Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► From Relay FM, it is connected episode 169.

00:00:12 ◼   ► The show is brought to you this week by our sponsors,

00:00:15 ◼   ► Text Expander from Smile, Timing, and Simple Contacts.

00:00:18 ◼   ► My name is Stephen Hackett and I'm joined, as always,

00:00:21 ◼   ► by my co-host Federico Fatici.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Hello Federico.

00:00:25 ◼   ► - Yes, and we are here to celebrate the very sad,

00:00:30 ◼   ► sad passing of our friend Myke Hurley.

00:00:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:33 ◼   ► - He has passed into the great vacation land in the sky.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Myke's not here this week, he's taking some time off.

00:00:41 ◼   ► It's just the two of us.

00:00:42 ◼   ► We commented a few minutes ago before we hit record

00:00:46 ◼   ► that it is a little after 5 p.m. Eastern.

00:00:49 ◼   ► This is the time that we used to record the show

00:00:51 ◼   ► when I had a job and I had to leave work early

00:00:54 ◼   ► to go record the show, which is crazy in hindsight.

00:00:57 ◼   ► But now we're a morning show,

00:00:59 ◼   ► but now we're back here in the afternoon.

00:01:01 ◼   ► And I kinda like the afternoon.

00:01:04 ◼   ► I know that probably there won't be any big news

00:01:06 ◼   ► between now and the time it goes up, right,

00:01:08 ◼   ► 'cause it's kinda after hours,

00:01:09 ◼   ► or getting close to the end of the day for most people.

00:01:12 ◼   ► And it's kinda nice.

00:01:14 ◼   ► I've been looking forward to it all day,

00:01:16 ◼   ► and now I can end my work day with you.

00:01:19 ◼   ► It's very good.

00:01:20 ◼   ► - You're feeling good about this.

00:01:23 ◼   ► - I'm feeling good.

00:01:24 ◼   ► - Okay, so if you're feeling good,

00:01:27 ◼   ► why is the first item of follow-up something about Macbooks?

00:01:31 ◼   ► That doesn't, are you feeling good about this

00:01:36 ◼   ► or are you feeling good in general?

00:01:37 ◼   ► Because this doesn't, like, whenever I see

00:01:40 ◼   ► somebody's thoughts on the MacBook Pro,

00:01:43 ◼   ► it's not a happy topic.

00:01:45 ◼   ► - It's usually, it has been sadness most recently.

00:01:48 ◼   ► - So what's wrong with the MacBook Pro?

00:01:52 ◼   ► - Well, lots of things.

00:01:53 ◼   ► So after we recorded last week, our friend Marco Arment

00:01:56 ◼   ► wrote a really nice article about the late 2015

00:02:00 ◼   ► MacBook Pro, the machine that he's returned to.

00:02:03 ◼   ► This came out like last Tuesday after we recorded the show,

00:02:06 ◼   ► so I'm sure lots of people have seen it by now.

00:02:08 ◼   ► But Jason Snell brought up a lot of good points

00:02:11 ◼   ► in a MacWorld column, kind of playing off this idea

00:02:14 ◼   ► that if you don't like the 2016, 2017 MacBook Pro,

00:02:19 ◼   ► you kind of don't have any choices.

00:02:23 ◼   ► And the way Ben Thompson has put it in the past

00:02:25 ◼   ► is that Apple has a monopoly on iOS and macOS.

00:02:29 ◼   ► So if Apple doesn't like macOS,

00:02:31 ◼   ► if Apple doesn't make macOS hardware that you like,

00:02:34 ◼   ► you're stuck, right?

00:02:36 ◼   ► There's no options really.

00:02:38 ◼   ► We're discounting Hackintoshes,

00:02:39 ◼   ► but that's not really an option

00:02:41 ◼   ► for the vast majority of people.

00:02:43 ◼   ► But let's even look at mobile.

00:02:45 ◼   ► Say that you like iOS,

00:02:47 ◼   ► but you don't like the iPhone hardware, too bad.

00:02:49 ◼   ► They come one and the same.

00:02:51 ◼   ► I think it's a very interesting way of thinking about it,

00:02:54 ◼   ► that if Apple doesn't give users the options they want,

00:02:57 ◼   ► those users just don't have those options.

00:02:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, especially with this new,

00:03:04 ◼   ► so I follow these topics sort of from the sidelines,

00:03:07 ◼   ► especially when it comes to pro Mac users,

00:03:11 ◼   ► but I have a general idea of the things

00:03:14 ◼   ► that people don't like, and I sort of understand.

00:03:19 ◼   ► I read Marco's post and there's a discussion

00:03:22 ◼   ► I feel to be made about how do you draw the line

00:03:26 ◼   ► between, for example, I wanna keep compatibility

00:03:30 ◼   ► with old accessories, old hardware as much as possible,

00:03:34 ◼   ► but also I wanna move, as a company,

00:03:37 ◼   ► we wanna move things forward.

00:03:39 ◼   ► If I were inside of Apple, I would say,

00:03:41 ◼   ► if we never get rid of things,

00:03:44 ◼   ► then we would still have a VGA port and a serial port

00:03:48 ◼   ► all those kinds of things on a computer.

00:03:50 ◼   ► So there's a balance, I think, to be met

00:03:52 ◼   ► when it comes to leaving the past behind,

00:03:55 ◼   ► but also imagining the future

00:03:58 ◼   ► while also keeping existing users happy,

00:04:00 ◼   ► especially when it's users who rely on this stuff

00:04:02 ◼   ► for getting actual pro work done.

00:04:05 ◼   ► We're talking beta, we're talking 3D,

00:04:07 ◼   ► all kinds of serious work that needs to happen on a Mac.

00:04:11 ◼   ► And I honestly, I don't know

00:04:14 ◼   ► what the process was like inside of Apple.

00:04:18 ◼   ► I think maybe Apple didn't see,

00:04:20 ◼   ► because I think it comes down, among many things,

00:04:23 ◼   ► I would say the chief problem is the USB-C spec.

00:04:27 ◼   ► That maybe Apple didn't see the kind of fragmentation

00:04:31 ◼   ► in USB-C that we're seeing today.

00:04:33 ◼   ► And especially with the confusion over Thunderbolt 3,

00:04:36 ◼   ► is that the one we compatible USB-C?

00:04:38 ◼   ► And the differences between different speeds,

00:04:43 ◼   ► and there's really not a great or non-expensive hub

00:04:48 ◼   ► for multiple USB-C ports,

00:04:52 ◼   ► so there's all kinds of confusion about USB-C,

00:04:55 ◼   ► and I'm not sure if Apple saw that coming or not,

00:04:58 ◼   ► but I'm inclined to say that maybe they assumed

00:05:01 ◼   ► things were gonna be easier to understand

00:05:04 ◼   ► and to sell and to buy?

00:05:06 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:05:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's hard to know, I think,

00:05:13 ◼   ► when the right time comes along to drop something.

00:05:16 ◼   ► Right, like we laugh now,

00:05:17 ◼   ► like oh, VGA ports would be ridiculous.

00:05:19 ◼   ► But maybe six years ago,

00:05:22 ◼   ► maybe that would have been different math.

00:05:24 ◼   ► And maybe, I think one thing Marco says

00:05:27 ◼   ► is that maybe they were a little too aggressive

00:05:31 ◼   ► with Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C.

00:05:33 ◼   ► And I think you bring up good points of confusion.

00:05:35 ◼   ► Like the port looks the same on the MacBook

00:05:37 ◼   ► and the MacBook Pro,

00:05:38 ◼   ► but it does different things on the MacBook

00:05:40 ◼   ► because it doesn't have the Thunderbolt.

00:05:41 ◼   ► It's just very messy and I think all that would be fine

00:05:46 ◼   ► if the rest of the hardware wasn't as questionable as it is.

00:05:51 ◼   ► But you have the keyboard and is the touch bar useful?

00:05:54 ◼   ► I think all together these things sort of add up

00:05:57 ◼   ► to the sort of the frustration that Marco feels

00:06:00 ◼   ► that I certainly feel.

00:06:01 ◼   ► I mean, I sold mine as well.

00:06:03 ◼   ► And I really was thinking about that

00:06:05 ◼   ► and I saw Jason's piece and just really wanted

00:06:08 ◼   ► to bring it up.

00:06:09 ◼   ► this idea that if Apple says no to something,

00:06:12 ◼   ► then that's the answer, right?

00:06:13 ◼   ► It's kind of like a parent, right?

00:06:15 ◼   ► If this is really terrible parenting,

00:06:17 ◼   ► but if you tell your kid the answer is because you said so,

00:06:20 ◼   ► it's kind of how it feels with Apple sometimes.

00:06:23 ◼   ► Why can't I have this in Apple?

00:06:24 ◼   ► Because we said you can't.

00:06:25 ◼   ► There's no reason.

00:06:26 ◼   ► So anyways, I hope this wraps up

00:06:29 ◼   ► the MacBook Pro conversation.

00:06:30 ◼   ► I'm still using it in 2012.

00:06:32 ◼   ► So we'll see.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Uh-oh.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Do you have some news?

00:06:35 ◼   ► - Let me propose this thought experiment to you.

00:06:38 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:06:39 ◼   ► Do you think that Marco's argument here,

00:06:44 ◼   ► with the USB, especially with USB ports and USB-C,

00:06:49 ◼   ► on iOS, would it be comparable to Apple saying,

00:06:54 ◼   ► with this new iPad, you can no longer connect

00:06:58 ◼   ► to Bluetooth keyboards,

00:07:00 ◼   ► you can only use the smart connector,

00:07:02 ◼   ► there's only two options right now,

00:07:05 ◼   ► but smart connector is great,

00:07:06 ◼   ► there's a lot more accessories coming,

00:07:08 ◼   ► It's much much better than Bluetooth, but now you can only use the smart connector.

00:07:13 ◼   ► Do you think that's a good equivalency between the problems happening on the Mac?

00:07:20 ◼   ► It's probably as good as a parallel as you can get on iOS.

00:07:26 ◼   ► I would be upset.

00:07:28 ◼   ► I would be really upset.

00:07:30 ◼   ► People would freak out.

00:07:32 ◼   ► Yeah, they're obviously very different platforms, but yeah, I think it's something that you're

00:07:38 ◼   ► you're trading a lot of flexibility and optionality around

00:07:42 ◼   ► to something that is simpler on the surface,

00:07:45 ◼   ► but is problematic in its own ways.

00:07:48 ◼   ► So yeah, I mean, absolutely.

00:07:50 ◼   ► I think anytime someone is used to a feature

00:07:53 ◼   ► or something in a platform and it goes away,

00:07:54 ◼   ► there's trouble.

00:07:56 ◼   ► It just seems that with the MacBook Pro,

00:07:58 ◼   ► there was a lot of that sort of coalesced

00:08:01 ◼   ► into something bigger that,

00:08:03 ◼   ► and I think Apple sort of lost control

00:08:04 ◼   ► of that narrative a little bit.

00:08:06 ◼   ► So what is next?

00:08:08 ◼   ► So Sonos One users.

00:08:10 ◼   ► Sonos, still in business.

00:08:13 ◼   ► As of today, if you have a Sonos product with the Echo voice assistant built in, you can

00:08:20 ◼   ► now use that Echo voice assistant to control Spotify, which is great.

00:08:24 ◼   ► Remember when this came out?

00:08:26 ◼   ► You can use your voice to control Spotify, you can only use the app and the app's a little

00:08:29 ◼   ► hit or miss.

00:08:31 ◼   ► And now you can use your voice, which is awesome.

00:08:33 ◼   ► I think this will make this product

00:08:35 ◼   ► way more attractive to people

00:08:36 ◼   ► now that we're sort of in the holiday buying season.

00:08:38 ◼   ► They originally said this would be done

00:08:39 ◼   ► by the end of the year,

00:08:40 ◼   ► but they got it done this week, which is awesome.

00:08:43 ◼   ► I'm glad to see this.

00:08:44 ◼   ► And so yeah, if you have a Sonos One

00:08:46 ◼   ► or another Sonos device that has this,

00:08:48 ◼   ► you know, make sure it's up to date,

00:08:50 ◼   ► and now I think it's gonna become a lot more useful

00:08:52 ◼   ► if you're a Spotify user.

00:08:53 ◼   ► - So when I saw this on The Verge today,

00:08:56 ◼   ► I asked John to see if those Amazon icons

00:09:01 ◼   ► Amazon Echo sort of virtual clients on the iPhone.

00:09:06 ◼   ► You know there's apps like Astra for example,

00:09:09 ◼   ► that sort of let you use Amazon Echo skills on your iPhone.

00:09:14 ◼   ► Because all of these apps

00:09:17 ◼   ► and also third party hardware accessories,

00:09:20 ◼   ► they all use the same Amazon Echo web platform.

00:09:25 ◼   ► They all talk to the same APIs I think.

00:09:29 ◼   ► So I asked John, can you chat?

00:09:31 ◼   ► because I was writing and I didn't have Astra on my iPhone.

00:09:33 ◼   ► Also my iPhone was running a battery test,

00:09:35 ◼   ► so I couldn't even install the app.

00:09:38 ◼   ► But it tested Astra and Spotify playback

00:09:41 ◼   ► is still not available.

00:09:43 ◼   ► So later I try with another Amazon Echo virtual client

00:09:47 ◼   ► on my iPad, it's called EchoJ, something.

00:09:52 ◼   ► And it also doesn't work.

00:09:54 ◼   ► It says Spotify playback is not supported.

00:09:57 ◼   ► So I wonder, is this change just for Sonos,

00:10:02 ◼   ► because they cut some kind of deal,

00:10:04 ◼   ► or does it go back to what we discussed last week?

00:10:08 ◼   ► Because we saw on the announcement posts

00:10:13 ◼   ► of multiple accessories, I think the Garmin,

00:10:15 ◼   ► and I think also the Blast, the speakers,

00:10:18 ◼   ► that Spotify support would be coming later.

00:10:21 ◼   ► So is this like an API change for everyone,

00:10:26 ◼   ► or is it just for Sonos right now?

00:10:28 ◼   ► This is not clear at this point,

00:10:30 ◼   ► but it would be incredible to have

00:10:34 ◼   ► native Spotify playback across the entire

00:10:37 ◼   ► Amazon Echo ecosystem of services and products.

00:10:40 ◼   ► That would be really nice.

00:10:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, there definitely seems to be some fragmentation

00:10:47 ◼   ► in what this voice assistant can do

00:10:49 ◼   ► on the different devices that it's embedded in.

00:10:52 ◼   ► Like, I don't know, I kind of assume that Sonos

00:10:55 ◼   ► and Spotify and Amazon came together

00:10:57 ◼   ► and figured out some sort of deal for this,

00:10:59 ◼   ► and I'm sure that there's money

00:11:01 ◼   ► or something changing hands,

00:11:02 ◼   ► but fragmentation is one thing in software

00:11:06 ◼   ► where you can see it, or in hardware where you can see it,

00:11:09 ◼   ► but we even see it with Siri.

00:11:13 ◼   ► When a voice assistant is fragmented,

00:11:15 ◼   ► it's a little more confusing,

00:11:16 ◼   ► and I think ultimately more frustrating

00:11:18 ◼   ► that I can ask Siri on one device to do something

00:11:21 ◼   ► and it can't do it on another,

00:11:23 ◼   ► or it does it differently,

00:11:25 ◼   ► because there's not a clear reason, right?

00:11:28 ◼   ► Like it makes sense that my, you know,

00:11:30 ◼   ► my iPhone may or may not be able to do the same sorts

00:11:33 ◼   ► of things that my iPad can do

00:11:34 ◼   ► because the hardware and software is different.

00:11:36 ◼   ► But a voice assistant is like,

00:11:38 ◼   ► there's like magic in the air, right?

00:11:40 ◼   ► Like I can't, I don't think about it

00:11:41 ◼   ► in terms of software or hardware, it's just a service.

00:11:43 ◼   ► And so to have that work one way on this device

00:11:46 ◼   ► from this company and work another way from this device

00:11:48 ◼   ► under these circumstances, like that's sort of weird.

00:11:51 ◼   ► And if you have the same voice assistant

00:11:53 ◼   ► in a bunch of different devices around your house,

00:11:55 ◼   ► I could see that being really frustrating

00:11:56 ◼   ► at the end of the day.

00:11:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know for like, for my usage,

00:12:02 ◼   ► having to sort of switch modes for Spotify playback

00:12:08 ◼   ► on my actual Echo device and on compatible Echo hardware

00:12:13 ◼   ► and software, that was really annoying.

00:12:16 ◼   ► And just having the virtual cutoff by Amazon saying,

00:12:19 ◼   ► "Nope, you cannot do this on this third party app

00:12:22 ◼   ► speaker. Well that was annoying. So I'm happy that they figured out a way to

00:12:27 ◼   ► make it work with Sonos but hopefully it's a bigger change that applies to all

00:12:31 ◼   ► kinds of integrations.

00:12:33 ◼   ► Yeah. So we're going to end our follow-up with what has become a little bit of a

00:12:39 ◼   ► custom. I have two questions for you.

00:12:41 ◼   ► Does Google Docs for iOS have drag-and-drop? Yes, no, no it does not.

00:12:45 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh, wait, what?

00:12:47 ◼   ► We gotta talk about this!"

00:12:49 ◼   ► And does it support the iPhone 10 screen resolution?

00:12:53 ◼   ► Nope.

00:12:55 ◼   ► Okay, well, this concludes Follow Up.

00:12:57 ◼   ► On a very sad note.

00:12:59 ◼   ► I was in such a good mood when we started.

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00:14:57 ◼   ► and Relay FM.

00:14:59 ◼   ► We had some mini topics this week, if you will.

00:15:03 ◼   ► And the first is from a listener, Thomas,

00:15:06 ◼   ► he wrote in about Spotify, that you can only download

00:15:11 ◼   ► 3,333 songs per device, so if you pay for premium

00:15:17 ◼   ► you can download files for offline play,

00:15:19 ◼   ► and you can only do this up on three devices

00:15:21 ◼   ► for a total of 9,999 downloaded songs total.

00:15:25 ◼   ► You cannot combine these allotments,

00:15:27 ◼   ► so for Thomas he says he finds himself stuck at the edge,

00:15:30 ◼   ► anytime he wants to add new music,

00:15:32 ◼   ► Spotify requires him to remove something old

00:15:35 ◼   ► before I can download it.

00:15:36 ◼   ► In 2017, that feels like a deal breaker.

00:15:38 ◼   ► I have a 256 gig iPhone, but cannot use the storage

00:15:42 ◼   ► because Spotify won't let me.

00:15:44 ◼   ► So I read this.

00:15:46 ◼   ► - This is stupid, basically.

00:15:48 ◼   ► - It's real dumb.

00:15:50 ◼   ► So I read this and I thought, my first thought was Thomas.

00:15:53 ◼   ► Thomas, you misunderstand.

00:15:54 ◼   ► Clearly, you're just confused.

00:15:56 ◼   ► So I did some homework.

00:15:57 ◼   ► There'll be a link in the show notes.

00:15:59 ◼   ► This is an actual limitation of Spotify.

00:16:02 ◼   ► They don't really, anywhere I can find their website

00:16:05 ◼   ► or in their support forums, explain why it is a limitation.

00:16:10 ◼   ► And they don't seem to really care to ever lift it.

00:16:13 ◼   ► It gets brought up from time to time

00:16:14 ◼   ► in their customer support forums,

00:16:16 ◼   ► and basically the answer is sort of a shruggy emoticon guy.

00:16:21 ◼   ► It's quite strange.

00:16:22 ◼   ► - Why?

00:16:23 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense.

00:16:26 ◼   ► It's not like you're storing physical bits

00:16:31 ◼   ► on a CD, you're saving songs into virtual libraries somewhere in the sky.

00:16:38 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense to why this number?

00:16:42 ◼   ► Why?

00:16:43 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:16:43 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:16:45 ◼   ► So you can have more than this in your library, but if you go to download them,

00:16:48 ◼   ► that's it.

00:16:49 ◼   ► So, you know, maybe it's really old from when people had 16 gig iPhones and they

00:16:53 ◼   ► didn't want to fill out people's phones.

00:16:54 ◼   ► But now, like you said, you got 256, 64 gig, 128 gig.

00:16:58 ◼   ► like it seems like something old that they need to revisit.

00:17:03 ◼   ► It was really surprising to me.

00:17:05 ◼   ► - I'm really sorry for Thomas.

00:17:07 ◼   ► This is a--

00:17:08 ◼   ► - It's a bummer.

00:17:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, I totally understand why maybe one,

00:17:12 ◼   ► I don't know if he wants to use Apple Music,

00:17:13 ◼   ► but I totally get it.

00:17:15 ◼   ► This doesn't make any sense,

00:17:16 ◼   ► especially now that we have these devices

00:17:18 ◼   ► with a lot of local storage.

00:17:20 ◼   ► I mean, I can store my entire photo library on my iPhone,

00:17:25 ◼   ► and I still have plenty of room to spare

00:17:27 ◼   ► for music and games.

00:17:29 ◼   ► So yeah, this doesn't make any sense.

00:17:31 ◼   ► - We have a couple topics and basically the bullet points

00:17:35 ◼   ► are Steven is broken and the next one is Federico is broken.

00:17:38 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:17:40 ◼   ► I had this tweet over the weekend.

00:17:43 ◼   ► I have noticed on my iPhone 10,

00:17:45 ◼   ► if I keep an eye on the upper left hand corner

00:17:48 ◼   ► when I launch an app, the time will be wrong.

00:17:51 ◼   ► So say that I launched Instapaper,

00:17:54 ◼   ► Instapaper's time in the little left ear

00:17:56 ◼   ► may say 1208 or 1210 and then after a second after the app resumes the clock

00:18:01 ◼   ► goes back to the correct time now I have been running the 11.2 public beta so I

00:18:07 ◼   ► was willing to write that off but like if you look at the replies of this tweet

00:18:11 ◼   ► and they never end it's like I'm not on the beta I see it I am on the beta I see

00:18:15 ◼   ► it I've never seen this before I see it all the time that's all I restarted

00:18:18 ◼   ► report that's the best kind I'm on the beta I'm not on the beta weird mine

00:18:23 ◼   ► doesn't do that. Okay, like, I didn't make it up. So I don't know what's happening here.

00:18:28 ◼   ► I'm still in the beta. I have not seen it. You know, consistently, I saw on the 18th.

00:18:34 ◼   ► I think I saw it again, maybe yesterday for a second. But something is happening where

00:18:39 ◼   ► the time you know, when an app resumes, it can resume, I believe, with a screenshot,

00:18:44 ◼   ► right? Is that how it works? It basically comes back up. And then the interface comes

00:18:48 ◼   ► to life and then it kind of fades in. And for some reason, the system is showing the

00:18:52 ◼   ► time from the screenshot or from the the app that's been put in the background as opposed

00:18:58 ◼   ► to the system time, you know, so I don't really know what's happening. But it's something

00:19:02 ◼   ► that once you see it, like what if you ever notice it on your phone, it cannot be unseen.

00:19:08 ◼   ► Like once I noticed it the first time I was like, Oh, no, I'm ruined. Right? Because like,

00:19:12 ◼   ► now you're always looking for it. You know, maybe it's like even now the chat room, I

00:19:16 ◼   ► have the same bug on the iPhone six, you know, like, I don't know what's going on. Maybe

00:19:20 ◼   ► Maybe it's a low memory situation where the system can't keep up.

00:19:24 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:19:25 ◼   ► But it's just one of those little things that once I started seeing it, I was like, "Oh,

00:19:29 ◼   ► look at that.

00:19:30 ◼   ► That's not the way it's supposed to work."

00:19:32 ◼   ► Have you seen this?

00:19:34 ◼   ► I'm happy that I have never seen this and I don't want to look because I feel like if

00:19:39 ◼   ► I see it just once, I'm going to see it forever.

00:19:42 ◼   ► So I'm going to keep my eyes off the top left corner because I really don't want to.

00:19:48 ◼   ► It's like, remember, I don't know if it's still going on,

00:19:50 ◼   ► but I think it was on the iPad

00:19:53 ◼   ► when you went back to the home screen.

00:19:56 ◼   ► You could see the corner radius of a folder.

00:20:00 ◼   ► - Oh my gosh, that was awful.

00:20:02 ◼   ► - Like change, like the sort of the curve of the icon.

00:20:06 ◼   ► That was awful because you saw it once

00:20:09 ◼   ► and then every single time you click the home button

00:20:11 ◼   ► to go back to the home screen,

00:20:12 ◼   ► you were paying attention to the corner radius of icons.

00:20:17 ◼   ► So I don't want to enter the situation where I'm looking at,

00:20:22 ◼   ► I'm using apps on my iPhone and I'm looking at the time,

00:20:28 ◼   ► every single time, I don't want to do that.

00:20:30 ◼   ► - I'm unlocking my phone.

00:20:32 ◼   ► I want to see if the folders still do that.

00:20:34 ◼   ► No, they seem to fix that.

00:20:35 ◼   ► But yeah, I remember when that was a thing,

00:20:37 ◼   ► and anytime you open a folder,

00:20:39 ◼   ► you just stare into the middle, right?

00:20:40 ◼   ► You just very carefully avoided the corners.

00:20:44 ◼   ► At the end of the day, right, it's not a big deal.

00:20:47 ◼   ► not an important bug but it's definitely something that that it is it you know

00:20:55 ◼   ► forever whatever reason it's inconsistent but it's definitely there

00:20:58 ◼   ► just just hanging out so I don't know I said a real moment the other night when

00:21:01 ◼   ► I saw this on my phone and I was like what is this like who are you but you

00:21:07 ◼   ► have a story and it's sadder than my story I think so you had this tweet I

00:21:11 ◼   ► want to set this up you had a tweet on the 19th it's a picture of an iPhone 10

00:21:15 ◼   ► Space Gray because you bought the wrong color.

00:21:18 ◼   ► No I did not.

00:21:20 ◼   ► The back's all smashed in. You got two big cracks across the back of your new phone.

00:21:25 ◼   ► Yes.

00:21:26 ◼   ► So what happened?

00:21:27 ◼   ► The funny part of all of this is that that day I already had two different cases for my iPhone X.

00:21:39 ◼   ► but none of them was on my iPhone X.

00:21:43 ◼   ► So I tried to convince myself that I could use the iPhone X without a case.

00:21:51 ◼   ► I think it looks much, much, and feels much, much better without a case.

00:21:58 ◼   ► And I thought, you know, I tend to be a clumsy person when it comes to taking care of electronics.

00:22:06 ◼   ► And also I have two very not quiet puppies that wanna play a lot, but it's fine.

00:22:13 ◼   ► I can totally take care of the iPhone X.

00:22:16 ◼   ► So three days ago I wake up, there's the iPhone X on my nightstand.

00:22:22 ◼   ► The dogs are already up and running inside the house and the bedroom door is open.

00:22:28 ◼   ► One of them, Ginger, she comes running, she bumps into the nightstand.

00:22:34 ◼   ► the iPhone because it's made of glass and I have one of those IKEA, you know, very basic

00:22:40 ◼   ► metal, white nightstands. The iPhone just glides over the nightstand and falls on the

00:22:48 ◼   ► ground. It wasn't not a high drop. It was like 40 to 50 centimeters. Like a nightstand,

00:22:55 ◼   ► like, you know, it's a regular, it's really regular nightstand. But I guess it just fell

00:23:02 ◼   ► on the wrong angle, but I pick it up, I look at the screen. Because my first concern was

00:23:08 ◼   ► "Oh my god, the screen." I look at the screen and it's fine. So Sylvia, she's looking at

00:23:12 ◼   ► me with a sort of terror in her eyes. She's like "Is it broken?"

00:23:16 ◼   ► - "Oh yeah, because she can see the back of the phone and you can't."

00:23:18 ◼   ► - "No, no, no, she thought it was the front." So I was like "Oh no, the front is okay."

00:23:24 ◼   ► She's like "Oh yes." I turn it over and I'm like "Nope, the back is broken." She's like

00:23:29 ◼   ► like, "No." So I see those two cracks. So you could see sort of the starting point.

00:23:37 ◼   ► This is why we should have drank, look at all of our broken electronics to sort of do

00:23:42 ◼   ► a diagnosis of what happened. But I think the iPhone, the point of impact was the bottom

00:23:52 ◼   ► angle, the bottom corner of the frame. And from that point the glass sort of snapped

00:24:00 ◼   ► and you see those two cracks running from the edge up basically to the middle of the

00:24:08 ◼   ► glass, the back. So I was really upset and for the first few minutes I was really upset

00:24:15 ◼   ► with the dog but then I realized, you know, the dog is just playing, it's my fault that

00:24:20 ◼   ► I have won the iPhone on my nightstand without basically no grip. But also, I'm stupid because

00:24:29 ◼   ► I thought I was gonna be able to use an iPhone 10, which is made of glass, and that I of

00:24:36 ◼   ► all people, that I basically drop something every single day, that I was gonna be able

00:24:41 ◼   ► to use this without a case. So thankfully, as we talked before on the show, the day that

00:24:47 ◼   ► I got my iPhone X. Like, ten minutes later, I was on Apple's website buying AppleCare.

00:24:55 ◼   ► Because I thought, you know, this is gonna come in handy. Because it's gonna happen to

00:25:00 ◼   ► me. I was hoping it was gonna happen later, but...

00:25:02 ◼   ► You made it like two weeks.

00:25:05 ◼   ► Yeah, wrapped it up for two weeks. So this is where it gets fun, finally. So I make an

00:25:14 ◼   ► appointment for the Genius Bar the day after. So I went in yesterday, go to the Genius Bar

00:25:20 ◼   ► and you know there's a person, you go to the person first and then the person says "Okay,

00:25:29 ◼   ► go wait there, we're gonna have a guy for you." So I go to the person and I'm like "I

00:25:36 ◼   ► have a broken iPhone" but he doesn't ask any more questions. It's like "Okay, just wait

00:25:40 ◼   ► there. So the lady, the Genius Bar lady, comes over and says, "Hi, I have this broken iPhone."

00:25:49 ◼   ► She looks at the back, she's like, "Oh, it's an iPhone 8. Oh, that's too bad." I'm like,

00:25:53 ◼   ► "No, actually." She turns it on, she's like, "You broke an iPhone 10?"

00:25:58 ◼   ► Oh no! I think you let her down, personally.

00:26:01 ◼   ► So I could see the same fear in her eyes that Sylvia had, but for a different reason.

00:26:10 ◼   ► she looks up like she's looking at, she has her eyes down looking at the phone,

00:26:14 ◼   ► that she looks up and she's like, and I look at her and I know, and I saw, I,

00:26:19 ◼   ► and I go, I have Apple care. And she's like, Oh, thank you so much.

00:26:24 ◼   ► Like I was gonna, she tells me,

00:26:26 ◼   ► I was gonna be upset for you if you didn't have Apple care.

00:26:29 ◼   ► And basically what happens is that the, um,

00:26:34 ◼   ► a small circle of a genius bar employees,

00:26:40 ◼   ► forms around me and my iPhone X,

00:26:43 ◼   ► because they tell me it's the first broken iPhone X

00:26:47 ◼   ► they have seen at the Apple Store in Rome,

00:26:50 ◼   ► at this one, this one of the three Apple Stores.

00:26:54 ◼   ► I was the first person who broke an iPhone X in Rome.

00:26:58 ◼   ► - Congratulations.

00:26:59 ◼   ► - Thank you, that's one of my favorite achievements.

00:27:02 ◼   ► - That should be in your Twitter bio, Twitter bio.

00:27:05 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:27:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, so everybody, basically everybody.

00:27:11 ◼   ► - Writer, podcaster, first person to break an iPhone 10

00:27:14 ◼   ► in a room.

00:27:16 ◼   ► - So every, it's like five to six people

00:27:19 ◼   ► hunching over my iPhone 10.

00:27:22 ◼   ► Everybody's inspecting the way that it broke.

00:27:25 ◼   ► And they're calling more people, right?

00:27:27 ◼   ► So I'm just standing there, I have no problem,

00:27:29 ◼   ► I'm sitting, I'm chilling at the Genius Bar.

00:27:32 ◼   ► And everybody's like, hey, come look at the,

00:27:33 ◼   ► there's a broken iPhone 10.

00:27:34 ◼   ► It's like this big event.

00:27:35 ◼   ► And I'll say it was like 8 p.m.

00:27:37 ◼   ► I thought the store was not really crowded.

00:27:39 ◼   ► So everybody's first reaction is, do you have AppleCare?

00:27:43 ◼   ► And so I'm like, yes, yes, I have AppleCare, by the way.

00:27:46 ◼   ► So they were super nice.

00:27:47 ◼   ► I was expecting to, they start telling me about like,

00:27:52 ◼   ► they really struggle to convince people to get AppleCare.

00:27:55 ◼   ► And so we start talking about like,

00:27:59 ◼   ► why is it that people spend, you know,

00:28:02 ◼   ► 1200 or 1000 euros on a phone

00:28:05 ◼   ► and they don't get the extra 150 or 200 for AppleCare.

00:28:10 ◼   ► And the lady brought up an interesting point

00:28:13 ◼   ► that especially in Italy where,

00:28:16 ◼   ► I would say the majority of people,

00:28:18 ◼   ► they tend to buy a new iPhone unlocked,

00:28:20 ◼   ► so they pay full price upfront.

00:28:22 ◼   ► They save the exact amount of money

00:28:28 ◼   ► to get a new iPhone for months.

00:28:31 ◼   ► And so when they go to the Apple Store,

00:28:32 ◼   ► and they've been saving those 100 euros

00:28:35 ◼   ► for the previous 10 months, they don't wanna,

00:28:39 ◼   ► they cannot spend an extra to get AppleCare.

00:28:42 ◼   ► But later, when something bad happens,

00:28:45 ◼   ► such as you have a broken glass back on the iPhone,

00:28:48 ◼   ► they regret it.

00:28:49 ◼   ► And the lady tells me, they always go like,

00:28:52 ◼   ► "Oh, I wish I had AppleCare."

00:28:54 ◼   ► And in this specific instance of the iPhone 10,

00:28:57 ◼   ► as you brought up on your site, Stephen,

00:29:02 ◼   ► Apple Care is more expensive for the iPhone X,

00:29:06 ◼   ► but also the problem is that if you break the back,

00:29:12 ◼   ► it's not, to get the iPhone repaired, it's not a repair.

00:29:16 ◼   ► You actually get a new unit,

00:29:19 ◼   ► because as also the Apple employees confirmed,

00:29:23 ◼   ► it's not like the iPhone 4,

00:29:25 ◼   ► where you just remove the glass panel.

00:29:27 ◼   ► It's, there's a circuit and the battery stuff

00:29:31 ◼   ► going on in there.

00:29:32 ◼   ► So you actually need to get a new unit.

00:29:34 ◼   ► You actually need to exchange it.

00:29:36 ◼   ► And I was expecting to wait four to five days,

00:29:40 ◼   ► but turns out that they had Genius Bar stock.

00:29:44 ◼   ► They have a separate stock at the Apple Store,

00:29:46 ◼   ► and they had iPhone X units, and my unit,

00:29:49 ◼   ► the space-grade 256 gig model was available,

00:29:54 ◼   ► so I get a new iPhone right away.

00:29:56 ◼   ► And they were super nice.

00:29:57 ◼   ► Everybody was looking at the iPhone X

00:29:58 ◼   ► because they'd never seen a broken iPhone X before.

00:30:01 ◼   ► It was surprisingly smooth experience,

00:30:06 ◼   ► unlike the back of the iPhone,

00:30:08 ◼   ► which was super, super weird to touch

00:30:10 ◼   ► because I could feel the broken glass.

00:30:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, hmm.

00:30:14 ◼   ► You made their day.

00:30:16 ◼   ► - It must have been a long day

00:30:19 ◼   ► because everybody was just chilling,

00:30:20 ◼   ► looking at the broken iPhone X.

00:30:22 ◼   ► Now, of course, I have a silicone case on.

00:30:26 ◼   ► I considered the leather one,

00:30:28 ◼   ► but I think I prefer the grip of the silicon one.

00:30:33 ◼   ► Even if this is a small tangent,

00:30:36 ◼   ► I'm not sure I necessarily prefer the new texture

00:30:41 ◼   ► of the iPhone X silicon case.

00:30:44 ◼   ► Sylvia is using-- - Is it different?

00:30:46 ◼   ► - It is different.

00:30:47 ◼   ► Sylvia is still using a silicon case on her iPhone 7.

00:30:52 ◼   ► And I think the iPhone X one is like a softer material,

00:30:58 ◼   ► softer texture. Interesting. I'm not sure I prefer that. So this is one of the things I feel

00:31:03 ◼   ► 512 pixels would be the perfect side to cover this stuff, the texture of the silicon case.

00:31:09 ◼   ► That's the same about my Ali. I'm just giving you ideas. I'm your idea man. I appreciate that.

00:31:14 ◼   ► Well I'm glad I'm glad you did AppleCare+. Because I think that's a good point that if you break the

00:31:19 ◼   ► back of this phone you're getting a new device because it's all built into that back case. If

00:31:26 ◼   ► If you look at like take apart stuff like I fix it their videos everything is basically

00:31:29 ◼   ► like just glued into that into that yeah that back panel so yeah oh and by the way it would

00:31:35 ◼   ► have cost John 599 euros so basically 600 euros I paid 99 euros so I saved 500 I got

00:31:46 ◼   ► a bunch of people on Twitter saying well actually you didn't save 500 years because you pay

00:31:52 ◼   ► for AppleCare. And I, well of course this is not how insurance works and also you get

00:31:58 ◼   ► another accidental damage cover but anyway. There were a couple of people who, I'm not

00:32:05 ◼   ► sure why they sent me this but…

00:32:07 ◼   ► Because it's the internet Federico.

00:32:09 ◼   ► It's Twitter but I thought it was amusing and also kind of interesting. They said well

00:32:16 ◼   ► now you only have one drop left.

00:32:21 ◼   ► And then even AppleCare won't cover you anymore.

00:32:24 ◼   ► It's like, okay, I get it.

00:32:26 ◼   ► I mean, you made it two weeks, so that's not a completely unreasonable thing to bring up,

00:32:33 ◼   ► maybe.

00:32:34 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:32:36 ◼   ► So my phone is unbroken.

00:32:40 ◼   ► I'm using it caseless.

00:32:41 ◼   ► But I have picked up a couple of scratches in the glass.

00:32:45 ◼   ► I've got one that's like an inch long on the front.

00:32:49 ◼   ► And I think what it is, so if you're wearing jeans right now,

00:32:54 ◼   ► and you can do this safely, don't do it if you're driving,

00:32:57 ◼   ► most jeans, like nice jeans, have a little brass standoff

00:33:01 ◼   ► above the pocket, right, where like the tiny pocket goes.

00:33:05 ◼   ► And I think what it is, I think the phone is like rubbing

00:33:08 ◼   ► on that little piece of brass or whatever it is on my jeans

00:33:12 ◼   ► when I pocket and un-pocket the phone.

00:33:14 ◼   ► And I think it's scratched the display.

00:33:17 ◼   ► So I have, you know, it's not deep,

00:33:19 ◼   ► I can't really feel it, but if I am in direct light

00:33:23 ◼   ► or the light's at the right angle,

00:33:24 ◼   ► or if I'm using a dark mode app, I can see it.

00:33:28 ◼   ► Which is really frustrating.

00:33:30 ◼   ► I don't think I ever scratched any previous phone's display

00:33:34 ◼   ► like this, especially so quickly.

00:33:37 ◼   ► So I got it scratched.

00:33:38 ◼   ► I said that on Twitter the other day,

00:33:39 ◼   ► I see people in the chat are now like,

00:33:40 ◼   ► "Yeah, I've got it too."

00:33:41 ◼   ► So I don't know what the deal is with that,

00:33:42 ◼   ► it's a bummer, but it is unbroken.

00:33:44 ◼   ► and I'm using it caseless and already,

00:33:46 ◼   ► what's interesting is the stainless steel,

00:33:48 ◼   ► 'cause I did the silver,

00:33:49 ◼   ► is already kind of dinged up a little bit

00:33:52 ◼   ► and there's no big dings or anything out of it,

00:33:55 ◼   ► but it's not as shiny as it was,

00:33:56 ◼   ► stainless steel sort of weathers

00:33:59 ◼   ► and I like the way stainless steel looks as it ages,

00:34:02 ◼   ► but the scratch, it makes me sad every time I see it,

00:34:04 ◼   ► but it's not shattered, so you've made me feel better,

00:34:07 ◼   ► really, than I did previously, so.

00:34:09 ◼   ► I'm sorry about your phone.

00:34:11 ◼   ► Yeah, but this was a, it was an opportunity to, um,

00:34:15 ◼   ► to kind of rethink my, my, uh, nightstand and bedroom situation, uh,

00:34:20 ◼   ► in the sense that I, I need to avoid, uh, the problem with the dogs,

00:34:25 ◼   ► um, sort of bumping into the nightstand and breaking things. So, uh,

00:34:30 ◼   ► what I'm doing is in addition to the, in addition to the Silicon case,

00:34:34 ◼   ► um, I want to, I want to inst, install, uh,

00:34:39 ◼   ► like a new shelf in my bedroom so I can, because my nightstand can get messy, you know, with,

00:34:45 ◼   ► I have the small iPad Pro sometimes when I'm working late, I also put the big iPad Pro on top

00:34:49 ◼   ► of that, so I, and I feel like having, you know, a mess on the nightstand makes it easier for things

00:34:55 ◼   ► to fall on the floor. So I want to put on a new shelf so I can, I can maybe also like have a

00:35:02 ◼   ► charger that goes on the shelf so I can put the iPad there, sort of as a tiny, as a tiny iPad bunk

00:35:08 ◼   ► bed, if you will. But also, I got the... I put the bulking boot stop, the wireless charging

00:35:18 ◼   ► mat. I put that in the living room. And I bought the Samsung stand for wireless charging.

00:35:29 ◼   ► It's not like an actual stand. It hasn't got the same angle of like an elevation dock,

00:35:35 ◼   ► for example, or a material dock, it's a 50 degree angle.

00:35:38 ◼   ► So it kind of stands upright,

00:35:41 ◼   ► but I prefer the way that you put the iPhone down vertically.

00:35:45 ◼   ► It's more, it feels more secure to me

00:35:48 ◼   ► and the rubber on the stand,

00:35:51 ◼   ► it grips better than the Belkin one.

00:35:54 ◼   ► So I have this white Samsung Qi stand

00:35:58 ◼   ► on my white nice stand, which is really nice.

00:36:01 ◼   ► It doesn't support 7.5 watt charging,

00:36:04 ◼   ► but it's all right, I just--

00:36:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean overnight it's not a big deal.

00:36:08 ◼   ► - Overnight it's not a big deal.

00:36:09 ◼   ► So, you know, clean air and nightstand,

00:36:13 ◼   ► less iPad, fewer iPads, no mess with the cables.

00:36:18 ◼   ► The last part would be, because I have a tendency

00:36:25 ◼   ► to fall asleep while either listening to

00:36:28 ◼   ► Death Cab for Cutie or Brain FM audio, you know,

00:36:33 ◼   ► like the machine learning audio app that I use.

00:36:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, they're machine learning you, definitely.

00:36:40 ◼   ► - So I tend to fall asleep with my headphones on.

00:36:44 ◼   ► Not actual headphones, usually AirPods.

00:36:48 ◼   ► But of course, with the dogs being able to move

00:36:50 ◼   ► inside the bedroom, I don't wanna be in the situation

00:36:54 ◼   ► where one day I wake up and there's one missing AirPod,

00:36:57 ◼   ► and then it would later come out from where.

00:37:01 ◼   ► So I don't wanna be in that situation.

00:37:04 ◼   ► And I'm thinking,

00:37:06 ◼   ► maybe I shouldn't fall asleep with the AirPods on.

00:37:09 ◼   ► I would maybe consider the Apple Beats X,

00:37:14 ◼   ► which are W1 powered in-ear headphones.

00:37:19 ◼   ► They don't need to be connected to the iPhone.

00:37:23 ◼   ► So the iPhone can stay on the charging stand.

00:37:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, a little pump bed.

00:37:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, the AirPods stay in the case.

00:37:31 ◼   ► and I'm just falling asleep with this cord around my neck,

00:37:34 ◼   ► which could be dangerous.

00:37:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:37:36 ◼   ► Could be dangerous.

00:37:37 ◼   ► - It sounded so good until you said that.

00:37:39 ◼   ► - Could be dangerous, but honestly,

00:37:42 ◼   ► I've done that for like 10 years.

00:37:45 ◼   ► I mean, if I'm still doing a podcast,

00:37:47 ◼   ► it's because I didn't die by suffocating with headphones.

00:37:51 ◼   ► So that could be an idea.

00:37:54 ◼   ► That could be an idea.

00:37:55 ◼   ► Instead of having the dogs eat my AirPods,

00:37:59 ◼   ► I could have the headphones killing me.

00:38:01 ◼   ► That seems like a fair compromise.

00:38:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, falling asleep with the AirPods,

00:38:07 ◼   ► the AirPods, the wireless ones,

00:38:09 ◼   ► is definitely like hit or miss.

00:38:11 ◼   ► Like it's nice you don't have a cable,

00:38:13 ◼   ► but it, you know, if you fall asleep

00:38:16 ◼   ► and then you gotta like find them in the bed

00:38:17 ◼   ► or under the bed or if dog eats them

00:38:19 ◼   ► or in my case a child eats them,

00:38:21 ◼   ► like it's, I haven't found them ideal for that

00:38:26 ◼   ► the few times I've tried it.

00:38:27 ◼   ► But yeah, I think the Beats X could work.

00:38:29 ◼   ► You know, my wife has a pair, she really likes them.

00:38:32 ◼   ► I should ask, I don't know if she's fallen asleep

00:38:33 ◼   ► with the men, I should ask her if she has.

00:38:35 ◼   ► But I know there's a lot of convenience

00:38:38 ◼   ► with having the wire connecting them.

00:38:39 ◼   ► Like, you know, if you need to take them off real quickly,

00:38:43 ◼   ► you don't have to like shove them in the pocket

00:38:44 ◼   ► if you don't have the case, 'cause you can just like

00:38:46 ◼   ► leave them around your neck and stuff.

00:38:47 ◼   ► So they're a little more practical, I think,

00:38:48 ◼   ► than the AirPods in some situations.

00:38:51 ◼   ► - Right, yeah, so we'll see, we'll see what I get.

00:38:54 ◼   ► - Well, keep us posted on the nightstand

00:38:56 ◼   ► if you build a shelf, I wanna see a picture.

00:38:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I will, okay.

00:39:00 ◼   ► - So I wanna talk just a little bit about this idea

00:39:04 ◼   ► of forced updating software.

00:39:10 ◼   ► And so this came up, Apple starting this past week

00:39:15 ◼   ► is pushing Mac users to upgrade to macOS High Sierra.

00:39:22 ◼   ► So if you're on Sierra or before,

00:39:26 ◼   ► and you can run High Sierra, your machine is compatible,

00:39:29 ◼   ► you will see a little push notification.

00:39:32 ◼   ► It says, "Hey, upgrade to Mac OS High Sierra."

00:39:35 ◼   ► It has two buttons, Install and Details.

00:39:38 ◼   ► And this notification is triggered

00:39:41 ◼   ► after Mac OS has downloaded High Sierra,

00:39:45 ◼   ► which is 5.1 gigabytes, in the background.

00:39:48 ◼   ► And so the Mac App Store is just downloading High Sierra

00:39:51 ◼   ► without telling anybody, and then once the installer

00:39:54 ◼   ► is like on your drive, then you get this little notification.

00:39:57 ◼   ► So you hit install and it just starts installing.

00:40:00 ◼   ► This is not new.

00:40:02 ◼   ► Apple did this, has done this at least one year.

00:40:05 ◼   ► They did it with Sierra.

00:40:06 ◼   ► They may have done it before that.

00:40:08 ◼   ► I couldn't verify that, I didn't remember.

00:40:10 ◼   ► But I kind of feel, I feel conflicted about this.

00:40:14 ◼   ► And I wanna see what you think,

00:40:15 ◼   ► especially from the perspective of how iOS handles it.

00:40:18 ◼   ► The idea that Apple wants its users

00:40:23 ◼   ► on the latest version of its operating systems.

00:40:26 ◼   ► I totally, like, I'm not being sarcastic,

00:40:28 ◼   ► I totally understand.

00:40:29 ◼   ► It's good for Apple, it's most of the time

00:40:32 ◼   ► good for consumers, and it's good

00:40:33 ◼   ► for third-party developers, right?

00:40:35 ◼   ► And Apple likes to get on stage and say,

00:40:36 ◼   ► "Look, 60% of our users are on the newest version

00:40:39 ◼   ► "of iOS or Mac OS, and Android, LOL, Windows, LOL."

00:40:43 ◼   ► But it's important for more

00:40:47 ◼   ► than just those marketing reasons.

00:40:49 ◼   ► I get that, like I totally get it.

00:40:51 ◼   ► I actually agree with most of that,

00:40:53 ◼   ► that I think it is best for consumers most of the time.

00:40:57 ◼   ► It's good for Apple, it's good for third party developers

00:40:59 ◼   ► to know where their targets are.

00:41:01 ◼   ► But at the same time, I feel like that's a big deal

00:41:06 ◼   ► on the Mac and with High Sierra in particular,

00:41:11 ◼   ► it seems like a minor upgrade, but High Sierra

00:41:15 ◼   ► is sort of the end of the line for older versions

00:41:18 ◼   ► of Microsoft Office, older versions of Adobe Creative Suite

00:41:22 ◼   ► that used to run in Sierra no longer run on High Sierra.

00:41:25 ◼   ► I've actually dealt with some people

00:41:27 ◼   ► who haven't sold High Sierra and now their stuff's broken

00:41:30 ◼   ► as they didn't, it's on them,

00:41:31 ◼   ► like they should have read and checked, but you know.

00:41:34 ◼   ► When you see a push notification from your Mac,

00:41:37 ◼   ► you tend to trust it.

00:41:38 ◼   ► And I just don't know if an OS update is the right,

00:41:44 ◼   ► if doing it this way is the right way to do it or not.

00:41:51 ◼   ► It feels a little heavy-handed.

00:41:53 ◼   ► I really don't like that the OS is downloaded

00:41:55 ◼   ► in the background.

00:41:56 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:41:57 ◼   ► - That's a lot of data.

00:41:59 ◼   ► Some people have caps on their data,

00:42:00 ◼   ► some people have, now it does check

00:42:02 ◼   ► for available disk space.

00:42:04 ◼   ► It's not gonna fill your hard drive up

00:42:05 ◼   ► if you've got eight gigs free,

00:42:06 ◼   ► it's not gonna download it or anything.

00:42:08 ◼   ► But I would rather when the user hits install,

00:42:13 ◼   ► then that trigger the download.

00:42:15 ◼   ► And that's a worse user experience,

00:42:16 ◼   ► so Apple doesn't do that.

00:42:18 ◼   ► So I'm real conflicted about this,

00:42:21 ◼   ► and I was very curious, I was talking to somebody

00:42:22 ◼   ► on Twitter today, he read this article I wrote

00:42:25 ◼   ► and said, "Hey, I'm on an iPhone and I'm still on iOS 10,

00:42:28 ◼   ► "some app that they want won't run on 11."

00:42:33 ◼   ► And so they're staying on 10 for now,

00:42:35 ◼   ► giving the developer the opportunity to update the app.

00:42:38 ◼   ► I don't think they ever will, but that's beside the point.

00:42:42 ◼   ► And they're getting bugged daily now to upgrade to iOS 11.

00:42:45 ◼   ► And I just wonder how you think about this.

00:42:47 ◼   ► Like on the Mac, it's a really big deal to upgrade your OS.

00:42:50 ◼   ► Do you feel like on an iPad or iPhone it's safer somehow,

00:42:55 ◼   ► or like people are more willing to do it than on the Mac?

00:42:58 ◼   ► What do you think?

00:43:00 ◼   ► - I think actually lately people are less willing

00:43:03 ◼   ► to do it on iOS as well.

00:43:06 ◼   ► And if you take a look at the install base stats for iOS 11,

00:43:11 ◼   ► it's been slower than iOS 10.

00:43:14 ◼   ► Because it feels like every year the first version

00:43:17 ◼   ► that Apple launches to the public,

00:43:19 ◼   ► it has severe battery life issues

00:43:23 ◼   ► that Apple just couldn't find during the beta stage

00:43:26 ◼   ► or that somehow got worse at the GM seed.

00:43:30 ◼   ► And I know a lot of people that, including my mom,

00:43:35 ◼   ► that wait for major iOS updates until the next version.

00:43:40 ◼   ► This usually happens that these people, they text me

00:43:44 ◼   ► and they ask me every few weeks, is it safe to update now?

00:43:47 ◼   ► And usually when Apple releases the new emoji,

00:43:50 ◼   ► actually, you know, I don't think it's a coincidence

00:43:53 ◼   ► that new emoji are not coming out a month

00:43:55 ◼   ► to a month and a half after the main version of a new iOS.

00:43:59 ◼   ► It's almost a way for Apple to time

00:44:02 ◼   ► the fixing of many of these problems

00:44:06 ◼   ► with the sort of like the stick and the carrot,

00:44:09 ◼   ► but the emoji version that, you know,

00:44:12 ◼   ► we fixed some bugs and here we apologize, have some emoji.

00:44:17 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:44:18 ◼   ► - I don't think that's a coincidence.

00:44:19 ◼   ► And usually my friends, when they see the new emoji,

00:44:22 ◼   ► then they just go, okay, now I need to update.

00:44:25 ◼   ► - Fine, fine, I'll give in, I wanna send the dinosaur.

00:44:27 ◼   ► - People are surprisingly skilled

00:44:31 ◼   ► at ignoring the badge on settings.

00:44:33 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:44:34 ◼   ► - On the Mac, I also feel like there's maybe

00:44:40 ◼   ► less of an expectation of the OS is downloading stuff

00:44:44 ◼   ► the background, like multiple gigs of software update. Like it's unusual, maybe because we've

00:44:50 ◼   ► been conditioned by, especially since the, what was that, iOS 4 that they introduced

00:44:56 ◼   ► the, you know, software update. I think you were, back in the day, you had to do it via

00:45:02 ◼   ► iTunes.

00:45:03 ◼   ► >> You did. Yeah, and then they added it over the air.

00:45:05 ◼   ► >> They added it over the air.

00:45:06 ◼   ► >> That feels like a lifetime ago. I can't even remember.

00:45:09 ◼   ► We're talking Scott Forsall on stage introducing PC Free as a feature of iOS 4, iOS 5.

00:45:18 ◼   ► 5, yeah.

00:45:19 ◼   ► So, yeah, over the years we've been conditioned, we've been sort of eased into the idea of

00:45:26 ◼   ► my iPhone overnight is doing stuff, but my Mac is not, you know, it's usually not on

00:45:32 ◼   ► my nightstand, it's not constantly plugged in, there's less of this idea of my MacBook

00:45:38 ◼   ► is downloading multiple gigs worth of data in the background.

00:45:41 ◼   ► So it is strange, it is strange that they're doing this now.

00:45:45 ◼   ► - I had heard some whispers about Apple

00:45:48 ◼   ► being more aggressive with software updates,

00:45:51 ◼   ► getting people to upgrade.

00:45:53 ◼   ► I kinda was thinking, okay, if I'm on 10.13

00:45:56 ◼   ► and 10.13.1 comes out on the Mac,

00:45:58 ◼   ► then I'll get moved to it automatically

00:46:00 ◼   ► after six weeks or something.

00:46:01 ◼   ► But I don't know if that's true,

00:46:02 ◼   ► that was sort of my assumption in hearing that whisper,

00:46:05 ◼   ► but there's something to this that just doesn't sit right

00:46:09 ◼   ► with me and I wish to back up a little bit.

00:46:14 ◼   ► I wish that on both the Mac and iOS,

00:46:18 ◼   ► Apple would take the opportunity for a big software update,

00:46:21 ◼   ► even if it cost them some update time, right?

00:46:24 ◼   ► Even if it said, even if people saw this and waited

00:46:28 ◼   ► until they had their stuff sorted out,

00:46:29 ◼   ► but hey, it's a big OS update.

00:46:33 ◼   ► "Hey, do you know about iCloud backup?"

00:46:35 ◼   ► Like, "Hey, go check the setting,

00:46:36 ◼   ► "make sure you're backed up."

00:46:37 ◼   ► Or on the Mac, "Hey, do you know about Time Machine?"

00:46:40 ◼   ► Like, you know, it's easy to set up.

00:46:41 ◼   ► Like, just because if things go wrong,

00:46:45 ◼   ► this is when they will go wrong, right?

00:46:47 ◼   ► If you have a big OS update,

00:46:50 ◼   ► it's more complicated than a smaller patch.

00:46:53 ◼   ► And I just wish Apple would educate their customers

00:46:57 ◼   ► a little bit more about this.

00:46:59 ◼   ► I don't think they will.

00:47:00 ◼   ► It's been this way for a thousand years,

00:47:02 ◼   ► but it's something that it just,

00:47:05 ◼   ► I don't know, it just felt weird when I saw this pop up,

00:47:08 ◼   ► and I think the iOS badge is,

00:47:13 ◼   ► I think that the way they handle an iOS

00:47:16 ◼   ► in the Mac is very similar, so.

00:47:19 ◼   ► Anyways, I'm gonna tell you about our second sponsor,

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00:49:20 ◼   ► So, tell me about the HomePod.

00:49:23 ◼   ► Where is it?

00:49:25 ◼   ► It's not coming this year anymore and I...

00:49:31 ◼   ► Yeah, he called this like last week.

00:49:33 ◼   ► The home party is supposed to be shipping like next month.

00:49:40 ◼   ► It's not, I don't think it's gonna.

00:49:42 ◼   ► Oh, you don't think it's gonna?

00:49:44 ◼   ► No, I think 2018.

00:49:46 ◼   ► There's no way they miss Christmas, he said.

00:49:49 ◼   ► No, but it's too late for Christmas.

00:49:50 ◼   ► For future follow-up.

00:49:51 ◼   ► December's too late for Christmas.

00:49:53 ◼   ► Like if you want to do the holiday season, December is not the time to release a product.

00:49:57 ◼   ► I mean, it's not November, but it's a hell of a lot there in January.

00:50:01 ◼   ► I think they'll make it.

00:50:04 ◼   ► December 29th.

00:50:07 ◼   ► They'll make it.

00:50:08 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:50:09 ◼   ► This is too bad.

00:50:10 ◼   ► You know, I'm actually upset.

00:50:14 ◼   ► Not because the home party is not coming, but because the guy has another ex down the

00:50:20 ◼   ► column of things Myke was right about.

00:50:22 ◼   ► right about there's now another check mark that says he was right so no one

00:50:29 ◼   ► tell him don't tell my company while he's uh is in the sky the do not tell him

00:50:35 ◼   ► um so yeah I was on Twitter did a few days ago and he or John Pachowski how

00:50:44 ◼   ► you say this? Well, you're the guy to pronounce names.

00:50:49 ◼   ► I'm terrible at this.

00:50:50 ◼   ► So anyway, a statement from Apple that was then sent to other sites that they cannot

00:50:58 ◼   ► wait for customers to get their hands, to get their ears, I don't know, on, around the

00:51:05 ◼   ► HomePod, but it's not coming this year. It's coming early 2018. We don't know why. So there's

00:51:12 ◼   ► there's been a lot of speculation here about what's going on. Is it Siri? Is it not Siri?

00:51:18 ◼   ► Is it about AirPlay? Is it about the hardware? There's people that tend to believe it's the

00:51:23 ◼   ► software. Other people I've talked to, not people that work at Apple, but people that

00:51:29 ◼   ► wouldn't know, that tell me it is not Siri, it is not the Siri integration stuff, and

00:51:38 ◼   ► it's not the hardware. So a bunch of people are speculating that it could be about Airplay.

00:51:44 ◼   ► And I tend to believe the theory, because we, Airplay 2 was advertised as one of the

00:51:50 ◼   ► features coming with iOS 11. I was told by Apple that by the release of iOS 11, we were

00:51:57 ◼   ► also going to see Airplay 2 speakers by third party companies. Now, I'm not sure I've seen

00:52:03 ◼   ► any so far and it's almost December, it's late November, we haven't seen any AirPlay 2 hardware,

00:52:10 ◼   ► there's no AirPlay 2 feature on iOS 11, there were some signs of AirPlay 2 integration in the beta

00:52:19 ◼   ► of iOS 11.2 which was then removed by the following beta and now we have this HomePod delay.

00:52:26 ◼   ► So I would say that speculating that AirPlay 2 could be the reason why the home part has

00:52:34 ◼   ► been delayed would be a pretty good guess.

00:52:39 ◼   ► Obviously Apple wants to get this right with the multi-room playback stuff.

00:52:44 ◼   ► And there's a lot of things going on with AirPlay 2.

00:52:46 ◼   ► It requires, first of all, developers to adopt a specific API, a specific audio controller

00:52:52 ◼   ► that, for example, if you want to use AirPlay 2, you gotta show the same UI

00:52:56 ◼   ► that Apple uses. There's considerations when it comes to playback and

00:53:01 ◼   ► buffering because

00:53:02 ◼   ► to enable the multi-room support, you know, you can have

00:53:06 ◼   ► podcasts playing in the living room and also in the kitchen and also in the

00:53:10 ◼   ► bedroom.

00:53:11 ◼   ► I don't know why you want to have so much podcast going on but it's possible

00:53:14 ◼   ► with AirPlay 2.

00:53:15 ◼   ► And then that means you gotta offer

00:53:18 ◼   ► buffering of audio of multiple minutes

00:53:21 ◼   ► instead of 10 seconds.

00:53:23 ◼   ► So there's that kind of consideration.

00:53:25 ◼   ► And there's also the fact that developers

00:53:27 ◼   ► need to differentiate between what is system audio,

00:53:31 ◼   ► what is long form audio.

00:53:33 ◼   ► There's this idea, and I still haven't,

00:53:35 ◼   ► I think we talked about this before,

00:53:37 ◼   ► of am I a podcast, am I an audiobook,

00:53:39 ◼   ► or am I a music player?

00:53:41 ◼   ► And if you're falling to that type of apps,

00:53:44 ◼   ► you need to say so to AirPlay 2, to the API.

00:53:48 ◼   ► So there's a lot of things going on.

00:53:49 ◼   ► And this is Apple's big debut, I would say big comeback

00:53:54 ◼   ► into the speaker game.

00:53:57 ◼   ► So being able to get it right,

00:53:59 ◼   ► especially with the competition hitting up,

00:54:01 ◼   ► Amazon, Google and Sonos,

00:54:02 ◼   ► and figuring out the API with developers

00:54:08 ◼   ► and with third party manufacturers

00:54:10 ◼   ► and the integration with HomeKit and Siri,

00:54:14 ◼   ► I buy the theory, honestly.

00:54:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree with you.

00:54:21 ◼   ► When this news first broke, it's always interesting

00:54:23 ◼   ► to try to think about what it may be.

00:54:26 ◼   ► And I think AirPlay 2 is definitely at the heart of it.

00:54:29 ◼   ► There was a story today on Bloomberg by Germann

00:54:34 ◼   ► talking about the background of the HomePod

00:54:38 ◼   ► and the work that has gone into it this far.

00:54:41 ◼   ► I don't know if there's anything in here

00:54:43 ◼   ► particularly surprising.

00:54:45 ◼   ► He does talk about the project was canceled and revived several times apparently, and

00:54:51 ◼   ► that there was all sorts of weird form factors they've experimented with, which shouldn't

00:54:54 ◼   ► be surprising, right?

00:54:55 ◼   ► New hardware, something new they're going to always have ideas that don't see the

00:55:02 ◼   ► light attack.

00:55:03 ◼   ► I thought that part was funny when he was listing all the shapes and sizes that the

00:55:11 ◼   ► the HomePod could have been, because I sort of pictured,

00:55:14 ◼   ► oh, and it could have been a rectangle,

00:55:16 ◼   ► and it could have been a cylinder,

00:55:18 ◼   ► and it could have been three foot tall,

00:55:19 ◼   ► or it could have been Johnny Ive

00:55:22 ◼   ► standing outside your window with a boombox.

00:55:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, one was like, one was three feet tall at some point,

00:55:28 ◼   ► which seems bananas.

00:55:30 ◼   ► You know, there's been some hand-wringing,

00:55:35 ◼   ► like does this mean that Apple has missed

00:55:38 ◼   ► the holiday buying season?

00:55:40 ◼   ► I think the truth is if they were gonna ship in December,

00:55:44 ◼   ► then they already missed it.

00:55:45 ◼   ► Like we are in the holiday buying season now,

00:55:48 ◼   ► and they're not here.

00:55:51 ◼   ► They weren't gonna be here.

00:55:52 ◼   ► You know, they announced it in June

00:55:53 ◼   ► and said then that it would be December.

00:55:56 ◼   ► And so they have, I don't know how much they've really lost

00:56:00 ◼   ► in the holiday season,

00:56:01 ◼   ► 'cause I'm not sure what they really had to begin with.

00:56:04 ◼   ► But it is a big buying season.

00:56:08 ◼   ► Sonos has new stuff we talked about earlier.

00:56:12 ◼   ► There are new echoes, there's new Google Home stuff.

00:56:15 ◼   ► All of these other speakers are out and have been refreshed

00:56:20 ◼   ► and Apple's gonna show up in whenever it is January

00:56:23 ◼   ► or February or March, whenever it is,

00:56:25 ◼   ► with their product that may not do as much

00:56:30 ◼   ► will be more expensive and will be now considered late.

00:56:33 ◼   ► So it's not a huge start to the HomePod.

00:56:38 ◼   ► And I gotta say, I'm not super sad about this.

00:56:44 ◼   ► I said on the show last week,

00:56:46 ◼   ► I'm really only interested in it as a topic

00:56:50 ◼   ► because Apple makes it,

00:56:51 ◼   ► and I'm not really looking to replace my Echo's in the house

00:56:56 ◼   ► and I'm not looking to add them, I don't think,

00:56:59 ◼   ► just so I could have Apple Music by voice.

00:57:02 ◼   ► And I just haven't seen a lot of people upset

00:57:05 ◼   ► that they can't buy one next month.

00:57:06 ◼   ► I just wonder if that is something worth paying attention to.

00:57:13 ◼   ► - Well, yeah.

00:57:15 ◼   ► I feel like the limited integration,

00:57:19 ◼   ► like a lot of people were expecting Apple

00:57:21 ◼   ► to make its own Echo and to launch this big platform

00:57:25 ◼   ► with all kinds of integrations,

00:57:27 ◼   ► and now you can do a lot of things

00:57:28 ◼   ► that you can do on the iPhone.

00:57:29 ◼   ► You can do them all just with the HomePod.

00:57:32 ◼   ► But the fact that there was not basically,

00:57:36 ◼   ► not a huge focus on third-party skills at WWDC.

00:57:44 ◼   ► And then when they detailed the way that circuit works,

00:57:47 ◼   ► that the home part is basically an extension of the iPhone,

00:57:50 ◼   ► that also sort of, whatever excitement was left,

00:57:55 ◼   ► was kind of, you know, was kind of dampled by that.

00:57:57 ◼   ► And you know, it's like, really?

00:57:59 ◼   ► and like another watch kit situation.

00:58:02 ◼   ► So the enthusiasts are, you know,

00:58:05 ◼   ► there's two types of enthusiasts here.

00:58:09 ◼   ► There's the Apple enthusiast, you know,

00:58:11 ◼   ► the person who's really into the Apple ecosystem,

00:58:13 ◼   ► they're gonna get the HomePod anyways.

00:58:15 ◼   ► So, you know, if Apple is taking more time,

00:58:19 ◼   ► then, you know, it means they're making it better,

00:58:21 ◼   ► just like with the AirPods.

00:58:22 ◼   ► So the AirPods were pretty great in the end,

00:58:25 ◼   ► so the HomePod will also be pretty great.

00:58:28 ◼   ► But there's also the audio enthusiasts, you know, the folks who like to complain to Mark

00:58:33 ◼   ► Harment on Twitter.

00:58:35 ◼   ► Those people, will they get the HomePod or are they getting the Sonos for this holiday

00:58:41 ◼   ► season?

00:58:42 ◼   ► Are those people ever happy?

00:58:44 ◼   ► These are questions that I wonder when I think about audio enthusiasts.

00:58:49 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:58:50 ◼   ► What's your take, Steven?

00:58:54 ◼   ► Does it make sense to you that there's this separation between, it's a high-end speaker,

00:58:59 ◼   ► so it appeals to folks who are really into high-end audio, but there's also the, it appeals

00:59:05 ◼   ► to Apple users.

00:59:07 ◼   ► So how do you separate those two as a product?

00:59:11 ◼   ► I think it's a really interesting question, and I think price is a big factor there too,

00:59:14 ◼   ► right?

00:59:15 ◼   ► You can go buy an Echo Dot for like $8, or not, you know, $50 or something, and the HomePod

00:59:23 ◼   ► is going to be for people who have the money to spend,

00:59:27 ◼   ► who are in the Apple ecosystem,

00:59:29 ◼   ► who may actively not want Amazon or Google

00:59:33 ◼   ► in their homes in this way,

00:59:36 ◼   ► and use Apple Music.

00:59:37 ◼   ► Like, it is a smaller, it's a more narrow

00:59:40 ◼   ► number of consumers than something that is broader,

00:59:45 ◼   ► like Alexa, like the Echo or Google Home,

00:59:49 ◼   ► but at the same time, like, it is,

00:59:52 ◼   ► none of this is a big market, right?

00:59:54 ◼   ► Like, we're talking about a very limited number of people

00:59:57 ◼   ► who even know these things exist or care about them.

01:00:00 ◼   ► And that could change with Apple.

01:00:02 ◼   ► If Apple's making money, all of a sudden,

01:00:04 ◼   ► people may pay attention,

01:00:05 ◼   ► as opposed to just the weird thing Amazon did.

01:00:08 ◼   ► So yeah, I don't know how they answer that.

01:00:09 ◼   ► I don't know how Apple approaches this market

01:00:13 ◼   ► in their way and it resonate with people.

01:00:18 ◼   ► I just, I don't know.

01:00:19 ◼   ► Anyways, I guess we'll see when it comes out,

01:00:21 ◼   ► it does. Right. I assume they're going to lump that in with like the Apple watch and

01:00:26 ◼   ► other stuff like the, the, the part of the quarterly results that they don't really tell

01:00:29 ◼   ► you how many they sold. But I guess, I guess we'll see what happens. I think I'm gonna,

01:00:35 ◼   ► if I can, I'm going to get one either via Myke or via John. If they can get me one from

01:00:41 ◼   ► the UK, from the U S I hope that it's not a region locked. I hope it's like the Amazon

01:00:49 ◼   ► Echo that, you know, the Amazon Echo still thinks I live in Seattle, and, you know, because

01:00:54 ◼   ► I don't know, there's some dumb limitation for region locking. It gives me the traffic

01:01:00 ◼   ► for Seattle, which I know a lot about Seattle traffic now. And also Seattle weather, because

01:01:06 ◼   ► my zip code is from Seattle for some reason. But yeah, I hope that I can just buy one and

01:01:12 ◼   ► and maybe I will not be able to ask

01:01:15 ◼   ► what's the traffic in Rome.

01:01:17 ◼   ► I mean, it doesn't answer that question anyway, Siri,

01:01:20 ◼   ► so that should be no problem.

01:01:22 ◼   ► I will just get a wall plug adapter and that's it.

01:01:26 ◼   ► So we'll see, we'll see.

01:01:27 ◼   ► - There you go.

01:01:28 ◼   ► The other product announced at WBC

01:01:31 ◼   ► and promised for the end of this year was the iMac Pro,

01:01:35 ◼   ► and it has not been announced.

01:01:37 ◼   ► There's not a date yet, but it's in the news.

01:01:42 ◼   ► Was it supposed to come out this year? Yeah, I said December. Oh, okay. So this has not been delayed

01:01:50 ◼   ► officially? No, not yet. No, there's been no news about the date. Not yet. Not yet. I don't think

01:01:55 ◼   ► it will. I think they'll make it. I think it'll be December 30th like the Mac Pro was in 2013,

01:02:00 ◼   ► but I think they'll make it. But our friend Stephen Trout Smith and others have been

01:02:06 ◼   ► digging around and early there was a post

01:02:11 ◼   ► that there was going to be an ARM chip in the iMac Pro

01:02:15 ◼   ► and there was a lot of speculation that it would run Touch ID

01:02:19 ◼   ► but then I realized there's no Touch ID sensor

01:02:23 ◼   ► in the keyboard for this thing.

01:02:27 ◼   ► And so a lot of people, including myself,

01:02:29 ◼   ► said, "Oh, it must be Face ID."

01:02:32 ◼   ► Turns out, not Face ID either.

01:02:33 ◼   ► So there's going to be, according to all this stuff,

01:02:36 ◼   ► an A10 CPU in the iMac Pro,

01:02:41 ◼   ► and it's gonna do a couple things.

01:02:44 ◼   ► So it's gonna potentially power a Hoy telephone

01:02:47 ◼   ► so you can talk to Siri and it's always listening.

01:02:51 ◼   ► I have questions why that can be done

01:02:52 ◼   ► when you have a Xeon under the hood,

01:02:53 ◼   ► but apparently it's built to run on the A series of chips.

01:02:57 ◼   ► You got an A10 so you can do that.

01:02:59 ◼   ► It is potentially going to take care

01:03:05 ◼   ► of some security stuff.

01:03:06 ◼   ► So there is a whole OS in here called Bridge OS.

01:03:10 ◼   ► It's also in the touch bar, MacBook Pros.

01:03:13 ◼   ► And Bridge OS can do a bunch of stuff.

01:03:15 ◼   ► One thing it can do is boot protection,

01:03:17 ◼   ► so it can assure that Mac OS hasn't been tinkered with.

01:03:20 ◼   ► And then basically you start up the A10 chip

01:03:23 ◼   ► and then it starts up Mac OS, which is crazy.

01:03:26 ◼   ► And it basically becomes a little co-processor

01:03:35 ◼   ► in the iMac Pro.

01:03:36 ◼   ► This all seems bananas, right?

01:03:37 ◼   ► Like, you got a whole A10 in there,

01:03:39 ◼   ► just for a whole telephone that seems like overkill.

01:03:42 ◼   ► - It does.

01:03:44 ◼   ► I saw some tweets about this,

01:03:46 ◼   ► that maybe the A10 could gate access

01:03:51 ◼   ► to more features than expected.

01:03:55 ◼   ► Like maybe, I don't know, maybe the iSight camera,

01:03:57 ◼   ► maybe the, maybe, you know, I don't know,

01:04:00 ◼   ► Apple Pay could be an idea,

01:04:02 ◼   ► or biometric security for sure.

01:04:06 ◼   ► And if you follow that thinking that maybe the ATN

01:04:10 ◼   ► is not just for Siri, but is actually using

01:04:14 ◼   ► the iOS security model and really the OS

01:04:19 ◼   ► for more than just the assistant,

01:04:25 ◼   ► then which one is really the coprocessor?

01:04:31 ◼   ► Is it the Intel chip that is just basically acting

01:04:34 ◼   ► as a dumb pipe to run macOS, or is it the A10?

01:04:39 ◼   ► So I guess it depends on, like,

01:04:41 ◼   ► is if the A10 is managing the booting sequence,

01:04:46 ◼   ► is taking care of security, is taking care of Apple Pay,

01:04:49 ◼   ► is taking care of Siri, and then it's also saying,

01:04:51 ◼   ► "Hey, by the way, Intel chip, come over here

01:04:52 ◼   ► "and run macOS for me."

01:04:54 ◼   ► Which one is the co-pilot here?

01:04:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah. (laughs)

01:04:58 ◼   ► - Interesting.

01:05:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, it is, and on the touch bar at MacBook Pros,

01:05:05 ◼   ► the iSight camera is already protected by this,

01:05:08 ◼   ► and so, Mac OS could be completely owned by,

01:05:12 ◼   ► let's just say hypothetically, Russian Twitter bots.

01:05:15 ◼   ► It still has to go through Bridge OS

01:05:20 ◼   ► and this custom chip to turn on the camera to control it.

01:05:25 ◼   ► So, there's already stuff in here.

01:05:28 ◼   ► I am more than fine with this if it means

01:05:31 ◼   ► that the Mac is more secure.

01:05:32 ◼   ► I think there will be some users who are doing

01:05:34 ◼   ► like weird kernel extension stuff.

01:05:37 ◼   ► You know, some of that may get more difficult.

01:05:40 ◼   ► It probably means eventually the death of hack-and-toshing,

01:05:43 ◼   ► right, unless you just like, just crack open an iPhone 7

01:05:47 ◼   ► and put the guts in.

01:05:49 ◼   ► Don't do that.

01:05:49 ◼   ► But it does mean no Face ID.

01:05:52 ◼   ► So Face ID on the iPhone 10 requires the A11 chip,

01:05:57 ◼   ► And that chipset in the iPhone X, as we all know,

01:06:01 ◼   ► can only store and learn and support one face.

01:06:04 ◼   ► So if my wife wants to unlock my phone,

01:06:08 ◼   ► she has to use the PIN code.

01:06:10 ◼   ► And it's annoying on the phone.

01:06:14 ◼   ► - Or your face.

01:06:15 ◼   ► - Or just take my face over to the phone.

01:06:19 ◼   ► Barring that.

01:06:21 ◼   ► That's annoying on the phone, but I think on a Mac,

01:06:26 ◼   ► I think it's more important to have multi-user support.

01:06:30 ◼   ► And they already have that with Touch ID.

01:06:31 ◼   ► You have multi-user support.

01:06:33 ◼   ► If you're on the login screen,

01:06:35 ◼   ► you can just put your thumb down

01:06:37 ◼   ► and it logs in to the correct user.

01:06:39 ◼   ► So maybe they're waiting until the A12 or something

01:06:42 ◼   ► that can support potentially more faces

01:06:45 ◼   ► to move this to the Mac.

01:06:47 ◼   ► I think it's also interesting that there's no touch bar

01:06:51 ◼   ► in this keyboard, we've talked about this a lot.

01:06:54 ◼   ► Until further notice, I just think the touch bar

01:06:56 ◼   ► like a dead end.

01:06:57 ◼   ► So it's a very interesting product for a bunch of reasons.

01:07:03 ◼   ► It's super expensive, it's very powerful,

01:07:06 ◼   ► it may usher in this new era of like Mac hardware

01:07:09 ◼   ► like infused with smart stuff from iOS and iPhones.

01:07:13 ◼   ► So I'm still very excited about this

01:07:16 ◼   ► and I'm really curious to see how Apple explains all of this

01:07:19 ◼   ► once this machine rolls out,

01:07:21 ◼   ► which you know, it's gotta be in the next

01:07:23 ◼   ► four or five weeks.

01:07:24 ◼   ► native iOS simulator running on the A10 inside the iMac Pro.

01:07:28 ◼   ► That'd be nice.

01:07:32 ◼   ► It's kind of like, who was it that,

01:07:35 ◼   ► was it Blackberry with the playbook

01:07:37 ◼   ► that they figured out a way to have Android apps

01:07:40 ◼   ► running on the-- - Yeah, they had like

01:07:41 ◼   ► the whole Android virtual machine in there.

01:07:45 ◼   ► That'd be something.

01:07:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, they could do all sorts of stuff

01:07:48 ◼   ► with the A10, right?

01:07:49 ◼   ► Like you said, iOS simulator and Xcode,

01:07:52 ◼   ► I can move more stuff to it in the future.

01:07:54 ◼   ► I think that the possibilities there are endless.

01:07:59 ◼   ► There was this weird thing from Mark Gurman years ago

01:08:02 ◼   ► about all the power nap stuff.

01:08:07 ◼   ► If your MacBook is asleep, you can still check mail

01:08:11 ◼   ► and do iCloud stuff in the background.

01:08:13 ◼   ► Maybe some of that stuff will be done on this A-series chip.

01:08:16 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:08:18 ◼   ► And there's lots of engineering in all of this.

01:08:20 ◼   ► But it sure seems like the iMac Pro is gonna be

01:08:23 ◼   ► the first machine to bring in this new era

01:08:27 ◼   ► of more complex hardware, doing more custom things.

01:08:31 ◼   ► And Apple has all this in-house, so why not use it?

01:08:33 ◼   ► It's smart for Apple to use this stuff.

01:08:35 ◼   ► I'm just very curious to see how it's gonna

01:08:38 ◼   ► play out in practice.

01:08:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, and all those iPhone 7 chip leftovers

01:08:44 ◼   ► are going into your fancy new iMac Pros.

01:08:47 ◼   ► Nothing goes to waste with the iMac Pro.

01:08:50 ◼   ► That's right. I mean, it's five grand. You got plenty of room to play with.

01:08:55 ◼   ► Just put everything in there.

01:08:56 ◼   ► It's a whole, yeah, it's like when iFixit does the take apart, they hit the glass off

01:09:00 ◼   ► and it's just like the iPhone plugged in with a lightning cable to the logic board.

01:09:06 ◼   ► It'll probably be better integrated than that, but you never know. Until further notice,

01:09:11 ◼   ► that's what it is in my mind.

01:09:12 ◼   ► Okay.

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01:11:37 ◼   ► So this is something that Myke made you do, right? He convinced you to do this again.

01:11:44 ◼   ► I mean, we can blame him because he's not here.

01:11:47 ◼   ► Exactly. I saw the conversation and it was totally Myke.

01:11:52 ◼   ► So we need to back up. We need to back up Federico to 2005.

01:11:56 ◼   ► Oh my God.

01:11:57 ◼   ► It's before we knew each other. We were young.

01:12:01 ◼   ► I was.

01:12:02 ◼   ► Some of us not as young as others.

01:12:07 ◼   ► - Well played.

01:12:09 ◼   ► And 2005, I'm in college.

01:12:11 ◼   ► I got a job, I got two jobs, I think, at this point.

01:12:15 ◼   ► And I needed what the kids call a task management system,

01:12:20 ◼   ► because I was losing track of homework assignments

01:12:24 ◼   ► and things to do for work, et cetera.

01:12:26 ◼   ► So I signed up for a service called Remember the Milk.

01:12:30 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

01:12:31 ◼   ► - It was around back then.

01:12:34 ◼   ► Remember the Milk was a very 2005 mid-aughts web app, right?

01:12:39 ◼   ► It ran on anything, still does.

01:12:44 ◼   ► It had an exchange, like you could plug it into Exchange,

01:12:47 ◼   ► all this cool stuff.

01:12:48 ◼   ► It worked great for me for a long time.

01:12:50 ◼   ► Eventually I grew it and went on to OmniFocus.

01:12:54 ◼   ► But for the last, really the better part

01:12:56 ◼   ► of the last two years I've been using Todoist,

01:12:58 ◼   ► mostly because of seeing what you've been able to do with it

01:13:01 ◼   ► with web automation and cross-platform stuff.

01:13:06 ◼   ► But there's this one thing in Todoist that really,

01:13:12 ◼   ► as the kids say, it grinds my gears.

01:13:15 ◼   ► This one thing is something that Todoist fails at,

01:13:19 ◼   ► is something that OmniFocus fails at,

01:13:21 ◼   ► is something that Things, I believe, fails at.

01:13:25 ◼   ► The only app that has done this for me

01:13:28 ◼   ► is Remember the Milk and To Do,

01:13:30 ◼   ► that did the number two DO, to do.

01:13:33 ◼   ► To do does this as well, but to do's interface,

01:13:36 ◼   ► it's like launching a rocket into space.

01:13:38 ◼   ► There's way too many dials and buttons, so I gave up on it.

01:13:41 ◼   ► And that is to keep a task sorted by due date.

01:13:46 ◼   ► So if I have a task list named connected,

01:13:51 ◼   ► and I add a new to do item to that list,

01:13:54 ◼   ► I want the list to stay sorted by due date.

01:13:56 ◼   ► And to do list and omni focus and everything else

01:13:59 ◼   ► as New Task at the bottom.

01:14:00 ◼   ► Now, you can manually sort those lists,

01:14:03 ◼   ► although in Todoist you cannot do that on iOS.

01:14:05 ◼   ► Every time they have a new test flight built,

01:14:07 ◼   ► I email them and say, hey, add this button

01:14:09 ◼   ► so I can sort manually on iOS, and they never do it.

01:14:12 ◼   ► But remember what the MOOC does,

01:14:14 ◼   ► and I have been revisiting my old friend

01:14:19 ◼   ► the last couple weeks, and I gotta say,

01:14:23 ◼   ► except for the icon, it's pretty good.

01:14:26 ◼   ► Pretty good, Federico.

01:14:27 ◼   ► Pretty good.

01:14:28 ◼   ► - So the icon is still a cow.

01:14:32 ◼   ► - The icon is the worst.

01:14:34 ◼   ► - The milk is now turned into curds?

01:14:38 ◼   ► - No, 'cause you remember it.

01:14:39 ◼   ► If you forget it.

01:14:40 ◼   ► - Oh, 'cause you forget it.

01:14:41 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:14:42 ◼   ► - But you remembered it.

01:14:44 ◼   ► - So all jokes aside,

01:14:49 ◼   ► they really should change the icon, by the way.

01:14:51 ◼   ► - I would pay them money.

01:14:53 ◼   ► On top of the premium,

01:14:55 ◼   ► which is a little bit more year than Todoist,

01:14:58 ◼   ► to change the icon.

01:14:59 ◼   ► They have a little milk carton guy

01:15:02 ◼   ► who runs across the screen when it loads.

01:15:04 ◼   ► Put him on the icon.

01:15:05 ◼   ► - Put the guy on the icon.

01:15:07 ◼   ► - Put anything on the icon.

01:15:09 ◼   ► So I think we should do some comparison.

01:15:13 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:15:14 ◼   ► - So both Todoist and Remember the Milk

01:15:16 ◼   ► offer the following.

01:15:17 ◼   ► They're cross platform, they work on iOS, Mac OS,

01:15:20 ◼   ► the web, Android, Windows, whatever you're on,

01:15:25 ◼   ► there. They're both free with a premium feature, you know, premium service that

01:15:30 ◼   ► adds more features. They both offer natural language processing. Remember

01:15:34 ◼   ► the look is actually the first as far as I know. And so you can type in, you know,

01:15:38 ◼   ► "Call Federico today 2 p.m." and it makes a task for 2 p.m. today to call Federico.

01:15:45 ◼   ► You can tell it what list to go on, you can do repeating stuff, all natural

01:15:49 ◼   ► language. It's a little bit different than the way Todoist does it, but as soon as

01:15:52 ◼   ► you learn it. It's just as fast as todoist. They both have sharing and task

01:15:57 ◼   ► delegation. I don't use this but if I did I could send tasks to other people and

01:16:01 ◼   ► they could send tasks to me. They both offer Siri kit support on iOS so you can

01:16:05 ◼   ► you can just tell your phone to add something. And the nice thing is RTM,

01:16:09 ◼   ► which is what they use, is way easy to pronounce than todoist and Siri can

01:16:13 ◼   ► actually hear it and listen to it and like understand and I struggled

01:16:17 ◼   ► endlessly to get Siri to add things to todoist and not just like freak out.

01:16:21 ◼   ► They both offer Apple watch apps that are pretty good. They both offer iOS widgets, although it does lack a Mac widget

01:16:27 ◼   ► They offer smart lists and I would argue that remember the milk smart is actually more powerful than todoists

01:16:32 ◼   ► They both offer API access and what I didn't know until recently is that you can use web automation

01:16:39 ◼   ► So if this and that

01:16:42 ◼   ► Zapier or just straight-up email to automate remember the milk

01:16:45 ◼   ► So all of my automations from Zapier that used to go into doest to work just fine

01:16:50 ◼   ► with Remember the Milk.

01:16:51 ◼   ► So it is basically, I would say it's on par

01:16:54 ◼   ► with something like Todoist as far as the features

01:16:57 ◼   ► it offers.

01:16:58 ◼   ► Todoist has a good icon, well Todoist has an okay icon.

01:17:03 ◼   ► Remember the Milk's is really bad,

01:17:04 ◼   ► but they're very similar.

01:17:05 ◼   ► And I was honestly surprised that a product

01:17:08 ◼   ► that's been around for as long as Remember the Milk

01:17:10 ◼   ► has been, that they have been able to stay up to date.

01:17:15 ◼   ► They had a big redesign a couple years ago

01:17:18 ◼   ► and they've been iterating on it,

01:17:20 ◼   ► and I think they are competitive.

01:17:23 ◼   ► Now, I think, you just look at their Twitter followers

01:17:25 ◼   ► and you know that it's a much smaller platform than Todoist,

01:17:28 ◼   ► but it has offered everything that I was using

01:17:31 ◼   ► in Todoist and a little bit more, so.

01:17:33 ◼   ► - Why do you think it hasn't been able to reach

01:17:38 ◼   ► the number of people that Todoist is now,

01:17:42 ◼   ► of course, reaching?

01:17:44 ◼   ► Because it seems to me like they were doing

01:17:47 ◼   ► a lot of the things that Todoist is well known now,

01:17:50 ◼   ► way before Todoist.

01:17:52 ◼   ► So what went wrong here?

01:17:54 ◼   ► Is it really the name or is it the icon?

01:17:56 ◼   ► Because I'm honestly not sure.

01:17:58 ◼   ► - I think the branding hasn't helped them.

01:18:01 ◼   ► I think if it looked more modern,

01:18:04 ◼   ► and like the UI on iOS is actually pretty decent.

01:18:08 ◼   ► The web and Mac app, like it's a little weird in places,

01:18:12 ◼   ► but Todoist is like a garbage Mac app.

01:18:13 ◼   ► So like none of them are awesome except for OmniFocus.

01:18:17 ◼   ► So I think the branding is one of them.

01:18:20 ◼   ► I think too, like, I think it's true of any product.

01:18:23 ◼   ► Like people may remember it from like 2005 or whenever

01:18:27 ◼   ► because it was the only game in town

01:18:28 ◼   ► and they may not realize how much it's evolved.

01:18:31 ◼   ► And I think it's easy when you leave a product behind

01:18:35 ◼   ► or an app behind, you remember it the way that it was

01:18:38 ◼   ► when you left and you don't keep up with it anymore, right?

01:18:41 ◼   ► So you may not realize that this app was kind of bad

01:18:44 ◼   ► when I left it four years ago or whenever,

01:18:47 ◼   ► but actually it's really good.

01:18:48 ◼   ► Or at least it's as good as something else

01:18:51 ◼   ► because they've been updating it.

01:18:52 ◼   ► Because we just remember things the way they were

01:18:54 ◼   ► and then we lose track.

01:18:55 ◼   ► So I think those are the two big things.

01:18:57 ◼   ► And two, I think Todoist just has,

01:19:00 ◼   ► they have a bigger marketing budget.

01:19:03 ◼   ► They seem, they're a bigger company.

01:19:05 ◼   ► RTM is, the company is still really small.

01:19:09 ◼   ► only like a dozen people or something, I think.

01:19:11 ◼   ► So I think all that kind of goes into it.

01:19:13 ◼   ► There are some things that it's missing versus Todoist,

01:19:15 ◼   ► so it does not have a nested list,

01:19:17 ◼   ► which I find really annoying,

01:19:19 ◼   ► and I've actually been talking with them about this

01:19:21 ◼   ► and explaining, like building my case.

01:19:24 ◼   ► So Todoist, I could have a project called Podcasts,

01:19:27 ◼   ► and then I could have subprojects or sublists

01:19:29 ◼   ► like connected, liftoff, ungenius, query, download.

01:19:33 ◼   ► You can't do that in RTM.

01:19:36 ◼   ► There's no depth to the list,

01:19:38 ◼   ► So they're all just like one level deep,

01:19:42 ◼   ► which I find a little frustrating

01:19:45 ◼   ► 'cause I've had to combine some things

01:19:46 ◼   ► and have some less that I wouldn't have otherwise.

01:19:48 ◼   ► But I've adjusted that a little bit.

01:19:50 ◼   ► There's also no karma or like reward system in RTM.

01:19:56 ◼   ► So in Todoist, you have points, right?

01:19:59 ◼   ► And the more things you check off

01:20:01 ◼   ► and you have daily and weekly goals,

01:20:03 ◼   ► and if you hit those goals, you can build a streak

01:20:05 ◼   ► and you can get points.

01:20:06 ◼   ► and like all that is 100% stupid, but I kinda miss it.

01:20:10 ◼   ► Like I kinda miss that I had like a year and a half streak

01:20:13 ◼   ► of untodos of hitting my goal every day.

01:20:16 ◼   ► And RTM just doesn't have any of that.

01:20:21 ◼   ► I think one thing it does have in its favor,

01:20:26 ◼   ► and I didn't have this in my notes,

01:20:28 ◼   ► but I'm gonna try to explain it.

01:20:30 ◼   ► So say that you have a task that's due every day, Federico.

01:20:33 ◼   ► So every day you have a task that says,

01:20:36 ◼   ► I don't know, like replace iPhone 10, right?

01:20:39 ◼   ► 'Cause you break it every day.

01:20:40 ◼   ► If you miss today's instance of that to-do item

01:20:47 ◼   ► and you leave it unchecked, so you left it undone,

01:20:51 ◼   ► and then tomorrow on Wednesday you complete it,

01:20:55 ◼   ► what Todoist and what every app I've ever seen does

01:21:00 ◼   ► is it skips Wednesday's instance of that

01:21:02 ◼   ► and the next time it's due is Thursday.

01:21:05 ◼   ► So this is something you have to do every day.

01:21:06 ◼   ► If you have to do it seven times a week and you miss a day,

01:21:09 ◼   ► you only get six to do items.

01:21:11 ◼   ► Does that make sense?

01:21:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:21:13 ◼   ► I know what you're talking about, yeah.

01:21:15 ◼   ► - I find that annoying 'cause I have two tasks

01:21:17 ◼   ► I do every day and they need to be done seven times a week.

01:21:21 ◼   ► And occasionally I'll miss it

01:21:22 ◼   ► because it'll be after midnight

01:21:23 ◼   ► before I get it done or something.

01:21:24 ◼   ► But I need to make sure I have it done every day.

01:21:27 ◼   ► Remember the milk handles this properly

01:21:29 ◼   ► and creates an instance for every day that I've missed.

01:21:31 ◼   ► So if I missed it for two days in a row,

01:21:35 ◼   ► and I do it the first time, it'll move it to one day behind,

01:21:38 ◼   ► and then I'll do it and move it to today.

01:21:40 ◼   ► It's a really small thing, but something that I run into,

01:21:42 ◼   ► 'cause like I said, I have two tasks

01:21:43 ◼   ► that I have to do every day.

01:21:45 ◼   ► So yeah, so I've kind of moved back to this,

01:21:51 ◼   ► and there's some frustration

01:21:55 ◼   ► with some of the organizational stuff,

01:21:57 ◼   ► but it syncs in the background just as good,

01:21:59 ◼   ► if not better, than Todoist.

01:22:00 ◼   ► I have on my web automation,

01:22:01 ◼   ► it sorts lists the way that I want,

01:22:03 ◼   ► because I really like having lists sorted automatically

01:22:05 ◼   ► by due date.

01:22:07 ◼   ► I just, for some reason, that's really the way that I think.

01:22:09 ◼   ► I want to look in my 512 pixels list

01:22:13 ◼   ► and know what is due in the next week,

01:22:15 ◼   ► or look at my Relay FM administrative task list

01:22:18 ◼   ► and know what's due in the next week.

01:22:20 ◼   ► And if it's not sorted by due date,

01:22:22 ◼   ► I don't have a way to do that easily.

01:22:24 ◼   ► And I have found that to be frustrating in Todoist

01:22:27 ◼   ► for so long, and it's nice to have something

01:22:28 ◼   ► that can keep them that way.

01:22:31 ◼   ► If Todoist were to add that feature, right, if I could say always sort this by due date,

01:22:35 ◼   ► I'd probably be back in Todoist really, I think really for the list, you know, I can

01:22:43 ◼   ► have multiple lists under a project, but yeah, so you guys can make fun of the icon, but

01:22:49 ◼   ► you know, I'm getting stuff done, that's the point of this, right?

01:22:52 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:22:53 ◼   ► - Getting stuff done.

01:22:54 ◼   ► you know, going beyond the icon and the name and sort of the aesthetic. That's not really

01:23:02 ◼   ► the point here. They got a bunch of integrations that seem to be working really well. It's,

01:23:08 ◼   ► you know, cross-platform stuff. When you have a lot of stuff going on, when you're using,

01:23:13 ◼   ► you know, sub-lists and sub-tasks. I took, I remember the Milk for Spill just to see

01:23:22 ◼   ► what it was like. I'm not a big fan of the iOS client. It seems to me like it's slightly

01:23:29 ◼   ► behind Todoist, especially when it comes maybe a little to the native integrations. Like

01:23:35 ◼   ► the extension is not as nice. I could find drag and drop support on iOS 11 for iPad.

01:23:43 ◼   ► But the web app seems to be solid. It looks much, much better than I remembered. And they

01:23:52 ◼   ► should change the name and the logo and everything about the branding but it's

01:23:56 ◼   ► you know maybe you're destined to you were destined to you to use a cow

01:24:02 ◼   ► Steven. I guess so. Hey I got start I got start dates again you don't have that

01:24:07 ◼   ► to do-est. I don't use start dates really. There's a bigger topic here using

01:24:14 ◼   ► things now but we can talk about it in the future. So you're using things okay

01:24:19 ◼   ► - Okay, so next week, maybe next week we'll talk about

01:24:21 ◼   ► you using things.

01:24:21 ◼   ► - No, no.

01:24:22 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:24:23 ◼   ► - No, no, no, no, no.

01:24:25 ◼   ► - You heard it here first, next week.

01:24:26 ◼   ► - It's gonna make me do this.

01:24:27 ◼   ► No, no, I'm not, I'm not.

01:24:29 ◼   ► Don't come back to the show for that,

01:24:30 ◼   ► it's not gonna happen.

01:24:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:24:33 ◼   ► - Soon?

01:24:34 ◼   ► We talk about it soon?

01:24:35 ◼   ► - Soon.

01:24:36 ◼   ► - Soon, okay.

01:24:37 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:24:38 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:24:38 ◼   ► 'Cause I think, I mean, sort of silliness aside,

01:24:40 ◼   ► I think that sometimes, like people sort of get like a

01:24:44 ◼   ► emotional about their to-do systems, right?

01:24:47 ◼   ► Like I know I used OmniFocus for like five or six years

01:24:50 ◼   ► and I was like, everything else stinks.

01:24:52 ◼   ► I've come to realize, and part of this is in defense

01:24:54 ◼   ► of my move because the branding stuff just isn't that good.

01:24:58 ◼   ► Like I do think it's most important that whatever system

01:25:02 ◼   ► you use serves you in getting stuff done.

01:25:06 ◼   ► And if you take tasks down in a paper document,

01:25:11 ◼   ► paper notebook, or you have a bunch of sticky notes

01:25:14 ◼   ► or you use an app, it doesn't really matter

01:25:17 ◼   ► as long as you get your work done.

01:25:18 ◼   ► And I think that if you can find the app

01:25:20 ◼   ► that works the way you do the best,

01:25:22 ◼   ► then that's the one for you.

01:25:24 ◼   ► And if someone else doesn't like it,

01:25:26 ◼   ► then that's their problem.

01:25:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, the thing about recommending task managers

01:25:31 ◼   ► and recommending email clients is that

01:25:33 ◼   ► one day highly depends on just what your life is like

01:25:37 ◼   ► at the moment.

01:25:38 ◼   ► There have been moments in my life

01:25:40 ◼   ► when I wanted to add the super complex task manager.

01:25:42 ◼   ► There are other moments when I really wanted collaboration.

01:25:45 ◼   ► and there may be moments when I want something simpler

01:25:47 ◼   ► that doesn't make me stress over my due tasks

01:25:51 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

01:25:54 ◼   ► And also the other problem is that a lot of people

01:25:57 ◼   ► feel about task managers and recommendations

01:25:59 ◼   ► about task managers or email clients

01:26:02 ◼   ► like they will feel about relative.

01:26:05 ◼   ► It's like, you stop recommending OmniFocus to me?

01:26:07 ◼   ► It's like, I haven't killed your uncle.

01:26:10 ◼   ► It's like, I'm using a different task manager, man.

01:26:13 ◼   ► It's fine.

01:26:15 ◼   ► So there's writing about and talking about,

01:26:18 ◼   ► especially task managers,

01:26:20 ◼   ► at one point there's like diminishing returns.

01:26:25 ◼   ► A lot of people, on one hand they wanna hear more,

01:26:30 ◼   ► but on the other, every time you talk about something new,

01:26:35 ◼   ► they're like, "Oh, so you're not using that anymore?"

01:26:38 ◼   ► I think it's great that we can,

01:26:43 ◼   ► I'm trying to approach this from a sort of high concept.

01:26:47 ◼   ► It's great that we can try multiple task managers.

01:26:52 ◼   ► I think CGP Grey made this point a long time ago on Cortex.

01:26:55 ◼   ► I always wanna try new task managers

01:27:00 ◼   ► because I never feel like there's the perfect one for me

01:27:03 ◼   ► exists at the moment.

01:27:05 ◼   ► And I think it's awesome that on the App Store

01:27:10 ◼   ► and on the web these days, and on smart speakers,

01:27:14 ◼   ► we have multiple choices.

01:27:16 ◼   ► And so if, remember, the milk works well for you,

01:27:19 ◼   ► or to-do list works well for Myke or for me,

01:27:22 ◼   ► or things works well for me,

01:27:24 ◼   ► I think it's great.

01:27:26 ◼   ► And I think maybe there's a lot of people,

01:27:31 ◼   ► of course, there's an investment,

01:27:33 ◼   ► both time-wise and money-wise,

01:27:37 ◼   ► into trying these task managers.

01:27:40 ◼   ► But on the other hand, a task manager that works well for you can really restore a lot

01:27:50 ◼   ► of sanity into your life.

01:27:53 ◼   ► So I don't think there's anything wrong about experimenting, trying multiple things, switching.

01:27:59 ◼   ► Because it's not like we are carrying – what do they call that?

01:28:04 ◼   ► The football?

01:28:05 ◼   ► The case that the president has?

01:28:06 ◼   ► The nuclear football?

01:28:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:28:09 ◼   ► It's not like we have those kinds of responsibilities.

01:28:13 ◼   ► I mean, we're reminding ourselves to post about podcasts

01:28:16 ◼   ► and edit blog posts about Twitter clients.

01:28:21 ◼   ► Not to say that we do stupid stuff,

01:28:23 ◼   ► but we can switch task managers

01:28:25 ◼   ► and the world is not gonna explode.

01:28:28 ◼   ► That's what I'm saying.

01:28:28 ◼   ► - It took me 45 minutes to move my task into it.

01:28:31 ◼   ► Like, it's not crazy.

01:28:33 ◼   ► We can all agree anything's better than reminders, right?

01:28:36 ◼   ► That's the threshold.

01:28:37 ◼   ► - Yes, yes, yes.

01:28:41 ◼   ► So yeah, this is all just a mini side extra topic

01:28:46 ◼   ► about the pressure of talking about task managers in public.

01:28:51 ◼   ► That also applies to email clients,

01:28:53 ◼   ► but even more so to task managers.

01:28:55 ◼   ► So you were very brave today, Steven,

01:28:58 ◼   ► to talk about your choice of Remember the Milk,

01:29:01 ◼   ► and I applaud your decision to be extremely forward

01:29:06 ◼   ► forward in your recommendation.

01:29:08 ◼   ► Well I appreciate that. If you want to find the show notes this week, topics, links we've

01:29:15 ◼   ► talked about, relay.fm/connected/169, man, getting up there. You can get in touch with

01:29:25 ◼   ► us there, you can send us an email, send us some tweets. Myke, if he's around, you can

01:29:31 ◼   ► You can find him on Twitter, I-M-Y-K-E.

01:29:34 ◼   ► Federico though, he writes MaxStories.net,

01:29:36 ◼   ► a website that you should read every single day.

01:29:39 ◼   ► And you can find him on Twitter, V-I-T-I-C-C-I.

01:29:43 ◼   ► You can find me at 512pixels.net and on Twitter is ISMH.

01:29:47 ◼   ► And all three of us host a bunch of shows here on Relay.

01:29:50 ◼   ► So if you haven't checked out some of those shows

01:29:53 ◼   ► on the network, go do that.

01:29:54 ◼   ► There's lots of good stuff to listen to.

01:29:56 ◼   ► I'd like to thank our sponsors this week one last time,

01:29:58 ◼   ► Text expander, timing, and simple contacts.

01:30:02 ◼   ► And until next week, Federico, say goodbye.

01:30:05 ◼   ► - Arrivederci.

01:30:07 ◼   ► - Adios.

01:30:07 ◼   ► [ Silence ]