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Connected

109: A Notable Apple Hisssssstorian 📱🐍

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:05   From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode 109.

00:00:10   Today's show is brought to you by Cricket and Fresh Books.

00:00:13   My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Federico Vittici.

00:00:18   Hi Federico Vittici.

00:00:19   Buona sierra Myke.

00:00:20   And can you, Federico, do you hear a sound?

00:00:22   Like a...

00:00:23   Like a, like a, would you say like a hissing sound?

00:00:26   Some kind of like hissing or fizzing.

00:00:29   I think so. I'm not sure where it's coming from.

00:00:32   I can't work out what it is, but maybe we'll find out later.

00:00:35   Hi Steven Hackett, welcome to the show.

00:00:38   You're very clever.

00:00:40   Are you proud of yourself right now? Yeah, we're gonna talk about that later on. Hissgate.

00:00:46   We have the hiss father with us today. And we'll be talking about that a little later

00:00:52   on in the show. So, something to look forward to. But before you became the father of hissing,

00:00:56   You were the father of follow-up for their show, so would you like to begin that?

00:01:01   Yes.

00:01:02   Big rudgingly, I will.

00:01:06   So we want to talk about... we've talked about Apple Music and ads in the past, so we want

00:01:09   to talk about this new Apple Music ad that debuted, I guess, yesterday or a couple days

00:01:14   ago that I think, at least, other than the Cookie Monster Siri one, is like the only

00:01:20   time I've actually laughed out loud at an Apple ad in a long time.

00:01:26   Myke, do you want to walk people through what the setup is here?

00:01:29   Yeah, it's basically James Corden of Carpool Karaoke, as you may know him.

00:01:35   He is basically given the job to pitch an ad to the Apple executives.

00:01:41   So we've got Bazoma St. John, Eddy Cue, and is it Jimmy Iovine?

00:01:46   Yes.

00:01:47   Jimmy, right?

00:01:48   So they're like in an office and Corden is pitching ideas to him, to the three of them,

00:01:53   they're all like super ridiculous over the top like insanely bold like perfume advertising

00:02:00   type things right like high concept stuff and at the same time the IP executives are

00:02:06   like no we just want to tell people how great our service is so they're getting the message

00:02:11   out it's really good only because James Corden is incredible like that's why this works because

00:02:17   he is a genuinely hilarious person and I really like that Apple are using him because he's

00:02:25   kind of part of the team right now as an executive producer on Carpool Karaoke. Like, you know,

00:02:31   I've heard some people like on Hello Internet, Gray and Brady, couldn't understand why James

00:02:36   Cordon was there. He's there because he's in the club.

00:02:40   Yeah, and it's kind of strange when you consider that according to the rumors James won't be

00:02:44   be hosting the Carpool Karaoke on Apple Music.

00:02:47   Yeah, which is so sad.

00:02:49   Yeah, I mean, they're featuring James at the WWDC action of the iPhone keynote and this

00:02:55   new ad, and it's not going to be on the new series, which is kind of strange.

00:02:59   Also sad, but maybe they've found a good replacement.

00:03:01   I don't know.

00:03:02   You'd hope so.

00:03:03   But yeah, he's like an executive producer or something on the project.

00:03:06   So that's one ad that they've got out, which is a really good one.

00:03:10   And Federico, there's another ad that you sent us this morning that you're extremely

00:03:13   unhappy about.

00:03:14   going from good to bad here? I mean, Apple launched these three new commercials for the Watch Series 2

00:03:20   and the iPhone 7. The one for the Series 2 is very good, it's showcasing the new sport and fitness

00:03:26   features and it's all right, it's very nice, the music is okay. There's the iPhone 7 one which is

00:03:31   a minute long and it shows this guy going like skating at night and taking pictures and doing

00:03:37   stuff with the iPhone at night because it's got a low light camera and in fact the very last tagline

00:03:42   on the video is low-light photography with iPhone 7.

00:03:46   And then there's the rain one, which is supposed to showcase the new waterproofing water-resistant

00:03:53   feature.

00:03:54   And it's just so unrealistic and there's so many issues with this commercial, and I tweeted

00:03:59   it this morning and I got a bunch of replies on Twitter.

00:04:02   So it's showing this person with his dog in what I assume is some kind of garage or shed,

00:04:08   and there's like a thunderstorm outside, like the word is ending.

00:04:11   like big thunders raining you know it's very dark and this guy thinks it's okay because

00:04:18   and his roof is leaking by the way there's a bucket filled with water and he thinks you

00:04:24   know the dog is looking at him like come on man what do you want to do and he thinks he

00:04:28   thinks you know what I'm just gonna go for a bike ride right now with these thunders

00:04:34   up in the hills I'm gonna go with for a bike ride because I got an iPhone 7 and it's water

00:04:39   resistance so hey I won't die the iPhone won't die so you know it's okay and it's

00:04:43   just so unrealistic with that kind of weather for this person to think it's

00:04:47   alright I want to bike ride myself into oblivion because I got an iPhone 7 I

00:04:51   just don't get it it's no one who has that nice of a bike who's taking that

00:04:58   sort of care of it is gonna go out and ride in the rain period let alone this

00:05:04   whole like this thunderstorm looks like the end of the world. My favorite part of

00:05:09   this ad is you've got the water-resistant iPhone 7 practically

00:05:14   magic liquid damage not covered under warranty. Okay I love it I just really love

00:05:21   that it's like hey you can attach a bike to your I phone to your bike in the rain

00:05:26   but if it breaks don't come see us like I really like that that just makes me

00:05:30   love a lot. Could have been so many different scenarios like I gotta go pick

00:05:34   up the kids at school but it's raining and it doesn't matter I need to go to

00:05:38   work and it's raining but I am on this very important call and I can still make

00:05:42   the phone call but the show dispairs like against all good judgments he's

00:05:47   going for a bike ride with thunders in the background and the dog looking at

00:05:50   him with a very sad face I don't know I don't know. So this is like in if you

00:05:57   want to do a silly ad for your water resistance, Samsung, they nailed it. The champagne one

00:06:04   where the guy's just, where the rapper's pouring champagne on his phone. That was perfect.

00:06:07   If you want to do something out of this world, go for that, right? But uh, riding around

00:06:13   on a bicycle in a thunderstorm, I don't know man. Like it's not relatable to people, so

00:06:20   I don't know why you did it. With the dog making a sad face, I mean look at the dog,

00:06:24   like it's super upset I don't know. Like the champagne one is even less relatable

00:06:28   but it's funny it's entertaining like this one they're like trying to paint a

00:06:31   real-life picture right and it just it just doesn't work for me. So the other

00:06:36   ads are fantastic this one I completely agree with you they should have done

00:06:39   something like you got caught in a rainstorm yeah and you're worried your

00:06:44   phone's not gonna work but it works or someone jumps in a swimming pool it's

00:06:47   fine like that's the sort of stuff show people how they break their phones in

00:06:50   real life show somebody dropping a phone in a toilet like make it funny like

00:06:54   these are the things that we actually care about.

00:06:56   Like, show us that stuff.

00:06:57   - Or you could go romantic and show like a couple

00:07:00   having a picnic and suddenly it starts raining

00:07:02   and it doesn't matter, everybody's laughing

00:07:04   because the iPhone is--

00:07:05   - All the sprinklers go off.

00:07:05   - You know, exactly.

00:07:07   That kind of real life situation,

00:07:09   but not a person risking his life for a bike ride.

00:07:12   - Just call us.

00:07:13   Like, just call us.

00:07:14   Like, give us a call on Skype.

00:07:16   You can join in the call whenever you want

00:07:17   and we'll just, we'll tell you what to do.

00:07:19   - Bring in Jimmy and James and, you know,

00:07:22   all the Apple Music team and we'll figure something out.

00:07:25   - Hey Federico, I have a question for you.

00:07:27   - Okay.

00:07:28   - Where are all the subscription apps?

00:07:30   - See, this is interesting because I've been keeping an eye

00:07:33   on the new subscription stuff in iTunes Connect,

00:07:36   as well as the App Store ads

00:07:38   that Apple said were launching this fall.

00:07:40   So the two things that I still cannot quite figure out

00:07:43   because with the launch of iOS 10,

00:07:45   it seems like all of the ads from the App Store are gone.

00:07:48   So they used to be there in the beta stage

00:07:50   and now they're not available anymore.

00:07:51   Apple says it's launching this fall,

00:07:53   so we're still waiting.

00:07:54   And also subscriptions

00:07:55   were supposed to be launching this fall.

00:07:57   And from what I know,

00:08:00   developers with previous existing subscriptions

00:08:03   were migrated to the new system in June.

00:08:05   So it's like they've already started counting against that,

00:08:08   you know, all of the different rates

00:08:10   that apply to subscribers after a while.

00:08:13   But I haven't found or haven't been pitched any new,

00:08:17   like productivity app with the new

00:08:20   iTunes Connect subscriptions. So I don't know. Maybe Apple is waiting for a few

00:08:25   more details because Phil Schiller mentioned at the talk show we have the

00:08:29   legal team working to figure out some details for international app stores

00:08:33   where the rules for subscriptions are different so maybe that's the hold up I

00:08:37   don't know. It's like we were expecting all of the apps that we use to go to

00:08:43   subscription but I haven't seen anything. I know that Overcast just kind of

00:08:49   changed the model a little bit but I don't think it's anything like what we

00:08:53   were expecting he was already doing the patronage thing but now it's like a

00:08:57   different type of subscription I think but like I was expecting to be paying

00:09:00   for OmniFocus by now. Yeah that's still still not the case Myke. I just wondered

00:09:07   if you'd seen anything but clearly not you know I never have seen the ads by

00:09:11   the way they weren't in the UK store even during the beta. The ads were in the

00:09:17   the US App Store during the beta, but now they're gone.

00:09:19   And they were super bad, by the way.

00:09:20   Like, you'd search for Twitter and Facebook,

00:09:23   and you'd get some scammy app selling your followers.

00:09:26   - I mean, and the theory behind that, though,

00:09:28   is that it wasn't launched yet,

00:09:30   so Twitter and Facebook weren't buying the ads.

00:09:33   - Sure, but they're completely gone,

00:09:35   and I saw quite a few people on Twitter say,

00:09:37   "Hey, what happened to the App Store ads

00:09:39   after iOS 10 launched?"

00:09:41   - Maybe it's like HomeKit last year, right?

00:09:43   Like, "Hey, here's a thing,"

00:09:44   and then just don't hear about it for a year.

00:09:45   It's like, "Here we go again.

00:09:46   Maybe that's what we got.

00:09:47   Pretending never happened.

00:09:48   [laughter]

00:09:49   Yeah.

00:09:50   [laughter]

00:09:51   So the Amazon Echo is coming to the UK.

00:09:55   This is the greatest piece of follow-up ever.

00:09:57   I'm so excited.

00:09:58   Ever?

00:09:59   I pre-ordered one.

00:10:00   Yeah, ever.

00:10:01   I pre-ordered it.

00:10:02   So let me understand.

00:10:03   You went from being an Echo denier to an Echo buyer.

00:10:05   How was I ever an Echo denier?

00:10:07   I just didn't want to do what you did and buy one through some shady eBay thing.

00:10:11   I've always said I wanted to do it, but like I wanted to wait until it was here because

00:10:16   I wanted all of the features to be like, you know, I want to do the thing where you ask

00:10:20   it the weather and it tells you because I know you can't really do that so easily.

00:10:23   Like it takes, it's a bit weirder.

00:10:25   So I was just waiting and waiting and waiting for them to release it in the UK and they

00:10:29   have, I knew that they would and they finally did it.

00:10:31   So I got my pre-order in, I got a £50 discount for being a Prime member on my pre-order, which

00:10:36   is sweet and it will be here next week, 28th.

00:10:40   Next week, nice.

00:10:41   So what do you plan on doing with the Echo?

00:10:44   Right now, not a ton.

00:10:46   I'm buying it for when we move, because when we move, I'm going to get Hue lights, and

00:10:52   I'm going to get Wi-Thing switches and all that stuff.

00:10:56   Wemo switches or whatever is the thing.

00:10:59   And then I'm going to kind of dig in.

00:11:01   What I really like is Amazon have worked with a bunch of UK companies to develop skills.

00:11:08   They call them skills, right?

00:11:10   Yeah. So like, you know, there's a service here called, for example, called Just Eat.

00:11:16   And Just Eat is like a takeaway service. So they have developed a skill with them and

00:11:22   they have one with the National Rail. So you can ask them when the train is and stuff.

00:11:27   Yeah, they have a few things. They work with Jamie Oliver to get recipes into it. And I'm

00:11:33   excited. I am genuinely I've wanted one for so long, but I wanted to kind of I wanted

00:11:37   to wait until I could get the full experience and it looks like that's what

00:11:40   I'm gonna get now. Amazon also in their true mad style that they have, they have

00:11:47   announced that they're selling the dot in a six-pack now, which is incredible.

00:11:55   You buy five and get one free. Or buy ten and get two free. What can you do with six dots?

00:12:02   The idea is you then have one in every room. That's their idea.

00:12:08   I don't know if anybody really needs...

00:12:12   I can already imagine you walking around your new flat and just talking to Alexa in every room.

00:12:18   So my plan is to put the echo in the living room/kitchen that we have, like the large room.

00:12:25   And then I might get a dot for the bedroom or for the office depending on how well it can hear us.

00:12:31   us but I'm gonna I want to kind of test it to see how that works out but I'm

00:12:36   really excited about this and they also have them in white now but I got the

00:12:40   back one. Yeah I've been waiting for a long time so you can expect to hear a

00:12:45   lot from me as I go through my home automation kick over the next couple of

00:12:50   months or something. Nice. Sweet. We teased this at the top of the show but

00:12:57   something interesting happened over the weekend something that will go down in

00:13:01   in history.

00:13:02   Let's do this forever.

00:13:03   I could do it forever.

00:13:04   Is it out of your system now?

00:13:07   No, Steven Hackett, can you tell us all about it please?

00:13:12   Can you be the gate father, Steven?

00:13:16   I mean, I only rode Myke's coattails with the buttons.

00:13:22   The button doesn't work with fabric in between your finger and the button.

00:13:28   So Myke really got everybody amped up.

00:13:31   - Yeah, I prime the pump.

00:13:33   - Yeah, you were the John the Baptist of the situation.

00:13:36   - Bad news for puppets using the home button, it won't work.

00:13:40   - Yeah, no puppets could use home buttons.

00:13:43   In all seriousness though, right,

00:13:45   like this became this whole thing about gloves,

00:13:48   which I never said anything about gloves.

00:13:52   I don't know why this became a thing, but it did.

00:13:54   - Well, it became a thing because people,

00:14:00   there are people who want to either

00:14:03   like write everything off is not a big deal

00:14:05   or feel like their job is to

00:14:08   protect the normals from like incorrect stories.

00:14:11   - Yeah.

00:14:12   - And like that's fine, like that,

00:14:13   I applaud people who do that

00:14:15   on Twitter, on their blogs or whatever,

00:14:17   but it doesn't mean that everything,

00:14:19   you gotta shoot down everything that comes across your desk.

00:14:22   - Yeah, 'cause it's like, you know,

00:14:24   it's a categorical fact that I found

00:14:26   that if you do not make contact with the Touch ID ring, the home button doesn't click.

00:14:32   So capacitive gloves fit into that story.

00:14:34   Like anyways, that was lots of fun.

00:14:37   Yeah, but that was only the what would turn out to be the second weirdest thing of our

00:14:41   week.

00:14:42   It was a mere appetizer as it were.

00:14:44   So that was what Friday night?

00:14:46   Yeah Friday night.

00:14:47   The button thing.

00:14:49   So I got my iPhone 7 plus Friday evening.

00:14:52   I did not get a chance to do anything with it until late Friday night.

00:14:57   And I set it up in the iCloud restore and I basically just signed in and then dropped

00:15:00   it on the dock and let it charge overnight thinking, "Uh, the iCloud restore will take

00:15:04   overnight and it'll be done when I wake up."

00:15:07   So we get up the next morning and two things were happening.

00:15:10   One, the iCloud restore was just like completely broken.

00:15:13   Things were just not...

00:15:16   It was like in a weird state where it had clearly failed during the restore for some

00:15:19   reason and so I noticed that and I set the phone down and then I noticed that it is

00:15:28   making basically a sound and there's a YouTube link in the show notes you can go listen to

00:15:35   it I'm sure you've already heard it because it's because over a million people have so

00:15:40   you're probably one of them yeah it's like almost 1.2 million now the and so I recorded

00:15:48   the sound thinking this is really strange and I know what the sound is it's

00:15:52   coil hum it's a sound that happens in a lot of electronic devices I have in all

00:15:57   of my years of owning and collecting devices I've never heard it in an iOS

00:16:02   device and I have a bunch to choose from now in my library none of them do it so

00:16:07   I was like this is strange clearly this phone is defective in some way so could

00:16:10   you hear it when it was on your desk yes okay and so a lot of the a lot of the

00:16:15   narrative including this morning people are like I can only hear it if I stick

00:16:18   it next to my ear. That is not what my phone did.

00:16:20   Yeah, because I can hear it sometimes if I jam my phone up to my ear.

00:16:24   Well sure. Yeah. Mine is on the desk and I am sitting at my computer and it is, you know,

00:16:30   18 or 24 inches away and I can hear it. It is loud.

00:16:32   Right. See, that's a problem and I would be scared if I heard that.

00:16:36   Yeah. I mean, I didn't think it was going to explode, but, um, I figured this is weird.

00:16:40   And the reason I recorded the sound was I wanted people who think they hear this not

00:16:46   to feel crazy. Like this is a thing that can happen just FYI and I decided because I'm

00:16:50   a reporter let me report on like the situation with my individual phone. And so I put the

00:16:57   video up Saturday morning early. I recorded it on my zoom recorder like standing in my

00:17:02   bedroom Saturday morning. Put the video up.

00:17:04   Birds in the background.

00:17:06   Birds are in the background. Yeah if I'd known a million people were gonna hear it I would

00:17:09   have definitely done a cleaner job with the audio. But the audio is a fair representation

00:17:14   of how it sounds. Like that is how it sounds. I didn't do anything with the audio.

00:17:17   So what are you doing? Do you have the recorder touching the phone?

00:17:20   No, the recorder is like, I have the phone in one hand and the recorder in the other

00:17:25   hand and there are inches in between them.

00:17:27   Yeah, see that's crazy. That's a piece of information I didn't know.

00:17:30   Yeah, the recorder is not touching the phone. And so I put it up on YouTube and I write

00:17:36   a little blog post on 512 saying, "Hey, I recorded the sound. It's kind of weird. I'm

00:17:42   going to conduct AppleCare and I will

00:17:43   update this post as I learn more. Right?

00:17:46   I was going to do a little live blog on a

00:17:47   Saturday morning and so I call AppleCare

00:17:50   and they're very responsive. I end up

00:17:53   talking to like an AppleCare supervisor

00:17:55   who says hey you know clearly this phone

00:17:58   is not doing what we want it to do.

00:18:01   He calls the my local Apple store and

00:18:03   says they have stock go in and swap it

00:18:06   out. I go to the Apple store they don't

00:18:09   have the phone they haven't had that

00:18:10   phone all day so there's some

00:18:11   discrepancy between what AppleCare said and what the store said. The Apple Store

00:18:16   deemed the fastest way to replace the phone was to order a service replacement

00:18:20   through the Genius Bar. That was Saturday. Today is Tuesday. I've not heard a peep.

00:18:23   So I still have this phone. It's in a box on my desk turned off. So I'm

00:18:30   waiting on a replacement phone. But Apple was going to replace the phone. The

00:18:32   AppleCare supervisor actually called me back Saturday afternoon saying, "Hey, I

00:18:36   want to make sure you got the phone." I was like, "I don't know who you spoke to,"

00:18:39   but they haven't had the phone all day and he wasn't very apologetic about that

00:18:43   but kind of was like oh well too bad

00:18:44   sorry have a nice day wasn't real through about that interaction

00:18:47   um so updated the blog post again saying hey I talked to AppleCare they're going

00:18:53   to replace the phone

00:18:54   I also updated the caption under the video and by this time by Saturday

00:18:58   afternoon it had started been picked up by a couple big people on Twitter people

00:19:05   at TechCrunch and people kind of in the tech sphere.

00:19:10   And it was starting to get some legs on it.

00:19:15   And at this point I was talking with the two of you guys

00:19:20   and I was starting to freak out a little bit.

00:19:24   I was like, I didn't mean to start a gate.

00:19:27   - You were very uncomfortable.

00:19:29   - I was very uncomfortable.

00:19:30   - Because at this point it is now

00:19:32   starting to become the story, right?

00:19:34   Like with the home button thing, it was like it bubbled up for a little bit.

00:19:38   It got picked up by a bunch of places, but it wasn't like a big issue.

00:19:44   It was like, hey, here's a weird thing about your iPhone.

00:19:46   That was kind of the overall narrative, like The Verge put it on there for us,

00:19:50   whatever. But then with your one, it was like at that point, some people are

00:19:54   ready to start fighting down the phone because at this point it's clear that

00:19:57   there is a whole industry based around trying to find the gate of the iPhone.

00:20:01   Right. It's the big thing. It's a big story.

00:20:03   It's a huge thing on YouTube. People bend them in half, snap them into pieces because you get a million views.

00:20:07   We have found out. That's why people do it.

00:20:10   So now it's like everyone's ready because that first one didn't go anywhere. So now it's like, okay

00:20:16   We'll all start talking about this. This is a scary thing. This is kind of a weird thing.

00:20:20   It's something like most people can't understand what it is.

00:20:23   Like I had no idea what causes those sort of sounds and like when people explain what Kog'ahom is, I was like, okay

00:20:29   that makes sense but it's like it's building up it's building up and now

00:20:32   it's like just this just exploded no pun intended yeah hmm and see I was kind of

00:20:40   freaking out actually like took tweetbot off my phone I haven't put it back yet

00:20:45   I was like Twitter replies were out of control the YouTube comments were out of

00:20:47   control and so I basically like hid for like 18 hours on the internet it's like

00:20:52   I just this needs to like happen without me and all I did was like post the video

00:20:58   I truly didn't mean for it to be as wide as it's been.

00:21:02   And it truly has gone viral.

00:21:03   It's by far the single biggest single piece of work

00:21:07   has ever been for me.

00:21:08   None of my other YouTube videos are even close to this.

00:21:13   Which is a really fascinating look

00:21:14   at how the media works.

00:21:16   And it was perfect timing, right?

00:21:17   It was launch weekend, it was Saturday morning early,

00:21:20   there's not a lot of news going on.

00:21:23   And it really spread like wildfire.

00:21:26   And I've heard from a lot of people, like my inbox is unbelievable right now, I've heard

00:21:31   from a lot of people who say a bunch of different things and the feedback kind of

00:21:35   falls into like two camps. Feedback that I'm willing to address is people who

00:21:39   are just like being hateful in the comments and whatever. I can't be bothered

00:21:43   with people who are going to respond that way. But people say my phone does

00:21:47   this and it's as loud as yours is and you know those people will contact Apple and

00:21:50   Apple's replacing them, which is great. And I've heard from people that say what you

00:21:54   said Myke of well I can hear it but only if I jam the phone into my ear, which is like a totally reasonable thing.

00:22:01   And I think if that's the volume level, that's acceptable. Electronics make noise and especially something as powerful as the ATIN Fusion chip.

00:22:10   Coil hum is something that can happen. And so the people who have been decent to talk to about this have been really great.

00:22:20   who disagree with me on like the fact that it happens like just because it

00:22:25   doesn't happen to your phone doesn't mean it's not true.

00:22:27   Even those people have been have been good to talk to so I've talked to a lot of

00:22:31   people. So yesterday on Sunday is when it began to evolve from the tech press to

00:22:38   like the mainstream press. So I started getting emails from places like the

00:22:44   Washington Post and Good Morning America which is like a morning television news

00:22:48   show who they are supposed to be featuring the video today I gave them

00:22:53   permission and so today I think like you know Monday and Tuesday I think it will

00:23:00   be the days that it's like mainstream press and I think this will be the end

00:23:03   of it I hope this will be the end of it but yeah it's a thing guys like we were

00:23:08   talking all weekend and I was like I I truly like this is it's hard to believe

00:23:14   that it's happening. Are you excited about it at all? I am now. Like I said, the

00:23:20   first 18 or 24 hours, two things happened early off that really made me feel bad.

00:23:26   One was there was a segment of the the Apple community that responded very

00:23:30   negatively to it and and people who basically wrote it off as not being a

00:23:37   thing because they hadn't experienced it. Or saying oh it's completely normal like

00:23:42   normalizing like this the issue like I

00:23:45   don't think it's like a danger like I

00:23:46   don't think it's widespread I don't

00:23:47   think there's something like you should

00:23:49   skip buying the iPhone 7 plus because of

00:23:51   it like I'm going to replace it and

00:23:53   carry an iPhone 7 plus I'm not saying

00:23:55   any of that but a lot of those things

00:23:57   got attributed to me based on like other

00:24:00   people's writing and that was pretty

00:24:02   hurtful and and I still feel pretty beat

00:24:06   up over how parts of the community

00:24:08   reacted. But now, like really starting yesterday, how I chose to approach this is after talking

00:24:16   with you guys, talking with my wife, talking with some other people, I was like, "Look,

00:24:21   I don't think any damage has been done to my audience size and my listeners and readers

00:24:26   of the website." Those people have all been amazing. The people who normally pay attention

00:24:31   to what I do have been nothing but supportive through this.

00:24:32   Well, because they understand what you're doing here.

00:24:35   - Yeah, they know I'm not doing it for like,

00:24:37   I don't know, like, just page view or something.

00:24:42   I really just publish it to be like,

00:24:43   I report on Apple, this is something that happened to me.

00:24:46   And so thank you to everyone who's just been like, awesome.

00:24:49   For every nasty comment I've gotten, I've gotten a nice one.

00:24:52   And if you've sent a nice one, thank you very much.

00:24:54   But now, how I'm trying to think about it is,

00:24:58   this is something that, however accidental

00:25:02   the viral aspect of it was,

00:25:04   Like, this is the situation I'm in now,

00:25:06   and so now it's about making the best of it.

00:25:08   And it means that Federico had suggested it

00:25:12   and I had already started doing it.

00:25:13   Like, if I talk to somebody,

00:25:14   and I've talked to a couple reporters,

00:25:15   I'm not talking to everybody,

00:25:17   I make sure the full website URL is given.

00:25:20   I'm now trying to channel this of like,

00:25:23   the story's out there, it's way beyond what I intended,

00:25:26   but I can't change that, and so now it's like,

00:25:29   how do I make sure that I handle it appropriately

00:25:33   and do it in a way that's professional.

00:25:35   Because it's playing on a big boy stage

00:25:37   that I normally don't get to be on.

00:25:38   Like none of us get to be on.

00:25:39   Like none of us have had anything to do with a million views.

00:25:41   - No.

00:25:43   - At least on this show.

00:25:44   So it's something that is unique

00:25:48   and something that doesn't come around very often.

00:25:49   And so now I'm really trying to handle it

00:25:53   the best that I can.

00:25:54   And I mean it's still completely overwhelming.

00:25:57   Like it's completely exhausting.

00:25:58   But it's almost over I think.

00:26:00   and I probably won't be able to outrun it for a while.

00:26:04   I think this will kind of be in the news for a little while

00:26:07   and people in the tech community,

00:26:09   it'll be associated with me for a little bit,

00:26:11   but we're talking six months from now,

00:26:13   or maybe even two months from now,

00:26:15   it'll be in the past and it'll be done

00:26:17   and it's fine with me.

00:26:19   - Serious question.

00:26:21   - Okay.

00:26:22   - Do you think you might look for stuff in the future?

00:26:26   Is this a thing that you'd be interested

00:26:27   in getting involved in?

00:26:29   this world of like let's find out what's wrong with the iPhone?

00:26:33   No. I mean I if it's one of those things like if my phone hadn't made this noise and I saw

00:26:38   it somewhere else I probably wouldn't even link to it. I didn't link to the button thing

00:26:45   like even though it was you. It's like whatever. That sort of thing is really not that interesting

00:26:52   to me. I was talking to somebody yesterday about it like my style normally like my style

00:26:58   coverage normally is to let things pass by

00:27:01   and comment on things that seem really important

00:27:04   but only when I've had time to process them.

00:27:07   So I'm not first to a lot of stuff.

00:27:10   My Sierra review, which we're gonna talk about later today,

00:27:12   that's out today with Sierra.

00:27:14   But that's a little bit different.

00:27:17   Big news stories, like 512 is I'm not in the news game

00:27:21   with 512 pixels, I'm not in the news game with this show.

00:27:24   I'm in the game of I have a unique perspective on Apple,

00:27:27   somewhat, and I try to filter things through that perspective.

00:27:31   And sometimes that means, most of the time that means I'm not first.

00:27:35   This thing that I recorded in like four minutes in my bedroom and put a PNG and audio file

00:27:40   together in Final Cut, the whole thing was over as far as publication in like half an

00:27:45   hour.

00:27:47   That's unusual for me, and I don't think that's, like, if it happens to me, like if I come

00:27:52   across that, how I normally operate, then sure, I'll do it again.

00:27:56   But I'm not going to be one of those people like, "Does the iPhone bend?"

00:28:01   You know, like be one of those YouTubers who tries to destroy a device for pages.

00:28:07   That is nothing for me interest-wise.

00:28:11   I only did it because it happened to the phone that was sitting on my desk and I felt an

00:28:14   obligation to report my experience.

00:28:18   Why do you think Apple haven't said anything yet?

00:28:20   Because they have issued some press comments about the lightning thing with the headphones

00:28:26   going dead after five minutes.

00:28:27   Yeah, losing the audio control.

00:28:30   I think it's a two-part question.

00:28:31   So I don't think they've replied publicly to anyone.

00:28:35   So I thought one of two things would happen.

00:28:37   A, Apple would contact me, which they have not.

00:28:40   Or two, they would contact their normal outlets to have some sort of message, like you were

00:28:46   saying with the deal with the lightning headphones and the adapter.

00:28:50   lose audio control after audio is cut off for five minutes and Apple made a

00:28:53   thing, "Hey it's a bug, we're gonna fix it in a future update." Sorry, right.

00:28:57   They've done neither as far as I know talking right now this

00:29:02   moment. They have not issued any sort of statement about this, especially not to

00:29:06   me. I think that if it goes past today that they won't do it. I thought at

00:29:13   least that I would get a call or an email, but I guess not. And like that's

00:29:19   fine I have no hard feelings over that. I think they haven't done it because then

00:29:22   I truly believe the number of units affected is very small. The five minute

00:29:26   headphone deal happens to all iPhone 7 and 7 pluses all however many million

00:29:30   they've sold. This thing has been seen by 1.2 million people on YouTube and I'm

00:29:35   sure has been read and seen on TV now which is crazy by many many more and I

00:29:42   have not heard from a lot of those people. I've definitely heard from people

00:29:45   but it's a very small number. So I think this is a very isolated deal and Apple just got

00:29:48   real unlucky that a guy with a blog and a YouTube channel happened to get one.

00:29:51   But isn't it one of those things now where like the public perception is that

00:29:55   the iPhones hiss and there's like something bubbling inside them? I mean

00:29:59   maybe and I think the idea that like this was in some of the arguments that

00:30:05   that saying that I overstated my you know overplayed my hand was that in the

00:30:09   world of like where Samsung Galaxy Note 7s like are actually hurting people

00:30:15   which is a terrible, terrible story,

00:30:19   like people are getting hurt, property's being damaged.

00:30:21   That, in that world and that climate

00:30:23   that's saying anything about the iPhone 7 Plus

00:30:26   that isn't that is like reckless somehow,

00:30:30   which I just don't buy for a second.

00:30:31   Like, this is a story with or without Samsung

00:30:34   having their horrific quarter of news.

00:30:37   - 'Cause it's still a thing a phone shouldn't be doing.

00:30:40   - Right. - Still a problem.

00:30:41   - It's an expensive device,

00:30:43   And it's a device from a company that usually gets details right.

00:30:47   And I'm sure it's just some little manufacturing detail.

00:30:49   I actually have an email from somebody who they are working on like a PhD in electrical

00:30:55   engineering and he sent me this one, so if you're listening, thank you, sent me this

00:30:59   wonderful like four paragraph email explaining what his thought was.

00:31:03   This is a guy who like is in school to learn how this stuff works, which is like really

00:31:07   cool that he emailed me, explaining how it works.

00:31:10   It seems like it's just a little manufacturing defect.

00:31:12   And if that's true, maybe there's just a batch of them,

00:31:15   and they've got it resolved.

00:31:17   I would have thought that Apple would have said something

00:31:20   to the effect that it's a very small number of units.

00:31:22   If you have one of these units, contact us,

00:31:25   but there's no danger in it,

00:31:28   like it's not going to cause harm to anyone,

00:31:32   like the Samsung phones are.

00:31:34   But they haven't said a thing.

00:31:37   And I do find it interesting,

00:31:40   but maybe it's just below their threshold

00:31:44   of needing to care about it.

00:31:48   But like I said, the mainstream media stuff

00:31:50   like last night and today may change that,

00:31:53   but if it doesn't happen today on Tuesday the 20th,

00:31:56   then I think it'll just float on by

00:31:59   and Apple won't have to respond to it.

00:32:02   - All right.

00:32:04   Well, I'm happy that your video

00:32:07   got viewed by a million people.

00:32:09   It's crazy.

00:32:10   It's one of those things that the timing and everything

00:32:16   was just, I guess, just perfect for it.

00:32:18   I truly had no anticipation that this is how it would end up.

00:32:21   - It's kind of weird that somebody that I know did this.

00:32:25   Because it always feels like malicious people

00:32:31   out to make a buck.

00:32:33   - If I had known that this is where it was gonna end up,

00:32:37   I wouldn't have done it, honestly.

00:32:40   The feeling that I had the last couple days

00:32:42   of just like utter dread looking at the internet,

00:32:45   and that's not because I'm like damaging Apple's brand.

00:32:47   I don't care about that.

00:32:48   I'm doing my job as a reporter.

00:32:50   The feeling of dread has been from people who

00:32:54   I thought we had a certain relationship

00:32:58   and that we don't, at least over this story.

00:33:01   That's a personal aspect more than anything.

00:33:03   The community response has not been what I was hoping for in places, but the feeling

00:33:10   of like, exhaustion and stuff is just the overwhelming numbers.

00:33:15   I was doing my job as a reporter, I'm proud of the job I've done as a reporter in this,

00:33:19   that I've been very, I think, even-handed and fair to Apple.

00:33:25   But yeah, it wasn't done out of any sort of malicious intent.

00:33:30   It was just a, "Hey, I write and talk about this stuff for a living.

00:33:34   I'm having this weird experience."

00:33:36   It's no different.

00:33:37   We're going to talk about, "I work in the cloud," a little bit later on in the show,

00:33:40   and, "We had a bad experience with it."

00:33:42   Again, shocking.

00:33:43   We're going to talk about it because that's our job is to talk about our experience.

00:33:49   It's not about being positive about Apple.

00:33:50   It's not about being negative about Apple.

00:33:53   Those two things, if that's how you approach this, you're approaching it wrong.

00:33:56   Our job is to simply report our experience

00:33:59   in this industry and in this space, and that's all I did.

00:34:02   And it is very strange to be the person who started a gate,

00:34:05   but it's sort of nutty at the same time, right?

00:34:10   It's been a very interesting look

00:34:13   into how big media stories happen,

00:34:15   and how quickly something can really just get out of hand.

00:34:22   So with the very small look that I had, like, comparatively at this, it's funny to see how

00:34:32   the media twists a story.

00:34:35   Like it starts off with this one thing and somebody else says something else and that

00:34:39   gets compounded and then somebody else says something else and that gets compounded and

00:34:43   then it ends up being the point where like four or five articles along, there's things

00:34:48   being said that like you never said.

00:34:50   Right.

00:34:51   weird thing to see that in action on the side of the original source.

00:34:57   And just looking at how like once X website's written it up and then this one

00:35:03   rewrote it and then this one rewrote it from that rewrite and this one rewrote

00:35:06   it from that rewrite, which you can see, which is so funny, like you look at the

00:35:09   words being exactly the same.

00:35:11   Um, it's just such a strange thing to see from this side rather than just the side

00:35:17   of the consumer of the information.

00:35:19   Right.

00:35:21   Because usually I wouldn't read the same story

00:35:25   about a home button not working

00:35:26   or an iPhone hissing from six different websites.

00:35:29   I would read one of them, right?

00:35:31   Rather than six of them.

00:35:33   So it's funny to see how the information gets regurgitated

00:35:37   and twisted as it moves through the chain.

00:35:39   - And I think that that will be even more interesting to see

00:35:43   with the mainstream covers and just tech.

00:35:45   - Yeah, what a good morning America gonna say about this.

00:35:48   Like they're not gonna talk about coil hum

00:35:50   or whatever it's called.

00:35:51   - No, no, and so who knows.

00:35:53   And that's always, this is part of it,

00:35:55   that as it goes further down the line, things change.

00:35:59   But at the same time, that's true,

00:36:02   but a lot of the stories that I've read,

00:36:04   at least in bigger,

00:36:05   my WordPress install has like 900 trackback deals right now.

00:36:10   It's often like little WordPress sites

00:36:11   that just are scraping content.

00:36:13   But the big reporters, some of them even like The Telegraph

00:36:17   went so far as like, name me an American podcaster,

00:36:19   and someone else was like, "Relay from co-founders."

00:36:22   There are reporters looking into me

00:36:24   and quoting the blog post and linking to the blog post,

00:36:27   as opposed to just building layers.

00:36:30   - My favorite ones were the ones

00:36:31   where people mentioned both of us,

00:36:33   which was really funny.

00:36:34   They were like, "Steven Hackett found this,

00:36:37   "or his co-founder found this."

00:36:38   It's just really funny.

00:36:40   There are these stories that put us together,

00:36:42   which was hilarious,

00:36:43   and it was just complete coincidence, right?

00:36:47   - Totally.

00:36:48   - We weren't sitting in Slack and being like, right,

00:36:51   now's the time.

00:36:52   This is our time, guys, we're gonna take it down.

00:36:54   That never happened.

00:36:55   - Two years of founding our own business

00:36:57   with our own money and working really hard every day

00:37:00   just to do this.

00:37:01   It is wild how far it's gone though.

00:37:03   Like I've gotten linked, people have been sending me links

00:37:05   to an article in Dubai and it was on the Dutch National News

00:37:10   and Federico was sending me stuff

00:37:15   to French websites last night.

00:37:17   It's all over the place, and it's just really,

00:37:19   it's hard to believe, I see my name there,

00:37:21   but I'm like, that's not me.

00:37:22   Like the NBC Nightly News carried out

00:37:26   on their website last night, and a friend of mine

00:37:28   texted it to me, he's like, is this you?

00:37:30   And I was like, yeah, yeah, it's me, all right.

00:37:33   It doesn't feel like it, but it is.

00:37:35   - But this is the thing, right,

00:37:36   this is the thing I keep coming back to,

00:37:37   this is the industry that exists,

00:37:40   the cottage industry that exists

00:37:42   to find these weird things, right?

00:37:47   - Something I didn't like is, speaking of that,

00:37:50   is how some folks in the community and on Twitter,

00:37:54   just if you take a look around,

00:37:56   there's a few articles with tweets from the, you know,

00:38:00   from Apple and tech people embedded in the story.

00:38:04   And you can see the common reaction of

00:38:06   when someone finds a problem in Apple's hardware or software,

00:38:10   There's a few people that deflect the criticism by saying, "Yes, but look at how Samsung is

00:38:17   bad."

00:38:18   So, instead of responding objectively to some criticism, they say, they cover their ears

00:38:25   and say, "Yeah, yeah, but Samsung, they're not seven.

00:38:28   It explodes."

00:38:29   It's not really an answer.

00:38:30   And this applies to Apple hardware, Apple software, when you criticize something that

00:38:34   doesn't work.

00:38:36   And there's always people who say, "Yeah, but Microsoft and Google are just as bad."

00:38:39   That's not really an answer.

00:38:40   I'm not talking about Microsoft and Google.

00:38:42   I'm talking about Apple.

00:38:43   - It is a valid independent point that they might be bad,

00:38:46   but it doesn't mean that it makes the other thing good.

00:38:48   - Exactly.

00:38:49   So it's, I think this way of reasoning applies

00:38:53   to every single area in life.

00:38:54   When you're dealing with a very specific criticism,

00:38:58   you shouldn't deflect attention to something else

00:39:00   just so you can avoid having that discussion.

00:39:03   And I think what Steven found was objectively true.

00:39:07   He made a video, he made a recording,

00:39:09   and other people heard it as well.

00:39:11   We're not saying that the iPhone 7 explodes,

00:39:13   we're saying that it makes a sound.

00:39:15   And so we're just curious about that

00:39:17   because it didn't used to make that loud a sound before.

00:39:21   So I don't understand the reaction that I've seen

00:39:23   from folks who say, yeah, yeah, you know,

00:39:25   the Note 7 explodes and now people are complaining

00:39:27   about the iPhone 7 making a sound.

00:39:29   It's not really the same scale here.

00:39:34   It's two different topics.

00:39:36   And I think Steven did the right thing

00:39:38   I think it handle it gracefully, you know, so yeah

00:39:42   Should we move on? Thanks guys

00:39:46   Congratulations on your 1 million views. I guess

00:39:49   This episode of connected is brought to you by a new sponsor and that is cricket cricket is a company that was founded in the pursuit

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00:41:26   of the 18th hole which is where golfing ends, the 19th hole is the relaxing part and the

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00:42:26   Thank you so much to Cricut for their support of this show

00:42:29   and Relay FM.

00:42:29   I work collaboration.

00:42:33   Now we promised that we would do our show notes

00:42:38   for you this week.

00:42:40   So the show notes that we put together

00:42:41   where we talk about what we're gonna talk about

00:42:44   and we have all of our bullet points, some of our research,

00:42:46   we put them into a document.

00:42:47   We've spoken about pages in the past,

00:42:49   we've spoken about paper,

00:42:51   we spoke about Quip and Google Docs.

00:42:53   We use one of these services that we collaborate on,

00:42:55   we all work on it together.

00:42:56   And then when we're doing the show,

00:42:58   we all have this document in front of us

00:42:59   so we know what we're talking about

00:43:00   and we have everything that we need.

00:43:02   We promised that we would try the new pages

00:43:04   for iCloud or whatever it's called,

00:43:06   the iWork collaboration stuff this week.

00:43:09   I wanna give a very quick spoiler.

00:43:12   I'm currently looking at Google Docs.

00:43:14   (laughing)

00:43:16   Let's talk about why.

00:43:19   it started off they announced this and then when I was on my travels after the Apple event,

00:43:26   after iOS 10 was released they put the update out and I figured that I would do something

00:43:32   you guys did last time. So when the first collaboration thing came out for pages when

00:43:39   we decided to take action all the way over on prompt 20, you two both put up a public

00:43:48   page right so people could come and just see what happened and break it. I think you did it with

00:43:53   Google Docs as well or something like that. So I decided that I would share a document on Twitter

00:44:00   for people to come in and edit and there were the little indicator said like 35 plus on it.

00:44:09   I have no idea how many people were actually at this document but it felt like more than 35. I was

00:44:15   was

00:44:34   held up on my phone.

00:44:35   'Cause I could see people typing,

00:44:37   I could see things being pasted over and over

00:44:39   and over and over again.

00:44:41   And then, yeah, it was fine.

00:44:44   So I was looking at it, watching it go through.

00:44:46   Then I started getting some tweets from people

00:44:47   saying that they were having some problems on the web,

00:44:49   like it was slowing down.

00:44:50   And then Dan Sturm hosted a defocused podcast

00:44:53   on the incomparable, sent me a screenshot

00:44:55   of a kernel panic that he received

00:44:57   whilst playing around on the web.

00:44:59   So I don't think it was completely stable,

00:45:03   But I will not knock them for this because I don't think it's fair to because I purposefully

00:45:11   tried to break it.

00:45:14   And if anything I was impressed by how well it was holding up on iOS.

00:45:20   And I just wanted to see can it cope with a lot of people at the same time and the answer

00:45:25   was yes it can.

00:45:28   But talking about iOS, I have used pages exclusively on my iPhone, so I wanted to see what the

00:45:36   experience was like there.

00:45:37   And I don't like it.

00:45:40   It does this weird zooming in thing.

00:45:41   So when you look at the page, it's really zoomed out.

00:45:44   Like you see the whole page.

00:45:45   And then when you tap to enter text, it zooms in.

00:45:47   But it zooms in so far that the end of the line is obscured.

00:45:54   It's not like reformatting things.

00:45:56   So what you would want it to be is like to then take the full size of the screen to be

00:46:02   the page or whatever and then it would reformat the text, right?

00:46:05   So it flows it.

00:46:06   It doesn't do that.

00:46:07   So you're typing and then it's like going off the edge of the screen, like the screen's

00:46:11   moving along and then you can't see what's on the left.

00:46:13   Do you know what I'm talking about?

00:46:14   Am I making sense?

00:46:15   >> Yeah.

00:46:16   >> Yeah, I think so.

00:46:17   >> So it was zoomed in too far to the point that you couldn't see the ends of the line

00:46:22   where you were.

00:46:23   And I didn't like that.

00:46:24   pan around to read everything. I just didn't like this. I wanted the text to flow more

00:46:32   responsibly, like responsive web design stuff, rather than having to pan around. It just

00:46:37   didn't feel nice. I don't need to do that on Google Docs, right? Google Docs just kind

00:46:41   of flows the text to make it work. So it moves it depending on the size of the screen rather

00:46:46   than being completely stuck to the original formatting.

00:46:51   is the only app that I've used in a collaboration sense that does it this way.

00:46:54   I don't like it. Yeah that seems that seems pretty janky. It should know I

00:47:00   mean it's a native iOS app but I can understand if it was a web view that

00:47:03   maybe didn't get the message that was on a smaller device but in a native app

00:47:07   they should be able to do that. This is purely like my experience but it felt a

00:47:13   little webby in a way that I can't explain. They're obviously doing

00:47:19   something here to connect all this stuff together, it didn't feel completely native. It just

00:47:25   didn't feel as responsive as I would like it to be. I don't know. The pages on iOS is

00:47:31   super unfriendly to third party keyboards. So on the iPhone, it doesn't give me any shortcut

00:47:38   bars. Third party keyboard just makes all that go away. It's not like how with some

00:47:42   apps you get a bar that lives above the keyboard. So if I wanted to do any formatting, putting

00:47:47   something in bold, having a list, even using a to indent on a list when I use gboard which

00:47:54   is my keyboard, I had to hit the formatting paintbrush to do anything. Like I couldn't

00:47:58   even highlight the text and bold it. I had to go I had to highlight the text, hit the

00:48:02   formatting paintbrush and do everything. I wish it was a little bit more forgiving to

00:48:08   third party keyboards considering Apple make the app and enable third party keyboards.

00:48:15   I think the guy who wrote the third-party keyboard code has been on vacation for two

00:48:18   years though.

00:48:19   Yeah.

00:48:20   Yeah.

00:48:21   So my experience on the iPhone is it works, but I don't like it.

00:48:27   Yeah.

00:48:29   So do we want to talk about the other platforms?

00:48:31   Yeah.

00:48:32   So on the Mac, as of this recording at least, and there was supposed to be an iWork update,

00:48:36   I assume coming with Sierra, maybe shortly after Sierra.

00:48:40   Right now if you go into iCloud Drive and I click pages and I click our shared thing,

00:48:46   a little pop-up comes up and says this document can be opened.

00:48:49   To open the shared document use pages for iCloud and it has a link on the web.

00:48:55   Go to iCloud.com and it gets made to the browser.

00:48:58   So on the Mac it's not really doing anything.

00:49:01   That will change with an update that may already be out by the time you're listening to this.

00:49:05   At this point in our testing, the Mac apps have not been updated.

00:49:10   Outside of crippling bugs, which we'll get to in a moment Federico, how is it on the

00:49:13   iPad?

00:49:16   It's kind of junky, the way that it doesn't feel as fast as other real-time collaboration

00:49:25   services.

00:49:26   Like, you don't see indications from people who are typing, you don't see different colors.

00:49:31   And I kept having this message at the bottom of the screen saying "This document is in

00:49:36   UK English."

00:49:38   And I wasn't sure what to do about that because it was just floating there.

00:49:41   It's more yous, man.

00:49:42   You gotta put more yous in all your words.

00:49:45   I don't know.

00:49:46   I wouldn't understand why it's a document in English.

00:49:48   I don't care about the language that Myke is using.

00:49:52   You could just write in any language.

00:49:53   It's fine.

00:49:54   What if I want to write in Italian?

00:49:56   Like I'm not supposed to write in Italian?

00:49:58   So I couldn't understand.

00:50:00   Like the general impression is, I mean, I like the new interface for the 12.9 inch

00:50:05   iPad Pro, there's like a sidebar for formatting controls on the right, which is nice, but

00:50:10   it doesn't feel, feels like they try to have this collaboration features onto an existing

00:50:18   solution which isn't meant for collaboration.

00:50:20   And you don't feel this problem as much in Notes, which also has CloudKit collaboration

00:50:26   now, but because the app is more lightweight and because it's simpler, it doesn't feel

00:50:32   like there's a whole extra thing built on top of it. Also because Notes is a new app

00:50:37   from last year basically, so it doesn't feel as aged as Pages.

00:50:41   So you know the only thing about the indicators, I was seeing them on the iPhone.

00:50:45   Oh yeah?

00:50:46   Yeah, so like I would see a little coloured cursor.

00:50:48   Lucky you.

00:50:49   I would see someone typing. So it's weird that you couldn't see them. Maybe, was there

00:50:53   a time where we were all in the document together? Was that maybe the problem?

00:50:57   Maybe? I don't know.

00:50:59   Hmm. Who knows? Who knows?

00:51:01   It's just it felt… I don't know, it felt off. I'm not sure how to describe it, but

00:51:06   what came next was the real problem for me.

00:51:10   Yeah.

00:51:11   Basically, when I opened… So I signed up for the document on my phone. So I take my

00:51:18   iPad, I open Pages, it loads from iCloud and it shows me the

00:51:25   document we're working on. So I tap on the document, I close the document and

00:51:31   then Pages is stuck on what says "Updating" at the top of the screen in the title

00:51:35   bar and it keeps spinning. So I wait a couple of minutes, it doesn't do anything,

00:51:39   I force quit the app and reopen Pages and it's still stuck on updating. So I

00:51:43   delete Pages from my iPad and I'm like "Okay, whatever, maybe with the

00:51:48   update something went wrong. So I re-download pages from the App Store, I open pages and

00:51:53   it says updating and when it's updating I cannot tap on the document to see what we're

00:51:58   working on for the show notes. So at that point I realized, ok, I tried everything,

00:52:04   in the meantime I also tried to switch to airplane mode, to 4G, to Wi-Fi, everything.

00:52:09   I just had to reboot the iPad to turn it off and turn it on again, because in that way

00:52:16   pages was not stuck anymore. And I was like "okay, this is the first problem, I mean what happens if I

00:52:22   work and I need to be quick with my notes, I need to save them in a couple of minutes,

00:52:31   and I run into this problem, maybe that can be an issue. But whatever, let's keep trying."

00:52:36   So I went on my phone again and last night I was trying to... I added some comments to the document.

00:52:44   So I add my notes and close pages and I go back to doing what I was doing.

00:52:49   So when I open pages a few minutes later, because I was like "okay, I gotta continue my notes",

00:52:54   I get this message, it says "your edits have not been synced, you can save a copy, but you will lose the edits in the cloud version".

00:53:04   So it wanted me to take up my edits and make a new document, a new local document that was not shared with you guys,

00:53:11   because it couldn't merge my changes with the changes to the document.

00:53:15   At that point I took a screenshot, I sent it to you on Slack and I was like "I'm done with this,

00:53:21   please let's go back to Google Docs". Because I cannot risk of adding notes, let's say that I

00:53:26   work for 20 minutes on my notes for the show, they don't save, then it wants me to create a copy,

00:53:31   then I gotta create a copy, copy and paste, go back, it's you know, what am I, an animal?

00:53:36   I mean, the basic collaboration 101.

00:53:39   And I cannot use a service that doesn't get the basics right,

00:53:43   which is you gotta merge changes from multiple people

00:53:46   into a single document.

00:53:47   This is like the basic collaboration stuff.

00:53:50   - What's the point of it?

00:53:51   - It's really the point of it.

00:53:52   Don't let me create multiple copies.

00:53:54   Always save my changes the moment that I close the app.

00:53:58   And that wasn't the case.

00:54:00   And sure, it's a beta.

00:54:01   Sure, other services from Microsoft and Google and Quip

00:54:05   and whatever also have problems,

00:54:07   but not this kind of problem in my experience.

00:54:10   So I don't wanna use it right now.

00:54:11   Does it make sense?

00:54:12   - Yeah, and that's exactly why we moved back.

00:54:15   We tried it.

00:54:16   I don't think any of us really had the expectation

00:54:18   that we would switch from Google docs.

00:54:19   And I know that people think that it's unfair

00:54:22   that we say that this isn't good, but it isn't good.

00:54:25   And frankly, it's gotta be, right?

00:54:29   Why would we move away or why would we recommend

00:54:32   that anybody move away from a collaboration system

00:54:34   that works perfectly, because Google Docs does, from a collaboration perspective, work

00:54:39   perfectly. I have never had a problem. Like, with edits not being saved or anything in

00:54:45   any of the apps or on the web, it's not a problem. We don't have these issues, you know.

00:54:50   Why would we move away from something? And frankly, like, if Apple want to parade on

00:54:54   stage their amazing features in this market in 2016, it's got to hold up against what's

00:55:00   available and it doesn't. Right? For us anyway, for our purposes this did not

00:55:06   hold up because it failed at a fundamental thing and that's Federico

00:55:12   added some notes and refused to save them. Now that's no good. It's no bueno.

00:55:19   Yeah I mean again might as well be working perfectly for others. I'm sure it

00:55:25   I'm sure it does and I'm sure again in notes didn't have a single issue with

00:55:31   notes collaboration since iOS 10 beta 1 not a single problem I try again with

00:55:36   pages and the very second test which is I'm just adding some bullet points to

00:55:43   share documents there we go again with the same error message of course that

00:55:47   notes is fundamentally different right me and you can't go in notes and write

00:55:51   together and see each other writing which you can do with pages but we can't

00:55:55   out of Notes. It just throws these blocks in every now and then. And like things like if me and

00:56:00   Stephen were testing this the other day for his Mac OS Sierra review which we'll talk about in a minute,

00:56:04   if I'm writing and Stephen enters his cursor and starts writing and we're writing in the same place,

00:56:11   Notes just like spits those two things out as separate paragraphs because it doesn't know how

00:56:15   to deal with the conflict because it's simple, but on pages it would pick it up and Stephen would

00:56:20   start writing and I would start writing and then we'd just all be writing in the same place and

00:56:23   and everything would be merged together properly.

00:56:25   Like, so it is more complex, and it is this added complexity

00:56:29   which adds difficulty to make this stuff work properly,

00:56:33   but Google's been doing this for a long time.

00:56:34   I bet Google's first tries at this were also pretty rough,

00:56:38   but the thing is, you can't come into a market like this today

00:56:42   and not get criticized if the product isn't good enough

00:56:44   when there are many viable alternatives.

00:56:47   It's the same thing that we did with paper, right?

00:56:48   With Dropbox paper. We looked at it.

00:56:50   It was good in a bunch of ways, wasn't good in a bunch of ways,

00:56:52   So we have to say why. Same with Quip, right? Like Quip worked really well for us, but it

00:56:57   was kind of janky at the same time. Google Docs, the only problem with Google Docs was

00:57:01   ever that they were slow to adopt iPad format stuff. So because that's back, from my opinion,

00:57:08   their only mark is gone again. It works perfectly. Never, never ever, ever have issues with it.

00:57:13   So I'm sorry iCloud. Well collaboration has to be perfect, right? Like the, it's almost

00:57:18   good enough like doesn't work when you have multiple people editing content or

00:57:22   even like Federico last night was alone in the document and it couldn't save it

00:57:26   like it's pretty fundamental stuff like I could argue that Apple's web apps still

00:57:31   are designed to look and feel way too much like desktop apps and they're

00:57:34   very heavy and sometimes they're slow and clunky because they're trying to

00:57:38   make a drop-down look like it does in aqua. This is not what we're talking about

00:57:41   we're talking about basic fundamentals but clearly I mean our complaints are only

00:57:47   valid if we put them on YouTube so maybe we should make a video. What do you guys think?

00:57:52   Yeah we should like, collab gate. Done. Ship it.

00:57:57   Alright. You work on that on your multi-million view YouTube channel and we'll get going.

00:58:04   Federico do you have any video footage of the edits not being saved?

00:58:08   No but I got a pages making a weird sound. Oh.

00:58:14   That works. It's like whispering at you like "come back".

00:58:17   I'm not going to save your changes.

00:58:18   You could try as much as you like, but I hate doing it.

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01:00:35   Steven Hackett.

01:00:36   It's the most wonderful time of the year, right?

01:00:39   Mac OS release.

01:00:40   Whoop whoop!

01:00:41   So, Sierra ships today, September 20th.

01:00:45   Just one moment.

01:00:46   So Federico, we'll see you next week, right?

01:00:48   Yeah, yeah.

01:00:49   We'll call you back for the end.

01:00:51   Thank you.

01:00:52   So, what do you want to know?

01:00:58   Tell me all about Sierra.

01:00:59   You've written a review about it.

01:01:01   I have written a review of it.

01:01:03   So, Sierra really breaks down, the new features break down into two big buckets.

01:01:09   The first being Siri, and the second being iCloud stuff.

01:01:14   So Siri is on the Mac for the first time.

01:01:17   It debuted on the iPhone 4S five years ago,

01:01:21   and it's finally on the Mac.

01:01:22   And it is the Siri that we know and sometimes love on iOS,

01:01:26   but it's also learned some Mac-specific tricks.

01:01:29   So all the normal stuff, like asking for the weather,

01:01:32   asking for simple math problems,

01:01:34   asking scores to baseball games,

01:01:36   all that stuff you can do with Siri on iOS,

01:01:39   including opening applications works on the Mac as you would expect. What Apple

01:01:44   has done in this version though like like you know on the Apple TV they added

01:01:48   like Apple TV specific things they've done this on the Mac as well and the big

01:01:53   one is dealing with files and folders so talking through talking to Siri saying

01:02:01   hey I want all my keynote documents or show me all of my PDFs with this tag

01:02:05   that all works and it works sort of in the same way that spotlight does there

01:02:11   are a few edge cases that are different like spotlight can see mail attachments

01:02:15   so I say look for all my keynote documents it can find keynote documents

01:02:19   and emails and Siri can't do that Siri can't look at your at your email

01:02:24   attachments even though they're local on your hard disk it won't it won't do it

01:02:29   so that sort of stuff is nice and it has a couple of the tricks like you can take

01:02:34   a search so if I say you know Siri tell

01:02:41   me the weather in Boston I can create I

01:02:44   can like take that and make it a

01:02:45   notification center widget or I could

01:02:47   say what is the the score of the Cubs

01:02:50   game and I can make that a notification

01:02:52   center widget and that's something that I

01:02:54   would actually really like to see on iOS

01:02:56   where I could have a save Siri search

01:02:58   and these things get updated every time

01:03:00   you go into the widget it pulls new

01:03:01   information like why can't I use Siri to

01:03:04   make custom widgets on iOS. I think that would be a really nice addition,

01:03:07   especially on the iPad where you can sort of use that widget screen for like

01:03:11   more useful stuff. But for now this is Mac OS only. And you know it

01:03:19   it's Siri. It works as well as Siri does on iOS. The voice recognition is probably

01:03:25   a little bit better. There's a lot of like my MacBook Pro's dual microphone system

01:03:28   and it hears me really clearly. It pauses both audio and the fans in the machines.

01:03:34   It spins the fans down so we can hear just like the voice dictation has done

01:03:38   for a couple years now. And it's fine. I don't think Siri is going to

01:03:44   drastically change the way I work on my Mac. Like I say in the review, I use Siri

01:03:50   more in writing the review than I have in the month or six weeks that

01:03:54   that I've been running Sierra.

01:03:56   So I don't think it's a huge game changer for me,

01:03:59   but I do think it will be,

01:04:01   I think a lot of people will like it,

01:04:02   I think a lot of people will find it very familiar.

01:04:05   And in talking with some people

01:04:08   who are much more knowledgeable about accessibility

01:04:10   than I am, they're all excited by it,

01:04:12   that unlocking what the Mac can do with the voice

01:04:16   is gonna be huge for lots of users.

01:04:19   And the Mac has had voiceover stuff for a long time,

01:04:22   some voice commands in the speak

01:04:25   preference pane area that you can go in and

01:04:27   the Mac could do some stuff by voice, but

01:04:28   this is totally different and I think

01:04:31   that's going to unlock the Mac's potential

01:04:32   for a lot of users who have struggled

01:04:35   with it in the past, like with keyboards

01:04:37   and mice, that that is maybe not the

01:04:40   right input for them, whereas speaking

01:04:43   to the Mac will be great. And so I'm

01:04:45   really excited to see what that looks

01:04:47   like and what that means for a lot of

01:04:49   of users who aren't me.

01:04:51   But outside of the people that need it for accessibility reasons, there kind of isn't

01:04:57   a lot of benefit is there? Like, Siri is adding some interesting functions, like the idea

01:05:03   to pin a little piece of information or to search for files in an interesting way, but

01:05:09   I really struggle to imagine people using this on a regular basis. Like, can you straight

01:05:16   up just type these questions in in natural language?

01:05:20   - No, and that's-- - Oh, come on.

01:05:23   - That's frustrating to me.

01:05:24   I want that on iOS.

01:05:25   Like Cortana has it on Windows Phone

01:05:28   where you can type Cortana.

01:05:30   Google Now, or it has like the Google Now on tap,

01:05:32   so basically it is aware of what's on the screen.

01:05:35   I think it's time for Siri to move beyond the voice.

01:05:37   I think voice will always be the primary method

01:05:40   of interaction with Siri, but I would love

01:05:43   to talk to Siri via my keyboard

01:05:45   and to be able to type to it and it retrieves stuff.

01:05:48   I have some of that sort of stuff in Alfred.

01:05:50   Alfred, you can set keywords and launch scripts and stuff,

01:05:52   and it's pretty handy.

01:05:54   I have heard that there was at some point

01:06:00   discussion of bringing Siri with the keyboard.

01:06:03   I don't know how accurate that is.

01:06:05   That's just something I've heard.

01:06:06   But it's not there in the release.

01:06:08   And I would like to see that across the platforms,

01:06:11   that typing to Siri at least be an option.

01:06:14   'cause there are times where it would be nice

01:06:16   for Siri to do things for me,

01:06:18   but I can't speak out loud,

01:06:19   or maybe I'm uncomfortable doing that,

01:06:22   but for now, no, you gotta sit there

01:06:25   and press option space and talk to your computer.

01:06:28   - Hmm, that's not good.

01:06:29   - It's fine, but I agree with you.

01:06:31   This is not something that I'm going to be using day to day.

01:06:34   So the other big bucket is iCloud stuff,

01:06:37   and there's a lot of stuff in here.

01:06:38   There's continuity features like auto unlock

01:06:40   with Apple Watch, which is really nice,

01:06:42   where you just sit down at your Mac

01:06:43   and it unlocks if you're wearing your watch.

01:06:45   I've had good luck with this.

01:06:46   Other reviewers have not had such good luck with this.

01:06:49   I don't really know why, but it works for me

01:06:52   and it's pretty quick, it takes about two seconds.

01:06:54   You can definitely catch it working.

01:06:58   You can see it, the little message comes

01:07:00   to unlocking with Apple Watch,

01:07:01   and then you get notifications sent to your wrist

01:07:03   that hey, this Mac was unlocked by your watch.

01:07:06   Works fine for me.

01:07:09   It's actually pretty nice.

01:07:10   It does make me really want Touch ID

01:07:12   or Apple Watch authentication and more stuff,

01:07:14   like why can't 1Password use this?

01:07:16   I don't have to log into my Mac anymore,

01:07:19   but I still have to unlock 1Password.

01:07:21   It'd be really nice if Apple opened that up

01:07:23   to third parties,

01:07:25   but they haven't yet, so.

01:07:28   What are you gonna do?

01:07:31   There's stuff too, there's Universal Clipboard,

01:07:34   there's where you can copy something

01:07:38   on your Mac or your iPhone or iPad,

01:07:40   and the other devices that are within continuity range

01:07:44   so they can see each other on the same network

01:07:45   and talk to each other over Bluetooth,

01:07:47   share that clipboard.

01:07:51   There's a couple interesting things,

01:07:53   interesting design decisions here with Apple.

01:07:56   Content is only transferred on paste,

01:07:59   so if you are, like right now I'm sitting at my computer,

01:08:02   my iPad is at home, my iPhone is with me now.

01:08:04   My iPhone and Mac can do this,

01:08:07   but if my wife is using my iPad,

01:08:10   I'm not gonna accidentally paste something

01:08:11   that she copied on the iPad because it's not here.

01:08:14   So it's designed in a way that like,

01:08:16   you are in control of all your devices,

01:08:17   assuming that you are picking one up and sitting one down.

01:08:21   But if that's not the case,

01:08:23   they don't wanna errantly override your clipboard.

01:08:26   - All right, hang on a second,

01:08:28   'cause this is very confusing.

01:08:30   So let's say I'm using one of your devices

01:08:33   and you've copied something.

01:08:36   If I have copied something,

01:08:37   it doesn't overwrite what I've copied on my clipboard.

01:08:42   Let's say I've copied something

01:08:44   and I paste it in 10 minutes time from now.

01:08:47   What you copy on your clipboard

01:08:49   doesn't override what's on mine, right?

01:08:51   If I'm using your devices.

01:08:53   - If you were in the,

01:08:54   if you were within continuity range, it would override it.

01:08:59   It's really, I don't think there's a mechanism in place

01:09:02   to say I'm not using my device.

01:09:05   you know it would fix that?

01:09:06   Multiple users on iPads.

01:09:07   - Wait, so if I've copied something on one device,

01:09:11   you've copied something on your device,

01:09:13   and then 10 minutes later,

01:09:15   so after the two minutes have passed,

01:09:17   I then can't paste what was copied before?

01:09:20   - Oh, I see what you're saying.

01:09:21   That honestly I don't know.

01:09:24   - 'Cause I'm wondering if it just blanks out the clipboard,

01:09:28   which would be weird.

01:09:31   - Yeah, I don't know about that, but you're right.

01:09:33   there is a two minute timeout on this,

01:09:35   so you're not going to pick up your iPad and hit paste

01:09:38   and get something from more than two minutes ago.

01:09:40   Like it's really designed for,

01:09:43   I'm working on something on my Mac,

01:09:45   I pick up my iPad and to do something with that content.

01:09:48   Like it's a feature that is built around

01:09:53   the idea of like intentionality.

01:09:56   But the issue with it is that none of these

01:10:00   continuity features was include handoff,

01:10:02   includes the that never works for me the

01:10:04   answering a phone call on your Mac that

01:10:06   called your cell phone number like there

01:10:08   are no settings for these anywhere like

01:10:10   if you are signed to iCloud and your

01:10:12   devices in nature this is just happening

01:10:14   and I think things like auto unlocking

01:10:16   universal clipboard do have certain

01:10:18   downsides I think especially universal

01:10:21   clipboard they're going to be people who

01:10:22   maybe they can use iCloud at work but

01:10:25   having their clipboard be I could be

01:10:28   aware of their clipboard maybe like a

01:10:29   a huge security issue for them, right?

01:10:32   That they are working with confidential data

01:10:35   on their computer and iCloud being aware

01:10:37   what's on your clipboard is a problem.

01:10:39   And so there should be a setting for this

01:10:41   and if you know where it is,

01:10:43   I couldn't even find it like in a P list anywhere.

01:10:45   Like my understanding is if you were signed to iCloud,

01:10:47   this is on.

01:10:49   I hope that's not the case.

01:10:50   I hope there is an option that I just missed it.

01:10:51   But my understanding is that this is just on all the time.

01:10:55   - See, what I want is the ability to

01:10:59   push something not to have it automatically synced so to be like what I

01:11:09   have copied I want to send it to other devices right and I know why Apple won't

01:11:16   do that because it's inelegant right and it adds like their whole idea is that

01:11:22   copy and paste like even in the keynote he's like we use copy and paste every

01:11:25   So we were gonna add this like transparent feature on top of it

01:11:28   But I agree with you that it would be nice something like like copied which is a third-party app

01:11:33   basically did that where you could send things to copied on the Mac and then pull them from iOS and

01:11:39   And on iOS there are several utilities that have like multiple pasteboards and stuff. But yeah, this thing is just like always on and it's um

01:11:47   Yeah, like people send me. I know that these apps exist but like, you know

01:11:53   I'm not like massively crazy about really having them like I don't I don't really use stuff like this

01:11:59   but I'm saying like if I you know my ideal for what this feature would look like would be that as opposed to just

01:12:03   Overriding the clipboard which is a I don't know. It's just it's just an interesting choice to me

01:12:09   It is it is

01:12:12   It's one of those those features that like

01:12:16   Apple designed to work in a very specific way and if you don't work in that way you can run into problems

01:12:23   This is also a feature that I had pretty good luck with,

01:12:26   but I know Jason Snell and others have had a lot of problems

01:12:29   of it just straight up not working.

01:12:31   And so I don't know if there's bugs going on

01:12:33   or there's something not quite finished somewhere,

01:12:35   but the times that I've used it,

01:12:38   I've always been like, oh, I have this thing

01:12:40   and the quickest way to get it to another device

01:12:42   is copy and paste.

01:12:44   It's nice.

01:12:45   And I haven't had it do something wrong,

01:12:47   but I don't really bounce between my devices very much.

01:12:49   Well, when I'm working, I'm just at my Mac.

01:12:51   So, you know, I'm really more interested to see what Federico thinks about this between

01:12:56   like the iPhone and the iPad, like how, because this feature is part of Sierra, but it's part

01:13:01   of continuity in 2016.

01:13:05   What do you think about this, Gigi?

01:13:08   I think it works most of the time.

01:13:11   It would have been nice to have some kind of interface to manage what is going on, because

01:13:16   it can be a little strange sometimes you don't think about it.

01:13:19   When you copy and paste overrides what you're doing on another device.

01:13:25   I know that developers can have settings to exclude their apps from having universal clipboard

01:13:31   and they can set expiration times.

01:13:33   But I think it'd be nicer to have some kind of visual confirmation of what is going on

01:13:39   or at least a setting to say, "Look, I never want what I copy on this device to propagate

01:13:45   across other devices."

01:13:47   And it can be especially problematic when, let's say, inside the house, you're using

01:13:52   your iPhone and you copy something and maybe your kid is using your iPad and it's logged

01:13:58   into the same iCloud account, of course it's on the same Wi-Fi network, and suddenly what

01:14:03   you copied on the iPhone, which not necessarily you want to be available on the iPad, can

01:14:07   be pasted on the iPad.

01:14:09   And it's one of the features that works, it works very well in my experience, but it doesn't

01:14:15   scale to the randomness and to what people do in real life because there's no interface,

01:14:22   there's no way to say "look I never ever want my photos or what I copy in Safari,

01:14:27   the text that I copy and paste, I don't want that to go to my iPad" and there should be a

01:14:35   setting screen for continuity features to say "okay I want to use this, I want to use that,

01:14:40   I don't want to use the clipboard sync.

01:14:43   I think it works well in theory, it works well in practice, but it doesn't scale to

01:14:47   those times when you don't want your stuff to be available on multiple devices.

01:14:51   So I'd never even thought about trying this on my iOS devices, like I'd kind of forgotten

01:14:56   about this feature, and I've just been playing around with it while you're talking.

01:14:59   And I mean it works, but I press the paste button and I'm sitting there for five seconds,

01:15:04   and nothing's happening, and then the text pops in.

01:15:06   Yeah, there's definitely a delay associated with it.

01:15:11   That's... no. I mean, I know why it's doing it, but like... I don't like that.

01:15:16   When you try to paste an image, you get a dialogue on screen saying "Pasting from iPhone"

01:15:21   and you get like a spinner that loads the image of the local network.

01:15:24   Honestly, if it's gonna make me wait for a few seconds, because as it was for just text

01:15:28   then, I want it to do that. Because I just pressed paste and I couldn't do anything.

01:15:32   Like notes just locked up until it pasted.

01:15:34   - Yeah, I think what it's doing is it's going out,

01:15:37   my guess is if something gets put on the universal clipboard

01:15:41   the devices are aware that something is waiting,

01:15:43   but they don't, like I said,

01:15:44   they don't pull that content until paste.

01:15:47   Because if the two minute time's out

01:15:48   then you've moved data you don't need to move.

01:15:51   And so I think what it's doing is going out and checking,

01:15:53   and that is slow.

01:15:54   And in my testing I've noticed that takes more time,

01:15:57   and sometimes it's fast.

01:15:58   So I don't know if there's some scaling issue

01:16:00   all with iCloud of it.

01:16:02   like sometimes it's busier than other times,

01:16:05   maybe that's a load issue on their end,

01:16:07   but that little hesitation is definitely noticeable

01:16:10   sometimes where you hit paste and the device is like,

01:16:13   BRB, I need to go talk to iCloud and I'm gonna go check

01:16:15   and I'll be right back.

01:16:17   It's like, you're trying to pay something,

01:16:18   like you're trying to get work done,

01:16:19   it should be instant.

01:16:21   - Yeah, I mean, I know why they're doing it that way.

01:16:24   This is Apple security thing, you know?

01:16:29   Like we don't, you know, it's gotta be secure,

01:16:31   So, got to hold it up there and then maybe it will come down later, right?

01:16:36   That's why they're doing it.

01:16:37   But in my opinion, this is one of those things where the added security makes for a lesser

01:16:43   experience.

01:16:44   Just saying.

01:16:45   I know that upsets people.

01:16:46   I think I agree.

01:16:47   Yep.

01:16:48   I don't want to be waiting for five seconds when I press the paste button.

01:16:53   Right.

01:16:54   I agree.

01:16:55   So some of the other iCloud stuff is tied in with storage. So that sort of the

01:17:02   third pillar in Sierra is like optimized storage and that means it's like a term

01:17:07   that covers a lot of stuff. And the first one and probably the biggest one is

01:17:12   iCloud Drive desktop and document sync which we talked about this over the

01:17:16   summer. You can go into settings and you can tell iCloud store things from

01:17:21   desktop and documents in iCloud Drive and sync those to my other devices. So if

01:17:26   I make a screenshot and it goes to my desktop by default in Mac OS, that

01:17:30   screenshot is available after a moment in iCloud Drive on my iPad and iPhone

01:17:35   and on the desktop of my other Mac. Same thing with your documents folder. You

01:17:41   save a new pages document or a new PDF and documents, it can sync to iCloud Drive,

01:17:45   it can sync to your other Mac. In my testing of this it does work right? I can make

01:17:52   something put it on my desktop and I can sync it to my other Mac. It is noticeably

01:17:58   slower than Dropbox. Now Dropbox has a funny trick with land sync where if two

01:18:02   computers in your Dropbox account are on the same local network they will copy over

01:18:05   the local network while uploading to Dropbox is like a speed it up type

01:18:10   thing which is a great feature. So it is not as fast as Dropbox. It's not something

01:18:17   I'm going to turn on because Dropbox is something that like we talked about many

01:18:21   times and all three of us basically use Dropbox as our file system to a degree

01:18:25   like any documents I'm working on happen to be in Dropbox and I'm a single Mac

01:18:29   user. I just use a MacBook Pro but I use Dropbox to have everything on my iOS

01:18:33   device and to have a copy of it in the cloud. So the syncing works as assuming

01:18:39   you pay for storage. Where it gets a little weird though is some of the edge

01:18:44   cases. So for instance in your home folder your desktop and document folders

01:18:49   get renamed the local badge like this like desktop dash local. I don't know why

01:18:53   they're showing you that like that seems really unpolished but... That feels

01:18:59   like hacking something onto the existing system and I mean I expect the Apple

01:19:05   file system will solve some of these problems.

01:19:08   I mean they have things in place in Finder for things like Dropbox to do custom badges,

01:19:13   like "applicated on a custom badge" but instead they stuck "-local" at the end of the name.

01:19:19   But even more worryingly this seems to screw with the space that Finder reports you have

01:19:24   available, which is really problematic because like Finder not knowing how much space you

01:19:29   have left can be a failure of like HFS problems and so to suddenly introduce something that

01:19:34   like screws with finders way to report disk space is worrisome. In what way?

01:19:39   What's it saying? You've got too much, you've not got enough, like I don't understand

01:19:43   what's it telling you. Generally it reports, it under reports. So if I have 200

01:19:48   gigs free on my on my local disk and I'm syncing like at 800 meg folder it will

01:19:55   go it will overrun that 800 megs and say that I have less space than I actually

01:19:58   actually do. It tends to err on the safe side, but even then, like in my testing, it's hit

01:20:06   or miss. You can't always tell what it's doing, which is sort of my problem with it. Like

01:20:13   all the other iCloud stuff, they want it to be transparent and magical, but the truth

01:20:17   is when it comes to syncing files, I want to know exactly what's happening. Dropbox

01:20:22   has that with its little badges and its mini bar app, and I can tell what's going on.

01:20:25   So is it getting ahead of itself then? Like is it saying that the 800 megabytes is not

01:20:30   there before it pushes it off to the cloud?

01:20:32   Yeah, plus some. So it'll like round up, it'll add some space to that. So it's just a little,

01:20:38   a little, this is not what I expected to see.

01:20:42   No, no good.

01:20:43   So that's desktop and document sync, right? Pretty straightforward.

01:20:49   Where it gets confusing and what I think problematic

01:20:54   at best is when you partner this

01:20:58   with some optimized storage options.

01:21:01   So you can sync your desktop and documents

01:21:04   and do no optimized storage stuff,

01:21:05   where it just keeps everything everywhere all the time,

01:21:09   which is fine if you have the disk space.

01:21:12   But also in Sierra, and the way that all this is laid out,

01:21:15   it makes you think you kind of have to do both,

01:21:17   is this optimized storage, which again is a family of features

01:21:21   that Apple has put in place to help keep local disk space free.

01:21:26   And how it does it is complicated and potentially

01:21:30   confusing to the point of data loss

01:21:31   if you're not really paying attention.

01:21:34   So optimized storage itself is really only two things.

01:21:40   It is the ability to automatically remove

01:21:44   watch content from iTunes.

01:21:46   so you watch all of Mr. Robot season 1 in iTunes and it says hey you've

01:21:51   watched the stuff, if this option is turned on iTunes will get rid of your

01:21:55   local downloaded files for you automatically and whenever you want them

01:21:59   again you can just redownload them from the iTunes store. I'm more or less okay

01:22:03   with that. I have my iTunes lab around a Drobo, I have lots of space but that's

01:22:07   pretty straightforward. We've all done that right? You delete a movie and it

01:22:09   says hey you know you can just go redownload it. That's fine. The other bit

01:22:14   optimized storage says download only

01:22:18   recent mail attachments. So if you're

01:22:20   like me I have years of email synced in

01:22:22   mail and it can go in and through some

01:22:25   method that it prescribes that I have no

01:22:27   control over it can get rid of old mail

01:22:29   attachments. Again they can be

01:22:30   redownloaded on demand. These two things

01:22:33   I don't need them but I'm more or less

01:22:35   okay with the way they work. Where it

01:22:37   gets confusing is that there's a third

01:22:40   option only in iCloud preferences and not

01:22:43   in system information. So these settings live in two places on the Mac and the

01:22:47   settings differ depending on where you are. Where you run into trouble is a

01:22:51   third checkbox called optimize Mac storage. So I'm just going to read this

01:22:56   label to you guys because in reading I think you understand the problem. The

01:23:00   full contents of iCloud Drive will be stored on the Mac if you have enough

01:23:03   space. Older documents will be stored only in iCloud when space is needed. So

01:23:09   if you have synced your desktop and documents folder in iCloud and if you

01:23:14   have optimized Mac storage on what you've done is given iCloud permission

01:23:19   to say I know you put this on your desktop you're working on this file

01:23:24   potentially but due to some algorithm that only I'm aware of is iCloud and you

01:23:29   can't see as a user I deem that you are running low on disk space so I'm going

01:23:34   to remove this file from your local computer and keep a copy in iCloud for

01:23:38   you. So what happens when you get on an airplane and you go to edit a podcast and

01:23:45   the the files you had in your documents folder have been synced away by iCloud

01:23:50   because it deemed you were out of space and I've seen I couldn't make it do this

01:23:54   but I've seen lots of reports I've talked to a lot of other reviewers who

01:23:57   iCloud started removing local files when they had tons of free space left on

01:24:02   their disk. Like the idea that hey only do this when I have 20 gigs free like

01:24:06   there's no setting, there's no checkbox, it just does it whenever it deems

01:24:10   necessary. And because there's not a lot of visual indication of what's happening,

01:24:16   like iCloud doesn't do a pop-up and say "hey I'm going to remove this folder, is that

01:24:19   okay with you?" because it's magic and transparent, it just does it. And so you

01:24:23   can end up in a situation very easily where you're looking for something that

01:24:27   is only available in iCloud Drive and your local icon gets grayed out, has a

01:24:31   little cloud icon on it and you're stuck without your file. Contrast that

01:24:37   with Dropbox for a second. With Dropbox you have the ability to selective sync a

01:24:41   folder. So for instance I have a shared folder with some other people that has

01:24:46   you know tons of files that I don't want on my local computer but I need access to

01:24:52   them every once in a while. I can tell Dropbox don't put this on my Mac but

01:24:56   leave it in my Dropbox account. I go to the Dropbox website I download those

01:25:00   files on demand but I have chosen to do that I went into Dropbox rather confusing

01:25:06   setting panel and told it I don't want these files locally you just keep a copy

01:25:10   of them Dropbox and I'll get them when I need them. iCloud thinks it's smart

01:25:13   enough that it's doing that on its own and that is my problem with this feature

01:25:17   is that I don't want iCloud to do this. If Dropbox did this I would turn it off

01:25:23   on Dropbox as well. I don't want any service to say you know what Steven I

01:25:28   I don't think you need this file anymore so I'm just gonna nuke your copy of it

01:25:32   and it'll be in the cloud when you're waiting. You know if you're always at

01:25:36   your Mac and you're always on a good internet connection, you know sitting in

01:25:39   your office,

01:25:40   ok. But the reality is most people have notebooks and most people work in

01:25:45   periods of offline or low connectivity. We're not in a all wireless world and if

01:25:50   you're going to look for a file it should be where you left it. It should

01:25:53   also be on iCloud, but this little optimize Mac storage checkbox is really

01:25:58   problematic and one that I think some people are going to turn on because the

01:26:03   language is helpful, but if you look at it with a critical eye, you look at it from

01:26:06   like a nerd perspective, you can see that this is potentially problematic because

01:26:12   it's so transparent. Does that all make sense?

01:26:15   It does, it does. I wonder if like, we're edge cases and the majority of people wouldn't

01:26:24   get affected when this stuff happens. And the reason I said it is because we work with

01:26:29   extremely large files so it would potentially trigger this optimized storage thing more

01:26:35   sooner than others. Like just one file can be like a few hundred megs so it's like, oh

01:26:41   this is things are getting chunky around here,

01:26:43   I need to remove stuff.

01:26:44   - And I understand that, and I think too that

01:26:48   we may also be educated that we pay for iCloud.

01:26:51   I mean how many people do we know in our lives

01:26:53   who turn off iPhone backups

01:26:54   because they're out of iCloud space?

01:26:56   - Good point.

01:26:57   - But I think Apple could do a better job

01:27:00   at explaining what's going on if you check that feature.

01:27:04   And especially what happens if you check it

01:27:05   in conjunction with iCloud desktop and document sync.

01:27:08   It's the combination of the two that I find problematic.

01:27:13   You know, it's one thing that,

01:27:15   if you're just doing this and it's just doing the stuff

01:27:18   you put in iCloud Drive directly,

01:27:20   maybe that's different, but something out in your desktop

01:27:22   or your Documents folder feels a little bit different to me

01:27:26   as a long-time Mac user, that they should be

01:27:28   stable repositories of data.

01:27:30   Whether this becomes a thing,

01:27:33   like if people get trapped by this, I don't know,

01:27:36   But in testing and using the Mac for a long time,

01:27:39   I find it off-putting that iCloud thinks it knows better

01:27:44   than I do what I should do with my disk.

01:27:46   What's really frustrating about this is like,

01:27:49   we are years into the SSD revolution.

01:27:51   I don't like, this would be a thing

01:27:52   where we're on 64 and 128 gig SSDs.

01:27:55   But I think the base model is 256 now.

01:27:58   Like, that's still tight, but it's not so tight

01:28:01   that people are, I don't think,

01:28:03   like as squeezed as they used to be.

01:28:05   Like, this would have been great

01:28:05   this came out with the original MacBook Air.

01:28:09   But that was five or six years ago.

01:28:10   And now we have bigger SSDs in our machines.

01:28:14   We have things like iCloud Photo Library,

01:28:19   which I think the bulk of people,

01:28:22   their biggest thing on their computer now

01:28:23   is their photo library, even bigger than music collections.

01:28:25   We're all streaming now.

01:28:27   Well, youngsters are streaming now, not me.

01:28:29   And so it feels like a feature that had been really nice

01:28:33   four years ago but it's out now and it's not implemented in a way that I think

01:28:38   makes complete sense to the average user.

01:28:40   There's a couple of points. I think one, it's not supposed to, right? Like that's the thinking.

01:28:45   The thinking is it will work, right? So they make it as simple as possible.

01:28:51   So the average user doesn't have to worry about it. Like that's the idea.

01:28:55   Whether it works or not, like you know, clearly there are some issues but I think

01:28:59   that's the thinking. I'm interested what is the onboarding process for this?

01:29:03   how does it get enabled? Does it happen automatically? Does the system tell you?

01:29:09   Or prompt you? Right, so I don't know if you run low on disk space.

01:29:16   Like if you fill up your SSD, if it says hey by the way we have this option. I don't

01:29:21   know that. This setting is in the iCloud preference pane where a lot of this

01:29:26   other stuff lives in system information which is like this weird utility that

01:29:30   is a hundred years old that they've grafted all this stuff into. When you do

01:29:34   click the option it does give you another box basically restating what the

01:29:38   first box said but I don't know if it's clear enough and I think they could do a better job.

01:29:43   But somebody has to actually go in and click this right?

01:29:46   See it was off for me by default but I upgraded from El Capitan. I don't know if on a

01:29:52   clean install what it's set to. Hopefully off but I didn't have time to

01:29:59   to wipe them out completely from scratch.

01:30:01   - Okay, I mean this just sounds like one of those things

01:30:05   that I'm just never gonna use.

01:30:07   - Oh yeah, it's all off for me.

01:30:08   None of the stuff I'm using.

01:30:10   - There you go.

01:30:13   I just, you know, I wonder if it's useful for people.

01:30:16   It might be, I'm sure it is, if it works fine.

01:30:20   The idea of letting you have, potentially,

01:30:23   with the right amount of money, infinite disk space.

01:30:27   there's a ton more disk space that you can get a hold of here and it's all saved

01:30:31   nice and neatly in the cloud but it takes a lot of really really smart stuff

01:30:37   to work out what files you need and what files you don't and I mean I just from

01:30:43   hearing people talk about it it sounds like it's got some smarts but it's not

01:30:48   smart enough and I wonder if anything really could be to like anticipate

01:30:52   exactly the files that you need on a given day.

01:30:55   - Right.

01:30:56   - Anything else you wanna talk about with Sierra?

01:31:00   - I mean, there's some other little stuff

01:31:03   we won't get into now.

01:31:04   There's some more optimized storage stuff.

01:31:06   It can be your trash automatically for you.

01:31:09   There's a new feature called reduced clutter

01:31:11   where it lists all your biggest documents.

01:31:13   And like, hey, you may have forgotten

01:31:14   this was buried in a folder, do you still need it?

01:31:16   That sort of thing.

01:31:17   Kinda like DaisyDisk.

01:31:18   I think Apple's Sherlock DaisyDisk

01:31:20   the way that reading lists Sherlock's Instapaper,

01:31:23   like this is a very simple blunt tool,

01:31:25   where DaisyDisc is very fine-grained

01:31:27   and quite frankly, like beautiful application.

01:31:30   So I think DaisyDisc will be fine.

01:31:31   I don't think they're in trouble.

01:31:33   I think all in all, my impression of Sierra is complicated.

01:31:39   Like I understand completely there's a 15-year-old system

01:31:42   getting annual updates, and as such,

01:31:45   these updates are going to be small and incremental.

01:31:47   and I am, hand on heart, truly okay with that.

01:31:51   I want my Mac, my workhorse to be stable

01:31:55   and to be secure and to be fast

01:31:58   and for big up endings to not happen very often.

01:32:02   I think that if, I was trying to think,

01:32:03   if they weren't going annual,

01:32:05   if Apple's doing a release every two or three years,

01:32:08   where would we be?

01:32:09   So we would have Yosemite with the redesign

01:32:11   and if El Capitan and Sierra were one release,

01:32:15   it'd be still only a moderately sized Mac OS release.

01:32:19   So I'm fine with that.

01:32:20   I'm fine with it.

01:32:21   I'm not in love with it, it's annual,

01:32:22   but it's going to be annual.

01:32:24   I'm fine with it being small.

01:32:26   And Sierra is stable and it is fast on my MacBook Pro

01:32:29   as well as a first generation Retina MacBook

01:32:31   that I have access to.

01:32:32   Completely usable.

01:32:34   So thumbs up there for Apple for Sierra being responsive

01:32:37   and being like there's a lot of polish in small areas

01:32:40   that if you use the Mac a lot you'll notice.

01:32:42   like the when you copy a big file in finder the the feedback of like how much

01:32:48   copying left to do has been updated in a nice visual way.

01:32:51   All that's great. However as a Mac power user, ding! I feel a little bit left out of

01:33:01   this release that the continuity stuff is fine.

01:33:05   I like actually really like auto unlock. I like the universal clipboard when it

01:33:11   works but the big bucket features of Siri and optimized storage I have very

01:33:18   little interest in. I have no interest in the optimized storage stuff and I feel a

01:33:22   little bit forgotten by Sierra. I feel like it's a release for people who are

01:33:27   really interested in their Mac and iOS devices working better together and for

01:33:30   me they work great together already and the things I need to do get done and I

01:33:34   don't have storage space problems and I understand that's because I bought a big

01:33:37   expensive computer with a big expensive SSD. I understand part of this is like the

01:33:41   privilege of me as a Mac power user.

01:33:44   But as someone sitting in that seat,

01:33:46   like a lot of our listeners are,

01:33:47   I feel like Sierra doesn't offer much to me.

01:33:50   And you know, I've updated to it, I'm gonna run it.

01:33:52   You should go out and download it and run it,

01:33:55   make sure all your stuff's compatible and have a backup.

01:33:56   But Sierra's a great release.

01:33:58   But just know there's a lot of stuff in there

01:33:59   that's not for you and not for me.

01:34:01   - I just don't think there's anything left.

01:34:05   - I mean, that's part of it too, right,

01:34:06   that it's a very stable platform.

01:34:09   So I was trying to think, if I was in charge

01:34:11   of the next Mac OS release, what would I put in it?

01:34:16   And honestly guys, I don't know.

01:34:19   There's no low hanging fruit left on the Mac, really,

01:34:22   that I can think of, and maybe feedback will point things out

01:34:25   that should be obvious to us.

01:34:27   But the Mac feels really good, and I'm not saying

01:34:30   walk away from it, I'm not saying cease development.

01:34:32   There are things you could do, like make it easier

01:34:33   to port UI kit apps to it, make it easier to do things

01:34:38   like in messages, like make messages work with iOS.

01:34:40   We didn't even talk about that.

01:34:41   We can do it next week.

01:34:43   Messages on the Mac is a really sad situation

01:34:45   compared to iOS.

01:34:47   There's still stuff to be done,

01:34:49   but it feels like the things they selected

01:34:50   for this release, a lot of people who consider

01:34:53   themselves power users just aren't gonna care about

01:34:55   and aren't gonna need, and that does make me

01:34:58   feel a little left out.

01:35:00   - Just an episode of sadness for you, really.

01:35:04   - It's been a lot of me on this show.

01:35:06   It's an emotional week for Stephen Hackett.

01:35:08   I was finishing this review while taking YouTube video accounts.

01:35:12   It's a very busy weekend.

01:35:14   Very busy.

01:35:15   If you want to find show notes for this week's episode head on over to relay.fm/connected/109.

01:35:22   You can find a plethora of interesting things and sadness over at Stephen's website at

01:35:28   512pixels.net and he is @ismh on Twitter.

01:35:32   And what are you?

01:35:33   for

01:35:51   Backstories.net is where you'll find Federico's work. He is also @Vittici on Twitter. V I

01:35:56   T I C C I. I am @imike. I M Y K E. Thanks again to our sponsors this week, Freshbooks

01:36:02   and Cricket. And as always, thank you for listening and we'll be back next time. Until

01:36:06   then, say goodbye guys.

01:36:08   Adios.

01:36:09   Adios.

01:36:10   Adios.

01:36:11   Adios.

01:36:12   Adios.

01:36:13   Adios.

01:36:14   Adios.