Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► Three, two, one, click.

00:00:04 ◼   ► Everybody good?

00:00:05 ◼   ► - I really hesitated for a moment

00:00:07 ◼   ► 'cause I wasn't sure whether to click on the one or not.

00:00:09 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:12 ◼   ► - From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode 183.

00:00:22 ◼   ► It's made possible this week

00:00:23 ◼   ► by our sponsors Hover Away and Casper.

00:00:26 ◼   ► My name is Stephen Hackett, I'm your host,

00:00:28 ◼   ► and I'm joined by your two other hosts.

00:00:31 ◼   ► We're all equal footing,

00:00:32 ◼   ► even though I'm the one announcing the show.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Up first, we have Michael Hurley.

00:00:36 ◼   ► Michael, how are you?

00:00:37 ◼   ► - You were very, very traditional this week.

00:00:40 ◼   ► - Well, I am now, but will it be that way in the edit?

00:00:42 ◼   ► No one knows.

00:00:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, anything could happen.

00:00:45 ◼   ► It could be in reverse.

00:00:47 ◼   ► Over me, over me.

00:00:49 ◼   ► - We also are joined, of course, by Mr. Federico Fattici.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Hey, buddy.

00:00:53 ◼   ► - Hi, it's, hi, how are you?

00:00:55 ◼   ► It's good to have you back.

00:00:56 ◼   ► Yes, yes, I was absent last week. I was absent in the body, but present in the spirit.

00:01:02 ◼   ► Were you though?

00:01:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it's almost strange to be able to talk to you in real time

00:01:09 ◼   ► instead of having this sort of godlike commentary coming from above into our ears, into our show.

00:01:17 ◼   ► It's strange. Are you a real person?

00:01:19 ◼   ► I think so.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Even?

00:01:20 ◼   ► Okay, okay, cool. All right. Yeah.

00:01:24 ◼   ► taken. So this is the show. We start with follow-up. With you. And I think we already talked about one.

00:01:31 ◼   ► Last week I was absent. And I was absent but I still edited the show. So if you haven't

00:01:37 ◼   ► listened to last week's episode, maybe listen to the first couple minutes and you'll get a taste of

00:01:40 ◼   ► whatever that was. It was really good. You did a really good job. I think the Steven era has been

00:01:48 ◼   ► is just a huge success so far.

00:01:51 ◼   ► I will say, for the listener who's rolling their eyes at me right now, I did not put

00:01:56 ◼   ► this in the show notes. I did not put this in follow-up. Someone else did.

00:01:59 ◼   ► He really... it's like, just in big, bold letters, "You must applaud me." It's very

00:02:03 ◼   ► upsetting.

00:02:04 ◼   ► That's right. Or, "I'll string your words together and make you say terrible things."

00:02:11 ◼   ► So let's jump in. What is this...?

00:02:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I have a few clarifications, corrections and pieces of follow-up from last week.

00:02:22 ◼   ► Maj pointed out the correction in, we were talking about the fingerprint sensor, you know,

00:02:27 ◼   ► talking about that in-screen fingerprint sensor.

00:02:29 ◼   ► So it is made by a company called Synaptic.

00:02:34 ◼   ► The phone maker, Vivo, they didn't make it.

00:02:37 ◼   ► That was what I said. I was incorrect on that.

00:02:40 ◼   ► Vivo is just the first manufacturer to use it.

00:02:43 ◼   ► So that's a good thing because it then means that Synaptic, the company that makes this

00:02:47 ◼   ► fingerprint sensor, they can sell it far and wide because it's just a part made by a vendor

00:02:51 ◼   ► is what it looks like so far.

00:02:53 ◼   ► And Vivo, for whatever reason, is a manufacturer in China, is the first one to really be doing

00:02:58 ◼   ► anything public with it.

00:03:00 ◼   ► It might be because it's a tricky part or an expensive part so it's being done at low

00:03:03 ◼   ► volume.

00:03:04 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:03:05 ◼   ► But Synaptic is the company and they make those sensors.

00:03:08 ◼   ► I do wonder, I mean it's great that it's like this third party like OEM other phone, you

00:03:15 ◼   ► know, companies could go and buy this thing and integrate it.

00:03:18 ◼   ► But I wonder, and you guys talked a little bit about this, like is there a market for

00:03:23 ◼   ► this thing?

00:03:24 ◼   ► Like Apple's not going to go back to a fingerprint reader.

00:03:26 ◼   ► Android will keep doing, there will be a lot and lot of Android phones that will do fingerprint

00:03:34 ◼   ► sensors, if anything, just to cater for people that don't like the face scanning.

00:03:40 ◼   ► Right, so if you've got so much choice...

00:03:42 ◼   ► I just wonder if those customers are used to it being on the back and that...

00:03:45 ◼   ► You know what I mean? Like, would they make the move to put it back on the front

00:03:48 ◼   ► where it used to be?

00:03:50 ◼   ► I think the back is nice, the front is normal, and I think that if you can have

00:03:57 ◼   ► so much of the screen be the sensor, that makes it good to put it on the front again.

00:04:02 ◼   ► Because you've added an additional incentive.

00:04:05 ◼   ► Like if you can cover a quarter of the screen so you don't actually have to put your finger

00:04:09 ◼   ► or your thumb in a specific place, that is enough of an incentive to move it again, right?

00:04:14 ◼   ► In my opinion, because now you've created something that is vastly superior.

00:04:21 ◼   ► Many people also recommended to me a way to trick Face ID into triggering a new scan.

00:04:28 ◼   ► So this is something that I was complaining about.

00:04:30 ◼   ► like if you're looking at your home screen and face ID doesn't recognize you,

00:04:34 ◼   ► there wasn't a button or anything you could press to make it scan your face again.

00:04:39 ◼   ► Well it turns out if you tilt the phone away from you and back again,

00:04:42 ◼   ► it will trigger a rescan because what it's doing is something with the accelerometer.

00:04:47 ◼   ► I reckon this is something to do with the raise to wake stuff,

00:04:49 ◼   ► so it effectively treats it as a new raise to wake. It's a hack but it totally works and I've

00:04:53 ◼   ► been using it this week and I'm very happy about it. Like it's fixed one of my biggest issues.

00:04:58 ◼   ► if it doesn't recognize me, I just tilt away, tilt back and it does it straight away.

00:05:01 ◼   ► So I like that, but I still think that there needs to be a better mechanism for it.

00:05:06 ◼   ► But this one will totally work for me for now.

00:05:08 ◼   ► I got lots of feedback about that.

00:05:09 ◼   ► If you do that enough times, it sort of becomes like a workout.

00:05:14 ◼   ► You know, if you do that like a hundred of times every day.

00:05:17 ◼   ► Yeah, wrist exercises.

00:05:18 ◼   ► You should put some weights on the back of the iPhone.

00:05:25 ◼   ► I mean seriously though, this film's pretty heavy as it is, so, you know.

00:05:30 ◼   ► We're gonna get pitches for cases now that you can attach weights to. You know what you've

00:05:33 ◼   ► done.

00:05:38 ◼   ► It's like when Goku trains in Dragon Ball because he needs to become faster and so he

00:05:42 ◼   ► puts on weights.

00:05:43 ◼   ► Sure.

00:05:44 ◼   ► We can totally relate to that.

00:05:45 ◼   ► I was getting ready to bring that up.

00:05:48 ◼   ► Especially Steven knows. Steven knows, I'm sure.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm surprised that we didn't think of it before now.

00:05:52 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:05:53 ◼   ► It's weird I had it written down in my notebook. It's very strange.

00:05:57 ◼   ► Stephen, tell us about Dragon Ball.

00:06:00 ◼   ► I can't tell you about Dragon Ball. But I can tell you about the story in the San Francisco

00:06:07 ◼   ► Chronicle. Apple Park is a beautiful campus. Everything is made out of glass and dreams

00:06:15 ◼   ► and hope. And the problem with those three construction methods is that people walk into

00:06:20 ◼   ► And if you walk into Dreams and Hope, you're mostly okay.

00:06:22 ◼   ► But if you walk into Glass, you're going to have a bad time.

00:06:26 ◼   ► And so this article has transcripts from three 911 calls from Apple's new campus.

00:06:35 ◼   ► These are retained by public record requests.

00:06:36 ◼   ► You can go and get these.

00:06:38 ◼   ► People walking into Glass and getting hurt.

00:06:40 ◼   ► And that's a funny story to me, but it's also, I mean, it's terrible that people are getting

00:06:46 ◼   ► hurt and clearly Apple has a problem on their hands.

00:06:49 ◼   ► But it's just something about this story just really… it just fits so many things that

00:06:56 ◼   ► people complain about Apple.

00:06:58 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:06:59 ◼   ► What do you guys think?

00:07:00 ◼   ► I have a couple of points on this.

00:07:01 ◼   ► One, it's super weird to read these 911 transcripts, and you should read them just

00:07:06 ◼   ► because they're interesting.

00:07:08 ◼   ► Especially because they're really good transcripts, so they pick up these strange inflections.

00:07:13 ◼   ► The way that they respond to things is really interesting.

00:07:16 ◼   ► time on all three calls, like the way that the address is described is very peculiarly

00:07:23 ◼   ► like they also, the person that's calling is always really hesitant to actually talk

00:07:28 ◼   ► about what's happened, which I find really weird. Like the 911 dispatcher has to ask

00:07:34 ◼   ► them multiple times to explain what has happened. And then there are these two calls which were

00:07:38 ◼   ► clearly made by the same person, like the second, the last two calls, because every

00:07:44 ◼   ► sentence has basically started with "it's going to be in" like this phrase is repeated

00:07:49 ◼   ► a bunch like it's gonna be on the gate it's gonna be in apple park it's gonna be like

00:07:54 ◼   ► a day and it's really just interesting to read these calls um i think it is really uh

00:08:01 ◼   ► meme-y to point at this and be like "johnny i've can't design" but i kind of i i'm sorry

00:08:08 ◼   ► stephen i roll my eyes at this it's just it's a building with glass like i walked through

00:08:12 ◼   ► a screen door at your house.

00:08:14 ◼   ► It's true, he did.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Right?

00:08:16 ◼   ► Like, you know, this is just a thing that people do, and there are ways around it, and

00:08:19 ◼   ► eventually people will stop doing it because everyone's bleeding out.

00:08:22 ◼   ► Yeah, everyone's dead.

00:08:24 ◼   ► I mean, I didn't put this in here to make the point that Johnny Ivey's bad at buildings,

00:08:27 ◼   ► although maybe he is.

00:08:29 ◼   ► It's just a weird story because we don't hear much about Apple, like their campus stuff

00:08:38 ◼   ► before Apple Park, and they made such a huge deal of it, and now it's in the news again.

00:08:42 ◼   ► a very strange story because we don't see this sort of stuff from Apple.

00:08:48 ◼   ► There were professional architects involved in this.

00:08:50 ◼   ► It wasn't like, you know, it wasn't all journey.

00:08:53 ◼   ► Maybe put some bandage or something on that glass.

00:08:56 ◼   ► I've worked in places with plenty of glass, I mean it happens, but it's a thing.

00:09:00 ◼   ► Anyways.

00:09:01 ◼   ► Yeah, this is going to be one of those sad situations where they have this beautiful

00:09:05 ◼   ► campus but now every wall is covered in stickers.

00:09:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:08 ◼   ► Right?

00:09:09 ◼   ► the unfortunate part of this, which I'm sure they're doing now if they haven't done already,

00:09:13 ◼   ► right? Like they're trying to put some tasteful warning signs, like push and pull or whatever,

00:09:18 ◼   ► but it's just a shame that eventually every pane of glass is going to be covered with

00:09:23 ◼   ► a health and safety sticker.

00:09:26 ◼   ► So what you're saying, Myke, is I'm going to quote you back to you. "It's a shame to

00:09:30 ◼   ► cover Apple products in stickers," is what you said.

00:09:34 ◼   ► That's what he said. It's on the record. It's in our audio files. It's what he said.

00:09:39 ◼   ► I've already lead quest on the show, but I held it back.

00:09:44 ◼   ► I love the question from the dispatcher.

00:09:47 ◼   ► Is this a building or a room number?

00:09:51 ◼   ► I imagine like these people staying in an Apple hotel and everybody just at their computers

00:09:57 ◼   ► in the rooms.

00:09:59 ◼   ► It's a very strange picture.

00:10:00 ◼   ► But yeah, I've never been in a...

00:10:05 ◼   ► I've never worked in this type of office, so I don't know. This is something that I've

00:10:11 ◼   ► learned recently of like offices with glass walls and doors and people walking into them.

00:10:18 ◼   ► This is all new to me, but I've never walked into a glass door myself, so I guess it I

00:10:25 ◼   ► suppose it hurts real bad, especially like if you're, you know, walking like, you know,

00:10:32 ◼   ► need to go somewhere and you're like focus on your phone and then you just suddenly hit

00:10:35 ◼   ► your head. It's like that must be awful. That must be really awful.

00:10:39 ◼   ► It happens all the time. Can I read, can I read just a little section of this, of this,

00:10:43 ◼   ► these calls? This is call two on January the second. This is just to highlight the interesting

00:10:47 ◼   ► text. This is like a good example of it. So dispatcher, what's the address of the emergency?

00:10:53 ◼   ► It's going to be one Apple Park Cupertino. It's going to be a medical emergency. Can

00:10:58 ◼   ► Can you verify the address of the emergency? It's going to be one Apple Parkway Cupertino.

00:11:02 ◼   ► Okay, and is that a business? Yes, it's going to be Apple Campus. It's just like it keeps

00:11:07 ◼   ► going on like this. It's really interesting to me. I don't understand. But this is obviously

00:11:13 ◼   ► just the way this person talks. And it's like, you know, I know I have my tics. I say "like"

00:11:17 ◼   ► a lot, right? But it's just fun to me to read it written down like this, because this person

00:11:23 ◼   ► just keep saying this phrase over and over again. Anyway, it's interesting. It's interesting

00:11:28 ◼   ► just because you kind of get to see the way that the protocols are, because the person

00:11:35 ◼   ► who hurts themselves is not really allowed to talk to the people. It's a security situation,

00:11:42 ◼   ► they call it. It's all really just weird, but it's there if you want to go see it.

00:11:47 ◼   ► Federico, tell us about iTunes LP.

00:11:51 ◼   ► It's 2004, everyone.

00:11:53 ◼   ► I think that yesterday this website, which is also a newspaper, I think, Metro, they

00:12:00 ◼   ► published this report based on an email that Apple was discontinuing the iTunes LP format,

00:12:07 ◼   ► which is this, I want to say, interesting experiment that Apple did.

00:12:13 ◼   ► I think it dates back to 2009, maybe?

00:12:18 ◼   ► And it was a way for artists with an album on the iTunes store.

00:12:24 ◼   ► This Metro article is so bad.

00:12:26 ◼   ► Yeah, it's terrible.

00:12:28 ◼   ► You just need to go and look at this.

00:12:31 ◼   ► It's really bad.

00:12:33 ◼   ► Like basically they don't know what iTunes LP is and they think that it means all albums

00:12:41 ◼   ► are being removed from the iTunes store.

00:12:43 ◼   ► Oh gosh, this is terrible.

00:12:48 ◼   ► The title of the story is "End of iTunes? Leaked Apple Email Sparks Fears Over Future

00:12:56 ◼   ► of Music Downloads."

00:12:58 ◼   ► Only to the Metro!

00:13:00 ◼   ► Check out the GIF, though. That's like iTunes version 6 with CoverFlow.

00:13:04 ◼   ► It's good.

00:13:05 ◼   ► I'm saving that GIF.

00:13:08 ◼   ► Never mind the source, but the story is that this format, which was a way for artists to

00:13:15 ◼   ► essentially replicate digitally the experience of buying a physical CD album.

00:13:22 ◼   ► So, using a mix of CSS,

00:13:25 ◼   ► HTML and

00:13:28 ◼   ► JavaScript, I want to say, you could offer on the desktop in iTunes these extra contents such as bonus tracks or

00:13:37 ◼   ► the... what's the name of the notes that you use to get CDs? Liner notes.

00:13:43 ◼   ► video so you could offer this basically DVD extras but for music and

00:13:48 ◼   ► I have thoughts about this. I thought it was a cool idea

00:13:51 ◼   ► but

00:13:53 ◼   ► Basically, then Apple reached out to the verge and they sent a statement

00:13:57 ◼   ► They will not be accepting new submissions for iTunes LP content the submissions for new LP content if it ever

00:14:05 ◼   ► I don't know if somebody is

00:14:07 ◼   ► Well, those are ending this month

00:14:10 ◼   ► I'm sorry to officially communicate this to you, but the existing iTunes LP albums

00:14:17 ◼   ► and your purchases will live on and you will be able to re-download them and enjoy them

00:14:21 ◼   ► only on the desktop because they're not compatible with mobile devices.

00:14:25 ◼   ► Man, that's just like... I love that, right? Like, they're gonna keep supporting it,

00:14:28 ◼   ► which means just more old code in iTunes, right? Like, just more legacy in iTunes.

00:14:35 ◼   ► That's what that means, poor iTunes.

00:14:37 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, what you gotta do, it's an old app anyway, so everything is old. And I want to say

00:14:44 ◼   ► that I'm sad because I think, and if you pay attention you could see how maybe Spotify is

00:14:50 ◼   ► sort of doing something along these lines, that the idea of being able to reach out to the super fans

00:14:58 ◼   ► of an artist and to offer, maybe even let them pay for extra content, it's something that I think

00:15:05 ◼   ► should have been adapted to the streaming era, which is something that of course Apple

00:15:09 ◼   ► never did.

00:15:10 ◼   ► But I could see how if I'm really into Fallout Boy, for example, I would love to have notes

00:15:16 ◼   ► or video or bonus tracks, stuff just for me, an interactive content that I could use within

00:15:23 ◼   ► Apple Music instead of having to search on Google or go to YouTube or something else.

00:15:28 ◼   ► I think it's a great idea for people who are really into, you know, an artist or really

00:15:33 ◼   ► into music.

00:15:34 ◼   ► But of course, how would you reconcile this with a subscription model?

00:15:39 ◼   ► And I guess that's why Apple ultimately, you know, it was a great idea launched in the

00:15:46 ◼   ► wrong time period.

00:15:48 ◼   ► That's the way that I think about it.

00:15:50 ◼   ► So what you want is a way to go into iTunes and to connect with the artist that you love.

00:15:58 ◼   ► No.

00:15:59 ◼   ► Maybe they can just put it in a tab in the iOS music app.

00:16:02 ◼   ► Yeah, and when they're ready to talk to you, they can just ping you and then you'll know

00:16:07 ◼   ► that they want to speak to you and tell you about their new releases.

00:16:12 ◼   ► So the only social feature that Apple ever got right is the current one in Apple Music

00:16:16 ◼   ► and that's it.

00:16:18 ◼   ► That's very good.

00:16:19 ◼   ► I saw something that happened to me a couple of days ago. Federico sent me a message and

00:16:22 ◼   ► he's like "there's this band that I think you would like, they're called Mount Joy"

00:16:26 ◼   ► and I was like "okay" and I saw it and I didn't get to it at that time. I opened Apple Music

00:16:30 ◼   ► an hour later and it was right there because and it had your little face on it.

00:16:34 ◼   ► And I was like oh yeah that's that album that Federico told me and then I started playing it

00:16:37 ◼   ► on my home pod. Like that is a great feature, works very well, I like it a lot, it's good.

00:16:43 ◼   ► Unless your friends have terrible music tastes then it's not so good.

00:16:45 ◼   ► Yeah, anyway, iTunes LP I think, I still think there's potential for reaching out to people who

00:16:55 ◼   ► want to support a favorite artists even on a streaming platform in different ways other

00:17:02 ◼   ► than just give us money and you listen to music. Like I would love to have notes, I

00:17:07 ◼   ► would love to have interviews, I would love to have extra content and I want to pay for

00:17:11 ◼   ► it. Or I would love to have, and this is something that I think Beats Music experimented with,

00:17:18 ◼   ► to be able to buy tickets for concerts or buy merchandising. I think it's also something

00:17:23 ◼   ► Spotify is playing with. If you go on an artist page in Spotify, you can see links to buy

00:17:29 ◼   ► merchandise on the artist's website. And I, you know, if you consider Apple as this huge

00:17:34 ◼   ► install base and they have Apple Pay, why don't you do something like that? And make

00:17:38 ◼   ► it, make it easy for people to support their favorite artists and go to see live music

00:17:42 ◼   ► and, you know, retaining people within Apple Music because it's a virtual cycle that I

00:17:47 ◼   ► think would be beneficial to everybody. But, you know, iTunes LP is not that and it's going

00:17:53 ◼   ► away so better keep all the downloads of your favorite iTunes LP contents. I think John

00:17:59 ◼   ► on MacStory is actually linked to a Wikipedia entry of all the iTunes LP albums that you

00:18:05 ◼   ► can buy on iTunes because of course somebody made that list. It's probably the intern at

00:18:09 ◼   ► Apple maintaining that Wikipedia. I'm pretty sure I have one. I don't know what it will

00:18:14 ◼   ► be but I'm sure I have one because I remember like when the feature debuted, like I remember

00:18:18 ◼   ► the Grateful Dead one that they kept showing off on stage. I don't know why I remember

00:18:23 ◼   ► that so fondly, but I know that I would have bought one because that was in that stage.

00:18:28 ◼   ► Well, I guess I'm still in that stage where I'll buy literally anything Apple will do

00:18:32 ◼   ► since that stage never ended.

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00:20:03 ◼   ► Our thanks to Hover for their support of this show. So Stephen, you wrote a little article on

00:20:09 ◼   ► your web blog 512pixels.net where you basically told the world that the home

00:20:17 ◼   ► pod is being rotated away from the kitchen because your family rebelled

00:20:20 ◼   ► against you? That's pretty much what happened. So I think I spoke on

00:20:25 ◼   ► the show that to review anything I really like I don't I need to

00:20:31 ◼   ► actually like use it and spend time with it. I'm not very good at like the like

00:20:33 ◼   ► fast like 48-hour impressions type things and so for me for the home pod

00:20:38 ◼   ► that meant unplug the echo and put the home pod where it sat in the kitchen. So

00:20:43 ◼   ► I did that after you know the first couple days I had it. It's been there

00:20:47 ◼   ► ever since. I unplugged the echo and put it in the hall closet which led to a lot

00:20:52 ◼   ► of questions about where the lady inside the echo had gone from our three-year-

00:20:56 ◼   ► old. He was very worried something bad happened to her which is something to

00:21:01 ◼   ► think about as a parent but that's not really the point today. So the home pod has

00:21:06 ◼   ► been there for three weeks and this weekend kind of all in the kitchen and someone asks

00:21:12 ◼   ► the HomePod something and it just botches it.

00:21:14 ◼   ► I forget what it was.

00:21:15 ◼   ► Some like simple request and Siri just fell down.

00:21:19 ◼   ► And just kind of all of a sudden the family is sharing with me that they really want the

00:21:23 ◼   ► Echo back in the kitchen.

00:21:26 ◼   ► And so I, you know, I didn't want a rebellion so I put the Echo back and now the HomePod

00:21:32 ◼   ► is sitting out here in the studio on the other desk just kind of sitting there looking sad

00:21:38 ◼   ► and alone.

00:21:39 ◼   ► I have a question for you as it relates to your children's use of these devices.

00:21:44 ◼   ► Do you think that there could be a point that like they grew an attachment to the Echo because

00:21:51 ◼   ► it was the first one like it was a novelty initially and now it's like that's the thing

00:21:56 ◼   ► so something different with a different voice isn't the same thing?

00:21:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so.

00:21:59 ◼   ► And Snell had said something silly

00:22:02 ◼   ► about how his kids sometimes,

00:22:03 ◼   ► or maybe it was John Sirkusa, someone,

00:22:05 ◼   ► said their kids used the wrong name.

00:22:08 ◼   ► Like for my kids--

00:22:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it was Sirkusa on ATP.

00:22:12 ◼   ► He was saying that they say the Google phrase to the HomePod.

00:22:16 ◼   ► - Right, because that wake phrase is just like

00:22:19 ◼   ► the word that you start to,

00:22:22 ◼   ► when you wanna do computer stuff with your voice.

00:22:23 ◼   ► Like that's just the word you start with.

00:22:25 ◼   ► And so yeah, that's definitely part of it.

00:22:27 ◼   ► - I do it too.

00:22:28 ◼   ► Like I say like, Alexa, when I want to trigger the HomePod,

00:22:33 ◼   ► like I do it.

00:22:35 ◼   ► So it is a thing because in my mind,

00:22:39 ◼   ► a voice command now is just started with that word.

00:22:43 ◼   ► It's not necessarily that I'm thinking about

00:22:45 ◼   ► what device I'm talking to.

00:22:47 ◼   ► It's just like when I want the lights to go on,

00:22:49 ◼   ► there is a sentence that includes that.

00:22:51 ◼   ► So like it's the whole sentence includes the Echo Wake word

00:22:55 ◼   ► as well as the command.

00:22:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I think that's definitely a factor in our case.

00:23:01 ◼   ► But really like the use cases,

00:23:04 ◼   ► and I've talked about this before,

00:23:05 ◼   ► we use the Echo for music listening,

00:23:07 ◼   ► checking the weather and news,

00:23:08 ◼   ► setting multiple timers,

00:23:09 ◼   ► and controlling like smart home stuff.

00:23:12 ◼   ► And all my smart home stuff works the same

00:23:13 ◼   ► with HomeKit or with the Echo.

00:23:15 ◼   ► And the HomePod is like way better for music listening

00:23:19 ◼   ► when Siri parses what you want correctly,

00:23:22 ◼   ► but all the rest of it, the Echo is better.

00:23:27 ◼   ► The Echo has this really cool flash briefing thing,

00:23:29 ◼   ► which by the way, it's a little plug,

00:23:32 ◼   ► we have a new show on Relay called Subnet,

00:23:34 ◼   ► which you can plug into your flash briefing

00:23:36 ◼   ► on the Amazon Echo service.

00:23:39 ◼   ► And so for me, I ask Amazon, what's the news?

00:23:42 ◼   ► It reads NPR, it plays NPR, it plays Subnet,

00:23:46 ◼   ► which is my own voice in my own kitchen,

00:23:48 ◼   ► which is kind of funny, and then plays the weather.

00:23:51 ◼   ► - And this is also on Google Home too.

00:23:53 ◼   ► - Yes, it is on Google Home.

00:23:55 ◼   ► You can do all of that stuff with the HomePod,

00:23:58 ◼   ► but you have to do them one at a time.

00:23:59 ◼   ► Like, just some of these features that have evolved

00:24:02 ◼   ► over time with the Echo, the HomePod just doesn't have.

00:24:04 ◼   ► And unfortunately, some of that stuff

00:24:07 ◼   ► is exactly what we use the Echo a lot for.

00:24:10 ◼   ► And so, for us, the sound quality,

00:24:14 ◼   ► which is way better than the Echo,

00:24:16 ◼   ► wasn't enough to offset, okay,

00:24:19 ◼   ► where all these other voice assistant type things

00:24:21 ◼   ► we want to do, the Echo does better,

00:24:23 ◼   ► it fits our needs better as a family.

00:24:26 ◼   ► And so, I don't want two of these things in my kitchen,

00:24:29 ◼   ► which is what a bunch of people said.

00:24:30 ◼   ► Like, we'll just have both.

00:24:31 ◼   ► I was like, well, that's not really an answer for us

00:24:35 ◼   ► in our kitchen, so we're gonna have one,

00:24:36 ◼   ► and we're gonna have one that music's okay, it's fine,

00:24:39 ◼   ► and it does the other voices and stuff better

00:24:42 ◼   ► than Siri does at this point.

00:24:44 ◼   ► - What about it getting better, though?

00:24:47 ◼   ► Like, this is a thing that everyone is kind of

00:24:49 ◼   ► hanging their hat on right now, and it's true, right?

00:24:52 ◼   ► that Siri can just get better.

00:24:55 ◼   ► And if Siri gets better, then you

00:24:56 ◼   ► have better hardware and competent voice assistants.

00:25:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:25:00 ◼   ► Well, there is-- I mean, people have quoted this,

00:25:03 ◼   ► but I think it was really well said by Marco

00:25:05 ◼   ► that you're buying something for what it can do today.

00:25:08 ◼   ► Don't buy it on the promise of features tomorrow.

00:25:10 ◼   ► That's really good advice as far as buying consumer electronics.

00:25:16 ◼   ► But backing up a little bit, the feedback of Siri

00:25:20 ◼   ► will get better soon, I think is extremely short sighted for a couple of reasons. One,

00:25:27 ◼   ► Siri has been less than great on Apple's most important product for years. The iPhone like

00:25:33 ◼   ► Apple is the iPhone company if you look at their bottom line, and series an important

00:25:38 ◼   ► part of the iPhone, and they haven't made real progression on it on the iPhone in a

00:25:44 ◼   ► while and there you know, I'm not saying they haven't done anything. They've made the voice

00:25:47 ◼   ► they add new domains, it is improving.

00:25:51 ◼   ► But it's not improving as rapidly as it needs to

00:25:54 ◼   ► to catch up with the Echo.

00:25:56 ◼   ► And so, I don't understand how what is surely

00:26:00 ◼   ► a low volume product sold just to Apple Music customers

00:26:05 ◼   ► is enough for Apple to completely change

00:26:08 ◼   ► their internal structure or fix whatever's broken

00:26:10 ◼   ► in the Siri team, whatever has made Siri slow to improve.

00:26:15 ◼   ► I don't think the HomePod is the magic bullet to fix that within Apple. I just don't see it.

00:26:19 ◼   ► Because if they were if they really thought Siri needed improving and

00:26:24 ◼   ► it's on the most important product your company makes like the the side button on

00:26:29 ◼   ► the iPhone 10 like is that it's like the Siri button and it also does some other stuff and

00:26:34 ◼   ► if that wasn't enough to like get Siri get like the Siri train on the right track

00:26:41 ◼   ► Then I don't think the home pod is nearly powerful enough as a lever to make that happen. Can I provide a counterpoint?

00:26:48 ◼   ► Sure, so, you know a lot of this stuff. I would assume a lot of things that get prioritized because

00:26:55 ◼   ► Apple is a company made of humans

00:26:58 ◼   ► They become prioritized when somebody important enough up the food chain

00:27:03 ◼   ► Realizes a problem. So what you're saying is my blog post will change this with no, I'm not

00:27:09 ◼   ► Unfortunately, I'm not talking about your blog post even though I'm sure it's been widely read and circulated because you're an influencer

00:27:15 ◼   ► my theory would be that like

00:27:18 ◼   ► High enough executives in Apple are probably not using Siri on their phone that often

00:27:23 ◼   ► Because I think that a lot of people that are pretty confident in technology

00:27:28 ◼   ► Tend not to use Siri on their phone like as much as they would use it in a product like the home pod

00:27:34 ◼   ► Because the home pods only interaction is via Siri

00:27:37 ◼   ► So like I would assume now that if Siri is deemed to have problems inside of Apple

00:27:44 ◼   ► They are becoming more apparent now that more employees and engineers and executives will be using the home pod as a

00:27:51 ◼   ► product and realizing some of the shortcomings firsthand, so whilst I agree that like

00:27:58 ◼   ► Logically, it doesn't make sense because Siri has been a part of basically every product that Apple shipped for the last few years

00:28:05 ◼   ► Why hasn't it gotten better?

00:28:07 ◼   ► I guess my point would be that maybe because it's not being used that much, so it kind

00:28:11 ◼   ► of gets swept under the rug.

00:28:12 ◼   ► But now that they have a device where Siri is the interface, it might prompt them to

00:28:19 ◼   ► prioritize things a little bit differently because it's right in their face when they

00:28:23 ◼   ► try and use the product and get less than, not less than stellar results, but just not

00:28:28 ◼   ► the results that they would want all the time.

00:28:30 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I think that's a really good counterpoint.

00:28:32 ◼   ► I don't know how I feel about like Apple fixes things when the boss notices like that's a I'm just gonna side

00:28:38 ◼   ► I'm just gonna put that off to the side for now. That's a really interesting competition. We should have one day

00:28:42 ◼   ► I hope they do fix it

00:28:46 ◼   ► Like I think some people took what I wrote or how I responded on Twitter to be well

00:28:51 ◼   ► He doesn't want it to improve and that's not true

00:28:53 ◼   ► Like I want Apple to be as good at this as Google and Amazon are Apple should be as good as their competitors are in

00:29:01 ◼   ► this market. This is a really important market and I hope that they can they can do it. I

00:29:06 ◼   ► just think that even if what you said is true and I think it probably is that that's not

00:29:12 ◼   ► going to be overnight. Like the people in my email saying oh just wait to WWDC and Apple

00:29:18 ◼   ► is going to have this massive overhaul. I just don't see it moving that quickly because

00:29:22 ◼   ► we have years and years of history showing that that it's not. And take something like

00:29:29 ◼   ► I'm comparing apples to oranges, but like the the Mac Pro conversation, right?

00:29:33 ◼   ► Like it takes time for these decisions to be made and it takes even longer for the work to be done.

00:29:39 ◼   ► Like I'm sure none of the three of us are anywhere near smart enough to work on this stuff.

00:29:45 ◼   ► I can't imagine the engineering that goes into it, but I hope that they do it.

00:29:52 ◼   ► Now if we're, you know, in June we're recording our post-WDC show and 2018 is the year of

00:29:59 ◼   ► Siri and Siri's like rapidly better, I don't think that means I was wrong.

00:30:04 ◼   ► I think it means that this has been going on.

00:30:07 ◼   ► That's selective.

00:30:08 ◼   ► Hear me out.

00:30:11 ◼   ► I don't think they can be as good as Amazon in the next three months.

00:30:16 ◼   ► Like that's just not possible.

00:30:20 ◼   ► If we are going to get WWDC or sometime in the fall and the HomePod is all of a sudden

00:30:24 ◼   ► way better, then that's awesome.

00:30:27 ◼   ► It means Apple has noticed this, but I think it means that it's been going on in the background

00:30:33 ◼   ► a little bit.

00:30:34 ◼   ► And then why ship the HomePod late if Siri's still back?

00:30:37 ◼   ► There's lots of questions in this.

00:30:38 ◼   ► I think the big picture is today at least, it struggles.

00:30:45 ◼   ► It struggles with some really basic things.

00:30:48 ◼   ► But it's not a nightmare.

00:30:49 ◼   ► Like Siri on the HomePod is not awful.

00:30:54 ◼   ► It's just frustrating.

00:30:55 ◼   ► And your mileage will vary.

00:30:58 ◼   ► I know y'all have them and like them.

00:31:00 ◼   ► I have one and like it.

00:31:01 ◼   ► I'm keeping it.

00:31:02 ◼   ► I'm gonna have it out here in my office.

00:31:03 ◼   ► But for our needs as a family, like as a kitchen thing,

00:31:06 ◼   ► it just, it just, I just wanted the right fit right now.

00:31:11 ◼   ► But I am keeping it because I do hope Apple fixes it.

00:31:14 ◼   ► And I think that they can and I think that they will.

00:31:17 ◼   ► just a matter of how long it's going to take.

00:31:20 ◼   ► Federico, there's something fascinating that I've noticed in the replies too, Steven. The

00:31:28 ◼   ► idea of, there's a common thread of folks on Twitter and on podcasts or websites saying

00:31:36 ◼   ► I'm sure Apple knows and they're working on this. And this is a fascinating social mechanic

00:31:42 ◼   ► to me. I've been thinking about why do people think this way? Why sort of almost sort of

00:31:48 ◼   ► analyzing the situation like why do some folks struggle to reconcile being able to like something

00:31:57 ◼   ► but also see the flaws and the mistakes in the product or in a story in whatever it is.

00:32:06 ◼   ► there's a group of like-minded individuals who they need to tell you that they are sure

00:32:21 ◼   ► that Apple knows. And I've been thinking about this, why is this such a common piece of feedback

00:32:29 ◼   ► that we get? Because whenever I point out something that is not up to my standards on iOS,

00:32:34 ◼   ► for example, I get this reply and Steven got this reply and Myke gets this reply. And the

00:32:40 ◼   ► conclusion that I've come to is that for some people, hope is sort of like a powerful sedative

00:32:49 ◼   ► in the sense that they need to know. And so they say, I'm sure that Apple knows and it's

00:32:55 ◼   ► working on this. And I wonder why that is. Why do you need that kind of conviction that,

00:33:03 ◼   ► know, Apple knows they're working on this, they got this. It's interesting to me because

00:33:07 ◼   ► it's sort of when you're having this kind of discussions on Twitter, it can be fascinating

00:33:13 ◼   ► to have this argument to get into these arguments with folks who have more of a more of an inclination

00:33:20 ◼   ► to you know, to just forgive every single mistake that Apple, that Apple does, and they

00:33:25 ◼   ► do make mistakes, you know, because they're not perfect. They're not, you know, they're

00:33:29 ◼   ► They're not gods.

00:33:31 ◼   ► They're just a really good company, I think.

00:33:32 ◼   ► But there's some stuff that needs to get better.

00:33:36 ◼   ► But that kind of reply, it sort of

00:33:38 ◼   ► defeats an entire conversation.

00:33:40 ◼   ► Because if you're sure that Apple knows,

00:33:44 ◼   ► where do we go from here?

00:33:46 ◼   ► And this is something that I wanted to bring up

00:33:48 ◼   ► a while back on the show.

00:33:49 ◼   ► I think it's always more productive when

00:33:52 ◼   ► we get into these arguments.

00:33:54 ◼   ► To offer some kind of solution, to offer some kind of,

00:33:58 ◼   ► like, how can this get better instead of saying, I'm sure it will get better

00:34:02 ◼   ► because that's just useless.

00:34:04 ◼   ► You know, for one, it's a fake hope because you have this hope.

00:34:08 ◼   ► You don't know for sure.

00:34:09 ◼   ► Because it seems logical.

00:34:11 ◼   ► But this isn't necessarily a logic situation.

00:34:15 ◼   ► You can't just assume.

00:34:17 ◼   ► Exactly. It feels like it should get better.

00:34:19 ◼   ► So it will. That's not how these things work.

00:34:21 ◼   ► Yes. Yes. And that's that's that's the fatal flaw.

00:34:25 ◼   ► And yeah, I've seen the replies to Steven.

00:34:29 ◼   ► I've been sort of following, you know, without getting into it.

00:34:33 ◼   ► I think you can like the HomePod like I do, like Myke does, I think.

00:34:37 ◼   ► I mean, I have two of them.

00:34:38 ◼   ► You like it more than most.

00:34:40 ◼   ► January, you like it more than most people do.

00:34:42 ◼   ► I like it twice than you, Myke does.

00:34:46 ◼   ► I think maybe a little bit more than that,

00:34:48 ◼   ► because you also got rid of all of your echoes.

00:34:50 ◼   ► So which does make me wonder, actually, I want to know

00:34:55 ◼   ► right? From you, what you think about the quality of Siri. Because you are in this

00:35:02 ◼   ► way more than most people that have this device because everybody else that I

00:35:06 ◼   ► know that has got a HomePod also has an Echo which they have kept plugged in and

00:35:12 ◼   ► they are probably continuing to give the majority of their like commands to

00:35:16 ◼   ► during their day. But you got rid of everything and switched over to the HomePod.

00:35:21 ◼   ► pod. Do you agree with the criticisms about the quality of Siri right now?

00:35:25 ◼   ► Well, yeah, for sure I do. I tried the other day, like I wanted to add something to my

00:35:32 ◼   ► Grocery List because we've been testing any list and it didn't work because the HomePod

00:35:38 ◼   ► still thinks that I don't have any of these SiriKit apps installed on my devices. And also,

00:35:44 ◼   ► like, there's a... I noticed that because of the current placement of the HomePod,

00:35:49 ◼   ► it's too close to my TV, and sometimes it does not understand what I'm asking, or it

00:35:56 ◼   ► thinks that I haven't stopped talking, where instead it's the TV that keeps talking, but

00:36:02 ◼   ► my request is over. So we're probably going to switch the placement to be more distant

00:36:07 ◼   ► from the TV. And yes, I mean, it doesn't take a genius to understand serious problems. Also,

00:36:15 ◼   ► You can understand that those problems exist and still like it.

00:36:20 ◼   ► Because I would say that in my experience, I never did the news briefings myself.

00:36:28 ◼   ► Because I'm not interested in US political news more than I already see them in the Italian

00:36:35 ◼   ► news.

00:36:36 ◼   ► Anyway, I listen to podcasts and stations are fine.

00:36:40 ◼   ► I listen to music and music requests have been fine for me.

00:36:45 ◼   ► And the other day I asked about like a unit conversion and it worked. I've noticed that

00:36:51 ◼   ► Sylvia is starting to, I'm talking quietly because I'm bragging, I don't want her to

00:36:57 ◼   ► listen that I'm bragging about this, but she's starting to ask questions to Siri, which is

00:37:01 ◼   ► nice because she's sort of, she's accepting her, which is cool.

00:37:08 ◼   ► Just that new roommate. Yeah, well, isn't it though? And in two rooms, so... So, I think...

00:37:23 ◼   ► She has accepted another person into our relationship.

00:37:27 ◼   ► So it's going well, but also I understand the problems and that's fine. I want to say

00:37:40 ◼   ► I'm sure that we'll get better. I'm not sure. I hope that we'll get better, but the, I think

00:37:46 ◼   ► in spite of the problems, I'm still able to enjoy it. And if I ever come to the point

00:37:51 ◼   ► where Siri is so bad, I cannot even set timers or play. Also, I should say I don't set multiple

00:37:56 ◼   ► timers so that's not a problem for me but it is for other people and I accept that and

00:38:01 ◼   ► I don't respond with "I'm sure it will get better because that's just useless" anyway

00:38:05 ◼   ► I like it I still like it and we're starting to like it as a family which is nice so yeah

00:38:12 ◼   ► I have one last thing on this it's just this is a purely like just a problem in my house

00:38:18 ◼   ► where Adina will say to me a lot "hey sir" right it's just like a joke that we've had

00:38:26 ◼   ► for a while, she'd just call me sir. But like, now, very frequently, she asks me something

00:38:33 ◼   ► and someone in the room goes "hmm?" which is what the HomePod does. It goes "hmm."

00:38:40 ◼   ► If it hears the trigger phrase but you don't give it a command, like because she might

00:38:44 ◼   ► just say it to get my attention, it just goes "hmm" in its little British accent. So that's

00:38:51 ◼   ► a little thing that keeps happening in my home, which I'm sure is a problem for anybody

00:38:54 ◼   ► whose name is Alex or something, right?

00:38:58 ◼   ► That is an issue for you because you wouldn't change the wake word because your name is

00:39:03 ◼   ► not the exact name, but every now and then it's going to get confused.

00:39:07 ◼   ► So I find it to be funny.

00:39:09 ◼   ► So that is an interesting point because on the Echo you can change the wake word and

00:39:13 ◼   ► Apple doesn't offer that.

00:39:15 ◼   ► I saw some people tweeting today that maybe it would be nice if you could change it per

00:39:19 ◼   ► device.

00:39:20 ◼   ► You could call the HomePod "Hey HomePod" and you call your phone the regular phrase,

00:39:23 ◼   ► instance because there is this issue and I'm sure y'all have seen it where for me

00:39:28 ◼   ► at least it's always my Apple watch will catch the command instead of the HomePod

00:39:32 ◼   ► like if I raise my wrist like if I'm doing something and I'm like there's this

00:39:37 ◼   ► move I can do and it confuses Siri which is hilarious and maybe it'd be nice to

00:39:42 ◼   ► have some customization at some point so you could avoid that sort of thing.

00:39:46 ◼   ► Yeah I would honestly much prefer to say hey HomePod like for this one device it

00:39:51 ◼   ► it just makes sense to me.

00:39:53 ◼   ► I don't know why, but like that in my mind

00:39:55 ◼   ► is just more of like a thing

00:39:57 ◼   ► because I'm specifically asking that device

00:40:00 ◼   ► because it's not my usual system of voice control.

00:40:05 ◼   ► Last thing, I wanna just talk about this,

00:40:08 ◼   ► the HomePod and like the little movie video thing

00:40:10 ◼   ► made by Spike Jonsie.

00:40:12 ◼   ► It features FK twigs with music from Anderson Paak.

00:40:16 ◼   ► You have to watch this video

00:40:18 ◼   ► if you have not yet watched this video.

00:40:20 ◼   ► It might be my favorite Apple ad of all time.

00:40:23 ◼   ► It is fricking unbelievable.

00:40:25 ◼   ► It is so good.

00:40:27 ◼   ► I love it.

00:40:28 ◼   ► I love the metaphors of it.

00:40:30 ◼   ► Like everything is expanding in the house

00:40:34 ◼   ► as she's listening to the music.

00:40:35 ◼   ► Like I like that, right?

00:40:36 ◼   ► Like the HomePod adds all this additional dimension.

00:40:40 ◼   ► Like I love this video so much.

00:40:44 ◼   ► It is wonderful.

00:40:45 ◼   ► If you haven't seen it, it's like four minutes long

00:40:47 ◼   ► and the music's really good.

00:40:47 ◼   ► The dance is really good.

00:40:48 ◼   ► like, and but just the visuals that it creates are really cool and feels like, I mean, like

00:40:56 ◼   ► as even the Apple website is using the kind of the colored strand visuals with the HomePod

00:41:01 ◼   ► now, I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes the template for future ads for the HomePod,

00:41:08 ◼   ► like the silhouettes became for the iPod. Like, it feels like a really strong visual

00:41:15 ◼   ► metaphor that I like a lot and it's very very unique so I really love this ad I

00:41:21 ◼   ► really really love this ad it's it's a really nice piece of filmmaking so if

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00:43:01 ◼   ► just I shudder to think what happens to suitcases once they go into once they go through that

00:43:06 ◼   ► little curtain like I don't even want to know there was a time where I could see

00:43:11 ◼   ► out of the window I like a baggage attendant sitting on a plane me and

00:43:17 ◼   ► Stephen were going to WWDC I think and I watched the baggage attendant pick up

00:43:22 ◼   ► Stevens back because they made him put it in the hold and she just threw it

00:43:26 ◼   ► over this guardrail into this basket and it was all of our audio equipment so

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00:44:17 ◼   ► So a couple of weeks ago our friend Marco wrote a, I think what the kids call a blog

00:44:22 ◼   ► post. I'm not familiar with this.

00:44:24 ◼   ► A blog. He wrote a blog. That's what he did.

00:44:27 ◼   ► It's like a tweet storm but all on one page.

00:44:29 ◼   ► It's a very confusing medium.

00:44:32 ◼   ► It's like a pod but written down.

00:44:34 ◼   ► Yes, it's a written pod.

00:44:37 ◼   ► I quit.

00:44:39 ◼   ► It's a pod storm in text.

00:44:44 ◼   ► Well done.

00:44:48 ◼   ► So in this pod storm, Marco draws some pretty harsh parallels between WatchKit apps and

00:44:57 ◼   ► And the sweet solution, if you remember this, before the iPhone had apps, Apple, Steve Jobs

00:45:05 ◼   ► said, "Hey, you've got Safari, just make web apps."

00:45:09 ◼   ► And they did this thing where you can still do it in iOS.

00:45:11 ◼   ► You can put a shortcut on your home screen to go to a website.

00:45:14 ◼   ► They called it a "sweet solution" and some other people had other names for it, which

00:45:18 ◼   ► I can't say on the air.

00:45:21 ◼   ► Wasn't super...

00:45:22 ◼   ► A sandwich of something that you shouldn't put into a sandwich.

00:45:25 ◼   ► Yes.

00:45:26 ◼   ► not ballooning I don't know and I think he's right um so basically he builds

00:45:33 ◼   ► this case of you know these apps especially in the beginning watch kit

00:45:38 ◼   ► apps were really like watch kit wasn't really an app framework you were

00:45:41 ◼   ► basically just sending data from the phone to the watch and over time it's

00:45:45 ◼   ► evolved a little bit where you can have logic running on the watch now and there

00:45:49 ◼   ► are some good examples of watch apps but I think it's safe to say that most of

00:45:54 ◼   ► them are pretty limited and there's a lot of stuff that the watch just can't do or can

00:46:01 ◼   ► do if you're Apple but that's not in the frameworks that third party developers can use and basically

00:46:07 ◼   ► his point is WatchKit only lets developers create baby apps.

00:46:13 ◼   ► They're not sort of these full featured like rich apps we've gotten so used to on iOS over

00:46:17 ◼   ► the years, that comparatively watch apps are very simple, very buggy, very limited.

00:46:23 ◼   ► And they got me thinking, and I want to see what we all use on our watches, app-wise,

00:46:31 ◼   ► and what we think about the watch as an app platform and what Apple should do to maybe

00:46:38 ◼   ► evolve it in the future.

00:46:40 ◼   ► I don't use a lot of watch apps.

00:46:44 ◼   ► I love my Apple Watch, but like I was going through this list and seriously the only two

00:46:50 ◼   ► third-party apps that I use on a regular basis are Shazam, which is ironic because it's

00:46:55 ◼   ► technically kind of owned by Apple, and Workouts++ by Underscore. These are the two apps that I use

00:47:04 ◼   ► like every day I would say. There's also the Apple Breathe app, which is another third-party

00:47:10 ◼   ► app but it's a native watch app that I use and sometimes I check the weather in Carrot

00:47:17 ◼   ► and I check things off in things but I really don't do that often. I mostly use my... I've

00:47:26 ◼   ► become one of those people who say I use my watch for notifications and workouts. I mean

00:47:31 ◼   ► the Apple watch is essential for me now for fitness and all that kind of stuff but I never

00:47:38 ◼   ► go to the home screen, I keep very basic complications. I don't switch watch faces. In fact, I remove

00:47:46 ◼   ► all the other watch faces because I don't want to switch them accidentally. I only keep

00:47:50 ◼   ► one alternative workout-based watch face and that's it.

00:47:54 ◼   ► Oh man, you've got to have a kaleidoscope face just for the funsies.

00:47:58 ◼   ► No, I don't. I'm not fun in that way. I stick to very basic stuff. So yeah, it's

00:48:08 ◼   ► not an app platform for me, which is a shame, but also I think it should be an app platform.

00:48:14 ◼   ► I don't think my usage of the watch justifies the state that it is right now. I would love to use

00:48:25 ◼   ► more apps, but it's just inconvenient and all the other apps that I've tried are slow or they just

00:48:32 ◼   ► haven't been really thought for the watch form factor and I would love to have like

00:48:38 ◼   ► a native overcast but that's not possible. I would love to have like a native home kit

00:48:43 ◼   ► app that can do all kinds of stuff in the background but that's also not possible I

00:48:48 ◼   ► think. I would love to have more apps that make sense for the watch but developers can

00:48:53 ◼   ► make them and so the fact that I use my Apple Watch primarily for fitness and notifications

00:49:00 ◼   ► means that's all I can do realistically right now but I would love to do more.

00:49:06 ◼   ► I think I use more watch apps than most people do. I don't specifically know why

00:49:14 ◼   ► but I use, I mean I use a bunch of the built-in ones right so I use mail and

00:49:19 ◼   ► the timer app, the home app, the nail playing app, these are all in my dock by

00:49:24 ◼   ► the way all of the apps that I use are in my dock, messages and then I use a

00:49:28 ◼   ► a bunch of third-party apps so I use Dew, Workouts++, JustPressRecord, Bear,

00:49:33 ◼   ► Fantastic Howl and Carrot Weather and they are all used very frequently like I

00:49:38 ◼   ► will use each of these applications multiple times a week some of them

00:49:42 ◼   ► multiple times a day and I would like a lot of them to be better but I've mostly

00:49:49 ◼   ► accepted a lot of the frustrations that come with using these applications now

00:49:55 ◼   ► But I would love it if I could have more like I would like to have like an

00:50:02 ◼   ► overcast app. I would like to have a due app that didn't get really upset when it

00:50:08 ◼   ► was trying to be done when the phone is not attached to it because it's trying

00:50:11 ◼   ► to do the processing somehow like the processing of the voice

00:50:17 ◼   ► recognition stuff is not that good on LTE and I don't know what it is that's

00:50:22 ◼   ► happening, I don't know what the difference is, whether it's trying to do more of it

00:50:25 ◼   ► in the cloud or whatever, I don't know.

00:50:27 ◼   ► But yeah, I think that I use these applications more than most people do, but, and I'm,

00:50:34 ◼   ► you know, it's not amazing, I don't get frustrated about it specifically, I just

00:50:40 ◼   ► get frustrated when things don't work, but a lot of the time, they do work.

00:50:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I think I'm probably closer to Federico on this scale.

00:50:49 ◼   ► I was looking through my watch and really the only third party apps I use on any sort

00:50:52 ◼   ► of regular basis are Carrot Weather, do Strava to start recording bike rides, so that's

00:51:00 ◼   ► not every day but at least once a week, and then Todoist just to kind of check on things,

00:51:05 ◼   ► check things off.

00:51:07 ◼   ► None of those apps I'm doing really any entry into.

00:51:11 ◼   ► It's mostly like status and checking things off and just kind of glancing in on things.

00:51:17 ◼   ► Most of these are really glorified notifications, or maybe interactive notifications as opposed

00:51:22 ◼   ► to a full, rich system.

00:51:25 ◼   ► Really Carrot Weather, which I think we all three mentioned and use, I think is probably

00:51:29 ◼   ► by far the best watch OS app that I've got installed.

00:51:33 ◼   ► But even it feels limited.

00:51:35 ◼   ► Even on the Series 3, it can be a little sluggish at times, and it feels very basic.

00:51:40 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:51:41 ◼   ► Like I said, I think it's best in class.

00:51:43 ◼   ► But I think it really shows that even if you really work really hard on a really good developer,

00:51:48 ◼   ► it's still going to have some limitations to it.

00:51:52 ◼   ► And when I read Marco's thing, he wrote it like a week and a half ago now, I found myself

00:51:57 ◼   ► in agreement and I still agree with what he said.

00:52:00 ◼   ► And I was like, "Yeah, Apple should fix it."

00:52:03 ◼   ► I think some other people said, "Just get rid of apps and just do notifications and

00:52:06 ◼   ► stuff."

00:52:07 ◼   ► And I don't know what the answer is.

00:52:08 ◼   ► I don't think getting rid of apps is the answer.

00:52:10 ◼   ► I think Apple is well within their,

00:52:13 ◼   ► you know what I'm talking about earlier,

00:52:15 ◼   ► they have the ability to improve this.

00:52:16 ◼   ► I think in the beginning it was very hardware constrained.

00:52:20 ◼   ► That original watch was very slow.

00:52:23 ◼   ► The Series 3 is a world apart as far as performance.

00:52:27 ◼   ► And so I'm hoping that as this hardware evolves

00:52:30 ◼   ► that the software catches up.

00:52:31 ◼   ► Because I don't think the watch is ever going to be

00:52:35 ◼   ► what Kevin Lynch initially demoed in that first keynote

00:52:38 ◼   ► of I'm doing everything that I used to do on my phone

00:52:40 ◼   ► my watch. A, I don't think anybody really wants that, and B, I just don't think it's

00:52:45 ◼   ► super within the realm of reality that people are going to stop carrying their phone. Even

00:52:50 ◼   ► with an LTE watch, I still carry my phone everywhere. But clearly they could improve

00:52:56 ◼   ► it, and I think that for the two or three or five apps that most people have and use

00:53:04 ◼   ► on a regular basis, that should be better than it is. My guess is this will continue

00:53:09 ◼   ► to improve, but other stuff is just going to take some time.

00:53:14 ◼   ► As someone who is not a developer, I don't know what the actual limitations are. I don't

00:53:18 ◼   ► know what is causing what. I don't know what an application could do if it could use the

00:53:23 ◼   ► frameworks that Apple uses, right? Because that seems to be the problem, is that Apple's

00:53:27 ◼   ► apps are better because they're not using WatchKit. They're using some frameworks that

00:53:32 ◼   ► Apple apps use, right? So they're able to take advantage of things differently. So my

00:53:37 ◼   ► My feeling is if developers feel like they need a better system to make their apps better,

00:53:43 ◼   ► then yeah I want them to have it and that would be great.

00:53:46 ◼   ► But I don't think that getting rid of applications completely is a good idea.

00:53:50 ◼   ► I actually think it's a bad idea because I use applications on my watch every day.

00:53:57 ◼   ► Just because some people don't use them or some people don't use the watches at all,

00:54:01 ◼   ► I don't think that means they should completely can it.

00:54:03 ◼   ► Should they make it better?

00:54:04 ◼   ► Yes definitely.

00:54:05 ◼   ► But the idea of the Apple Watch just being a thing that you can just get information

00:54:10 ◼   ► from, I think over time I've started to move away from that a little bit because of the

00:54:14 ◼   ► LTE watch.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Like the LTE watch enables me to treat my watch like it's a little computer sometimes.

00:54:21 ◼   ► Like when I'm at the gym or whatever, like I actually don't have my phone with me and

00:54:26 ◼   ► I can do a lot of things on my watch and I want that stuff to get better because I do

00:54:31 ◼   ► see a potential for this watch to be like a mini computer that just does what I need it to do

00:54:36 ◼   ► without having to have a thing where I can check on my feeds, right? But like I can check an email

00:54:42 ◼   ► if I need to, I can send a text if I want to, I can check the weather, I can get this like basic

00:54:46 ◼   ► information from it, but it just giving me information isn't necessarily what I want.

00:54:51 ◼   ► Sometimes I want to be able to act on the thing too and I don't think that getting rid of all of

00:54:56 ◼   ► that stuff is a good idea. I think it's a bad idea and I actually think that it would be a detriment

00:55:00 ◼   ► to the watch overall. I would love to see this stuff get better because I would like to see more

00:55:05 ◼   ► complex and more full featured applications but I don't think that scrapping it is a good idea.

00:55:11 ◼   ► I think it's a bad idea and I actually do believe that Apple... I am more... I actually believe more

00:55:19 ◼   ► that they're more likely to improve watchOS than they are to improve Siri at a fast rate.

00:55:23 ◼   ► It's because Siri's been around for so long right at this point. Yeah and Apple's really good at

00:55:29 ◼   ► frameworks and like system software and API stuff and Siri,

00:55:34 ◼   ► assumedly, is a very different problem set than like

00:55:38 ◼   ► building tools for developers to build on top of an OS. That's Apple's bread and butter.

00:55:41 ◼   ► Especially when like a lot of the tools already exist but they're just being

00:55:44 ◼   ► used internally

00:55:46 ◼   ► Well, it feels easier to like fix up some of that stuff to release

00:55:51 ◼   ► to developers than it would be to like fix a problem that they seem to have not

00:55:55 ◼   ► been able to completely fix

00:55:57 ◼   ► For the last six years or something. So yeah

00:56:00 ◼   ► I really hope that there is more that will be shown in the future on watchOS

00:56:05 ◼   ► Like I really hope that it's gonna continue because like year over year watch OS has gotten so much better

00:56:10 ◼   ► but

00:56:12 ◼   ► maybe the the things that they're opening up for

00:56:16 ◼   ► Developers hasn't been as strong

00:56:19 ◼   ► but it would make me very sad if

00:56:22 ◼   ► Apps went away completely. I think that that is a bad move

00:56:26 ◼   ► So I you mentioned the LTE watch and I wanted to say that it's been well like

00:56:32 ◼   ► more than five months and I think it's just ridiculous that we still have no news as to and

00:56:41 ◼   ► If ever the the Apple watch with LTE will become available in more countries

00:56:46 ◼   ► So I'm pretty happy with my decision to buy a series 3

00:56:50 ◼   ► standard Wi-Fi watch a few months ago because otherwise I would still be waiting and

00:56:55 ◼   ► I really like my Series 3 watch. It's faster, the battery lasts forever, but I

00:57:00 ◼   ► would love to have the LTE version and I think it's super strange that we have no confirmation by Apple whatsoever.

00:57:09 ◼   ► So that's too bad.

00:57:12 ◼   ► Whilst we're on this train, like Apple Pay Cash, all that kind of stuff, like

00:57:17 ◼   ► These are like, should be really important things that seem to be very slowly if at all

00:57:22 ◼   ► moving out and I really want to see stuff like that start to expand a little bit more.

00:57:26 ◼   ► I don't know what's going on recently but like Apple seem to be not being as good as

00:57:30 ◼   ► they have been in the past about international rollouts and expansions for new things.

00:57:35 ◼   ► So I would like to see that.

00:57:36 ◼   ► There's a whole page I think on the Apple website that lists all of the features by

00:57:44 ◼   ► country and someone a while back they asked me to compile like a full article about all

00:57:50 ◼   ► the regional differences of iOS features which I think is a super fascinating story that

00:57:54 ◼   ► I just haven't had the time to get to.

00:57:57 ◼   ► But even if you consider stuff like indoor mapping or lane guidance in Apple Maps, those

00:58:03 ◼   ► features are not available for me at all.

00:58:05 ◼   ► So they're literally impossible to test unless, I mean, I can look up a mall or an airport

00:58:11 ◼   ► in the US maps, I will need to go for a driving session in the UK to test lane guidance, which

00:58:18 ◼   ► is unfeasible, to say the least. You also drive on the wrong side, so that's also...

00:58:25 ◼   ► You can drive my car anytime you come to Memphis.

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01:00:24 ◼   ► So there's rumors, there's a lot of rumors going on right now.

01:00:28 ◼   ► They're like kind of small round-uppy product type things which is kind of leading to two

01:00:34 ◼   ► trains of thought.

01:00:35 ◼   ► Are we going to see some kind of probably pretty chill Apple event maybe at the campus

01:00:41 ◼   ► sometime within the next month or two or are we going to get a bunch of press releases?

01:00:46 ◼   ► So there are a few different selections of products, some new rumors, some old rumors,

01:00:52 ◼   ► but let's run through some of the things that could find their way into a potential event.

01:00:57 ◼   ► So the first off is new iPads.

01:01:00 ◼   ► So we spoke a couple of weeks ago about these cheaper iPads, so kind of like a refresh to

01:01:05 ◼   ► the current iPad situation that is existing right now, like the 329 one.

01:01:11 ◼   ► So that looks like it would make its way in, but kind of nothing else, right?

01:01:14 ◼   ► There's not going to be a new iPad Pro in March.

01:01:17 ◼   ► In fact, there were rumors today kind of trying to detail what the new iPads could look like

01:01:24 ◼   ► later on this year.

01:01:25 ◼   ► Federico, what are these features? What are we looking like to get from the iPad Pro line

01:01:31 ◼   ► later on this year?

01:01:33 ◼   ► So it looks like we're gonna get the iPads with Face ID and therefore there will be some

01:01:41 ◼   ► kind of bezel, not bezel free, but you know, sort of edge to edge design like on the iPhone

01:01:51 ◼   ► I suppose, and no home button, again just like the iPhone X, and there will be both

01:01:57 ◼   ► again a 10.5 inch and a 12.9 inch iPad Pro models, and the latest rumors from today,

01:02:05 ◼   ► they say that Apple will make an announcement at WWDC again, so just like last year, and

01:02:12 ◼   ► maybe some kind of update to the Apple Pencil, although it's not clear what kind of feature

01:02:16 ◼   ► will get on the new Apple Pencil. And no, based on this report from Rosenblatt Securities

01:02:23 ◼   ► shared today.

01:02:24 ◼   ► Who is that person?

01:02:26 ◼   ► It's called Rosenblatt Securities. The analyst's name is Jun Zhang. And yeah, no details as

01:02:37 ◼   ► to whether there also will be a smart keyboard or a new smart cover. Just, you know, iPad

01:02:44 ◼   ► Pro with Face ID. So that's pretty cool, but I don't think it's ready for March.

01:02:48 ◼   ► Yeah, that... I mean, I would still be surprised if that is in June even. Like, I would be

01:02:53 ◼   ► really happy to get more new hardware, but that would be a surprise to me. But it would

01:02:57 ◼   ► make me feel a lot better about no new software features. Get a new fancy iPad. Yay! Sure,

01:03:04 ◼   ► okay. Yes. So I guess that device would probably get a little bit physically smaller, maybe?

01:03:12 ◼   ► that would be nice. Maybe? I don't know, I mean the bezels are already really thin on the 10 inch.

01:03:16 ◼   ► On the 12.9 that would be especially welcome because the bezels are still huge. Yeah. So

01:03:25 ◼   ► so does this this room has both both devices? That would be cool. I mean I would really like that 12.9

01:03:33 ◼   ► with either... I wonder if it would be a bigger screen, like it would actually be bigger than 12.9

01:03:39 ◼   ► or if change the form factor, I thought about the physical form factor.

01:03:42 ◼   ► And I think personally, I would prefer keep this form factor the same

01:03:47 ◼   ► and give me an even bigger screen.

01:03:49 ◼   ► But what they're probably going to do is is just bring the device

01:03:52 ◼   ► in kind of like squeeze it in.

01:03:54 ◼   ► I think so. I don't see that would be also pretty cool.

01:03:57 ◼   ► I'd like that to.

01:03:57 ◼   ► What else do we have on this rumor list?

01:04:00 ◼   ► What about the iPhone?

01:04:03 ◼   ► I see, too. I think we talked about this a while back.

01:04:07 ◼   ► the idea of Apple doing a follow up to this phone, right?

01:04:11 ◼   ► I think it's been popular enough that they'll do it, but it's kind of there's

01:04:14 ◼   ► there are a lot of conflicting thoughts about what this device will get.

01:04:18 ◼   ► So there were like a lot of different rumors from different analyst firms.

01:04:21 ◼   ► And I think a lot of this stuff is just speculation, but it's informed speculation.

01:04:25 ◼   ► Some people are saying there will be significant changes

01:04:28 ◼   ► and some people are saying there won't be significant changes.

01:04:31 ◼   ► I think personally, I lean towards the not significant change area.

01:04:36 ◼   ► I think it would be really nice to see a small version, like a really small version of an

01:04:42 ◼   ► iPhone X, right?

01:04:43 ◼   ► Like it has all the iPhone X guts in it and Face ID and stuff like that, but I don't see

01:04:47 ◼   ► it.

01:04:48 ◼   ► I think kind of just like maybe a new processor and some other little bumps here and there,

01:04:53 ◼   ► but I don't foresee a super fancy future for the iPhone SE2 at least this year.

01:05:01 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:05:03 ◼   ► I don't know why would Apple make a mini iPhone X where the iPhone X is still the latest version.

01:05:10 ◼   ► I mean when they did the iPhone SE, the iPhone 5 design was already passed, I think.

01:05:16 ◼   ► So I don't think that that will happen.

01:05:19 ◼   ► And a huge part of the SE is the price.

01:05:23 ◼   ► It starts at like $349 in the US and to keep that price down, the easiest way to do that

01:05:29 ◼   ► I would think would be to upgrade the internals but leave the case and the machining and everything

01:05:34 ◼   ► else alone. If they invest in it to make it a tiny iPhone 10, just knowing other things

01:05:40 ◼   ► about Apple, I just don't know how they do that and then keep the price where it is.

01:05:47 ◼   ► Those two things feel like they're in big conflict to me.

01:05:49 ◼   ► What about this MacBook Air rumor that we're going to get a cheaper model? Is this interesting?

01:05:56 ◼   ► I think it is.

01:05:57 ◼   ► You know, the MacBook Air assumedly exists to hit a price point.

01:06:02 ◼   ► It starts at $999.

01:06:04 ◼   ► The 12-inch MacBook is $1299, so there's a bit of a gap there.

01:06:10 ◼   ► And my feeling is, just from talking to people and talking to listeners and readers, my guess

01:06:17 ◼   ► is the MacBook Air still sells really well.

01:06:19 ◼   ► Yes, the CPU in it is pretty old at this point,

01:06:23 ◼   ► but I think people looking to spend a grand

01:06:29 ◼   ► or especially less on a notebook,

01:06:33 ◼   ► like I don't know if that's the biggest priority to them,

01:06:38 ◼   ► to have the newest CPU.

01:06:40 ◼   ► So this rumor is weird 'cause it just says a price drop.

01:06:43 ◼   ► People have attached all their hopes and dreams

01:06:46 ◼   ► for the MacBook Air to this rumor.

01:06:48 ◼   ► I don't think it's gonna get a Retina display.

01:06:51 ◼   ► I don't think it's gonna get Thunderbolt 3 probably

01:06:54 ◼   ► unless it's just, if they upgrade the CPU

01:06:56 ◼   ► then maybe that comes along with it.

01:06:58 ◼   ► But I think at the very least we could see an 899

01:07:01 ◼   ► or even a 799 according to a rumor today, MacBook Air.

01:07:06 ◼   ► And I think a 799 MacBook Air,

01:07:09 ◼   ► even if it doesn't get any CPU increase,

01:07:13 ◼   ► I still think it would sell really well

01:07:15 ◼   ► because it's big for students,

01:07:17 ◼   ► It's big for people who just need a Mac

01:07:19 ◼   ► and don't have the budget for something nicer.

01:07:21 ◼   ► And for people who buy them in bulk,

01:07:23 ◼   ► a lot of MacBook Airs still get passed out

01:07:26 ◼   ► within businesses as part of large deployments.

01:07:28 ◼   ► And so a 7.99 retail price, if you're education

01:07:32 ◼   ► or buying in bulk is maybe 7.49 or 6.99,

01:07:37 ◼   ► that is really interesting to me.

01:07:40 ◼   ► That would be by far the cheapest notebook

01:07:42 ◼   ► Apple's ever sold, and I think it would continue

01:07:45 ◼   ► to sell well at that price.

01:07:46 ◼   ► So maybe this is March, maybe it's later, maybe there's a CPU update, but my gut says

01:07:52 ◼   ► it's more or less the same machine it is now, but noticeably cheaper.

01:07:57 ◼   ► And I think even at $899, I think that's a lower enough price that I think more people

01:08:04 ◼   ► would look at it, maybe switching to the Mac for the first time.

01:08:09 ◼   ► The Mac Mini, to bring up Apple's other old machine, when it was announced, it was really

01:08:15 ◼   ► cheap and part of that that pitch was hey if you want to switch to the Mac

01:08:18 ◼   ► this is the easiest way to do it because it's super cheap and you just plug all

01:08:20 ◼   ► your stuff into it well people don't use desktops anymore these notebooks and

01:08:24 ◼   ► Apple doesn't really have a switcher notebook anymore I think the MacBook was

01:08:28 ◼   ► supposed to be that but until they can bring the price down it's not and you

01:08:34 ◼   ► know something $799 $899 somewhere in there competes with a lot of you know

01:08:39 ◼   ► mid-range PC notebooks I think it'd be interesting I hope they do it so I have

01:08:45 ◼   ► a question for you right because I don't know this I know that like the some of

01:08:50 ◼   ► the older iPads and some of the older iPhones sticking around in the iOS line

01:08:55 ◼   ► there were like a lot of complaints that those devices were holding back iOS and

01:09:00 ◼   ► it was like making it difficult for developers because they had to keep

01:09:04 ◼   ► targeting for these slow under the phone like the i-5 processor hung around

01:09:08 ◼   ► forever. Is this the same on the Mac? Like is this the same kind of problem? I don't

01:09:13 ◼   ► I don't think it is at this point. The system requirements for Mac OS High Sierra

01:09:20 ◼   ► go back all the way to like some 2009 machines and the rest of it

01:09:27 ◼   ► kind of like 2010. So you're talking about machines that are seven years old

01:09:32 ◼   ► can still run High Sierra. They might not run it great. I've run High Sierra on

01:09:36 ◼   ► some of these older machines, and honestly if you put an SSD in them, it's more or less

01:09:40 ◼   ► fine.

01:09:41 ◼   ► So I don't think they're at that point quite yet, because the MacBook Air that is for sale

01:09:46 ◼   ► today, if you walk in Apple Store right now and buying a MacBook Air, it's really basically

01:09:52 ◼   ► from 2015.

01:09:54 ◼   ► And so I think they're well within that sort of margin of acceptable performance.

01:09:58 ◼   ► So I don't really worry about that with the MacBook Air at this point.

01:10:03 ◼   ► So if we were going to look at, so we got these, right? Refreshing the iPad, refreshing

01:10:07 ◼   ► the iPhone SE2, a price drop in the MacBook Air, and if there was going to be an event

01:10:12 ◼   ► or like a big kind of PR thing, it would probably also include AirPower and some refreshed watch

01:10:18 ◼   ► bands and cases. This isn't an event, is it? Like this doesn't feel like an event. I can't

01:10:24 ◼   ► imagine somebody getting on stage for this selection of things.

01:10:28 ◼   ► No, I mean you still need the big product. If you're making an event, especially Apple

01:10:34 ◼   ► is under so much scrutiny from the entire industry, you cannot make an event to announce

01:10:40 ◼   ► a cheaper MacBook Air and a wireless charging mat and a bunch of bands for your watch and

01:10:47 ◼   ► iPhone SE. It just feels like...

01:10:49 ◼   ► Like these will all be welcome products but they are press release products.

01:10:54 ◼   ► It feels, yeah, it would be like a press release event, like a bunch of minor products all

01:10:59 ◼   ► clustered together with people getting on stage to repeat their specs and prices. Like

01:11:05 ◼   ► it would be a boring event, unless there's a surprise of some kind, but I don't think

01:11:11 ◼   ► we've seen any mentions of surprises coming.

01:11:16 ◼   ► The only thing that I think could slot in here, but there are no rumors of it and it's

01:11:19 ◼   ► not expected would be a new Apple watch. Right? Like I feel like if there was a new version of the

01:11:24 ◼   ► Apple watch, you could maybe make that the headliner and then do this other stuff. But I don't think

01:11:28 ◼   ► that we're due for that. No, like I don't think that that's going to come. But like that, that

01:11:32 ◼   ► feels like it's something that could fit in here, which is outside of the usual kind of flow of the

01:11:38 ◼   ► events. But I don't think we're ready for that even. No, because that was refreshed in September.

01:11:43 ◼   ► So, exactly.

01:11:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I want to buy a bunch of

01:11:47 ◼   ► AirPower mats when they come out

01:11:49 ◼   ► because I'm really looking forward

01:11:51 ◼   ► to that. And also, I suppose the

01:11:53 ◼   ► updated AirPods with

01:11:55 ◼   ► the case, because I just assume that

01:11:57 ◼   ► Apple is launching the AirPower mat

01:11:58 ◼   ► and the new AirPod

01:12:00 ◼   ► case together.

01:12:02 ◼   ► So, yeah, I think that that won't

01:12:04 ◼   ► just be the case. Like, I think it

01:12:06 ◼   ► will be that those rumored refreshed

01:12:08 ◼   ► AirPods. Like, I think it would be

01:12:09 ◼   ► really weird for them to just

01:12:11 ◼   ► release the case. I know that they

01:12:12 ◼   ► will release the case as a separate

01:12:13 ◼   ► that you can buy for your existing ones, which is fine. But like at this point, I feel like

01:12:17 ◼   ► they could probably, they probably have some Any AirPods update nearly ready and who even

01:12:22 ◼   ► knows where AirPower is, right? So it's like they may as well just wait and do those two

01:12:26 ◼   ► things together. So there's one thing that I wanted to talk about. I'm going to start,

01:12:34 ◼   ► this is the point where in our notes we have something that says Federico's surprise story,

01:12:41 ◼   ► which the guys have no idea what I'm talking about and there are no notes.

01:12:47 ◼   ► Federica really likes to do this. He really likes to tell us like three days before the

01:12:52 ◼   ► show "I have a secret surprise story for you" and then that's it.

01:12:56 ◼   ► Because I feel like the surprise brings out the interesting questions in you Myke because

01:13:03 ◼   ► you really react positively to the surprise and it makes for a good show. So that's why

01:13:08 ◼   ► I do it.

01:13:11 ◼   ► So, I'm gonna start from the main problem that happened. Now, I don't want you to

01:13:19 ◼   ► be concerned, but I lost everything on my Synology.

01:13:24 ◼   ► What? Okay, hang on a second. Hang on a second. We need to go back a little bit to last weekend,

01:13:30 ◼   ► I think, here, from my perspective of Federico sending us a message that said, "I lost

01:13:37 ◼   ► the drive on my Synology, but like, as you said, thank God for RAID 1 or something, you

01:13:43 ◼   ► were super proud of something you set up, so I'm expecting that that is how this story

01:13:48 ◼   ► begins.

01:13:49 ◼   ► So, yes, a couple of weeks ago, in the middle of the night, Sylvia and I, we start hearing

01:13:58 ◼   ► this loud beep sound, and it just wouldn't stop. It's like, what is going on here? All

01:14:06 ◼   ► all our devices were set to silent, and the sound was coming from the living room, so

01:14:12 ◼   ► I go to the living room and I look around and I realize the beep is coming from the

01:14:17 ◼   ► Synology, which is this home server that we were using to store personal backups and our

01:14:24 ◼   ► TV show episodes and movies. And so I log into the Synology web interface, and it says

01:14:33 ◼   ► that one of the drives had failed. And it was like 1am, I didn't want to look into it.

01:14:41 ◼   ► I was like, I'm just going to turn the beep sound off and think about this tomorrow.

01:14:46 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, you can't do that. That's wild.

01:14:48 ◼   ► I don't want to deal with file system issues in the middle of that.

01:14:54 ◼   ► Speak for yourself.

01:14:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean…

01:14:56 ◼   ► I live for that.

01:14:57 ◼   ► - That's what you like to do.

01:15:00 ◼   ► So what I'm about to share is gonna drive some folks,

01:15:05 ◼   ► especially those who like to debug file system problems,

01:15:10 ◼   ► really upset because my course of action

01:15:14 ◼   ► has been really different

01:15:15 ◼   ► from what those people might expect.

01:15:18 ◼   ► So the following day I log into the Synology

01:15:22 ◼   ► and everything is super slow for some reason.

01:15:24 ◼   ► and it says volume one is degraded.

01:15:27 ◼   ► It's like, what does it even mean?

01:15:29 ◼   ► First of all, what is volume one?

01:15:33 ◼   ► That was my question.

01:15:34 ◼   ► It's like, what does it mean that it's degraded?

01:15:36 ◼   ► This complex terminology, which I really don't like.

01:15:39 ◼   ► And everything starts being super slow

01:15:42 ◼   ► to the point where I cannot even open the system preferences

01:15:46 ◼   ► to change settings.

01:15:48 ◼   ► It just, it would not respond.

01:15:50 ◼   ► And it starts beeping again,

01:15:53 ◼   ► but I cannot open the settings to turn the beep sound off.

01:15:55 ◼   ► - Where are these settings?

01:15:56 ◼   ► I've never used a Synology.

01:15:57 ◼   ► What device are you using?

01:15:59 ◼   ► - It's, so the Synology runs like a fork of Linux.

01:16:05 ◼   ► - So this is all on it.

01:16:06 ◼   ► You're like trying to do with it on it.

01:16:08 ◼   ► - And this is all on it.

01:16:09 ◼   ► And you log into the web interface

01:16:13 ◼   ► using like a local IP address.

01:16:15 ◼   ► And you have this Linux interface,

01:16:17 ◼   ► which has been modified by Synology.

01:16:19 ◼   ► And you turn the beep sound off

01:16:21 ◼   ► by opening like some kind of preference screen.

01:16:25 ◼   ► And it says, "Turn system over."

01:16:27 ◼   ► - Turn off the beep.

01:16:28 ◼   ► - So that, turn off the damn beep

01:16:32 ◼   ► because I really don't wanna hear.

01:16:33 ◼   ► And it wasn't working.

01:16:36 ◼   ► So everything was unresponsive.

01:16:38 ◼   ► And I was trying to use an interface

01:16:42 ◼   ► in the volume manager thing

01:16:45 ◼   ► to understand what was going on.

01:16:48 ◼   ► And it just wouldn't work.

01:16:50 ◼   ► And I start doing some googling around.

01:16:53 ◼   ► And everybody's recommending that you install Linux

01:16:58 ◼   ► and you do this manually.

01:16:59 ◼   ► Like you understand what is going on with the file system,

01:17:04 ◼   ► which is x4.

01:17:08 ◼   ► I didn't even know what it means.

01:17:10 ◼   ► This is like-- it sounds like a John Syracuse nightmare,

01:17:13 ◼   ► but it's a bunch of terms that I don't understand.

01:17:18 ◼   ► So what I do is I text Steven and I'm like,

01:17:21 ◼   ► so let's assume that I have a SATA drive,

01:17:26 ◼   ► like a 3.5 inch drive,

01:17:28 ◼   ► and I need to access the contents of this drive.

01:17:30 ◼   ► What do I do?

01:17:32 ◼   ► And Steven tells me, well, you need an adapter

01:17:34 ◼   ► and you need to, and I was like, does this work?

01:17:37 ◼   ► So I send him like a screenshot or a link

01:17:39 ◼   ► and it's like, yeah, it should work.

01:17:42 ◼   ► So I talked to my girlfriend and I'm like,

01:17:44 ◼   ► I guess we should somehow extract

01:17:47 ◼   ► The contents of the drives, at least the one that is working,

01:17:52 ◼   ► and at least try to salvage this situation

01:17:56 ◼   ► and maybe reinstall the Synology OS from scratch.

01:17:59 ◼   ► We make a backup of the drive and then we reinstall

01:18:02 ◼   ► and we hope that the issue goes away.

01:18:04 ◼   ► So we go to the electronics store and I buy this adapter.

01:18:09 ◼   ► But I don't look on the description on the package,

01:18:12 ◼   ► that was my fault.

01:18:13 ◼   ► So I come back home and I connect this adapter,

01:18:17 ◼   ► but it wasn't adapt.

01:18:18 ◼   ► So the SATA connector is the same,

01:18:20 ◼   ► but if you have a 3.5 inch drive,

01:18:22 ◼   ► instead of a 2.5 inch drive,

01:18:25 ◼   ► just the adapter itself will not power the drive on.

01:18:28 ◼   ► - People ask me why I don't bother

01:18:30 ◼   ► with network attack storage.

01:18:32 ◼   ► - Hold on, hold on.

01:18:34 ◼   ► So the drive will not spin.

01:18:37 ◼   ► It will not make a sound.

01:18:38 ◼   ► And I was holding my ear against the drive to hear

01:18:41 ◼   ► if it was actually spinning, but it was not spinning.

01:18:43 ◼   ► So I was like, I text Steven again.

01:18:46 ◼   ► It's like, it does not turn on.

01:18:49 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, you may need like some external power source.

01:18:52 ◼   ► So I go on Amazon.

01:18:55 ◼   ► And the adapter and the whole box

01:18:58 ◼   ► is beyond the state of being returned

01:19:01 ◼   ► to the electronics store at this point.

01:19:02 ◼   ► Like, I think I opened it using scissors or something.

01:19:05 ◼   ► Like, it was like the package was entirely destroyed.

01:19:08 ◼   ► And it was like a 10-year-old adapter, so whatever.

01:19:10 ◼   ► I just keep the adapter.

01:19:11 ◼   ► I don't want to go to the store.

01:19:13 ◼   ► So I go on Amazon and I buy a docking station, which is like this, it's like this, it's like

01:19:22 ◼   ► this cradled thing where you put drives in and it's got a power. It's like a cable that

01:19:30 ◼   ► goes into the wall and it powers the drives and you connect them. So I wait three days

01:19:35 ◼   ► for the docking station to arrive. And in the meantime, I discovered this tool called

01:19:40 ◼   ► the Paragon for Mac, which allows you to read the contents of drives that have a file system

01:19:49 ◼   ► that is not officially supported by Mac OS. In this case, this .ext4 format. It's like,

01:19:57 ◼   ► "Okay, I'm gonna wait for the docking station, connect my drives, and with Paragon I will

01:20:02 ◼   ► be able to open the file system and there will be, I suppose, like a user folder and

01:20:08 ◼   ► and I will copy everything into my MacBook storage.

01:20:12 ◼   ► So the docking station arrives and I connect the drives, they spin, they power on.

01:20:17 ◼   ► I see the drive in Paragon.

01:20:19 ◼   ► I was like, "Okay, I did it."

01:20:20 ◼   ► I was very proud of myself until I realized that all the folders that were exposed in

01:20:29 ◼   ► the drive were like system stuff and my user data was encrypted.

01:20:36 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:20:38 ◼   ► So I was like, oh no, I go to YouTube and there's like,

01:20:45 ◼   ► here's how to recover data from your Synology,

01:20:48 ◼   ► even if it says the drive has failed and the volume

01:20:51 ◼   ► has crashed because in the meantime, yes,

01:20:54 ◼   ► the entire volume has crashed and I couldn't even

01:20:57 ◼   ► reboot my Synology anymore.

01:21:00 ◼   ► And I watched these tutorials on YouTube.

01:21:02 ◼   ► There's a guy who is spelling out Linux commands

01:21:06 ◼   ► that you're supposed to enter in the term.

01:21:09 ◼   ► And at the point I was like, you know what?

01:21:10 ◼   ► I'm done with this.

01:21:11 ◼   ► I'm never, I don't wanna install Linux.

01:21:15 ◼   ► I'm not, I actually even tried to make a USB key

01:21:19 ◼   ► Ubuntu drive and just nothing worked.

01:21:25 ◼   ► And I was like, you know what?

01:21:27 ◼   ► I'm not gonna make a partition on my MacBook.

01:21:30 ◼   ► This would have never happened if I had an Apple computer,

01:21:33 ◼   ► because at least it would have given me some terminology

01:21:37 ◼   ► that I would understand,

01:21:38 ◼   ► or it would have given me an actual interface

01:21:42 ◼   ► that I could use instead of a guy spelling out commands

01:21:45 ◼   ► for the Linux shell.

01:21:47 ◼   ► I know that people love to solve these problems.

01:21:50 ◼   ► I hate these problems.

01:21:52 ◼   ► I hate this kind of, oh, you have to do it yourself

01:21:56 ◼   ► because there's no GUI for you.

01:21:59 ◼   ► This is not at all what I like in computers, so I have made the decision that I will buy a Mac Mini.

01:22:08 ◼   ► It's the end of times.

01:22:14 ◼   ► This is like a trail of just like really questionable decisions that you have made so far.

01:22:23 ◼   ► I realize that now people are going to send me all kinds of recommendations on how to recover data

01:22:32 ◼   ► from a Synology drive. They're literally happening in the chat room right now.

01:22:35 ◼   ► So like, you know, you've got you've got a whole situation ahead of you here.

01:22:39 ◼   ► No, here's my reply. If you want, if you if you are like a normal human being,

01:22:48 ◼   ► and you want to come to my house and do this for free, and you're not weird, and you're not creepy,

01:22:53 ◼   ► get in touch with me. But nobody will do this. So I don't have the time for this. I don't have

01:22:59 ◼   ► the patience. I don't have the knowledge. It's not fun for me to do at all. I don't want to go

01:23:04 ◼   ► to a technician who will do it for me and see my data. Thankfully, the personal data that was

01:23:14 ◼   ► stored in the Synology. For some reason, I don't know why, but a few months ago I had

01:23:20 ◼   ► copied everything in my Dropbox account. So all we lost is effectively our Plex library,

01:23:27 ◼   ► which is fine. I can rebuild that.

01:23:31 ◼   ► I can rebuild it. I can make it stronger.

01:23:34 ◼   ► I can re-download stuff. If personal and sensitive and highly important work and personal data

01:23:43 ◼   ► was stored in the Synology, I would have probably gone to greater lengths to make

01:23:49 ◼   ► this work, to recover that data, but because it's just a bunch of Plex

01:23:55 ◼   ► media folders, I just don't care. I think I've lost a little bit. Didn't you lose

01:23:59 ◼   ► just one drive? Why is everything... No, I said that both failed. Oh, okay. I don't know what

01:24:07 ◼   ► happened. Something in the file system happened, obviously, that was mirrored to

01:24:11 ◼   ► the other drive as well because they were in a RAID configuration. So something happened.

01:24:17 ◼   ► I don't know where, how, or why. I don't even know what it means that volume is degraded.

01:24:24 ◼   ► Like, I need normal human words for this stuff, and I need a normal interface. And I realized

01:24:34 ◼   ► that, and this is, this is going to be a bigger topic, but what happened is that I realized

01:24:41 ◼   ► that I have a bunch of stuff that I've tried over the past two years and I just don't have

01:24:51 ◼   ► the patience for that stuff anymore. And I want to sell every of these accessories of

01:24:57 ◼   ► these devices that I bought because ultimately the Apple stuff.

01:25:03 ◼   ► Is the Nvidia Shield included in all of this?

01:25:06 ◼   ► The Nvidia Shield has been already reset and put in the box.

01:25:13 ◼   ► So this is a change that is happening in my life right now that I'm sure we'll talk about

01:25:17 ◼   ► again on the show.

01:25:19 ◼   ► But I realized that despite all the issues that I have with Apple software and hardware

01:25:25 ◼   ► times. It's never driven me this crazy or it's never caused me this kind of problems.

01:25:33 ◼   ► And for better or worse, the Apple stuff works for me quite well. And it's designed for humans.

01:25:42 ◼   ► It's not designed for Linux nerds. I just don't have the time or patience or I just don't like

01:25:48 ◼   ► doing this. And so it's sort of this problem, this entire situation that really stresses me out

01:25:54 ◼   ► a couple of weeks ago, it became this bigger theme of I bought a bunch of devices over the past

01:26:02 ◼   ► couple of years because I wanted to explore and I'm glad I did that. I wanted to try a bunch of

01:26:07 ◼   ► different things but now I realize that I'm happy when everything is consistent and is made by Apple

01:26:15 ◼   ► and it works and it's got a UI that I understand and it does not require me to type out commands

01:26:21 ◼   ► in a shell. So I'm gonna sell a bunch of these things and I wanna buy a Mac Mini, but there's

01:26:30 ◼   ► an entire discussion to be had about the Mac Mini, which we probably should have next week,

01:26:36 ◼   ► because it's a big topic. But this surprise was meant to be an app...

01:26:38 ◼   ► Not next week, because Steven's not here next week, and I can't help you. Yeah.

01:26:43 ◼   ► In a couple of weeks. I'm still doing my research. I'm still doing my research about what I want

01:26:48 ◼   ► and what I want to do. There's things that I plan on selling, so I already, I'm doing

01:26:55 ◼   ► my research in terms of what it costs to ship stuff. I have a big box outside where I'm

01:27:03 ◼   ► keeping all the stuff like in our garage where I want to sell all these things. But yeah,

01:27:08 ◼   ► it's been a sort of like an epiphany, like this single thing broke and the entire system,

01:27:15 ◼   ► It's like my Synology, I guess. The entire system crashed.

01:27:19 ◼   ► So what you're saying is that you have returned to your eBay store ways, really, what you're

01:27:26 ◼   ► doing.

01:27:27 ◼   ► You get to use your training.

01:27:31 ◼   ► I can use my e-mail skills again. So yeah, I guess the surprise was meant to be sort

01:27:38 ◼   ► of an appetizer for this idea of "I'm happy with my Apple devices", because they're not

01:27:48 ◼   ► perfect. Apple makes some really questionable decisions sometimes, but you know what? Their

01:27:57 ◼   ► stuff works. And it's visual, it's friendly. Which you cannot say the same thing for Linux.

01:28:05 ◼   ► I'm keeping my Raspberry Pi because it does something that I need, but also that could

01:28:11 ◼   ► probably be run on a Mac Mini home server.

01:28:14 ◼   ► So we'll see.

01:28:15 ◼   ► But yeah, this was a surprise.

01:28:17 ◼   ► Are you concerned?

01:28:19 ◼   ► No, no, actually, I mean, I'm really sorry that you went through this.

01:28:23 ◼   ► I'm really glad you didn't lose anything important.

01:28:26 ◼   ► And I did a similar thing.

01:28:27 ◼   ► I had a Synology, I had a hardware problem with it, and now I use a Mac Mini and a Drobo.

01:28:33 ◼   ► But I know that if that Drobo explodes, it can be extremely difficult to get data off

01:28:37 ◼   ► of them.

01:28:38 ◼   ► And so I shared this with you when you said that, you know, because I asked you, like,

01:28:41 ◼   ► you know, my gosh, did you lose anything important?

01:28:43 ◼   ► I keep, there's like regular old, like unencrypted USB portable hard drives that I, you know,

01:28:50 ◼   ► I back up that Drobo to, you know, once a month or so.

01:28:54 ◼   ► And so I've got everything safe and sound on a device that is very simple and that I

01:28:59 ◼   ► trust completely.

01:29:01 ◼   ► And so I, yeah, I'm sorry, and I totally get it,

01:29:05 ◼   ► 'cause, you know, especially if you're doing

01:29:07 ◼   ► like file sharing and stuff, that's just easier on the Mac.

01:29:10 ◼   ► Like the Synology is really powerful,

01:29:12 ◼   ► but it has a lot of overhead that I found unnecessary.

01:29:17 ◼   ► And I think maybe that's what you're responding to as well.

01:29:20 ◼   ► It's like, I can just have a Mac, I can have Mac,

01:29:22 ◼   ► a Mac mini, I can run a macOS on it,

01:29:24 ◼   ► I don't even have to run a macOS server,

01:29:25 ◼   ► 'cause it's not a thing anymore.

01:29:27 ◼   ► And you can just share it to your network

01:29:29 ◼   ► and it's gonna work and you're gonna get the benefit.

01:29:32 ◼   ► And what I guess is going to happen

01:29:35 ◼   ► is that you will find uses for that Mac Mini.

01:29:38 ◼   ► Having an always on Mac can be helpful for different things.

01:29:42 ◼   ► And so you'll be able to run back plays

01:29:44 ◼   ► and backup the external drives.

01:29:47 ◼   ► I think this is going to be a better setup

01:29:49 ◼   ► once you kind of get through the pain of the migration.

01:29:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:29:53 ◼   ► There's been a lot of discussions with Sylvia here about,

01:29:58 ◼   ► And she, for once, she's like, "I told you, just like the guys," she said, "many years ago, that you should have bought a Mac Mini."

01:30:08 ◼   ► And I was like, "You know, all of you, you were right, but I wanted to explore. I wanted to have my wilderness ears to understand what was out there."

01:30:18 ◼   ► And I needed to try stuff for, ultimately, just to realize, "No, not for me."

01:30:24 ◼   ► This is why I don't have no interest in looking at something like a Synology,

01:30:29 ◼   ► because I already know how I will be when I'm having the cold sweats of trying to fix these problems.

01:30:36 ◼   ► And like you describing that to me, like if this happened to me today, I wouldn't be able to deal with it.

01:30:44 ◼   ► Like I'd be like, well, I can't do anything now because I don't have the time to sit and fix this problem.

01:30:50 ◼   ► Like I wouldn't have even gone as far as you did I would have had to have just got up and walked away from it

01:30:54 ◼   ► Like with where I am in my life right now, I need my technology to just be doing it for me

01:30:59 ◼   ► I wouldn't be able to deal with something like that

01:31:01 ◼   ► So I can completely sympathize with you

01:31:03 ◼   ► I'm sorry. So well, yeah, it's fine. Thankfully just media files. So

01:31:10 ◼   ► That's totally okay

01:31:12 ◼   ► But it was still stressful because I at least I wanted to try but I couldn't because it's way beyond my skills and my knowledge

01:31:20 ◼   ► Anyway, this will be I suppose like a continuing topic of

01:31:23 ◼   ► Federico gets rid of all the stuff and is considering a Mac Mini. So

01:31:28 ◼   ► Be on the lookout for updates on this story. Bring us home Steven

01:31:33 ◼   ► If you want to find show notes this week links and stuff

01:31:37 ◼   ► We've talked about you can do so over on the website relay.fm/connected/183

01:31:43 ◼   ► If you want to go visit Federico and fix his hard drive you get in touch with us

01:31:48 ◼   ► You can send us an email through that webpage or you can find us on Twitter.

01:31:52 ◼   ► You can find Federico, he's the most important one this week, @Vittici.

01:31:57 ◼   ► And of course he writes the, what do we call it?

01:32:00 ◼   ► What are blogs called now?

01:32:02 ◼   ► Podstorm.

01:32:03 ◼   ► Podstorm, he writes the Podstorm, MacStories.net.

01:32:07 ◼   ► And this is MacMinnie's going to put the Mac back in MacStories, I'm very excited.

01:32:11 ◼   ► You can find Myke as I-M-Y-K-E.

01:32:13 ◼   ► You can find me on Twitter as ISMH.

01:32:17 ◼   ► think our sponsors this week Hover Away and Casper they made all this possible

01:32:20 ◼   ► and I guess until next time boys say goodbye. Adios. I don't have it yet.

01:32:31 ◼   ► I just don't have it yet. You're just supposed to say, I guess, say bye. But I

01:32:36 ◼   ► can't though because I have listened for like five years to that specific end so

01:32:43 ◼   ► like I can't get out of my head it's the only thing I can think of