Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 447.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace and TextExpander.

00:00:17 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by a very special guest,

00:00:20 ◼   ► underscore David Smith.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Hi David.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Hello.

00:00:24 ◼   ► So I called you David there.

00:00:25 ◼   ► I always call you Dave.

00:00:27 ◼   ► That just tends to be how I refer to you.

00:00:29 ◼   ► I don't know if Dave is a chosen nickname for you, but I do call you Dave a lot.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Is that okay, Dave?

00:00:35 ◼   ► >> Yeah, totally fine.

00:00:36 ◼   ► I would say most people call me Dave.

00:00:38 ◼   ► I'm like formally David and then informally underscore.

00:00:41 ◼   ► >> Yes, or just under for sure.

00:00:44 ◼   ► You have an honor today.

00:00:46 ◼   ► Do you know what that honor is?

00:00:47 ◼   ► >> I do not know what that, other than being on an upgrade, which is in itself an honor.

00:00:52 ◼   ► >> So Jason's on vacation.

00:00:53 ◼   ► He's on vacation for the next two weeks.

00:00:56 ◼   ► And you are my first guest host of the show.

00:00:59 ◼   ► Well, that is quite an honor.

00:01:01 ◼   ► Quite a special feeling.

00:01:03 ◼   ► There was an episode, I think last year, where Jason went away, but he was still on the episode.

00:01:10 ◼   ► We recorded some stuff in advance and I had a bunch of guests and we did guests like segments.

00:01:15 ◼   ► So you are the first person to fill in for Jason in full in the 447 episodes that we've

00:01:22 ◼   ► been doing this show.

00:01:23 ◼   ► Well, I will do my best.

00:01:25 ◼   ► I bring the big guns, you know?

00:01:27 ◼   ► When I need a good guest host, I bring an underscore.

00:01:31 ◼   ► And I have a Smith Talk question for you

00:01:33 ◼   ► to start this week's episode of the show.

00:01:35 ◼   ► Peter wants to know, how did you settle on the underscore

00:01:40 ◼   ► for your online handle?

00:01:41 ◼   ► Where did that come from?

00:01:43 ◼   ► - Sure, so as you might imagine, having a name,

00:01:46 ◼   ► David Smith, it is quite popular.

00:01:49 ◼   ► There are many of us in the world.

00:01:52 ◼   ► It has caused all manner of challenge

00:01:54 ◼   ► and hilarity over the course of my life,

00:01:57 ◼   ► having a name that is, I think, by many measures,

00:02:00 ◼   ► perhaps the most popular name in the world,

00:02:03 ◼   ► certainly in the English-speaking world.

00:02:06 ◼   ► And it has definitely been interesting.

00:02:09 ◼   ► So whenever I sign onto a new service,

00:02:11 ◼   ► so in this case, where the story starts was on Twitter,

00:02:14 ◼   ► I was signing up for an account there.

00:02:16 ◼   ► Obviously, I couldn't get @DavidSmith.

00:02:18 ◼   ► That would have been, or even DaveSmith.

00:02:20 ◼   ► No version of my name would have been available.

00:02:23 ◼   ► And I believe the best I could do,

00:02:27 ◼   ► and I'm not a big fan of throwing numbers

00:02:28 ◼   ► at the end of my handle or anything like that.

00:02:31 ◼   ► That's not gonna work.

00:02:33 ◼   ► So I did the David Smith initially, which was available.

00:02:38 ◼   ► And then maybe two days later,

00:02:41 ◼   ► and this isn't, I mean, I had no followers.

00:02:45 ◼   ► It was no anything.

00:02:45 ◼   ► It was just me trying to see what Twitter was.

00:02:49 ◼   ► And then two days later, my shyness

00:02:52 ◼   ► kind of kicked in and I was like, ooh, that sounds kind of presumptuous. Like, I'm the

00:03:00 ◼   ► David Smith, like all the other David Smiths. No, no, no. They're not the one you want.

00:03:04 ◼   ► I'm the one. And so I was like, ooh, yeah, and I'm going to be a little I'm too shy for that.

00:03:08 ◼   ► So instead, I was like, realizing that, oh, you can actually just like throw underscores

00:03:12 ◼   ► into Twitter as and that's a valid character. And so I just replaced the the with an underscore.

00:03:18 ◼   ► and it became, you know, underscore David Smith.

00:03:21 ◼   ► And then I think the nickname itself kind of got started

00:03:23 ◼   ► by Marco Arment who started referring to me

00:03:26 ◼   ► as just underscore on build and analyze.

00:03:29 ◼   ► This is probably like, I don't know,

00:03:31 ◼   ► whatever that is.

00:03:32 ◼   ► - It's ancient history now.

00:03:34 ◼   ► - It's like 10, 12 years ago.

00:03:36 ◼   ► And that's just what he would refer to me as,

00:03:37 ◼   ► it's like underscore.

00:03:38 ◼   ► And then it just, it stuck because rather than saying

00:03:41 ◼   ► underscore David Smith, you just say underscore.

00:03:42 ◼   ► And it works well as a nickname

00:03:44 ◼   ► and has kind of stuck with me ever since.

00:03:45 ◼   ► And I appreciate it because I mean, even in Apple, like the Apple world, there are other

00:03:50 ◼   ► David Smith's like there's an Apple, there's a David Smith who works at Apple, who works

00:03:54 ◼   ► on foundation.

00:03:56 ◼   ► And that has caused challenges for both of us over the last few years.

00:03:59 ◼   ► So you know, just being underscore being it that that's a great way to kind of differentiate

00:04:03 ◼   ► between myself and the other David Smith's out there.

00:04:06 ◼   ► You didn't consider like David Smith official or anything like that, you know, like you

00:04:10 ◼   ► went for the David Smith thing, but the real David Smith.

00:04:13 ◼   ► - No, yeah, I mean, those are even more presumptive,

00:04:16 ◼   ► I think, so.

00:04:17 ◼   ► - I really like that you went with the

00:04:20 ◼   ► and then changed your mind.

00:04:22 ◼   ► I'm happy you changed your mind, but that is very fun.

00:04:25 ◼   ► And I will say as well,

00:04:26 ◼   ► if you would have been able to claim David Smith on Twitter,

00:04:29 ◼   ► that wouldn't have been a good thing for you, right?

00:04:30 ◼   ► 'Cause you wouldn't have been the same everywhere else,

00:04:33 ◼   ► right, like you wouldn't have got that handle

00:04:35 ◼   ► in other places.

00:04:36 ◼   ► If you would like to send in a question

00:04:41 ◼   ► to help us open a future episode of the show.

00:04:43 ◼   ► I'll say in advance next week's guest

00:04:45 ◼   ► is the one and only Casey Liss.

00:04:47 ◼   ► So if you would like to send in a Liss talk question

00:04:50 ◼   ► for next week's episode, just go to upgradefeedback.com

00:04:54 ◼   ► and you can submit that.

00:04:55 ◼   ► Thank you to everybody that does send in these questions

00:04:58 ◼   ► every single week.

00:04:59 ◼   ► Saddle up, David Smith,

00:05:03 ◼   ► 'cause we're heading down for a rumor round up.

00:05:06 ◼   ► Yee-haw.

00:05:07 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:05:08 ◼   ► - Someone finally gives me what I'm looking for.

00:05:11 ◼   ► I have a report from Digitimes

00:05:13 ◼   ► that the 15 inch MacBook Air is set to launch

00:05:16 ◼   ► in Q2 of this year.

00:05:19 ◼   ► As of right now, it is unclear if these machines

00:05:22 ◼   ► will see an M3 chip or they'll be sticking

00:05:25 ◼   ► with the M2 chips.

00:05:26 ◼   ► So Dave, I know that you were a big fan

00:05:29 ◼   ► of the 12 inch MacBook, right?

00:05:31 ◼   ► I know that there are stories told of you sliding one

00:05:34 ◼   ► inside of an inside jacket pocket.

00:05:36 ◼   ► So I'm assuming a bigger MacBook Air

00:05:39 ◼   ► is not necessarily of interest to you,

00:05:42 ◼   ► but I do wonder what you think about this product

00:05:44 ◼   ► entering the lineup.

00:05:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I think this feel,

00:05:49 ◼   ► A, it's just kind of interesting to transition away

00:05:52 ◼   ► from Air being small.

00:05:56 ◼   ► Initially, I would say when the Air first launched,

00:05:58 ◼   ► it was one of its big things that was small enough

00:06:00 ◼   ► to fit in a envelope.

00:06:02 ◼   ► That's how it was reversed revealed.

00:06:03 ◼   ► And I think Air has now sort of just--

00:06:08 ◼   ► instead been sort of basic or initial

00:06:12 ◼   ► rather than having the sense of it being always the smallest.

00:06:15 ◼   ► And so introducing a big MacBook Air

00:06:18 ◼   ► is kind of an interesting evolution of that name,

00:06:22 ◼   ► and I think probably is representative of where

00:06:24 ◼   ► this falls in the lineup now.

00:06:27 ◼   ► Whereas I don't think--

00:06:29 ◼   ► it's not necessarily related to its size anymore.

00:06:32 ◼   ► I think people think of a MacBook Air

00:06:34 ◼   ► as the entry level MacBook.

00:06:37 ◼   ► That if you want an Apple laptop

00:06:39 ◼   ► and you don't wanna spend a lot of money

00:06:40 ◼   ► or you don't have huge needs for it,

00:06:43 ◼   ► that's what you get, is you get a MacBook Air.

00:06:45 ◼   ► And I think that could make some sense

00:06:46 ◼   ► as to why they would introduce a bigger one

00:06:49 ◼   ► as another way to kind of increase their margins.

00:06:53 ◼   ► Presumably it'll cost 100 or $200 or $300 more

00:06:57 ◼   ► than the smaller size.

00:06:59 ◼   ► And I think the thing that it really makes me curious with this is like, is it going

00:07:05 ◼   ► to fall to the same fate as the the 14 plus this last iPhone cycle where they took the

00:07:13 ◼   ► base and added a bigger version of it and it has not been selling nearly as well as

00:07:19 ◼   ► I think perhaps Apple would have liked or expected it to that it continues, I think,

00:07:24 ◼   ► being outsold by the just the iPhone 14 like three to one in my stats like for my apps

00:07:29 ◼   ► and it I can't imagine that's what they hoped for for this device and I think it's interesting

00:07:33 ◼   ► with this is like are people buying the air and it's it's so popular because it's cheap

00:07:39 ◼   ► or because it's an error and if they're buying because it's an error and they love the error

00:07:43 ◼   ► always the error but bigger would be great if really what they want is cheap then it

00:07:48 ◼   ► may not actually be as compelling of a device and so I think that's what I'm really curious

00:07:53 ◼   ► to see with this sort of a larger air to see if it is actually successful

00:07:57 ◼   ► or if people are actually just they'll just be they'd rather get,

00:08:00 ◼   ► you know, a basic MacBook Pro if they want a bigger device,

00:08:04 ◼   ► because they want the power and the other capabilities of that.

00:08:08 ◼   ► And this may actually not have great fit, but you'll have to wait and see.

00:08:12 ◼   ► As you mentioned, it does strike me that this is an interesting product

00:08:16 ◼   ► to add to the lineup, no matter how it falls. Right.

00:08:19 ◼   ► Where it's like either scenario a that it's just not popular

00:08:23 ◼   ► because people want to get the MacBook Pro in the same way that they do the Pro iPhone.

00:08:27 ◼   ► Or option B, people buy the 15-inch MacBook Air instead of a MacBook Pro.

00:08:31 ◼   ► So it's like, you know, like either way that it falls, it's an interesting,

00:08:36 ◼   ► there is a potential interesting downside. I guess Apple is expecting that a 15-inch MacBook Air may

00:08:42 ◼   ► bring more people into the MacBook Air line that would otherwise be elsewhere. I do wonder,

00:08:48 ◼   ► like there's, it's an interesting thing that you pose about the iPhone, if it will stretch over.

00:08:52 ◼   ► My gut feeling is that people buy the Pro iPhones because they want the best iPhone.

00:08:59 ◼   ► Where when it comes to laptops, I'm not sure if they're the same status symbol.

00:09:04 ◼   ► I think a lot of people would just want a bigger screen for their laptop.

00:09:09 ◼   ► And so they would get the MacBook Air.

00:09:11 ◼   ► But I don't know.

00:09:13 ◼   ► And similarly, will this become the standard issue laptop from corporations?

00:09:18 ◼   ► corporations, because it seems to be that MacBook Pro's are, or as we found out when

00:09:24 ◼   ► I got 700,000 people right in to me that the 16 inch MacBook Pro tends to be a pretty standard

00:09:30 ◼   ► issue.

00:09:31 ◼   ► We'll find out.

00:09:32 ◼   ► But either way, I am happy that Apple is continuing to expand the line, but it is going to be

00:09:37 ◼   ► fascinating to see what fate this product ends up having.

00:09:41 ◼   ► Exactly, yeah.

00:09:42 ◼   ► The 9to5 mac reports that they have obtained renders of the upcoming iPhone 15 Pro.

00:09:49 ◼   ► I'll tell you what we see here.

00:09:56 ◼   ► So we see a USB C port, a thicker camera bump, which we had expected, but it is worth noting

00:10:04 ◼   ► this is the pro model, not the pro max, where we are expected to see even more changes from

00:10:09 ◼   ► periscope lens I expect it will be even bigger. And then there are a couple of

00:10:14 ◼   ► things that are newish here from some of the stuff we've been talking

00:10:17 ◼   ► about recently. So there have been some rumors of the volume and the sleep/wake

00:10:23 ◼   ► button becoming capacitive with haptic feedback kind of like the old touch ID

00:10:28 ◼   ► button rather than a clicky button. And 9to5 say that these renders indicate to

00:10:33 ◼   ► them this would be the case. And also the glass on the screen so like on the

00:10:38 ◼   ► front of the device features more of a curve to the frame of the phone making it a smoother

00:10:45 ◼   ► transition with the frame itself carrying more of that curve.

00:10:49 ◼   ► So rather than these very harsh, straight, flat sides and sharp corners, the iPhone might

00:10:55 ◼   ► get a bit rounder and softer in its feel again.

00:10:59 ◼   ► Does any of this intrigue you at all, Dave?

00:11:02 ◼   ► - I mean, I think it's such a tricky thing

00:11:06 ◼   ► where I feel like the physical shape

00:11:10 ◼   ► and dimensions of iPhones,

00:11:12 ◼   ► I don't think matter very much to anyone.

00:11:16 ◼   ► I mean, I think there are people who care about that,

00:11:19 ◼   ► but I don't think the vast majority of people,

00:11:20 ◼   ► myself included, really don't care too much.

00:11:24 ◼   ► Like I buy an iPhone, it goes into a case.

00:11:26 ◼   ► I never really see the shape of the phone again.

00:11:28 ◼   ► Like it's the entire, my entire experience of it

00:11:32 ◼   ► is the quality of the screen and, I guess,

00:11:35 ◼   ► the physical dimensions, like the width and height

00:11:39 ◼   ► of the screen.

00:11:40 ◼   ► But beyond that, having a slightly thicker camera bump

00:11:43 ◼   ► or having curves that are slightly more rounded,

00:11:47 ◼   ► I just don't-- it's the kind of rumor

00:11:50 ◼   ► or the kind of aspects of a device that doesn't particularly

00:11:53 ◼   ► seem to matter.

00:11:54 ◼   ► Because there are people who use their phone without a case,

00:11:57 ◼   ► but they are few and far between.

00:11:59 ◼   ► And as soon as you put it in a case,

00:12:00 ◼   ► having a slightly more curved transition. Like if anything, it makes me wonder, it's

00:12:04 ◼   ► like, Oh, is this going to make it harder to put on a screen protector or those types

00:12:07 ◼   ► of things where, you know, if you have the more rounded you make things, the harder those

00:12:12 ◼   ► types of things become. And when I think of the capacitive, the buttons potentially going

00:12:17 ◼   ► capacitive, it's like, I just hope they work. Like, especially, I mean, the, the volume

00:12:20 ◼   ► ones I'm less worried about. I feel like I use those and those are used much less frequently

00:12:26 ◼   ► in the sleep wake button, which is,

00:12:29 ◼   ► I probably am pushing that hundreds of times in a day

00:12:33 ◼   ► to sleep my phone when I'm about to put it in my pocket.

00:12:36 ◼   ► And if it's not 100% reliable,

00:12:38 ◼   ► like if that's 99% reliable, it's gonna be annoying

00:12:42 ◼   ► because that 1% is many times in a day.

00:12:46 ◼   ► And so it's like, it sounds reasonable.

00:12:49 ◼   ► That's interesting that it doesn't seem

00:12:50 ◼   ► like it's a dramatic year.

00:12:52 ◼   ► It's still, I feel like we've been

00:12:53 ◼   ► on the same general design language for these phones

00:12:56 ◼   ► for this will be what the third ish year third or fourth year.

00:13:00 ◼   ► >> I found 12 was the first one that had this kind of design on it.

00:13:03 ◼   ► >> Yeah. It's a slight change, but it feels much more like we've had, I think maybe this

00:13:07 ◼   ► was the seven or there was a period where it was like they just kept, they started with

00:13:12 ◼   ► a basic design and they just kept rounding things off.

00:13:14 ◼   ► >> Yeah. That was the side with the six.

00:13:18 ◼   ► >> And so like that seems to where we're going, but it's like, it's fine. Like, I mean, the

00:13:22 ◼   ► reality is, it's like I'm always excited for new iPhones because the shape of it is not

00:13:28 ◼   ► the interesting part. It's what's going inside that shape. And what, you know, it's like

00:13:31 ◼   ► if you make the camera bump a thicker, that's exciting because the camera is going to be

00:13:34 ◼   ► better. And that's always exciting for me. But, you know, the seeing the physical dimensions

00:13:39 ◼   ► of it is just kind of like, it doesn't really matter. And I'm always excited when like,

00:13:44 ◼   ► make that camera bump as thick as you want. Like, just go wild with it because, you know,

00:13:49 ◼   ► I'm the kind of person who has an iPhone and a card case.

00:13:51 ◼   ► So, you know, my case is super thick anyway, so it doesn't even matter to me.

00:13:55 ◼   ► It's like make that as you put it, you can put a, you know, like a,

00:13:59 ◼   ► you know, like a like a like a thickness camera, like a camera,

00:14:02 ◼   ► the thickness of a like a camera in there and I'd be happy.

00:14:04 ◼   ► Like, I don't care.

00:14:05 ◼   ► I just, you know, give me awesome pictures.

00:14:07 ◼   ► That's awesome.

00:14:08 ◼   ► There's one. Well, I have three faults now.

00:14:11 ◼   ► I just have a different one.

00:14:12 ◼   ► One, I hope that they don't get rid of the switch for the mute.

00:14:16 ◼   ► Like if everything's going to be like capacitive

00:14:20 ◼   ► or like I guess kind of solid state, right?

00:14:22 ◼   ► Like there's no physical movement.

00:14:25 ◼   ► I'm worried about the mute switch.

00:14:27 ◼   ► 'Cause that is a very important,

00:14:29 ◼   ► like just you know it's muted, right?

00:14:32 ◼   ► You can just put your hand in your pocket

00:14:33 ◼   ► and feel that the phone is on mute.

00:14:37 ◼   ► I would be sad if they got rid of that.

00:14:39 ◼   ► Two, I wouldn't mind this at the moment

00:14:41 ◼   ► because right now on my current iPhone 14 Pro Max,

00:14:45 ◼   ► the sleep/wake button has become a little spongy.

00:14:48 ◼   ► I don't know what's happened.

00:14:49 ◼   ► Maybe I spilled something on my phone.

00:14:51 ◼   ► I don't know what's going on,

00:14:52 ◼   ► but it's now not working very reliably,

00:14:55 ◼   ► so I wouldn't mind it if nothing could get in there.

00:14:58 ◼   ► - Sure.

00:14:59 ◼   ► - And then this is more of kind of like an existential thing.

00:15:02 ◼   ► I was thinking about this the other day.

00:15:03 ◼   ► I don't use a case on my phone, right?

00:15:05 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:15:06 ◼   ► - And I enjoy that feeling,

00:15:07 ◼   ► but really everybody, by and large,

00:15:11 ◼   ► does use a case on their phone, right?

00:15:13 ◼   ► I feel like I'm in a tiny percentage.

00:15:16 ◼   ► Why do they make these things out of glass still?

00:15:20 ◼   ► Like if everybody's just gonna put a case on it,

00:15:23 ◼   ► like, and we all know that and Apple knows that

00:15:26 ◼   ► and they want you to buy cases,

00:15:28 ◼   ► like, well, obviously they want you to buy cases,

00:15:30 ◼   ► but like why did we continue to make these products,

00:15:33 ◼   ► at least especially the back of them,

00:15:35 ◼   ► out of a breakable material,

00:15:37 ◼   ► if everyone's gonna put a case on it

00:15:39 ◼   ► to stop their phone from breaking if they drop it?

00:15:42 ◼   ► - It's just an interesting thought, Diane.

00:15:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it'd be like, it's almost like they're trying

00:15:47 ◼   ► to optimize for that experience of going

00:15:50 ◼   ► into an Apple store, picking the one up off the desk

00:15:53 ◼   ► and holding it in your hand.

00:15:55 ◼   ► And that being feeling premium, that feeling beautiful

00:15:59 ◼   ► in a way that is not actually representative of, you know,

00:16:01 ◼   ► your actual use of it.

00:16:03 ◼   ► It's almost like if the display model was glass

00:16:05 ◼   ► and then the one that you could buy came

00:16:06 ◼   ► with the plastic back, like I'd be perfectly happy

00:16:08 ◼   ► with that, like I'd love it if my phone was

00:16:11 ◼   ► a little bit lighter and was much more durable.

00:16:14 ◼   ► Like that sounds a great trade off to me,

00:16:16 ◼   ► but I could understand not wanting to have people

00:16:18 ◼   ► pick up the phone in the Apple store

00:16:21 ◼   ► and have it feel less premium,

00:16:22 ◼   ► to have it feel like it's plastic.

00:16:25 ◼   ► Like there's just-- - This is so strange, right?

00:16:26 ◼   ► 'Cause like everyone's popping off

00:16:28 ◼   ► in the live Discord right now telling me

00:16:29 ◼   ► that it's for signal, it's for wireless charging.

00:16:32 ◼   ► But all of these things work through plastic cases, right?

00:16:34 ◼   ► So that's obviously not the reason.

00:16:35 ◼   ► And it is this strange thing of like,

00:16:38 ◼   ► I believe you, like what you're saying,

00:16:41 ◼   ► I believe that is the case, right?

00:16:42 ◼   ► That they do it because you want the thing to feel premium,

00:16:45 ◼   ► but then if you're gonna put a case on it,

00:16:47 ◼   ► what does it matter, you know?

00:16:49 ◼   ► Just like, I would like it if Apple started

00:16:54 ◼   ► to experiment with this stuff,

00:16:56 ◼   ► but in a way that made sense.

00:16:58 ◼   ► 'Cause a couple of years ago,

00:16:59 ◼   ► Samsung put a plastic back on one of their mainline phones,

00:17:04 ◼   ► people lost their mind.

00:17:06 ◼   ► And I was disappointed in them,

00:17:07 ◼   ► because they didn't change the price, right?

00:17:08 ◼   ► Like it was still the same price as it would have been

00:17:11 ◼   ► if it had glass on it is how it appeared.

00:17:14 ◼   ► So that would be the thing, right?

00:17:15 ◼   ► If they were gonna do that,

00:17:17 ◼   ► it would have to be some kind of balance,

00:17:18 ◼   ► which is probably why they'll never do it.

00:17:20 ◼   ► But still, it was just like a funny thought to me.

00:17:22 ◼   ► Like they put all this time and effort and money

00:17:25 ◼   ► and we pay all this money on these expensive materials,

00:17:28 ◼   ► but then you just put plastic case around it

00:17:29 ◼   ► and never think about it.

00:17:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:17:32 ◼   ► This device is also, you skipped over,

00:17:34 ◼   ► it's also seems to confirm that it's USB-C,

00:17:36 ◼   ► which I think is also a pretty nice confirmation

00:17:39 ◼   ► that that's actually seems to be coming this year

00:17:42 ◼   ► rather than at some point in the future,

00:17:44 ◼   ► like after if Apple fights the EU or whatever,

00:17:47 ◼   ► like it seems like, nope,

00:17:49 ◼   ► it seems this is gonna be the year

00:17:50 ◼   ► that it's gonna go USB-C and Lightning will be behind us.

00:17:54 ◼   ► - At least on the Pro phones,

00:17:56 ◼   ► I expect that it will be USB-C on the Pro phones this year

00:18:00 ◼   ► and then on everything next year.

00:18:02 ◼   ► I reckon that's how they'll do it.

00:18:03 ◼   ► just to try and get the last advantage they can get

00:18:08 ◼   ► from USB-C, right, to be like,

00:18:11 ◼   ► "Oh, it's an upsell for just one year."

00:18:14 ◼   ► And then it will trickle out to everything.

00:18:17 ◼   ► I have a question for you actually, as a developer.

00:18:19 ◼   ► Do you think and do you want the regular phones,

00:18:22 ◼   ► the regular iPhone 15 to get the Dynamic Island this year?

00:18:25 ◼   ► - I think, I mean, yes, I think is certainly

00:18:29 ◼   ► the answer to that.

00:18:29 ◼   ► Just in so, the Dynamic Island is such a weird feature

00:18:33 ◼   ► that it's really hard to explain or to be excited about it unless you use a phone that

00:18:42 ◼   ► has it.

00:18:44 ◼   ► Like it's a very-- and this is just something I found from-- I mean, I've been doing a lot

00:18:48 ◼   ► of work recently with adding Dynamic Island support to one of my apps.

00:18:52 ◼   ► And when I'm explaining the feature to people, they kind of don't really get it unless they

00:18:57 ◼   ► hold it in their hands and can actually see what's happening.

00:19:00 ◼   ► that when you explain, well, you know, like while you're going to other apps, the small,

00:19:04 ◼   ► tiny version of your app will be visible in the top in the top of the screen. And you

00:19:07 ◼   ► can go long press on that to see it or tap it to go to that app. And there's a sort of

00:19:11 ◼   ► a complexity to that that I think is really hard to explain. And so expanding the number

00:19:16 ◼   ► of phones that can support that that can do that. It's like if this is a feature that

00:19:21 ◼   ► Apple wants broad and wide developer support for, you know, making that a wide features

00:19:29 ◼   ► I think is the only way that that's gonna happen.

00:19:30 ◼   ► And I feel like the Dynamic Island,

00:19:33 ◼   ► I mean, we're, what are we, four or five months on

00:19:35 ◼   ► since it was first introduced.

00:19:37 ◼   ► And I wouldn't say that as a developer feature,

00:19:39 ◼   ► it's sort of really caught on in a big broad way.

00:19:42 ◼   ► There's a couple of use cases for it here and there.

00:19:44 ◼   ► There's some apps support it,

00:19:45 ◼   ► but it doesn't seem to have had that.

00:19:47 ◼   ► And I think part of that is,

00:19:49 ◼   ► it hasn't had a big moment.

00:19:51 ◼   ► It wasn't like when it first came out,

00:19:53 ◼   ► it was very exciting and trending

00:19:54 ◼   ► and all those kinds of features.

00:19:56 ◼   ► And I think that's partly because it's only on the high end phone of the current generation.

00:20:02 ◼   ► And so it's going to be a long time.

00:20:03 ◼   ► And if they keep it in the pro phones, it's going to be even longer before it's going

00:20:08 ◼   ► to get there because none of the sort of hand me down or I guess like whatever you would

00:20:13 ◼   ► call the second tier phones next year where, you know, at some point the iPhone 14 is going

00:20:19 ◼   ► to be $100 less and move down in the line.

00:20:22 ◼   ► It's not going to have it.

00:20:23 ◼   ► If they don't get it into those base models that stick around forever,

00:20:27 ◼   ► it's just never going to be anywhere.

00:20:29 ◼   ► Then at some point, it turns into a touch bar or something where it's

00:20:32 ◼   ► this feature that is technically cool and interesting in some ways,

00:20:36 ◼   ► but just never really catches on.

00:20:37 ◼   ► That would be, I think, a sad fate for the dynamic island.

00:20:40 ◼   ► >> I agree. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at TextExpander.

00:20:47 ◼   ► When you work in a small team,

00:20:49 ◼   ► every single moment counts because you don't want to be wasting

00:20:52 ◼   ► your time finding video conferencing details to send to a new client. You don't want to

00:20:56 ◼   ► have to spend a ton of time tracking down the same questions to answer for the FAQs

00:21:01 ◼   ► that are on your company website. In fact, just today, Dave sent me a message and was

00:21:05 ◼   ► like, "Are we going to use Zoom for this?" And I said yes, and I typed ZZOO on my keyboard

00:21:11 ◼   ► and it just prefilled the message with my Zoom link because I just have that saved so

00:21:15 ◼   ► I can very easily send someone my Zoom link when I need them to join a Zoom call with

00:21:19 ◼   ► me.

00:21:20 ◼   ► These are the kinds of things you want at your fingertips, so you can get your work

00:21:23 ◼   ► done faster and easier.

00:21:25 ◼   ► That is why you need TextExpander.

00:21:26 ◼   ► With TextExpander you can access what you type the most with just a few keystrokes,

00:21:31 ◼   ► allowing you to work faster and eliminate repetition, so you can focus on what matters

00:21:35 ◼   ► most or get back to what it was you were doing.

00:21:38 ◼   ► TextExpander's powerful shortcuts and abbreviations streamline the work of your team as well.

00:21:43 ◼   ► All you have to do is type that short abbreviation and let TextExpander do the rest.

00:21:47 ◼   ► You can all just build and collect your most commonly used phrases, messages, URLs and

00:21:51 ◼   ► more right within TextExpander, choose your abbreviations and they'll be with you and

00:21:56 ◼   ► your team wherever you're typing.

00:21:58 ◼   ► You can even customise the snippets to make them feel more personal.

00:22:01 ◼   ► You can add in dates, fill in the blank fields, timestamps and more.

00:22:05 ◼   ► TextExpander is available on any device that you use, across any app that you use, on the

00:22:09 ◼   ► Mac, Windows, Chrome and iOS.

00:22:12 ◼   ► If repetitive typing is getting you down, you need TextExpander.

00:22:15 ◼   ► Check out TextExpander today at textexpander.com/upgrade and you can get 20% off your first year.

00:22:21 ◼   ► We also use TextExpander here at Relay FM across the team to make sure that everyone

00:22:25 ◼   ► has access to the information they need and to keep our responses similar across multiple

00:22:29 ◼   ► people.

00:22:31 ◼   ► That is TextExpander.com/upgrade.

00:22:34 ◼   ► Go there today to find out how you can get 20% off your first year and to say goodbye

00:22:38 ◼   ► to repetitive typing.

00:22:39 ◼   ► Our thanks to TextExpander for their support of this show and Relay FM.

00:22:43 ◼   ► Apple's

00:22:51 ◼   ► WWDC this year. Apple made the decision to delay the launch earlier this month after

00:22:58 ◼   ► product testing showed that both hardware and software issues still need to be ironed

00:23:02 ◼   ► out. Apple has been working to fix issues with sensors on the device to enable the hand

00:23:07 ◼   ► and eye control mechanism. It's also trying to strike a balance between battery life and

00:23:13 ◼   ► performance.

00:23:14 ◼   ► I would say on this one, considering this was supposed to be a march is what the original

00:23:19 ◼   ► rumor was, feels like they're cutting this one really close if they're still making these

00:23:24 ◼   ► decisions about the hardware maybe not being where they want it to be, right?

00:23:27 ◼   ► >> Yeah, I mean, even WDC is close. I mean, I think I was on a calendar and based on like

00:23:34 ◼   ► the most likely day, if WDC is the first Monday in June, that's like 105 days from now. I

00:23:40 ◼   ► mean, if the hardware isn't final, like it's not going to be, you know, you're not going

00:23:44 ◼   ► to be mass producing these in 105 days if you haven't locked in the hardware at this

00:23:48 ◼   ► point. So I mean, in general, it feels super, like down to the wire. And I mean, they keep

00:23:54 ◼   ► moving this forward in a way that I mean, obviously, they haven't they've never announced

00:23:57 ◼   ► anything. So it's always just like, entirely speculative. But it seems externally based

00:24:01 ◼   ► on the rumors that it continuously is getting pushed forward and forward and forward. And

00:24:05 ◼   ► it's like, at some point, you just kind of have this feeling of like, man, like, how

00:24:08 ◼   ► are they how are they ever going to get across the line if they just, you know, it's like,

00:24:11 ◼   ► every time they get close, it just gets kind of pushed out another three, three months,

00:24:15 ◼   ► another six months, whatever it is,

00:24:16 ◼   ► I can imagine that genuinely the reason they've chosen WWDC, it is the very end point.

00:24:22 ◼   ► Because this is, whatever it is, they're not going to be shipping these things in July, right?

00:24:28 ◼   ► Like they will start shipping towards the end of the year.

00:24:31 ◼   ► But if the plan is for this product to make sense, they have to be able to show

00:24:37 ◼   ► developers what the operating system is at WWDC this year.

00:24:41 ◼   ► Like if they're not doing that, you might as well wait another year.

00:24:44 ◼   ► and I don't think they have that ability anymore.

00:24:47 ◼   ► 'Cause I feel like, I mean, you can correct me if I'm wrong,

00:24:49 ◼   ► I feel like as we are leading up towards this,

00:24:52 ◼   ► thinking about what potentially could be

00:24:54 ◼   ► on the roadmap this year,

00:24:56 ◼   ► what all of the rumors seem to be pointing towards,

00:24:58 ◼   ► this is the focus of 2023, especially for developers.

00:25:03 ◼   ► So if they don't have it,

00:25:05 ◼   ► there won't be a lot for people to get busy with.

00:25:09 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:25:11 ◼   ► And I mean, that's always so hard to tell.

00:25:13 ◼   ► Like, I mean, I would say the software teams at Apple are so are by far the quietest, most

00:25:18 ◼   ► secretive groups.

00:25:19 ◼   ► And so like, there could be other amazing things down the road.

00:25:23 ◼   ► I think there is certainly a lot of indication that I mean, even just from a conceptual perspective,

00:25:27 ◼   ► if Apple is launching a whole new platform, that whole new platform is almost certainly

00:25:32 ◼   ► going to be a focus of WDC.

00:25:34 ◼   ► That's where they're going to because that's just there's the most to educate developers

00:25:38 ◼   ► about.

00:25:39 ◼   ► And WDC is functionally a education event.

00:25:41 ◼   ► It is about them communicating to developers what they should be aware of, how they can

00:25:47 ◼   ► actually use it, and that's the venue for the -- and they have other ways they can do

00:25:52 ◼   ► that.

00:25:53 ◼   ► Like, if they didn't make WWDC and they instead launched this in September, they could do

00:25:57 ◼   ► tech talks and they can do videos, especially since WWDC is much more virtual now.

00:26:01 ◼   ► I mean, I think the big thing they would miss out on is, presumably if they have an event

00:26:04 ◼   ► to WWDC with this announced is the developers who are there in person and the invited guests

00:26:12 ◼   ► and all of that will be able to try it out to experiment with it.

00:26:17 ◼   ► You could imagine having onsite labs where developers could use this before it actually

00:26:24 ◼   ► is available.

00:26:25 ◼   ► It's the kind of device where I'm really curious that they're going to do kind of a development

00:26:30 ◼   ► version of this where developers can buy it ahead of time, you know, like they have done

00:26:35 ◼   ► with like the Apple Silicon Max or some of the other devices or if it's going to be,

00:26:39 ◼   ► you know, in order to use this, you have to be on site at Apple and they may have like

00:26:43 ◼   ► onsite labs throughout the year. But I mean, having it ready by WDC gets rid of a lot of

00:26:48 ◼   ► the initial complexity of that because you're going to bring, you know, whatever, a thousand

00:26:53 ◼   ► developers into one place. And so you can show it to them, you can have them try it

00:26:57 ◼   ► on and it seems the kind of device that no matter how good your simulator is that you

00:27:02 ◼   ► can run on your Mac, it is not going to give you nearly the sort of the impression of how

00:27:06 ◼   ► the device will actually work in practice because the whole point of it is that it's

00:27:10 ◼   ► kind of revolutionary as a display technology.

00:27:13 ◼   ► And so, you know, it just doesn't really work that way.

00:27:16 ◼   ► And it does feel like the longer it is until they announce it, the less likely I believe

00:27:22 ◼   ► that there would be developer kits.

00:27:24 ◼   ► Like if there's not showing it until this time, until June, I don't imagine they would

00:27:30 ◼   ► be like, hey, come here and get a developer kit and it'd be like a hardware unit.

00:27:34 ◼   ► I mean, it would be incredibly helpful if Apple can do that, but I don't know how that's

00:27:40 ◼   ► going to shake out.

00:27:42 ◼   ► And I would imagine that for something like this, especially, a development kit would

00:27:47 ◼   ► be really helpful for you, right?

00:27:49 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:27:50 ◼   ► I mean, I think it's the only it's going to be a really difficult device to develop for

00:27:56 ◼   ► without something like that. I think you can do the basics, but actually experiencing like

00:28:02 ◼   ► the experiencing the device is going to be so important. I mean, obviously, and they

00:28:06 ◼   ► could do things where you can run it with like a quest or something like you could use

00:28:10 ◼   ► other kinds of VR devices to get some impression of it. But that seems very on Apple like to

00:28:15 ◼   ► to you know, that the developer kit is here just, you know, use this competitors device

00:28:19 ◼   ► and it'll kind of give you some of the impression of it.

00:28:22 ◼   ► I think they would want developers developing

00:28:24 ◼   ► on their hardware, taking advantage of the things

00:28:26 ◼   ► that only Apple can do, that are,

00:28:30 ◼   ► oh, you couldn't do this on a Quest

00:28:32 ◼   ► because we have fancier screens or better processing

00:28:35 ◼   ► or whatever that thing is.

00:28:37 ◼   ► And so they've also done onsite developer things before

00:28:42 ◼   ► with other devices, like the Apple Watch,

00:28:45 ◼   ► where there was no developer kit Apple Watch.

00:28:47 ◼   ► They had an early access thing

00:28:49 ◼   ► where if you were a developer,

00:28:50 ◼   ► once they were available for public sale,

00:28:52 ◼   ► you could buy it from the developer team

00:28:56 ◼   ► to get around supply chain issues

00:28:58 ◼   ► where it was in short supply.

00:29:00 ◼   ► But that's a very different thing.

00:29:02 ◼   ► But before that, even they had some onsite labs

00:29:04 ◼   ► where people could go and try out the Apple Watch

00:29:07 ◼   ► ahead of time, which I could see working with this.

00:29:09 ◼   ► But I mean, it's just such a complicated device.

00:29:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, but if there's one platform,

00:29:15 ◼   ► we don't want to feel like it's the Apple Watch

00:29:18 ◼   ► when it comes to development, right?

00:29:19 ◼   ► Like that was a really tough, really tough version one

00:29:24 ◼   ► and the apps were not running very well for a long time,

00:29:29 ◼   ► right, and it was because of, was it,

00:29:31 ◼   ► watch kit, was that the name of it then?

00:29:33 ◼   ► - Yes, watch kit one.

00:29:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, so it wasn't even really a full OS, right?

00:29:40 ◼   ► Like things weren't running on the device,

00:29:42 ◼   ► I'm trying to get my head around, you know.

00:29:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know, and I think that's a very good analogy

00:29:47 ◼   ► for some of the questions I have about this device is in WatchKit 1, the app ran on your

00:29:54 ◼   ► iPhone and was being projected onto the screen of the Apple Watch kind of it was almost like

00:30:00 ◼   ► streaming the you know, the the screen to the watch in real time as you were using it,

00:30:06 ◼   ► which meant it was there was lots of latency issues. There were a lot of and just complexity

00:30:10 ◼   ► issues around that. And that's interesting for a device like this because you have the

00:30:15 ◼   ► same kinds of questions like, is this device going to be reliant on another device? You

00:30:22 ◼   ► know, is it going to be you pair it with your iPhone and then it, you know, the iPhone is

00:30:27 ◼   ► doing some of the heavy lifting for it? Or is it entirely independent, you could use

00:30:31 ◼   ► it without any other device. You know, if you don't have an iPhone, you don't have a

00:30:35 ◼   ► Mac, you could just get this and put it on and use it. And or and that is this going

00:30:41 ◼   ► to be different for developers than for Apple. Like there may be Apple apps that it could

00:30:45 ◼   ► run completely independent and untethered with. But if you want to run developer apps,

00:30:49 ◼   ► then you need to have an iPhone that you could load them on, you know, is the App Store inside

00:30:53 ◼   ► on your iPhone or is the App Store inside the headset? Like, I think these are some

00:30:58 ◼   ► of the questions that will be very telling for what the initial developer experience

00:31:02 ◼   ► is going to be like and what the initial kind of breadth of what's possible is going to

00:31:08 ◼   ► there because similarly with watchOS, like the early versions of WatchKit were so limited

00:31:13 ◼   ► in what they could do.

00:31:14 ◼   ► And it wasn't the technology that Apple was using to build their own apps.

00:31:18 ◼   ► It was this separate kind of second class citizen version.

00:31:21 ◼   ► And it wasn't really until fairly recently in terms of the lifespan of the watch that

00:31:26 ◼   ► maybe about half, you know, four years ago, five years ago, we could really make proper

00:31:30 ◼   ► apps using the same technologies that Apple was using.

00:31:33 ◼   ► And so like all those kind of questions really will, I think, define the early days.

00:31:38 ◼   ► And it's like, we'll have to wait and see, too.

00:31:39 ◼   ► We're assuming that Apple wants really broad, wide, rich developer experience.

00:31:44 ◼   ► And it's like, maybe they do, maybe they don't.

00:31:45 ◼   ► Maybe the early days are they're trying to be focused on their own apps, their core experiences

00:31:49 ◼   ► that they'll be able to tune to perfection, because if they're really up against the edge

00:31:55 ◼   ► of performance and battery life, that's going to be much easier for them to optimize for

00:31:59 ◼   ► than to build something that third parties are able to do.

00:32:02 ◼   ► and then you have to build so many more guardrails and things because a developer makes a bad

00:32:08 ◼   ► choice and then suddenly it just destroys the battery life from the device.

00:32:12 ◼   ► That reflects badly on Apple as well as the developer.

00:32:15 ◼   ► And so that's the experience that people have when they first get it.

00:32:18 ◼   ► It could be dangerous as well.

00:32:21 ◼   ► I feel like as you're explaining this to me, I'm coming around to the idea that there has

00:32:24 ◼   ► to be some kind of development kit solution because there just isn't anything that can

00:32:31 ◼   ► simulate this because even if you used headset by another brand it's not going to have all

00:32:38 ◼   ► of the features. Like one of the big features is foveated rendering, right, which I think

00:32:43 ◼   ► at the moment I know the PSVR2 just has, but obviously that's not going to work, but this

00:32:48 ◼   ► is the idea that like it's using eye tracking to see where you're looking and then just

00:32:53 ◼   ► rendering that part. Now that for certain types of experiences is going to be a very

00:32:59 ◼   ► important part of the process, right? Like especially if you're like a game

00:33:03 ◼   ► developer and stuff like seeing how that works inside of the environment that

00:33:07 ◼   ► you're building will be important. It'll be important for testing. It's like you

00:33:10 ◼   ► won't be able to test for things like that. The same for the hand tracking,

00:33:14 ◼   ► right? So the idea that we've been hearing time and time again is this

00:33:17 ◼   ► device is all about hand tracking. Hand tracking, hand tracking, hand tracking. No

00:33:21 ◼   ► controllers. Well no other device that's available on the market right now has

00:33:26 ◼   ► very reliable hand tracking.

00:33:28 ◼   ► So the entire inter, this would be like saying,

00:33:32 ◼   ► oh, here's the new iPad,

00:33:34 ◼   ► but it has no glass on the screen, right?

00:33:36 ◼   ► It's just like, and you have,

00:33:38 ◼   ► it's like the entire interaction method

00:33:42 ◼   ► relies on the good hand tracking.

00:33:45 ◼   ► So unless Apple can get you hardware,

00:33:48 ◼   ► you can't use anything to reliably simulate that yourself.

00:33:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think the only thing that I can think of there

00:33:58 ◼   ► in terms of like without a developer kit

00:34:00 ◼   ► or before general release of the device

00:34:03 ◼   ► that I could imagine is like you could imagine

00:34:05 ◼   ► them taking iOS components and letting you use them

00:34:10 ◼   ► on this device without necessarily developing them

00:34:14 ◼   ► on the device.

00:34:15 ◼   ► So if you imagine like a live activity or a widget

00:34:17 ◼   ► or some of those kind of rendering modes

00:34:21 ◼   ► they already have in iOS, you could bring those

00:34:24 ◼   ► and have them available on a headset

00:34:27 ◼   ► without needing a developer kit, because they're

00:34:29 ◼   ► doing all of the complexity around rendering and placing

00:34:34 ◼   ► them places and dealing with user interaction

00:34:38 ◼   ► with finger tracking and all the things that are going on there.

00:34:41 ◼   ► But if they just make it so that, hey,

00:34:42 ◼   ► if you want to have a live activity,

00:34:45 ◼   ► you want to have a widget that you pin into your virtual world

00:34:49 ◼   ► or whatever, that could be totally reasonable to be

00:34:53 ◼   ► developed without a developer kit,

00:34:54 ◼   ► that it's just they add a new type in the way

00:34:56 ◼   ► that with the iPad, when they added widgets there,

00:34:59 ◼   ► they added an extra large type.

00:35:01 ◼   ► And I didn't need to have an iPad running iOS 15 in order

00:35:05 ◼   ► to test that and be pretty confident that I had it right.

00:35:09 ◼   ► I could do that in a simulator.

00:35:11 ◼   ► It's just two-dimensional and very similar to something

00:35:14 ◼   ► we already have.

00:35:15 ◼   ► Those kind of experiences, I could see them very easily

00:35:18 ◼   ► developing without having a developer kit.

00:35:20 ◼   ► And so it's entirely possible if they're going down that road

00:35:23 ◼   ► where initially there is limited developer support

00:35:26 ◼   ► in terms of what's possible,

00:35:27 ◼   ► or at least the broad experience they're hoping

00:35:31 ◼   ► from developers are existing experiences,

00:35:33 ◼   ► like things like widgets or live activities,

00:35:35 ◼   ► that could make a lot of sense.

00:35:36 ◼   ► It's like if they want a rich experience

00:35:39 ◼   ► that everyone's taking advantage of,

00:35:40 ◼   ► not just the select game developers

00:35:42 ◼   ► that they're bringing to the developer center in Cupertino

00:35:45 ◼   ► and working with onsite,

00:35:47 ◼   ► like that's where it gets much more of a complicated story,

00:35:49 ◼   ► and I certainly don't envy them trying to find that balance.

00:35:53 ◼   ► As a developer yourself, right, so just developer part of David Smith,

00:35:57 ◼   ► how are you feeling about the prospect of there being another platform that

00:36:02 ◼   ► Apple produces like for you and for your workload? Like you, you would,

00:36:07 ◼   ► you know, I know you, you don't develop any Mac OS apps, right?

00:36:10 ◼   ► Not really. No.

00:36:11 ◼   ► Right. So you're on iOS, iPad, OS, watch OS. We'll call this reality OS.

00:36:16 ◼   ► How does that feel kind of sitting here right now?

00:36:19 ◼   ► What's interesting about that is that I feel like there's a deep tension.

00:36:23 ◼   ► feel as a developer around like new platforms or new system capabilities have been like the

00:36:31 ◼   ► cornerstone of my ability to be successful as a developer by being an early adopter, by being out

00:36:37 ◼   ► on the cutting edge of whatever Apple is putting out there. Like that's something that as a small

00:36:42 ◼   ► minister, like one person, independent developer, that's what has allowed me to sort of shine in a

00:36:48 ◼   ► the way that I can move more quickly,

00:36:50 ◼   ► I can get out onto these new platforms very quickly

00:36:53 ◼   ► because I'm not a big team who has to get approval.

00:36:55 ◼   ► I'm not like the Google Apps team who's trying to,

00:36:58 ◼   ► I'm sure it's very complicated and difficult to work,

00:37:01 ◼   ► you know, to get approval and to be there on day one.

00:37:04 ◼   ► You know, I've had a lot of success with doing that.

00:37:06 ◼   ► Like that's how Pedometer++, that's how Widgetsmith,

00:37:09 ◼   ► how those two, you know, like those apps are successful

00:37:11 ◼   ► because they were there on day one.

00:37:13 ◼   ► And so I'm always excited when Apple adds a new platform,

00:37:16 ◼   ► when they add something into this that I want to be there.

00:37:19 ◼   ► But it's complicated for this one

00:37:21 ◼   ► where I feel like it seems like such a narrow use case

00:37:26 ◼   ► and it's such a narrow audience for this platform

00:37:29 ◼   ► that it's hard to be excited about it

00:37:32 ◼   ► because I think it's going to be very complicated

00:37:35 ◼   ► to have it be something that is kind of worth the time

00:37:39 ◼   ► and worth the investment in doing this.

00:37:42 ◼   ► Because it's like, if you only have,

00:37:45 ◼   ► I don't think they're gonna sell nearly as many of these

00:37:48 ◼   ► as they've sold Apple watches.

00:37:49 ◼   ► And the Apple watch is a difficult platform

00:37:51 ◼   ► to kind of get a good return on as a developer.

00:37:54 ◼   ► And so if you have a tiny fraction of that,

00:37:56 ◼   ► if you're talking about a user base

00:37:59 ◼   ► that should be measured in maybe hundreds of thousands

00:38:01 ◼   ► to start with, like you have to sell to a lot of them

00:38:05 ◼   ► to make any income back.

00:38:07 ◼   ► And you're gonna need to be selling

00:38:08 ◼   ► at a pretty high price probably too

00:38:10 ◼   ► in order to kind of recoup anything there.

00:38:13 ◼   ► And so it's like, I'm excited about it in that regard,

00:38:16 ◼   ► but I'm also kind of skeptical that it's gonna be

00:38:19 ◼   ► kind of like worthwhile.

00:38:20 ◼   ► And I feel like it may,

00:38:22 ◼   ► I think it's potentially more likely

00:38:23 ◼   ► that it ends up being like a tvOS or something

00:38:26 ◼   ► where there's a very particular type of app

00:38:29 ◼   ► where it makes sense to develop for.

00:38:31 ◼   ► And then for the rest of the apps,

00:38:33 ◼   ► it doesn't really kind of actually fit in.

00:38:35 ◼   ► That in practice, there's not a good market there.

00:38:37 ◼   ► There's not a lot of reason to show up

00:38:39 ◼   ► unless you happen to be whatever platform that is.

00:38:43 ◼   ► And it's like, if widgets are a big thing on a headset,

00:38:46 ◼   ► then I'll totally be there and that'll be super exciting.

00:38:48 ◼   ► And it's a new platform.

00:38:50 ◼   ► But if it's all about media consumption and communication,

00:38:54 ◼   ► say, like it's for video apps and like Skype, Zoom,

00:38:59 ◼   ► those kinds of apps, then it just wouldn't be for me.

00:39:02 ◼   ► And I'd be happy with that in some ways,

00:39:04 ◼   ► but that's kind of the tension that I'm feeling right now.

00:39:06 ◼   ► - But this is like a change in your attitude, right?

00:39:09 ◼   ► where I feel like maybe David Smith of 2016, 2017,

00:39:14 ◼   ► you would have been like scrambling to try and think of like,

00:39:17 ◼   ► what is an app that works in this?

00:39:20 ◼   ► Where now you really do have a couple of very successful apps

00:39:24 ◼   ► and you need to just work out

00:39:25 ◼   ► how you can apply those to different things.

00:39:27 ◼   ► As you say, right?

00:39:27 ◼   ► Like if they're like, hey, if you make widgets,

00:39:29 ◼   ► you can bring them over.

00:39:30 ◼   ► And as you mentioned a minute ago,

00:39:32 ◼   ► like pin them to your virtual space.

00:39:34 ◼   ► Like you're there, right?

00:39:35 ◼   ► Like day one, you're in the app store, right?

00:39:37 ◼   ► 'cause that is 100% your thing.

00:39:39 ◼   ► And as you mentioned, if they did do that,

00:39:42 ◼   ► probably wouldn't be very hard, right?

00:39:44 ◼   ► Because it is mostly, that's the kind of stuff

00:39:46 ◼   ► where they're like, oh, it's all SwiftUI.

00:39:49 ◼   ► We're using SwiftUI here too,

00:39:50 ◼   ► if you have this kind of application,

00:39:52 ◼   ► very easy to compile for,

00:39:56 ◼   ► and then you just do some testing and bug squashing

00:39:58 ◼   ► and you're done, right?

00:39:59 ◼   ► Like, I'm simplifying, of course,

00:40:02 ◼   ► but it's a different aspect to,

00:40:05 ◼   ► if you were to come up with a walking simulation app, right?

00:40:10 ◼   ► And you did that, right?

00:40:11 ◼   ► Like that is a whole different kettle of fish completely.

00:40:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think I've been burned in the past a bit

00:40:17 ◼   ► and part of the, both in terms of,

00:40:19 ◼   ► just in terms of like, I could imagine coming up

00:40:23 ◼   ► with like wild ideas and spending a lot of time,

00:40:26 ◼   ► say this summer, that's like, that's all I'm working on.

00:40:28 ◼   ► And I think it's difficult to imagine

00:40:31 ◼   ► there being a big enough audience

00:40:33 ◼   ► for that to make a lot of sense.

00:40:34 ◼   ► as I think the maturity that I've come to as a developer,

00:40:37 ◼   ► that it's fun to do as a hobby,

00:40:40 ◼   ► as something that's interesting to play around with.

00:40:42 ◼   ► But if you're viewing it as a business,

00:40:45 ◼   ► coming to as a developer, coming to this thing

00:40:47 ◼   ► as a platform that you wanna support,

00:40:49 ◼   ► if it's a couple of thousand dollars as a device,

00:40:54 ◼   ► and it's potentially very limited in scope

00:40:58 ◼   ► and is a completely new paradigm

00:41:00 ◼   ► for the vast majority of people,

00:41:01 ◼   ► but they're not gonna consider themselves

00:41:04 ◼   ► as computing is sitting down in a chair

00:41:07 ◼   ► or standing up with a headset on

00:41:09 ◼   ► and closing yourself off in that way.

00:41:10 ◼   ► Like that's just a very, it's a totally new thing.

00:41:13 ◼   ► And so that limiting of the space is I think something

00:41:18 ◼   ► that makes me tentative going into it

00:41:20 ◼   ► in a way that obviously we'll have to see.

00:41:22 ◼   ► I could be totally wrong about this

00:41:24 ◼   ► and they come back and they say,

00:41:26 ◼   ► we found a way to make this device

00:41:27 ◼   ► and it's super cheap and it's super amazing.

00:41:30 ◼   ► And it's gonna have wide audience

00:41:31 ◼   ► and there's millions of these selling everywhere

00:41:33 ◼   ► and it's like the hit thing.

00:41:35 ◼   ► And so finding anything you can do to be on that platform

00:41:38 ◼   ► will be important and will be kind of get a good return.

00:41:41 ◼   ► Like that's certainly possible.

00:41:42 ◼   ► Like Apple has done that before.

00:41:43 ◼   ► Of all the companies who could pull that off,

00:41:45 ◼   ► I'd certainly put Apple at the top of the list.

00:41:47 ◼   ► - But it's the iPad, right?

00:41:49 ◼   ► And we're gonna mention this before

00:41:51 ◼   ► and we're gonna mention it a million more times

00:41:53 ◼   ► leading up to this product's launch.

00:41:54 ◼   ► But these were the rumors for the iPad.

00:41:56 ◼   ► It was gonna be really expensive, like over $1,000

00:42:00 ◼   ► and it came in a 500 and it blew up

00:42:03 ◼   ► and everyone was very excited.

00:42:05 ◼   ► Do you have interest in this device personally?

00:42:09 ◼   ► - I mean, not particularly.

00:42:12 ◼   ► I think the only use case for a device like this

00:42:16 ◼   ► that I see myself potentially interested in

00:42:19 ◼   ► is the use cases I've heard of

00:42:21 ◼   ► around using it as a virtual display,

00:42:25 ◼   ► like if you're traveling or something like that.

00:42:27 ◼   ► So when I go to WWDC,

00:42:30 ◼   ► I bring a whole bunch of sort of stuff

00:42:34 ◼   ► to set up my work environment to be as productive

00:42:36 ◼   ► as I can be away from my actual office,

00:42:39 ◼   ► which is, right now I'm sitting in front of a Pro Display XDR

00:42:43 ◼   ► with my laptop on a stand and I got a keyboard and a mouse

00:42:45 ◼   ► and all the things that I use to ergonomically

00:42:48 ◼   ► be productive and effective.

00:42:50 ◼   ► And if there was a way to have a virtual Pro Display XDR

00:42:55 ◼   ► with me anywhere in the world that is relatively small

00:42:58 ◼   ► and packable in a suitcase, that sounds super exciting.

00:43:01 ◼   ► I'm skeptical that it would be an ASimilar experience,

00:43:05 ◼   ► but if that's the case, that would be awesome.

00:43:07 ◼   ► That's a use case I could imagine,

00:43:09 ◼   ► but it's, I think, tricky to imagine myself,

00:43:13 ◼   ► even in that situation, of wanting to have something

00:43:15 ◼   ► like this on my face for eight hours at a time,

00:43:18 ◼   ► or for long stretches, without that being something

00:43:22 ◼   ► that is very fatiguing and difficult ergonomically

00:43:25 ◼   ► and challenging on your neck,

00:43:26 ◼   ► and all those kinds of things.

00:43:29 ◼   ► And playing games on a device like this

00:43:32 ◼   ► isn't a use case that particular--

00:43:34 ◼   ► I don't play many games as it is.

00:43:36 ◼   ► And so having a much more involved experience

00:43:41 ◼   ► that requires a lot of commitment for a game

00:43:44 ◼   ► is going to be even more difficult.

00:43:45 ◼   ► And so I find it really difficult

00:43:48 ◼   ► to be excited about this personally in that way.

00:43:50 ◼   ► And maybe that's also part of why

00:43:53 ◼   ► I have a little bit of skepticism about it

00:43:55 ◼   ► in some ways in general, but I look forward to,

00:43:59 ◼   ► I would love to be proven wrong in that way.

00:44:01 ◼   ► Like, I'd be fantastic to have this device unveiled,

00:44:05 ◼   ► have them show me what it does and sort of have

00:44:09 ◼   ► the aha moment of like, oh, wow, that's amazing.

00:44:12 ◼   ► Like, I really sort of like am blown away by what it can do.

00:44:17 ◼   ► But as it is now, I'm interested in it mostly

00:44:20 ◼   ► from a professional perspective as a platform

00:44:22 ◼   ► that I want to support, rather than as a personal matter,

00:44:25 ◼   ► being advice that I'm super excited to get and to use,

00:44:30 ◼   ► and would look forward to and camp out

00:44:32 ◼   ► to day one at a personal level.

00:44:34 ◼   ► - And as a developer of apps on Apple's other platforms,

00:44:40 ◼   ► how do you feel about the prospect of WWDC

00:44:43 ◼   ► completely being overshadowed by this?

00:44:45 ◼   ► Like if they're gonna, in a WWDC keynote,

00:44:49 ◼   ► they're showing off a new platform,

00:44:51 ◼   ► I can't imagine as much time for anything else,

00:44:53 ◼   ► or it's gonna be a two, two and a half hour

00:44:56 ◼   ► WWDC keynote.

00:44:57 ◼   ► Like how does this make you feel of like,

00:45:01 ◼   ► you know, I have all this other stuff that I do,

00:45:02 ◼   ► I have, you know, ways I wanna push my apps forward,

00:45:06 ◼   ► but Apple will be spending their time

00:45:08 ◼   ► talking about this instead.

00:45:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I think there are two versions

00:45:13 ◼   ► of that scenario, and they would play very differently

00:45:16 ◼   ► to how I would feel.

00:45:17 ◼   ► I think in one scenario, it is,

00:45:19 ◼   ► It overshadows the main keynote because there's the most to explain there, but the other platforms

00:45:24 ◼   ► still have large, meaningful, robust announcements to be had.

00:45:30 ◼   ► There's lots of things happening still on watchOS and iOS, and it's just they didn't

00:45:35 ◼   ► talk about them in the keynote.

00:45:38 ◼   ► After the keynote at the State of the Union and at the videos that are being released

00:45:41 ◼   ► throughout the rest of the week, there's still tons of stuff and it's super exciting.

00:45:44 ◼   ► I'd be fine with that.

00:45:46 ◼   ► I don't care if the keynote is slim on what's on watchOS, which is probably like the platform

00:45:50 ◼   ► you know, closest to my heart. Like that's, that's fine to me as long as I'm getting a

00:45:54 ◼   ► lot of stuff and what's new in watchOS. If it's the other version of that where it's,

00:45:58 ◼   ► it's the WWDC is overshadowed by this because that's all there is or that's prime that,

00:46:04 ◼   ► you know, there's very minor incremental updates to the other platforms. I think I would feel

00:46:09 ◼   ► kind of more sad by that, that if it felt like the other platforms were being put on

00:46:14 ◼   ► on hold so that they could launch and focus

00:46:17 ◼   ► on this new platform, I think I would have

00:46:20 ◼   ► a bit more frustration in terms of it would feel like,

00:46:24 ◼   ► some of the other platforms that I'm perhaps more directly

00:46:27 ◼   ► and immediately excited about and whose changes

00:46:30 ◼   ► and improvements will have a bigger impact

00:46:32 ◼   ► to my users and to me, that would feel a bit more crummy.

00:46:36 ◼   ► So it's like, my hope is it's the former version of that,

00:46:40 ◼   ► that even if it does have this big,

00:46:42 ◼   ► It's the talk of the show in terms of Apple's messaging

00:46:45 ◼   ► and their PR strategy.

00:46:46 ◼   ► That's fine as long as the actual story behind the scenes

00:46:49 ◼   ► is that there's a lot of cool stuff that I can do

00:46:52 ◼   ► and that I can look forward to launching in September.

00:46:56 ◼   ► - It would surprise me if they weren't able

00:47:00 ◼   ► to still do other things on other operating systems

00:47:03 ◼   ► because of this.

00:47:04 ◼   ► I would understand it maybe more with the hardware

00:47:06 ◼   ► just because it's just complex

00:47:08 ◼   ► and they maybe needed to pull people in from all over.

00:47:10 ◼   ► But the software stuff, it's not like,

00:47:15 ◼   ► I mean, I just imagine, it's not like everybody

00:47:17 ◼   ► who's working on iOS and watchOS had to be pulled

00:47:19 ◼   ► to develop the software for this thing, but I don't know.

00:47:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's certainly possible that that would be the case,

00:47:26 ◼   ► but it seems unlikely that there are certainly,

00:47:29 ◼   ► I'm sure there's dedicated people working on watchOS,

00:47:32 ◼   ► on WidgetKit, on HealthKit, on all of the other,

00:47:35 ◼   ► you know, on SwiftUI, on all of the other platforms,

00:47:38 ◼   ► And there might be some drain to that,

00:47:41 ◼   ► but it doesn't seem like it should be

00:47:42 ◼   ► that they couldn't do both at the same time.

00:47:44 ◼   ► It would seem like a very strange staffing place

00:47:47 ◼   ► for Apple to find themselves.

00:47:49 ◼   ► Oh, we just can't have enough,

00:47:50 ◼   ► we only have 20 engineers,

00:47:52 ◼   ► and so we have to focus them all on the news thing

00:47:54 ◼   ► rather than being able to have different teams

00:47:57 ◼   ► who can take care of things

00:47:58 ◼   ► and juggle multiple platforms

00:48:01 ◼   ► being updated at the same time.

00:48:03 ◼   ► - Now, we'll just say personally,

00:48:05 ◼   ► as a person who produces weekly podcasts about Apple.

00:48:10 ◼   ► I'm really bummed out that they're not showing this off

00:48:12 ◼   ► next month, 'cause I was like,

00:48:14 ◼   ► my next few months are gonna be easy, you know?

00:48:16 ◼   ► March to WWDC, we could just talk about the headset,

00:48:19 ◼   ► but now, gotta go all the way to June, come on.

00:48:21 ◼   ► - Yes, it is definitely frustrating in that perspective

00:48:24 ◼   ► that it is not, I mean, I think any time you have these big,

00:48:29 ◼   ► like unanswered questions, I get, you know, it's just,

00:48:32 ◼   ► you want the answers as soon as you can,

00:48:34 ◼   ► both from your perspective from having content to talk about

00:48:36 ◼   ► and from my perspective from having certainty

00:48:40 ◼   ► about the future just feels nice

00:48:42 ◼   ► in a way that it's difficult to have this like,

00:48:44 ◼   ► is it, what's it gonna be?

00:48:45 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:48:46 ◼   ► And having to wait longer and longer

00:48:48 ◼   ► is not a great place to be.

00:48:49 ◼   ► - This episode is brought to you by Squarespace,

00:48:54 ◼   ► the all-in-one platform for building your brand

00:48:56 ◼   ► and growing your business online.

00:48:58 ◼   ► You can stand out with a beautiful website,

00:49:00 ◼   ► engage with your audience and sell your products, services,

00:49:03 ◼   ► or even the content you create because Squarespace has got you covered.

00:49:06 ◼   ► It's so easy to get started with Squarespace.

00:49:09 ◼   ► You just sign up and choose from one of their beautiful, best in class, award winning website

00:49:13 ◼   ► templates.

00:49:15 ◼   ► You can just browse the categories that they have to find the site type that you have or

00:49:19 ◼   ► maybe the business that you have to find the perfect starting place.

00:49:22 ◼   ► Everything is customisable with just a few clicks.

00:49:24 ◼   ► You can choose branding, you can choose fonts.

00:49:27 ◼   ► It's really easy to then move and drag things around on the page, all in your web browser

00:49:30 ◼   ► or on their app to really customise it to just look and feel like you want it to.

00:49:35 ◼   ► And it's so simple to then add in additional functionality.

00:49:39 ◼   ► If you want to sell products, physical, digital, it doesn't matter, they have all of the tools

00:49:43 ◼   ► that you need to start selling this stuff online and they have powerful blogging tools

00:49:47 ◼   ► to share photos, videos, updates and more.

00:49:50 ◼   ► You can categorise, share and schedule your posts to make your content work for you.

00:49:55 ◼   ► I have been using Squarespace personally for over a decade at this point.

00:50:00 ◼   ► I mean it's gotta be getting close to 15 years which is just like a wild thing for me to

00:50:05 ◼   ► think about now.

00:50:07 ◼   ► But it is because if I want to put something online I don't want to have to deal with any

00:50:11 ◼   ► of the complicated hard stuff.

00:50:13 ◼   ► I want to make the content.

00:50:14 ◼   ► The content is what I care about and Squarespace gives me all of the tools to be able to make

00:50:18 ◼   ► that content sing and so I can just focus on what it is I care about and not all of

00:50:23 ◼   ► the stuff that I don't.

00:50:24 ◼   ► So go to squarespace.com/upgrade and you can sign up for a free trial today with no credit

00:50:29 ◼   ► card required, then when you're ready to launch, just use the offer code UPGRADE. You'll save

00:50:34 ◼   ► 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That is squarespace.com/upgrade, then

00:50:39 ◼   ► when you sign up, use the offer code UPGRADE to get 10% off your first purchase and show

00:50:43 ◼   ► your support for the show. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of

00:50:47 ◼   ► Relay FM.

00:50:48 ◼   ► Everyone's talking about AI these days, right? AI all over the place. I got access to the

00:50:56 ◼   ► Bing, the Bing AI search thing today.

00:50:59 ◼   ► I'm just playing around with that.

00:51:01 ◼   ► I'll actually say I was trying to plan a vacation,

00:51:05 ◼   ► like me and Nadine are looking to take a vacation,

00:51:08 ◼   ► and I got some good suggestions from Bing.

00:51:11 ◼   ► And I was like, oh good.

00:51:13 ◼   ► But one thing that they've done,

00:51:14 ◼   ► I mean, you probably saw the wild things it was doing

00:51:17 ◼   ► like last week, right, where people were breaking through.

00:51:20 ◼   ► Ben Thompson's Stratechery article

00:51:23 ◼   ► is not just one of the best things I've read from him,

00:51:26 ◼   ► it's like one of the best things I've read in years.

00:51:28 ◼   ► So it's called From Bing to Sydney.

00:51:31 ◼   ► I'll put it in the show notes.

00:51:32 ◼   ► You should go and spend some time reading it.

00:51:34 ◼   ► It's unbelievable.

00:51:35 ◼   ► Also, Kevin Russ at the New York Times

00:51:39 ◼   ► had the column where Sydney told him that it loved him.

00:51:44 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:51:46 ◼   ► - Which was like a whole other thing.

00:51:48 ◼   ► Because of this, the way that Microsoft, I think,

00:51:51 ◼   ► is solving this for now is you can only ask five questions

00:51:53 ◼   ► and then it makes you restart.

00:51:55 ◼   ► Which was really annoying for me today

00:51:57 ◼   ► because I was trying to refine some things,

00:52:00 ◼   ► and I found that quite frustrating.

00:52:02 ◼   ► Nevertheless, you have been dabbling

00:52:07 ◼   ► with another of OpenAI's projects,

00:52:09 ◼   ► which is, I think, currently one of the less sexy ones.

00:52:12 ◼   ► It's called Whisper.

00:52:14 ◼   ► I feel like not a lot of people are talking about this.

00:52:16 ◼   ► It's not Dali, it's not ChatGPT.

00:52:19 ◼   ► It's the same company, OpenAI.

00:52:21 ◼   ► Whisper is a speech-to-text engine,

00:52:24 ◼   ► and you have been feeding a selection of podcasts

00:52:27 ◼   ► into whisper and I kind of wanted to get one,

00:52:30 ◼   ► like why are you doing this?

00:52:31 ◼   ► And two, like what have been your experience of this so far?

00:52:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, and so I think that AI is definitely sort of like

00:52:39 ◼   ► the technology of the moment in so many different ways,

00:52:42 ◼   ► whether it's the image generation, the text generation,

00:52:44 ◼   ► or in this case, being able to convert spoken audio

00:52:48 ◼   ► into text and I feel like there's the reason it's so

00:52:53 ◼   ► kind of like of the moment and feel like it's transformative

00:52:57 ◼   ► in a way that it wasn't, you know,

00:52:58 ◼   ► many of these technologies have existed for a long time.

00:53:01 ◼   ► There's something different about it now.

00:53:04 ◼   ► And that difference seems to have been

00:53:06 ◼   ► this crossing this point where suddenly these things

00:53:09 ◼   ► that previously were just too computationally intensive

00:53:13 ◼   ► to reasonably and pragmatically do kind of at scale.

00:53:17 ◼   ► Now, suddenly we've been able to kind of cross that point

00:53:19 ◼   ► where as is so often with the case with technology,

00:53:23 ◼   ► it goes from something that is niche and limited

00:53:25 ◼   ► and requires very specialist tools

00:53:27 ◼   ► and very specialist hardware

00:53:29 ◼   ► to something that can be run much more broadly

00:53:31 ◼   ► and at a scale that is different,

00:53:33 ◼   ► that you can have hundreds of, whatever,

00:53:36 ◼   ► or tens of millions of people talking to chat GPT

00:53:39 ◼   ► and it doesn't completely implode on itself

00:53:41 ◼   ► and same thing with mid-journey

00:53:44 ◼   ► or any of the stable diffusion models.

00:53:46 ◼   ► And in Whisper specifically's case,

00:53:50 ◼   ► it's this difference of speech to text

00:53:52 ◼   ► is something that has existed for a very long time.

00:53:55 ◼   ► I mean, like Nuance and Dragon Dictate

00:53:57 ◼   ► have been doing this for a very long time.

00:54:00 ◼   ► You could be able to do automation on the Mac

00:54:02 ◼   ► even with your voice and being able to speak rather than type.

00:54:06 ◼   ► There's some great accessibility things

00:54:08 ◼   ► that have been out of that for a while.

00:54:11 ◼   ► But what made Whisper different and is interesting

00:54:14 ◼   ► as a technology is that it is making this thing

00:54:17 ◼   ► that previously was either very proprietary

00:54:20 ◼   ► or very sort of expensive and complicated,

00:54:22 ◼   ► something that anyone can run on almost any device

00:54:26 ◼   ► in a way that is pretty performant

00:54:27 ◼   ► and certainly way more performant than it was before.

00:54:30 ◼   ► So what I do with my podcast searching system is,

00:54:34 ◼   ► I've done this, previously what I actually used to do is,

00:54:37 ◼   ► I tried this before and YouTube was the only place

00:54:41 ◼   ► that would do kind of wide scale automatic speech to text.

00:54:45 ◼   ► And so I would actually take podcasts,

00:54:46 ◼   ► turn them into videos,

00:54:48 ◼   ► upload them as private videos on YouTube,

00:54:50 ◼   ► wait for it to do the automatic like subtitling,

00:54:54 ◼   ► download the subtitles and turn that into the transcript,

00:54:58 ◼   ► which is terrible and awful in lots of ways.

00:55:00 ◼   ► And the actual quality wasn't very good.

00:55:02 ◼   ► And then whisper comes out and instead I can write a script

00:55:05 ◼   ► that just downloads it through the podcast episode,

00:55:07 ◼   ► runs it right on my MacBook Pro,

00:55:11 ◼   ► and I get the result in a few minutes,

00:55:14 ◼   ► and it doesn't cost me anything.

00:55:16 ◼   ► There's no infrastructure or overhead involved in this.

00:55:18 ◼   ► You can run the same model on an iPhone even

00:55:21 ◼   ► and have it work with some degrees of accuracy.

00:55:25 ◼   ► And so it's this very different place to be

00:55:28 ◼   ► that just wasn't possible before.

00:55:31 ◼   ► - How does this work?

00:55:32 ◼   ► Like, how do you generate these transcripts?

00:55:35 ◼   ► Yeah, so I mean, Whisper is just a technology that you feed it an MP3 file, basically, and

00:55:44 ◼   ► you transform it in a few ways.

00:55:46 ◼   ► And then it gives you a transcript as best as it can come up with of what that file is,

00:55:54 ◼   ► what the people in that are saying.

00:55:57 ◼   ► And in my case, my goal was to make a keyword search quality podcast retrieval tool.

00:56:07 ◼   ► And so I make it so that-- which this is fine for.

00:56:10 ◼   ► It's not a true transcript in the way that if you wanted to read the content of this

00:56:14 ◼   ► show.

00:56:15 ◼   ► But if you wanted to find out when we talked about RealityOS and you search for RealityOS,

00:56:20 ◼   ► it'll be able to transcribe it and give you the place in the episode where we talked about

00:56:26 ◼   ► it. So it just isn't, you know, it's this, I don't know, it's a magic black box that

00:56:31 ◼   ► you feed MP3s into and get the textual versions of that coming back to you on the other side.

00:56:37 ◼   ► >> I did a search for Reality OS and it currently doesn't find anything. Because I guess it's

00:56:42 ◼   ► just, I don't even know. Because this is it, right? Like, because they're not human.

00:56:46 ◼   ► >> No.

00:56:48 ◼   ► >> There are things that are missed.

00:56:49 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:56:50 ◼   ► >> Right? So like, because a human would hear that, and if they knew what we were talking

00:56:54 ◼   ► about they will put it in there and like and I know we've spoken about reality oh

00:56:58 ◼   ► I found it here reality space OS right like by going looking through the

00:57:03 ◼   ► transcript like search results but like I know and you know that's one word

00:57:08 ◼   ► right but like that's what you mean about this this is not a it cannot

00:57:12 ◼   ► currently create a comfortable readable transcript but it can almost I think of

00:57:20 ◼   ► almost like an index, it's doing like an index of the words to the best of its

00:57:25 ◼   ► ability and if you think about it like smartly in those ways you can kind of

00:57:29 ◼   ► find what you're looking for right? Where like if I was doing a search on

00:57:33 ◼   ► something that I thought was perfectly transcribed, type reality OS and it said

00:57:37 ◼   ► no results, be like okay there's nothing here but yeah because I know what the

00:57:42 ◼   ► limitations of the machine are I can just search for the word reality and I

00:57:47 ◼   ► I will find what I'm looking for, right?

00:57:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think what's so interesting

00:57:52 ◼   ► with so all of these systems is based on the input

00:57:55 ◼   ► you give it is so determinant on what the output is.

00:57:58 ◼   ► So RealityOS currently doesn't get transcribed correctly

00:58:03 ◼   ► because it's not a public thing that exists on the internet.

00:58:07 ◼   ► In like, say Apple announces it at WWDC,

00:58:12 ◼   ► a year from now when they've updated their language model,

00:58:14 ◼   ► and that's a proper pronoun that exists

00:58:17 ◼   ► in the English language,

00:58:19 ◼   ► it'll probably transcribe it 100% correctly.

00:58:21 ◼   ► That there's so many situations where now

00:58:23 ◼   ► it gets brand names, it gets trademarks correct,

00:58:27 ◼   ► because presumably it's indexing,

00:58:29 ◼   ► it's gone out and looked at all of the content

00:58:32 ◼   ► on the internet and it's worked out,

00:58:33 ◼   ► well, what is in the English language,

00:58:35 ◼   ► what are these words?

00:58:36 ◼   ► And then how can we build a model to predict

00:58:38 ◼   ► when someone was saying one of these words?

00:58:41 ◼   ► And so I feel like it's the same thing

00:58:44 ◼   ► with all of these, with the chat systems

00:58:46 ◼   ► or the image generation, it's so much a,

00:58:50 ◼   ► it's just transforming the input

00:58:51 ◼   ► into some kind of useful output in an automated fashion.

00:58:55 ◼   ► And so it's really complicated.

00:58:57 ◼   ► Like if you're trying to transcribe something

00:58:59 ◼   ► that is a very standard use of the English language

00:59:04 ◼   ► or with nouns and proper nouns that are known,

00:59:08 ◼   ► it'll do a great job.

00:59:09 ◼   ► And it'll be kind of amazing in that way.

00:59:11 ◼   ► But otherwise, it's just sort of guessing and doing its best.

00:59:15 ◼   ► And that's just like the fundamental reality

00:59:18 ◼   ► of all these tools, I feel like, is they're incredibly powerful,

00:59:23 ◼   ► but they're not intelligent.

00:59:25 ◼   ► Like we call it artificial intelligence, which is not

00:59:28 ◼   ► really what's happening.

00:59:29 ◼   ► It's just really powerful, careful automation

00:59:32 ◼   ► that can enable people to do cool things more quickly.

00:59:37 ◼   ► But it's not actually intelligent in that way.

00:59:40 ◼   ► It's just giving you more handles or more inputs

00:59:44 ◼   ► into information that you previously

00:59:47 ◼   ► wouldn't have been able to do.

00:59:48 ◼   ► The reason I got started with going down this road

00:59:51 ◼   ► is I love listening to podcasts.

00:59:52 ◼   ► And very often, I think to myself, oh, what episode

00:59:55 ◼   ► did they talk about that?

00:59:56 ◼   ► Oh, I remember this thing.

00:59:58 ◼   ► There's this episode of Connected where Federico talked about how

01:00:01 ◼   ► he got this very particular device or something like that.

01:00:06 ◼   ► Ooh, when was that?

01:00:07 ◼   ► Kickstance.

01:00:07 ◼   ► that's a really complicated question to answer.

01:00:11 ◼   ► 'Cause you can't just search Google for it

01:00:12 ◼   ► in a way that if Federico had written an article

01:00:15 ◼   ► on Mac stories, well, I could just Google

01:00:18 ◼   ► and say site macstories.net and boom, it's gonna find it.

01:00:22 ◼   ► But audio was just not indexable in that way, but now it is.

01:00:27 ◼   ► And that transformation is just

01:00:29 ◼   ► the amazing part of this.

01:00:31 ◼   ► - How much energy or power does it take

01:00:35 ◼   ► on your Mac to produce one of these transcripts,

01:00:38 ◼   ► say for an episode of this show?

01:00:41 ◼   ► - Sure, so like for an episode of upgrade,

01:00:43 ◼   ► which is typically maybe,

01:00:46 ◼   ► it's maybe like an hour and a half long,

01:00:48 ◼   ► something along those lines,

01:00:49 ◼   ► I can generate a transcript on my M2 Mac's MacBook Pro

01:00:54 ◼   ► in maybe about 20 or so minutes, 20, 25 minutes,

01:00:59 ◼   ► which is reasonably fast as these things go.

01:01:04 ◼   ► But during that time, it is completely using every core of the device.

01:01:08 ◼   ► And the fans come on and it is, you know, if you ever wanted to, you know, cook an egg

01:01:13 ◼   ► on a MacBook Pro, this is how you do it.

01:01:17 ◼   ► And I can say going back and re indexing the entire back catalogue of upgrade of connected

01:01:22 ◼   ► event of the external tech past podcast of the talk show.

01:01:25 ◼   ► There was a lot of heat being generated on MacBook Pros in my office for quite some time.

01:01:31 ◼   ► is slowly wearing those clothes down.

01:01:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, it definitely made me a little nervous

01:01:36 ◼   ► that I was like, huh, should I be worried

01:01:41 ◼   ► that I'm gonna overcook my MacBooks?

01:01:43 ◼   ► But I was like, no, no, no, no,

01:01:44 ◼   ► this is like, it says pro in the name, right?

01:01:46 ◼   ► If I was a researcher doing some kind of,

01:01:50 ◼   ► those people they always show in Apple keynotes

01:01:52 ◼   ► of these scientific people who use Mac Pros

01:01:56 ◼   ► to do protein folding or something,

01:01:58 ◼   ► like they would be doing this.

01:01:59 ◼   ► This is well within the spec,

01:02:01 ◼   ► but it definitely made me a little nervous to be,

01:02:03 ◼   ► seeing my device be running at that hot for that long,

01:02:07 ◼   ► 'cause I think it was in the course of maybe about two weeks,

01:02:10 ◼   ► 24 hours a day.

01:02:11 ◼   ► So, and it's definitely not something that is like

01:02:14 ◼   ► lightweight in that way where you can do it.

01:02:17 ◼   ► And if you wanted to, you can run this on an iPhone

01:02:19 ◼   ► and it works, but that's one of those,

01:02:21 ◼   ► you definitely wouldn't want to do it without being plugged

01:02:25 ◼   ► in 'cause it would absolutely destroy your battery.

01:02:28 ◼   ► And like the back of the phone,

01:02:29 ◼   ► You can feel exactly where the chip is on the iPhone's back,

01:02:34 ◼   ► 'cause if you run your finger down,

01:02:35 ◼   ► it'll be scorching hot, especially there,

01:02:38 ◼   ► 'cause it's entirely passive.

01:02:39 ◼   ► So all of the heat is just doing its best

01:02:42 ◼   ► to radiate out otherwise.

01:02:44 ◼   ► So it's definitely, the amazing thing is that it's possible,

01:02:49 ◼   ► that I don't need some dedicated,

01:02:52 ◼   ► it's not like, oh, you need to get a Mac Pro

01:02:55 ◼   ► with an Afterburner card, and then you can do this.

01:02:58 ◼   ► or like how Google and Amazon, et cetera,

01:03:01 ◼   ► build these specific chips for machine learning,

01:03:05 ◼   ► like they were put in servers.

01:03:07 ◼   ► So, I guess it's taking advantage

01:03:11 ◼   ► of the neural chips inside of these machines.

01:03:15 ◼   ► I don't know that, is it?

01:03:17 ◼   ► - So, Whisper has not yet been sort of ported

01:03:21 ◼   ► or adapted to take advantage of that.

01:03:24 ◼   ► In a way that like Apple themselves with stable diffusion,

01:03:27 ◼   ► They like Apple came, created a version of stable diffusion

01:03:32 ◼   ► that could work with the, all of the core ML stuff

01:03:37 ◼   ► that Apple has been adding to their chips for years.

01:03:39 ◼   ► But it's right now, I don't believe there's a version

01:03:42 ◼   ► of Whisper that can do that.

01:03:43 ◼   ► - Okay, I believe I've heard that somewhere,

01:03:47 ◼   ► but I could be making this up now,

01:03:49 ◼   ► so don't attribute it to me,

01:03:50 ◼   ► that Apple are looking at that,

01:03:53 ◼   ► like in the same way they have other things

01:03:55 ◼   ► of how can they make sure that this stuff can run.

01:03:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, and if they do, it'll be amazing

01:03:59 ◼   ► 'cause that's so purpose-built.

01:04:02 ◼   ► It's almost like this very purpose-built bit of hardware

01:04:05 ◼   ► that would both speed up the process

01:04:08 ◼   ► and probably, as a result, do it so much more efficiently

01:04:11 ◼   ► than having to do it on the CPU or the GPU on a device now.

01:04:16 ◼   ► And especially if they wanted to make this something

01:04:20 ◼   ► that worked well on iOS devices,

01:04:23 ◼   ► it would be even more of a huge win there

01:04:25 ◼   ► because I feel like every iPhone for years has been shipped

01:04:29 ◼   ► with these neural engines that do nothing

01:04:32 ◼   ► like 99% of their life.

01:04:34 ◼   ► That there's just no, there's so few use cases

01:04:38 ◼   ► where it makes sense to,

01:04:40 ◼   ► but with things like stable diffusion, with whisper,

01:04:42 ◼   ► with these kind of new AI things,

01:04:45 ◼   ► finally it feels like the payoff is coming

01:04:47 ◼   ► for all this, you know, all this Silicon

01:04:49 ◼   ► that's just been sitting dormant in iPhones

01:04:51 ◼   ► for so many years.

01:04:53 ◼   ► And like, that's exciting and interesting for me

01:04:55 ◼   ► looking forward to the next year of development,

01:04:58 ◼   ► is are there going to be,

01:05:00 ◼   ► like there was a moment where all the profile,

01:05:03 ◼   ► like avatar generators were super hot on the App Store.

01:05:07 ◼   ► And that was, most of those had to be run

01:05:09 ◼   ► on the server side, but if Apple did some work in iOS 17

01:05:13 ◼   ► to make those kind of things possible to run on an iPhone

01:05:18 ◼   ► in super real time, very lightweight,

01:05:20 ◼   ► very optimized for the neural engine,

01:05:22 ◼   ► like how amazing would that be?

01:05:24 ◼   ► and how kind of cool and interesting would that be

01:05:26 ◼   ► as an unlock that it's not this,

01:05:28 ◼   ► like we were talking about with the headset,

01:05:30 ◼   ► it's not the situation where only the new people

01:05:32 ◼   ► who are gonna have it, it's like every person

01:05:35 ◼   ► who has an iPhone since, you know, whatever it is,

01:05:37 ◼   ► the iPhone 10 or something has a neural engine

01:05:39 ◼   ► of some variety in their phone

01:05:42 ◼   ► that they could use to take advantage of this.

01:05:44 ◼   ► And so that would be just amazing.

01:05:45 ◼   ► - That would be an interesting thing

01:05:48 ◼   ► for Apple to do for 17, right?

01:05:50 ◼   ► to show off some kind of machine learning capability

01:05:55 ◼   ► that they, that people will be interested in now

01:05:59 ◼   ► in maybe a way they wouldn't have been before.

01:06:01 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Right.

01:06:02 ◼   ► 'Cause it's like, hey, you remember that thing

01:06:03 ◼   ► that you, you know, you know that thing

01:06:06 ◼   ► that everyone is love to do right now,

01:06:08 ◼   ► well, you can do it all on device

01:06:09 ◼   ► and how much would that fit in

01:06:11 ◼   ► with Apple's kind of mentality, right?

01:06:14 ◼   ► The on-device-ness of it all.

01:06:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, and like, I could see,

01:06:19 ◼   ► You could imagine a world where like,

01:06:20 ◼   ► I have no idea how Whisper compares

01:06:24 ◼   ► to their current dictation system in iOS,

01:06:27 ◼   ► but it seems very good.

01:06:29 ◼   ► It seems very impressive.

01:06:31 ◼   ► And it makes me wonder about if Apple would benefit

01:06:33 ◼   ► potentially from making their own version

01:06:36 ◼   ► using the same technology and concepts behind this

01:06:40 ◼   ► and building it into iOS.

01:06:42 ◼   ► And then if they do that for themselves,

01:06:44 ◼   ► then they can make that available to developers

01:06:47 ◼   ► through some kind of very lightweight wrapped,

01:06:50 ◼   ► hyper-performant system.

01:06:52 ◼   ► And then it starts to get really interesting

01:06:53 ◼   ► for what that opens up for,

01:06:55 ◼   ► where you have a podcast app that can show you

01:07:00 ◼   ► a live subtitles for what you're listening to.

01:07:03 ◼   ► Or when you hit share, the shareable clip

01:07:05 ◼   ► includes all of the live index transcript

01:07:09 ◼   ► of what's happening.

01:07:10 ◼   ► These things, it's so different

01:07:12 ◼   ► when you can suddenly do them in a lightweight,

01:07:14 ◼   ► performant way on device,

01:07:16 ◼   ► do it right where the user is, you can do it offline.

01:07:19 ◼   ► All of those advantages start accruing.

01:07:21 ◼   ► That is where it starts to get very exciting for me.

01:07:24 ◼   ► - So there were, Mark Germin reported

01:07:27 ◼   ► in his Power On newsletter, Apple had an event,

01:07:30 ◼   ► like an internal event a few weeks ago,

01:07:33 ◼   ► which is their AI Summit.

01:07:36 ◼   ► It's kind of internally dubbed, nicknamed as WWDC for AI,

01:07:40 ◼   ► but it's just for Apple employees.

01:07:42 ◼   ► - Sure.

01:07:43 ◼   ► And I've got a quote here, I'll just read from Mark Gurman.

01:07:48 ◼   ► In a brochure for the event, Apple's AI chief told employees

01:07:54 ◼   ► that machine learning is moving faster than ever

01:07:57 ◼   ► and the talent we have here is truly at the forefront.

01:08:00 ◼   ► They're at least focusing on it and we've seen it, right?

01:08:05 ◼   ► Like you said, we've seen it.

01:08:06 ◼   ► We've seen them do enhancements to the operating system

01:08:09 ◼   ► to support and optimize for some of these models,

01:08:14 ◼   ► I think it would make a lot of sense for them

01:08:18 ◼   ► to have some kind of what is now called AI focused features

01:08:23 ◼   ► for the next couple of versions of iOS,

01:08:26 ◼   ► because it could really catch on with people.

01:08:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think too, it's an opportunity for them

01:08:32 ◼   ► to do AI in a way, the way that they would talk about it

01:08:37 ◼   ► in the sense of it's like in a way that only Apple can,

01:08:40 ◼   ► right, it's that sense of like when they did their image

01:08:44 ◼   ► indexing system in photos, I remember like Craig Federighi

01:08:48 ◼   ► talking about how they, you know, they did the work

01:08:52 ◼   ► to build their own training set of like appropriate images

01:08:57 ◼   ► for, you know, defining what a mountain is or what a dog is

01:09:01 ◼   ► and did it in a way that then they didn't just scrape

01:09:05 ◼   ► the internet and then use that as their basis or use user photos as the basis for it. They

01:09:12 ◼   ► did it in a way that is much more predictable, reliable, like legally sound, all those kinds

01:09:18 ◼   ► of things. And like, I could imagine them going down that road with a lot of these types

01:09:24 ◼   ► of features and saying, we like this exists other places, you know, if you wanted to generate

01:09:28 ◼   ► an image, you could do it with, you know, stable diffusion or Dolly. But if you do it

01:09:34 ◼   ► there's all these questions or difficulties or ambiguities about how that works, but if

01:09:40 ◼   ► you do it with our system, we've taken care of all that. We've done it kind of like, quote,

01:09:44 ◼   ► the right way in a way that, you know, everyone else is doing it the easy way or the cheap

01:09:48 ◼   ► way. This is the Apple way. We're going to do it the best way. And that would be very

01:09:53 ◼   ► interesting to see where they could go with that because they have devices that are capable

01:09:57 ◼   ► of this and they have kind of a history and a pedigree of going down that road. And the

01:10:01 ◼   ► the results are great.

01:10:02 ◼   ► When they did image indexing on the iPhone,

01:10:07 ◼   ► initially they were doing it in a way

01:10:08 ◼   ► that was totally different than everyone else

01:10:10 ◼   ► because everyone else was doing it in the server

01:10:12 ◼   ► and kind of doing it using,

01:10:14 ◼   ► they're building models based on user images.

01:10:17 ◼   ► Apple went the other way

01:10:18 ◼   ► and they did it completely on device

01:10:19 ◼   ► and both their own kind of internal image sets

01:10:22 ◼   ► and training models.

01:10:24 ◼   ► But the result is amazing.

01:10:25 ◼   ► And the stuff that iOS 16 can do,

01:10:28 ◼   ► where if you ask it, show me pictures of the beach,

01:10:32 ◼   ► and it'll show you all the pictures

01:10:34 ◼   ► where you were at the beach,

01:10:34 ◼   ► and you can ask it very sophisticated, nuanced questions,

01:10:38 ◼   ► and it will be able to answer you

01:10:40 ◼   ► in terms of what is the content of my images,

01:10:41 ◼   ► is there text in the image?

01:10:43 ◼   ► You can select it and search it,

01:10:45 ◼   ► and that kind of stuff is just where they're doing,

01:10:48 ◼   ► they've done this in a very different way,

01:10:50 ◼   ► and it's been very impressive.

01:10:52 ◼   ► And so I think it's very exciting for them,

01:10:55 ◼   ► for me to imagine that that's how they see themselves

01:10:57 ◼   ► and it's something that they care about enough

01:10:59 ◼   ► that they're putting in their own version of it,

01:11:02 ◼   ► that they're not sort of worried about not being first,

01:11:05 ◼   ► they'd rather be best.

01:11:08 ◼   ► And I think that's a great place

01:11:10 ◼   ► for Frabel to find themselves.

01:11:11 ◼   ► 'Cause if the general, the incredible growth

01:11:15 ◼   ► in AI systems recently in the public sphere,

01:11:18 ◼   ► it's like makes me very curious and intrigued to see

01:11:20 ◼   ► where they're gonna be on their internal side,

01:11:24 ◼   ► coming at it from a potentially more rigorous approach.

01:11:28 ◼   ► If you enjoy this show and want to get more of it, why don't you subscribe to Upgrade

01:11:33 ◼   ► Plus.

01:11:34 ◼   ► Not only do you hear no ads in any episode, you also get bonus content every single week.

01:11:41 ◼   ► You also become a Relay FM member so you get access to a ton of bonus content.

01:11:45 ◼   ► The Relay FM members discord, which is a great place to be.

01:11:48 ◼   ► Go to GetUpgradePlus.com, you can sign up for just $5 a month or $50 a year and you'll be

01:11:53 ◼   ► helping support the show.

01:11:55 ◼   ► On last week's episode, me, Jason and I played a game of Marvel Snap together.

01:12:00 ◼   ► In the show notes for the Upgrade Plus version, there is a video recording of the game with

01:12:05 ◼   ► our audio over the top.

01:12:07 ◼   ► In this week's episode, I have a ton of ask_questions that came in.

01:12:11 ◼   ► We're going to do a bunch in a moment, but we have tons more that were submitted by Relay

01:12:16 ◼   ► FM members that we're going to do in Upgrade Plus.

01:12:18 ◼   ► If you want this and no ads, go to getupgradeplus.com.

01:12:24 ◼   ► Are you ready for some Ask_Questions?

01:12:27 ◼   ► (imitates laser noises)

01:12:29 ◼   ► Beautiful, look at that.

01:12:31 ◼   ► The lasers, they're still here.

01:12:33 ◼   ► First question comes from Joe, who wants to know,

01:12:36 ◼   ► what additions or improvements

01:12:38 ◼   ► are you hoping for WidgetKit this year?

01:12:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I think the main thing that I feel like

01:12:44 ◼   ► I would love to see WidgetKit get in, you know,

01:12:47 ◼   ► I was 17, is a broadening of what lock screen widgets are.

01:12:52 ◼   ► widgets are. I feel like they were really interesting, really. They're a very cool,

01:12:59 ◼   ► compelling, popular feature. But what they can be and how they look is so limited and

01:13:05 ◼   ► so often limited in weird ways. That it's kind of frustrating for me as someone who

01:13:10 ◼   ► spends a lot of time trying to make widgets awesome. Like there's only so far I feel like

01:13:14 ◼   ► I can make lock screen widgets awesome because there's no color layout options are really

01:13:18 ◼   ► limited, the size options are very limited. You have a giant lock screen, but you can

01:13:22 ◼   ► only put them in these very specific places. And the one above your lock screen has almost

01:13:27 ◼   ► no customization options whatsoever. Like it feels really limited. And so I think I

01:13:32 ◼   ► would be very excited if widget kit got more options there that if we could do color widgets

01:13:37 ◼   ► on your lock screen, you can, or there's a new, you know, different sizes, or even you

01:13:43 ◼   ► could take your home screen widgets and put them on your lock screen or, you know, crazy

01:13:47 ◼   ► things like that would be wonderful, and I think very exciting to kind of push that forward.

01:13:52 ◼   ► And especially now that we know kind of what it looks like with the always on and some

01:13:58 ◼   ► of the other concerns and things that I could imagine if you know going came into play with

01:14:02 ◼   ► lock screen widgets this year where, you know, they were announced before the always on display

01:14:07 ◼   ► was announced. And so there are certain things in there that are kind of inherent and challenging

01:14:12 ◼   ► and they have potentially evolved what they think of with the always on lock screen where

01:14:16 ◼   ► Initially, it always had the image in it.

01:14:19 ◼   ► Now it has the image, or you can go to a black wallpaper

01:14:23 ◼   ► when you're in Always On.

01:14:24 ◼   ► And I feel like those evolutions and refinements

01:14:27 ◼   ► mean that there's a bigger possibility

01:14:30 ◼   ► for what lock screen widgets could be.

01:14:32 ◼   ► And I think that's where I'd be most excited.

01:14:34 ◼   ► I mean, if there were any changes to widgets anytime,

01:14:36 ◼   ► I'm always excited.

01:14:37 ◼   ► Like I'm super up for taking on whatever Apple

01:14:40 ◼   ► wants to give me on widgets.

01:14:41 ◼   ► But that's the area that I feel like home screen widgets

01:14:44 ◼   ► feel pretty good.

01:14:45 ◼   ► They feel pretty robust and I don't have nearly as long

01:14:48 ◼   ► of a kind of wish list on them

01:14:51 ◼   ► than I do with lock screen widgets right now.

01:14:53 ◼   ► - Do you think we're ever gonna get interactivity

01:14:56 ◼   ► on home screen widgets?

01:14:57 ◼   ► - I don't know.

01:15:00 ◼   ► I think what's strange about that is I,

01:15:02 ◼   ► as someone who has a lot of users

01:15:06 ◼   ► who interact with widgets on a very regular basis,

01:15:10 ◼   ► I don't hear a lot about requests for interactivity.

01:15:13 ◼   ► - They're not asking you, right?

01:15:14 ◼   ► like can't I do this, can't I do that kind of thing.

01:15:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, it doesn't come up in the way

01:15:20 ◼   ► that I would have expected it to,

01:15:23 ◼   ► in a way that I think people are pretty happy

01:15:25 ◼   ► with them not being interactive.

01:15:27 ◼   ► Obviously, if they became interactive,

01:15:28 ◼   ► people would be happy

01:15:29 ◼   ► and you'd have new things that are possible.

01:15:32 ◼   ► I think the things that I hear more

01:15:35 ◼   ► are people wish they could be updated

01:15:37 ◼   ► in ways that were more live and real time,

01:15:41 ◼   ► or like being able to show animations or videos

01:15:45 ◼   ► or those kinds of things on the lock screen

01:15:48 ◼   ► or on the home screen would be compelling.

01:15:51 ◼   ► But being able to interact with it,

01:15:52 ◼   ► like putting buttons there just hasn't been something

01:15:55 ◼   ► that I sort of hear about as much.

01:15:58 ◼   ► And it's something that, sure, it'd be cool if it happened,

01:16:01 ◼   ► but I'm not, I think the way they went about it

01:16:06 ◼   ► makes a ton of sense technically

01:16:08 ◼   ► that it's this very predictable thing

01:16:10 ◼   ► that you can put on your locks,

01:16:12 ◼   ► if you're gonna put it on the home screen,

01:16:13 ◼   ► it needs to be kind of bulletproof

01:16:15 ◼   ► because if the home screen,

01:16:18 ◼   ► you do something weird as a developer

01:16:19 ◼   ► and it like crashes your home screen,

01:16:21 ◼   ► well, that's like your phone is in trouble

01:16:23 ◼   ► in a way that if you do something weird in your app,

01:16:26 ◼   ► your app quits, well, you're just back to your home screen.

01:16:28 ◼   ► Like the home screen has to be bulletproof

01:16:30 ◼   ► and I feel like the way that they've done it

01:16:33 ◼   ► by making them pre-rendered and stable

01:16:36 ◼   ► is a way of making that like guaranteed.

01:16:39 ◼   ► And so I don't expect that necessarily,

01:16:41 ◼   ► like sure, if it would be cool,

01:16:42 ◼   ► but I don't hear a lot of requests for it.

01:16:44 ◼   ► And it's not something that I feel like is as compelling

01:16:48 ◼   ► as it's like conceptually, it would be compelling.

01:16:50 ◼   ► But in practice, even back in the day

01:16:52 ◼   ► when we had interactive widgets

01:16:54 ◼   ► with the old today style widgets,

01:16:56 ◼   ► like it wasn't, I don't think that the interactivity

01:17:00 ◼   ► was the killer feature.

01:17:01 ◼   ► I think the putting that information in a place

01:17:04 ◼   ► that is accessible and then making it,

01:17:07 ◼   ► you know, customizable by the user is what's cool,

01:17:10 ◼   ► rather than necessarily being able,

01:17:12 ◼   ► if you want to interact, interact with the app,

01:17:15 ◼   ► tap on the app and you can get into that.

01:17:17 ◼   ► And I think some of the changes they've made with that

01:17:20 ◼   ► about being able to launch into other apps

01:17:23 ◼   ► and those kind of features have made it really compelling.

01:17:26 ◼   ► So like, sure if it happened,

01:17:28 ◼   ► but that's not something that's really on my sort of

01:17:30 ◼   ► to-do list or my radar.

01:17:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would say personally, I have not missed,

01:17:36 ◼   ► I don't particularly feel like I need interactivity

01:17:39 ◼   ► in my widgets.

01:17:40 ◼   ► I kind of see my widgets more as like little windows

01:17:43 ◼   ► into the app.

01:17:43 ◼   ► Like if I want to do something, I'll open the app,

01:17:46 ◼   ► do the thing.

01:17:47 ◼   ► But other than that, it's just here's some information.

01:17:50 ◼   ► I don't feel like it's something that I'm really that,

01:17:54 ◼   ► that I really miss as much as I thought I would

01:17:57 ◼   ► when it seemed like that was the way

01:17:59 ◼   ► that it was gonna change, how widgets were gonna be.

01:18:02 ◼   ► Rob asks, how do you balance the many apps

01:18:05 ◼   ► your portfolio. I've been happily using Podometer++ and related apps for years. When

01:18:11 ◼   ► Widgetsmith became a breakout here, I was happy for you, but worried that the support

01:18:15 ◼   ► for other apps that I use would drop to a minimal. I have been very happy to be very

01:18:20 ◼   ► wrong about that, but I don't understand why. Is it for diversification in your business?

01:18:26 ◼   ► I mean, I would say since things like Widgetsmith becoming wildly successful and popular when

01:18:34 ◼   ► at first had its moment when it went viral on TikTok. Like, I am less diversified and

01:18:40 ◼   ► less broad in my approach as a result of that. That I think I'm glad if people think that

01:18:47 ◼   ► the other apps are still getting attention and it feels that way to them, because they're

01:18:53 ◼   ► getting some attention, but not nearly as much. And I think this is just the reality

01:18:59 ◼   ► of working on a portfolio of things makes sense. I give products the attention that

01:19:08 ◼   ► they can pay for. Like if they were a consulting client, like back in the day before I made

01:19:13 ◼   ► apps, I was a consultant, and clients would buy a certain amount of my time and pay me

01:19:21 ◼   ► for it directly. And in some ways, I view my apps in a similar vein, just with a slightly

01:19:27 ◼   ► different perspective where, you know, Widget Smith is by far has the broadest audience

01:19:32 ◼   ► that I have and has the most potential for me to do things. And so I spend the most time

01:19:37 ◼   ► on it. Like it sort of it buys that time for me and, you know, pedometer plus plus is gets

01:19:42 ◼   ► the next biggest chunk of that. And then, you know, my other apps from there kind of

01:19:46 ◼   ► falls off very dramatically that beyond that apps that I'm working on, I'm either I'm primarily

01:19:51 ◼   ► working on because they're exciting to me, like I'm, they're more of a hobby or something

01:19:56 ◼   ► that I enjoy working on or I have a personal reason to work on them rather than it being

01:20:02 ◼   ► like a business decision. And I think that's an evolution of the way that I work. Like

01:20:07 ◼   ► when I started and certainly I've been doing this for 14 years or something. I've been

01:20:12 ◼   ► making apps now. And so in the early days of the App Store, the like the best way to

01:20:17 ◼   ► make, you know, sort of to try and make it was to build lots and lots of different things.

01:20:22 ◼   ► And that was because not a lot existed. You know, there were no apps in the App Store.

01:20:26 ◼   ► So anytime you made something, it was new and interesting

01:20:29 ◼   ► and pushed something out,

01:20:29 ◼   ► whereas now those opportunities I find

01:20:32 ◼   ► are much fewer and far between,

01:20:34 ◼   ► and there's a much better return on enhancing

01:20:38 ◼   ► and going deeper into things

01:20:39 ◼   ► that have already found traction,

01:20:41 ◼   ► that trying to get traction is so difficult

01:20:44 ◼   ► that it's better to just sort of double down on things.

01:20:47 ◼   ► And so I just kind of balance them by,

01:20:49 ◼   ► based on their general popularity,

01:20:51 ◼   ► and then when I have periods of,

01:20:54 ◼   ► there's inevitably in the Apple developer cycle,

01:20:57 ◼   ► there are gonna be kind of these quiet periods where,

01:21:00 ◼   ► there's not much that Apple is doing right now

01:21:02 ◼   ► in terms of new stuff versus from June to September.

01:21:05 ◼   ► So June to September, like WidgetSmith was my primary focus

01:21:08 ◼   ► and I was doing everything I could to have

01:21:11 ◼   ► the most compelling thing day one for that.

01:21:14 ◼   ► Some of my other apps, not so much.

01:21:15 ◼   ► If they got an update, that's great,

01:21:17 ◼   ► but if they didn't, it was fine.

01:21:18 ◼   ► And so I think there's just a maturity

01:21:20 ◼   ► that you kind of have to have to be realistic

01:21:22 ◼   ► and understand that sometimes it's gonna disappoint people

01:21:26 ◼   ► who care about one of the less popular products

01:21:29 ◼   ► are just gonna be kind of, you know,

01:21:30 ◼   ► it's like if you're a big fan of the,

01:21:33 ◼   ► you know, whatever, the Mac Pro,

01:21:35 ◼   ► and you're gonna get sad that Apple puts all their attention

01:21:37 ◼   ► on the MacBook Air, but that's just the reality.

01:21:40 ◼   ► That's just what makes sense.

01:21:41 ◼   ► And it's, you know, all those same forces are magnified,

01:21:44 ◼   ► you know, a thousand-fold when it's just

01:21:45 ◼   ► a one-person developer trying to make those kind of

01:21:48 ◼   ► decisions about how to best allocate your time.

01:21:51 ◼   ► Oz asks, "Where do you predict the Apple Watch could go in the next few years? Do you

01:21:57 ◼   ► think we're getting close to third-party watch faces, or is this still a pipe dream?"

01:22:00 ◼   ► Oh, boy. Third-party watch faces. I mean, third-party watch faces are like my—that's

01:22:10 ◼   ► my dream feature. That is the thing that I enjoy making them. I make them now. That doesn't

01:22:17 ◼   ► exist as a thing that Apple has created. There is no third party API for watch faces, but

01:22:23 ◼   ► I have found ways for years now of making my own. And you and I have met up in person

01:22:30 ◼   ► and if you look at my wrist, I'm very rarely running a Apple watch face because I like

01:22:36 ◼   ► my own better. I've come up with dozens of these over the years. I think they're super

01:22:41 ◼   ► compelling and interesting, but that's just not been a place that Apple has kind of decided

01:22:47 ◼   ► to put effort into. And I don't -- at this point, it is certainly a conscious choice.

01:22:52 ◼   ► There's nothing technically why they couldn't. I mean, I'm making apps that pretend to be

01:22:56 ◼   ► watch faces and running them in kind of a way that doesn't make a lot of sense and isn't

01:23:00 ◼   ► necessarily the most battery efficient. Like, if they wanted to, they could do this so much

01:23:04 ◼   ► better. But it seems to be a conscious choice that they have not done. And I think what

01:23:09 ◼   ► What is complicated there is the future of the Apple Watch is whether that is they're

01:23:13 ◼   ► holding it back for a kind of using it.

01:23:18 ◼   ► You have this trump card in the back that they're trying to play at the right moment

01:23:22 ◼   ► where they can get a big impact or they have a quiet year that they want to, you know,

01:23:27 ◼   ► turn into something big.

01:23:28 ◼   ► And if that's the case, like this year would be really cool.

01:23:31 ◼   ► It's the 10th anniversary of, you know, watch us.

01:23:33 ◼   ► It'll be watching us 10 like be a great time to have a big splashy feature.

01:23:37 ◼   ► But like otherwise, if I was trying to predict the future of the Apple Watch, I would say,

01:23:43 ◼   ► you know, history shows us that every year, what they'll do is they'll add a couple of

01:23:48 ◼   ► new workout modes and a couple of new kind of workout fitness related things.

01:23:53 ◼   ► You know, it's every year there's something new that they're doing there.

01:23:57 ◼   ► There'll be some new capability on the new hardware that is an improvement, kind of an

01:24:02 ◼   ► evolution of what's happening there.

01:24:06 ◼   ► And they'll add two or three new watch faces of their own.

01:24:10 ◼   ► And it's like, if I was going to like place a bet on what watchOS 10 and the series nine

01:24:15 ◼   ► watch was going to look like, that's what I would predict.

01:24:19 ◼   ► Like, I think that's the most likely scenario.

01:24:23 ◼   ► I think the only thing kind of pulling it slightly differently this year that if I'm

01:24:27 ◼   ► going to try and do a little wish casting is this year, you know, last year, they dropped

01:24:33 ◼   ► support for the Series 3 Apple Watch, but that was the first year that they did that.

01:24:39 ◼   ► And I'm curious to see what a full year of being unencumbered by the Series 3 looks like

01:24:46 ◼   ► for WatchOS.

01:24:47 ◼   ► I think that's interesting to me that they'll still have-- I don't know at what point they

01:24:52 ◼   ► decided they were going to drop the Series 3.

01:24:54 ◼   ► Like if that was something they knew going into all of WatchOS 9, then maybe it doesn't

01:24:59 ◼   ► actually make a difference.

01:25:00 ◼   ► But if they didn't know that until January of last year, and so there were some choices

01:25:08 ◼   ► they couldn't make because it would have had to support the Series 3, that would be interesting

01:25:13 ◼   ► and compelling and intriguing to see what happens.

01:25:16 ◼   ► And similarly, what's going to happen with the Ultra, which is this very different model

01:25:21 ◼   ► to it, is this a device that's going to be supported and upgraded regularly, or is it

01:25:26 ◼   ► just kind of be this thing that happened once and you know will get updated every few years

01:25:31 ◼   ► and from a system software perspective doesn't get much so it's hard to say but I mean third

01:25:37 ◼   ► party watch faces I'm so there for that like I will be shouting as the top of my lungs

01:25:41 ◼   ► and jumping up and down if that ever happens at WWDC.

01:25:44 ◼   ► Maybe definitely be a new watch Smith there I feel like if that was the case I I am intrigued

01:25:51 ◼   ► by the idea of there could be something that they are able to do now or a set of things

01:25:59 ◼   ► they're able to do now because they can rely more on the hardware and what the hardware

01:26:05 ◼   ► is capable of.

01:26:06 ◼   ► Because series 3 to series 4 was a big jump, right?

01:26:10 ◼   ► The series 4 watches, they have remained kind of like better over the long term than the

01:26:18 ◼   ► series 3 and I guess they also stopped selling the series 4 and the series 3, they just kept

01:26:23 ◼   ► selling it, which is just dragging everything back.

01:26:28 ◼   ► And Jonathan asks, when you want to implement a feature in an app but you don't know how,

01:26:34 ◼   ► what is the process that you work towards building something into your app?

01:26:38 ◼   ► Do you start with documentation, tutorials or example projects?

01:26:42 ◼   ► And what do you do if there aren't a lot of resources?

01:26:45 ◼   ► So what is your learning process like?

01:26:48 ◼   ► How do you understand new things?

01:26:52 ◼   ► And how do you kind of test putting them into your applications?

01:26:56 ◼   ► >> So I think everyone has a different approach to learning.

01:26:59 ◼   ► And mine tends to be very experimental and kind of -- I very much am on the side of rapid

01:27:08 ◼   ► prototyping, get something working, build it as quick as you can.

01:27:13 ◼   ► And that's the best way for me to learn.

01:27:15 ◼   ► that I don't really read a lot of documentation. I think the only bit of Apple documentation

01:27:20 ◼   ► that I would actually could say that I've read is probably the human interface guidelines.

01:27:25 ◼   ► Like the technical documents that sometimes get produced or like the Swift language guide

01:27:30 ◼   ► and things like that. Like I just can't do it. Like those hurt my brain. I'm not that

01:27:36 ◼   ► kind of developer. And tutorials, I have a similar kind of difficulty. Like I struggle

01:27:42 ◼   ► just wrapping my head around something unless I can see it and use it and I'm in Xcode doing

01:27:48 ◼   ► that. And so if there's a new feature I want to build, I just start, I suppose like I just

01:27:54 ◼   ► will think, okay, well, what is like a basic version of this? Or how can I probably first

01:27:59 ◼   ► step is, is this a problem that I can solve at once? Or do I need to break it into five

01:28:03 ◼   ► smaller problems, and then I break it down into five smaller problems, and try and pick,

01:28:07 ◼   ► pick the first one and just try and build it. And if I don't know how to do it, I'll

01:28:11 ◼   ► tend to just either experimentally do it

01:28:14 ◼   ► or just do a lot of Google searching

01:28:16 ◼   ► and kind of looking around or those kinds of things.

01:28:21 ◼   ► Because usually there is, most things tend to have,

01:28:25 ◼   ► they're not, you're not the first person to solve a problem.

01:28:27 ◼   ► Even if it's a new technology, a new platform,

01:28:30 ◼   ► there are rules or things that you can benefit from

01:28:33 ◼   ► where you can kind of be taking your past experiences

01:28:36 ◼   ► and bringing it forward.

01:28:37 ◼   ► Or I try and say like this new thing,

01:28:39 ◼   ► how is this similar to something else that I've done before?

01:28:43 ◼   ► And in my case, I've been making apps for 14 years now.

01:28:48 ◼   ► I've launched something like 60 different apps

01:28:51 ◼   ► over that time.

01:28:52 ◼   ► Like I got a lot of back,

01:28:54 ◼   ► I got a lot of code in the catalog that I can go

01:28:56 ◼   ► and look at and pull from and kind of learn

01:29:00 ◼   ► to see if I can take this thing and adapt it

01:29:02 ◼   ► into the new thing, which isn't necessarily the best always

01:29:05 ◼   ► in terms of I'm not doing these kind of clean room,

01:29:07 ◼   ► "Oh, Apple introduced this totally new technology.

01:29:10 ◼   ► Let me just implement it in a totally new way."

01:29:13 ◼   ► It's like very often I'll end up saying,

01:29:15 ◼   ► "Is there an old ver-- can I use this old version

01:29:18 ◼   ► and make it better and then refine it

01:29:20 ◼   ► and move it forward going from there?"

01:29:23 ◼   ► But, like, for me, that's what works best.

01:29:25 ◼   ► And I feel like for a lot of --

01:29:27 ◼   ► My best advice usually to someone

01:29:28 ◼   ► who's trying to get into app development

01:29:30 ◼   ► or wanting to learn something is find a problem

01:29:32 ◼   ► that you feel like you are excited

01:29:34 ◼   ► and passionate about solving

01:29:36 ◼   ► and then just start trying to solve it.

01:29:38 ◼   ► And that is the best way to learn,

01:29:40 ◼   ► that trying to learn it theoretically never works for me.

01:29:45 ◼   ► There's something powerful about,

01:29:47 ◼   ► like the most exciting part of my job

01:29:50 ◼   ► is when I hit build and run,

01:29:51 ◼   ► and then something that didn't exist before now exists.

01:29:54 ◼   ► Like this capability, this feature, whatever that is,

01:29:57 ◼   ► like there was a magic in kind of taking this thing

01:30:00 ◼   ► that is theoretical in your brain

01:30:02 ◼   ► and turning it into reality.

01:30:04 ◼   ► that is like actual feels like magic. Like it is. It just, you know, it's turning something from

01:30:09 ◼   ► nothing into something. And so I just go through that process and try and do as many times as I can.

01:30:16 ◼   ► How can I make this from something that doesn't exist into something that does exist and get

01:30:19 ◼   ► started? And if you do that enough, you start to get good. You kind of learn how to learn,

01:30:24 ◼   ► through through that process. And I feel like if you get too stuck in documentation or feel

01:30:30 ◼   ► like you have to understand something before you try it, you'll hardly ever start. And that's,

01:30:35 ◼   ► you know, definitely worse. Thank you to everybody who sent in a question for Under School. If you

01:30:39 ◼   ► would like to send in questions for our next episode where you will be asking things of Casey

01:30:43 ◼   ► Liss, just go to... I don't know why that made me laugh to say that, but yeah, if you want to make

01:30:50 ◼   ► Casey answer for his crimes, go to upgradefeedback.com and you can submit questions for me

01:30:57 ◼   ► me to ask Casey on the next episode.

01:31:00 ◼   ► But most importantly right now,

01:31:02 ◼   ► I would like to thank you,

01:31:03 ◼   ► underscore David Smith, for joining me on this episode.

01:31:06 ◼   ► It has been wonderful and fascinating to talk to you as always.

01:31:09 ◼   ► >> It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.

01:31:12 ◼   ► >> If you would like to find David's work in the meantime,

01:31:14 ◼   ► here's a few places you can go.

01:31:15 ◼   ► If you want to find his blog,

01:31:17 ◼   ► David does a great job by the way of you're going through,

01:31:19 ◼   ► I know some Perometer++ stuff right now,

01:31:22 ◼   ► and you've been detailing a lot of

01:31:23 ◼   ► the design diary that you've been going through.

01:31:26 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

01:31:26 ◼   ► You can find out more about that and find out about David's apps at David-Smith.org.

01:31:34 ◼   ► That is an interesting URL you've got there.

01:31:36 ◼   ► .org as well?

01:31:38 ◼   ► Well, David Smith's a hard... it's a very popular name.

01:31:41 ◼   ► Can't you get like underscore something? Surely you must have one.

01:31:45 ◼   ► I do have underscore David Smith dot com like spelled out, but then you have the problem of like

01:31:51 ◼   ► you can't use underscores in URLs and so...

01:31:54 ◼   ► David - Smith org works have to do what you just didn't say spelled out which is that's no good

01:32:00 ◼   ► Yeah, all right, David - or David - that's the word I was looking for Smith dot org

01:32:05 ◼   ► So you can find out more there or just if you google David Smith what happens?

01:32:10 ◼   ► Do you think I think if you do David Smith app, I would be the top result, but David Smith

01:32:16 ◼   ► There's a famous sculptor who was also called David Smith. So he's usually the number one hit. I mean, I just got

01:32:23 ◼   ► The number one hit is a British Embassy security guard convicted of spying for Russia who's gonna spend 13 years in prison.

01:32:29 ◼   ► Not me.

01:32:30 ◼   ► Are you sure? That was three days ago. So Google is is

01:32:34 ◼   ► full of this right now. So your Google juice is not good right now. Your SEO is bad.

01:32:41 ◼   ► Search for Widget Smith, search for penomena plus plus. Those are trademarked names that are gonna be much more unique.

01:32:46 ◼   ► There you go. And Widget Smith, you know,

01:32:49 ◼   ► Everybody knows it right? Yeah, it's not using it. Come on

01:32:52 ◼   ► You can also listen to David's podcast here under the radar on relay FM and David is underscore David Smith

01:32:58 ◼   ► You're a mastodon social right? I am. Yes, great

01:33:01 ◼   ► You can listen to my shows

01:33:03 ◼   ► Of course here in relay FM check out my work a cortex brand and I am I Myke on Myke dot social

01:33:08 ◼   ► You can send us your feedback and your questions to upgrade feedback calm

01:33:13 ◼   ► Thank you to our members who support us with upgrade plus

01:33:16 ◼   ► We really appreciate that.

01:33:18 ◼   ► And thank you to Squarespace and TextExpander for their support of this week's episode.

01:33:23 ◼   ► I'll be back next time. Until then, thank you for listening.

01:33:27 ◼   ► Thank you to David Smith. Say goodbye, David.

01:33:29 ◼   ► Goodbye.

01:33:30 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:33:33 ◼   ► [ Music ]