0:00:00[MUSIC PLAYING]
0:00:04Hello, and welcome to Connected, episode number 62.
0:00:09Today is October 20, 2015.
0:00:11I am your host, Steven Hackett.
0:00:12And I'm joined, as always, by our man in Italy,
0:00:18man with the plan in Rome, Mr. Federico Vittigi.
0:00:21Hello, Steven.
0:00:22How are you?
0:00:23I'm doing well.
0:00:24How are you?
0:00:25I'm doing very well.
0:00:26Thank you.
0:00:27We're missing a piece of the connected puzzle today.
0:00:32- We are, Myke is currently flying to the US.
0:00:36He and I are both attending the Release Notes Conference.
0:00:40We'll have a link in the show notes.
0:00:42Myke is actually the keynote speaker, which is--
0:00:44- Oh, fancy.
0:00:45- Pretty sweet.
0:00:46And so yeah, so I'll be joining him.
0:00:48I leave like super early tomorrow morning.
0:00:52It's a pretty short plane trip for me,
0:00:53just a couple hours.
0:00:54And we'll be together the rest of the week.
0:00:57and doing release notes at this conference for people like us
0:01:02with independent tech businesses.
0:01:04And I'm looking forward to seeing some relay hosts
0:01:07and listeners and everything there.
0:01:09So if you're going to be there, be sure to say hey.
0:01:12Yeah, we'll be asking Myke for an autograph or a selfie.
0:01:17I mean, he's a celebrity now.
0:01:20Am I going to ask him for that?
0:01:21Yeah.
0:01:24Seems a little strange for me to do it,
0:01:26but I guess other people could.
0:01:27- Just pretend you're a big fan of Myke.
0:01:29Just pretend you don't know him.
0:01:31Just ask for an autograph and a selfie.
0:01:33Imagine Myke's reaction.
0:01:35- Yeah, it's like, "Dude, can I get your autograph?"
0:01:37- We're actually co-founders of the same company,
0:01:40but whatever.
0:01:41The real, if I were there,
0:01:47the real game for me would be to try to find typos
0:01:51in Myke's presentation.
0:01:53I know that he's gonna kill it,
0:01:54and I know that he's gonna be awesome,
0:01:56but I'm pretty sure there's gonna be typos.
0:01:58- I'm a little worried about that
0:02:00and I haven't seen the presentation.
0:02:02I don't know what he's talking about.
0:02:05I'm okay with that for the most part,
0:02:07but we'll, I guess we'll see.
0:02:08- That's his signature, you know?
0:02:11At least a little typo.
0:02:12It won't kill anyone.
0:02:14I'm sure Myke has a way to make it look nice.
0:02:18So Myke-
0:02:18- I think if he does a Myke chat, it should be on purpose.
0:02:21Like if he says I'm a professional podcasters,
0:02:23I think that's good.
0:02:25- That would be perfect.
0:02:26So Micra now is up in the air, I think.
0:02:29I don't know.
0:02:30Is he in the land of the free yet?
0:02:33I don't know.
0:02:34- He should be getting close.
0:02:35So I guess if we hear from him during the show,
0:02:38which I think was what happened last time he was traveling,
0:02:41he texted us during when you and I were doing the show.
0:02:43We'll see, it's hard to keep up with the guys.
0:02:46International businessman and traveler and everything.
0:02:49- Always going to America.
0:02:51He's always going around,
0:02:53flying in all different countries is a diplomat, you know?
0:02:57Is going to lots of different places.
0:03:00Steven, save us and take us into follow up.
0:03:03- All right, so we've got some follow up this week.
0:03:05We were speaking last week about the MacBook Pros,
0:03:10the MacBook Airs, and how everything is all sealed in now.
0:03:14Lauren wrote in to remind us that that's not completely true.
0:03:19There is, and I will put this link in the show notes
0:03:22and in the chat room, so if you're listening live,
0:03:24you can understand that this computer
0:03:26is still in production.
0:03:30Apple still sells a 13-inch MacBook Pro,
0:03:33non-retina, with a DVD drive
0:03:38for $1,099 here in the United States.
0:03:44And it's really not a great machine.
0:03:46I'm not sure who it's for.
0:03:48I think it's mostly for,
0:03:51I think it's mostly for education or people who buy in bulk perhaps but I don't
0:03:58I'm not quite sure what that's about. So maybe DVDs marketers, you know, man. Yeah
0:04:054 gigs of RAM a 500 gig 54 rpm hard drive
0:04:10Just you know, it's the MacBook Pro from four years ago still for sale
0:04:17I highly doubt that it even comes with El Capitan if you open another box.
0:04:21I'm sure it's just an old config they have laying around.
0:04:25But what can you do?
0:04:27Yeah, there's probably Lion on that machine.
0:04:30Yeah.
0:04:31So you can still buy that machine, so my apologies for being incorrect.
0:04:34I tend to forget about this computer because I just assumed that Apple's killed it since
0:04:38the last time I looked.
0:04:39And every time I look, it's still there hanging on for life.
0:04:42Nice.
0:04:43We also wanted to touch base on the Magic accessories.
0:04:48The keyboard, so I have the keyboard and the trackpad.
0:04:54I'm actually using both right now,
0:04:56even though I'm not really a trackpad guy.
0:04:57- No.
0:04:59- I really like the keyboard.
0:05:01My review just went live like 20 minutes ago on the site.
0:05:04I like the keyboard.
0:05:05It is, if you like the old one,
0:05:08there's a lot of things that are better about it.
0:05:11Yes, the key travel is less than the old one,
0:05:16but the trade-off is it feels more precise.
0:05:18They're not using the butterfly mechanism from the MacBook.
0:05:20They're still using the scissor mechanism,
0:05:23but all in all, it feels more precise,
0:05:24and it feels tighter than the old one, and I like that.
0:05:28And so I've been using it since the weekend.
0:05:30Mine came in on Friday, and I'm a fan so far.
0:05:34It is sort of funny.
0:05:36There's still a new Jet Key on it.
0:05:37I don't know what that does.
0:05:39I'm hitting it now, and nothing's happening to my computer.
0:05:41- Make sure you're not the one being ejected
0:05:44from your chair.
0:05:45- Yeah, it just ejects my USB free too
0:05:47from being connected.
0:05:49No, I mean, if you have an external,
0:05:51if you have like the super drive plugged in,
0:05:53it ejects it.
0:05:53I mean, I get why it's there.
0:05:55I do wish it was backlit.
0:05:57I'm sure that that was a thickness,
0:06:00battery life type thing is my guess.
0:06:03But it would be nice, like, it'd be nice
0:06:04to have a backlit external keyboard.
0:06:07So that's my hope that one day we'll get that.
0:06:10It would be weird with the white keycaps, I don't know how quite that would look, but
0:06:15all in all it's a nice improvement if you like the old one.
0:06:20If you don't like the old one you're really not going to like this one because it is sort
0:06:23of like a distilled version of the old one.
0:06:26But all in all it gets a thumbs up from me.
0:06:29I got one question for you Steven.
0:06:31Yes.
0:06:32Have you tried the keyboard on your iPad?
0:06:35I have not.
0:06:39My understanding is that it's basically the same as last time.
0:06:46But I'm not sure, I mean the pairing is still done over Bluetooth obviously.
0:06:51I don't think it has any more iOS features than the old one did though.
0:06:57I don't think there's something that doubles as the home button or anything, but I'm not
0:07:00sure to be honest.
0:07:01So you can probably replicate the same shortcuts of course, you can do command tab, you can
0:07:06do command space to open Spotlight.
0:07:08- All that should work.
0:07:09- No special keys for--
0:07:10- Right, there's no Siri key you get on the Logitech
0:07:13or something like that.
0:07:14I mean, and that makes sense,
0:07:16like at this point with the iPad Pro coming,
0:07:19I don't think they wanna keep that separate
0:07:21for that keyboard cover.
0:07:22Man, I don't know, I like using the iPad
0:07:26with the Apple keyboard,
0:07:28but I'm not,
0:07:30I'm just not sure how big of a use case it is
0:07:34in Apple's mind of people buying their keyboard
0:07:36to use with the iPad, like with all the keyboard cases and everything out there.
0:07:40I don't know.
0:07:41Yeah, it's going to be interesting with the iPad Pro.
0:07:43The software keyboard, there's a bunch of new features.
0:07:46Of course, it's bigger, so it should be easier to type on the screen.
0:07:50But there's also a couple-- the increased space
0:07:53allows for a couple of new features.
0:07:55There's more keys.
0:07:56There's the number row.
0:07:57I think it's always shown by default, at least in landscape.
0:08:01So it's going to be a big software keyboard.
0:08:03But of course, Apple makes the smart keyboard as well,
0:08:06which I look forward to trying because I'm really curious to see what they've done there.
0:08:12I type most of my articles on the iPad Air 2 with the software keyboard and usually I
0:08:18know that this sounds crazy but I type in portrait mode with my thumbs, you know, that's
0:08:23the advantage of being human, you have thumbs.
0:08:27And I do like typing in portrait mode on my iPad.
0:08:32And that goes down to the biggest question I have about the iPad Pro.
0:08:37Can you still use it in portrait mode?
0:08:39Can you still hold it with two hands and type?
0:08:41It's probably going to be a little too big for that use case, at least that's what I
0:08:45imagine.
0:08:46Because it's going to be about as wide as the iPad Air as in landscape.
0:08:50That might be, that's going to be a reach for me.
0:08:53I don't have Myke Hurley fingers, but I've got decent sized hands.
0:08:57I don't get it, fingers.
0:09:00I actually, just last night, my wife has the 12 inch Retina MacBook and I was doing something
0:09:05on it and I was walking to the house and I was thumb typing on it.
0:09:09Like I had it wedged in my hands, like my hands were claws, and thumb typing on this
0:09:12MacBook.
0:09:13I was like, "Huh, what have I done?"
0:09:15Because I'm like you, I type in my iPad Air generally in portrait with my thumbs.
0:09:20The landscape keyboard is like just the wrong size for me.
0:09:23There's something about it that I've never really been able to do well.
0:09:27And so I type like you do on the Air and I can do it.
0:09:29It's pretty comfortable.
0:09:30But I was like walking around the house with a MacBook doing it, I was like, "What am I
0:09:33doing?"
0:09:34What's happened to me?
0:09:35Yeah.
0:09:36You know, the thing about the landscape keyboard on the iPad is not necessarily, at least for
0:09:41me, not necessarily the size of the keys or the layout.
0:09:44It's how much it obscures content in the top half of the screen.
0:09:50And I usually type in portrait mode because I can see more of the app that I'm using,
0:09:54which is usually editorial.
0:09:55So I see more of my text and when I switch to landscape I just see like a paragraph.
0:10:02And on the iPad Pro it's gonna be interesting because you can see more in landscape and
0:10:06the keyboard is also bigger.
0:10:08But there's a problem in portrait because it becomes too large to type with your thumbs.
0:10:13So it's gonna be a curious setup.
0:10:18We should have a couple of weeks left, Apple said, the iPad Pro is coming out in November.
0:10:23And I'm curious, in this case, the Italian Apple website says "coming in November".
0:10:28So we don't know yet if the iPad Pro is going to launch in many countries, like in 30 countries
0:10:35at launch, so Italy should be included.
0:10:38We just have a "November" notice on the Italian website.
0:10:42And I hope that we will know more, maybe next week there's an Apple earnings call, maybe
0:10:48they will provide a release date for the iPad Pro.
0:10:51We don't know.
0:10:52We'll see.
0:10:53- Yeah, I mean it's the same thing here, there's not a date.
0:10:55And just last night, Apple CEO Tim Cook
0:10:58was being interviewed and he said the Apple TV
0:11:00would be going for pre-order on Monday,
0:11:02so six days from now and then shipping next week.
0:11:05So we can talk about that in the next couple weeks as well.
0:11:08I mean, it's sort of funny, like, you know,
0:11:10Apple clumps all their stuff together in the fall,
0:11:12but this year, even within the fall,
0:11:14it's a little spread out.
0:11:15I feel like we get a couple weeks with like each thing.
0:11:17Like we've had phones and then we had iMacs and Mac stuff
0:11:21and now we're gonna go back to the Apple TV
0:11:23through the iPad Pro.
0:11:24Yeah, it'll be fun.
0:11:27I think I said it last week,
0:11:29I'm increasingly interested in the iPad Pro.
0:11:33I think that I will at least get one to check it out
0:11:36and then maybe take advantage of that return policy.
0:11:39But we'll see.
0:11:41I think it'll be interesting to see how it does.
0:11:44- Yeah, for sure.
0:11:45- Now Federico, you are our reporter in the field
0:11:50when it comes to all things blah, blah, blah, blah,
0:11:53and you tweeted something yesterday,
0:11:55is it, I think it was yesterday.
0:11:56- Yes.
0:11:57- The only way I can describe it,
0:11:59and I'm gonna put this,
0:12:00like you should go look at Federico's tweet.
0:12:04It troubled me deeply in my soul.
0:12:08I think it's really the only way, the only thing.
0:12:10So what is this?
0:12:11Can you explain what you've done to the internet here?
0:12:13- So I was, it was after dinner,
0:12:16and I was at the kitchen table
0:12:18just looking at Twitter on my iPad and the TV was on because we were following the news
0:12:23during dinner.
0:12:24And at one point a weird song started playing and I look up at the TV and there's like two
0:12:32blob monsters with very uncomfortable eyes and a very uncomfortable shape and it was
0:12:41There's a commercial for BlaBlaCar and there's these two little things, I would describe
0:12:47them, talking about BlaBlaCar and how it works and it's a very creepy commercial.
0:12:54I don't understand why you would trust a service, you know, you're getting into someone else's
0:12:59car so it's a pretty serious thing to do and the creatures advertising this service are
0:13:07are too creepy looking monsters. So I don't know if I can find the commercial on YouTube,
0:13:14I can try. There's a weird song, there's weird monsters and there's an explanation of how
0:13:20BlaBlaCar works. It's the car sharing service that lets you ride into someone else's car
0:13:27for a fee so you can save on costs to go from a specific place of Italy to another. So you
0:13:32You can split the fees for highway tolls, that kind of stuff.
0:13:38But the monsters, the blah blah monsters, that's how I call them, they're really
0:13:41creepy and they're the stuff of nightmares, basically.
0:13:47And of course I tweeted the picture and a lot of people responded to the nature of the
0:13:52commercial.
0:13:54There's no way around it, they're creepy.
0:13:57there's a tweet from a friend of the show, John, he sent us a picture of a McDonald's
0:14:07monster. Does it have a name? His name is Grimace. Oh, nice. And the other one is the
0:14:13Hamburglar? Yep. Yeah. So they're eerily similar in nature. And the worst part of the blah blah
0:14:23a monster isn't just the color which is purple or the fact that he has hands with no fingers
0:14:32and then he's holding a phone. It's the red lips.
0:14:38It's just really terrifying in every way. I'm going to put the picture in the show notes.
0:14:44If you go to the page relay.fm/connected/62 you can just see it because I think everyone
0:14:49had experienced the terror that I did.
0:14:55I'm surprised that you didn't comment on those cables going under my TV.
0:15:00You know, I really almost did.
0:15:03And I was like, no, I'm going to be the bigger man here, I'm going to be the gentleman, but
0:15:07I'm just going to buy you some cable conduit.
0:15:10Okay, so there's an explanation, which we will discuss in the topic that we have today.
0:15:17I will explain in a few minutes why.
0:15:19If you were a gentleman you would hide that in the wall.
0:15:22But it's temporary, let me explain to you later why.
0:15:25Okay, I understand temporary setups, I get it.
0:15:30So we got a couple little topics before we get into the big one, but first let me tell
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0:17:22Alright Federico, tell me about iWork.
0:17:26So last week Apple released finally, I would say, not in an ironic way, an iOS 9 update
0:17:34for the iWork suite for iOS.
0:17:36So there's updated pages, numbers and keynote with new iOS 9 features which include of course
0:17:42iPad multitasking, keyboard shortcuts, you know, you get a little pop-up when you hold
0:17:50down the Command key on your physical keyboard so you can see all the list of supported commands
0:17:54in the apps. There's a new way to share documents with iCloud.com on the web and there's an
0:18:01increased compatibility with older file formats, which I know you want to talk about.
0:18:07But of course the big change, and of course there's a little, a small amount of improvements
0:18:13to each individual app with a series of long-standing feature requests from iOS users. But of course
0:18:23the big change is iPad multitasking and if you don't mind Steven I have a little
0:18:27story for you today. So right before the update which was on Thursday at 10
0:18:34around 10 p.m. which is when Apple refreshes the App Store for the
0:18:38weekly features, Sylvia my girlfriend was just talking about how she wanted to use
0:18:45numbers on her iPad R2 with SplitView because she has to do some accounting
0:18:51stuff on a monthly basis and she was asking why she couldn't put Safari with a webpage
0:18:57where she's looking at numbers and a bunch of different expenses next to numbers so she
0:19:03could go through all the lists of transactions and organize them in a spreadsheet.
0:19:09And maybe 20 minutes after she was complaining about the iOS 9 update to numbers, there was
0:19:17an iOS 9 update to Numbers on the App Store. And she got really excited and I understand
0:19:23why. I don't use Numbers much because I'm a Google Sheets user and the Google Sheets
0:19:28app for iOS still hasn't been updated to support iOS 9. But she does this Numbers accounting
0:19:35really often and she got excited because the ability to pin Safari next to Numbers or any
0:19:46other app basically saved her like an hour she would have spent jumping from app to app.
0:19:53And I witnessed how a non-Power User, because she's not the type of user who obsesses over
0:20:01the little advanced features like we do, or shortcuts, or Power User tips and tricks,
0:20:08that kind of stuff, she just uses her iPad because she likes it more than a MacBook.
0:20:13And being able to use SlideOver and more importantly SplitView, she got through all the list of
0:20:23expenses and the database that she keeps for accounting purposes, she got through that
0:20:30really fast with SplitView because she says I don't have to go from app to app anymore,
0:20:37it's right there and the layout is still the same and the iPad Air 2 is comfortable and
0:20:43she was really happy. So I thought it's really interesting that we, just a few months ago
0:20:50we were saying yeah but you know power users are just gonna be, are the ones who are gonna
0:20:55be happy about iOS 9 because normal people really don't do any sort of work on the iPad.
0:21:02So even if Apple does multitasking or slide over or split view, normal people they're
0:21:07not gonna care as much as we do. And maybe to an extent that's true because especially
0:21:13I guess people like me, while we use an iPad on a daily basis, we are excited by those
0:21:19functionalities. But even normal people like Silvia, she's definitely a normal person,
0:21:23she doesn't spend hours looking into apps on the App Store like I do. But the single
0:21:30change in numbers allowed her to be faster and to work faster, to save time and to be
0:21:39happier with the iPad.
0:21:41So it kind of got me thinking about this whole, you know, we usually refer to normal people,
0:21:47I wouldn't say as they don't know what's going on behind the scenes, but maybe we discard,
0:21:54we dismiss those people and the needs of those people because we imagine that they use just
0:21:59Facebook and mail and Safari and they do but they're not stupid and I've said
0:22:04this many many times and every time I come across someone in this case my
0:22:08girlfriend just discovering this functionality and being super okay with
0:22:13it it surprises me every time. Yeah you know it's I think what's nice about that
0:22:19sort of stuff on the iPad is that it's pretty discoverable and it's it's like
0:22:24not fiddly right like you just slide the app over when you're done you put it back
0:22:27They really did a good job at adding complexity without making it confusing.
0:22:33And I think your story kind of points that out.
0:22:36It's like I can just go pull these two things together and do what I need to do
0:22:40and then go back to the way it was, which is nice.
0:22:44A thing that caught my eye in the iWork updates is the backwards compatibility.
0:22:49So the new version of iWork, Apple basically rebuilt the Mac apps
0:22:54and the iOS apps really but especially the Mac apps to to be more compatible
0:23:00that you know they redid their document structure so you could use documents
0:23:05more cleanly on both platforms and they left a lot of stuff out we talked about
0:23:09that I was like a year ago or so like Apple script was left out of the Mac
0:23:12apps a bunch of stuff and they've been slowly adding it back in and this week's
0:23:16update brought back like true backwards compatibility so if you have I don't
0:23:21remember how far back it goes but I think I work oh eight and maybe even oh
0:23:24six documents you can now open again?
0:23:27Which is good and again, a not sarcastic finally.
0:23:32It sort of was frustrating that if you had those old documents you couldn't open them
0:23:36but I'm glad they circled back and got that taken care of.
0:23:39I saw some tweets from people kind of poking fun at Apple for adding support for old file
0:23:46formats back.
0:23:47It's kind of like backtracking on what they wanted to do when they relaunched the iWork
0:23:51apps for OS X and iOS, they made a big deal out of saying "We needed this clean slate,
0:23:58so we're not supporting the old apps and the old documents because we wanted to start fresh".
0:24:03And now that they added the support for the old document types back, I saw some people
0:24:09saying "Yeah, look at Apple, first they say that they want to start fresh and they do
0:24:13backwards compatibility". I kind of don't know what to make of this argument because
0:24:17Ultimately it was a clean slate and there were problems but there were also new apps
0:24:24and those apps let them start fresh, new features, new design and eventually after update they
0:24:31bring features back but they don't compromise on the original vision.
0:24:36These are still brand new iWork apps.
0:24:39So I kinda understand the making fun of, yeah first you say you wanna start fresh and then
0:24:45and then you bring the old files back.
0:24:48But in the end it's just a practical thing to do.
0:24:52Now that we got the basics covered, we have these new apps, we're supporting these new
0:24:57iOS 9 features, it's a month late but still now we're supporting iOS 9, so what else can
0:25:03we do?
0:25:04Let's bring the old file formats back.
0:25:08I don't think it's a big deal and if anything, people who still have those files, they're
0:25:13just going to be happy now.
0:25:14So it's okay to poke fun, but I don't think it compromises on the basic vision of the
0:25:21iWork suite.
0:25:22I agree.
0:25:24And your backwards compatibility with documents is big.
0:25:29You can look at Microsoft and say, "Well, they do this to a fault."
0:25:34They just will not let go of backwards compatibility.
0:25:37But you can say that, but a Word document you made 20 years ago, you can probably still
0:25:42open.
0:25:44that helps Office stay entrenched so many places.
0:25:49And I think comparing iWork to Office is unfair to both,
0:25:54and I think they sort of solve the same problem
0:25:57for very different angles, but having a document
0:26:01that you created seven years ago that you can't open,
0:26:05that is a problem, and so I'm glad they got that sorted out.
0:26:08And yeah, I agree with you, the vision thing,
0:26:13Like I work is still much simpler and cleaner than it was and much faster. I just spent some time
0:26:19the last week or so and I books author helping a friend with something and
0:26:24I books author is basically like I work oh eight like that
0:26:27it's a use a lot of those old controls and sort of old way of thinking about things and it's it's very like
0:26:33Bumbly in there like you just it's just not very good and you go to the new I work
0:26:38This is for the most part is a lot better. So I'm glad they did it
0:26:42I wish they had gotten to this faster for people who were stuck with this problem.
0:26:47I think, if I remember correctly, the new version of iWork did not override the old
0:26:51one on disk.
0:26:52It would leave iWork 09 also installed.
0:26:56So you'd have two versions, but at least you could open everything and now that'll be a
0:26:59lot cleaner moving forward, which is good.
0:27:03One thing that still hasn't replaced other services for me is the real-time collaboration.
0:27:09So right now, me and you, we're looking at a shared Google Docs document and we're both
0:27:15typing and we have our own cursor in the document and we can collaborate on the same document,
0:27:20the same notes.
0:27:22And my understanding, you can do this for iCloud and iWork, but it'll still eventually
0:27:30upset you because there are going to be problems.
0:27:33And so if you're looking for a solution to collaborate on documents with multiple people
0:27:37at once, you still have to use Google Docs, Quip, which is also an excellent service,
0:27:42and maybe in the near future you will be able to use this new Dropbox paper service, which
0:27:47has a totally unoriginal name, but the idea is you're sharing a rich document with multiple
0:27:54people and it's kind of like Google Docs and Quip, but it's nicer maybe, and right now
0:28:00it's in sort of public beta on the web, there's going to be native apps eventually, it looks
0:28:06nice, the name is, I mean, come on, another paper service, but I have to tell you, I'm
0:28:13kinda excited by Dropbox paper. And part of me is torn between, I'm excited because I
0:28:21like Dropbox, and the other part of me says "what is Dropbox doing?" because they're trying
0:28:27this bunch of different things now, because file storage and management has kinda become
0:28:33a feature everyone has its own cloud storage services whether it's Google, Apple, Microsoft,
0:28:39Amazon. Pretty sure Facebook is coming out eventually with a file storage service if
0:28:44they don't already have one in the settings. And now Dropbox is kind of trying all these
0:28:50different things. So there's business, there's photos, there's paper, you know the carousel
0:28:57service I don't know what's going on there and I don't know if they're kind of trying
0:29:02to see what's next. So that's the pessimistic part of me. The optimistic side says this
0:29:09is cool, this is exciting, I like Dropbox and it looks nice. So we'll see. But right
0:29:15now still not using an iWork and iCard for collaboration. If you do, I'm generally curious
0:29:24to know if it's improved. I remember when we tried, Steven, back in the prompt days
0:29:30and let's just say it got weird fast. Remember when we shared the document with people on
0:29:40Twitter?
0:29:42We did and the iWork document like blew up within seconds and the Google Docs got really
0:29:47strange and locked me out of my account for a while. It was good times. Yeah, you know
0:29:53it's interesting to me that all these companies are like going after like collaborative document
0:29:59editing. Office 365 also has some stuff. I haven't used it. I'm not really familiar
0:30:04with it to be honest, but it's like it's a kind of a hot space right now. And you
0:30:10know for me at least like you I mean the Google stuff like I mean our whole
0:30:14business is in there and it works unbelievably well and not just
0:30:19documents and spreadsheets as well. And it's gonna take you know something
0:30:23really powerful to knock that off the top of the list for me, but I'm excited
0:30:27that there's competition there.
0:30:30We should talk about Notes though too.
0:30:33- Yeah, you posted a really nice article this week,
0:30:36or last week?
0:30:37- Yeah, last week, 16th,
0:30:40where, and again this is something we've been talking about,
0:30:46we've all talked about Evernote for a long time,
0:30:48and then iOS 9 and El Capitan brought new Notes apps
0:30:52built on CloudKit so the syncing actually works,
0:30:55a lot of new features and I've been using it for,
0:31:00well since I upgraded to El Capitan
0:31:02and for the most part I like it.
0:31:04So I wrote up my review of it last week,
0:31:07kind of comparing and contrasting it
0:31:09with Evernote in places.
0:31:10And all in all, while there are things I don't like,
0:31:15I have switched to it and it's on the home screen
0:31:18of my iPhone and iPad and it's in my dock on the Mac
0:31:21and all my stuff's in it and I've uninstalled Evernote
0:31:24and closed my account.
0:31:24- Oh, like, give a clear option.
0:31:27- Yeah, well, yeah, I mean,
0:31:30you know, it's fine, it's not Evernote.
0:31:35All that stuff that Evernote does,
0:31:36where like, the Web Clipper,
0:31:38and you can email stuff into it,
0:31:39like, it doesn't do any of that,
0:31:40but it does have, as you spoke about in your iOS 9 review,
0:31:45really good extension support in iOS.
0:31:48It has that same extension support in OS 10 to a degree.
0:31:53And so there are ways to get stuff into it that's a little more automated than copying and pasting.
0:31:57And it just has not failed yet.
0:32:00I mean, I've got, I don't know, like 165 notes in there and it's rock solid.
0:32:06And you know what I noticed?
0:32:08I'm using notes, I would say primarily through two features, the extension and slide over.
0:32:15So I save bits of text, usually links into individual notes.
0:32:21so I append links to the bottom of an existing note.
0:32:24And I have a bunch of these for connected, for MacStories Weekly, for virtual.
0:32:29I just save links every day
0:32:32into notes with the extension. And then when it's time to pull those links back in,
0:32:38whether it's into a Google document or in a tutorial,
0:32:41I can just use slide over to open notes,
0:32:45tap and hold on the link and copy the link again. And
0:32:48that's how I primarily use notes as a
0:32:52kind of storage solution for links with nice previews because unlike Evernote
0:32:56it gives me this little snippet view of a link which has an image,
0:33:01a title and a brief description so I can easily remember what a link is about
0:33:06but what I noticed is
0:33:09sometimes iCloud initially fails
0:33:13at updating the note
0:33:17that I'm appending a link to. So for instance I'm on my iPhone and I save a link into a
0:33:22note. Then maybe a couple of hours later I'm on my iPad and I want to save another link
0:33:28into the same note but the note doesn't say I was updated two hours ago. It still says
0:33:34last updated, last night. So it's not like on the iPad the extension is not seeing the
0:33:38last version of a note. But when I'm going into, you know, maybe a couple of days later,
0:33:45I'm going into the note and when I open the note it kind of reconciles all the changes
0:33:51and it kind of merges all the links from the iPhone, the links from the iPad, so I don't
0:33:55lose anything and that's nice because I was like "oh man, I trusted this app and now iCloud
0:34:02is failing again" but it turns out that there's a mechanism in place to reconcile changes
0:34:08from different devices which I'm ok with.
0:34:10Even if, of course, Apple being Apple, there's no UI, there's no conflict resolution tool
0:34:16that says "Hey, this was a change from an iPhone, this is a new change to the same note
0:34:21from an iPad, what do you want to do?"
0:34:22It just kind of happens in the background, invisibly, as Apple likes to do, but it works.
0:34:27And I've been putting together the newsletter or links for the website for basically since
0:34:33June with the Notes app.
0:34:36And it works for me. It's faster, it gives me these nice previews.
0:34:42I'm not the kind of user who saves a lot of documents into notes.
0:34:47I guess I prefer to use Dropbox for things like PDFs and email receipts, that kind of
0:34:53stuff. I use notes for links, maybe screenshots and
0:34:57text. That's the reason why I also felt comfortable
0:35:02switching from Evernote. Because I don't need all of those features
0:35:05in a work chat and the shared notebooks.
0:35:08I just need a nice note-taking app with a nice extension,
0:35:12iPad multitasking on iOS 9, and Notes works for me.
0:35:15So a big thumbs up for the Notes app.
0:35:19- Yeah, I got a lot of feedback about tagging.
0:35:23Tags just don't, just not the way my brain works.
0:35:26And Shindo sent me an email about the review,
0:35:32but I wanted to bring it up here
0:35:33to see what you thought about it.
0:35:34They write tags can be hashtags, but markdown renders those as headers.
0:35:39So if you copy it out into some sort of marked editor, you get headers instead of something
0:35:44useful.
0:35:45So they're saying that they use the @ symbol, like a Twitter handle.
0:35:48@tag is usually at the bottom of file content, sometimes in the body if I'm tagging tasks.
0:35:53And of course those are searchable, so you could search @work and all of the notes "tagged"
0:35:59with work which show up, which I think is a clever workaround.
0:36:04I think it's pretty nice, but the thing that's really killing me is the font size on the
0:36:08Mac is really small and you can't change it universally.
0:36:13I've even gotten a little, I've gotten more used to the sort by last edit.
0:36:19I really want everything alphabetically but I'm sort of letting go of that and learning
0:36:22that it's kind of handy to jump back in the same note that I'm always in.
0:36:26But I hope the tag thing was clever.
0:36:28In fact if you use the extension there's a threshold, a couple of minutes.
0:36:35If you're saving text or a link or a file with the notes extension, it remembers for
0:36:42a couple of minutes the last note where you saved something into.
0:36:47So when I'm going through my Twitter favorites for example and I want to save a bunch of
0:36:52of links into my Maxories Weekly note, the extension remembers that it has to go into
0:36:59the Maxories Weekly note. But then, if I let a couple of minutes pass, it just resets to
0:37:05a new note. So I have to tap that and to pick a note if I want to append links again. And
0:37:11it's a nice touch, because if you're going through links and you want to save them into
0:37:16the same note, just remembers that note. And it's kind of similar to the SlideOver app
0:37:22picker. It shows the last three apps that you use in SlideOver, because Apple wants
0:37:28to make it easier to let you switch to the apps that you always use in SlideOver, not
0:37:33necessarily the most recent apps. iAssign is full of these little touches to save time.
0:37:41I'm a big fan of the notes extension. It's really well done and an example for many developers
0:37:47to see what is possible to append to a note. You can save text, you can save links, you
0:37:53can save audio files and they will be played back into the Notes app. Apple doesn't say
0:37:59this but there's actually a UI to control audio playback into the Notes app. One thing
0:38:05One thing that I would love to know is how is Apple parsing web pages for titles, for thumbnails?
0:38:13Are they using the OpenGraph image tag to pick the thumbnail?
0:38:17Are they using... I wouldn't say they're using Schema.org, which is another metadata standard for the web,
0:38:23but I'm definitely curious to see what they're doing.
0:38:26And another... this is super nitpicking...
0:38:29During the beta, the Notes extension used to behave differently for YouTube and for
0:38:36Twitter links.
0:38:37So, for Twitter, it used to be that it would try to find an image or at least a profile
0:38:43picture of a Twitter user.
0:38:44If you were saving a twitter.com link into the Notes app, the extension would try to
0:38:49fetch a link's image or profile picture.
0:38:52Now they're just using the Twitter icon, the blue icon with the Twitter logo.
0:38:58And for YouTube links, the same thing, they used to try to generate a thumbnail for the
0:39:03video, now they're just using nothing.
0:39:05So sometimes they give you a video's title, most of the time, at least for me, they just
0:39:11save YouTube links with "YouTube" as the title, which is not super useful.
0:39:17And I would like to see an update there.
0:39:19So yes, I think we'll keep an eye on our notes usage and see.
0:39:24now I'm happy with it but we will see how that goes. So we're going to talk about
0:39:30HomeKit today but before that I want to take a break and thank our friends at
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0:41:51So we're talking about HomeKit.
0:41:54You and I have both been playing with some HomeKit devices,
0:41:57but before we get there, I thought
0:41:59it'd be nice to kind of talk through some basics of HomeKit
0:42:01because I feel like Apple hasn't given it a lot of stage time.
0:42:06And it's sort of ambiguous like what HomeKit actually is
0:42:09and what it can actually do.
0:42:11So could you maybe walk us through the idea
0:42:14behind what it is?
0:42:16So I'm going to give you my best explanation.
0:42:19HomeKit is a common language for dedicated devices to share and access data on iOS.
0:42:31These devices are home automation devices.
0:42:34So they can be sensors, they can be door locks, they can be weather stations.
0:42:41Apple provides a framework for developers to plug into and the user gets a very simple
0:42:51settings screen in the Settings app and you can say I want to grant access to my home
0:42:57data to these apps and I want to access my home data remotely with iCloud and I want
0:43:04to share my home data with another family member or with another user.
0:43:09The training is extremely simple from a user perspective.
0:43:14When you set up a device, you take it out of the box, you download the dedicated app
0:43:20from the developer, so there is no home app on iOS.
0:43:24You have to download a compatible app and you go through the setup, you grant permission
0:43:30to manage and access your home kit data, you scan with the iPhone's camera setup code on
0:43:36the back of the device and from that point on you will be able to ask Siri for home information
0:43:45so if you buy a weather station you will be able to say "hey Siri, what's the temperature
0:43:49in my bedroom?" and other apps will also be able to access data from other apps and other
0:43:56devices.
0:43:58The key thing to understand is that there's different levels of management for your HomeKit
0:44:05data. So you can set up accessories as they're called. They're not called devices, they're
0:44:09called accessories. I think it's the official definition. You set up accessories and you
0:44:14set them up in rooms for your house. At the same time you can also set up scenes. Actually
0:44:22you can set up rooms, you can set up zones. So for example I have a room called bedroom
0:44:28and another "room" which is called "kitchen balcony" as it's the balcony outside of my
0:44:35kitchen and then I can create a zone and a zone in my example is inside so the inside
0:44:44zone has two rooms the bedroom and the kitchen outside as the kitchen balcony as it's outside
0:44:52of the house. Finally you can set up scenes. So scenes are kind of like, I wouldn't say
0:44:59presets, maybe they are like a bunch of commands and triggers that you can do. For example
0:45:08you can set up a good morning scene and when you say "City, turn on my good morning scene"
0:45:19You can use apps to say when I say good morning in this scene you gotta turn on my lights
0:45:25and turn on my coffee maker through this HomeKit compatible smart plug.
0:45:31And so there's all these little features that you gotta keep in mind.
0:45:37But the most confusing aspect is there's no single place where you can go to an iOS to
0:45:43do all of this management and setup.
0:45:46Unlike HealthKit, which is Apple's framework for health data, there's no home app on iOS.
0:45:53When you go to the home app and you say "ok, these are my accessories, this is my data,
0:45:59I have a bunch of toggles so I can grant access to these apps, and I want to set up rooms
0:46:03and zones and scenes".
0:46:06All is done through third party apps and there's a system level privacy screen which you can
0:46:14used to grant or remove access to your HomeKit data.
0:46:19So right now the state of HomeKit is you gotta buy, first you gotta find a HomeKit device
0:46:26which, as we'll talk about, is not easy.
0:46:29You gotta buy the device, you gotta download the accessories app from the App Store, you
0:46:35gotta do the setup in the app and then you can share this information across apps.
0:46:41So in my example I bought Eve, Elgato, Eve, Weather and Eve room.
0:46:48There are two accessories, both to monitor temperature and humidity for outside, so my
0:46:55kitchen balcony and inside.
0:46:57And I put the Eve room in my bedroom.
0:47:00And from the Eve app I can do the setup, so I can do the barcode scan, it's not actually
0:47:07a barcode is more like a HomeKit icon and a string of numbers that you gotta scan with
0:47:11the iPhone camera. From the Eve app I can see my Elgato devices, so I can see the Eve
0:47:18weather, I can see the Eve room, but I can also see all the rooms and I think the Philips
0:47:24Hue lights that I set up in different apps. So for example, I also downloaded this third
0:47:32party app which is called Home. It's from a third party developer who had the brilliant
0:47:38idea, generally a good idea, to release a third party app to provide a dashboard for
0:47:44HomeKit data. Because there isn't one by default on iOS. So I set up all my rooms and zones
0:47:51and scenes in the Home app. It's made by Mattias, oh gosh I don't remember his last name, it's
0:47:59made from a third-party developer is Brutella on Twitter. So I set up all my rooms and zones
0:48:06in the Home app, but because the framework, the HomeKit framework is shared across apps,
0:48:14I can see the same information, so the same rooms, the same zones in the Elgato Eve app.
0:48:21So to sum up, you gotta find the accessories, you gotta buy the accessories, set them up
0:48:26the individual apps and then those apps can communicate. On top of that you can use Siri
0:48:32to access information. And this is the last point, if you have an Apple TV you can set
0:48:39up HomeKit to be accessed remotely, so if the devices are in range of the Apple TV,
0:48:45which is another problem we're going to talk about, when you're outside the house, when
0:48:49you're on cellular data or maybe on another Wi-Fi connection, you will be able to ask
0:48:54Siri for home information and Siri will go through your Apple TV which is connected to
0:48:59your iCloud account and it will give you information such as temperature or maybe turn on the lights,
0:49:04turn on the smart plug, that kind of stuff remotely.
0:49:09So it's quite complex and there's a... it took me a while to understand all these different
0:49:15definitions, rooms, zones, scenes and I'm still kind of playing around.
0:49:21So far I have two devices, the Eve weather and the Eve room and I'm a genius and I'm
0:49:29sarcastic here because I really wanted to try the remote access stuff so I couldn't
0:49:35wait for the new Apple TV to come out and last week I just went out and bought a third
0:49:41generation Apple TV.
0:49:42Oh boy.
0:49:43Spoiler it's not working.
0:49:46So Steven, before we move on to our actual experience, what devices do you have?
0:49:53Well, I've got the Hues, the LED white in color ambient light kit.
0:50:02This is a mouthful.
0:50:05But I was going to backtrack for a second.
0:50:06You know, I think you describing like how HomeKit works and you being an incredibly
0:50:14smart guy about this stuff and like struggling with getting it working and
0:50:18figuring it out at first like HopeKit is is a very like it's sort of like
0:50:25inside out from a lot of other Apple services and software where like it's
0:50:31not even visible on your phone like I assumed like when I bought this like
0:50:35it was like oh well I'm gonna go into like the HomeKit settings and like set
0:50:37this up it's like no that's not even visible until you have like HomeKit
0:50:42hardware on your network. Like it is very very strange and setting it up because
0:50:49there's like no immediate starting point. So with the Hue lights you download
0:50:56their app and then it has a little like six digit pin and I think like a QR code
0:51:01that you you pair the base station with the app and then the base station goes
0:51:06on your network over Ethernet which is gonna be a problem for a lot of people
0:51:10not a problem for me, but for a lot of people it might be.
0:51:13And then they all talk to each other,
0:51:14and then I was like, oh yeah,
0:51:15I have this HomeKit thing I could turn on now.
0:51:18It's just very strange.
0:51:19If I had to read the directions,
0:51:21and LOL, men don't read directions,
0:51:24but I was like, oh, I'll just put these in
0:51:26and get it going, and I was like,
0:51:28I don't know where to start with this.
0:51:30And because there's no interface,
0:51:33there's no interface for HomeKit.
0:51:35I'm in my settings right now,
0:51:36and so HomeKit shows up in the long list,
0:51:39And the only thing in settings is like my house and who it's shared with.
0:51:44So I have it shared with my wife so she can, she can do stuff, uh, with the lights
0:51:48on her phone and like, that's it.
0:51:52Like there's no, it's all this like, Sort of not really visible.
0:51:57Like I had no idea the Apple TV was acquired for external access because
0:52:00Apple's website doesn't say that anywhere.
0:52:02Like, uh, we've got three links in the show notes to support documents.
0:52:06And like, none of them are extremely helpful because it just sort of exists.
0:52:12But again, you have to find the hardware.
0:52:14But I don't know, just setting it up in a destructive way is like a very strange thing from Apple to set up and to use.
0:52:21Yeah, in the developer's defense, at least from the Eve app, the setup is really well done.
0:52:29I mean, provided that you know you've got to find this app on the App Store.
0:52:33So I needed to go through the instructional manual, you know, like a paper manual to read
0:52:38"you should go download our app from the App Store"
0:52:40I'm like "okay"
0:52:42But the Eve app is really well done.
0:52:44It tells you "okay, now you gotta put the batteries into the accessory, then you gotta
0:52:51find the code, put the camera in front of the code, scan the code and you're done"
0:52:56So from the developers perspective they've done a good job, you know.
0:53:00But it's really strange, I mean, when you first pair a HomeKit device, you literally
0:53:05end up with a new option in the settings.
0:53:09Like it pops up at the bottom of a list.
0:53:11Otherwise you won't be able to see HomeKit if you don't have an accessory set up on your
0:53:16device.
0:53:18And it's really strange when you compare that to HealthKit.
0:53:22It's always there, there's an app.
0:53:24Of course the big difference is your iPhone is already packed with sensors.
0:53:28So Hellkit already has access to a pool of data about you and it makes sense to have
0:53:34a default app there.
0:53:36But I would argue that to promote these new features for your iPhone, so your iPhone can
0:53:43be this little remote control for your home.
0:53:47That's a powerful idea, that's pretty cool actually.
0:53:50But to not have a single place that is preinstalled, and I know that we criticize Apple for having
0:53:57too many pre-installed apps. But there has to be something that you gotta give to people
0:54:01to say "Look, you gotta go here if you wanna set up your accessories". Instead, I ended
0:54:07up with this folder on my home screen where I put all of these different apps to access
0:54:12my HomeKit data and to manage my HomeKit rooms. And that's the even stranger part. There's
0:54:19this whole level of hierarchy, you know, accessories, rooms, zones, scenes and that's completely
0:54:28hidden from iOS and the settings.
0:54:32And if it weren't for the Home app, I wouldn't know how to do this management.
0:54:36I wouldn't know how to create rooms to assign zones to my accessories.
0:54:42So it's a really, I would say, odd decision to not have a single place.
0:54:48It can be in the settings, it doesn't have to be an app to just say go there, create
0:54:53rooms, go crazy, create custom Siri commands.
0:54:57Because even for the Siri portion of the whole deal, there's all these different commands
0:55:03that you can ask, but those commands depend on the names that you assign in a third party
0:55:11app.
0:55:12Siri understands Bedroom only because I created the room called Bedroom in a third party app.
0:55:19There is no setting screen where I can say "ok Siri, I want you to call this room my Bedroom"
0:55:27and I can give you a nickname for other rooms. There is nothing. You gotta do all of these with third party apps.
0:55:33So once you accept this, and it can be difficult to accept this because I don't think it makes much sense,
0:55:40But once you accept this, you can start playing with HomeKit.
0:55:45And I've been...
0:55:47So let me give you first a disclaimer because I know that people are gonna make fun of me
0:55:52for this.
0:55:53I am famously...
0:55:54I wouldn't say against, but I famously poked fun in the past at people obsessing over weather
0:56:04information and weather apps.
0:56:06So the irony is why is Federico using weather sensors?
0:56:11It's a very simple problem.
0:56:13At my apartment in Rome last year we had problems with humidity in the bedroom and we had problems
0:56:21with the wall in my house and we needed to paint the rover to buy a special paint for
0:56:29for this humidity problem and we, especially because of my condition, you know, we gotta make sure that the air we breathe is okay.
0:56:39And my doctor specifically recommended you cannot be exposed to high humidity all the time.
0:56:46And you gotta make sure that the air is always fresh, that there's no, you know, weird particles going around in the air that you breathe.
0:56:55and so we need to keep an eye on this stuff
0:56:59and so I didn't buy these devices for the temperature
0:57:03because it's always around 20 degrees Celsius over here
0:57:08which is fine for us but we gotta make sure that the air quality
0:57:12and the humidity is at an acceptable level for us
0:57:15and for this reason I thought okay I can, I always like to do this
0:57:20I can combine my personal needs
0:57:23with my desire to play around with geeky stuff, which always motivates me.
0:57:30And so that's the reason why I went with the two weather sensors.
0:57:35And of course, other HomeKit devices, they're just cool.
0:57:38I like the idea of controlling my home remotely, so that's why.
0:57:42Yeah, it's neat.
0:57:45What I do like about it, and May is part of the design of the way HomeKit works, is that
0:57:50You can really form it to be what you want it to be.
0:57:53So we're gonna talk about our hardware in a second.
0:57:54Like, you can, like if you're interested in X,
0:57:57you can put X in or you know,
0:57:59you want this sort of control, you can do that.
0:58:00And HomeKit by its sort of ambiguous nature,
0:58:04like is adaptive to all that stuff.
0:58:07But I agree with you.
0:58:07I do think that something like this Home app,
0:58:09which I'm definitely gonna check out,
0:58:12would be useful in servicing this for people
0:58:16and giving them a hub to do this stuff
0:58:21because you do end up with a bunch of different apps,
0:58:23a bunch of different services that sort of,
0:58:25they don't compete, but sort of feel like
0:58:28all these like separate little things.
0:58:29And I could almost see this working like ideally
0:58:33where there's a HomeKit app
0:58:35and these third party developers create extensions
0:58:38into that app where if you have like the Hue lights
0:58:42on your network and you have that app,
0:58:44and you can also control them in the master HomeKit app.
0:58:47And maybe it'll get there.
0:58:50I mean, we're going to close the show with the question of,
0:58:53do we think HomeKit's important to Apple?
0:58:55But I think that that would go a long way to showing consumers
0:58:59what this could do.
0:59:01As opposed to right now, it's like, well,
0:59:02we really created this for third-party developers
0:59:05to do stuff.
0:59:07And it's more of a framework than an actual service
0:59:09or application.
0:59:11But I don't know.
0:59:14So let's talk about hardware, but real first, I want to thank our third and final sponsor,
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1:01:18and all of Relay FM.
1:01:19So we talked about the eve weather a little bit.
1:01:24Do you have any other gear set up,
1:01:31any other gear that you wanna add?
1:01:32You still have not told me why your cables
1:01:34and your TV are crazy?
1:01:35- Okay, so--
1:01:36I wrote that down, I haven't forgotten.
1:01:39- Jesus.
1:01:40So the cables are for the Apple TV,
1:01:41which was a temporary experiment.
1:01:44I wanted to see if it would work as advertised by Apple.
1:01:47So last weekend, I went back to Viterbo as I always do.
1:01:52And I thought, okay, I'm excited
1:01:54because as soon as I'm in Viterbo,
1:01:56I'm going to ask Siri to look up my home kit information.
1:02:01I'm going to ask Siri, what's the humidity
1:02:03and the temperature from the Eve sensors.
1:02:06And of course it didn't work. Siri said that it couldn't look up the information right now
1:02:13and the Eve app and the Home app on my iPhone, they just said the devices are unreachable.
1:02:19So I don't know what the problem is. But my idea is, sometimes it just doesn't work.
1:02:27And I got this feedback from quite a few people on Twitter. The remote access is basically a black box.
1:02:34Sometimes it works, most of the time it just says it's unreachable.
1:02:38And also, my understanding is, these devices, the sensors, the HomeKit accessories,
1:02:45they connect to the Apple TV via Bluetooth.
1:02:48So, my theory is, the sensor that is outside, because I closed the window and all of the...
1:02:58I went away so I had to close everything.
1:03:02Maybe it wasn't possible for that device to connect to the Apple TV which is inside.
1:03:08It's just like three meters away but maybe there's a problem with the window when it's closed.
1:03:14I don't know.
1:03:15But still it doesn't explain why the Apple TV wouldn't be able to connect to the E room
1:03:20which is in another room like two meters away with no door in between them.
1:03:27with no window, no glass, no metal, no weird obstacles and it just didn't work.
1:03:33It works right now, it just didn't work remotely.
1:03:37I don't understand what's going on here and I got also on Twitter some replies from developers
1:03:46saying that in the current version of tvOS for the Apple TV Developer Unit, they removed
1:03:55any mention or framework related to HomeKit, which is not a good sign.
1:04:01That's encouraging.
1:04:03I don't know if Apple is kind of backtracking.
1:04:06Maybe they found out that the remote access feature is not as stable as they would like
1:04:11it to be yet.
1:04:12But still, according to these developers, the new Apple TV doesn't have the HomeKit
1:04:17functionality for remote access.
1:04:20So with that in mind, the Apple TV, the cables were there because I was just setting up this
1:04:25experiment and I didn't want to buy cable protection and that kind of stuff.
1:04:30I'm just going to remove the Apple TV now.
1:04:34So aside from remote access which didn't work.
1:04:39Right now the Eve weather and the Eve room are the only two devices that I have.
1:04:45There's some confusion in regard to the Philips Hue bridge with HomeKit support.
1:04:51I can find the device on Amazon Italy, but it's not available yet.
1:04:57It's not available on the Italian Apple Store and, according to Philips Hue, existing owners
1:05:03of a Philips Hue bridge, the first generation one, will be able to receive a discounted
1:05:09HomeKit bridge starting November 1st, but it's not clear to me whether this discount
1:05:14will be available to Italian customers or just in Europe in general, or if it's just
1:05:19an American thing so I don't know. Right now I really want to try the Philips Hue lights
1:05:24with the HomeKit support but I can't. So all I have are two sensors and they work really
1:05:30well. When I'm inside the house the information updates in a couple of seconds. I can ask
1:05:37Siri, I can use the Eve app, I can use the Home app which is a nice widget to see information
1:05:45at a glance in Notification Center.
1:05:47And one particular mention for the sharing and iCloud syncing
1:05:53process--
1:05:54it was really easy and fast.
1:05:57After finding out that I had a new HomeKit
1:06:01option in the settings, I just added Silvia's email address
1:06:05in the sharing panel.
1:06:07And she received a notice on her iPhone
1:06:09to control and access home information.
1:06:14and it worked right away, so I just needed to download the EVAP on Synvius iPhone
1:06:18and I didn't have to go through any setup process because iCloud was syncing the existing
1:06:23accessories and home information on our device too, which was nice.
1:06:27And also when I set up my new iPhone 6S Plus, which I bought on Friday, Steven, the home
1:06:34information was already there in my iCloud account, so I didn't have to go through the
1:06:39pairing process with the accessory again.
1:06:41And the accessories themselves, they're nice, they're powered by AA batteries which will
1:06:48last I think a couple of months, maybe three months. I will have to replace them eventually.
1:06:55And it's really handy to be able to look up the humidity level and to act accordingly,
1:07:02depending on what Siri tells me or what the apps tell me.
1:07:08And overall I think I'm excited about HomeKit.
1:07:14Actually let me say, I'm excited about the idea of home automation.
1:07:18And I think HomeKit needs a lot of work.
1:07:20And specifically there needs to be an app on your iPhone.
1:07:26You must not be forced to download an app from the App Store to access a system feature.
1:07:33And so I look forward to having a proper HomeKit app on my iPhone, maybe next year.
1:07:40But overall I'm really intrigued by the idea of having all these accessories communicating
1:07:46with each other securely, storing credentials in my iCAD account so it's available on all
1:07:54my devices, I can share them with my family.
1:07:57And there is a convenience to be able to ask Siri for this information, you know?
1:08:04And I'm using Siri a lot for this, and I'm happy with the devices, I'm happy with how
1:08:13the framework, the HomeKit framework works behind the scenes, I'm really unhappy with
1:08:19the front end of HomeKit, which is basically non-existent.
1:08:22Yeah, so what front end?
1:08:26Exactly.
1:08:27So the framework I think is a good idea. I think having Siri as a kind of basically Siri like a butler.
1:08:36I can ask Siri for home stuff and it responds. That's cool and that's useful.
1:08:41But the remote access, the front end, the system level exposure of this feature, that needs a lot of work.
1:08:49Yeah, the the hue lights
1:08:51They you can find them here. I've picked up my kit at
1:08:55At Best Buy but on Amazon like they were in stock and now it's sold out again
1:09:01And you can find the old one, but the new one the bridge of course. It's still
1:09:05Like it's still their network hardware on your network
1:09:08But it provides that bridge to home kit as well and so in my review yesterday
1:09:13Like I I show like trying to use Siri to turn the lights off
1:09:17And it works about half the time.
1:09:22The video that I shot yesterday,
1:09:23I actually tried it like four or five times
1:09:25and it didn't do it, so I just left it in
1:09:28'cause I thought it was kind of funny.
1:09:30So that's a little hit or miss,
1:09:32but the Philips app, the Hue app itself is not super great,
1:09:37but there's other third party apps out there.
1:09:41I'm using one just called Hue that is simpler,
1:09:44but does a nice job, and basically you
1:09:47pair it with the bridge and so you open the app
1:09:50and you have to go hit the big,
1:09:51there's a big button on the top of the bridge you push
1:09:54and then they can communicate and kind of do a handshake.
1:09:57And that's all fine.
1:09:58Like the lights themselves are pretty cool,
1:10:02they're the LEDs so they stay cool.
1:10:03They, most cheap LEDs struggle to
1:10:08fill like the full color gamut,
1:10:11so the green on these is not super great.
1:10:15I wish it was better, but it kind of struggles
1:10:19to get it like a nice green color that's bright.
1:10:22But it's really cool, I've got all three
1:10:23in the same floor lamp, and so I can make like,
1:10:27I can mix and match the colors a little bit,
1:10:28I can do scenes, and because they're all kind of
1:10:30in the same corner of the room, it can be really nice.
1:10:33I've got Link to my Review in the show notes.
1:10:36It's the first time I've done a video review, Federico,
1:10:38it was very strange.
1:10:39I like it, but it was a lot of work,
1:10:42and I don't know something I'm experimenting with but the video is nice because you can
1:10:48actually see like how rapidly they work like the second you tap the scene or change the
1:10:53color in the app the bulb responds which is nice.
1:10:58I like you though have had range issues with it where when I started at the bridge was
1:11:02kind of at the other end of the house and I had to end up moving it to the sort of the
1:11:07Secondary I've had a secondary switch at the end of the house where this lamp is and I moved
1:11:12The Phillips bridge down there and it's much more responsive now, so it's definitely like a
1:11:17Range issue I'm a little worried about the eve weather thing
1:11:22I want to put it out on our screen in porch, and I worry that it would not be able to
1:11:27To communicate back to the house, and so I'm gonna. I'm gonna have to play with that
1:11:33But you know all in all it's all really early, like as early as HomeKit feels, this hardware feels early too, like the Philips app
1:11:40like I said, it's okay.
1:11:42It feels like it could be a lot more polished there, and it'll get there, but
1:11:46you know for 200 bucks, like it's, I don't think the Hue Lite kit is worth it yet at that price point, but...
1:11:54I guess it depends whether you buy the Hue set for HomeKit or just as a set, because I bought one
1:12:02last year and we've been super happy with our Philips Hue lights
1:12:07and we use it to set the mood
1:12:10in a room, we use it as a
1:12:14basic light when we like to be able to control from the iPhone
1:12:20we even like to be able to
1:12:23turn on the lights so when we're not home
1:12:26the camera that we use for security
1:12:31can have a better view because when it's dark we can turn on the Philips lights
1:12:35and as a smart set of lights
1:12:39it's fine I think but if you buy it with the primary intention of trying HomeKit
1:12:45I can understand why the issues that you've had lead you to think
1:12:49this is not worth the money so it kinda makes me skeptical to upgrade my Hue
1:12:55bridge
1:12:55because for the past year I don't know if mine is
1:13:00is an isolated case but it's been really stable for us. The Hue app is kind of complex but it works
1:13:08it's really fast when I'm on wi-fi and if you create a Philips account you can turn on the
1:13:16lights remotely over 3G or 4G and it takes a couple of seconds but it gets there. So I've been happy
1:13:23with my Hue lights and they make for a great demo when my friends are at my house. But,
1:13:30you know, we'll see. Steven, can you hold on one second? The plumber is calling me.
1:13:36Sure.
1:13:37Pronto.
1:13:38I'm just going to leave this in to your listener. You can hear Federico argue with this plumber
1:13:44Italian.
1:13:45Yo.
1:13:46That was quick.
1:13:48Yeah, they're going to be here in 15 minutes.
1:13:52So we kind of already answered it a little bit
1:13:54about the is home kit important to Apple.
1:13:56And when I first thought that question,
1:13:59like my thought was, well, it's really slow right now
1:14:02and so it must not be.
1:14:03But typically when Apple adds services to things,
1:14:07it's either like, they're like all in
1:14:10and have like a special like iBooks event
1:14:12with the iPad in New York City,
1:14:14or it's like this where it's like,
1:14:16oh, well, you know, we're talking about it on stage
1:14:18and like the stuff's out there,
1:14:19but it's gonna kind of be a slow burn.
1:14:21I feel like Apple News is this way.
1:14:23We still don't have the Apple News format spec out.
1:14:26They're not really pushing it.
1:14:28Yes, it's on the home screen by default,
1:14:30but I think it'd be wrong to conflate
1:14:35the rollout with the importance level in Apple.
1:14:39I do think Apple believes in this sort of stuff,
1:14:42and I think that they do want the iPhone
1:14:45to be increasingly at the center of everything you do.
1:14:49And if home automation is going to become a thing,
1:14:52why not have the iPhone be the central hub?
1:14:56It's good for Apple.
1:14:57It's good for their customers.
1:14:58Yeah.
1:14:59I think it is important to Apple.
1:15:00It makes total sense to use the iPhone as the hub
1:15:03to access all of this information from your iPhone
1:15:06and to use Siri, because voice is a natural input mechanism
1:15:10to ask for this type of information.
1:15:12It's quick.
1:15:12You can use nicknames for rooms and other commands.
1:15:16It makes sense.
1:15:18the support right now, it's very much in, and I know that Apple doesn't like to use
1:15:22this, but it's a beta, basically. I would say it is a beta. You know, everything from
1:15:26the setup process to not having a dedicated app to the difficulty of finding HomeKit accessories
1:15:33on the Apple Store or on Amazon, you really, you really gotta go out your way to find them.
1:15:40And it's not officially a beta, but it feels like one.
1:15:44Yeah, I agree and I hope that it gets better.
1:15:48Like I would love to be able to have more connected stuff in my house.
1:15:52You know part of this is that the hardware is slow. Apple's going, putting hardware
1:15:56manufacturers through a certification process to make sure everything works
1:16:00as expected, which is important. Like you want your lights to work, you want
1:16:04like your door locks to work, you want it to all be really seamless. And so I'm glad
1:16:08Apple's taking the time to do that. And if that makes this a little bit slower then so be it.
1:16:12be it. But yeah, I think that's all we got this week, Federico.
1:16:19Yeah. I wasn't expecting to talk this much about HomeKit. But yeah, good episode. And
1:16:25I'm sure Myke will listen and he'll decide to go on a HomeKit shopping spree.
1:16:33I think so.
1:16:34That's what he does.
1:16:35That's what he does. So you can find the show notes this week at our website, relay.fm/connected/62.
1:16:4262 you can find the show itself on Twitter at underscore connected FM can
1:16:48find Federico Vitici at maxstories.net where he and his team cover iOS and iOS
1:16:54apps unlike anyone else you can find him on Twitter at Vitici V I T I C C I you
1:17:00can find Myke our yearly departed leader on a bunch of shows at Relay and he is
1:17:05@imike on Twitter and you can find me at 512pixels.net or @ismh on Twitter.
1:17:10Until next time Fedorica, say goodbye.
1:17:14Arrivederci.
1:17:16Adios.