Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Connected, episode 460. It's made possible by our sponsors, Vitaly, Squarespace, and Factor.

00:00:18 ◼   ► My name is Stephen Hackett and I'm joined by Mr. Mike Hurley.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Hello, my name is Mike Hurley and I'm joined by Mr. Federico Vittucci.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Hello, it's me. Hi.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Hey buddy.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Hi.

00:00:28 ◼   ► How is everybody?

00:00:29 ◼   ► Tired because it's way too hot.

00:00:31 ◼   ► Oh, what are you dealing with over there?

00:00:33 ◼   ► Typically around 40 degrees Celsius.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Oh!

00:00:36 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's been like this for two weeks.

00:00:39 ◼   ► It's 104.

00:00:40 ◼   ► I will agree Federico, that is too hot.

00:00:42 ◼   ► I'm very low energy during the day.

00:00:45 ◼   ► Are you having, like is this abnormal for this time of year or what?

00:00:49 ◼   ► Well, yes, yes. It is slightly...

00:00:52 ◼   ► Oh, storms and wildfires again. Oh no.

00:00:54 ◼   ► Yeah, so in Italy there's this problem right now of this crazy storms,

00:01:02 ◼   ► unlike almost hurricane level storms in northern Italy.

00:01:07 ◼   ► It's been causing all kinds of destruction up north, even in Milan a couple of nights ago,

00:01:13 ◼   ► and wildfires in southern Italy, which is also very bad.

00:01:19 ◼   ► And here in central Italy, where I am in Rome, it's just hot.

00:01:25 ◼   ► And thankfully the fancy AC system that I have now, like, makes it very nice to spend time at home.

00:01:34 ◼   ► But as soon as you go outside, and I mean I need to go outside to do stuff,

00:01:38 ◼   ► it's just exhausting after a while.

00:01:41 ◼   ► But I don't want to complain too much, and I gotta say this on the show,

00:01:46 ◼   ► I don't want to complain too much, because as much as it is hot and I'm kind of low energy,

00:01:52 ◼   ► I'll still take this over the winter season, anytime.

00:01:57 ◼   ► Like, anytime. At least it's not raining, it's not cold.

00:02:01 ◼   ► You know, I can't stand people who are like, "Oh man, I love when it rains."

00:02:07 ◼   ► No, what is wrong with you? You know, what is wrong with you? Nobody loves the rain.

00:02:11 ◼   ► Do people love when it rains?

00:02:12 ◼   ► Yes, some people say that. And they're liars. And they're wrong.

00:02:17 ◼   ► I think I would take that over the 40 degrees, because I wouldn't like that,

00:02:22 ◼   ► but it's not because I love the rain. I just don't want the 40 degrees.

00:02:26 ◼   ► Yeah, no.

00:02:27 ◼   ► But I wouldn't say like, "Oh, I love when it's cold and raining." I don't feel that way.

00:02:32 ◼   ► Let's start with some follow-up. I went back to Dropbox. I'm sorry, I ever tried leaving.

00:02:38 ◼   ► Who are you apologizing to?

00:02:40 ◼   ► Dropbox. Do you think they're listening?

00:02:43 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:02:44 ◼   ► I don't remember you leaving. I know we had that conversation,

00:02:47 ◼   ► but I felt like the conversation was very resounded in like, "No, I'm going to stick with Dropbox."

00:02:52 ◼   ► I feel like this all happened in your head, or you did it and you didn't tell us.

00:02:55 ◼   ► No, I'd taken everything off of Dropbox, or a lot of things off of Dropbox, and put them in documents.

00:03:01 ◼   ► Oh, because it wasn't syncing.

00:03:02 ◼   ► Right, yeah.

00:03:03 ◼   ► Because it had like freaked out, but now it's all back in Dropbox. It took four days to sync.

00:03:07 ◼   ► So I'm also apologizing to Comcast, I guess, but life is good again.

00:03:12 ◼   ► Oh, just like Jeeps.

00:03:14 ◼   ► Wait, what?

00:03:15 ◼   ► Life is good. That's what it says on the back of the Jeep, right?

00:03:17 ◼   ► Oh, that's true. You know my wife has like an unrational hatred of that brand?

00:03:22 ◼   ► I do know that.

00:03:23 ◼   ► Like you think...

00:03:24 ◼   ► Yep, I do know that.

00:03:25 ◼   ► It's very funny.

00:03:27 ◼   ► This is very interesting. So she hates the brand Jeep.

00:03:31 ◼   ► No, no, no, not Jeep. No, there's a brand called Life is Good.

00:03:35 ◼   ► Which is a terrible brand name.

00:03:36 ◼   ► Which is terrible. And people who drive Jeeps often have Life is Good paraphernalia on their Jeeps.

00:03:44 ◼   ► Why is that? Why did these things go together?

00:03:46 ◼   ► They're not related, right?

00:03:48 ◼   ► No, just people... If you're a Jeep person, you have a Life is Good thing on the back.

00:03:53 ◼   ► So look, on their homepage, they have two dudes standing next to the back of a Jeep, and it's got a Life is Good tire cover on it.

00:04:02 ◼   ► The tire covers are very... They seem to be the thing that I see all the time.

00:04:07 ◼   ► We talked about watchOS 10 and the dock and like the double click thing, and now I'm just confused as to what this watch on my wrist actually does.

00:04:16 ◼   ► So Darren wrote in to say, "I think you guys are missing the boat when saying that by getting rid of the dock to show your favorite apps,

00:04:24 ◼   ► Apple has taken away a quick way to get to your favorites.

00:04:27 ◼   ► Instead, with the new grid view, like one tap on the crown, that's not new, that list view has been there forever.

00:04:34 ◼   ► But if you double click on it, you can have your favorites at the top.

00:04:38 ◼   ► No, no.

00:04:40 ◼   ► That doesn't seem to work. I can't drag them around. So Federico, do you know what's happening here?

00:04:43 ◼   ► This is the thing that Federico was telling us about. At the top of the honeycomb, they just put your apps there.

00:04:49 ◼   ► So the honeycomb...

00:04:51 ◼   ► Yeah, so the honeycomb has been slightly tweaked, right, in watchOS 10. It doesn't start in the center of the honeycomb anymore.

00:04:59 ◼   ► It starts at the top and all the icons are placed so that you can just scroll from top to bottom.

00:05:06 ◼   ► You don't have to pan around like before.

00:05:09 ◼   ► Got it.

00:05:10 ◼   ► So the thinking is, you're missing your favorites, just pin them to the top of the honeycomb.

00:05:16 ◼   ► And in theory, this is the part I mentioned, and it was not working for me.

00:05:22 ◼   ► In theory, watchOS 10, when it launches, it should automatically migrate your dock favorites from watchOS 9 into icons placed at the top of the honeycomb in watchOS 10.

00:05:36 ◼   ► Right? So that should happen for people at some point in September.

00:05:42 ◼   ► I still think that, OK, that's one way to go about it. I still think that the dock was a better design, you know, with the thumbnails.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Yes.

00:05:51 ◼   ► And it's bigger and, you know, you see, you get more on screen than a bunch of tiny icons to choose from.

00:06:00 ◼   ► So, yeah, you can do this in watchOS 10 if you want to, and the system will do that migration for you.

00:06:06 ◼   ► I still feel like icons are not as good as the old dock view from watchOS 9.

00:06:12 ◼   ► So I just switched to mine and it has all four of the clock related things next to each other.

00:06:18 ◼   ► Stopwatch, timer, world clock and alarms.

00:06:21 ◼   ► But I don't know what is what because all these icons look the same.

00:06:24 ◼   ► That's one of the problems.

00:06:26 ◼   ► OK, I'm going to try this.

00:06:28 ◼   ► I turned off the honeycomb view years ago, so I think that's where I was confused.

00:06:32 ◼   ► I'm going to give this another shot and see what happens.

00:06:34 ◼   ► There's zero way that this is better. Like, there is no way that this is better.

00:06:38 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not better.

00:06:40 ◼   ► Because here's the thing. I also don't want to use the honeycomb view. So now what?

00:06:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:45 ◼   ► Right? Like, I don't want to do that because I don't like that UI. I think that is bad UI.

00:06:49 ◼   ► I can never find one I'm looking for. Like, this is that thing of, like you just said about the clock icons.

00:06:56 ◼   ► I know the word timer. I can never remember which one of the four clock icons is the timer just by looking at them.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Because they're like four orange clocks. This is like, this isn't helpful.

00:07:08 ◼   ► And so like, this is not better. It's so much worse. Like, just because they have an affordance, it's still a poor one.

00:07:16 ◼   ► And the double click is your most recent apps, which is kind of useful, but the dock was better.

00:07:24 ◼   ► OK, now I understand. I've been very confused about this for a week.

00:07:28 ◼   ► OK, we spoke about the portable HomePod mini situation. This came up in the Relay FM Slack.

00:07:35 ◼   ► And our friend Marco pointed out that some Amazon Echo models are actually designed for battery stands out of the box.

00:07:44 ◼   ► Like, they had one that had some sort of like pogo pin arrangement on the bottom, and it had a quarter 20.

00:07:52 ◼   ► So you could like screw this particular Amazon Echo into a battery base made by another company, like from the beginning, designed for that.

00:08:01 ◼   ► So that is pretty cool. And I wouldn't mind seeing Apple explore that a little bit.

00:08:07 ◼   ► Like, are there ways to make a more portable HomePod product?

00:08:13 ◼   ► I mean, because like the stand thing that you pointed out, like I've got one now too, like it's fine.

00:08:18 ◼   ► But it would be cool if Apple sort of accounted this for in the design of the product, I guess.

00:08:23 ◼   ► For sure. Here's an idea. MagSafe for the HomePod mini.

00:08:27 ◼   ► That'd be sweet.

00:08:28 ◼   ► Just at the bottom, you attach it. They're never going to do it.

00:08:32 ◼   ► I don't think it's the kind of product that Apple wants to make, but still it'd be pretty nice to have.

00:08:37 ◼   ► I forgot about the Echo with the mouth hole in it.

00:08:41 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:08:42 ◼   ► The Echo Studio.

00:08:43 ◼   ► Remember, remember I had them for like a week last fall and then I returned them on Amazon.

00:08:50 ◼   ► They were weird.

00:08:51 ◼   ► That doesn't sound like you.

00:08:52 ◼   ► Yeah, that's me. That'd be me trying things and returning them. Yes.

00:08:58 ◼   ► Oh, I think they got a new version. It's got buttons on the top.

00:09:00 ◼   ► It's a thing.

00:09:02 ◼   ► They're just rearranging stuff. I feel like the Echo. OK, this is my theory that I just came up with.

00:09:07 ◼   ► OK.

00:09:07 ◼   ► The Amazon Echo product line is kind of like the iPod Nano used to be. They have to refresh it every year,

00:09:14 ◼   ► but some years they don't know what to do. So they put a mouth hole in it or they add buttons or they take buttons away.

00:09:20 ◼   ► That sort of thing.

00:09:21 ◼   ► Just to make it look different.

00:09:22 ◼   ► Maybe they'll make one that you can strap onto your wrist.

00:09:24 ◼   ► I think the mouth hole has a specific purpose. It's base, right?

00:09:28 ◼   ► I think so.

00:09:30 ◼   ► Yeah, but I mean, they do do weird ones like now they have the Echo Pop. Have you seen this one?

00:09:37 ◼   ► What is the Echo Pop?

00:09:39 ◼   ► It is just really small and it's in colors.

00:09:42 ◼   ► So like, I do agree with your theory. They just like can't stop making them.

00:09:47 ◼   ► Like they just they just keep making them.

00:09:50 ◼   ► It's just like it's got a slightly different shape. I don't really know what else. It's like cheaper maybe.

00:09:56 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:09:58 ◼   ► I totally missed the news of the existence of a HomePod Pop of Echo Pop.

00:10:03 ◼   ► I mean, it wouldn't be hard to miss because they have so many of them.

00:10:07 ◼   ► There's a lavender one.

00:10:08 ◼   ► Do you remember remember when they did the microwave with the Amazon voice assistant in it?

00:10:14 ◼   ► Did you guys know or remember that they make Echo sunglasses?

00:10:19 ◼   ► Yes.

00:10:20 ◼   ► What?

00:10:21 ◼   ► Yes.

00:10:22 ◼   ► They make audio sunglasses with Alexa inside.

00:10:26 ◼   ► Incredible.

00:10:27 ◼   ► I remember that.

00:10:29 ◼   ► They need to just chill. They're on the second generation of these.

00:10:33 ◼   ► Yeah. Who's buying them?

00:10:36 ◼   ► I don't know. No one.

00:10:39 ◼   ► No one is buying them, right?

00:10:41 ◼   ► They make two versions of earphones? Like earbuds?

00:10:45 ◼   ► They made a second version of the Echo Auto, which I had no idea that was still a thing.

00:10:51 ◼   ► Like the car accessory. They're on version two of that now, apparently.

00:10:56 ◼   ► A lot of new cars have the Amazon voice assistant built in now to like manage in-car stuff, which is pretty wild.

00:11:04 ◼   ► I still have my one Echo in the living room and I still use it on a regular basis.

00:11:13 ◼   ► And I still cannot believe that Apple is not doing multiple languages for the HomePod.

00:11:18 ◼   ► I think it's wild that they can do multiple languages with the keyboard.

00:11:22 ◼   ► And they have a actually very, very good multilingual keyboard.

00:11:26 ◼   ► Google is doing multi-language assistance.

00:11:29 ◼   ► Amazon is doing multi-language in Alexa and Apple is not.

00:11:33 ◼   ► I think it's wild that they're so behind on that particular front.

00:11:38 ◼   ► That is literally the only reason why I'm forced to use an Echo.

00:11:41 ◼   ► Otherwise, I would just, you know, take it, give it to somebody else, give it to my mom or sell it or whatever, and put a HomePod there.

00:11:51 ◼   ► Like I would immediately do it, but I can't.

00:11:54 ◼   ► Saying about, this is a slight left turn, you said about the keyboard.

00:11:59 ◼   ► And it made me remember a thing that I think I've noticed and I just wondered if you'd noticed it or if you have any thoughts about it.

00:12:05 ◼   ► So the new keyboard does the prediction, right? I really like it.

00:12:09 ◼   ► It predicts all the next words for me.

00:12:11 ◼   ► It seems like it doesn't do this if you use swipe typing.

00:12:15 ◼   ► I don't use swipe typing.

00:12:17 ◼   ► This is an information that I have noticed.

00:12:20 ◼   ► And I'm letting you know, because you're probably in the world where you're collecting pieces of information.

00:12:25 ◼   ► I feel like when I'm swipe typing, it doesn't do any suggestions of words that are coming next.

00:12:30 ◼   ► I've yet to see it and I use it quite a lot.

00:12:32 ◼   ► Not exclusively, like I use both like typing out words and also swipe typing words.

00:12:38 ◼   ► And I have yet to see a like word suggestion, like one of those like greyed out word suggestions in swipe typing.

00:12:46 ◼   ► Very interesting.

00:12:47 ◼   ► I'm saving a note for myself.

00:12:50 ◼   ► Something to check out.

00:12:52 ◼   ► Suggestions do not work with swipe typing.

00:12:56 ◼   ► This is live notes for the review.

00:12:58 ◼   ► What app did that go into?

00:13:00 ◼   ► Yeah, what app did that go into?

00:13:02 ◼   ► Notes for now.

00:13:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm still in the note taking phase.

00:13:07 ◼   ► I haven't written anything yet.

00:13:09 ◼   ► So very different schedule, very different vibe this summer.

00:13:13 ◼   ► Okay.

00:13:14 ◼   ► All right.

00:13:15 ◼   ► Good vibes.

00:13:16 ◼   ► Friend of the show, Dan Seifert from The Verge wrote in to say that he really likes his dbrand leather skin for you, Stephen.

00:13:24 ◼   ► Yeah, Dan's a real leather daddy, it looks like.

00:13:28 ◼   ► Okay, we're going with that.

00:13:30 ◼   ► I'm sure he wants you to just keep talking about that.

00:13:33 ◼   ► I'm sure Dan is really happy about that.

00:13:35 ◼   ► Yeah, go for it.

00:13:36 ◼   ► So I think I'm going to try it on the next phone.

00:13:39 ◼   ► I mean, I'll upgrade this fall and I think I'll give this a shot then.

00:13:43 ◼   ► So I'll report back, I guess, in the fall.

00:13:45 ◼   ► Very exciting.

00:13:46 ◼   ► We spoke last time about iOS 17 betas and battery health.

00:13:51 ◼   ► We felt like some of us were seeing big drop offs after installing the betas or maybe because of cases or MagSafe charging.

00:14:00 ◼   ► We asked for feedback.

00:14:01 ◼   ► We got like a bajillion responses.

00:14:04 ◼   ► I read all of it and it's all over the place.

00:14:07 ◼   ► So a lot of people have dropped multiple percentage points in their battery health since installing the beta.

00:14:14 ◼   ► That seems fast to me.

00:14:16 ◼   ► So I wonder if there's something in iOS 17 that has changed the way that they factor that.

00:14:22 ◼   ► Like, do you remember way back in the day, they're like, "Oh, the phone doesn't drop bars.

00:14:26 ◼   ► Our algorithm was wrong."

00:14:28 ◼   ► So they changed it.

00:14:29 ◼   ► Maybe it's one of those type situations.

00:14:30 ◼   ► It could be.

00:14:31 ◼   ► That's a very good point.

00:14:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:33 ◼   ► Or is it another one of those battery gates?

00:14:35 ◼   ► Are we going to find out that they've been under reporting battery health on us again?

00:14:39 ◼   ► You know, we're going to be plunged back into that hellscape.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Can you imagine?

00:14:44 ◼   ► This feature is here because you got into trouble about batteries and you messed up the feature.

00:14:48 ◼   ► I will say that I'm at 92% now and I think I was at 93% last week.

00:14:52 ◼   ► So that's a percentage point a week.

00:14:54 ◼   ► So by September, you're going to be at 85 just in time for a new phone.

00:14:59 ◼   ► It's going exactly as planned.

00:15:03 ◼   ► But not everyone running the betas has seen this.

00:15:05 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:15:07 ◼   ► Some people say they blame MagSafe or a case.

00:15:12 ◼   ► Some people don't.

00:15:13 ◼   ► Like I said, it was all over the place.

00:15:15 ◼   ► But there are definitely people who have seen big drop-offs.

00:15:18 ◼   ► So my gut feeling is like there's something here that's changed about this or it's a bug in 17.

00:15:26 ◼   ► These numbers aren't as bad as they look.

00:15:28 ◼   ► But I don't--I can't say for sure.

00:15:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:32 ◼   ► It feels like something is going on.

00:15:34 ◼   ► And the battery life in these betas is not very good.

00:15:38 ◼   ► And the phones are hot all the time.

00:15:40 ◼   ► To me, this just feels like an open and closed situation, right?

00:15:43 ◼   ► My phone is hot constantly.

00:15:45 ◼   ► Yes.

00:15:46 ◼   ► I'm convinced that it's having an effect on it.

00:15:49 ◼   ► But I'm not mad about it because I shouldn't have put the beta on if I wanted things to be normal.

00:15:55 ◼   ► Right?

00:15:56 ◼   ► I feel like this is an agreement that we all come to.

00:15:59 ◼   ► If I'm going to do this, weird things are going to start happening.

00:16:02 ◼   ► And maybe it's destroying my battery.

00:16:04 ◼   ► But that's kind of the price I'm paying.

00:16:06 ◼   ► But the thing is, we're now at beta 4.

00:16:09 ◼   ► And we're going to talk about it shortly.

00:16:11 ◼   ► And usually by beta 4, the phone is not getting that warm at this point in the beta season.

00:16:22 ◼   ► Yes, the phones are still getting warm and the battery life is still not great.

00:16:27 ◼   ► I wonder what's going on.

00:16:29 ◼   ► Maybe I need to restore my phone.

00:16:31 ◼   ► No, no, no, we're not getting into that.

00:16:33 ◼   ► I've got a ghost in the machine now.

00:16:35 ◼   ► There's nothing I can do about it.

00:16:37 ◼   ► I kind of wonder if maybe some of the new machine learning stuff they're doing, you know, with Spot.

00:16:42 ◼   ► Turns out the keyboard is destroying the battery.

00:16:45 ◼   ► That could be, right?

00:16:47 ◼   ► That could be.

00:16:49 ◼   ► Battery GPT.

00:16:52 ◼   ► Every text you send is like 0.01% of your battery health.

00:16:56 ◼   ► The noisy group chat, it's just like you just destroy your phone in a day.

00:17:02 ◼   ► I think, honestly, I think beta 4 is worse than 3 so far in this regard.

00:17:07 ◼   ► It's only been, what, a day?

00:17:09 ◼   ► But my battery life yesterday was abysmal.

00:17:12 ◼   ► The keyboard is better just typing on the iPhone.

00:17:15 ◼   ► There were a lot of keyboard related bugs before.

00:17:18 ◼   ► That part got better in beta 4.

00:17:21 ◼   ► I don't think anything else did.

00:17:23 ◼   ► And also, like, and I mean this sort of speaks to, no, I'm going to say this later.

00:17:30 ◼   ► So put a pin in this dot for later.

00:17:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:33 ◼   ► Okay.

00:17:34 ◼   ► Yeah, we're going to come back to that.

00:17:35 ◼   ► Real quick, I just want to invite you to help the Relay FM back office shape the co-founder quiz.

00:17:43 ◼   ► We have a podcast-a-thon coming up very soon.

00:17:47 ◼   ► We're going to announce dates for that in a couple weeks, but it's coming quickly.

00:17:50 ◼   ► And Kathy and others are working on the annual quiz.

00:17:54 ◼   ► So there is a Google Form link in the show notes.

00:17:57 ◼   ► If you have suggestions about, if you have suggestions for questions that should be in the quiz,

00:18:05 ◼   ► go fill out that form.

00:18:07 ◼   ► Go help them out.

00:18:08 ◼   ► We would appreciate it.

00:18:09 ◼   ► What we're looking for here is esoteric trivia about Relay FM.

00:18:13 ◼   ► That's what we're looking for.

00:18:14 ◼   ► It's not like what's Steven's favorite color.

00:18:17 ◼   ► It's like this is trivia about the history of the network usually.

00:18:23 ◼   ► So they're the kinds of questions.

00:18:25 ◼   ► It describes this in a little bit more detail in the form.

00:18:28 ◼   ► This episode of Connected is brought to you by Vitaly.

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00:19:59 ◼   ► Our thanks to Vitaly for their support of the show and Relay FM.

00:20:03 ◼   ► So the pin that I saved before about iOS 17 Beta 4, which just came out as developer beta yesterday,

00:20:11 ◼   ► I assume we're getting a public beta, well, maybe not today, but next week.

00:20:16 ◼   ► I think they're still probably doing them a couple of days after or the week after.

00:20:21 ◼   ► My thought so far is that in previous years, Beta 3 and Beta 4 had more changes and additions to the original release from June

00:20:35 ◼   ► than what we are seeing this year in iOS 17.

00:20:39 ◼   ► And it does not surprise me, given that Apple is so focused on the Vision Pro and Vision OS.

00:20:45 ◼   ► So I think what we saw in June is pretty much what we're getting in September, probably even less,

00:20:52 ◼   ► because they're going to punt some features to later in the iOS 17 cycle.

00:20:56 ◼   ► But basically the thought that I had was, yeah, I was expecting more changes, tweaks, additions,

00:21:03 ◼   ► and we got very, very, very minimal stuff so far.

00:21:08 ◼   ► And I'm good with it. I'm not complaining. I'm good with it. It's just a change that I noticed from previous years.

00:21:14 ◼   ► There's stuff that's not in the beta as yet, like being able to put stickers as tapbacks.

00:21:21 ◼   ► And it's not going to be in 17.

00:21:23 ◼   ► Oh, really?

00:21:24 ◼   ► Yeah, that's coming later this year.

00:21:27 ◼   ► Why? What's the limitation there? That's very strange. I must have missed that. I don't know how I missed that.

00:21:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I think I told you on the show and you didn't react. I was like, yeah, maybe it doesn't care.

00:21:44 ◼   ► Maybe I didn't understand what that meant. I don't know.

00:21:47 ◼   ► Yeah, they said that's coming later this year. So in theory, 17.1, Stephen even said maybe they want to do like with emoji.

00:21:56 ◼   ► And you just said nothing. Maybe you were thinking about something.

00:22:00 ◼   ► What show was this?

00:22:02 ◼   ► Unconnected.

00:22:04 ◼   ► Oh, I know the podcast. Was it when we did the live show, when we were like together?

00:22:08 ◼   ► No, no, no. It was like last week or two weeks ago.

00:22:13 ◼   ► Maybe I was too busy thinking about pranks. I don't know.

00:22:16 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe, maybe. Maybe everybody was like, yeah, Mike's gonna say, he's gonna react to this news.

00:22:22 ◼   ► Everyone was waiting. I let everyone down.

00:22:24 ◼   ► Mike is going to be so upset.

00:22:26 ◼   ► I'm going to write a public apology and screenshot in Apple Notes.

00:22:30 ◼   ► You should write an apology for not being upset enough when the world was waiting for you to be upset.

00:22:39 ◼   ► You did nothing.

00:22:42 ◼   ► I just stood by.

00:22:45 ◼   ► When the world was waiting for your anger, you just stood silent.

00:22:53 ◼   ► Why is Mike not talking about this?

00:22:57 ◼   ► Yeah, literally you become the meme.

00:23:00 ◼   ► So anyway, Beta 4. All right, three things I want to point out.

00:23:05 ◼   ► The first one, the weird app picker menu, you know, the giant one in the messages app.

00:23:13 ◼   ► Those icons that we've seen in iOS 17 Beta 1, 2, and 3, they were kind of strange, you know,

00:23:21 ◼   ► kind of a different style from the typical Apple iconography.

00:23:25 ◼   ► I think people need to get off their friggin' high horses about this.

00:23:28 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:23:29 ◼   ► Oh, it looks like Facebook.

00:23:30 ◼   ► Like, just chill out.

00:23:32 ◼   ► Facebook is used by like billions of people.

00:23:35 ◼   ► Like if they take some UI design from Facebook Messenger, that's not the worst thing in the world.

00:23:41 ◼   ► Look, all it took was to tell him that he didn't get upset enough.

00:23:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I know. Now I'm getting really upset.

00:23:45 ◼   ► How dare you?

00:23:47 ◼   ► But also, I do think there is a regression here though, which I'm kind of mad about.

00:23:50 ◼   ► So like in the previous one, the little photos thing shows you a preview of your last image.

00:23:54 ◼   ► And now it's just the crappy photos icon.

00:23:56 ◼   ► I want the image.

00:23:58 ◼   ► Counterpoint, counterpoint, counterpoint.

00:24:01 ◼   ► I see what you mean, but for consistency and for being able to see at a glance,

00:24:08 ◼   ► what's better, to have a preview of your latest photo that's always changing,

00:24:13 ◼   ► or a photos icon that is always the same?

00:24:16 ◼   ► I mean, the word photos does a decent job of telling me that, but I know, I get your point.

00:24:20 ◼   ► I get your point.

00:24:21 ◼   ► No, no, I get your point, but...

00:24:22 ◼   ► I could go either way, and I kind of liked the idea, but I guess that's what Apple is thinking.

00:24:28 ◼   ► I can, you know, I agree that like, I can see both sides of that.

00:24:33 ◼   ► They've chosen this one.

00:24:34 ◼   ► At least it is visually consistent because none of the others change, right?

00:24:37 ◼   ► Every time you open it.

00:24:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:39 ◼   ► But I do think it is very strange to me that people are so mad about this design,

00:24:44 ◼   ► and like refer to Facebook all the time.

00:24:46 ◼   ► It's just very, like, I don't know what's so wrong about this UI anyway that makes people mad.

00:24:52 ◼   ► Like, it's just like a picker.

00:24:54 ◼   ► So, yeah, it's a bigger context menu than what we're used to seeing from Apple.

00:25:01 ◼   ► The thing I will say, it is especially huge on the iPad.

00:25:07 ◼   ► Oh, I haven't tried that.

00:25:09 ◼   ► Take it down a notch, maybe, you know, you tap on this thing, it's like,

00:25:13 ◼   ► "Ooh, just got this giant menu." It's like, "Okay, I get it.

00:25:17 ◼   ► You want me to pick things from this menu?"

00:25:21 ◼   ► On the iPhone, I think it's fun.

00:25:25 ◼   ► I like the animation that they added in this beta when you open and dismiss the menu.

00:25:30 ◼   ► It sort of pops back into the plus button.

00:25:33 ◼   ► I think that's very nicely done.

00:25:35 ◼   ► I do kind of wish, though, that it was a little bit more like Path, you know?

00:25:39 ◼   ► Yeah, dude, yes.

00:25:41 ◼   ► The thing that I don't like about it, and I would say this is way worse in light mode than dark mode,

00:25:48 ◼   ► is in dark mode, it doesn't really feel like it takes over your screen as much.

00:25:52 ◼   ► I feel like it's the same amount of information density as in light mode,

00:25:57 ◼   ► but I think it is visually more appealing in dark mode than it is in light mode.

00:26:01 ◼   ► But I don't think it needs to cover the entire screen in the way that it does.

00:26:07 ◼   ► But just overall, I'm fine with the UI, personally,

00:26:12 ◼   ► and also it is significantly better when and what it replaced,

00:26:15 ◼   ► so I kind of just take your wins and losses.

00:26:19 ◼   ► We finally got rid of that ridiculous button that you had to press twice to get your images

00:26:23 ◼   ► because you never pressed the right one, you know what I mean?

00:26:26 ◼   ► Also, in iPadOS 17 Beta 4,

00:26:30 ◼   ► we now have favicons for your favorites in the Safari Favorites bar,

00:26:37 ◼   ► which is an excellent change, in my opinion, at least.

00:26:41 ◼   ► You can disable these in settings.

00:26:43 ◼   ► I just like the fact that you now have a touch of color here and there in your Safari Favorites.

00:26:49 ◼   ► So at least for me, easier to find my favorites at a glance.

00:26:55 ◼   ► And again, you can go into Settings and turn off these icons

00:26:58 ◼   ► if you don't want to see them in the Safari toolbar at the top of the screen.

00:27:01 ◼   ► Because these are in tabs, right? But they weren't in the favorites.

00:27:04 ◼   ► They were in tabs before, but they were not in favorites.

00:27:08 ◼   ► Now you can have them in your favorites too.

00:27:10 ◼   ► And lastly, the Shortcuts widget.

00:27:13 ◼   ► In theory, this was working for some people before,

00:27:17 ◼   ► but for a lot of people, the Shortcuts widget, especially on the iPad,

00:27:20 ◼   ► it just never appeared, this Excel version.

00:27:24 ◼   ► Now there is an Excel-sized, the huge one, basically, Shortcuts widget for iPad.

00:27:31 ◼   ► I think I'm going to have fun with this.

00:27:34 ◼   ► Probably not as much as Matthew Casanelli. I can already imagine Matthew.

00:27:38 ◼   ► He responded to your post saying, "I have once again gone off the deep end."

00:27:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I can only imagine like 20 home screens all made of Excel Shortcuts widgets.

00:27:48 ◼   ► So this is 16 actions, right, it looks like?

00:27:51 ◼   ► -16? Yeah. -Yeah, 4x4.

00:27:53 ◼   ► 4x4. No, it should be more than that, right?

00:27:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it is 4x4, because they're not square. They're the rectangular ones.

00:28:01 ◼   ► I thought it was more. Still, it's 4x4.

00:28:05 ◼   ► It is Excel-ent.

00:28:08 ◼   ► Sometimes I wonder why we put up with you, Stephen.

00:28:14 ◼   ► Yeah, there's that widget.

00:28:17 ◼   ► Look, you even suggested it as a title. Your own joke.

00:28:22 ◼   ► You gotta play the game, man.

00:28:24 ◼   ► Yeah, but if you suggest it as a title, that is you thinking nobody else will.

00:28:29 ◼   ► So are you really that proud of your joke at that point?

00:28:32 ◼   ► So, closing thoughts so far on this beta season.

00:28:36 ◼   ► Phones are getting hot, batteries are not lasting as much.

00:28:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:41 ◼   ► iPad is going fine, I think, would be my conclusion so far.

00:28:47 ◼   ► They fixed what they wanted to fix with Sage Manager. I'll take it.

00:28:53 ◼   ► Could still be improved, yes, but we're not gonna get that this year.

00:28:57 ◼   ► And I feel like it's gonna be relatively simple, speaking of my state with the review.

00:29:06 ◼   ► I had this feeling in June. I think it's gonna be a pretty easy and fun one.

00:29:10 ◼   ► There were more challenging years, for sure.

00:29:14 ◼   ► And not even speaking of last year, but what was it, two or three years ago with Safari always changing?

00:29:20 ◼   ► Now that was tough to handle.

00:29:22 ◼   ► Or even just years that had more features, right?

00:29:25 ◼   ► They're just challenging because there's just more to cover.

00:29:27 ◼   ► I think we said this last month, sort of grab bag style of a release, which is fine.

00:29:36 ◼   ► Totally fine. It's actually pretty fun. There's some really fun things.

00:29:39 ◼   ► And I haven't played around with the airdrop features at all.

00:29:43 ◼   ► I think I'm gonna convince Silvio to just install the public beta at some point.

00:29:47 ◼   ► But yeah, I think this should be a pretty easy one to handle.

00:29:52 ◼   ► Standby still rules.

00:29:54 ◼   ► Standby is great.

00:29:55 ◼   ► Standby rules is a fantastic feature.

00:29:58 ◼   ► And one final thing I'll say, and take this as you will.

00:30:02 ◼   ► I have filed, I believe, around 20 feedback items.

00:30:08 ◼   ► And I followed the unspoken, unwritten, I guess, rule of the feedback filer.

00:30:16 ◼   ► Which is I filed my feedbacks before beta 2.

00:30:21 ◼   ► Everybody's like, "Oh, make sure you get your feedbacks in because it really matters."

00:30:26 ◼   ► And that was a good chunk of my time to do that.

00:30:30 ◼   ► And I didn't because it's the right thing to do.

00:30:32 ◼   ► Not a single one of those feedback items has been addressed.

00:30:37 ◼   ► Sometimes I wonder, does it even matter really to file those feedbacks in June and to rush to get them in?

00:30:46 ◼   ► Does it even make a difference? Right?

00:30:50 ◼   ► Well, the counterpoint is I got the reminders badge fixed last year.

00:30:55 ◼   ► So it counts overdue and today.

00:30:58 ◼   ► That was a feedback and admittedly a blog post.

00:31:01 ◼   ► Wait, wasn't that a feedback that you filed because you spoke about it on a show and someone told you to file the feedback?

00:31:06 ◼   ► I don't think someone told me to. I filed a feedback, we talked about it, and I wrote a blog post.

00:31:11 ◼   ► But was it in the first weeks after WWDC?

00:31:14 ◼   ► I think I did it at WWDC.

00:31:17 ◼   ► I don't know, man.

00:31:18 ◼   ► I guess, again, this year they're doing all the Vision Pro stuff, which we're going to talk about.

00:31:27 ◼   ► The Vision Labs, the developer kits.

00:31:30 ◼   ► It is a different year for sure, but just as a piece of information, none of the 20, almost, feedback items I've filed have gone addressed.

00:31:41 ◼   ► And I don't know, I kind of feel like it was useless.

00:31:45 ◼   ► That's how I'm feeling.

00:31:47 ◼   ► And I hope that it wasn't, but it kind of feels like that.

00:31:51 ◼   ► Speaking of the Vision Pro, so they announced a bunch more information.

00:31:55 ◼   ► So I think more details about things we knew were coming.

00:31:58 ◼   ► The developer kits are coming soon.

00:32:00 ◼   ► You can put in an application right now to get a developer kit.

00:32:05 ◼   ► We'll put a link in the show notes to James Thompson.

00:32:08 ◼   ► He, I believe James applied for one, and took a screenshot of the terms, the things that you have to do, which are just incredible about what you're agreeing to.

00:32:18 ◼   ► It's like that nobody else in your life or at your work will be able to see this thing and you'll keep it locked in a room.

00:32:23 ◼   ► And if you go on holiday, you have to contact Apple so you can work out where you're supposed to put it.

00:32:28 ◼   ► And there's a Pelican case and you've got to lock it in the Pelican case.

00:32:31 ◼   ► It's just like a whole thing. It's incredible.

00:32:33 ◼   ► It's just a great thing to read.

00:32:35 ◼   ► And developer labs, this is where you as a developer can go to an Apple building, campus somewhere,

00:32:42 ◼   ► and take your app and try it out and have people from Apple look at it and guide you a little bit.

00:32:50 ◼   ► It'll begin next week in London and Cupertino.

00:32:53 ◼   ► That's way faster than I thought it would be.

00:32:55 ◼   ► Yes. It's just like, oh, you want to?

00:32:58 ◼   ► Like they announced it on Monday and the next, and I think the first one is next Monday.

00:33:04 ◼   ► So if you were sitting around and waiting before getting work on your Vision Pro app, that was a bad idea.

00:33:09 ◼   ► Maybe they're also doing something they're calling compatibility evaluations.

00:33:14 ◼   ► Yes.

00:33:15 ◼   ► That sounds like a severance type of thing.

00:33:18 ◼   ► A little bit, yeah. It really does.

00:33:20 ◼   ► Please, we welcome you for your compatibility evaluation. Please step in.

00:33:24 ◼   ► Yes.

00:33:25 ◼   ► So there's a checklist that you're supposed to do, and then you can submit an application for compatibility evaluation.

00:33:37 ◼   ► So Apple will look at the app and evaluate it on Vision Pro,

00:33:43 ◼   ► and then you'll get an evaluation back within a few weeks with anything that they have found.

00:33:51 ◼   ► It's first come, first serve, so if you can't travel to one of these things and you don't get a developer kit,

00:33:57 ◼   ► there is still a way for Apple to take a look at this.

00:33:59 ◼   ► And I get the sense from reading this it's going to be more than just like what the App Store does.

00:34:05 ◼   ► This feels like you're going to get logs back and screen captures back.

00:34:09 ◼   ► So they really are going to spend some time with these, I hope.

00:34:12 ◼   ► And I think it's a cool fallback if you can't make one of the other two things work for you.

00:34:18 ◼   ► Well, I expect there's like a scale thing, right?

00:34:20 ◼   ► For each developer kit, there's ten places at a developer lab.

00:34:23 ◼   ► For each developer lab, there's ten compatibility evaluations. You know what I mean?

00:34:27 ◼   ► They can do more of those than they can do with the other things.

00:34:31 ◼   ► So even if you want to make it but you don't get a spot,

00:34:35 ◼   ► this is at least a way to send something to Apple and have somebody take a look at it and give you some guidance.

00:34:41 ◼   ► It feels collaborative in a sense.

00:34:44 ◼   ► Which is really cool. I'm glad they're doing it.

00:34:46 ◼   ► And clearly Apple wants these apps to be as good as possible.

00:34:50 ◼   ► The question is, is this the time that we announce our app for Vision OS?

00:34:57 ◼   ► 123 Vision.

00:34:59 ◼   ► 123 Vision?

00:35:00 ◼   ► The grand return of the 123 brand.

00:35:03 ◼   ► And what would be the point though?

00:35:05 ◼   ► It's not like you could talk about it though, right? You just have it.

00:35:07 ◼   ► Yeah, but you know, we'd have it.

00:35:09 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. What I'm really keen on, and I don't know how long it will take to get this information,

00:35:15 ◼   ► is in what state is this hardware when it arrives at developers?

00:35:21 ◼   ► Like, what's the operating system? What has it got in it?

00:35:26 ◼   ► You know what I mean? Like, can you use Safari?

00:35:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:29 ◼   ► Can you use Messages?

00:35:31 ◼   ► Does it actually have the full thing?

00:35:34 ◼   ► Can you log in with your iCloud account and just use it?

00:35:38 ◼   ► Because the simulator is pretty full of things, right?

00:35:42 ◼   ► Is it going to be running the simulator?

00:35:44 ◼   ► Or will it only allow you to run your application and any dependencies that are needed for that?

00:35:51 ◼   ► I'm really keen to find that information out.

00:35:55 ◼   ► And I guess that's just going to be the case of...

00:35:57 ◼   ► I don't think anyone can tell us.

00:35:59 ◼   ► Someone will. Someone might not tell us, but someone's going to tell someone, right?

00:36:02 ◼   ► That's how these things always go.

00:36:05 ◼   ► There are rules. People break the rules.

00:36:07 ◼   ► Within a week of the developer kits going out, we will get an understanding as to what's on them,

00:36:12 ◼   ► the same as literally every single time this has happened in history, right?

00:36:15 ◼   ► But, yeah, I'm very keen to understand that.

00:36:19 ◼   ► And I'm sure...

00:36:20 ◼   ► I have no doubt that this is going to be a very complicated thing from Apple's perspective,

00:36:24 ◼   ► because every developer will be requesting one of these, right?

00:36:29 ◼   ► Why would you not?

00:36:30 ◼   ► I do hope that Apple make some concessions for maybe some developers

00:36:35 ◼   ► to be able to talk about their experiences a little bit, though.

00:36:38 ◼   ► I'm going to use Underscore as the example here, right?

00:36:41 ◼   ► Just because we know him, and Underscore does a great job of communicating his experiences of being a developer.

00:36:46 ◼   ► But if he was able to get a DTK, or just a developer kit, there's no T in this one, right?

00:36:53 ◼   ► There's nothing to transition from. A DK. A Donkey Kong.

00:36:56 ◼   ► If he was to get a Donkey Kong, then I think it would benefit Apple for some developers

00:37:03 ◼   ► to be able to talk about their experience of using it in the same way that they had people from the media go and try it, right?

00:37:09 ◼   ► And talk about it.

00:37:10 ◼   ► Yeah. Well, I mean, do you remember way back in the day that the whole SDK was under an NDA?

00:37:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:17 ◼   ► So iOS developers couldn't even talk to each other. It was so dumb, and they eventually got rid of it.

00:37:22 ◼   ► I agree with you. This should be a thing that people can do.

00:37:27 ◼   ► You could word it in such a way of, like, you can talk about what the software experience is like,

00:37:32 ◼   ► but you can't talk about the hardware. I think that would be fine, because it's kind of no different to the simulator, right?

00:37:37 ◼   ► In that way, yeah. I just think it would behoove them, if they want to encourage developers,

00:37:45 ◼   ► to be able to at least have some developers who are blessed in a way, to be able to talk about their experience in public with the developer kit.

00:37:55 ◼   ► But, hey, I don't make the rules.

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00:39:21 ◼   ► So you can search for a stock image, and you can either purchase the rights, or a lot of them, the rights come with a Squarespace account.

00:39:27 ◼   ► It's really awesome to have all that under one place. I really love building on this platform.

00:39:32 ◼   ► Check out squarespace.com/connected for a free trial.

00:39:36 ◼   ► And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code "connected" to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain name.

00:39:44 ◼   ► Once again, that's squarespace.com/connected, and the code "connected" when you decide to sign up to get 10% off your first purchase and to show your support for the show.

00:39:54 ◼   ► Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of Connected and Relay FM.

00:39:58 ◼   ► It's an exceptionally rare thing, in life or in business, that you get a second chance to make another big impression.

00:40:12 ◼   ► Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate.

00:40:16 ◼   ► Now X will go further, transforming the global town square.

00:40:20 ◼   ► X is the future state of unlimited interactivity centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking, creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services and opportunities.

00:40:33 ◼   ► Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we're just beginning to imagine.

00:40:40 ◼   ► For years, fans and critics alike have pushed Twitter to dream bigger, to innovate faster, and to fulfill our great potential.

00:40:47 ◼   ► X will do that and more.

00:40:49 ◼   ► We've already started to see X take shape over the past 8 months through our rapid feature launches, but we're just getting started.

00:40:56 ◼   ► There's absolutely no limit to this transformation.

00:41:00 ◼   ► X will be the platform that can deliver, well, everything.

00:41:04 ◼   ► Elon Musk and I are looking forward to working with our teams and every single one of our partners to bring X to the world.

00:41:12 ◼   ► X CEO? That's funny to say that out loud.

00:41:16 ◼   ► X CEO? Current X CEO?

00:41:20 ◼   ► Linda Yaccarino everybody.

00:41:22 ◼   ► I have never heard so much baloney.

00:41:24 ◼   ► This is, you know what this feels like Federica? I think you'll get this.

00:41:27 ◼   ► This feels like a monologue that someone in a Horizon game would say.

00:41:34 ◼   ► This sounds like a video game monologue.

00:41:37 ◼   ► None of this even sounds real.

00:41:40 ◼   ► This sounds like an NPC in Horizon giving you directions for a side quest.

00:41:46 ◼   ► But it's like some fake keynote.

00:41:49 ◼   ► It sounds like someone's putting, you know, there's Steve Jobs in it, right?

00:41:52 ◼   ► Like, oh, we're going to do like a black background and we're standing on a plate.

00:41:58 ◼   ► It's an exceptionally rare thing.

00:42:01 ◼   ► And it's so fake poetic.

00:42:03 ◼   ► Like you're literally talking about Twitter is now called with the letter X.

00:42:09 ◼   ► Like I don't even know where to begin with the stupidity of all of this.

00:42:15 ◼   ► And they haven't gotten to make a second.

00:42:19 ◼   ► Like they've just decided that they're going to rebrand the company.

00:42:24 ◼   ► It's not like this came to them.

00:42:26 ◼   ► Not, yes.

00:42:27 ◼   ► It's not like, oh, we've been blessed by the gods of X to take upon the mantle of this, of this huge mission.

00:42:34 ◼   ► No, no.

00:42:36 ◼   ► What you've done, what you've done is you've taken Twitter and you've swapped a bird logo for a letter X.

00:42:45 ◼   ► And now suddenly you're changing the world.

00:42:48 ◼   ► And you've like halfway done it.

00:42:50 ◼   ► Right?

00:42:51 ◼   ► You've like halfway, you've like only half like actually done a rebrand.

00:42:55 ◼   ► But this rebrand is now apparently meaning that you're going to become a payments and banking platform.

00:43:01 ◼   ► Sure.

00:43:02 ◼   ► You want to give your money to Elon Musk, you know, to see it.

00:43:06 ◼   ► This is true.

00:43:07 ◼   ► Like he has done so many like ridiculous things, right?

00:43:12 ◼   ► From a business perspective with this company.

00:43:15 ◼   ► This is the biggest one, right?

00:43:17 ◼   ► Like I feel like this has got to take the cake of like the most ridiculous business decision that he has made as the owner of Twitter.

00:43:29 ◼   ► It's like this, this doesn't make any, there is zero sense to this.

00:43:33 ◼   ► This makes no sense.

00:43:34 ◼   ► Like why, why would you take like the one piece of value that Twitter actually had was its brand and just get rid of it?

00:43:44 ◼   ► For such a bad brand like X as so bad, like it's not, it's unbelievable.

00:43:55 ◼   ► Truly.

00:43:56 ◼   ► It is.

00:43:57 ◼   ► It feels like a joke that's been taken too far.

00:44:01 ◼   ► It feels like we are in a prank.

00:44:09 ◼   ► I think this is what I feel like.

00:44:11 ◼   ► I feel like I'm watching this from a distance because I'm not using Twitter anymore.

00:44:17 ◼   ► But whenever I hear these updates from Twitter, I just feel like it's some kind of performance art piece at this point.

00:44:30 ◼   ► This is what it feels like to me.

00:44:31 ◼   ► It feels like, hey, how far can, is he the richest man in the world?

00:44:37 ◼   ► I don't even know.

00:44:38 ◼   ► How far can a rich guy take this joke until people stop paying attention to him?

00:44:46 ◼   ► He's talked about this for a long time.

00:44:49 ◼   ► Going back to the acquisition phase of all of this, I think it's clear that he wants to take Twitter and use it as a base to like rebuild WeChat for the rest of the world.

00:45:03 ◼   ► Sure.

00:45:04 ◼   ► That quote that Mike so wonderfully read, that sounds like the pitch for WeChat, right?

00:45:10 ◼   ► It's going to be social and payments and everything all together.

00:45:13 ◼   ► It's a thing he can't do, no matter what he wants to do.

00:45:17 ◼   ► No.

00:45:18 ◼   ► I don't think anyone would really strictly trust it.

00:45:22 ◼   ► And no regulator would allow it.

00:45:25 ◼   ► No American regulator is going to allow him to build WeChat or how WhatsApp is in India.

00:45:31 ◼   ► That's what he's going for.

00:45:33 ◼   ► That's not going to happen.

00:45:35 ◼   ► It's just not, no one's going to allow this.

00:45:37 ◼   ► But it doesn't even matter if they did because who would trust this company with their money, like their actual money?

00:45:44 ◼   ► Like, oh yeah, I want to get the X debit card.

00:45:49 ◼   ► Like, no, I'm not going to, like, who's going to do this?

00:45:52 ◼   ► Honestly, here's what I say.

00:45:54 ◼   ► If you would, then good luck to you, right?

00:45:56 ◼   ► Like you should give him your money.

00:45:58 ◼   ► If you out there would trust Elon Musk with your money in this way, then you should give it to him.

00:46:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I saw someone on Threads the other day.

00:46:08 ◼   ► I forget who it was. If it was you, forgive me.

00:46:10 ◼   ► But it was like, everybody gets your bank account information ready for the X relaunch.

00:46:14 ◼   ► It's like, oh no, don't do that.

00:46:17 ◼   ► That's incredible.

00:46:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:20 ◼   ► I mean, I guess he thinks that he can build this on top of the social graph that is Twitter.

00:46:26 ◼   ► But he's burned a lot of that social graph to the ground.

00:46:30 ◼   ► And the people who are still there who aren't like journalists or sports people, right?

00:46:37 ◼   ► Just like regular people.

00:46:38 ◼   ► Some of them will be super into this, right?

00:46:40 ◼   ► Because he does have fans and they'll be up for this.

00:46:44 ◼   ► Other people, you know, who are hanging out and giving him eight bucks a month or whatever.

00:46:48 ◼   ► But you can't build what he called in a Twitter reply to somebody the world's most valuable platform.

00:46:55 ◼   ► At this point with what's left of this thing.

00:46:58 ◼   ► Just bananas.

00:47:01 ◼   ► It's just like I struggle to follow the decision making process, right?

00:47:06 ◼   ► There is none.

00:47:07 ◼   ► I can't.

00:47:08 ◼   ► Like, I know you were very right to point out Steven.

00:47:12 ◼   ► He has been talking about this the entire time, right?

00:47:15 ◼   ► And like, fine, if that's what you have ambition to building.

00:47:19 ◼   ► But why would you rebrand the company in such a haphazard way then?

00:47:23 ◼   ► Right? Like if you really wanted to go with X, right?

00:47:27 ◼   ► Because I know that this has been like his thing forever, right?

00:47:29 ◼   ► He's always loved X.

00:47:31 ◼   ► Fine, right?

00:47:33 ◼   ► But why not actually just do it then?

00:47:35 ◼   ► Like why like crowdsource a logo and then like just change the logo.

00:47:42 ◼   ► But like, is it called X or is it called Twitter?

00:47:45 ◼   ► Like, can anyone actually answer that question?

00:47:47 ◼   ► Like, I feel like I don't know.

00:47:50 ◼   ► Like, what is the...

00:47:51 ◼   ► I think he says X.

00:47:52 ◼   ► Right, but it still says Twitter everywhere and the app is still called Twitter.

00:47:55 ◼   ► So like, does Twitter part of X?

00:47:57 ◼   ► You can't rebrand an entire app on a Sunday with four employees.

00:48:02 ◼   ► It takes some time. Give them a break.

00:48:05 ◼   ► But like, but that, I know, that is my point though, right?

00:48:08 ◼   ► Of like, if this was his like plan, it wasn't a very well thought out plan.

00:48:14 ◼   ► No, it wasn't.

00:48:15 ◼   ► And like, I genuinely feel like at the moment, he is doing all of these things just to get people to log on to Twitter, right?

00:48:21 ◼   ► Like, he just wants people to log on.

00:48:25 ◼   ► So he just keeps doing things that are more and more extreme to get people to log on.

00:48:32 ◼   ► Like, the rate limiting thing was that because people wanted to log on to see what would happen to them, right?

00:48:37 ◼   ► And then like, now this is it.

00:48:40 ◼   ► Like, oh, everyone wants to go check Elon Musk's Twitter account, like log in because you have to log in to look at it.

00:48:45 ◼   ► So you can see like at what point is he going to drop the logo, right?

00:48:50 ◼   ► And so like, how far does this go? Does he delete Twitter to get people to log on to Twitter?

00:48:55 ◼   ► Like, where does this end?

00:48:58 ◼   ► It ends with, you know, what he's going to do next.

00:49:02 ◼   ► If you don't tweet in a specific number of months, you're going to get your account deleted automatically.

00:49:12 ◼   ► I think that, yeah, you know what, that probably will happen.

00:49:15 ◼   ► It's going to do that.

00:49:16 ◼   ► David in the Discord post, I saw it today, like that, you know, brands have the gold checkmark to keep that now and keep your, like, for them to not allow people to impersonate you.

00:49:29 ◼   ► You have to spend $1,000 or more in ads a month.

00:49:32 ◼   ► Oh, yeah. See?

00:49:33 ◼   ► So there's already some kind of threat going on at this point.

00:49:39 ◼   ► Yeah, it's certainly going to delete accounts from people who don't tweet.

00:49:42 ◼   ► Like, our accounts, our accounts, they're going to go.

00:49:45 ◼   ► They're going to go. They're just going to go.

00:49:47 ◼   ► And let it, I don't care. Like, let it go. I don't care.

00:49:51 ◼   ► Maybe I should just go delete it myself.

00:49:53 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:49:54 ◼   ► Right?

00:49:55 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:49:56 ◼   ► So I don't even give him the same sanction.

00:49:58 ◼   ► You're not breaking up with me. I'm breaking up with you.

00:50:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:50:01 ◼   ► It's not me. It's you.

00:50:06 ◼   ► They also took the @x handle.

00:50:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:50:12 ◼   ► It belonged to a photographer named Gene Wang, and they just took it.

00:50:18 ◼   ► They've done that forever, though, man.

00:50:20 ◼   ► Like, that was a thing that was happening before Musk.

00:50:22 ◼   ► Like, some brand would come along and they'd be like, "Oh, here you go."

00:50:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, and if you had a short handle, like, you would have problems all the time.

00:50:30 ◼   ► The company, this is a quote from a TechCrunch article by Sarah Perez.

00:50:35 ◼   ► In a letter, the company, formerly known as Twitter, thanked Wang for his loyalty

00:50:39 ◼   ► and offered him a selection of X merchandise and a tour of X's HQ as a quote, "reflection of our appreciation."

00:50:47 ◼   ► What is the merchandise? Show me the merch, Elon. I want to see it.

00:50:51 ◼   ► Well, you know, he took all the Woke T-shirts out of the office. Maybe they just rebranded those, too.

00:50:56 ◼   ► I just hope the tour gets past the police tape because the SFPD had to intervene

00:51:01 ◼   ► because they closed the sidewalk in the street to take down the Twitter sign without city approval.

00:51:07 ◼   ► I think they didn't get all the way with that because of that. Like, I think it just says ER was the last I'd seen.

00:51:14 ◼   ► On one side, yeah. It's incredible.

00:51:16 ◼   ► Yeah, which is also quite telling that it now says ER.

00:51:20 ◼   ► If we were to rebrand the show with a letter, what letter would we pick?

00:51:26 ◼   ► I feel like connected as sort of a G vibe.

00:51:30 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:51:31 ◼   ► Like, like...

00:51:32 ◼   ► No?

00:51:35 ◼   ► No, it's fine.

00:51:37 ◼   ► The funny thing is, you'll never know which one I was referring to.

00:51:43 ◼   ► This episode of Connected is brought to you by Factor.

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00:54:14 ◼   ► I made a purchase.

00:54:16 ◼   ► Okay.

00:54:17 ◼   ► I have here on my desk a set of Brown Beats Studio Pros.

00:54:22 ◼   ► Yes.

00:54:23 ◼   ► Big Apple Buddy came through. By that I meant I ordered them and then UPS brought them.

00:54:28 ◼   ► I mean your Big Apple Buddy was just Apple.

00:54:30 ◼   ► Yes, my regular delivery guy.

00:54:33 ◼   ► If anything, the biggest Apple Buddy.

00:54:38 ◼   ► Are they your buddy?

00:54:40 ◼   ► I feel like sometimes there's like, what are you doing with your life?

00:54:44 ◼   ► You know?

00:54:45 ◼   ► Anyways, here we are with some brown headphones on my desk.

00:54:50 ◼   ► What do you all want to know?

00:54:51 ◼   ► Why'd you get brown? Like, I just don't understand why you do that.

00:54:55 ◼   ► Let's start with the brown.

00:54:56 ◼   ► I feel like if a product offers brown, you should choose brown.

00:55:01 ◼   ► So I kind of feel like, and I was telling this to Silvia today.

00:55:05 ◼   ► I kind of feel like in recent years I've become sort of a brown convert in terms of like the brown color for furniture, for clothes.

00:55:14 ◼   ► Like it has grown on me a lot.

00:55:17 ◼   ► I don't know if it's like a fashion thing or just with age I started liking the color brown for more objects in my life.

00:55:26 ◼   ► Probably about both.

00:55:27 ◼   ► Probably?

00:55:28 ◼   ► I gotta say, I saw your picture, Steven.

00:55:31 ◼   ► You sent us a selfie of you wearing the Beats 2D Pro.

00:55:35 ◼   ► I kind of dig the color. I kind of like it.

00:55:37 ◼   ► I think I could pull them off.

00:55:39 ◼   ► You know, brown headphones.

00:55:41 ◼   ► I think the brown headphones are cool.

00:55:43 ◼   ► They are very much like other Beats that you may have used in the past.

00:55:49 ◼   ► Like, still kind of plastic-y.

00:55:51 ◼   ► Do they creak?

00:55:53 ◼   ► Yeah, not the nicest build quality.

00:55:55 ◼   ► I don't like the creaking.

00:55:57 ◼   ► That's no good.

00:55:59 ◼   ► The brown in particular shows a lot of fingerprints.

00:56:04 ◼   ► And I would imagine the other darker colors would too.

00:56:07 ◼   ► I guess because it's kind of that matte plastic.

00:56:10 ◼   ► But the trade-off is they weigh a lot less than AirPods Max.

00:56:16 ◼   ► So AirPods Max weigh 385 grams and these weigh 260.

00:56:22 ◼   ► Noticeably less.

00:56:24 ◼   ► And you definitely feel that weight difference.

00:56:27 ◼   ► Now, I haven't used AirPods Max in a long time, but my complaint was the weight.

00:56:32 ◼   ► And these are definitely more comfortable than those, at least to me.

00:56:36 ◼   ► They do have noise cancellation and transparency.

00:56:40 ◼   ► And both are good, but I feel like both are kind of a step behind the AirPods Pro 2, which are my daily earbuds.

00:56:49 ◼   ► Good, but not as great as those.

00:56:53 ◼   ► And overall, a lot of the features just kind of aren't as nice as some of the AirPods.

00:56:59 ◼   ► They don't auto-pause when you take them off.

00:57:02 ◼   ► They have an on/off switch, so you kind of got to manage that.

00:57:05 ◼   ► But you get USB-C, and if you use USB-C to physically connect to something, you can have nice, high-quality lossless music.

00:57:17 ◼   ► Of course, charging over USB-C is sweet.

00:57:20 ◼   ► And they fold down into a case that's really pretty manageable in size, way better than the storage you get with the AirPods Max.

00:57:28 ◼   ► The on/off switch, I don't like the thought of that.

00:57:32 ◼   ► I go back and forth on that.

00:57:33 ◼   ► Because, yeah, it's nice that the AirPods Max are sort of like, they automatically just work.

00:57:40 ◼   ► But I'm also a bit of a control freak.

00:57:44 ◼   ► And I know myself, and I know that being able to actually decide I'm turning them on or turning them off, not a bad thing.

00:57:53 ◼   ► Honestly, the one aspect that really sticks out for me is they don't pause when you take them off.

00:58:00 ◼   ► That would bug me.

00:58:01 ◼   ► That's probably the thing that would bug me the most.

00:58:04 ◼   ► More than you have to use a power switch.

00:58:08 ◼   ► It kind of surprised me.

00:58:09 ◼   ► I was listening to something, and then one of my kids came in my office and I took them off.

00:58:14 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh, they're still playing."

00:58:16 ◼   ► I was like, "It surprised me."

00:58:18 ◼   ► Because I'm used to the AirPods auto-pausing.

00:58:22 ◼   ► They've done it forever.

00:58:24 ◼   ► So that feels like a bit of a miss.

00:58:26 ◼   ► I don't know how complicated or cost, how it would have impacted the cost to do that.

00:58:34 ◼   ► But it's a really nice feature.

00:58:36 ◼   ► And it makes these feel cheaper than they are.

00:58:39 ◼   ► Because these are still pretty pricey.

00:58:41 ◼   ► That's the biggest bummer to me, I think.

00:58:43 ◼   ► How do you adjust volume and stuff?

00:58:47 ◼   ► So on the left ear cup, the B artwork has a button.

00:58:53 ◼   ► So you can press the top of it and it will get louder.

00:58:57 ◼   ► And you can press the bottom of it and it will get quieter.

00:59:00 ◼   ► I'm reaching for them.

00:59:01 ◼   ► And it's actually like the old iPod click wheel.

00:59:04 ◼   ► And it actually moves in and you can hear the click maybe.

00:59:06 ◼   ► [Clicking sound]

00:59:09 ◼   ► So you can actually click the button.

00:59:11 ◼   ► And that's nice that you can feel it.

00:59:13 ◼   ► I think that works a bit better than some of the AirPods.

00:59:16 ◼   ► You're sliding around or pinching or that sort of thing.

00:59:19 ◼   ► Well, because the AirPods Max has the crown, right?

00:59:23 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:59:24 ◼   ► That's really nice as a volume adjustment.

00:59:27 ◼   ► And also as a button for play/pause that you can use.

00:59:30 ◼   ► You click it for play/pause.

00:59:31 ◼   ► And then it has the secondary side button looking thing for the ANC and transparency switch.

00:59:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:59:40 ◼   ► And it's funny, the Vision Pro basically uses those same two controls, but for very different things.

00:59:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:59:46 ◼   ► It's got a digital crown and a button on that thing.

00:59:48 ◼   ► What does the button do?

00:59:49 ◼   ► It takes the memory photos of your kid's birthday party.

00:59:55 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:59:56 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:59:58 ◼   ► But just of your kid's birthday party.

01:00:00 ◼   ► It doesn't work otherwise.

01:00:01 ◼   ► It's actually locked to just the birthdays of your children.

01:00:04 ◼   ► It has a scene recognition unless it's a birthday party and it's not going to work.

01:00:08 ◼   ► And it uses two factor with your calendar to confirm.

01:00:11 ◼   ► Yeah, to confirm, yes.

01:00:12 ◼   ► So people in the Discord obviously want to know how they sound.

01:00:15 ◼   ► They sound like beats.

01:00:17 ◼   ► There's a lot of low end.

01:00:18 ◼   ► There's a lot of high end.

01:00:19 ◼   ► There's not much in the middle.

01:00:21 ◼   ► Would you say they're pretty muddy or crunchy?

01:00:23 ◼   ► I would say it's velvety, but velvety, but punchy and maybe a little spiky.

01:00:29 ◼   ► But kind of rounded.

01:00:30 ◼   ► And how many X's does it have?

01:00:33 ◼   ► I would say it's full like 5X.

01:00:36 ◼   ► If you were to compare these headphones to an animal, which one would it be?

01:00:40 ◼   ► A Hyena.

01:00:41 ◼   ► And how's the sound stage by any chance?

01:00:44 ◼   ► I would say the sound stage is captivating, but ultimately artificial.

01:00:53 ◼   ► Can you feel the tannins when you listen to music?

01:00:58 ◼   ► Do they make you tired or what?

01:01:01 ◼   ► I fell out of my chair.

01:01:02 ◼   ► After Thanksgiving dinner, would they make you fall asleep?

01:01:05 ◼   ► They would, but they look really good with like Thanksgiving-y, you know, sort of decorations

01:01:10 ◼   ► because of the brown.

01:01:11 ◼   ► The brown.

01:01:12 ◼   ► Would you give these headphones to your best friend or your best enemy?

01:01:17 ◼   ► I think I'd give them to, you know, just like a person I saw walking down the street.

01:01:21 ◼   ► But is it a graduation present or a wedding present?

01:01:24 ◼   ► I would say graduation present.

01:01:26 ◼   ► Kids like the bass.

01:01:27 ◼   ► So you're waiting in line at the DMV.

01:01:30 ◼   ► Do you put this on or do you put on AirPods Pro?

01:01:33 ◼   ► I'd put on Vision Pro at the DMV, I think.

01:01:35 ◼   ► Okay.

01:01:36 ◼   ► Because it's the last place you want to be.

01:01:38 ◼   ► All right.

01:01:39 ◼   ► So, seriously, are they fun to listen to music to?

01:01:43 ◼   ► Yeah, they are.

01:01:44 ◼   ► I mean, if you listen to the kind of music...

01:01:47 ◼   ► All my answers are very clear.

01:01:48 ◼   ► I don't know why you need to circle back on this.

01:01:50 ◼   ► Some people don't understand audio, so you've got to put it in different terms.

01:01:54 ◼   ► In practical terms, yes.

01:01:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:01:57 ◼   ► There's not a gold USB-C cable, so I would probably upgrade to a gold-plated cable.

01:02:02 ◼   ► Clearly, you need that.

01:02:04 ◼   ► No, I mean, if you listen to music that sounds good, punchy, with a bunch of low and highs,

01:02:09 ◼   ► then it sounds great for sort of modern music like that.

01:02:13 ◼   ► Now, they are not like neutral reference headphones you're going to listen to Apple Music classical with.

01:02:19 ◼   ► If you were a Beats person before, I don't think this really changes that part of the equation.

01:02:26 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:02:28 ◼   ► I kind of feel like I would totally get along with somebody who's going to listen to Apple Music classical wearing Beats.

01:02:33 ◼   ► I mean, they do, lossless.

01:02:36 ◼   ► They are my kind of people.

01:02:40 ◼   ► Arguably, these are the best headphones that Apple produces for classical music, right?

01:02:47 ◼   ► Because these are the only headphones that Apple sells that do lossless.

01:02:51 ◼   ► At the moment, yes.

01:02:52 ◼   ► Yeah, you don't hear any, I don't know what the middle part of the orchestra is.

01:02:55 ◼   ► You know, it's a lot of timpani, drums, and flutes.

01:02:58 ◼   ► You just get drums and trumpets.

01:03:00 ◼   ► Yeah, the bassoon is totally lost in the soundstage.

01:03:03 ◼   ► You lose it. I can't hear the bassoon in this mix.

01:03:06 ◼   ► If you could just adjust the equalizer, it would be good, please.

01:03:09 ◼   ► I still feel like I want these headphones.

01:03:14 ◼   ► There's no H-chip in these at all, which is quite peculiar, because previous Beats headphones...

01:03:20 ◼   ► Right. That's what does all the cool stuff that we want.

01:03:23 ◼   ► Yeah, and that's just weird, because other Beats headphones have done that.

01:03:28 ◼   ► And so, I like the fact that even Apple makes these kinds of weird considerations for whatever reason.

01:03:35 ◼   ► It's just like, it's all a bunch of trade-offs.

01:03:38 ◼   ► I will say, I think the reason these are such a big deal is because it really shows how bad of a value the AirPods Max are, at this point in their lives.

01:03:49 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I guess it depends, right?

01:03:51 ◼   ► Would you pay $200 for a digital crown for the fact that they turn off on their own for... what else?

01:03:58 ◼   ► A really cool case.

01:03:59 ◼   ► Maybe you want a strong neck. I don't know.

01:04:02 ◼   ► Never skips neck day.

01:04:04 ◼   ► I mean, there is a difference in features, right? And I guess you can choose what's most important to you in style.

01:04:09 ◼   ► Right? I don't think these are particularly stylish. I think AirPods Max have a style.

01:04:14 ◼   ► I don't know if it's good or bad, but they have a look to them.

01:04:18 ◼   ► Apple is fine with the look, because if you had a bunch of tables with Beats over the last eight years, they all kind of look the same.

01:04:25 ◼   ► And, as Zach points out, they don't do the inner device auto-switching.

01:04:29 ◼   ► I'm going to be completely honest, right? For me, if you put both of these together with the feature list, I would go AirPods Max.

01:04:38 ◼   ► Because there's just enough things that are missing that I enjoy that would annoy me.

01:04:43 ◼   ► I wouldn't like the fact that I have to click a physical button on the side of these things.

01:04:47 ◼   ► I'm not going to like that as I'm moving around or going to hear plastic creaking.

01:04:51 ◼   ► I've used Beats before. I know what it's like, right?

01:04:53 ◼   ► I would not like that it doesn't have the auto-switching, because I really like that a lot.

01:04:58 ◼   ► I wouldn't like the fact that I'd have to turn them off. That wouldn't annoy me.

01:05:02 ◼   ► There are enough things in there, I would still go AirPods Max.

01:05:08 ◼   ► Even though I know it's a worse deal, but I'm thinking about my long-term enjoyment with this product.

01:05:13 ◼   ► And I think I would get more long-term enjoyment out of the features and benefits that they have over the Beats.

01:05:19 ◼   ► Your mileage will vary, right?

01:05:20 ◼   ► Yeah, totally. And you can look at these and see what's coming for AirPods Max, assuming they update them at some point.

01:05:26 ◼   ► They'll move to USB-C, they'll do lossless over the cable.

01:05:30 ◼   ► I think all that's coming. It's just a matter of when they do it.

01:05:34 ◼   ► Maybe I think they do it after the iPhone goes USB-C.

01:05:37 ◼   ► So yeah, Beats Studio Pros. They're pretty good. That's the review.

01:05:43 ◼   ► If you want to find links to stuff we spoke about this week, head on over to the website.

01:05:48 ◼   ► Relay.fm/connected/460. Those links are also in your podcast player.

01:05:59 ◼   ► You can also become a member and get Connected Pro, which is a longer ad-free version of the show each and every week.

01:06:06 ◼   ► That is just $5 a month or $50 a year. You also get access to the Relay FM members Discord.

01:06:13 ◼   ► You get access to a podcast feed that has all the annual specials and interviews and a bunch of extra stuff we do throughout the year and a really cool newsletter.

01:06:21 ◼   ► So go check that out.

01:06:22 ◼   ► If you want to find us online, you can find Federico's work at maxstories.net and he is on Mastodon as Vitici at maxstories.net.

01:06:32 ◼   ► Mike is the co-host of a bunch of other shows here on Relay FM and he's the co-founder of Cortex Brand.

01:06:38 ◼   ► You can follow him on Mastodon as imike@mike.social.

01:06:43 ◼   ► Threads baby, I'm on Threads, come on!

01:06:45 ◼   ► He's also on Threads. I don't know what to do because Federico is not because he lives in the EU.

01:06:50 ◼   ► It's very confusing.

01:06:52 ◼   ► I know but that's where I am. I'm not at Max Stories either.

01:06:55 ◼   ► Okay, well so you can also follow Mike as imike on Threads.

01:06:59 ◼   ► I wished Federico was on Threads but there's nothing I can do about that right now.

01:07:03 ◼   ► You can find my writing at 512pixels.net and I'm on Mac Power Users here on Relay FM every Sunday afternoon.

01:07:10 ◼   ► I'm ismh86 on Threads.

01:07:12 ◼   ► I'd like to thank our sponsors. They are Vitaly, Squarespace, and Factor.

01:07:17 ◼   ► Until next week guys, say goodbye.

01:07:19 ◼   ► Arrivederci.

01:07:20 ◼   ► Bruzchetta.

01:07:21 ◼   ► Bye y'all.