think they're really going into education

00:37:52 ◼   ► with the iPad being the focus.

00:37:55 ◼   ► And I think that's totally fine.

00:37:57 ◼   ► I would like to see Apple have an entry-level Mac notebook

00:38:02 ◼   ► that is more relevant than the MacBook Air.

00:38:06 ◼   ► By the way, you can still buy the 11.6-inch MacBook Air

00:38:08 ◼   ► if you're a school.

00:38:09 ◼   ► But it's still expensive for what it is,

00:38:12 ◼   ► and so maybe there's room there for them

00:38:14 ◼   ► to make some changes.

00:38:15 ◼   ► but I'm not particularly worried that this event

00:38:18 ◼   ► says something about the future of the Mac

00:38:20 ◼   ► because I think at least in education,

00:38:22 ◼   ► Apple's gonna be iPad first from here on out.

00:38:24 ◼   ► - Which I think is a sensible approach,

00:38:27 ◼   ► provided that Apple have a long-term vision

00:38:31 ◼   ► that supports this, right?

00:38:34 ◼   ► Like, there needs to be continued development

00:38:37 ◼   ► of this platform into different form factors

00:38:40 ◼   ► if they believe it's the platform of the future.

00:38:43 ◼   ► So therefore it's the platform

00:38:44 ◼   ► they pushed the children. But yeah I think that the event was like okay it's kind of what I expected

00:38:51 ◼   ► I think that some of the messaging is weird but it's as weird as again as I would have expected

00:38:58 ◼   ► it to be and there was some cool little bits and bobs that came out of it like some of the

00:39:02 ◼   ► Logitech stuff but yeah I guess that's kind of it really like it was it was what it was there's a

00:39:08 ◼   ► bunch of stuff we didn't see there's a bunch of stuff that I expected to see and we didn't see

00:39:11 ◼   ► And I guess all of that stuff like air power will come later, I suppose, I guess at some point maybe.

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00:40:58 ◼   ► There was a rumor which came during the event yesterday from KGI Securities from Ming-Chi

00:41:05 ◼   ► Kuo about a potential future redesign of the Apple Watch, the Series 4, which I guess we'd

00:41:11 ◼   ► expect this year.

00:41:13 ◼   ► In a nutshell, new design with a 15% larger screen, longer battery life, and improved

00:41:19 ◼   ► health sensors.

00:41:20 ◼   ► Federico, what do you think about that?

00:41:22 ◼   ► The larger screen, I'm really intrigued.

00:41:26 ◼   ► It suggests that Apple is getting rid of the bezels around the screen of the device, so

00:41:33 ◼   ► I would love to see an edge-to-edge Apple Watch form factor.

00:41:39 ◼   ► I wonder if that would impact the overall look of the device.

00:41:44 ◼   ► Because the design of the Apple Watch is fine, it is looking a bit dated, a bit old at this

00:41:50 ◼   ► point maybe.

00:41:51 ◼   ► So, I'm all for a design refresh at this point.

00:41:55 ◼   ► The health stuff, super unclear, super non-descriptive at all.

00:42:01 ◼   ► Improved health sensors.

00:42:02 ◼   ► It could mean new sensors, it could mean just better reporting, like I think it's clear

00:42:07 ◼   ► they don't know.

00:42:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:42:09 ◼   ► They have no idea.

00:42:10 ◼   ► Let's work with what we have.

00:42:12 ◼   ► The current heart rate sensor.

00:42:18 ◼   ► So I started working out every day a couple of months ago and soon after I started this

00:42:26 ◼   ► routine I noticed that the sensor on the Apple Watch, it was not capturing my heart rate

00:42:33 ◼   ► quite accurately or quickly enough.

00:42:36 ◼   ► So the Apple Watch sensor, it polls for data when you're doing a workout every 3 to 5 seconds

00:42:44 ◼   ► usually.

00:42:46 ◼   ► My problem was that because I mostly do indoor cycling,

00:42:51 ◼   ► and for some reason I realized that I move my arms around

00:42:55 ◼   ► when I do this.

00:42:56 ◼   ► I don't stand perfectly still.

00:42:58 ◼   ► Maybe I'm using the Apple Watch to control podcast playback,

00:43:03 ◼   ► for example, or I just need to stretch my arms,

00:43:06 ◼   ► but I move my arms around, and the Apple Watch

00:43:09 ◼   ► didn't like my wrist movements.

00:43:11 ◼   ► So it was giving me much, much lower heart rate

00:43:16 ◼   ► estimates, then it was actually true.

00:43:19 ◼   ► So I bought an external chest strap

00:43:24 ◼   ► for heart rate measurements.

00:43:26 ◼   ► And it works amazingly well, because it

00:43:29 ◼   ► uses Bluetooth low energy.

00:43:31 ◼   ► And it can poll for data every second.

00:43:34 ◼   ► So that at the end of a workout, when

00:43:36 ◼   ► you go into the activity app and you

00:43:38 ◼   ► look at the graph for your heart rate, you see a smooth line.

00:43:42 ◼   ► You don't see a bunch of spotty data points.

00:43:45 ◼   ► you see an actual curve, an actual line,

00:43:48 ◼   ► because the heart rate is being captured every single second

00:43:51 ◼   ► of a workout.

00:43:52 ◼   ► And ideally, an Apple Watch with improved health sensors

00:43:55 ◼   ► and maybe improved battery life will

00:43:58 ◼   ► be able to capture not every four seconds,

00:44:01 ◼   ► but every second also.

00:44:02 ◼   ► So it removes the need for-- well,

00:44:04 ◼   ► part of the need for an external chest sensor.

00:44:07 ◼   ► There's still the problem of depending

00:44:10 ◼   ► on how you move your wrist or how you move your arms,

00:44:13 ◼   ► the sensor will lose contact with your skin

00:44:15 ◼   ► all will be unable to measure your heart rate correctly,

00:44:19 ◼   ► but being able to poll for heart rate data

00:44:24 ◼   ► more frequently than three to four seconds,

00:44:27 ◼   ► that would be a huge improvement over the Series 3.

00:44:30 ◼   ► So I hope that when KGI says improve the health sensors,

00:44:35 ◼   ► it could be this, or it could be the rumor from last year,

00:44:40 ◼   ► that was the skin, some name I don't remember,

00:44:45 ◼   ► that like, remember that?

00:44:47 ◼   ► There's a very specific term.

00:44:50 ◼   ► - I couldn't tell you what it's called, but yes.

00:44:52 ◼   ► There have been rumors of other types of sensors

00:44:54 ◼   ► that they could use.

00:44:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I don't know what this could mean.

00:44:59 ◼   ► There's been also speculation

00:45:00 ◼   ► that Apple is investigating glucose monitoring

00:45:05 ◼   ► using sensors on the watch.

00:45:09 ◼   ► And I think we also see,

00:45:11 ◼   ► Do you guys remember Vic Gundotra? He used to work at Google and now he has this health company,

00:45:18 ◼   ► the the Cardia band. I think it's the company's called Alive Cora, something like that maybe.

00:45:26 ◼   ► Anyway they have this band which has been FDA certified in the United States and this band can

00:45:32 ◼   ► It can do, what's it called, an electrocardiogram.

00:45:37 ◼   ► It can do an ECG using the Apple Watch. And it can also measure the level of potassium

00:45:45 ◼   ► in your body somehow. I think there's a patent that's going around. I saw it on the news a few

00:45:51 ◼   ► weeks ago. So there's definitely potential for more on-skin measurement of interesting data

00:46:00 ◼   ► points. But of course the big question here is does Apple want to get into the

00:46:04 ◼   ► field of FDA certification? Which is, last year John and I on App Stories, we talked

00:46:12 ◼   ► to Dermot Daly, he's worked on a bunch of FDA certified apps for the iPhone.

00:46:19 ◼   ► And the entire process of getting certified for medical equipment

00:46:23 ◼   ► essentially, it's just, it sounds like a nightmare. You gotta work with regulators

00:46:28 ◼   ► months in advance and you got to show them what you're working on. And this has been

00:46:32 ◼   ► the big counter argument for Apple getting into more health stuff of, well, if they do

00:46:38 ◼   ► this, they got to work with the FDA and they got to get that certification months in advance,

00:46:43 ◼   ► which means everybody's going to know what Apple is working on. So I don't know. Maybe

00:46:47 ◼   ► there's a way for Apple to do this in secret, although I don't think it's possible under

00:46:52 ◼   ► US law. So we'll see. I mean, I would settle for a better heart rate sensor, but KGI, I

00:47:00 ◼   ► don't know what they're thinking. So it's interesting.

00:47:05 ◼   ► It makes sense to me, like a lot of this stuff, like a redesign with more screen. Like, yeah,

00:47:12 ◼   ► I believe that we are at that point. Like, I think that we are with the fourth edition,

00:47:18 ◼   ► I believe it is, I get confused in numbering now, of the watch.

00:47:22 ◼   ► I think that we are at the time for it to change visually.

00:47:27 ◼   ► I think that we have passed that point now and I would really really like to see that.

00:47:32 ◼   ► But whether it works out being exactly this, I don't know.

00:47:38 ◼   ► There's a lot of stuff going on here, right?

00:47:40 ◼   ► Like a bigger battery and more screen and better sensors.

00:47:44 ◼   ► It all makes sense logically and I hope that we see it but I mean I don't think it does

00:47:48 ◼   ► this stage, I would be willing to bet on it.

00:47:51 ◼   ► Like a larger screen could change things for developers, though, right?

00:47:55 ◼   ► It could be a problem if the I mean, the situation with Apple Watch apps is already

00:48:01 ◼   ► quite I don't want to say comical, but it's problematic in that, you know, there's

00:48:08 ◼   ► been issues with WatchKit.

00:48:09 ◼   ► We all we all know that we've been talking about this and changing the display form

00:48:14 ◼   ► factor. It would mean extra work for developers. And it would mean going back to those folks

00:48:21 ◼   ► and saying, "Well, now you're going to be letterboxed on the Apple Watch also, unless

00:48:27 ◼   ► you update your apps for the new display resolution." Or maybe there is a way for Apple to say,

00:48:33 ◼   ► "No, no, you're not going to get the letterboxed problem because we figured out a way to make

00:48:41 ◼   ► your assets look bigger or something. I strongly doubt that that would be possible. There will

00:48:47 ◼   ► be consequences for developers that do not adapt to the new screen size. So it would

00:48:54 ◼   ► be interesting to see Apple going back to developers who have been complaining about

00:48:57 ◼   ► WatchKit and WatchOS or even going back to developers who pulled their watch apps completely,

00:49:03 ◼   ► such as I think eBay and Slack most recently. Going back to those companies and saying,

00:49:08 ◼   ► well do you want to try again maybe? We have watchOS 5 and a new Apple Watch display size,

00:49:15 ◼   ► you want to bring your app back and also update it for the new watch please? I don't know.

00:49:21 ◼   ► I don't know what the relationship is like.

00:49:24 ◼   ► I would think anything that developers have to do to adopt a new watch would be slow.

00:49:31 ◼   ► You know, like, I would like a redesign.

00:49:34 ◼   ► Like it is, it's what, since 2015,

00:49:37 ◼   ► like I'd like something, primarily I'd like

00:49:40 ◼   ► something slimmer, but you know,

00:49:42 ◼   ► something a little bit neater and nicer looking

00:49:44 ◼   ► would be an upside, but I don't know if Apple would be,

00:49:49 ◼   ► I don't know if Apple has enough goodwill

00:49:51 ◼   ► to developers on watchOS.

00:49:53 ◼   ► You know, with the phone, they change sizes all the time

00:49:55 ◼   ► and people are just used to it because it's the biggest

00:49:57 ◼   ► product that Apple makes for developers to build on.

00:50:01 ◼   ► but the watch is not that.

00:50:03 ◼   ► And so, yeah, I don't know.

00:50:05 ◼   ► I don't know if they would, how that would be greeted.

00:50:06 ◼   ► - I would just love to be able to buy a cellular watch

00:50:10 ◼   ► in Italy, which is still not available.

00:50:12 ◼   ► And I don't think the Sears 3 watch

00:50:14 ◼   ► will ever be cellular here at this point.

00:50:17 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure they originally said

00:50:20 ◼   ► come in a few months later, but you know, months have passed.

00:50:25 ◼   ► - Have they actually expanded the cellular connectivity

00:50:28 ◼   ► anywhere outside of the original?

00:50:30 ◼   ► No, I don't think so. No.

00:50:32 ◼   ► Yeah. Interesting.

00:50:34 ◼   ► Some other weird... This is interesting. This is weird news. Interesting news. Foxconn, the company that makes Apple's phones,

00:50:41 ◼   ► has acquired Belkin for

00:50:44 ◼   ► $866 million. This acquisition includes Belkin and their subsidiary companies Linksys,

00:50:51 ◼   ► Wemo and Fin. Never heard of Fin before, but it's like a smart plumbing thing which can detect leaks and stuff like that.

00:50:57 ◼   ► Is that a thing? It's it's actually so as a site maybe this is in a house that has

00:51:02 ◼   ► Plumbing that's made of tears and sorrow, but this yeah, it's actually pretty cool

00:51:07 ◼   ► Like you put it

00:51:07 ◼   ► I think it's your water meter and it can detect like flow coming in and check for leaks and all this stuff like it

00:51:13 ◼   ► Is cooler than it sounds being a smart plumbing device

00:51:16 ◼   ► What I didn't know in this is that Belkin owned Linksys I that totally like I totally missed that

00:51:22 ◼   ► Didn't know that Eva. I knew we mo but I didn't know about links this no

00:51:27 ◼   ► I just wanted to say in terms of acquisitions we don't remember. Do you guys remember that

00:51:31 ◼   ► Mozilla now owns Pocket?

00:51:35 ◼   ► Every time this comes up it's just a joy for me again. Or what about the fact that Pinterest

00:51:40 ◼   ► owns Instapaper?

00:51:41 ◼   ► Oh, you're right!

00:51:42 ◼   ► Both of those services found weird and wonderful homes, didn't they?

00:51:47 ◼   ► Foxconn have said in a statement that the plan for them is to more aggressively expand

00:51:52 ◼   ► the Belkin set of brands in the US. They consider them premium consumer products and smart home

00:51:58 ◼   ► devices. These are the things that they're going to focus on. The thing that I find so

00:52:02 ◼   ► fascinating about this, like basically everybody else, who better to make cases and charges

00:52:07 ◼   ► than the company that actually makes the phones? I kind of can't believe this is allowed to happen.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Like it is incredibly uncompetitive. I guess this is kind of one of those things where like

00:52:21 ◼   ► nothing can happen about it really because they're not like it's not the same market right like Fox

00:52:30 ◼   ► Con have just acquired a company that they you know that oh and they're also just lucky enough

00:52:35 ◼   ► that Apple give them phones to make and now they have the plans I mean I have no idea what Apple

00:52:41 ◼   ► might say about this like Apple might ask for ring fencing for example between the companies

00:52:46 ◼   ► not that it will matter really though like you know you can ask whatever you want but what but

00:52:50 ◼   ► There's just no, I mean, there's no way that Foxcom will not be able to make things faster

00:52:55 ◼   ► than Belkin could make them before. Especially when, I mean, Belkin was already seemed to be a

00:53:00 ◼   ► blessed partner like Logitech, you know, in some ways. Like they made some of the weird lightning

00:53:06 ◼   ► adapters when the headphone thing went away. So, but it is, it is like super, like, I feel sorry

00:53:11 ◼   ► for everybody else, you know, like I feel sorry for like the Mophies of the world and people like

00:53:16 ◼   ► that because it's just like well Belkin's gonna just destroy you now

00:53:20 ◼   ► because they're just gonna be ready immediately plus they have Foxconn

00:53:24 ◼   ► behind them right which is like the biggest manufacturer technology

00:53:27 ◼   ► manufacturing house in the world. Foxconn may have been already

00:53:31 ◼   ► building stuff for Belkin like I don't know how close the two companies were.

00:53:34 ◼   ► Foxconn builds stuff for lots of companies. The way it's described is like a city right like

00:53:39 ◼   ► it's not even like a factory. They're gonna edit this podcast

00:53:42 ◼   ► honestly. No. Now they're gonna make both accessories for Mophie and Anker and

00:53:47 ◼   ► and also their own stuff. They're gonna be like, you know, when you when you hear

00:53:51 ◼   ► those stories at the restaurants they're gonna be spitting in the in the plate of

00:53:57 ◼   ► Mophie secretly. I nearly, I just nearly destroyed my microphone with water

00:54:03 ◼   ► because I had no idea where you were going with that and we got very close to

00:54:07 ◼   ► spectate town. They're just gonna put like bad battery juice into the stuff.

00:54:12 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a shame these things keep exploding. There is an angle to this

00:54:20 ◼   ► that is, it's a little weird to talk about, but I think it's worth

00:54:24 ◼   ► talking about. In the US, Huawei right now is like basically being banned.

00:54:32 ◼   ► Like they can still sell in the US. The FTC has not revoked their license to

00:54:35 ◼   ► to sell cell phones.

00:54:37 ◼   ► - This is such a weird story.

00:54:38 ◼   ► - All major carriers have dropped their agreements

00:54:42 ◼   ► with Huawei.

00:54:43 ◼   ► Best Buy, like if you're not in Best Buy,

00:54:46 ◼   ► you're in trouble.

00:54:47 ◼   ► Best Buy has dropped Huawei, their notebooks,

00:54:50 ◼   ► their tablets, their laptops.

00:54:52 ◼   ► And now the federal government,

00:54:56 ◼   ► the US Congress is working on a bill

00:54:59 ◼   ► to say that Huawei devices cannot be used

00:55:02 ◼   ► by government employees for work.

00:55:04 ◼   ► So like, if you work for, I don't know,

00:55:06 ◼   ► the Energy Department, back when we had one of those,

00:55:08 ◼   ► you get a BlackBerry, and then maybe you got an iPhone,

00:55:11 ◼   ► you know, years later, and now they're saying,

00:55:14 ◼   ► well, you can't have a Huawei phone.

00:55:16 ◼   ► It's believed that Huawei and the Chinese government

00:55:18 ◼   ► have some sort of like, relationship

00:55:20 ◼   ► the US government doesn't approve of.

00:55:22 ◼   ► I don't really know the details,

00:55:23 ◼   ► I don't wanna just like, talk off the hip about that.

00:55:28 ◼   ► But, they're, you know, Lynx is making like,

00:55:31 ◼   ► network equipment and stuff, Foxconn may run into an issue where the US government or parts

00:55:39 ◼   ► of the US population all of a sudden don't trust them because they're being operated

00:55:44 ◼   ► by a Chinese company. Unfortunately, that's just a very real thing right now. I'd seen

00:55:50 ◼   ► some comments about that on Twitter, that are they going to run into regulatory issues

00:55:55 ◼   ► or public trust issues the way Huawei has.

00:55:58 ◼   ► I don't know, I think Foxconn's in better shape

00:56:02 ◼   ► than Huawei in that regard.

00:56:04 ◼   ► And honestly, I think most people don't know who Foxconn is.

00:56:06 ◼   ► And because Foxconn, my understanding is

00:56:10 ◼   ► that Linksys and Belkin, they're gonna remain

00:56:13 ◼   ► their own brands, at least for now.

00:56:15 ◼   ► And so it's not like you're gonna walk into a Best Buy

00:56:17 ◼   ► and buy a Foxconn-branded charger, right?

00:56:21 ◼   ► In reality, all these devices may be being built

00:56:24 ◼   ► Foxconn behind the scenes, but they're going to remain like separate. So I don't know if

00:56:28 ◼   ► it's going to be a problem or not, but it's something that has sort of been part of the

00:56:31 ◼   ► conversation. Have I ever told you guys that when I was a kid, so I, when I was like really

00:56:37 ◼   ► young, like six or seven or up until eight until I think we started, we started studying

00:56:44 ◼   ► English in elementary school in the third or fourth grade, maybe I thought, so I didn't

00:56:51 ◼   ► no English at all. And I thought that Made in China was a brand. And so I would, because

00:56:57 ◼   ► I used to read Made in China on labels and stuff.

00:57:04 ◼   ► My favorite clothing brand is Made in China.

00:57:10 ◼   ► Yes. Stuff like that. I was like, oh, this is Made in China.

00:57:16 ◼   ► That's like the joke from Friends, right? I think it's Friends. Like, why do so many

00:57:20 ◼   ► bad things happen at the place called Gunpoint, right? Like a man was killed while being held

00:57:25 ◼   ► at Gunpoint. There's a bank robbery at Gunpoint. It's just that kind of idea. Made in China,

00:57:31 ◼   ► everybody's favorite clothing brand. That's wonderful, man. I absolutely love that.

00:57:35 ◼   ► That's really funny.

00:57:36 ◼   ► Oh dear. Alright, today's show is also brought to you by Audible, the leading provider of

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00:59:55 ◼   ► I believe we're going to get into a bit of story time. I think we've got a story time

01:00:00 ◼   ► gripe's section here. Federico, do you want to go first to talk about some issues you've

01:00:05 ◼   ► been having with the HomePod?

01:00:06 ◼   ► >> Sure. So since I got the HomePod and then the second one, I couldn't use the personal

01:00:14 ◼   ► request feature at all. And initially I thought that it was just a problem with third-party

01:00:21 ◼   ► SiriKit apps, that I wasn't able to use them because I was on the iOS 11.3 beta and that

01:00:31 ◼   ► it was just a beta problem. But then last week I got really annoyed because I... not

01:00:38 ◼   ► even the basic stuff like setting reminders, like the Apple native reminders or reading

01:00:44 ◼   ► my messages, none of that stuff worked. And so I spent a couple of days doing research

01:00:50 ◼   ► and trying to understand how the personal requests feature worked.

01:00:55 ◼   ► And I saw on Reddit and on the Apple Discussions forum board, I saw other folks having the

01:01:02 ◼   ► same problem of, I turn on personal requests, but it doesn't work.

01:01:07 ◼   ► And my problem was slightly different in that the iPhone kept asking me for authentication

01:01:16 ◼   ► As soon as I spoke a request that involved reminders

01:01:20 ◼   ► or messages, I got a notification on my phone

01:01:24 ◼   ► saying Siri would like to help with reminders.

01:01:28 ◼   ► And then when I tapped the notification,

01:01:30 ◼   ► it would open the Siri UI on my iPhone and on my iPad,

01:01:34 ◼   ► and it would just give me an error, something like,

01:01:37 ◼   ► I'm sorry, I cannot help with that.

01:01:39 ◼   ► And so that was useless.

01:01:40 ◼   ► And initially I thought, well,

01:01:42 ◼   ► this is just an iOS 11.3 beta problem.

01:01:45 ◼   ► I should downgrade one of my two iPads to the stable version of iOS 11.

01:01:50 ◼   ► So I went back to iOS 11.2.6.

01:01:55 ◼   ► I set it up from scratch again.

01:01:57 ◼   ► And of course, in the meantime, I should say I had already tried to reboot, reset the HomePods

01:02:03 ◼   ► twice.

01:02:05 ◼   ► I didn't log out of my iCloud account because that was just annoying.

01:02:09 ◼   ► But then when I did the downgrade on my small iPad Pro, of course, I started from scratch.

01:02:15 ◼   ► backup, new iCloud login, everything was new. I tried again, still didn't work. I got a

01:02:23 ◼   ► Siri notification again as soon as I tried to ask a reminder question. I tapped the notification

01:02:29 ◼   ► and this time the reminder was being created. So that was progress, but of course still

01:02:35 ◼   ► no HomePod only functionality. And eventually I gave up and then I came back the other day

01:02:45 ◼   ► and I realized, you know, I first set up HomeKit when it launched with iOS 8, iOS 9, anyway,

01:02:56 ◼   ► years ago. And I realized, you know, maybe something is wrong with my HomeKit configuration.

01:03:04 ◼   ► not only was the HomePod not working with personal requests, everything else was fine

01:03:09 ◼   ► by the way, controlling my own HomeKit devices, playing music, just the personal request stuff

01:03:15 ◼   ► was not working. And the personal request is tied to a device and is tied to my Apple

01:03:21 ◼   ► ID. Because Apple says so...

01:03:23 ◼   ► So you were thinking that one of the many betas that you've been on over the years may

01:03:28 ◼   ► have kind of like screwed something up somewhere.

01:03:29 ◼   ► - I thought something is wrong with my HomeKit setup

01:03:33 ◼   ► and the authentication that connects HomeKit

01:03:38 ◼   ► with my Apple ID.

01:03:40 ◼   ► Because HomeKit remote access was not working for Sylvia,

01:03:45 ◼   ► and she's a guest of my HomeKit configuration

01:03:49 ◼   ► with family sharing.

01:03:50 ◼   ► So there was a common thread between

01:03:53 ◼   ► personal requests not working,

01:03:55 ◼   ► my HomeKit setup, and remote access for a guest

01:03:59 ◼   ► that is also not working.

01:04:00 ◼   ► And the thing in the middle was my Apple ID

01:04:04 ◼   ► and my HomeKit setup.

01:04:06 ◼   ► So it was either one of the two things,

01:04:07 ◼   ► either I delete my Apple ID,

01:04:09 ◼   ► so I delete my iCloud account and I make a new one,

01:04:12 ◼   ► which of course was not an option,

01:04:14 ◼   ► or I delete my home configuration from the home app

01:04:19 ◼   ► and I create a new home from scratch,

01:04:23 ◼   ► which means I re-add all of my devices,

01:04:26 ◼   ► I recreate all of my automations,

01:04:29 ◼   ► I recreate all of my scenes, basically everything from scratch again, which I did.

01:04:34 ◼   ► And of course, that was the problem that fixed all of my issues.

01:04:39 ◼   ► Somehow, sometime in the past, I don't know when along the way of the many, many

01:04:45 ◼   ► videos that I installed, something went wrong.

01:04:47 ◼   ► I my Apple ID was not given, I guess, the proper authorization to HomeKit to perform

01:04:55 ◼   ► personal requests on the HomePod,

01:04:57 ◼   ► or to give Sylvia proper remote access.

01:05:00 ◼   ► And now everything is working again.

01:05:04 ◼   ► But I want to call out two things that I noticed.

01:05:08 ◼   ► Of course, recreating everything from scratch is bad.

01:05:12 ◼   ► It sucks, it's terrible.

01:05:15 ◼   ► And I wish that the world,

01:05:17 ◼   ► maybe this is the common theme of this mini topic.

01:05:22 ◼   ► There have to be better troubleshooting,

01:05:25 ◼   ► solutions that do not involve delete everything and start from scratch again.

01:05:30 ◼   ► But also I was able to appreciate the way that Homebridge, the custom HomeKit

01:05:37 ◼   ► plugin I ran on a Raspberry Pi, the way that it works. Because all the

01:05:43 ◼   ► accessories that were previously set up with Homebridge, I didn't need to add

01:05:48 ◼   ► those manually one by one. All I needed to do was to scan the fake QR code that

01:05:54 ◼   ► Homebridge gives you and all the accessories were imported.

01:05:58 ◼   ► Again, I just needed to assign them to a room.

01:06:01 ◼   ► I didn't need to scan to any custom HomeKit codes.

01:06:05 ◼   ► I just needed to scan one of them because Homebridge is the bridge, is the single

01:06:09 ◼   ► bridge that contains all of the accessories.

01:06:12 ◼   ► So that was really convenient.

01:06:13 ◼   ► I just want to say that we're going to talk about this, like because I know Steven, you

01:06:20 ◼   ► have some stuff too, but and I agree that like, you know, better troubleshooting tools,

01:06:24 ◼   ► whatever they might be would be good.

01:06:25 ◼   ► But it is worth appreciating yours very specific.

01:06:28 ◼   ► So like such set of circumstances that you believe led you to this route,

01:06:31 ◼   ► which is installing iOS betas over many years

01:06:35 ◼   ► when they were just developer betas. Right.

01:06:37 ◼   ► I know. I know.

01:06:38 ◼   ► Like, you know, I totally get what you're saying that like

01:06:42 ◼   ► it would be really great if someone could just tell you

01:06:44 ◼   ► that was what you had to do rather than you just hoping and assuming

01:06:48 ◼   ► and guessing you might need to.

01:06:50 ◼   ► But this probably if that was the reason like if you're

01:06:53 ◼   ► if your hypothesis was correct, like, I don't think it's fair to us to say that they have

01:06:59 ◼   ► to like, fix that because well, you do that at your own risk.

01:07:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I know. And that was probably the cause, honestly, like all the betas, all the resets

01:07:10 ◼   ► and the, you know, all the changes that are gone through first developer beta, public

01:07:15 ◼   ► beta, stable version, developer beta again, that messes things up.

01:07:19 ◼   ► It's funny that it just happened now though, right? Like what changed?

01:07:22 ◼   ► I don't know. I don't know. I suppose it's the way the personal requests work. The feature

01:07:29 ◼   ► needs to see one device on your local network, but the Apple ID needs to be the same. The

01:07:36 ◼   ► same Apple ID on the connected device, so my iPhone, and the Apple ID that the HomePod

01:07:43 ◼   ► was set up with originally. So I just assumed that the problem was there and between deleting

01:07:51 ◼   ► my iCloud account and deleting the HomeKit configuration, I just went with the HomeKit

01:07:56 ◼   ► option. Which is annoying.

01:07:58 ◼   ► You mentioned deleting your account. How far would you have to go before you would do that?

01:08:04 ◼   ► Oh no, no way. I would have kept not using personal requests.

01:08:08 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:08:09 ◼   ► Yeah. I don't, I mean...

01:08:11 ◼   ► Can you think of anything? It's like, this is a difficult question, but like, is there

01:08:15 ◼   ► anything that like you need so bad like this tied to your Apple ID that if it

01:08:20 ◼   ► didn't work you would delete it all and go over it? I have an example it's not

01:08:24 ◼   ► something that is not working but I don't know if you've seen what our

01:08:28 ◼   ► friend Shahid has been going through with his Apple ID. Yes. All the security

01:08:33 ◼   ► issues that have been going on with his Apple ID someone is trying to break into

01:08:37 ◼   ► his iCloud account for years now and it keeps... Yeah and it's almost every couple of

01:08:42 ◼   ► days Shahid's iCloud account gets locked. It gets locked and he's been contacting Apple

01:08:48 ◼   ► support, it showed us messages and they are unable to fix this problem for him.

01:08:52 ◼   ► And in that case, I mean, Shahid is very patient, he's been keeping up with these

01:08:57 ◼   ► problems, I wouldn't be able to do the same. I would just delete my

01:09:01 ◼   ► Apple ID and create a new one and be done with it. That is a very good example.

01:09:06 ◼   ► I wouldn't be able to deal with what Shahid is dealing with either, but he has

01:09:10 ◼   ► the patience of a saint so he can deal with it. But I know that I wouldn't be able to,

01:09:14 ◼   ► so yes, I would have nuked it out of orbit a long time before.

01:09:17 ◼   ► Steven, you've been having some Apple Notes problems?

01:09:20 ◼   ► Yeah, so I store a lot of stuff in Apple Notes. I've got a couple hundred notes in there easily.

01:09:27 ◼   ► And a couple weeks ago, I went to add a PDF to a note, drug it in there, not a big PDF,

01:09:32 ◼   ► like three or four megs, and I come back later and I notice on the Mac the little spinner

01:09:38 ◼   ► in Notes, a little activity indicator is still spinning,

01:09:41 ◼   ► like hours later.

01:09:43 ◼   ► It's like, oh, that's weird, so I pick up my iPad

01:09:47 ◼   ► and realize that not only is that new Note not there,

01:09:52 ◼   ► but I have a lot of things that have stopped syncing,

01:09:56 ◼   ► that the Mac has stopped sending changes to iOS devices.

01:10:00 ◼   ► iOS devices could still send changes to the Mac.

01:10:02 ◼   ► It wasn't completely broken, but it was partially broken.

01:10:06 ◼   ► - Do you remember this happened to me

01:10:07 ◼   ► when 11 came out, this happened to me.

01:10:10 ◼   ► So I kind of went through and made a sort of a list of, OK,

01:10:14 ◼   ► these are the notes I know that I'm going to lose these changes.

01:10:19 ◼   ► I went to System Preferences and to iCloud.

01:10:21 ◼   ► I unchecked the note sync, restarted the computer,

01:10:26 ◼   ► rechecked the note sync, same problem.

01:10:29 ◼   ► It pulled down old data.

01:10:30 ◼   ► It would not be in sync with my iPhone and iPad.

01:10:35 ◼   ► And what ultimately fixed it was completely signing out

01:10:38 ◼   ► of my iCloud account.

01:10:40 ◼   ► And the problem with that is that the iCloud credentials

01:10:46 ◼   ► are tied to all sorts of stuff, right?

01:10:49 ◼   ► Like not only my address book and my calendar,

01:10:52 ◼   ► but a bunch of sync data, and my entire photos library,

01:10:56 ◼   ► and bookmarks, and some files on iCloud Drive,

01:10:59 ◼   ► and on, and on, and on.

01:11:02 ◼   ► Signed out, rebooted, signed back in.

01:11:05 ◼   ► Notes is syncing now, but now I have all this other stuff that's

01:11:08 ◼   ► missing or halfway broken because iCloud

01:11:11 ◼   ► got disconnected from it.

01:11:12 ◼   ► My photos library, which has-- oh gosh,

01:11:16 ◼   ► I don't even know-- something like 40,000 images in it

01:11:21 ◼   ► just had to re-download, but crawl through the entire library

01:11:28 ◼   ► to make sure that the Mac and iCloud were in sync.

01:11:31 ◼   ► And it just is maddening.

01:11:34 ◼   ► That little note toggle should fix this problem.

01:11:37 ◼   ► And to back up even further,

01:11:40 ◼   ► Apple, you should have alerted me

01:11:42 ◼   ► when something fell out of sync.

01:11:44 ◼   ► Like, it should not be on me to notice,

01:11:47 ◼   ► oh, this is still spinning for some reason.

01:11:49 ◼   ► Oh no, I have two dozen notes that have at some point

01:11:53 ◼   ► over the last couple days fallen out of sync.

01:11:56 ◼   ► That should not be on the customer to see that.

01:12:00 ◼   ► back in the day with like iDisk sync,

01:12:03 ◼   ► you can make fun of it,

01:12:04 ◼   ► but Apple would pop up an alert on the Mac

01:12:07 ◼   ► and say, "Hey, we have a conflict.

01:12:09 ◼   ► "What do you want us to do?

01:12:10 ◼   ► "Do you wanna keep the local copy?

01:12:12 ◼   ► "Do you wanna keep the server copy?

01:12:14 ◼   ► "Do you wanna keep both?"

01:12:14 ◼   ► Now I'm not suggesting they do that in Notes,

01:12:16 ◼   ► but there should be some sort of notice that,

01:12:19 ◼   ► hey, your stuff has stopped syncing for some reason.

01:12:21 ◼   ► Something has gone wrong,

01:12:22 ◼   ► and there's no mechanism for that.

01:12:24 ◼   ► It's just up to me that I noticed it,

01:12:26 ◼   ► and it wasn't a huge deal.

01:12:29 ◼   ► like the couple things that I lost,

01:12:30 ◼   ► like I knew what I had changed, it wasn't a big deal.

01:12:33 ◼   ► But what would have happened if I had added a PDF

01:12:36 ◼   ► for like a flight or a hotel reservation

01:12:39 ◼   ► and then I travel with just my phone and my iPad

01:12:41 ◼   ► and then I realize I don't have that information.

01:12:43 ◼   ► Like it really makes me think about trusting Notes

01:12:48 ◼   ► because like this should be solid.

01:12:51 ◼   ► And Notes is solid until it fails

01:12:53 ◼   ► and then it fails in a way that's like infuriating.

01:12:55 ◼   ► So I agree with Federico,

01:12:57 ◼   ► Like there needs to be some, I don't know what it is.

01:13:00 ◼   ► Like I'm not smart enough to figure this out,

01:13:02 ◼   ► but I don't work at Apple on the iCloud team.

01:13:03 ◼   ► So I don't have to figure it out,

01:13:04 ◼   ► but there should be some sort of mechanism.

01:13:07 ◼   ► It's like a Bulletproof way to solve this stuff.

01:13:09 ◼   ► Like in the Mac, you would think unchecking the notes box,

01:13:14 ◼   ► that would fix it.

01:13:14 ◼   ► Like I was like, oh, I'll just uncheck it and recheck it.

01:13:16 ◼   ► And I'll be golden.

01:13:17 ◼   ► Like not true.

01:13:18 ◼   ► I should not have to log out of an account.

01:13:20 ◼   ► I should not have to recreate an account

01:13:21 ◼   ► to solve these issues.

01:13:24 ◼   ► But it seems like again and again,

01:13:25 ◼   ► when I talk to people with iCloud problems.

01:13:27 ◼   ► And iCloud is way better than it's ever been.

01:13:29 ◼   ► I really like a lot about iCloud.

01:13:31 ◼   ► But when it does act up, the way that you solve it very often

01:13:36 ◼   ► is just sign out of your account and sign back in.

01:13:38 ◼   ► And it's easy to say.

01:13:39 ◼   ► It's easy to give somebody that advice in email or tweet

01:13:41 ◼   ► or on a podcast.

01:13:42 ◼   ► But in reality, you could be looking at quite a bit of work

01:13:45 ◼   ► to do that.

01:13:46 ◼   ► You'll lose your afternoon.

01:13:47 ◼   ► You're going to lose your afternoon.

01:13:49 ◼   ► And then my very expensive iMac Pro on a very fast internet

01:13:53 ◼   ► connection took four days to like re-sync up my photo library and in that time my photos

01:14:01 ◼   ► were falling further out of sync and then it all caught back up.

01:14:04 ◼   ► That's a terrible experience.

01:14:06 ◼   ► So what was it re-indexing or was it like pulling all the photos down again?

01:14:10 ◼   ► It was re-indexing so I have it downloaded all local files to the local drive.

01:14:15 ◼   ► It was re-indexing but in that time it wouldn't see any new changes until it re-indexed.

01:14:21 ◼   ► It's like what are you doing?

01:14:22 ◼   ► It's ridiculous.

01:14:23 ◼   ► This is the thing, like iCloud is getting better.

01:14:25 ◼   ► Like it is getting a lot better.

01:14:27 ◼   ► Like a lot of the services that I use,

01:14:30 ◼   ► the iCloud services that I use, are vastly superior

01:14:33 ◼   ► than what they used to be.

01:14:35 ◼   ► And the proof in that is that I actually use them,

01:14:37 ◼   ► where before I wouldn't use them,

01:14:39 ◼   ► I would use something else.

01:14:41 ◼   ► But there is this problem in like so many things

01:14:45 ◼   ► being tied to iCloud that when something breaks,

01:14:48 ◼   ► if that is the way that you have to fix things,

01:14:51 ◼   ► which is to sign in, sign out,

01:14:53 ◼   ► It can just, it's like a house of cards that like topples down when you do that

01:14:57 ◼   ► sign out thing.

01:14:58 ◼   ► Because there are like a million things that need to be changed and need to be

01:15:03 ◼   ► rechecked and all that kind of stuff.

01:15:05 ◼   ► Like when I had this problem with my notes, I was sitting down for hours,

01:15:10 ◼   ► like working out like what notes do I have?

01:15:12 ◼   ► Where is the source of truth, right?

01:15:14 ◼   ► Like because I didn't want to lose any data because I didn't know how much data

01:15:18 ◼   ► I'd lost.

01:15:18 ◼   ► So I went to iCloud.com and it wasn't all there, but it was all on my iPhone.

01:15:23 ◼   ► So it's like, well, what do I do?

01:15:24 ◼   ► And like, it was just a case of like checking and unchecking on many different

01:15:28 ◼   ► devices until like I did enough of this that it ended up going to the right place.

01:15:33 ◼   ► But there, there just doesn't really seem to be a way to deal with it, which is a,

01:15:40 ◼   ► which is a frustration.

01:15:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:15:42 ◼   ► And it's strange because on the Mac, you can still, if you, if you want to, and if

01:15:46 ◼   ► you know where to look, you can still do things like manually delete caches, for example,

01:15:51 ◼   ► which you cannot do on iOS. Or you can delete all the application support files and all

01:15:56 ◼   ► that junk. You cannot do the same on iOS. So the Mac still gives you the ability to

01:16:01 ◼   ► debug manually things or to get rid of, you know, these files that can cause problems

01:16:07 ◼   ► in the long term, but you don't have the same kind of manual nerdy and advanced controls

01:16:14 ◼   ► for iCloud which is frustrating. So yeah, there should be more manual stuff for people

01:16:20 ◼   ► that know what they're doing without having to go to the Genius Bar or log in out of their

01:16:26 ◼   ► accounts and back in again.

01:16:28 ◼   ► I mean, I will forever and a day give my number one example of this is the Apple Watch. That

01:16:36 ◼   ► like, if something gets screwed up, the only thing you can do is go to a Genius. Like they

01:16:41 ◼   ► will not let you plug it into a device and reset it, which is wild.

01:16:48 ◼   ► It's even more basic like that. Like I have this problem routinely where my watch will

01:16:53 ◼   ► stop sending, it's doing it right now actually, if I reply to somebody via iMessage, it sends

01:16:59 ◼   ► as an SMS for my watch. And if I'm on, say the other day I rode my bike to run some errands,

01:17:05 ◼   ► I left my phone at home and took my cellular Apple watch with me, and I dictated text to

01:17:10 ◼   ► and it's sent as an SMS, which is like,

01:17:12 ◼   ► it's not a big deal, but it's like,

01:17:14 ◼   ► I don't know how to fix it.

01:17:15 ◼   ► Like I can sign in out of iMessage, I've done that,

01:17:17 ◼   ► I've rebooted everything.

01:17:19 ◼   ► Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

01:17:22 ◼   ► And that's what's so frustrating

01:17:25 ◼   ► about Apple software and services.

01:17:27 ◼   ► And again, I wanna balance this with iCloud,

01:17:30 ◼   ► and this stuff is better than it's been in a long time.

01:17:33 ◼   ► Like iCloud is really solid for most things.

01:17:35 ◼   ► But when things do go wrong, 'cause things do go wrong,

01:17:38 ◼   ► It's like this black box.

01:17:40 ◼   ► There's no way on iOS on my phone to be like,

01:17:43 ◼   ► hey, toggle iMessage on and off just on the watch.

01:17:46 ◼   ► Or like, it's just one of those things,

01:17:49 ◼   ► like I guess it'll get fixed at some point,

01:17:51 ◼   ► or I'll reboot my watch one day, or the battery will die

01:17:54 ◼   ► or something, and it'll work again,

01:17:55 ◼   ► and then one day it won't.

01:17:56 ◼   ► Like I'm left to the whims of what it wants to do.

01:17:59 ◼   ► - Well I guess the only thing that we can do now

01:18:01 ◼   ► is to uncheck and recheck this podcast,

01:18:03 ◼   ► and then we can come back happier next week, right?

01:18:05 ◼   ► That's how this works?

01:18:07 ◼   ► Can we log out of a podcast?

01:18:09 ◼   ► - Well, let's try.

01:18:12 ◼   ► Come on, Steven, log us out.

01:18:13 ◼   ► - We're gonna go up to the Apple menu and select log out.

01:18:16 ◼   ► But first, I wanna thank our sponsors this week,

01:18:19 ◼   ► Squarespace, Smile, and Audible.

01:18:22 ◼   ► I wanna tell you how to get in touch.

01:18:23 ◼   ► If you wanna find an email address for us,

01:18:27 ◼   ► or more importantly, the links

01:18:29 ◼   ► to all the stuff we've talked about,

01:18:30 ◼   ► you can do so on the website,

01:18:31 ◼   ► relay.fm/connected/186.

01:18:36 ◼   ► that number keeps getting bigger and bigger really every week. I guess that's how that

01:18:39 ◼   ► works. It goes up by one every week, which is so

01:18:42 ◼   ► fascinating. We can make this a daily show. Let's not do that. If you want to find Federico

01:18:47 ◼   ► and talk to him about HomeKit on Twitter, you can do that at @Vittici. And of course,

01:18:53 ◼   ► he is the editor in chief of the glorious MacStories.net. If you want to talk to Myke

01:18:59 ◼   ► about how the Apple Pencil is useful to you or not useful to you, you can do that on Twitter

01:19:04 ◼   ► at I-M-Y-K-E and if you want to tell me how awesome I am at doing this outro you can do

01:19:11 ◼   ► so. I'm on Twitter as @ismh and I write 512pixels.net. If you like nerdy podcasts we have lots of

01:19:18 ◼   ► options go to relay.fm/shows. I promise you, you will find something else to love besides

01:19:24 ◼   ► connected. There's lots of good stuff there. And yeah, I think that's it. So, until next

01:19:29 ◼   ► time gentlemen, say goodbye. Adios.