Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:05 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode 126.

00:00:10 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Smile, Blue Apron, and Squarespace.

00:00:14 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley, I'm joined by Steven Hackett. Hello, Steven Hackett.

00:00:17 ◼   ► Hello, Michael Hurley.

00:00:19 ◼   ► And Federico Vittucci is back, everybody.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Hola, guys.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Oh, because you were in Spain, right?

00:00:26 ◼   ► Yes.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Did you say adios to people with a twinkle in your eye?

00:00:29 ◼   ► I only knew like two words, hola and adiós, and everything else I tried to improvise a combination of English and Spanish,

00:00:41 ◼   ► but it wasn't really Spanish, it was like Italian with the letter S appended to the end of some words.

00:00:48 ◼   ► So it mostly went okay.

00:00:51 ◼   ► Yeah, because they're relatively close, right?

00:00:54 ◼   ► Yes, but the Catalan language, the dialect of Barcelona, it's actually different from the mainland, Spanish.

00:01:04 ◼   ► So sometimes it worked, other times it didn't. But it was amazing. Great city, beautiful place, I want to go back.

00:01:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I was there. We might be going back again this year for the music festival I went to last year, I think it's called Primavera.

00:01:19 ◼   ► So we might be going to Barcelona again for that.

00:01:21 ◼   ► When is it?

00:01:22 ◼   ► It's like early June. It's like a weekend in early June. I think it's the first weekend of June.

00:01:27 ◼   ► Before WWDC, huh?

00:01:29 ◼   ► It's before WWDC, yep.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Oh nice, interesting. Thank you.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Anything. Steven?

00:01:36 ◼   ► Yes.

00:01:38 ◼   ► Follow us up, please.

00:01:39 ◼   ► I will. So when Federica was gone, I took the reigns to talk about the Mac Mini with you,

00:01:46 ◼   ► Myke, and our guest.

00:01:47 ◼   ► He brought Dan Moran in and they tag-teamed and took me down.

00:01:51 ◼   ► We just Mac Mini'd it up.

00:01:53 ◼   ► I thought it was John Siracusa last week.

00:01:57 ◼   ► Now that you mention it, it makes sense.

00:02:00 ◼   ► Oh, it never gets old, that joke.

00:02:03 ◼   ► I love it so much.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Makes sense.

00:02:06 ◼   ► Makes sense.

00:02:07 ◼   ► So it turns out that I have accidentally, but I will take the mantle upon my shoulders,

00:02:14 ◼   ► as the official...

00:02:16 ◼   ► I'm going to go with Mac Mini spokesperson.

00:02:19 ◼   ► I think the Sernaites originally said "profit" but that didn't feel quite right because of

00:02:22 ◼   ► what's-his-name who AOL hired.

00:02:25 ◼   ► But the official Mac Mini spokesperson, the leader of the Mac Mini people, if you will.

00:02:31 ◼   ► So we had a bunch of feedback.

00:02:32 ◼   ► I wanted to share two pieces of it.

00:02:35 ◼   ► Listener John wrote in praising the Mac Mini as a good family computer since it's small

00:02:40 ◼   ► and quiet and really budget friendly that you can get one cheaper than any other Mac.

00:02:46 ◼   ► And what I was struck by this is that this is the same reason the Mac Mini existed in

00:02:50 ◼   ► the first place, right?

00:02:51 ◼   ► That it was small and budget friendly and you could switch from a PC to a Mac Mini pretty

00:02:57 ◼   ► easily.

00:02:58 ◼   ► And then I remembered that years ago, probably on the prompt, so Federico when we started

00:03:05 ◼   ► the show you had an iMac and you don't have that iMac anymore, right?

00:03:09 ◼   ► Or is it's using holding a door open or something at your house?

00:03:11 ◼   ► Yeah I think it's used to hold... my mom throws t-shirts on top of it in my bedroom at my parents place.

00:03:20 ◼   ► Oh yeah, like a drawing rack?

00:03:22 ◼   ► I don't know if I mentioned this last time but I've donated my Mac Mini to a family member who didn't have a computer.

00:03:28 ◼   ► Oh did you?

00:03:29 ◼   ► Yeah so it's got a new life.

00:03:31 ◼   ► Gotcha, that's the Mac Mini that really started on.

00:03:34 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

00:03:35 ◼   ► - And I believe Federico, we told you years ago

00:03:40 ◼   ► just to buy a Mac Mini.

00:03:41 ◼   ► 'Cause you know, at the time,

00:03:43 ◼   ► at the time you needed something to put iOS betas on.

00:03:45 ◼   ► Of course, the world has changed

00:03:46 ◼   ► and you only need a Mac now for recording.

00:03:49 ◼   ► But this is like, this is another use case

00:03:51 ◼   ► for this little computer,

00:03:52 ◼   ► that if someone really doesn't need a Mac full-time

00:03:54 ◼   ► or they're switching or they want something cheap,

00:03:56 ◼   ► or like Myke said, like someone who doesn't have a computer,

00:03:59 ◼   ► the Mac Mini is a great starting place.

00:04:01 ◼   ► and without it, the starting place for the Mac line is what,

00:04:05 ◼   ► like the $1,000 MacBook Air,

00:04:08 ◼   ► or whatever the cheapest iMac is,

00:04:10 ◼   ► maybe 12 or 14 hundred bucks,

00:04:12 ◼   ► maybe someone in the chat room can tell me

00:04:13 ◼   ► how much the cheapest iMac is.

00:04:14 ◼   ► - You should buy an iPad.

00:04:16 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, but if you need a Mac, if you want--

00:04:20 ◼   ► - I'm mostly trolling you.

00:04:22 ◼   ► - I know.

00:04:23 ◼   ► Listener Sebastian wrote in with some crazy bath salt ideas,

00:04:30 ◼   ► Wouldn't a stackable modular Mac Mini be cool?

00:04:32 ◼   ► Base unit, external GPU, et cetera.

00:04:35 ◼   ► These could be the same shape and look

00:04:38 ◼   ► and you basically use like,

00:04:39 ◼   ► you build your Mac Mini by stacking components

00:04:41 ◼   ► on top of each other.

00:04:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, it would be super cool,

00:04:43 ◼   ► but it's never gonna happen.

00:04:45 ◼   ► - Right, because if the Mac Mini does get updated,

00:04:48 ◼   ► and I think that, you know, whatever.

00:04:51 ◼   ► If it does get updated,

00:04:52 ◼   ► I don't see a big form factor change coming.

00:04:55 ◼   ► I wrote this thing years ago,

00:04:56 ◼   ► I linked to it in my Mac Mini piece on Mac Stories

00:04:59 ◼   ► about this idea of a Mac Mini basically being as small as possible and without a traditional

00:05:06 ◼   ► hard drive and without a SuperDrive, you can make the thing like the size of the Apple

00:05:10 ◼   ► TV and they haven't done that.

00:05:14 ◼   ► The form factor has been the same for a long time.

00:05:16 ◼   ► I don't see them putting the R&D money into creating a new form factor, let alone some

00:05:21 ◼   ► sort of like new interconnect system.

00:05:24 ◼   ► That would have to apply to a bunch of Macs.

00:05:26 ◼   ► That's one reason I think the touch bar is going to end up everywhere that you make that

00:05:30 ◼   ► investment so you can spread it across the line.

00:05:32 ◼   ► It's a cool idea and I think Sebastian is onto something like the Mac Mini as a modular

00:05:38 ◼   ► system is kind of what it used to be where you could upgrade stuff but I think the days

00:05:42 ◼   ► of Apple making any computer like that are gone.

00:05:45 ◼   ► It died with the cheese grater Mac Pro.

00:05:47 ◼   ► I also see that argument, I can see where it's coming from but then it could also replace

00:05:52 ◼   ► a more powerful machine, it could in theory replace a Mac Pro if you just build it out

00:05:56 ◼   ► that way. I can see why you would get to that thinking, but that's in a world in which the

00:06:02 ◼   ► Mac is more important than it is now. To put that insane amount of R&D it would take to

00:06:09 ◼   ► develop a new system like this that works reliably, that would be very very expensive.

00:06:15 ◼   ► I don't know if Apple would truly recoup the cost on that product in 2017 to be honest.

00:06:21 ◼   ► - Totally agree, you're totally right.

00:06:23 ◼   ► So it would be cool, it would be nice,

00:06:26 ◼   ► there was this conversation years ago

00:06:28 ◼   ► about the XMac, sort of a mini tower

00:06:31 ◼   ► that you could put one or two GPUs in,

00:06:34 ◼   ► kind of a modular system.

00:06:36 ◼   ► And I just think Apple's passed that.

00:06:37 ◼   ► And it makes me sad, I wish there was something like that,

00:06:40 ◼   ► but I don't think that external modules are the answer,

00:06:43 ◼   ► and like I think you said, the time for this has passed,

00:06:46 ◼   ► they're never gonna make that money back,

00:06:47 ◼   ► so they're not gonna do it.

00:06:48 ◼   ► - Nope.

00:06:50 ◼   ► So moving on a little bit to the Amazon Echo,

00:06:53 ◼   ► which we've been speaking a lot about

00:06:54 ◼   ► the last couple weeks.

00:06:56 ◼   ► The Vertex article last night,

00:06:58 ◼   ► I think it's rolling out now,

00:07:00 ◼   ► so if you don't have this yet in your iPhone app

00:07:04 ◼   ► for the Echo, it may be there shortly.

00:07:07 ◼   ► You can now change the trigger word from blank to computer.

00:07:12 ◼   ► And I mean, so one, like, lolStarTrek.

00:07:18 ◼   ► But I would fire this thing a billion times a day by mistake.

00:07:21 ◼   ► I don't know how many times in the day I say computer and I work by myself in an office.

00:07:26 ◼   ► I get that it's funny but I would find it frustrating to switch to this.

00:07:30 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a terrible way to quote.

00:07:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't get it.

00:07:33 ◼   ► It must be funny, like a reference for people who have watched Star Trek, I guess.

00:07:39 ◼   ► I don't get it.

00:07:40 ◼   ► Why would you say computer?

00:07:41 ◼   ► It's like a common news word.

00:07:43 ◼   ► I don't want my echo to go off because I say computer.

00:07:46 ◼   ► So you can send all your email to Federico about those comments.

00:07:49 ◼   ► No, I mean, I'm just...

00:07:51 ◼   ► Why are they adding this entire, like, thing to it for a joke?

00:07:55 ◼   ► Yeah, but like...

00:07:56 ◼   ► But we don't need cute.

00:07:57 ◼   ► We need stuff that works, not cute.

00:08:00 ◼   ► I mean, you gotta...

00:08:01 ◼   ► Dogs are cute, not speakers.

00:08:04 ◼   ► That's what I'm saying.

00:08:05 ◼   ► Yeah, we're going to call it like, you know,

00:08:06 ◼   ► I want my wake word to be Fido, you know, something like that.

00:08:10 ◼   ► Just make me think of a dog or like Rover or something.

00:08:13 ◼   ► No, that's cute.

00:08:14 ◼   ► I get it, I get it, but I think it would be better if it was cute and useful.

00:08:19 ◼   ► I don't think the word computer is a useful wake word for the echo.

00:08:24 ◼   ► Maybe they should have looked somewhere else, I don't know.

00:08:27 ◼   ► But maybe we're just Star Trek haters, you know?

00:08:31 ◼   ► I'm not a hater, I'm just a Star Trek non-person.

00:08:37 ◼   ► I never watch it.

00:08:39 ◼   ► Star Trek is the one with the weird finger salute, right?

00:08:43 ◼   ► Like the hand? That they made the emoji for.

00:08:46 ◼   ► The emoji, yes. That's from Star Trek.

00:08:48 ◼   ► And it's the one with the people with the pointy ears.

00:08:51 ◼   ► That's Star Trek? Okay.

00:08:54 ◼   ► Live long and do some stuff.

00:08:57 ◼   ► Yes, I know that phrase.

00:09:00 ◼   ► That's all I know about Star Trek.

00:09:03 ◼   ► Myke, are you going to bleep every time we say computer on the show?

00:09:06 ◼   ► Yes, yes. Every time now. That is the new thing.

00:09:10 ◼   ► Just in case.

00:09:12 ◼   ► So Connect will be moving to a three times a year release schedule.

00:09:16 ◼   ► That's going to take forever.

00:09:18 ◼   ► We spend a lot of time on this show talking about music streaming services.

00:09:23 ◼   ► I saw a news story yesterday, which was perplexing to me.

00:09:28 ◼   ► Sprint, the mobile carrier in the US, has bought a 33% share in Tidal.

00:09:34 ◼   ► Who? Okay.

00:09:36 ◼   ► They reportedly paid around $200 million for this.

00:09:42 ◼   ► Jay-Z paid 56 million when he bought the entire company in 2015.

00:09:47 ◼   ► So how is this more expensive?

00:09:48 ◼   ► So Jay-Z's done a good job of raising the valuation from 56 million to $600 million.

00:09:55 ◼   ► So good work.

00:09:57 ◼   ► I mean, in case you actually don't know what Tidal is, Tidal is a music streaming

00:10:01 ◼   ► service, which is all about kind of like making sure that those hungry artists

00:10:06 ◼   ► like Justin Timberlake get food on their table, right?

00:10:09 ◼   ► Like they have this, this, do you remember that big event that they did?

00:10:11 ◼   ► Well, I guess super creepy it was super strange

00:10:14 ◼   ► But anyway, they're kind of about like making sure that people get paid and and they do like lossless and stuff like that

00:10:20 ◼   ► They believe in like the quality, you know, I'm being silly but like this is that that kind of thing

00:10:24 ◼   ► And they've had some strange ways that they've gone about this by like talking about

00:10:28 ◼   ► Making sure artists get paid but instead of featuring indie artists, they feature like the biggest pop stars in the world

00:10:34 ◼   ► They've had a bunch of exclusives that are kind of linked in some way to jay-z, right?

00:10:40 ◼   ► So like I think Beyonce's is an exclusive he has and I think Kanye's album was exclusive to title for like 24 minutes before

00:10:47 ◼   ► Gotta be friends or you know related to Jay-z in order to be on title

00:10:53 ◼   ► That's what you're saying, right?

00:10:54 ◼   ► Like what never that's how the exclusives are done because he's doing those deals right and he gets the exclusives to title that way

00:10:59 ◼   ► Anyway, so there will now be title exclusives that are only available if you're a sprint customer like that is a thing that they're doing

00:11:08 ◼   ► Nice that's that's what it's called a net neutrality. I think yeah, that's yeah, that's it. That's the perfect example

00:11:15 ◼   ► Yeah, so we should revisit the net neutrality conversation at some point so much that's gonna change here

00:11:20 ◼   ► Yeah, but um see if you can try and explain it to us again

00:11:23 ◼   ► Yeah, so sprint is these I mean it's not the smallest but of the big four they're the smallest

00:11:31 ◼   ► Carrier here and title is not very big it just seems like like what's the point?

00:11:37 ◼   ► I don't know. I have it having a hard time getting excited about the story Myke

00:11:41 ◼   ► Yeah, I know Sprint will be putting around 75 million dollars a year into a marketing fund that's intended to help title secure more exclusives

00:11:47 ◼   ► it's

00:11:50 ◼   ► It's clearly a desperation move on both parts

00:11:53 ◼   ► But I don't think it's gonna pay off. I don't think that like an

00:11:57 ◼   ► Exclusive for six months to Jay-z's album is gonna make people change phone carrier. Like I just don't yeah, right

00:12:06 ◼   ► Yeah, because I mean I get why Tidal is accepting the money

00:12:10 ◼   ► I just don't get how Sprint hopes to make a good investment here

00:12:15 ◼   ► Yeah, because I mean sure you got the album from Kanye West for like a month

00:12:19 ◼   ► Let's say because I truly don't believe that Kanye West can keep on it

00:12:22 ◼   ► You know the new album exclusive to Tidal for more than a month, honestly. So

00:12:27 ◼   ► You hope that people will switch just to have a one month window to listen to the album. I

00:12:34 ◼   ► It does seem like a bad plan to me, honestly.

00:12:36 ◼   ► I don't get it.

00:12:37 ◼   ► I don't get it.

00:12:38 ◼   ► And it sprints so bad you won't be able to actually stream your music most places in

00:12:42 ◼   ► the US.

00:12:43 ◼   ► Oh, there you go.

00:12:44 ◼   ► Okay.

00:12:45 ◼   ► And finally, just something that we didn't talk about last week because Federica wasn't

00:12:48 ◼   ► here.

00:12:49 ◼   ► You have a new contributor to MacStories.

00:12:52 ◼   ► So last year, when it was announced that Sal Segoian, the previous project lead of user

00:13:02 ◼   ► automation technologies at Apple. So the man who actually, you know, I don't want to say

00:13:07 ◼   ► invented but basically managed the entire Automator project, was in charge of Apple

00:13:12 ◼   ► script, JavaScript for automation and all of the other power user automation stuff on

00:13:18 ◼   ► macOS, he announced last year, I think in December, that he was leaving Apple. And as

00:13:24 ◼   ► soon as I saw the announcement and I linked it on the website, I remember I was just sitting

00:13:30 ◼   ► in my living room and I told my girlfriend, "Hey, should I send an email to Sol and see,

00:13:36 ◼   ► you know, if we can get him to write something for Mac Stories?" And of course she said,

00:13:42 ◼   ► "Yeah, you should do it." So I sent an email and…

00:13:45 ◼   ► She's like, "Whatever, man, just…"

00:13:46 ◼   ► She's always like, "Yeah, whatever, do whatever you want. I don't even know what

00:13:50 ◼   ► you're talking about, but yeah, you should do it."

00:13:51 ◼   ► Stop asking me, like, I don't know who this guy is.

00:13:53 ◼   ► Stop asking me about workflows, I don't get it. I was really excited, I was really excited,

00:13:58 ◼   ► She was not buying into it. So I sent an email and it got back to me and after a bit of back and forth

00:14:05 ◼   ► it came up to me with a story idea and we worked, actually we did some work behind the scenes

00:14:11 ◼   ► to make sure that the story could be viewed on the website with the exact style that Saul wanted.

00:14:19 ◼   ► So we made some technical changes to make this story happen and a couple of weeks ago we published it on Mac Stories

00:14:26 ◼   ► got way... you know, the response was way beyond what I was imagining. And I get it because

00:14:32 ◼   ► what happened here is I got used to the idea of having solemn maxories for about a month,

00:14:40 ◼   ► but everybody else didn't know. I actually kept a surprise from some of my team members

00:14:45 ◼   ► because I wanted them to be surprised. So John knew and I think my developer knew, of course.

00:14:52 ◼   ► But it is, you know, I'm very happy that this happened. We should have more stories from Sal going forward.

00:14:59 ◼   ► I know that it's now collaborating also with the Omni Group.

00:15:02 ◼   ► The Omni Group is about to share their annual roadmap.

00:15:06 ◼   ► And I know that automation is going to be one of the key features of the Omni Group apps on iOS and macOS.

00:15:12 ◼   ► You can actually check out Ken Case on Twitter.

00:15:15 ◼   ► he posted a brief video of automation coming to OmniGraffle on iOS, thanks to the input from Sol.

00:15:24 ◼   ► So, it's great that Sol is now open to share and talk about things.

00:15:30 ◼   ► And I think the story made a lot of sense. It was a story about how user extensions are not a

00:15:36 ◼   ► replacement for automation technologies. So, if you haven't checked out the story yet, Sol makes

00:15:43 ◼   ► a lot of good points. You can read into those points whenever you want. It doesn't work

00:15:47 ◼   ► for Apple anymore. It's free to talk about stuff. I think it's a very interesting angle

00:15:54 ◼   ► to talk about when it comes to productivity on Mac OS and iOS.

00:15:59 ◼   ► So yeah, go check it out. It's a deep article, but it's a fun one. But more than anything,

00:16:04 ◼   ► it's just kind of cool, right? It's just kind of cool.

00:16:08 ◼   ► It is cool, thank you.

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00:18:19 ◼   ► so much to Smile for their support of this show and Real AFM. So let's talk a

00:18:24 ◼   ► little bit about the the next iPhone and I think there are two stories here and I

00:18:28 ◼   ► want to try to keep them separate a little bit even though it gets a little

00:18:32 ◼   ► messy. So the first one is the next iPhone is rumored to have a bunch of

00:18:38 ◼   ► fantastic features that we'll get into. Oh really? And the second story is that

00:18:43 ◼   ► you know this is going to be the 10th anniversary of the iPhone. Does it carry

00:18:48 ◼   ► any sort of anniversary branding? So I think they're separate conversations to

00:18:53 ◼   ► have. Over the weekend a story broke about the the touch ID. Now for a long

00:19:00 ◼   ► time there have been rumors about the touch ID being underneath the glass of the

00:19:03 ◼   ► screen if the bezels go away. The big design rumor is that this iPhone is

00:19:07 ◼   ► going to be the same screen size but in a smaller chassis that the the bezels

00:19:12 ◼   ► are going to be smaller if existent at all. Just like how Samsung has done with

00:19:18 ◼   ► things with phones like the the edge where it's you know the same size screen

00:19:21 ◼   ► as the iPhone but in a much smaller package. There's talk about it using

00:19:25 ◼   ► glass back with like steel bands again. It's kind of going back to the 4 and 4s

00:19:29 ◼   ► curved glass. Lots of rumors that basically put this this next iPhone

00:19:34 ◼   ► potentially like a big leap ahead of the design they've used for three years. So

00:19:39 ◼   ► that's kind of the background here that a lot of people expect this next phone

00:19:42 ◼   ► to be a big departure design wise. So there's a rumor about the Touch ID you

00:19:47 ◼   ► know and not being a physical button being under the glass somehow. There's

00:19:50 ◼   ► been some conversation even today about how that may work. Although in the same

00:19:54 ◼   ► article KGI says they're working on this but they say it's unlikely to debut in

00:19:58 ◼   ► this year's phone so you gotta take all this with a grain of salt.

00:20:01 ◼   ► Yeah Ming-Chi Kuo who is kind of renowned for these these rumors and I think has a

00:20:08 ◼   ► pretty solid record but not perfect but but solid put out this this article over

00:20:14 ◼   ► the weekend but they put out a report which is reported on by a few different

00:20:17 ◼   ► places about this new type of sensor which is optical, which is instead of capacitive

00:20:24 ◼   ► like the Touch ID sensors are now. And it is these optical sensors that can be embedded

00:20:30 ◼   ► in the LCDs and stuff which would be needed if they want to get rid of the home button

00:20:33 ◼   ► for the iPhone 8. But in that same article, depending on where you read it, 9to5Mac writes

00:20:38 ◼   ► it differently to MacRumors, but 9to5Mac claims that the report says that this is only in

00:20:43 ◼   ► early stages of development so it would be unlikely that it could be in the iPhone 8

00:20:48 ◼   ► which is tricky. They also talk about face detection as well right?

00:20:57 ◼   ► So some Android phones have had this where they use the front facing camera to look at

00:21:00 ◼   ► you and say "oh you're Steven, I can let you into your phone". I have not tried this on

00:21:07 ◼   ► an Android phone but I've heard very very mixed things. It seems you know like

00:21:14 ◼   ► the MacRumors piece this weekend say that it would be like a two-factor deal

00:21:18 ◼   ► potentially so you have to touch with your fingerprint and use face detection

00:21:22 ◼   ► or a pin code like some sort of second level to log into your phone but I just

00:21:29 ◼   ► don't know I just don't know if face detection is the is the the route that

00:21:33 ◼   ► they should take. It seems a little gimmicky and someone in the show notes or I don't know

00:21:38 ◼   ► who, so I'm stealing one of the two of you idea that you know finger sensors were around

00:21:42 ◼   ► a long time before the iPhone but Touch ID kind of made it commonplace and made it really

00:21:45 ◼   ► fast and so maybe Apple could do the same thing here but I'm a little skeptical that

00:21:50 ◼   ► face detection would be something that would be useful day to day.

00:21:54 ◼   ► Yeah I've tried it on Android phones and I tend to not like it. It feels like a gimmick

00:21:58 ◼   ► and it's slow.

00:22:00 ◼   ► But you know, as you stole from me, Stephen,

00:22:03 ◼   ► Apple made fingerprints work, right?

00:22:05 ◼   ► The fingerprint scanners existed on phones before the iPhone,

00:22:08 ◼   ► but it was slow and clunky.

00:22:10 ◼   ► But I am very skeptical of Apple being able to improve

00:22:15 ◼   ► kind of face detection technology to the point

00:22:17 ◼   ► where I would wanna do it over my finger.

00:22:19 ◼   ► Like, I can unlock my iPhone no matter where my iPhone is

00:22:24 ◼   ► in relation to my body, right?

00:22:26 ◼   ► I don't know if I want to have to like show my face to my phone every time I want to unlock

00:22:31 ◼   ► it.

00:22:32 ◼   ► Um, also like how, how, what then, how do I unlock my phone when the lights off?

00:22:37 ◼   ► I mean, I know that some of these have like infrared sensors on them, so it does it that

00:22:41 ◼   ► way.

00:22:42 ◼   ► Um, but I, I, this is something I just don't, I just don't like about this and I think the

00:22:47 ◼   ► fingerprint stuff, it works, it works really well.

00:22:50 ◼   ► I don't know if I would get that much of a kick out of it doing something in my face.

00:22:56 ◼   ► I could see Apple doing some kind of iris scanner, not necessarily face detection technology,

00:23:03 ◼   ► but something more advanced.

00:23:05 ◼   ► Because I've tried face detection unlock on Android and like Myke said, the first versions

00:23:10 ◼   ► you could actually fool the system with the picture of the person in charge of unlocking

00:23:15 ◼   ► the phone.

00:23:16 ◼   ► But then, especially companies like Samsung, they got better at the face detection so now

00:23:21 ◼   ► you can no longer fool the system with the picture, you actually gotta, you know, use a real person's face.

00:23:27 ◼   ► But still, you know, what if you're not necessarily looking at the screen when you want to unlock the device?

00:23:33 ◼   ► I could see why Apple might want to do some kind of iris scanner technology, especially for two-factor on-device,

00:23:41 ◼   ► which would be kind of neat, but I don't know how well it could work in practice.

00:23:46 ◼   ► Yeah, Ming-Ji Kuo's report seems to hint that Apple are potentially planning to move to

00:23:54 ◼   ► face detection only in the future. Like, that they consider it to be better than fingerprint.

00:24:01 ◼   ► I don't know. I don't buy that.

00:24:04 ◼   ► Neither do I.

00:24:05 ◼   ► How can face detection be more accurate than the finger that you always have attached to

00:24:10 ◼   ► your body?

00:24:11 ◼   ► I mean, your face is always attached to your body.

00:24:13 ◼   ► Yes, but you're not touching the phone with your face. You're touching the phone with

00:24:16 ◼   ► That's what the face detection is! You just put your whole face on the phone!

00:24:20 ◼   ► We're reading it wrong!

00:24:21 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense, you're using a phone with your hands.

00:24:23 ◼   ► Face ID!

00:24:24 ◼   ► And you're interacting with the phone with your fingers, not with your face.

00:24:29 ◼   ► I mean there's animals like Myke, they touch things with their noses.

00:24:33 ◼   ► Nose ID!

00:24:35 ◼   ► It's not the point, no, it's not happening Myke.

00:24:38 ◼   ► What I'm saying is, it doesn't make any sense to ditch the fingerprint, which is unique enough

00:24:43 ◼   ► and they have a good system in place to what?

00:24:47 ◼   ► Use a camera to store an image of your face?

00:24:51 ◼   ► What if you have glasses where you have, you know,

00:24:53 ◼   ► there's so many variables when it comes to the human face.

00:24:57 ◼   ► It just seems better to use a fingerprint,

00:24:59 ◼   ► which tends to stay consistent over time.

00:25:01 ◼   ► Unless you're like a criminal

00:25:03 ◼   ► and you burn off your fingerprints,

00:25:05 ◼   ► but that's another problem.

00:25:06 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:25:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, it's a complex thing.

00:25:10 ◼   ► And the thing that I think about immediately is Apple Pay,

00:25:12 ◼   ► right that you my phone is out of her credit card reader and I touch the touch

00:25:16 ◼   ► ID like I can't be looking at my phone.

00:25:19 ◼   ► There's lots of weirdness here and that's why it's rumors and it's early in

00:25:23 ◼   ► the cycle. I mean it's still January for crying out loud. So we're early in this

00:25:26 ◼   ► but just interesting to talk about. The report goes on to say and other reports

00:25:31 ◼   ► have said this as well that the 8 will move to an OLED display that is

00:25:35 ◼   ► potentially flexible.

00:25:37 ◼   ► So you know the the OLED display the only OLED display Apple ships right now

00:25:41 ◼   ► is the Apple Watch and then I guess more recently the Touch Bar. The phone would be

00:25:45 ◼   ► the biggest OLED display they've done. There's a lot of benefits there right

00:25:49 ◼   ► especially if they have Federico's much desired night mode to have black pixels

00:25:56 ◼   ► on OLED display are very easy on the battery because you're only lighting up

00:26:00 ◼   ► things you actually need. So there'd be potential benefits here. There's a story

00:26:05 ◼   ► on iMore I think today about you know the way that 3D Touch works now and

00:26:10 ◼   ► they'd have to change that to use OLED display.

00:26:12 ◼   ► That doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

00:26:14 ◼   ► The phone would have a new structural design

00:26:16 ◼   ► to support all of this.

00:26:16 ◼   ► So it would be a big change,

00:26:19 ◼   ► but it's something that it seems like,

00:26:21 ◼   ► it seems almost inevitable.

00:26:23 ◼   ► Like a lot of other manufacturers are doing this.

00:26:25 ◼   ► Apple's already doing it on some devices.

00:26:28 ◼   ► OLED looks really nice,

00:26:29 ◼   ► especially if you have a dark theme.

00:26:31 ◼   ► I could see them doing this.

00:26:33 ◼   ► I think OLED is probably the way forward eventually.

00:26:36 ◼   ► - Yep, the flexible display is not so your phone

00:26:38 ◼   ► and like roll up and put in your pocket.

00:26:40 ◼   ► Like the flexibility is what allows for 3D touch.

00:26:43 ◼   ► So there is a type of OLED screen

00:26:47 ◼   ► that that can can be like manipulated in that way.

00:26:51 ◼   ► Right. It can be pushed and it can be prodded.

00:26:54 ◼   ► And that's how they would kind of make 3D touch work on these devices.

00:26:58 ◼   ► And as Stephen said, like the new structural design will support

00:27:01 ◼   ► the fact that the screen is going to be moving, physically moving.

00:27:03 ◼   ► And even though like a minuscule like directions.

00:27:08 ◼   ► but that's kind of how they make 3D Touch work.

00:27:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the, you know, I think that there's something

00:27:14 ◼   ► to be said here, like these rumors are all pointing

00:27:17 ◼   ► towards something new, there's parts of these things

00:27:19 ◼   ► saying it's not gonna be ready for this year.

00:27:21 ◼   ► I mean, maybe this is a deal where it'll be,

00:27:24 ◼   ► Stephen was right, that we see a 7S that looks the same

00:27:27 ◼   ► and this phone is the end of the year off.

00:27:30 ◼   ► There's conversation the three of us have been having

00:27:33 ◼   ► that I mentioned in my article the other day

00:27:34 ◼   ► that, you know, the 7 being basically the same case design,

00:27:38 ◼   ► like was that Apple bunting so they could get

00:27:40 ◼   ► to this new phone that they needed a year

00:27:43 ◼   ► that was simpler from industrial design perspective?

00:27:46 ◼   ► There's lots of new stuff on this phone,

00:27:49 ◼   ► but it's not a dramatic rethink,

00:27:52 ◼   ► and that they decided to kind of take it easy this year

00:27:56 ◼   ► so they could have more time to work on the 8.

00:27:58 ◼   ► I mean, that doesn't seem very much like Apple to me,

00:28:01 ◼   ► but you never know.

00:28:02 ◼   ► It'd be really interesting if that is the case,

00:28:04 ◼   ► how that conversation went down internally.

00:28:07 ◼   ► It's all this stuff and I feel like more than any phone before, this stuff is earlier and

00:28:15 ◼   ► more varied as far as rumors.

00:28:17 ◼   ► There is already talk about this phone that is kind of all over the map and a lot of people

00:28:22 ◼   ► have these really interesting ideas of what it could be and what it could look like, lots

00:28:27 ◼   ► of rumors.

00:28:28 ◼   ► It's kind of a unicorn phone at this point.

00:28:30 ◼   ► We didn't even talk about wireless charging or some of the other stuff that could be in

00:28:33 ◼   ► it.

00:28:34 ◼   ► This phone, in some people's minds, is going to be drastically different and hopefully

00:28:38 ◼   ► drastically better.

00:28:39 ◼   ► I just don't know.

00:28:41 ◼   ► And I'm not one to play the game of, "Oh, Apple has expectational debt."

00:28:47 ◼   ► That's not my problem.

00:28:48 ◼   ► But I do think it is interesting if we start seeing controlled leaks from Apple toning

00:28:53 ◼   ► this down.

00:28:54 ◼   ► We saw the headphone jack thing was basically taken as fact starting, I guess, in the spring

00:29:02 ◼   ► or even summer leading up to the seven and we all kind of went through our stages of

00:29:06 ◼   ► grief over it by the time it came out it was kind of like okay this is just how it is and

00:29:10 ◼   ► and I accept diverge.

00:29:13 ◼   ► Yeah yeah you know.

00:29:14 ◼   ► Bang in the drum yeah.

00:29:15 ◼   ► Yeah burn himself at the stake over it but so you know like I just wonder like if we

00:29:21 ◼   ► start seeing these these stories in like the Wall Street Journal and other places are like

00:29:24 ◼   ► hey you know it's the maybe some of the stuff isn't isn't accurate then then Apple may be

00:29:30 ◼   ► trying to combat this. So I just think we're going to be in for a very interesting season

00:29:35 ◼   ► of iPhone rumors.

00:29:36 ◼   ► The problem really is that nobody knows anything. And there's just different trends going on

00:29:44 ◼   ► in terms of rumors. And it seems to me like at this point everyone is just coming up with

00:29:50 ◼   ► some new story. There's the people who believe in the anniversary theory. There's the people

00:29:55 ◼   ► who say wireless charging. Some say you're going to have to place the phone on the surface.

00:29:59 ◼   ► say well it's gonna be actually energy flowing through space which seems a little too futuristic

00:30:04 ◼   ► to me. There's people who say well the cameras are gonna get redesigned and it's gonna be

00:30:07 ◼   ► stacked vertically on the plus model. Some of the people say you know it's gonna be an

00:30:11 ◼   ► iPhone Pro which is a totally new design but they're gonna do the 7s and they're also gonna

00:30:15 ◼   ► do the iPhone 8. It seems like to me nobody knows anything at this point and we're just

00:30:20 ◼   ► coming up with stories every week. So I'm definitely waiting, like you said Steven,

00:30:25 ◼   ► I'm definitely waiting for some, you know, the classical Washington, the Wall Street Journal report

00:30:33 ◼   ► saying according to people familiar with the matter, the next iPhone is going to do X and Y.

00:30:38 ◼   ► And we're going to know when the time comes whether it's the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, or BuzzFeed really.

00:30:45 ◼   ► That's a very likely chance that someone from Apple is trying to control the message.

00:30:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's just, you know, every year we do this,

00:30:57 ◼   ► it kind of starts sort of crazy and all over the place

00:31:00 ◼   ► and people just, you know, I have no doubt

00:31:02 ◼   ► that some people have sources and other people don't,

00:31:06 ◼   ► but things will begin to coalesce around a story eventually.

00:31:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's a little more of an increased kind of like

00:31:14 ◼   ► pent up demand here than in recent years, you know,

00:31:19 ◼   ► 'cause we've had the extra year.

00:31:20 ◼   ► So I think that there's just like a little bit more

00:31:23 ◼   ► like a feeling of what really desiring at this big change. I can't really get my head

00:31:31 ◼   ► around like a lot of these parts like rumors and where it ends up because it seems like

00:31:38 ◼   ► the phone that everyone's expecting needs a technology that it seems like isn't ready

00:31:42 ◼   ► which is this under the screen touch ID so I don't know. But let's talk about the other

00:31:48 ◼   ► apart. Let's talk about the marketing aspect.

00:31:50 ◼   ► Let's talk about the anniversary phone.

00:31:51 ◼   ► Right.

00:31:53 ◼   ► Ten years of the iPhone is this

00:31:56 ◼   ► this whole year, basically.

00:31:58 ◼   ► Right.

00:31:59 ◼   ► So this in theory could be,

00:32:02 ◼   ► Stephen put it at the top of this

00:32:04 ◼   ► conversation, the anniversary phone.

00:32:06 ◼   ► Is this something that Apple

00:32:10 ◼   ► is likely to hang on to?

00:32:12 ◼   ► Like, are we going to see?

00:32:14 ◼   ► I'll ask you first, Stephen.

00:32:15 ◼   ► Tenth anniversary in the marketing, in the

00:32:18 ◼   ► name or anything like that. What do you think? I do not think it will be directly

00:32:23 ◼   ► attached to the phone so I don't think it's going to be in the name of the

00:32:26 ◼   ► phone or on the packaging of the phone. I do think that it will get a mention on

00:32:31 ◼   ► stage and maybe even more than I mentioned that there will be some sort

00:32:35 ◼   ► of retrospective iPhones flying through space type deal like we saw with the

00:32:39 ◼   ► MacBook Pro. I think Apple will say something will make some sort of deal

00:32:44 ◼   ► about it during the event. But I don't expect it to be attached to the phone in

00:32:49 ◼   ► any meaningful way past that. Nerds who see the keynote will

00:32:53 ◼   ► get a rise out of it but that the general public going to buy an iPhone

00:32:57 ◼   ► won't know that it's the 10th anniversary phone in any way.

00:33:02 ◼   ► Federico? I agree with Stephen. I don't think we'll see any kind of branding

00:33:07 ◼   ► related to the anniversary. I think we'll get a mention on stage like the

00:33:12 ◼   ► evolution of the iPhone it's been 10 years but no branding on the phone, no

00:33:17 ◼   ► you know connection on the product website. I think it will be mentioned

00:33:22 ◼   ► because I mean it's 10 years it's kind of cool but I don't see Apple doing

00:33:26 ◼   ► iPhone 10 or iPhone special edition iPhone you know anniversary whatever. I

00:33:30 ◼   ► think it will be mentioned but that's about it.

00:33:32 ◼   ► All right okay here we go huh here we go. So I don't think this is gonna get like

00:33:40 ◼   ► it's not gonna be called like iPhone X the name of this phone will be whatever they call it I

00:33:47 ◼   ► Think that they might change the naming a little bit

00:33:52 ◼   ► Just to try and break them off the number

00:33:56 ◼   ► like this would be the time to potentially do that like and

00:34:00 ◼   ► And it might be you know, you know

00:34:03 ◼   ► Like I spoke about the pro or whatever like they might just name the phones that way right like iPhone air and iPhone Pro

00:34:08 ◼   ► I was I don't know right because a way to get it off like just the counting number

00:34:12 ◼   ► Especially if they're gonna move to this like different schedule of the way that Kate new cases and hardware will be released

00:34:19 ◼   ► Like in theory, this should be the 7s, right?

00:34:23 ◼   ► But will they call it that if it looks completely new or they call it the 8?

00:34:26 ◼   ► So I think this might be a time that they bring the naming

00:34:29 ◼   ► But I don't think it's gonna be called like iPhone X or iPhone special edition

00:34:33 ◼   ► But I do think the entire marketing campaign will be based around the fact that it's the 10th iPhone

00:34:38 ◼   ► If they completely change the hardware design,

00:34:43 ◼   ► like I can really imagine an ad where the ad shows

00:34:46 ◼   ► all the old iPhones and then shows what they've done now.

00:34:49 ◼   ► 'Cause if they go edge to edge,

00:34:52 ◼   ► this will not look like an iPhone.

00:34:55 ◼   ► The iPhones have had a similar look

00:34:57 ◼   ► for their entire generation, right?

00:34:59 ◼   ► That front with the chin and the forehead, right?

00:35:02 ◼   ► Like that is an iPhone.

00:35:04 ◼   ► Well they're gonna potentially change the way that it looks

00:35:06 ◼   ► And I can really imagine them making a big deal out of like the we've taken

00:35:11 ◼   ► everything we've learned over the last 10 years and this is what we've come up

00:35:15 ◼   ► with. So.

00:35:16 ◼   ► That's what I think. I don't think I'm I don't think it's wild what I'm

00:35:22 ◼   ► speculating here, but this is just kind of my thinking on it.

00:35:25 ◼   ► Like I think they will make a big deal out of it because they can.

00:35:29 ◼   ► And honestly, I think I think they should.

00:35:33 ◼   ► I mean, I know why people like Apple doesn't look back.

00:35:36 ◼   ► I mean, but they do though.

00:35:38 ◼   ► But they do, right?

00:35:39 ◼   ► Like there was this 30 year of Macintosh campaign.

00:35:43 ◼   ► They have, you know, this is not like wild to assume--

00:35:47 ◼   ► - Putting in a product name is different.

00:35:50 ◼   ► Like you can have everything on your website.

00:35:51 ◼   ► - I'm not saying that.

00:35:52 ◼   ► You know, my argument is around

00:35:55 ◼   ► just how the marketing campaign looks

00:35:56 ◼   ► and like how the ads look, how they announce the thing.

00:36:00 ◼   ► I think that they're gonna push for that.

00:36:01 ◼   ► And plus it's like, okay, this has probably been

00:36:05 ◼   ► the most successful consumer electronic in history.

00:36:09 ◼   ► If you're gonna look back on anything,

00:36:11 ◼   ► you might look back on the 10 years

00:36:13 ◼   ► of the thing that changed the world.

00:36:15 ◼   ► - Maybe it's gonna be called the iPhone 8

00:36:17 ◼   ► but the 8 is flipped, so it's called iPhone infinity.

00:36:20 ◼   ► - Ooh.

00:36:21 ◼   ► - I'm a genius, give me money. - You're a genius.

00:36:27 ◼   ► - Hire me, I'm gonna be your branding consultant

00:36:30 ◼   ► going forward.

00:36:31 ◼   ► - How much do you charge?

00:36:33 ◼   ► Millions per hour, that's my rate.

00:36:35 ◼   ► Wow, okay.

00:36:36 ◼   ► Anyway, I think there's a...

00:36:39 ◼   ► You know, if you're just saying they're gonna do a heavy marketing campaign,

00:36:44 ◼   ► focused on the anniversary, whatever,

00:36:48 ◼   ► I don't like the idea, but if it happens, I don't think it's completely crazy.

00:36:54 ◼   ► I don't like the fact that Apple may be doing, you know, a slide with old iPhones and then the new one,

00:36:59 ◼   ► I feel like in advertising especially you gotta promote the new and I don't think you know, what if Nintendo, you know

00:37:07 ◼   ► Puts up a billboard and instead of just showing the switch

00:37:11 ◼   ► It shows you a carousel of the Gameboy and the NES people like me and you were gonna love it

00:37:17 ◼   ► But do you really need to show old stuff to you know new people?

00:37:21 ◼   ► So that's my problem isn't it in those entire business model built on old stuff, but that's different

00:37:26 ◼   ► you don't show the old consoles next to the new one?

00:37:29 ◼   ► Well, I mean Apple has in Keynote's past shown old iPhones and they did the 6 and

00:37:35 ◼   ► success, they had a slide of all the phones from the edge.

00:37:37 ◼   ► Like it wouldn't be new.

00:37:38 ◼   ► But I think the difference is if Myke's right and it's a marketing push, you're going to

00:37:43 ◼   ► see that on billboards.

00:37:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's a given that they're going to talk about it in the keynote.

00:37:48 ◼   ► Like that I think is just like a thing, right?

00:37:52 ◼   ► I just think they're going to do that, right?

00:37:54 ◼   ► They don't mention like, "Oh, this is the 10th year of the iPhone and the keynote."

00:37:57 ◼   ► And that'd be very strange to me.

00:37:59 ◼   ► But I'm taking a punt here.

00:38:02 ◼   ► But I do think, I think they're going to go that way.

00:38:05 ◼   ► I mean, if I was in charge of this, that's what I would do.

00:38:11 ◼   ► You've got something that you can be proud of and the campaign shows that you know what

00:38:17 ◼   ► you're doing, right, to new people.

00:38:18 ◼   ► It's like, we've been doing this for 10 years and look what we've done.

00:38:22 ◼   ► And if they really want to show, like if this phone doesn't look like any of the other iPhones

00:38:26 ◼   ► that come before it, I feel like it could warrant that type of campaign.

00:38:29 ◼   ► To show the new direction.

00:38:33 ◼   ► How an iPhone looks now is brand new.

00:38:36 ◼   ► And it will add weight to the new design as well by showing everything that came before

00:38:39 ◼   ► it.

00:38:40 ◼   ► But we'll see.

00:38:41 ◼   ► We'll see.

00:38:42 ◼   ► I mean it's also quite simple to just imagine that they're just going to show young people

00:38:44 ◼   ► taking pictures of each other.

00:38:47 ◼   ► It could go either way but I'm going to hang my hat on them.

00:38:51 ◼   ► a campaign based around the anniversary. What if they're gonna do a campaign that's like

00:38:57 ◼   ► the... what's the... what's a movie called? Boyhood? It's like they're following someone

00:39:04 ◼   ► like a kid who started using the iPhone 10 years ago and now the kid is like a young

00:39:09 ◼   ► parent and he's taking pictures of their kids. That would work though, right? Like, it would

00:39:14 ◼   ► work. I mean it's basically my life. Is it called boyhood? Yeah that was the movie that

00:39:22 ◼   ► took like 30 years to make. Yes yes. Yeah I mean look again I would probably get a kick

00:39:28 ◼   ► out of that campaign. It would probably make me cry right like it you know. Like I was

00:39:33 ◼   ► that guy. We'll see we'll see but I'm hanging my hat on it for now. Today's show is brought

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00:41:38 ◼   ► You know, when you think about it, the dual camera on the iPhone Plus kind of looks like the Infinity symbol.

00:41:44 ◼   ► I mean, you could feel it there.

00:41:46 ◼   ► You're rested on this now, aren't you?

00:41:48 ◼   ► Maybe it's been in front of us all the time.

00:41:50 ◼   ► It's been here all along. We're just looking at the iPhone Infinity right now.

00:41:55 ◼   ► They just don't know. Anyway, I'm done for now.

00:41:57 ◼   ► All right, moving on from the iPhone infinity home automation.

00:42:01 ◼   ► I would like to do a quick update, a rundown, as you may call it

00:42:06 ◼   ► with the two of you about the home automation equipment that you're using.

00:42:09 ◼   ► I just bought my first Hue lights.

00:42:11 ◼   ► I've not installed them yet.

00:42:14 ◼   ► We're waiting on lamps to be delivered.

00:42:15 ◼   ► OK. I also have a couple of weimos that currently aren't connected to anything.

00:42:21 ◼   ► I'm trying to get my head around like how and what I want to automate.

00:42:26 ◼   ► Well, first you got to plug them in, Myke.

00:42:28 ◼   ► Well, yeah, I know.

00:42:30 ◼   ► But I haven't I haven't worked out like what it is that I want to plug into them.

00:42:33 ◼   ► Right. OK. OK.

00:42:35 ◼   ► So because like there's one thing that I really want,

00:42:37 ◼   ► I want to be able to like plug my Dyson fan in and have it on a timer.

00:42:41 ◼   ► But like when it comes on, it doesn't turn the fan on.

00:42:44 ◼   ► You then have to use the remote to turn the fan on.

00:42:46 ◼   ► So at that point, it's not useful.

00:42:48 ◼   ► Right. So like I'm trying to work out, like,

00:42:49 ◼   ► what are the good things here for me to be automating?

00:42:53 ◼   ► So I wanna go through a couple of different categories

00:42:55 ◼   ► with you and see how you guys are using these things

00:42:57 ◼   ► and what you're using them for.

00:42:58 ◼   ► The first being lighting.

00:43:00 ◼   ► So Federico, what lights do you have?

00:43:03 ◼   ► - I have a starter kit of the Philips Hue lights,

00:43:07 ◼   ► which I bought two years ago

00:43:08 ◼   ► and I upgraded to the version two of the bridge

00:43:11 ◼   ► with Siri integration last year.

00:43:13 ◼   ► And I keep, so what I've done is I have one light bulb

00:43:18 ◼   ► light bulb in the kitchen on a tall IKEA lamp.

00:43:23 ◼   ► I have a second one in a smaller lamp by the front door.

00:43:30 ◼   ► And I have the third one in an IKEA ball-shaped lamp in the bedroom, which I usually turn

00:43:38 ◼   ► blue or red at night, which I find to be two colors that are soothing and they make me

00:43:44 ◼   ► relax.

00:43:46 ◼   ► light by the front door is also used to power the Canary camera in the sense

00:43:52 ◼   ► that when I'm gone and I want to kind of make sure that I can watch

00:43:58 ◼   ► the front door better than the infrared camera of the Canary camera, I

00:44:06 ◼   ► turn on the lights from outside of my... when I'm in V-Turbo I turn on

00:44:11 ◼   ► the light by the front door so I can watch and I leave it on for like

00:44:15 ◼   ► you know, couple of hours then I turn it off again. So it's a way to, you know,

00:44:19 ◼   ► it's a way to kind of show people that there's someone home, maybe. I don't

00:44:25 ◼   ► think, you know, burglars are kind of up to date with the latest all my

00:44:28 ◼   ► automation stuff. So yeah, I turn on the lights when I'm not home, I check with

00:44:34 ◼   ► the camera and, you know, the one in the kitchen, Myke, is also

00:44:38 ◼   ► connected to one of my two Logitech POP buttons, which I know you want to talk

00:44:45 ◼   ► later but still I wanted to mention that. We'll come back to the pop things

00:44:49 ◼   ► because I don't even really understand what those things are. Stephen what are

00:44:52 ◼   ► you using? So I'm as far as lighting I'm all hue lights so I have a floor lamp

00:44:58 ◼   ► with three like three individual lights on it so I have a hue bulb in each of

00:45:03 ◼   ► those and then there'll be a picture in the show notes it's still a little bit

00:45:07 ◼   ► of a work in progress but my like super heavy-duty and like industrial rack that

00:45:12 ◼   ► put in my studio for the collection. I put a hue strip light on each shelf

00:45:18 ◼   ► shining down so I can illuminate each shelf and control them individually

00:45:23 ◼   ► which is really nice. And then I just picked up the other day kind of on a whim

00:45:26 ◼   ► the hue bloom light which is kind of like sits on a table or something and

00:45:31 ◼   ► it's like a it's basically like a hue light bulb but kind of in its own

00:45:34 ◼   ► enclosure. And I've been using that in conjunction with the floor lamp to light

00:45:39 ◼   ► stuff for videos like the backdrop you know being pink or blue or something.

00:45:43 ◼   ► Just kind of be able to move around the office and put color where I need it.

00:45:49 ◼   ► I haven't really expanded past that as far as as far as lighting. I do have all

00:45:55 ◼   ► these hooked up with the Echo of course and I have them in the HomeKit app I

00:46:02 ◼   ► guess on iOS as well so they're all in Control Center but I very often because

00:46:07 ◼   ► I'm just out here, we'll just talk to the Echo

00:46:09 ◼   ► and tell it to turn it on.

00:46:11 ◼   ► I have learned that the Echo struggles a little bit

00:46:15 ◼   ► if you put items into a group and the name is similar

00:46:19 ◼   ► or the same to an individual light.

00:46:21 ◼   ► So for instance, the rack with the computers on it,

00:46:25 ◼   ► you know, it's like top shelf, middle shelf, bottom shelf,

00:46:28 ◼   ► is what I named the lights themselves.

00:46:31 ◼   ► So if you open the Hue app, that's how you control them.

00:46:33 ◼   ► And calling that group, you know, shelf,

00:46:37 ◼   ► The Echo really struggles with that

00:46:38 ◼   ► and doesn't really know what to do

00:46:39 ◼   ► and will ask, you know, which light do you mean?

00:46:41 ◼   ► And so I've changed that group name

00:46:44 ◼   ► to I think I call it collection.

00:46:45 ◼   ► So I can say, you know, lady in the cylinder,

00:46:49 ◼   ► turn on the collection and it will turn

00:46:51 ◼   ► all three of those lights on.

00:46:53 ◼   ► And that just took a little kind of trial and error

00:46:55 ◼   ► to get that right.

00:46:57 ◼   ► So that's kind of a little pro tip if you're using the Echo.

00:46:59 ◼   ► Name your groups and your devices separately

00:47:01 ◼   ► and it will, it makes it simpler to use.

00:47:05 ◼   ► But I've been really happy with the setup.

00:47:07 ◼   ► I like that I can have some color in here.

00:47:09 ◼   ► It's really nice on video.

00:47:10 ◼   ► And like Federico, I have a Canary in here.

00:47:14 ◼   ► And like Federico,

00:47:15 ◼   ► I have started leaving one of the Hue lights on

00:47:18 ◼   ► so I can kind of see out here at night

00:47:21 ◼   ► and around a minute or something,

00:47:23 ◼   ► it turns off on its own.

00:47:24 ◼   ► The Hue app, you can actually set timers on these.

00:47:28 ◼   ► So when we're out of town,

00:47:29 ◼   ► I put that lamp in the front room

00:47:31 ◼   ► and I have it kind of coming on and off

00:47:33 ◼   ► throughout the evening

00:47:34 ◼   ► so it looks like someone's home.

00:47:36 ◼   ► Could you not set up an IFTTT action to turn that light on when the canary arms?

00:47:41 ◼   ► So I, and I want to talk to Federico about this, I have really struggled getting my canary to work with IFTTTTTT.

00:47:48 ◼   ► Still haven't tried myself actually.

00:47:50 ◼   ► Do you use Wink?

00:47:52 ◼   ► So I tried, and so I have many questions about Wink.

00:47:54 ◼   ► It just seems like a third party service that can talk to all my home stuff, which I'm not super down with.

00:48:01 ◼   ► I need to just read more about them.

00:48:03 ◼   ► But even then I had trouble I have an account and had trouble connecting the canary to it

00:48:07 ◼   ► It struggled to see it. So I need to revisit that

00:48:10 ◼   ► Because it would be nice to say hey, you know lady in a cylinder arm the studio and I see I have that set up

00:48:17 ◼   ► With mine, that's one thing that I have got working. I have wink

00:48:20 ◼   ► Set up that I can because we gave we gave you know, I've said before we gave our canary we call it buster

00:48:28 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. So I say like trigger on buster and it arms the canary

00:48:33 ◼   ► which is cool, it's one of the only things that I have set up, but I just wonder if

00:48:37 ◼   ► you could then have a like, if the thing sets, could you turn on a light?

00:48:41 ◼   ► Yeah, but I don't need to turn on the light if the canary is armed during the

00:48:47 ◼   ► day and there's daylight.

00:48:48 ◼   ► Sure, yeah, no, that's a good point.

00:48:50 ◼   ► Yeah, so there's always more you can do here. One thing I want to look at is, and we're

00:48:55 ◼   ► gonna get to this next, looking at some smart plugs so I can turn dumb lamps

00:49:00 ◼   ► into smart things. That's definitely next for me because we have a couple lamps in the house that

00:49:05 ◼   ► I don't want to spend the money to put a hue light bulb in and they don't really need it.

00:49:09 ◼   ► When all I need is like simple on/off control from the network. So that's

00:49:12 ◼   ► that's next for me and I haven't really done anything with that. Federico I know you have

00:49:18 ◼   ► a couple of them right? No I actually have one and I'm looking for so here's my problem. I have a

00:49:24 ◼   ► WIMO, that's called a WIMO switch. It's like a socket that you put in, you know, between the wall outlet and whatever you're connecting to it.

00:49:32 ◼   ► And it's one of the first generation, fridge generation one, it's kind of bulky, but it works!

00:49:38 ◼   ► And it supports, it doesn't support HomeKit, but it supports Alexa.

00:49:41 ◼   ► My problem is that I'm looking for a second one, and ideally I would like to have one that works with my Italian/European, I don't know whatever the name is, standard.

00:49:51 ◼   ► and supports both HomeKit and Alexa. So simultaneously integrates with Amazon and Apple.

00:49:56 ◼   ► And I'm looking constantly, every week I'm looking on...

00:50:01 ◼   ► Me too, I'm doing the exact same thing. There are some in the US,

00:50:05 ◼   ► but I haven't found any for the UK.

00:50:07 ◼   ► Exactly, there's some in the US, I think one is called the iHome, maybe.

00:50:12 ◼   ► And I know that Belkin has a new one, which is Mueller, and I think supports both Apple and Amazon.

00:50:18 ◼   ► but I cannot find it in Italy.

00:50:20 ◼   ► So, you know, should I buy the US one then buy an adapter?

00:50:26 ◼   ► So basically I end up with like three things in my wall outlet.

00:50:29 ◼   ► I don't really want to do that, you know.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Defeats the whole point.

00:50:33 ◼   ► So I'm just waiting for the second one.

00:50:35 ◼   ► I want to just come back to something about the lights real quick.

00:50:39 ◼   ► And then we talk a bit more about some of the smart sockets.

00:50:42 ◼   ► I had like toyed with the idea of maybe putting like a hue bulb in the office.

00:50:47 ◼   ► like in the actual light in the office and a hue bulb in the bedroom.

00:50:50 ◼   ► Then I realized that like you have to have the switches on all the time.

00:50:54 ◼   ► Right. Which I didn't.

00:50:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it didn't really consider to because you have to have the light switch on.

00:50:59 ◼   ► So the power running to the hue bulb.

00:51:01 ◼   ► So you're able to turn it on and off.

00:51:03 ◼   ► And that was a bit that was a shame.

00:51:06 ◼   ► And I wondered, like, I assume then you guys, do you have any hue bulbs

00:51:11 ◼   ► that are in regular light socket? No, no, no.

00:51:15 ◼   ► So I've been I've been looking around like

00:51:16 ◼   ► And there are a couple of things that you can do like

00:51:18 ◼   ► Hugh sell a wall switch like a demo switch which you can buy and you

00:51:24 ◼   ► Basically just take off your existing one puts one over the top

00:51:27 ◼   ► Or something I've seen people do it. I thought was quite smart is to put like child safety

00:51:33 ◼   ► protection shield

00:51:36 ◼   ► I think we're gonna do one of this for the bedroom big just because like, you know

00:51:43 ◼   ► You have like the bedroom light on and you don't want to get out better go turn the light off

00:51:46 ◼   ► So I'm looking at one of these things to maybe put into the into the bedroom socket, but we haven't worked out what yet

00:51:53 ◼   ► I want to see if

00:51:54 ◼   ► Because we're about to get a lamp right for the bedroom and I wonder if we're just gonna always just have the lamp on as

00:51:59 ◼   ► Opposed to the main light anyway

00:52:01 ◼   ► We haven't seen yet, but I thought that that yeah

00:52:03 ◼   ► I was kind of just digging around and found that solution about putting like child safety type things over the switches

00:52:10 ◼   ► So they can't be telling my mom. I thought it was quite smart. It's a good idea

00:52:13 ◼   ► You're gonna like what I do with the WIMO switch. So usually it is connected to my espresso machine.

00:52:22 ◼   ► And I can say to Alexa, turn on the coffee maker, because I called the accessory India Alexa app, I renamed it as coffee maker.

00:52:30 ◼   ► So I can say turn on the coffee maker and the machine turns on and I can brew an espresso in like two minutes.

00:52:37 ◼   ► Or, when I'm gone, what I've done for example the past week, I've been away in Barcelona

00:52:45 ◼   ► and my apartment has a humidity problem, especially in one area of the apartment.

00:52:53 ◼   ► So we need to turn on a dehumidifier, so to turn down the humidity levels.

00:52:59 ◼   ► So what I've done is, I've taken the WIMO switch and plugged the thing with this air

00:53:05 ◼   ► kind of unit that does a bunch of things.

00:53:08 ◼   ► You can also dry your clothes by the way, it's got multiple functions.

00:53:11 ◼   ► So I connected it to the Wemo switch and I left it on, so you know, with the air going,

00:53:19 ◼   ► then I turned it off with a Lettar.

00:53:21 ◼   ► Then what I've done is, because the thing was on when the power was cut to the Wemo,

00:53:28 ◼   ► when I was in Barcelona I opened Astra, so the Lettar client on my iPhone, and I said

00:53:34 ◼   ► turn on the coffee maker, I didn't change the name, but basically the hot air went off

00:53:42 ◼   ► in my apartment. So when we came back, the humidity levels were okay because I turned

00:53:47 ◼   ► on the thing multiple times a day for five days.

00:53:55 ◼   ► That's home automation right there. That's the dream, right? To be able to control these

00:53:59 ◼   ► things when you're like hundreds and thousands of miles away or whatever.

00:54:03 ◼   ► I came back to, you know, 50% humidity, perfect for me, and I was really happy.

00:54:08 ◼   ► And so that's why I'm considering a second switch, because I don't want to move it, you

00:54:12 ◼   ► know, between the kitchen and the, you know, the hall where we're putting this humidity

00:54:17 ◼   ► thing.

00:54:19 ◼   ► I don't know what's the name actually, dehumidifier.

00:54:21 ◼   ► Dehumidifier.

00:54:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

00:54:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:54:24 ◼   ► So I want to buy a second switch for that.

00:54:25 ◼   ► If you considered getting any sensors, you could probably get a humidity sensor, right?

00:54:30 ◼   ► I have sensors for that, actually.

00:54:32 ◼   ► I have a couple. I have one in the bedroom and I have another one outside.

00:54:37 ◼   ► So I can correlate the humidity outside and the humidity inside so I can see what I should do.

00:54:42 ◼   ► It's a bunch of Elgato Eve sensors. I'm really happy with them.

00:54:47 ◼   ► And they can't turn the thing on for you?

00:54:50 ◼   ► No, because the Wemo is not HomeKit. So I cannot set up a trigger.

00:54:55 ◼   ► And it can't be done with IFTTT either?

00:54:58 ◼   ► No, because they don't have a channel.

00:54:59 ◼   ► This is so annoying, isn't it?

00:55:01 ◼   ► Yeah, I know.

00:55:02 ◼   ► It's like I have all this stuff and like it, if I can just get it to talk to each other,

00:55:08 ◼   ► it's perfect, right?

00:55:09 ◼   ► Because that's what you want.

00:55:10 ◼   ► You have a humidity sensor and you have a dehumidifier, right?

00:55:16 ◼   ► They are made for each other, right?

00:55:19 ◼   ► Like you want that to talk to that and then it can just come on its own.

00:55:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I know.

00:55:23 ◼   ► I know.

00:55:24 ◼   ► You know, eventually we'll get there.

00:55:27 ◼   ► I think honestly the main problem is getting a switch that supports both Alexa and HomeKit

00:55:33 ◼   ► with triggers and groups.

00:55:35 ◼   ► That'd be ideal.

00:55:36 ◼   ► But again, I've been looking for like a year at this point and still nothing.

00:55:41 ◼   ► I mean there's a new HomeKit plug, again from Elgato on Amazon Italy.

00:55:45 ◼   ► It's called the Elgato Eve Energy, but it only supports HomeKit.

00:55:48 ◼   ► No Alexa computers, so no go for me.

00:55:51 ◼   ► I want, I'll tell you something I want.

00:55:53 ◼   ► I want a motion sensor in my bathroom to turn the light on in the bathroom.

00:55:57 ◼   ► Right.

00:55:58 ◼   ► Have either of you looked into motion sensors at all?

00:56:01 ◼   ► I think like Samsung, like the smart things.

00:56:03 ◼   ► No I don't like the idea.

00:56:04 ◼   ► Why don't you like it?

00:56:06 ◼   ► Because I feel like, I don't know, I want to be in control.

00:56:11 ◼   ► You are with your body.

00:56:12 ◼   ► Yeah but I don't like, you know, like, I've never been into it actually.

00:56:17 ◼   ► Either the light is on or is off.

00:56:19 ◼   ► You know, doesn't need to be on when I walk.

00:56:22 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:56:23 ◼   ► is a Philips Hue motion sensor. So if it hooks up to the bridge and you can say, "Hey, when

00:56:27 ◼   ► this sensor goes off, turn the light on," which I've thought about putting in our front

00:56:31 ◼   ► room and putting Hue lights in there. So like if you walk into the house, the lights come

00:56:35 ◼   ► on, which would be really nice if you have kids and groceries and stuff. I just haven't

00:56:39 ◼   ► done it yet. There are a couple others looking around. I think Elgato makes one that works

00:56:45 ◼   ► with HomeKit, but I don't know.

00:56:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I want to try that. That's one of the things that I think I would quite like.

00:56:51 ◼   ► But yeah, we'll see. Last thing I want to ask you, Federico, is about these pop things.

00:57:00 ◼   ► These Logi pop thingamajigs. What are they?

00:57:04 ◼   ► They are physical buttons that you stick on any surface you want, and from the app you can connect

00:57:12 ◼   ► to a list of built-in accessories, so there's like hue lights, probably some

00:57:19 ◼   ► cameras, or you can just connect into IFTTT and you can... basically what you can do

00:57:26 ◼   ► is you have three activation modes. You can tap the button once, you can

00:57:31 ◼   ► double tap it, or you can tap and hold it and when you actually physically press

00:57:36 ◼   ► the button, stuff happens. So I have one on my nightstand. It's actually, you know, I used,

00:57:44 ◼   ► there's a sticky surface on the back of the button, so I placed it and pressed really hard

00:57:52 ◼   ► to place it on my nightstand. And when I press it once, turns the bedroom light blue. When I press

00:57:59 ◼   ► it twice, it's kind of clever because I do this in the morning every time, double tap and it turns

00:58:05 ◼   ► on the coffee maker in the kitchen. First thing when I wake up...

00:58:09 ◼   ► Everything in your home revolves around the coffee maker.

00:58:12 ◼   ► Of course. If Silvia is not making me coffee in the morning because, you know, she had

00:58:16 ◼   ► to go out, I just wake up, I roll over and double tap and my coffee is about to be prepared,

00:58:23 ◼   ► which is awesome. And I have another one in the kitchen, but it's only connected to lights

00:58:30 ◼   ► and different light colors. Yeah.

00:58:33 ◼   ► kind of cool. I like it because you can assign different things to it. Yeah. I

00:58:38 ◼   ► might look at this. I mean I'm kind of at the start of this process really which

00:58:42 ◼   ► is why I wanted to kind of get a check-in from you guys. I think you've been looking at

00:58:45 ◼   ► this stuff for a long time and kind of just see where you're settling on and

00:58:49 ◼   ► the thing, the overriding thing that continues to frustrate me is that

00:58:53 ◼   ► there's just all this stuff and it doesn't talk to each other in the way

00:58:55 ◼   ► that you'd want and I think it's this is gonna be that way for a while. I can see

00:58:59 ◼   ► why nerds like this stuff because there are like problems to solve you know like

00:59:04 ◼   ► you have some stuff and you have an outcome that you are desiring and then

00:59:09 ◼   ► it's like the steps that you take to get to that outcome that's why I'm kind of

00:59:12 ◼   ► like I'm having all of these ideas before I have any hardware right like I'm

00:59:16 ◼   ► like oh I could try this it's like well do you even know if such a thing even

00:59:19 ◼   ► exists it's probably best you know your approach because you've seen what you

00:59:26 ◼   ► know other people including me and Steven what we have done yeah and you

00:59:29 ◼   ► that you can go crazy down the rabbit hole if you just keep buying things. I think if you come up

00:59:34 ◼   ► with a plan first and if you try to be reasonable and practical like I want to have lights, I want

00:59:39 ◼   ► to have sensors, I think it's a better approach because you know that otherwise you're just going

00:59:42 ◼   ► to waste your money buying things to find the purpose later. Instead you're coming up with a

00:59:47 ◼   ► plan and I think it's more reasonable, you know, your approach. Thank you. This week's episode is

00:59:52 ◼   ► also brought to you by Squarespace. Enter the offer code "worldcheckout" and you'll get 10%

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01:01:34 ◼   ► All right, so Steven, can you talk to me about sleep tracking?

01:01:39 ◼   ► Steven: Yeah, so this is something that I've revisited.

01:01:44 ◼   ► During the break, I picked up a series two Apple watch.

01:01:48 ◼   ► I think all three of us now are wearing one.

01:01:50 ◼   ► And part of the deal with his watch is the battery life is just unbelievable.

01:01:55 ◼   ► So I decided to know how is a good time to revisit sleep tracking.

01:01:59 ◼   ► I did it when Sleep++ first came out which is an app by _DavidSmith that I've used on

01:02:06 ◼   ► and off.

01:02:07 ◼   ► And so the last week or so, week and a half, I've been wearing my watch to bed which has

01:02:13 ◼   ► taken a lot of getting used to.

01:02:14 ◼   ► I really don't care for the feeling of it while I sleep, but that is what it is.

01:02:21 ◼   ► And you know, you go to sleep, you tap the button, you wake up, you tap the button again

01:02:24 ◼   ► and it tells you your restlessness and all that sort of stuff, saves it to health kit.

01:02:28 ◼   ► And you know, I have, I don't know if I've learned much.

01:02:32 ◼   ► I learned that I don't sleep very well.

01:02:33 ◼   ► I think I already knew that.

01:02:36 ◼   ► But it's nice to kind of have like quantitative data around it.

01:02:39 ◼   ► I don't know Federico, you've been doing this as well and I've only really ever tried Sleep++

01:02:46 ◼   ► but what are you using?

01:02:48 ◼   ► I use Autosleep by David Walsh.

01:02:52 ◼   ► The thing for me about sleep tracking is that I know 100% I'm gonna forget.

01:02:57 ◼   ► If it's a manual activation I will eventually forget.

01:03:00 ◼   ► So I need an automatic sleep tracker.

01:03:02 ◼   ► And I talked about this I think when I very briefly tried the Fitbit.

01:03:06 ◼   ► One of the best features is you put it on and it figures out when you started sleeping on its own.

01:03:12 ◼   ► And AutoSleep brings that kind of functionality, automatic sleep tracking, to the Apple Watch.

01:03:16 ◼   ► And got a first release with a bunch of issues.

01:03:20 ◼   ► The app was updated to version 2 last week, I think, and the developer fixed a lot of the complaints that I had in my original review.

01:03:28 ◼   ► And it does get the job done.

01:03:31 ◼   ► It's not perfect to the minute, but what is really when it's automatic and it's a piece of software that needs to figure out when you started sleeping?

01:03:39 ◼   ► I don't care if instead of you know,

01:03:41 ◼   ► 4.13 in the morning it says I went to sleep at 4 or 9, you know, it's no big deal. It gives me an

01:03:49 ◼   ► accurate enough reasonable representation of my sleep times, which is all I need.

01:03:53 ◼   ► Hmm. I'm looking at the screenshots. This app seems really complicated.

01:03:59 ◼   ► That's my ongoing frustration with this app.

01:04:03 ◼   ► I think the developer needs to seriously take a look at the design of the,

01:04:08 ◼   ► not necessarily the configuration screen, because that got better with version 2, but the editing mode.

01:04:15 ◼   ► I think it needs to be cleaned up a lot and it's one of those apps that you can tell a developer designed it.

01:04:21 ◼   ► And I don't mean this in a super pejorative way. I'm just saying it's easy for developer and

01:04:28 ◼   ► We actually do this mistake many times at Mac stories as well. It's easy for developer to

01:04:33 ◼   ► design something in a way that is

01:04:37 ◼   ► That that they think it makes sense for a similar audience

01:04:41 ◼   ► but the problem is regular people are not developers and

01:04:45 ◼   ► You know

01:04:46 ◼   ► That's when you need to have a designer come in and say look you get up you get a rethink this all this all

01:04:51 ◼   ► Structure like that's a cool thing that's supposed to show I assume you're sleeping

01:04:57 ◼   ► that looks like a nightmare to me. Like there's different colors, they're in different shades, they don't look clear.

01:05:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I really think that this app is suffering from something.

01:05:09 ◼   ► Yeah, it is but the data is excellent. So that's my thing.

01:05:13 ◼   ► I still think it's too difficult to use. I still think it needs to be rethought visually.

01:05:21 ◼   ► But the data and the functionality, once you set it up, I mean I forget about the app.

01:05:27 ◼   ► because it works on its own. I don't want to look at the app but I also don't have

01:05:32 ◼   ► to. So you know I'm hoping that it will get a new design in the next update.

01:05:37 ◼   ► Do you guys feel like you're getting data from this that is useful?

01:05:46 ◼   ► Yeah I think so. Why? Because everything goes into gyroscope.

01:05:53 ◼   ► just this excellent service and dashboard that aggregates a bunch of data.

01:05:58 ◼   ► It's one of those are qualified self type of products that gives you a

01:06:03 ◼   ► dashboard for your life. And I'm making an effort to sleep more and to sleep

01:06:11 ◼   ► between six and a half and seven hours each night. Which if you know me, you

01:06:16 ◼   ► know, it's actually a big deal for me because I tend, you know, there were times

01:06:20 ◼   ► when I was sleeping four or five hours each night. And if you do that, you know, continuously you're

01:06:25 ◼   ► gonna die, basically. So I want to be more, you know, I want to... I'm committed to sleeping between

01:06:33 ◼   ► six and seven hours at least. And in gyroscope, since I started following this, you know, this

01:06:40 ◼   ► objective of mine, I can see for the past month I've done six and a half hours on average. And

01:06:47 ◼   ► And that's very useful to me because it gives me motivation and it tells me that I still gotta improve

01:06:52 ◼   ► and it lets me visualize a bunch of cool things like on the weekends I tend to sleep a little more.

01:06:57 ◼   ► During the weekdays and especially on Wednesdays and Thursdays when I'm working more and I'm putting in more work for Mac stories and Club Mac stories,

01:07:03 ◼   ► I tend to sleep a little less. So it is useful for me to be able to visualize this data.

01:07:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know. I'm mostly doing it as a curiosity.

01:07:16 ◼   ► I wanted to kind of confirm what I thought about my sleep patterns is that I get pretty

01:07:21 ◼   ► good time in bed but the quality of that sleep isn't always super great.

01:07:26 ◼   ► And I don't really know where to go from there but right now it's sort of the exploration

01:07:32 ◼   ► phase.

01:07:33 ◼   ► I do find it fascinating that the watch, the Series 2 in particular is so good at it because

01:07:38 ◼   ► of the battery life.

01:07:39 ◼   ► And David Smith, guy who writes C++, actually wrote a blog post saying that his app, it

01:07:46 ◼   ► feels like his app and things like AutoSleep will be Sherlock'd.

01:07:51 ◼   ► That it's kind of inevitable that Apple is working on something like this because the

01:07:55 ◼   ► Series 2 battery life is so good and you'll get Fitbit and these other trackers do this

01:08:00 ◼   ► and the watch up to this point hasn't.

01:08:03 ◼   ► That of course Apple is working towards this, which I find a really interesting attitude

01:08:08 ◼   ► towards software development.

01:08:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, I really like this post.

01:08:12 ◼   ► We'll put it in the show notes.

01:08:13 ◼   ► He kind of just, it's like the idea

01:08:15 ◼   ► of it being inevitably Sherlock'd.

01:08:18 ◼   ► And I like the way that Dave is kind of thinking

01:08:21 ◼   ► about his application and what it's good for

01:08:25 ◼   ► in planning out his roadmap.

01:08:27 ◼   ► Because he highlights that sleep tracking

01:08:33 ◼   ► is one of the last kind of things around health.

01:08:38 ◼   ► that Apple isn't tracking with the Apple Watch, but they could.

01:08:44 ◼   ► So is it like, are they waiting for new software?

01:08:46 ◼   ► Are they waiting for another watch?

01:08:48 ◼   ► Maybe even better battery life?

01:08:49 ◼   ► Not sure, but there is something, right?

01:08:51 ◼   ► There is maybe a train that you can see them going down here.

01:08:56 ◼   ► I think it's very reasonable to expect that Apple is going to do automatic sleep tracking

01:08:59 ◼   ► eventually, especially when you consider that Apple could use private APIs to monitor, you

01:09:07 ◼   ► with sensors like heart rate sensor for example to monitor data in the

01:09:12 ◼   ► background without consuming too much battery life which is something that

01:09:16 ◼   ► third-party developers wouldn't be able to do and sleep

01:09:20 ◼   ► tracking I feel like it could be a headline feature of what you asked for

01:09:23 ◼   ► but only for the series 2 because of the exceptional battery life

01:09:28 ◼   ► that Steven mentioned and it seems to me like it's one of those features that

01:09:32 ◼   ► would be interesting enough for enough people to have people commit technologies to make it happen.

01:09:39 ◼   ► And I wouldn't be surprised, and I think David is really smart in saying I know I'm gonna be

01:09:46 ◼   ► Sherlock'd eventually, so what I need to focus on is presenting data, whether it's been captured by

01:09:51 ◼   ► my app or it's been captured by Apple. I know that people don't want to use the Apple health

01:09:57 ◼   ► application so I need to make sure that besides capturing data my app is also a

01:10:02 ◼   ► better dashboard than Apple's which I think is really clever but it doesn't

01:10:05 ◼   ► surprise me because David is a genius so yeah.

01:10:08 ◼   ► It's very smart so of course he's gonna think of that but yeah it does make sense right that like that

01:10:13 ◼   ► data is gonna go into health so it's just about you know because you can

01:10:17 ◼   ► assume like with a lot of the stuff that Apple does like their version is the

01:10:20 ◼   ► basic version right it is the version for everyone so they're maybe not gonna

01:10:25 ◼   ► go like next level with the charts right and like really go into detail about showing you these

01:10:30 ◼   ► graphs of everything like it's just going to be I assume quite simple stuff where it's like hey you

01:10:34 ◼   ► know this is how you slept last night maybe you should go you know like and maybe advancing that

01:10:39 ◼   ► bedtime thing or it's like you know we know uh I hate that bedtime thing by the way. Oh no I never

01:10:46 ◼   ► use it like I don't get it. Adina uses it right because she likes the alarms she finds the alarms

01:10:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I know Jeremy does too. Bert loves the sounds.

01:10:56 ◼   ► But the idea of my phone saying to me "hey, you should go to bed now"

01:11:00 ◼   ► It shames you into sleeping.

01:11:03 ◼   ► It's a feature that shames you into sleeping.

01:11:07 ◼   ► It's like "hey, by the way, you should go to bed, it's 3am". Yes, I know that.

01:11:11 ◼   ► Stop watching Parks and Recreation, just go to bed.

01:11:13 ◼   ► I've been working all day, now let me play some PlayStation.

01:11:17 ◼   ► It's like "what's wrong with you? You stupid f*ck".

01:11:20 ◼   ► But yeah, I can imagine the sleep tracking being a move from that.

01:11:25 ◼   ► But I find the Apple Watch too big for me to want to sleep with.

01:11:30 ◼   ► And also, a problem I have, I have a new Do Not Disturb timer for it because it will just

01:11:36 ◼   ► keep bumping me in the night, you know, with things happening.

01:11:41 ◼   ► So that's going to be like...

01:11:42 ◼   ► Do you guys put your watches on Do Not Disturb?

01:11:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:11:45 ◼   ► Okay.

01:11:46 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's silent and Do Not Disturb.

01:11:48 ◼   ► Okay.

01:11:49 ◼   ► I don't think you guys run it like me so I guess you just have it mirror your phone, right?

01:11:53 ◼   ► Yes. Yeah, because I have mine on those independent things. Yeah, I never I never really understood what you do with the notifications

01:12:01 ◼   ► But I know it works for you, but I don't do that. Yes. Yeah, that was a real setup separately as well

01:12:06 ◼   ► the thing about sleep tracking though for me is

01:12:09 ◼   ► I don't know what I'm supposed to do with the information that it gives me. Do you feel like you sleep enough?

01:12:17 ◼   ► No, okay, but I know that already because I'm you know, I know that I go to bed. Do you want to get better?

01:12:24 ◼   ► Yeah, okay, but I don't know why a sleep track is gonna help me do that

01:12:28 ◼   ► Like I already know this information was gonna do just write down on a piece of paper

01:12:31 ◼   ► like, you know

01:12:32 ◼   ► it's one of those things like if you need to if you're a visual person and if you try and if you start doing

01:12:39 ◼   ► Something like when I started exercising I knew I needed to exercise every day

01:12:44 ◼   ► But I still made a to-do in my task manager because I needed to be able to see it and to see my progress

01:12:51 ◼   ► And to go in there every day and check it off and mark it as done

01:12:55 ◼   ► I think if you're a visual person and you know, you need to do something, you know to you need to make a change

01:13:02 ◼   ► But you want to be able to visualize it to see it with your eyes because it's one thing to know it and at least

01:13:09 ◼   ► For me, it's another thing to do it and to see the progress. I've always been that kind of person

01:13:14 ◼   ► I need to see progress. So any kind of tracker, any kind of visualization works for me.

01:13:20 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe it doesn't work for you, it's fine.

01:13:24 ◼   ► It might do, right, but it's just my...

01:13:28 ◼   ► OK, so I'm time tracking now, right? Like I started time tracking.

01:13:30 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. Yes.

01:13:32 ◼   ► But I can do something about that.

01:13:33 ◼   ► Like I can change the way that I work.

01:13:37 ◼   ► Like I don't know how much...

01:13:39 ◼   ► Like if I can't sleep, I don't know.

01:13:43 ◼   ► Like I just feel like I have less control over it. Maybe that's just because I don't know the information

01:13:47 ◼   ► I feel like you need to understand what the problem is if you can't sleep or if you're just sleeping less

01:13:53 ◼   ► Because you're doing something else before sleeping like playing video games or reading or watching TV, whatever but I like doing those things

01:13:59 ◼   ► I know and I like it too

01:14:01 ◼   ► But it's just I know I need to set limits because I'm gonna regret it when I'm 40

01:14:04 ◼   ► Because I haven't slept when I was 20, you know that kind of thing. Here's my problem, right? I like to sleep

01:14:10 ◼   ► I don't like to go to sleep. Oh, that's a very peculiar

01:14:14 ◼   ► Predicament that you're in yeah, how you don't like going to sleep like is like the action of putting on pajamas

01:14:21 ◼   ► No, I'm fine pajamas. I'm wearing pajamas right now

01:14:24 ◼   ► my

01:14:26 ◼   ► that I have is like

01:14:28 ◼   ► Like the whole procedure. It's the stopping of being awake

01:14:32 ◼   ► I like the things that I do when I'm awake and it's like, you know, like putting everything down and going to sleep

01:14:40 ◼   ► I don't like to do that. I like to go to sleep when I can't stay awake anymore.

01:14:44 ◼   ► And that's my problem.

01:14:46 ◼   ► Well, maybe what you're looking for is a way to make little changes to your life

01:14:54 ◼   ► in a way that you can maybe wake up earlier, I don't know, but still do the things that you like to do

01:14:59 ◼   ► when you're awake and make it so that by the time you've done enough of those things,

01:15:05 ◼   ► like you've played enough video games, you start falling asleep.

01:15:08 ◼   ► And maybe it's all a matter of waking up at different times or, you know, sleeping an hour more,

01:15:12 ◼   ► or maybe sleeping half an hour more, I don't know. But maybe what you need to achieve is time

01:15:17 ◼   ► everything so that you have the best of both worlds. You get enough sleep and you also do the

01:15:22 ◼   ► things you like to do. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, yeah. And I assume using something like

01:15:27 ◼   ► that gyroscope thing can help because you can maybe pull together a few different things. Like,

01:15:31 ◼   ► you know, like if I sleep better on the days that I walk 15,000 steps, right? It's like, oh, there's

01:15:37 ◼   ► a thing you know like I can see how tying it into other like sources could be

01:15:43 ◼   ► interesting but I don't know maybe maybe I'll go down this route eventually but

01:15:49 ◼   ► really I don't want to be doing it wearing the app my Apple watch like it

01:15:53 ◼   ► feels too I don't know it just feels too big too chunky maybe there's something

01:15:59 ◼   ► else for me there I don't know I know there are a bunch of iPhone apps you can

01:16:01 ◼   ► use but and you kind of have to like put them on the your pillow that doesn't

01:16:05 ◼   ► really feel to me like a really good thing that I want to wear all of the time that works.

01:16:10 ◼   ► Is it because of the light from the screen?

01:16:13 ◼   ► No, it's just, I don't know, like, when I'm, whenever I have slept, like fallen asleep,

01:16:18 ◼   ► and I have my watch on, I kind of find it uncomfortable. Like, I'll wake up and I'll

01:16:22 ◼   ► feel it and it doesn't feel right. But it might just be because I'm not used to it.

01:16:26 ◼   ► Like, I have and used to sleep with analog watches on. So maybe I just need to get used

01:16:31 ◼   ► to the to this one.

01:16:33 ◼   ► But I mean, you know, like frankly,

01:16:34 ◼   ► this watch is bigger and bulkier

01:16:36 ◼   ► than some of the analog watches

01:16:37 ◼   ► that I've worn in the past.

01:16:38 ◼   ► Not all, but some.

01:16:40 ◼   ► So maybe it's just a case

01:16:41 ◼   ► of just getting used to it.

01:16:42 ◼   ► Like, you know, whenever you start

01:16:43 ◼   ► wearing a watch for the first time,

01:16:44 ◼   ► you have to get used to that.

01:16:45 ◼   ► It might just be the same kind of thing

01:16:47 ◼   ► for me with sleeping.

01:16:48 ◼   ► Maybe I should just try it

01:16:50 ◼   ► and then just see see what I think about it

01:16:52 ◼   ► and move on from there.

01:16:53 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:16:54 ◼   ► So the battery life

01:16:54 ◼   ► is definitely good enough.

01:16:55 ◼   ► You know, just throw it on the charger

01:16:57 ◼   ► for like 15 minutes or whatever.

01:16:58 ◼   ► Like when I wake up,

01:16:59 ◼   ► like just pop it off,

01:17:00 ◼   ► put it on the charger, catch up on my email, get out of bed, and it's all ready to go for the day.

01:17:04 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe I should try it. Who knows.

01:17:07 ◼   ► All right, I think that's the end of this week's show. Thanks again to our sponsor

01:17:10 ◼   ► for supporting us, the fine folk over at Squarespace, Smile and Blue Apron.

01:17:15 ◼   ► If you want to find Felerico online, he is @Vittici on Twitter, V-I-T-I-C-C-I,

01:17:20 ◼   ► and he writes over at MacStories, and you can find, MacStories.net I should say,

01:17:25 ◼   ► you can find Stephen he's at ismh and he's at 512pixels.net and I am @imike thank you so much

01:17:34 ◼   ► for listening we'll be back next time you can find our shout outs today at relay.fm/connecty/126

01:17:39 ◼   ► until then say goodbye everybody adios

01:17:42 ◼   ► Adios.