Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [MUSIC]

00:00:07 ◼   ► >> From Relay, this is Connected, Episode 515.

00:00:11 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by our excellent sponsors,

00:00:13 ◼   ► NetSoot, Vitaly, ExpressVPN, and KRCS.

00:00:17 ◼   ► I'm one of your three co-hosts, Federico Vitticchio,

00:00:19 ◼   ► and it's my pleasure to introduce

00:00:21 ◼   ► our keynote chairman, Stephen Hackett. Hello, Stephen.

00:00:25 ◼   ► >> Hello, Federico. How are you?

00:00:27 ◼   ► >> I'm doing great. Yeah, I'm happy to be here,

00:00:31 ◼   ► and I think it's going to be a fun episode.

00:00:33 ◼   ► >> I think it is too. I'd like to

00:00:35 ◼   ► introduce our annual chairman, Mr. Mike Hurley.

00:00:38 ◼   ► >> Hello. It's interesting to think that

00:00:41 ◼   ► keynote chairmanship is probably going to go back up.

00:00:43 ◼   ► Well, it's not probably. It is going to go back up in

00:00:45 ◼   ► a couple of weeks. I wonder if you're going to retain.

00:00:47 ◼   ► >> We'll see. The iPhone event,

00:00:48 ◼   ► I mean, it can happen anytime.

00:00:51 ◼   ► >> Yeah, it could be tomorrow.

00:00:53 ◼   ► >> Well, I mean, maybe.

00:00:56 ◼   ► I mean, look, these days, it could be.

00:00:58 ◼   ► >> Do you know something we've done?

00:00:59 ◼   ► >> No, but it could be though, right?

00:01:01 ◼   ► Because they could just put out a video.

00:01:03 ◼   ► >> Remember when they did

00:01:06 ◼   ► that weird Mac event for Halloween last year?

00:01:09 ◼   ► >> So stupid.

00:01:11 ◼   ► >> Sometimes I feel like I don't know why they did it.

00:01:14 ◼   ► >> I think in my brain,

00:01:16 ◼   ► I think about that event with the same energy,

00:01:19 ◼   ► sort of like the same brain energy and

00:01:22 ◼   ► brain vibe as the iPhone 5C.

00:01:25 ◼   ► >> Interesting.

00:01:30 ◼   ► >> It's got that, I don't know, sort of giving that back.

00:01:33 ◼   ► >> I hated that event.

00:01:34 ◼   ► I hated that it was so late.

00:01:36 ◼   ► I hated that it messed up my week and that

00:01:38 ◼   ► they didn't even bother to lean into it.

00:01:41 ◼   ► They had one werewolf joke and that was it.

00:01:45 ◼   ► Every single person should have been

00:01:47 ◼   ► in a fancy dress for that in costume.

00:01:50 ◼   ► >> Yeah. What was it even about?

00:01:53 ◼   ► >> M3 Macs.

00:01:54 ◼   ► >> There didn't really seem to be

00:01:56 ◼   ► an actual reason for why they did it.

00:01:59 ◼   ► >> The M3, nobody cares about the M3.

00:02:01 ◼   ► Because people really love the M2 and people are

00:02:04 ◼   ► looking forward to the M4 but nobody cares about the M3.

00:02:07 ◼   ► >> Yeah, the M3 is lost.

00:02:09 ◼   ► >> It's the chip that was off the track.

00:02:14 ◼   ► The process that the M3 is on will never be used again by TSMC.

00:02:20 ◼   ► I think that's the case.

00:02:21 ◼   ► So it's just like they did it because they wanted it,

00:02:23 ◼   ► but now we're going to go back on.

00:02:25 ◼   ► They're still going to jump on the M4 train at some point.

00:02:27 ◼   ► >> Anyway, yeah.

00:02:29 ◼   ► We have some excellent follow-up about something we said last week

00:02:35 ◼   ► about plastic and coming from front of the show, Dr. Drang.

00:02:40 ◼   ► Just listen to another episode of Mike was Right.

00:02:44 ◼   ► The generic term for plastics that Federico was searching for is polymer.

00:02:51 ◼   ► Polycarbonate is a type of polymer.

00:02:53 ◼   ► As are polys, how do you say this?

00:02:56 ◼   ► >> I don't know.

00:02:57 ◼   ► >> Polystyrene, polyethylene, and polypropylene.

00:03:01 ◼   ► >> Those are the three worst Pokemon names I've ever heard.

00:03:04 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:03:05 ◼   ► >> Oh, you know?

00:03:06 ◼   ► >> No, you're thinking of Polywag.

00:03:08 ◼   ► >> Polywirl, Polywrath.

00:03:12 ◼   ► The great thing is Steven didn't know that.

00:03:15 ◼   ► It's a great joke, but there actually are.

00:03:18 ◼   ► >> Steven, that's a great unintended joke.

00:03:20 ◼   ► Well done.

00:03:20 ◼   ► Polywag, Polywirl, Polywrath.

00:03:23 ◼   ► >> You know I hang with Lickitung.

00:03:25 ◼   ► >> Lickitung.

00:03:25 ◼   ► >> Mm-hmm.

00:03:26 ◼   ► There's also Politoad.

00:03:28 ◼   ► >> Oh, yeah.

00:03:29 ◼   ► >> Remember Politoad, the green one?

00:03:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:31 ◼   ► Anyway, Dr. was saying not all polymers start with poly, but many do.

00:03:37 ◼   ► Sadly, I don't know offhand what type of polymer was used in the Performa cases,

00:03:42 ◼   ► but I feel certain that the information floating around --

00:03:46 ◼   ► but I feel certain that information is floating around the internet.

00:03:49 ◼   ► And in the thread, Alex Padilla said the original Macintosh had an ABS plastic case

00:03:57 ◼   ► according to a website.

00:03:59 ◼   ► And if I had to make an uneducated guess, I'd say the Performas were probably ABS as well,

00:04:05 ◼   ► to which the doctor replied, "Makes sense.

00:04:07 ◼   ► A well-established material with good mechanical properties."

00:04:11 ◼   ► So yeah, ABS.

00:04:13 ◼   ► That's a type of plastic.

00:04:15 ◼   ► And ABS is very popular in mechanical keycaps.

00:04:20 ◼   ► Mechanical keycaps love ABS.

00:04:22 ◼   ► >> There you go.

00:04:23 ◼   ► I'm glad we got to the bottom of that.

00:04:24 ◼   ► >> Thank you, doctor.

00:04:25 ◼   ► >> Thank you, Dr. Drang.

00:04:27 ◼   ► >> Thank you, doctor.

00:04:28 ◼   ► The next one -- so I was looking at this item in our notes last night as I was preparing for the show.

00:04:35 ◼   ► This app that -- I don't know who put it in the document.

00:04:40 ◼   ► >> I did.

00:04:40 ◼   ► >> This app is changing my life.

00:04:42 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:04:42 ◼   ► >> In a way that like -- it's making me feel like it's one of those rare moments these days

00:04:51 ◼   ► when I am genuinely surprised by a new application on my phone.

00:04:56 ◼   ► So, Stephen, what is it about?

00:04:58 ◼   ► >> Yeah, so we were talking about the how do I watch YouTube without getting sucked into the algorithm, right?

00:05:05 ◼   ► And so listener Michael sent in an app that they wrote called Unwatched.

00:05:10 ◼   ► And it uses RSS feeds because each of your channel has an RSS feed.

00:05:15 ◼   ► YouTube makes it kind of difficult to find.

00:05:17 ◼   ► But a lot of apps if you like plug in the channel name, it will just automatically kind of build --

00:05:22 ◼   ► you know, get the feed URL for you.

00:05:24 ◼   ► So he combined RSS, an embedded video player, and a triaging system.

00:05:29 ◼   ► And so you subscribe to playlists or channels.

00:05:32 ◼   ► And they come in and it -- I mean, honestly, playing with it,

00:05:37 ◼   ► it kind of reminds me of like a full featured podcast client, right?

00:05:39 ◼   ► >> This is sick.

00:05:42 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:05:42 ◼   ► >> This is incredible.

00:05:43 ◼   ► So I spent like an hour using this app last night.

00:05:46 ◼   ► This app -- so basically, I'm just going to say these two magic words.

00:05:50 ◼   ► It's Castro for YouTube.

00:05:52 ◼   ► >> Exactly.

00:05:53 ◼   ► >> This is what this app does.

00:05:55 ◼   ► You follow your channels.

00:05:57 ◼   ► There's a bunch of ways to -- there's even like an import tool that uses the Google takeout export

00:06:04 ◼   ► to automatically -- yeah, you can do that.

00:06:07 ◼   ► You can use your takeout file from Google.com and import it into the app and it's going to,

00:06:11 ◼   ► you know, sift through and get all your channels.

00:06:13 ◼   ► Or you can search for those manually, which is what I did.

00:06:17 ◼   ► And this app, like, it really is a game changer in the sense

00:06:21 ◼   ► that it just uses the same triage-based mentality of Castro.

00:06:25 ◼   ► Like, everything goes in the inbox, and then from the inbox, you can put them in your queue.

00:06:31 ◼   ► And it lets you watch -- this was very important for me.

00:06:34 ◼   ► It lets you watch those episodes.

00:06:36 ◼   ► In full screen, like, it opens like a YouTube web player at the top of the screen.

00:06:42 ◼   ► But that web player somehow, unlike other apps, it lets you switch to even 4K quality.

00:06:49 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:06:49 ◼   ► >> So you can do that.

00:06:51 ◼   ► And the bottom half of the screen kind of looks like the now playing design of a podcast client

00:06:57 ◼   ► in the sense that it's got the same Castro-inspired playback speed control.

00:07:03 ◼   ► It lets you navigate chapters of a video.

00:07:08 ◼   ► It lets you manage your queue from there.

00:07:10 ◼   ► There's a sleep timer at the bottom.

00:07:13 ◼   ► You can reopen the menu at any point.

00:07:16 ◼   ► So if you want to jump to something else in your queue, you can do that without having

00:07:21 ◼   ► to go to a separate page.

00:07:22 ◼   ► And it even keeps track.

00:07:24 ◼   ► I don't know how this developer did it, but it even keeps track

00:07:28 ◼   ► of your progress while watching a video.

00:07:30 ◼   ► So I'm watching this interview with Mark Zuckerberg,

00:07:32 ◼   ► and it's like 20 minutes.

00:07:33 ◼   ► And I only watched seven minutes last night before falling asleep.

00:07:37 ◼   ► And the app remembers this.

00:07:38 ◼   ► The app knows that I got to resume from there.

00:07:41 ◼   ► And when I hit play on that player, it resumes from those seven minutes.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Like, the only thing about this app is, like, there's a couple of things that I would like to see.

00:07:52 ◼   ► I think it's very gesture-based.

00:07:55 ◼   ► Like, everything, every video you manage via swipe gestures.

00:07:59 ◼   ► And I think there should probably also be context menus instead of just the swiping left and right.

00:08:08 ◼   ► The other thing is that I just cannot explain to myself.

00:08:12 ◼   ► I mean, it's pretty cool.

00:08:14 ◼   ► So this app is open source, totally free, without a way to give Michael money.

00:08:21 ◼   ► Michael, listen to me.

00:08:22 ◼   ► This app is incredible.

00:08:24 ◼   ► Please put a donation thing in the app to let us give you money for this.

00:08:29 ◼   ► Because this, like, I'm not exaggerating.

00:08:32 ◼   ► This app is going to be a game changer for me.

00:08:34 ◼   ► It's on the iPhone, it's on the iPad, it syncs with iCloud.

00:08:37 ◼   ► I have been looking for years for this sort of experience.

00:08:42 ◼   ► Please let us give you money for your effort.

00:08:44 ◼   ► This truly, at the moment, one of my favorite app debuts of the year.

00:08:51 ◼   ► And I'm assuming that if I sign into YouTube in the app, I'm not going to get ads because I'm YouTube Premium, right?

00:09:05 ◼   ► I have not seen...

00:09:06 ◼   ► I signed in via...

00:09:07 ◼   ► So I signed into the YouTube web view.

00:09:12 ◼   ► I have not seen any ad.

00:09:15 ◼   ► And also, if you sign in, that means when you go to a channel page, like, if you sign in, it's very easy to re-follow the same channels in Unwatched.

00:09:27 ◼   ► Because you can just go to your subscriptions, click through the ones you want to add to the app.

00:09:31 ◼   ► And something else that the app does that is very cool, it sort of overlays a plus button on top of those channel pages that allows you to add that channel back into the app.

00:09:42 ◼   ► And of course, you can also view those videos by channel.

00:09:46 ◼   ► So you can browse...

00:09:47 ◼   ► It's not just the inbox and the queue.

00:09:49 ◼   ► You can also browse all videos from a channel with a dedicated UI.

00:09:54 ◼   ► And you can even set defaults for each channel.

00:09:59 ◼   ► So, for example, if there's a channel...

00:10:00 ◼   ► If typically you listen, you watch videos at 1.3x, which is what I do, but there's a particular creator that talks very fast.

00:10:08 ◼   ► And so, I don't know, 1.3x, you know, you cannot do it.

00:10:11 ◼   ► You can set a default speed per channel.

00:10:14 ◼   ► You can also set a default placement, sort of like Castro.

00:10:17 ◼   ► So you can do like, oh, every single video from, I don't know, an upgrade on YouTube, I want to immediately put it at the top of my queue.

00:10:25 ◼   ► You can do that, like in a podcast client.

00:10:27 ◼   ► It's seriously incredible, all the things this app does, and the fact that it's free on open source.

00:10:33 ◼   ► And I just was like, oh, I added some stuff and I was like, ah, I don't want to see shorts.

00:10:38 ◼   ► But you can hide shorts too.

00:10:40 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:10:41 ◼   ► You can't.

00:10:41 ◼   ► Because I don't need shorts in this list, right?

00:10:44 ◼   ► This is going to be long for...

00:10:45 ◼   ► This is so good.

00:10:47 ◼   ► This is so good.

00:10:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:49 ◼   ► Wow.

00:10:50 ◼   ► Look at that.

00:10:51 ◼   ► Huh.

00:10:52 ◼   ► It's already on the iPad.

00:10:55 ◼   ► This is good.

00:10:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, truly, truly wild.

00:11:00 ◼   ► I was so surprised.

00:11:01 ◼   ► I saw this in the nonsense, and I was like, wait a second.

00:11:04 ◼   ► Because I've seen these YouTube RSS tools before.

00:11:08 ◼   ► Most of them, to be fair, they're kind of terrible.

00:11:12 ◼   ► This one is the real deal.

00:11:14 ◼   ► And it's based on the RSS feeds, so it's not using any private API for YouTube.

00:11:19 ◼   ► But YouTube shouldn't be upset that they're doing this, because the RSS feeds for the channels are a documented thing.

00:11:26 ◼   ► So yeah, it immediately went to my home screen.

00:11:31 ◼   ► And finally, I was looking for a way to see videos from my favorite subscriptions,

00:11:36 ◼   ► without all the clutter of the YouTube homepage.

00:11:39 ◼   ► And this is perfect.

00:11:42 ◼   ► That's cool.

00:11:43 ◼   ► Good luck.

00:11:44 ◼   ► Ben wrote in with a similar app for Reddit called Winston.

00:11:53 ◼   ► And so it is another open source app.

00:11:57 ◼   ► It's a developer tool for developers to test their own Reddit API keys.

00:12:02 ◼   ► But really, what it is is a Reddit client.

00:12:04 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:12:07 ◼   ► So yeah, I wanted to use this.

00:12:11 ◼   ► The problem is that the beta is full on TestFlight.

00:12:16 ◼   ► So you cannot join.

00:12:18 ◼   ► I tried, and TestBeta is full.

00:12:20 ◼   ► 10,000 TestFlight users it says.

00:12:24 ◼   ► That's the maximum number of slots.

00:12:26 ◼   ► So this is the delta kind of idea, right, is what they're doing here.

00:12:32 ◼   ► Like, here's a thing that kind of shouldn't exist, but we're doing it.

00:12:36 ◼   ► And people will use it on TestFlight forever.

00:12:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:41 ◼   ► It looks nice.

00:12:42 ◼   ► It looks very nicely made.

00:12:44 ◼   ► It looks really nicely made.

00:12:46 ◼   ► Yeah, it looks very like iOS native, sort of inspired by reminders with that navigation

00:12:52 ◼   ► at the top of the page.

00:12:53 ◼   ► Yeah, it looks very nice.

00:12:54 ◼   ► But sadly, I cannot join the beta.

00:12:59 ◼   ► Bummer.

00:13:01 ◼   ► I also saw this recommendation by a listener, Lincoln.

00:13:05 ◼   ► Also, a few people on Mastodon wrote in to say the same thing.

00:13:09 ◼   ► If you disable your YouTube watch history, it also disables the front page algorithm

00:13:13 ◼   ► that feeds your videos.

00:13:15 ◼   ► Use the subscriptions page to view only those channels you've subscribed to.

00:13:21 ◼   ► But I'm not sure I want to disable my watch history.

00:13:23 ◼   ► That's the thing.

00:13:24 ◼   ► Like, the watch history is convenient for me.

00:13:26 ◼   ► Like, if I want to continue watching a video, it's a feature

00:13:30 ◼   ► that I use all the time, especially on the YouTube app on my TV.

00:13:37 ◼   ► It's very convenient to just go to the history and pick up where you're left off with the

00:13:41 ◼   ► video that I was watching on the phone.

00:13:42 ◼   ► So I don't want to give that up.

00:13:44 ◼   ► But I feel like with Unwatched and the official YouTube app still installed for search and

00:13:52 ◼   ► the occasional browsing of the homepage, I think I'm pretty much set.

00:13:56 ◼   ► So, yeah.

00:13:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree.

00:13:59 ◼   ► I find the history stuff useful.

00:14:02 ◼   ► And, you know, yes, the algorithm can be a pain.

00:14:06 ◼   ► But I didn't even say this on the episode, but like, I basically just go to my subscription

00:14:13 ◼   ► box on YouTube.

00:14:14 ◼   ► I don't I very rarely will go to see what it suggests.

00:14:18 ◼   ► Very rarely will follow the things in the side.

00:14:22 ◼   ► But I am I have installed and set up Unwatched.

00:14:26 ◼   ► And my only feedback from Michael, too, is like, I would love for you to officially bless

00:14:29 ◼   ► the Mac because it the iPad app runs, but it basically crashes no matter what I tried

00:14:36 ◼   ► to do.

00:14:37 ◼   ► So.

00:14:38 ◼   ► Mac client, please.

00:14:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, if we're making feature requests, obviously, you know, iOS 18 support for icon

00:14:46 ◼   ► colors, icon tinting.

00:14:48 ◼   ► Yes, maybe a control center control to, I don't know, open a specific channel or open

00:14:54 ◼   ► a random video from your queue or something like that.

00:14:57 ◼   ► You know, iOS 18 support.

00:14:59 ◼   ► But also but really, Michael.

00:15:02 ◼   ► Let me give you money.

00:15:03 ◼   ► Let us give you money for this.

00:15:05 ◼   ► It's really well done.

00:15:08 ◼   ► So in my weekly celebration of performer month where I go through Steven's articles, all

00:15:14 ◼   ► I'm really looking for is what I found today, which is it appears like you bought another

00:15:17 ◼   ► one.

00:15:18 ◼   ► It's the last one.

00:15:20 ◼   ► I think four total.

00:15:22 ◼   ► You bought four.

00:15:23 ◼   ► So you have bought one a week, which I think is what I said you would do.

00:15:27 ◼   ► Well, it's one a week as the articles come out.

00:15:30 ◼   ► The purchases are all very close together.

00:15:32 ◼   ► But yeah, but yeah, that's semantics.

00:15:36 ◼   ► Like just because you bought them all in one week, you know, I buy one a week before in

00:15:42 ◼   ► one week.

00:15:43 ◼   ► Who's laughing now?

00:15:44 ◼   ► Yep.

00:15:45 ◼   ► Performer month marches on.

00:15:46 ◼   ► It's a box.

00:15:47 ◼   ► It marches on.

00:15:48 ◼   ► We got a.

00:15:50 ◼   ► Power PC transition.

00:15:52 ◼   ► We got all in ones, all sorts of stuff.

00:15:55 ◼   ► We've got one week left.

00:15:56 ◼   ► Well, yeah, it will end.

00:15:59 ◼   ► The last post will go up on the 27th because Wednesday, the 28th, we have something else

00:16:04 ◼   ► exciting to do.

00:16:05 ◼   ► Okay.

00:16:06 ◼   ► So then the long national nightmare is over.

00:16:08 ◼   ► The month long holiday will unfortunately wind down.

00:16:15 ◼   ► You created your own spending event like a Black Friday.

00:16:19 ◼   ► Bays August.

00:16:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess it doesn't have the same, same ring to it.

00:16:27 ◼   ► Really.

00:16:28 ◼   ► I hate it.

00:16:31 ◼   ► Relay has turned to 10.

00:16:32 ◼   ► We did it.

00:16:33 ◼   ► We're now over 10 years old as a company.

00:16:36 ◼   ► Congratulations everyone, which also means this podcast is now over 10 years old.

00:16:40 ◼   ► Don't forget that, which is a wild thing to consider.

00:16:45 ◼   ► We spoke a bit a month ago about our 10th anniversary show.

00:16:50 ◼   ► During that week, a friend of the show, Ian, was in town and he was making a video about

00:16:59 ◼   ► the live show.

00:17:01 ◼   ► What ended up kind of happening is the video turned into a celebration of Relay by the

00:17:09 ◼   ► people involved.

00:17:10 ◼   ► So Ian spent some time talking to all of the hosts that were there.

00:17:15 ◼   ► He also interviewed me and Steven.

00:17:16 ◼   ► He has a second video coming out the end of this week, which is like a two hour interview

00:17:22 ◼   ► that we did with him.

00:17:24 ◼   ► But this video, it's called 10 and it is just beautiful.

00:17:29 ◼   ► It's 15 minutes long.

00:17:30 ◼   ► I've watched it three times.

00:17:31 ◼   ► I've cried every time.

00:17:33 ◼   ► I love it so much.

00:17:35 ◼   ► It's so perfect and is so incredible to see all of the people that we work with all give

00:17:42 ◼   ► very similar answers about how about like what Relay means to them.

00:17:47 ◼   ► It's so beautiful and I really hope that you take some time to watch it because I don't

00:17:54 ◼   ► think you'll regret it.

00:17:55 ◼   ► It's so good.

00:17:56 ◼   ► It's so, so good.

00:17:57 ◼   ► Yeah, it really is.

00:17:59 ◼   ► And it made it.

00:18:02 ◼   ► I didn't send it, but it made it into like a family text thread.

00:18:06 ◼   ► So like I had people talking about it.

00:18:10 ◼   ► Really awesome.

00:18:11 ◼   ► It's funny.

00:18:12 ◼   ► It's funny.

00:18:13 ◼   ► It's funny.

00:18:14 ◼   ► It's funny.

00:18:15 ◼   ► It's funny.

00:18:16 ◼   ► I'm not a family chat.

00:18:17 ◼   ► I'm not.

00:18:18 ◼   ► Watch this suckers.

00:18:19 ◼   ► So yeah, there's that.

00:18:20 ◼   ► And then you and I did our traditional annual Q&A.

00:18:22 ◼   ► That's in the departures feed as well as the crossover feet if you're a member.

00:18:26 ◼   ► So go check that out.

00:18:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:28 ◼   ► Go check it out and happy anniversary, birthday.

00:18:31 ◼   ► Here's the thing.

00:18:32 ◼   ► I get struggle with an is it an anniversary or is it a birthday?

00:18:36 ◼   ► I think it's an anniversary because we have matching tattoos, but but wouldn't the 10th

00:18:41 ◼   ► anniversary be well, isn't a birthday just for like people like would you say like would

00:18:49 ◼   ► you say to a person happy 36th anniversary on the day of their birth?

00:18:56 ◼   ► You know, okay.

00:18:57 ◼   ► But like our anniversaries and birthdays, the same thing.

00:19:01 ◼   ► So like, yeah, it is right.

00:19:04 ◼   ► Because it's all plus one plus one.

00:19:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:08 ◼   ► Okay.

00:19:09 ◼   ► So you're like your first anniversary 12 months into your thing, just like your birth, which

00:19:13 ◼   ► is the same as a birthday.

00:19:14 ◼   ► All right, cool.

00:19:15 ◼   ► I get confused at that.

00:19:16 ◼   ► Sometimes it's just some things.

00:19:17 ◼   ► So it's like inaugural and I don't know, like annual first annual first annual.

00:19:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:22 ◼   ► Totally fine to use all the time.

00:19:24 ◼   ► Jason totally fine first and well, it's fine when you commit, which I did.

00:19:29 ◼   ► Right.

00:19:30 ◼   ► So like you can say first annual if you know you're doing another one, but that's the only

00:19:34 ◼   ► time that you can ever do it.

00:19:35 ◼   ► And I did it and we've done like 10 upgrade is now.

00:19:39 ◼   ► So I was right to call it the first annual.

00:19:40 ◼   ► All right.

00:19:41 ◼   ► So and I like anniversary because yeah, birthday would imply that it was a living thing, which

00:19:46 ◼   ► is interesting to consider.

00:19:48 ◼   ► And we're not done talking about the anniversary.

00:19:50 ◼   ► We will be back next year.

00:19:51 ◼   ► We probably won't focus on it so much.

00:19:54 ◼   ► I feel like we've got to focus on them less now.

00:19:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:58 ◼   ► Agreed.

00:20:01 ◼   ► This episode of connected is brought to you by NetSuite.

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00:21:35 ◼   ► Our thanks to NetSuite for the support of the show and all of Relay.

00:21:41 ◼   ► Are you boys excited for a brown iPhone?

00:21:48 ◼   ► You know what?

00:21:49 ◼   ► I'm committing to it now.

00:21:51 ◼   ► If this brown iPhone is real, it will be the phone I buy this year.

00:21:55 ◼   ► Okay.

00:21:56 ◼   ► I'm looking to do it.

00:21:57 ◼   ► Here's the thing.

00:21:58 ◼   ► It's not going to look like that image.

00:21:59 ◼   ► I said it's an image.

00:22:00 ◼   ► That's on the Mac.

00:22:01 ◼   ► I really hope not.

00:22:03 ◼   ► I need to reopen this image.

00:22:05 ◼   ► I need to look at it again.

00:22:06 ◼   ► Sonny Dixon has a very good track record of this stuff.

00:22:12 ◼   ► And so that's why you would post their images.

00:22:15 ◼   ► But these images, they are indications of color.

00:22:21 ◼   ► And I actually think there is a Macrumors article where they have kind of rendered what

00:22:26 ◼   ► this color could look like with a name that I also don't think is correct, which is called

00:22:30 ◼   ► desert titanium, which doesn't make any sense to me.

00:22:34 ◼   ► I think that is, Jason made the joke quickly on upgrade, but do you remember upgrade iPhone

00:22:40 ◼   ► math?

00:22:41 ◼   ► Remember that one?

00:22:42 ◼   ► Yeah, it was the plus, right?

00:22:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:44 ◼   ► So I think that the desert titanium, I can only assume is an error because that just

00:22:50 ◼   ► doesn't make any sense.

00:22:52 ◼   ► There isn't like titanium in the desert, right?

00:22:55 ◼   ► Like anyway.

00:22:57 ◼   ► Can you know for sure though?

00:22:59 ◼   ► You know what?

00:23:00 ◼   ► No, I actually can't know for sure.

00:23:01 ◼   ► That's a really good point.

00:23:02 ◼   ► That's a really good point.

00:23:04 ◼   ► The render that Macrumors have put together, I expect is more what this color is going

00:23:08 ◼   ► to look like, where it is kind of like a bronzy gold.

00:23:12 ◼   ► And maybe that would be what I would go for, even though I really like natural, but yes,

00:23:16 ◼   ► this looks brown.

00:23:17 ◼   ► I would be very surprised if this was brown.

00:23:22 ◼   ► And also don't forget, this has happened before.

00:23:24 ◼   ► Like brown iPhone has been a rumor before, but it obviously didn't come to fruition.

00:23:31 ◼   ► Mike, do you think this is in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Dave Matthews ban

00:23:36 ◼   ► bus incident?

00:23:37 ◼   ► Possibly.

00:23:42 ◼   ► I'll put a link in the show notes.

00:23:43 ◼   ► Synergy baby.

00:23:44 ◼   ► I don't know what that is.

00:23:45 ◼   ► That's good.

00:23:46 ◼   ► That's good.

00:23:47 ◼   ► I mean, the color's weird and I think it will be less weird than these renders show.

00:23:52 ◼   ► The thing that worries me about the iPhone colors this year is the part of the report

00:23:57 ◼   ► that the side rails are going to be shiny again.

00:24:00 ◼   ► I really like the matte look of the titanium.

00:24:04 ◼   ► And I don't want to go back to shiny.

00:24:08 ◼   ► No, I'm not excited about that.

00:24:11 ◼   ► I mean, the phone might get grippier, which is, I mean, that is like from a tactile perspective,

00:24:16 ◼   ► good.

00:24:17 ◼   ► But also Steven, why does it bother you?

00:24:19 ◼   ► You put your phone in that case.

00:24:20 ◼   ► But I know it's in there.

00:24:23 ◼   ► I've also realized listening to upgrade and you're talking about how you've dropped your

00:24:25 ◼   ► phone a couple of times that for years I was the person on the podcast not using a case.

00:24:31 ◼   ► And then finally my mini broken phones caught up with me and I have been using a case for

00:24:36 ◼   ► a while now.

00:24:37 ◼   ► But that aside.

00:24:38 ◼   ► That reminds me, there was something I wanted to talk to you guys about, about my iPhone.

00:24:44 ◼   ► So something I've realized is that there's a thing that I need to change in how I use

00:24:53 ◼   ► my iPhone.

00:24:54 ◼   ► So the display of my iPhone 15 Pro Max is really, really scratched.

00:25:03 ◼   ► There's a lot of scratches.

00:25:05 ◼   ► And I think this is happening not because I keep my phone in the same pocket as my keys.

00:25:10 ◼   ► I don't do that.

00:25:12 ◼   ► What happened is that over the past year, I have really made an effort to turn my phone

00:25:21 ◼   ► face down when we are like with friends at restaurants.

00:25:26 ◼   ► I've really made an effort to do it more often.

00:25:29 ◼   ► And in doing that, I have scratched the screen more than before.

00:25:34 ◼   ► So on one hand, these are like good scratches, you know, because like it means that what

00:25:39 ◼   ► I wanted to do, I've done it.

00:25:41 ◼   ► But at the same time, you know.

00:25:43 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:25:45 ◼   ► But I'm looking at it like, man, though, like it's really scratched.

00:25:50 ◼   ► And so this is problem number one.

00:25:53 ◼   ► Problem number two, I really want Apple to make a nano texture iPhone and I don't think

00:25:58 ◼   ► they're going to do it.

00:26:00 ◼   ► This is something that also I also noticed this year because I've spent a lot more time

00:26:05 ◼   ► with my iPhone either at the beach or at the pool.

00:26:09 ◼   ► And using an iPhone under direct, really hot sun in the summer, basically impossible.

00:26:17 ◼   ► So I think the time has come for me to accept that I need to put a screen protector on my

00:26:24 ◼   ► iPhone and ideally a matte one.

00:26:27 ◼   ► I know, I know.

00:26:29 ◼   ► But I think I got to do it.

00:26:31 ◼   ► I think I got to do it.

00:26:32 ◼   ► I've never done before.

00:26:33 ◼   ► Does that exist?

00:26:35 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:26:37 ◼   ► Which is why I'm mentioning it on the show.

00:26:40 ◼   ► Is there a way for me to, you know, have it both ways.

00:26:44 ◼   ► Belkan make one for the iPhone 13.

00:26:47 ◼   ► Is that helpful?

00:26:48 ◼   ► No.

00:26:49 ◼   ► Is that helpful?

00:26:50 ◼   ► Belkan, what are you doing?

00:26:51 ◼   ► Belkan, come on.

00:26:52 ◼   ► Just slap it in the middle of your phone, you know, because it's close enough.

00:26:56 ◼   ► Can you imagine?

00:26:58 ◼   ► That'd be so good.

00:27:01 ◼   ► You can also make one for the iPhone 13 mini if you just have one very small part of your

00:27:07 ◼   ► screen.

00:27:08 ◼   ► I actually do it.

00:27:10 ◼   ► I do have a 13 mini that I keep around.

00:27:12 ◼   ► That's like, you remember guys when I surprised you last year with the small iPhone that I

00:27:18 ◼   ► used as an iPod.

00:27:19 ◼   ► It was the Boobs Palma of music.

00:27:22 ◼   ► That's what that thing was.

00:27:24 ◼   ► Yes.

00:27:25 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:27:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:27 ◼   ► I think I got to use the screen protector for the next phone.

00:27:28 ◼   ► I got to do it.

00:27:29 ◼   ► When you do this, you have to get a glass one, right?

00:27:33 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:27:34 ◼   ► And you should get it put on at the Apple store.

00:27:37 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:27:38 ◼   ► I will not do it myself.

00:27:40 ◼   ► Are you kidding?

00:27:42 ◼   ► Every single time I tried to put any sort of film or like protector on any device, it

00:27:47 ◼   ► ended up with air bubbles underneath and with me removing it after 40 minutes.

00:27:53 ◼   ► So yeah, I will not do it.

00:27:55 ◼   ► I put a screen protector on the, uh, over the gauge cluster in my truck.

00:28:02 ◼   ► Cause it was pretty scratched up and trying to hide it and keep it from getting any worse.

00:28:08 ◼   ► And there's a bubble about the size of a dime in that thing.

00:28:11 ◼   ► And like, I'm gonna have to take it off.

00:28:12 ◼   ► Like I can't, I can't live this way.

00:28:15 ◼   ► Cause the Apple stores have these like machines.

00:28:19 ◼   ► Even you know, even in Italy, I don't know if it's the same elsewhere.

00:28:23 ◼   ► You can even get one applied at GameStop for some reason.

00:28:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:28 ◼   ► I think like in the mall kiosks and stuff like that.

00:28:32 ◼   ► Like people do it.

00:28:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:35 ◼   ► I'm trying, I'm trying to find you one.

00:28:37 ◼   ► I am not, I'm not having a lot of luck finding.

00:28:42 ◼   ► There's this, uh, this TikTok personality in Italy.

00:28:46 ◼   ► This, this, this, uh, young woman, she became ultra popular here just for, well, just, um,

00:28:55 ◼   ► so she, her thing on TikTok and I don't remember the name.

00:29:00 ◼   ► She was on even on the national TV news, like couple of weeks ago, she applies screen protectors

00:29:08 ◼   ► on phones in the videos.

00:29:11 ◼   ► This is all she does.

00:29:12 ◼   ► And how do you get, how do you get, how do you get,

00:29:16 ◼   ► well, people watch those videos.

00:29:19 ◼   ► She talks while applying the screen protector.

00:29:22 ◼   ► She says, you know, a bunch of funny things and whatnot.

00:29:25 ◼   ► She eventually came out with her own line of cases.

00:29:29 ◼   ► There it is.

00:29:30 ◼   ► And she does these meetups in like malls and I don't know, this is incredible.

00:29:37 ◼   ► And thousands of people go there.

00:29:39 ◼   ► It's wild.

00:29:40 ◼   ► I'll find the link for you.

00:29:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:29:44 ◼   ► It looks like people on Reddit, like, uh, the Binks B E N K S matte glass screen protector,

00:29:54 ◼   ► B E N K S. So that might be a brain looking to, why would you say Binks banks?

00:30:01 ◼   ► It's not banks banks.

00:30:03 ◼   ► I mean, it's just like his banks, right?

00:30:06 ◼   ► Banks.

00:30:07 ◼   ► I can't, well, how does that word sound with an E in it?

00:30:11 ◼   ► Banks banks.

00:30:12 ◼   ► I can't, that is weird.

00:30:13 ◼   ► This is one of those ones where if you said banks and banks, they both sound the same.

00:30:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:18 ◼   ► I've thought it's like Brad with, with pen and pin.

00:30:20 ◼   ► It's just all the same.

00:30:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:22 ◼   ► We've we've made this joke in the last 10 years.

00:30:24 ◼   ► I'm sure.

00:30:25 ◼   ► PN.

00:30:26 ◼   ► Here you go.

00:30:27 ◼   ► I found a, you can't, you gotta have to translate this.

00:30:30 ◼   ► She has 8 million followers on Tik TOK cosmopolitan article that you can translate.

00:30:36 ◼   ► Um, incredible.

00:30:37 ◼   ► I'm going to put it in the show notes.

00:30:39 ◼   ► Where are you sending this?

00:30:40 ◼   ► I need to see it.

00:30:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:42 ◼   ► I'm going to put it in the show notes.

00:30:43 ◼   ► That's just, I mean, I don't understand Tik TOK, you know?

00:30:48 ◼   ► Me neither.

00:30:49 ◼   ► Me neither, but obviously, but I'm happy for this.

00:30:51 ◼   ► A lot of people do.

00:30:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:54 ◼   ► Who is New Martina, the Tik TOK star of smartphone movies?

00:30:58 ◼   ► That's how it is.

00:31:00 ◼   ► Oh movies.

00:31:02 ◼   ► So is this Apple translate?

00:31:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:05 ◼   ► However, when I, this is really weird.

00:31:07 ◼   ► So that's how it's translated.

00:31:08 ◼   ► When I added it to our CMS, it grabs the title from somewhere.

00:31:12 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:31:13 ◼   ► But in that it says smartphone covers.

00:31:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:16 ◼   ► I'll tell you why it translated movies.

00:31:19 ◼   ► It's because we call the screen protector, PELICOLA and which means film.

00:31:24 ◼   ► So it translated PELICOLA as films.

00:31:26 ◼   ► The four movies.

00:31:27 ◼   ► Oh, that's funny.

00:31:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:29 ◼   ► We would probably call it a film here too.

00:31:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:31 ◼   ► Cause it's like a, it's okay.

00:31:33 ◼   ► So she now has her own brand, huh?

00:31:35 ◼   ► Yep.

00:31:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:37 ◼   ► Respect.

00:31:38 ◼   ► All creators eventually make products.

00:31:40 ◼   ► You know, it is the trend cause that's like, that's how it works.

00:31:44 ◼   ► Keep paying your bills.

00:31:47 ◼   ► Apple podcasts have migrated to the web.

00:31:50 ◼   ► So this is from John Voorhees on Mac stories.

00:31:54 ◼   ► Apple podcasts got the full Apple music treatment with its own web app today.

00:31:59 ◼   ► You can find this at podcasts, plural, not apple.com.

00:32:03 ◼   ► Although if you're on a Mac, like I am and you click that link, it opens the podcast

00:32:06 ◼   ► app.

00:32:07 ◼   ► I have not been able to, Oh, there we go.

00:32:09 ◼   ► I finally got to it.

00:32:10 ◼   ► I've been trying for days just to look at this on any of my devices and it's almost

00:32:15 ◼   ► impossible.

00:32:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:17 ◼   ► But I'm looking at it now and yeah, this just looks like Apple podcasts, but on the web,

00:32:20 ◼   ► it is the most typical Apple web experience that they've done since dot Mac and mobile

00:32:26 ◼   ► me.

00:32:27 ◼   ► Like let's make this look like an app.

00:32:28 ◼   ► So this looks like iTunes in the browser.

00:32:30 ◼   ► You know what?

00:32:31 ◼   ► It doesn't need to, there's no reason that it should, but it does.

00:32:35 ◼   ► And you get your library and top charts and channels and all that stuff there.

00:32:42 ◼   ► I think one thing that's interesting about this is that it seems like not all of the,

00:32:50 ◼   ► like if you have like our like connected pro like that feed, I've heard from people that

00:32:56 ◼   ► that doesn't show up for them in the web view.

00:33:01 ◼   ► And I didn't have any luck either.

00:33:04 ◼   ► And so I don't know if like those private feeds, they're not exposing to the web player

00:33:08 ◼   ► or that's like a temporary bug.

00:33:10 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:33:12 ◼   ► Huh?

00:33:13 ◼   ► I can imagine they wouldn't do that cause then it's like might make it viewable on the

00:33:18 ◼   ► web.

00:33:19 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:33:20 ◼   ► This is interesting.

00:33:21 ◼   ► I think it seems pretty clear to me why they've done this and it's not free.

00:33:26 ◼   ► You use it in your web browser.

00:33:28 ◼   ► It's so they can like make Apple podcasts available in other places.

00:33:32 ◼   ► So cause right, like get it in your Rivian or whatever.

00:33:37 ◼   ► Stuff like that.

00:33:38 ◼   ► I would expect like they just want to make sure they have like a, a more complete web

00:33:42 ◼   ► experience because what is this for the PC?

00:33:47 ◼   ► Like what is this for?

00:33:48 ◼   ► You know, like now a whole time.

00:33:49 ◼   ► And I just feel like it's going to be tying into something cause otherwise I don't know

00:33:54 ◼   ► why they've done this.

00:33:55 ◼   ► I mean, it's like they put maps on the web too.

00:33:58 ◼   ► I think those reasons could be similar.

00:34:00 ◼   ► That was like what a week or two ago.

00:34:01 ◼   ► Um, yeah.

00:34:02 ◼   ► They're up to something.

00:34:06 ◼   ► Maybe it's just somebody who works on the web team at Apple has just become really powerful

00:34:09 ◼   ► and able to just do anything they want.

00:34:12 ◼   ► Cause it's an interesting, uh, prospect, right?

00:34:15 ◼   ► That like, Oh, we have maps on the web.

00:34:16 ◼   ► We have podcasts on the web.

00:34:18 ◼   ► Like it's w it's weird now really to do these, to just do these things out of nowhere.

00:34:23 ◼   ► Like I, I don't, I feel like I don't understand the full thinking behind it.

00:34:29 ◼   ► Like I can make my theories, but I don't actually know.

00:34:32 ◼   ► Well, what are your theories?

00:34:34 ◼   ► Well, that's it that like it's to tie into other things.

00:34:38 ◼   ► It's like how they, it's like how really like this is leaning to Apple TV, right?

00:34:43 ◼   ► That you can get Apple TV on connected TV sets.

00:34:47 ◼   ► And so you would build a web view so you can more easily integrate into stuff like that.

00:34:52 ◼   ► You know, you have all the URLs and I'm going to say a word that I don't fully understand

00:34:55 ◼   ► what I'm going to say at the end points so that you're able to tie into different things,

00:34:59 ◼   ► maybe different interfaces that you don't control.

00:35:03 ◼   ► And so I could imagine them having these things to integrate more, but like, are they actually

00:35:10 ◼   ► going to do that?

00:35:11 ◼   ► Like I have no idea, but you know, if you have all of the URLs and end points for maps

00:35:17 ◼   ► and for podcasts, you could integrate into Tesla, into Rivian and stuff like that more

00:35:23 ◼   ► easily, I would assume.

00:35:25 ◼   ► Maybe I don't know.

00:35:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

00:35:27 ◼   ► I mean, Tesla I know has Apple podcast support.

00:35:30 ◼   ► They've had that a while now and I think Apple music both.

00:35:33 ◼   ► So yeah, I mean maybe that is a conversation that is happening for sure, right?

00:35:38 ◼   ► Like the, the continued dominance of CarPlay versus new car manufacturers or existing car

00:35:44 ◼   ► manufacturers who want to do it themselves and then downgrade from CarPlay to just experiences

00:35:50 ◼   ► in their own software.

00:35:53 ◼   ► Translate is my own word.

00:35:54 ◼   ► You might disagree with that.

00:35:55 ◼   ► That's fine.

00:35:56 ◼   ► But Apple is pretty late to the podcast on the web game, but they're here.

00:36:02 ◼   ► And if you use Apple podcasting, now you got it in one more place.

00:36:05 ◼   ► So that's good.

00:36:08 ◼   ► This episode of connected is brought to you by our friends at Vitaly.

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00:37:29 ◼   ► Big news Monument Valley three is on its way.

00:37:33 ◼   ► I will admit when I saw this headline, I was like, oh, Apple Arcade is at it again.

00:37:38 ◼   ► But no, it's not Apple Arcade.

00:37:41 ◼   ► It's Netflix.

00:37:42 ◼   ► So Netflix games will be the home of Monument Valley three as well as the first two apps.

00:37:50 ◼   ► They will also be on Netflix.

00:37:52 ◼   ► They have a trailer out and this trip, man, this trailer took me right back.

00:37:56 ◼   ► Like I love Monument Valley one and two.

00:37:58 ◼   ► I played them a lot.

00:38:00 ◼   ► And when I saw this, this trailer, I was like, I want to go back to that time.

00:38:04 ◼   ► I want to I want to be playing this on my iPad, you know, first iPad Air or whatever

00:38:09 ◼   ► it was.

00:38:10 ◼   ► So yeah.

00:38:12 ◼   ► And the protagonist is going to sail a boat, according to John's blog post, which is exciting.

00:38:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:18 ◼   ► I'm on a boat, as the song says, on a boat.

00:38:23 ◼   ► We have talked about this before.

00:38:24 ◼   ► I think there was also a Polygon article about this.

00:38:27 ◼   ► Like we need to we need to take Netflix games seriously.

00:38:35 ◼   ► I feel like they sure they have their own catalog of like really silly mobile games

00:38:42 ◼   ► based on their IP that are meant to keep you using Netflix and thinking about their TV

00:38:47 ◼   ► shows and movies while you're waiting for the next season to start or whatever.

00:38:52 ◼   ► But at the same time, it feels like there is a group within Netflix that has been courting

00:38:58 ◼   ► indie developers and and they've been making incredible progress and licensing games that

00:39:08 ◼   ► are the sort of games you hear being talked about for like Game of the Year nominations,

00:39:17 ◼   ► right, games that typically come out on Steam, indie games, the whole sort of indie PC gaming

00:39:24 ◼   ► scene.

00:39:25 ◼   ► Netflix has been signing those games in addition to, you know, the mobile spinoff of I don't

00:39:32 ◼   ► know, The Bachelor.

00:39:33 ◼   ► I don't even know what is on Netflix.

00:39:36 ◼   ► Like Too Hot to Handle.

00:39:38 ◼   ► Too Hot to Handle.

00:39:39 ◼   ► Yeah, that type of stuff.

00:39:40 ◼   ► They also yesterday announced that they're making a Squid Games game.

00:39:42 ◼   ► Right.

00:39:43 ◼   ► They make games based on their properties, and that's what people think Netflix Games

00:39:48 ◼   ► is.

00:39:50 ◼   ► But Netflix Games is like the Apple Arcade they told you to worry about.

00:39:56 ◼   ► Yes.

00:39:57 ◼   ► This is like this is, you know, Apple Arcade is Netflix and mom, we have Apple Arcade at

00:40:02 ◼   ► home.

00:40:03 ◼   ► It is actually Apple Arcade, what you have at home.

00:40:06 ◼   ► The thing is like this is what Apple Arcade should have been in many ways.

00:40:09 ◼   ► It's a place for both the commercially popular game that maybe is not going to revolutionize

00:40:17 ◼   ► mobile gaming.

00:40:18 ◼   ► It's not going to win any award, but it makes easy money.

00:40:22 ◼   ► And it's also the place for the more, I'm going to say this, please don't take it the

00:40:26 ◼   ► wrong way, the more refined gamer who wants to play those indie titles from a particular

00:40:33 ◼   ► artist, from, you know, those like more author based games.

00:40:39 ◼   ► Like the Autor games, like they have Immortality, which was a game from a few years ago.

00:40:45 ◼   ► It was very, very popular.

00:40:48 ◼   ► And at the same, so the reason why I think is interesting is that Netflix has been doing

00:40:53 ◼   ► this while at the same time, just in 2024 alone, two reports have come out, one at the

00:41:02 ◼   ► beginning of the year and another just a couple of weeks ago, again, of developers, game developers

00:41:08 ◼   ► speaking to, I believe it was gameindustry.biz, if I'm not mistaken, mobilegamer.biz, claiming

00:41:16 ◼   ► that Apple Arcade is directionless, that payouts are not going out to developers, that Apple

00:41:25 ◼   ► is not returning emails from developers part of the program, and that it's unclear exactly

00:41:32 ◼   ► what Apple wants to do with Apple Arcade.

00:41:35 ◼   ► And now I feel like Netflix has recognized this lost opportunity for Apple Arcade, especially

00:41:47 ◼   ► in the past couple of years, because I truly believe that Apple Arcade started on the right

00:41:52 ◼   ► foot.

00:41:53 ◼   ► What was it, five, six years ago at this point?

00:41:55 ◼   ► I truly believe they had the right idea.

00:41:59 ◼   ► And I don't know what is it that, well, I have, like Mike, I have my theories.

00:42:05 ◼   ► And Stephen, you're supposed to say, what are your theories?

00:42:08 ◼   ► And what are your theories?

00:42:10 ◼   ► Yes.

00:42:11 ◼   ► So thank you for asking.

00:42:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:42:14 ◼   ► Great question.

00:42:21 ◼   ► I feel like, and we've said this on the show before, Apple never really understood gaming

00:42:30 ◼   ► and likely never will, because they only see it as an accessory to their subscription sales.

00:42:37 ◼   ► And I don't think, at a high level, here's the problem, at a high level, I don't think

00:42:44 ◼   ► they see gaming as really an art form or something that you need to nurture over time.

00:42:53 ◼   ► And I'm sure there are people working at the gaming division at Apple listening to this

00:42:58 ◼   ► and being upset because they do care.

00:43:01 ◼   ► But what I'm saying is that maybe your managers don't and maybe your managers' managers don't.

00:43:06 ◼   ► And so you end up in this situation where Netflix is maybe, you know, I'm sure this

00:43:12 ◼   ► isn't, you know, also Netflix is in this to make money.

00:43:16 ◼   ► But in making money, they're also actually building a lineup of all types of games that

00:43:23 ◼   ► can cater to the kind of person who just cares about how to handle, the kind of person who

00:43:30 ◼   ► wants to play GTA on their phone, and also the kind of person who listens to video game

00:43:34 ◼   ► podcasts and wants to play, I don't know, Into the Breach or Leia's Horizon or Monument

00:43:41 ◼   ► Valley 3, like the more niche, more indie, you know, experience.

00:43:49 ◼   ► It's something that if you asked me two years ago, I would have never said this was going

00:43:53 ◼   ► to happen.

00:43:54 ◼   ► And Netflix is running with it.

00:43:57 ◼   ► I think it's very fascinating to observe.

00:43:59 ◼   ► I have a question.

00:44:01 ◼   ► I've never experienced Netflix gaming.

00:44:04 ◼   ► Like it's what is it in an app?

00:44:08 ◼   ► Is it on the web?

00:44:09 ◼   ► So everybody doesn't understand this.

00:44:13 ◼   ► This is the Apple problem.

00:44:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:44:16 ◼   ► These games are individually available on the App Store as like separate.

00:44:23 ◼   ► Yes, yes.

00:44:24 ◼   ► They are branded with Netflix gaming.

00:44:26 ◼   ► No, realistically, this is the only way you could do it, because otherwise the Netflix

00:44:30 ◼   ► app would be 17 terabytes.

00:44:34 ◼   ► I guess that's true.

00:44:35 ◼   ► Oh, or, or, and they're never going to do this, but like, or the Netflix in Europe could

00:44:40 ◼   ► release a game store, but that's only going to be in Europe.

00:44:44 ◼   ► I think on your phone, though, in the Netflix app, you can see a list of the games.

00:44:49 ◼   ► So it is a thing that you can, you can do, but like, here's the thing, Netflix do not

00:44:56 ◼   ► do a good job telling you about this stuff.

00:44:58 ◼   ► Like, no.

00:44:59 ◼   ► So I've got to, I have a couple of, I agree with most of the stuff you're saying, Sverika,

00:45:03 ◼   ► I have a couple of different things I want to just throw out there, right?

00:45:06 ◼   ► Uh, one, I still think Apple has their waves of Apple Arcade where they showed they know

00:45:10 ◼   ► what they're doing because they sign new games and interesting games.

00:45:15 ◼   ► I think they just put Vampire Survivors right on, on Apple Arcade, which is also a game,

00:45:20 ◼   ► which is like a couple of year ago, game of the year contender.

00:45:23 ◼   ► So like, I think there are people that still understand it.

00:45:25 ◼   ► And I think Apple Arcade goes in waves.

00:45:27 ◼   ► Like, do you remember like there was nothing for a while and then they were like, we're

00:45:31 ◼   ► remastering a bunch of, we're working with developers to remaster a bunch of classic

00:45:34 ◼   ► iPhone games.

00:45:35 ◼   ► And we were like, yeah, you know, like it was like, great.

00:45:38 ◼   ► Right.

00:45:39 ◼   ► And that was only a little while ago.

00:45:40 ◼   ► I think they go in these like waves of, of, of their focus.

00:45:44 ◼   ► I think that also Apple treat game developers the same as they treat all developers.

00:45:49 ◼   ► Like they're not interested in creating commercial partnerships.

00:45:52 ◼   ► I think Netflix is maybe more, right?

00:45:55 ◼   ► Like to go to what you're saying about like, they don't make art.

00:45:58 ◼   ► Also Netflix clearly have a push to do this because there is a, when they started this,

00:46:04 ◼   ► they believed that this would be good for their subscription revenue.

00:46:08 ◼   ► Several months ago, it was brought up on an earnings call that Netflix games is doing

00:46:12 ◼   ► nothing for them right now.

00:46:14 ◼   ► And it is purely losing money.

00:46:17 ◼   ► That is a concern point where like Netflix is going hard on this, but at some point they're

00:46:23 ◼   ► probably just going to stop same as Apple.

00:46:25 ◼   ► But as the catalogs, Netflix is catalog is in my opinion, superior.

00:46:35 ◼   ► And it is what Apple arcade should be.

00:46:38 ◼   ► Apple arcade should have all of these games.

00:46:40 ◼   ► The fact that a new monument value game is coming out and it's not an Apple arcade is

00:46:44 ◼   ► a significant failure on Apple's part.

00:46:47 ◼   ► Like significant failure on their part.

00:46:49 ◼   ► They should have this game.

00:46:50 ◼   ► Uh, it's wild to me that monument value one and two are going to be on Netflix when they're

00:46:55 ◼   ► also on Apple arcade.

00:46:57 ◼   ► Uh, so I think that shows that the, the deals that were done for the remasters were different

00:47:03 ◼   ► to the deals that we'd heard about from the original.

00:47:05 ◼   ► Cause originally with Apple arcade, you couldn't be on any other subscription service that

00:47:10 ◼   ► was on mobile.

00:47:11 ◼   ► Yeah, they were exclusive.

00:47:13 ◼   ► So clearly whatever plus games that they came out with, uh, they have different terms.

00:47:21 ◼   ► They must have different terms.

00:47:22 ◼   ► Um, my other thing is these reports that come out are interesting, but I always have this

00:47:26 ◼   ► thing of like, are these as people that Apple don't want?

00:47:31 ◼   ► Like I don't know if this is like indicative of all Apple arcade experiences, you know,

00:47:37 ◼   ► cause like we've heard this type of thing before and it's, you know, people get upset

00:47:42 ◼   ► maybe that Apple doesn't want their game anymore or is that game didn't do well for Apple because

00:47:47 ◼   ► there was a report a long time ago that like Apple was moving to games that grab your attention.

00:47:52 ◼   ► Do you remember that?

00:47:53 ◼   ► Like that they were moving to like attention games and we were like, Oh no.

00:47:57 ◼   ► But then they remastered monument value and ridiculous fishing.

00:47:59 ◼   ► So it's like, so maybe it wasn't the full story, but I have a lot of thoughts in this

00:48:02 ◼   ► and that was all of them.

00:48:04 ◼   ► Federico, I heard you're moving.

00:48:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:48:08 ◼   ► Moving back to Italy.

00:48:10 ◼   ► Congratulations.

00:48:11 ◼   ► Congrats.

00:48:12 ◼   ► Congrats.

00:48:13 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I am.

00:48:15 ◼   ► I've made a decision and I've been thinking about this for the past couple of weeks, but

00:48:21 ◼   ► I am, uh, slowly going to move from my app store.

00:48:28 ◼   ► It's just people get confused when I say Apple ID, just my app store account from US to Italy,

00:48:34 ◼   ► uh, really for a bunch of, uh, of, of, uh, uh, administrative reasons.

00:48:40 ◼   ► Um, uh, it was becoming a problem.

00:48:42 ◼   ► I've been using this US app store account.

00:48:46 ◼   ► It's not my iCloud.

00:48:47 ◼   ► My iCloud has always been in Italy.

00:48:49 ◼   ► Uh, but these apps are account I've been using since 2008, I believe it's got 16 years of

00:48:57 ◼   ► history.

00:48:58 ◼   ► Um, you know, the first apps I downloaded on the iPhone 3GS, I think were, or 3G, were

00:49:05 ◼   ► with that account.

00:49:07 ◼   ► Um, but there's over the past couple of years, especially as I started using family sharing

00:49:15 ◼   ► with the family, we have run into so many situations where, um, the problem was not

00:49:21 ◼   ► anymore US app store exclusivity for certain apps, but Italian specific apps.

00:49:30 ◼   ► Um, I started using the US app store back in the day for the opposite reason.

00:49:36 ◼   ► When I started Mac Stories, it used to be pretty common practice for certain apps to

00:49:41 ◼   ► only be available in the US.

00:49:44 ◼   ► Uh, you remember like Mailbox, for example, I believe for a while initially was like US

00:49:49 ◼   ► only with the queue.

00:49:50 ◼   ► Like, it was very common back in the day, back in the early app store days, to see US

00:49:55 ◼   ► only releases.

00:49:56 ◼   ► Um, over time, or the past, I mean, it's been a long time, 16 years, and things have changed

00:50:02 ◼   ► to the point where now apps are usually global, and there's, because Italy is a small country,

00:50:10 ◼   ► it's much more common for me to run into an app that is only available on the Italian

00:50:15 ◼   ► app store.

00:50:16 ◼   ► Like so many times over the past few years, I've gone to a restaurant, and the restaurant

00:50:20 ◼   ► had an app, or like a beach resort had an app, and I clicked on the link, and it was

00:50:26 ◼   ► not available on the US app store.

00:50:28 ◼   ► And so, I really got tired of having this problem over the years, and it's not just

00:50:34 ◼   ► me, but also Silvia, my mom, we're all part of the same family sharing group, and every

00:50:41 ◼   ► single time I would have to do the whole dance of like switch out of the US app store, log

00:50:46 ◼   ► in with the secondary Italian Apple ID, download the app you need, and then switch back out

00:50:50 ◼   ► again.

00:50:51 ◼   ► Um, so yeah, that was the primary motivation for like doing this.

00:50:57 ◼   ► But I want to clarify, I am not migrating that app store account.

00:51:03 ◼   ► I am keeping the US app store account for historical reasons, and also for the occasional

00:51:10 ◼   ► app that I still need from the US app store, like I don't know, some TV networks app that

00:51:18 ◼   ► I need that is not available in Italy.

00:51:22 ◼   ► This means, of course, a couple of things.

00:51:24 ◼   ► That I had to cancel all of my app store subscriptions, to sign up again for the apps that I want

00:51:32 ◼   ► to use using the Italian app store account.

00:51:36 ◼   ► It means that I had to re-sign up and ask developers over the past week to re-add me

00:51:45 ◼   ► to their test flight betas with the Italian email that I'm using.

00:51:52 ◼   ► Well, Italian, not email, like different email for the Italian app store account that I'm

00:51:57 ◼   ► using.

00:51:58 ◼   ► It also means that now my iPhone is officially European.

00:52:03 ◼   ► You had to buy apps again too, right?

00:52:07 ◼   ► Like any apps again?

00:52:08 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:52:09 ◼   ► Okay, I was just checking.

00:52:10 ◼   ► I wasn't sure if you'd found some kind of like...

00:52:11 ◼   ► Yeah, developers, I'm just out here supporting you twice.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Apple's getting 60%, you know?

00:52:18 ◼   ► Yeah, you know?

00:52:20 ◼   ► You know?

00:52:22 ◼   ► The iPhone is now always European.

00:52:24 ◼   ► So because now I'm not in that weird scenario where I'm in Italy, but also using a US app

00:52:30 ◼   ► store account, therefore I cannot install third party marketplaces, now I can do whatever

00:52:35 ◼   ► I want.

00:52:36 ◼   ► The Epic Game Store came out, Fortnite came out, I could just install it.

00:52:40 ◼   ► Because now my phone is always European.

00:52:43 ◼   ► By the same token, the phone is always European.

00:52:47 ◼   ► So even if I'm on 18.1 with the phone set to US English, I cannot use Apple intelligence

00:52:55 ◼   ► anymore.

00:52:56 ◼   ► Not that I particularly care about it, because I was basically never using it.

00:52:59 ◼   ► But that's something that happened.

00:53:01 ◼   ► Yet.

00:53:02 ◼   ► Yet.

00:53:03 ◼   ► It'll come eventually.

00:53:05 ◼   ► There's still stuff to come, and there's going to be different things that are going to add,

00:53:09 ◼   ► but so far you didn't really find it interesting.

00:53:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:13 ◼   ► So yeah, it's going to take a while.

00:53:20 ◼   ► The way I've been doing this, very simple strategy really.

00:53:26 ◼   ► Once a day, or every couple of days, I check for updates on the app store.

00:53:32 ◼   ► I have always had automatic updates disabled on my phone.

00:53:36 ◼   ► I mean, they don't really work anyways.

00:53:38 ◼   ► They don't really work anyways, and this is something that I used to do back in the day.

00:53:41 ◼   ► Check for updates, see if there's anything new.

00:53:44 ◼   ► It's something that I still do on a regular basis, and so whenever I see an update, what

00:53:48 ◼   ► I do is, if I know that that app is still coming from the old app store account, I delete

00:53:55 ◼   ► the app from the update screen, and I immediately redownload it from the search page.

00:54:01 ◼   ► So I'm doing this in batches of, I don't know, three or four apps, and it's much more manageable.

00:54:07 ◼   ► You can still, like you said, the US apps that you want to keep, you would just, when

00:54:14 ◼   ► you do the update, you just have to put your old password in, right?

00:54:17 ◼   ► And then you can update those.

00:54:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I think you have to do it the first time, and then iOS actually remembers that,

00:54:24 ◼   ► so it's not even a huge problem.

00:54:25 ◼   ► Okay, so you can still keep the stuff that you want to keep, but you're just, you're

00:54:29 ◼   ► in the movement.

00:54:30 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah, like Paramount Plus, for example, which I'm paying for at the moment,

00:54:33 ◼   ► via the US account.

00:54:36 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the sort of thing that I'm keeping.

00:54:41 ◼   ► What was that, Paramount Plus and something else that I'm keeping?

00:54:45 ◼   ► Yeah, it's easy enough to do, and it's going to take a while.

00:54:50 ◼   ► Obviously, in the process, you also lose your Apple Music library, but yeah, there's tools

00:55:02 ◼   ► to migrate that using the Mac, so I'll get to it eventually.

00:55:07 ◼   ► Well, good luck.

00:55:10 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:55:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it really highlights how complicated the Apple account system is.

00:55:17 ◼   ► It doesn't need to be this way.

00:55:20 ◼   ► I'm in the boat of a lot of people.

00:55:21 ◼   ► I have sort of a classic Apple ID for purchasing, and it's now in my shared family thing, but

00:55:28 ◼   ► a bunch of purchases are tied to that, and it's like, I don't know what to do about that.

00:55:34 ◼   ► It's just going to be that way forever.

00:55:35 ◼   ► I still sign in for media and purchases as that old Apple ID, and maybe I could do it

00:55:41 ◼   ► another way, but I'm so afraid of breaking everything, I just leave it alone, and maybe

00:55:47 ◼   ► one day it'll make more sense.

00:55:50 ◼   ► Just like they should just let you, once every two years, just move it, because people that

00:55:58 ◼   ► move country, this is something that they have to do, and then they just lose everything.

00:56:04 ◼   ► Well, no, you can switch the country from one to another.

00:56:11 ◼   ► No, but if you like switch banks and stuff, right?

00:56:15 ◼   ► They're like, all right, I've moved now, so I don't want an American bank account anymore.

00:56:20 ◼   ► I want a British bank account.

00:56:22 ◼   ► What you have to do is create a new Apple ID, which is wild to me.

00:56:28 ◼   ► They should just let you do a little transfer and just move all the licenses over.

00:56:32 ◼   ► They own it all, right?

00:56:33 ◼   ► Especially the apps.

00:56:35 ◼   ► I understand TV and music, fine, whatever, right?

00:56:38 ◼   ► That's more complicated, but the app stuff, just let people move it.

00:56:42 ◼   ► Just don't move it.

00:56:44 ◼   ► What do I know?

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00:58:13 ◼   ► It seems like iOS 18 Beta 7 could be the final beta or getting close to a release candidate.

00:58:22 ◼   ► Maybe it is the release candidate.

00:58:23 ◼   ► Nobody knows.

00:58:25 ◼   ► But it seemed like a good time to do, maybe for the last time, iOS 18 Beta vibe check.

00:58:32 ◼   ► So we've all been running it for a while.

00:58:34 ◼   ► And Federico, how's it going?

00:58:39 ◼   ► I'm actually, sorry, writing my iOS 18 review.

00:58:42 ◼   ► So this has been on my mind, sort of collecting all my thoughts finally.

00:58:49 ◼   ► I briefly tried Apple intelligence before switching App Store accounts.

00:58:57 ◼   ► I continue to be...

00:58:59 ◼   ► In my notes, I had repulsed as a word.

00:59:02 ◼   ► Maybe that's too strong.

00:59:04 ◼   ► I really did not like the writing tools feature.

00:59:11 ◼   ► I know.

00:59:12 ◼   ► And this is not like...

00:59:14 ◼   ► It is a principle thing, but it's not even just a principle thing.

00:59:17 ◼   ► I am never, ever going to use writing tools or the image stuff whenever it comes out.

00:59:25 ◼   ► It really just...

00:59:27 ◼   ► It does repulse me, I guess.

00:59:30 ◼   ► Just the idea of letting this thing change my output or make images for me.

00:59:39 ◼   ► Control center is great.

00:59:42 ◼   ► Possibly my favorite feature of iOS 18.

00:59:44 ◼   ► It's pretty good.

00:59:45 ◼   ► I really, really like the fact.

00:59:46 ◼   ► It's pretty good.

00:59:48 ◼   ► However, rearranging those tiles, those buttons is...

00:59:54 ◼   ► Somehow, somehow they have managed to make that dragging around worse than the home screen.

01:00:05 ◼   ► They have had 17 years to get the home screen to a semi-functional state.

01:00:13 ◼   ► It's like they didn't learn anything with rearranging control center.

01:00:17 ◼   ► Good luck rearranging control center in iOS 18.

01:00:22 ◼   ► Maybe they're like, "Oh, well, we gave you free placement on the home screen, so we're

01:00:27 ◼   ► going to make it tough somewhere."

01:00:29 ◼   ► But at what cost?

01:00:31 ◼   ► We can't make it easy everywhere.

01:00:33 ◼   ► Are you kidding?

01:00:36 ◼   ► You got to work for it somewhere.

01:00:38 ◼   ► There's a fun thing where sometimes the control you're moving just disappears, and sometimes

01:00:45 ◼   ► it's spawned onto a new control center page.

01:00:48 ◼   ► But sometimes it just disappears, and then when you exit the editing, it just appears

01:00:52 ◼   ► somewhere, and it's pushed everything else out of the way.

01:00:55 ◼   ► It's super weird.

01:00:57 ◼   ► And I'm on 18.1 on my carry phone, so I haven't played with 18.0 beta seven that much yet,

01:01:06 ◼   ► but it's weird.

01:01:09 ◼   ► But I agree with you.

01:01:10 ◼   ► The control center stuff is surprisingly interesting, and we'll have a link to a screenshot in the

01:01:16 ◼   ► show notes.

01:01:17 ◼   ► I've built a homekit page with my most used scenes and accessories, and I love it.

01:01:25 ◼   ► It is my favorite way and the fastest way to interact with homekit stuff now.

01:01:30 ◼   ► And it took a while.

01:01:31 ◼   ► I think I texted you.

01:01:32 ◼   ► I was like, "22 hours later, this is finished," because things kept moving around.

01:01:37 ◼   ► But it's really compelling, and I'm excited to see what third-party developers will do

01:01:41 ◼   ► with it.

01:01:43 ◼   ► And I love that when you create basically your homekit page, you can just put as many

01:01:48 ◼   ► single widgets or a big widget, or you can have Apple choose for you, or you can set

01:01:53 ◼   ► up manually or whatever.

01:01:54 ◼   ► The iOS kind of denotes that as the little homekit icon and the little selector on the

01:01:59 ◼   ► side.

01:02:00 ◼   ► I think that's a really nice touch.

01:02:02 ◼   ► I could have imagined a scenario where it's like, if you use the one we made for you,

01:02:07 ◼   ► it will be like this.

01:02:08 ◼   ► But if you make your own one, it's just going to get that little dot or whatever.

01:02:11 ◼   ► I think it's really cool.

01:02:13 ◼   ► I like it a lot.

01:02:14 ◼   ► Someone on the Discord said, "Apparently the screen mirroring button just keeps how multiplying."

01:02:19 ◼   ► I didn't have it.

01:02:20 ◼   ► Yes.

01:02:21 ◼   ► Then there were one, and now there are two.

01:02:22 ◼   ► I had four.

01:02:23 ◼   ► I had four this morning.

01:02:25 ◼   ► Yes.

01:02:26 ◼   ► It's mirroring.

01:02:27 ◼   ► It's still what it's supposed to do.

01:02:29 ◼   ► I was thinking with this multi-page control center, this is something that I will explore

01:02:33 ◼   ► in my review.

01:02:34 ◼   ► It's not the first time Apple has tried a multi-page control center.

01:02:38 ◼   ► Last time it was back in the days of iOS 10.

01:02:42 ◼   ► This is obviously different.

01:02:43 ◼   ► I was thinking because you move vertically between pages, right?

01:02:49 ◼   ► It's nice in that if you swipe down from the top right, and if you keep swiping, you can

01:02:54 ◼   ► immediately go to one of the secondary pages.

01:02:57 ◼   ► Wouldn't it be nice if that...

01:03:00 ◼   ► Probably never going to happen, right?

01:03:01 ◼   ► But that new physical button that they're adding to the iPhone this year, wouldn't it

01:03:06 ◼   ► be nice if you could also swipe on that button to quickly open control center?

01:03:11 ◼   ► That's always a good thing on Android phones that have the fingerprint sensor in the button.

01:03:16 ◼   ► You can swipe it up and down.

01:03:20 ◼   ► Something that's weird to me...

01:03:21 ◼   ► I would love that.

01:03:22 ◼   ► Something that's weird to me is you can't rearrange the pages, right?

01:03:25 ◼   ► But you can delete them and recreate them in any order that you want to, which is really...

01:03:32 ◼   ► I got really weird detail.

01:03:34 ◼   ► It's like, no, you can't drag the HomeKit one above the telecommunications one, but

01:03:40 ◼   ► what you can do is delete the telecommunications one and then just make another one.

01:03:44 ◼   ► And so it's like, yo, if you were at like five pages deep, you decide you want to change

01:03:48 ◼   ► them around.

01:03:49 ◼   ► Well, start again, son.

01:03:51 ◼   ► Have a good time.

01:03:53 ◼   ► I do wish...

01:03:54 ◼   ► I cannot believe I'm going to say this.

01:03:56 ◼   ► Do you remember the feature?

01:03:57 ◼   ► I don't think I ever went anywhere where you could like share your Apple watch face with

01:04:02 ◼   ► somebody.

01:04:03 ◼   ► It was going to be big on social.

01:04:06 ◼   ► I kind of want that for control center.

01:04:09 ◼   ► So I could like, hey, look what I built and here are the apps I'm using.

01:04:12 ◼   ► But also like I would like just to send Mary my HomeKit control center page because it's

01:04:18 ◼   ► all the stuff in our house and I think she would find it useful.

01:04:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:22 ◼   ► And also, I mean, if you have more than one device.

01:04:24 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:04:25 ◼   ► Or sync them.

01:04:26 ◼   ► On my iPad, I need to redo the whole thing.

01:04:29 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:04:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:31 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:04:32 ◼   ► So I will probably build her one when she's on iOS 18 at some point this fall, but syncing

01:04:37 ◼   ► or sharing or something feels like a good next step in this area.

01:04:41 ◼   ► It's like whenever I see stuff like this, I'm reminded about how the Apple TV syncs

01:04:46 ◼   ► all your apps.

01:04:47 ◼   ► I know.

01:04:48 ◼   ► It's just like, why is that only on the Apple TV?

01:04:51 ◼   ► Let me do it in other places.

01:04:53 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:04:56 ◼   ► I still don't like the tinted icons and it's not just that I dislike the tinting, although

01:05:05 ◼   ► like it seems very difficult to come up with something that looks good.

01:05:09 ◼   ► Maybe I'm not enough of an artist to do it.

01:05:13 ◼   ► What I dislike is that you cannot do the tinting on a per icon basis.

01:05:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:05:19 ◼   ► It's the whole affair all at once and I would have preferred to do like, oh, in this corner

01:05:24 ◼   ► of the screen, I'm going to do my pink icons and in this other corner, I'm going to do

01:05:28 ◼   ► my green ones.

01:05:30 ◼   ► It's all or nothing and that I don't like.

01:05:34 ◼   ► I don't know what happened with the Safari menu.

01:05:43 ◼   ► The new...

01:05:44 ◼   ► It's weird.

01:05:46 ◼   ► So they have, so on the iPhone, I believe it's the same on the iPad and possibly even

01:05:53 ◼   ► worse on the Mac.

01:05:54 ◼   ► John was telling me.

01:05:56 ◼   ► So they have this new menu button that now contains both like some top level options,

01:06:06 ◼   ► like content blockers and translations and some extensions.

01:06:12 ◼   ► But then if you like, there's multiple layers of like, there's another sub menu called the

01:06:18 ◼   ► page menu that has a lot more options.

01:06:23 ◼   ► And it's like, I get what they're doing.

01:06:26 ◼   ► Like they have a single menu with like the most frequently used options and then everything

01:06:31 ◼   ► else in a secondary screen.

01:06:34 ◼   ► But I don't know.

01:06:35 ◼   ► It looks confusing.

01:06:37 ◼   ► And I think what's not helping is that especially the page menu, everything looks the same because

01:06:43 ◼   ► it's like a giant list view, like a plain table view of like dozens of options on the

01:06:50 ◼   ► same page with these monochrome icons.

01:06:54 ◼   ► It feels like I can never find what I'm looking for in this Safari menu now.

01:07:01 ◼   ► It's very difficult to visually parse, sort of like the share sheet, like the bottom of

01:07:06 ◼   ► the share sheet.

01:07:07 ◼   ► Everything is black and white and it feels like I'm reading these labels for several

01:07:12 ◼   ► seconds before finding what I'm looking for.

01:07:17 ◼   ► I love the Photos app.

01:07:20 ◼   ► I think as we've spoken about this before, the new design is really working for me, even

01:07:24 ◼   ► though they have sort of walked back some of their initial changes.

01:07:30 ◼   ► I keep saying like, I still think the carousel was a good idea that they have removed.

01:07:39 ◼   ► The separation of recent days and the people and pets, the pin collections, the customization,

01:07:47 ◼   ► everything is really working for me here.

01:07:49 ◼   ► And I think at least for me personally and the way I use Photos, it's a very successful

01:07:54 ◼   ► redesign in terms of like, I can still browse my library, but also I can tweak it to my

01:07:59 ◼   ► own liking and I can browse by days and I can get highlights from trips and memories

01:08:05 ◼   ► more easily than before.

01:08:09 ◼   ► I think they've done a good job.

01:08:13 ◼   ► And lastly in my list of thoughts, much love to notes and reminders.

01:08:18 ◼   ► I feel like those teams at Apple keep...

01:08:22 ◼   ► Notes and reminders are like the kind of Apple that I like to see instead of Apple intelligence.

01:08:32 ◼   ► If I could, I would put these people in charge.

01:08:36 ◼   ► Notes is getting a bunch of really good features this year, like collapsible sections, text

01:08:42 ◼   ► highlights, a way to turn plain URLs into rich links, math notes, voice recordings,

01:08:52 ◼   ► call transcriptions.

01:08:54 ◼   ► It's an incredible tool.

01:08:56 ◼   ► And obviously reminders, it's getting the subtasks that you can see in every list and

01:09:05 ◼   ► just the ease of capture of reminders and the real-time sync of reminders on every Apple

01:09:11 ◼   ► device.

01:09:12 ◼   ► It's still unmatched by other task managers.

01:09:16 ◼   ► And so, yeah, just much love in general to notes and reminders.

01:09:21 ◼   ► Every year they keep getting better.

01:09:22 ◼   ► And so, yeah.

01:09:23 ◼   ► Weren't you just using things?

01:09:26 ◼   ► Like five seconds ago?

01:09:27 ◼   ► I switched back to...

01:09:28 ◼   ► So, no.

01:09:29 ◼   ► So it was three months ago in June and things broke in the first iOS 18 beta, like all my

01:09:35 ◼   ► shortcuts were not working.

01:09:38 ◼   ► And so I was like, "Well, I need a task manager.

01:09:39 ◼   ► I'm going to use reminders and I'm going to switch back to things eventually."

01:09:43 ◼   ► And then I started using reminders again.

01:09:44 ◼   ► I was like, "Well, actually this is pretty good."

01:09:49 ◼   ► So the transition happened because of a bug and then I stayed because I liked it.

01:09:57 ◼   ► But I basically set it up like things.

01:09:58 ◼   ► Like all my shortcuts, I swapped the things actions with the reminders ones.

01:10:04 ◼   ► And I'm still using the same setup just in a different app that has a much better serial

01:10:10 ◼   ► integration because first party advantage and whatever.

01:10:17 ◼   ► The EU is going to come for your task manager.

01:10:18 ◼   ► Look out.

01:10:19 ◼   ► Eventually.

01:10:20 ◼   ► What about you, Mike?

01:10:22 ◼   ► I mean, a lot of my thoughts don't massively diverge from Federico.

01:10:29 ◼   ► Like the iContent thing is just not for me and that's fine, but it's just not for me.

01:10:35 ◼   ► I think it's great that the home screen placement thing exists, but is at the moment as I thought,

01:10:41 ◼   ► I don't have it on my phone.

01:10:43 ◼   ► I'm only using this on my iPad.

01:10:47 ◼   ► And I think it's going to be the same thing on my phone though.

01:10:51 ◼   ► I don't currently have a desire to move, like have space on my home screens, but like maybe

01:10:56 ◼   ► that will change in the future and it will be great when I want to do that.

01:11:01 ◼   ► And control center, I like photos.

01:11:03 ◼   ► I really like the only thing that I wanted to add is just I think that emoji tap backs

01:11:07 ◼   ► are great and the text effects are good fun.

01:11:09 ◼   ► Yeah, it is a lot of fun to have just one word in your message, you know, be bubbly

01:11:15 ◼   ► or zoom in and out.

01:11:17 ◼   ► I think those are all nicely done.

01:11:19 ◼   ► It doesn't make me wish Apple would revisit the full screen effects because those have

01:11:22 ◼   ► been unchanged for about a hundred years now.

01:11:25 ◼   ► Maybe, maybe next year.

01:11:28 ◼   ► I talked about control center, being that I have embraced light mode in the day, dark

01:11:35 ◼   ► mode at night lifestyle.

01:11:39 ◼   ► I was, I've been basically all dark mode on my iPhone since it came out and I don't like

01:11:45 ◼   ► dark mode anywhere else, just on the phone, but I've switched to this at some point and

01:11:50 ◼   ► really like it and I've embraced automatic icons.

01:11:55 ◼   ► So light mode icons during the day, dark mode icons and widgets at night.

01:12:01 ◼   ► Not all apps support this yet, right?

01:12:03 ◼   ► So like some of my apps like blindly bright, but they'll get there, right?

01:12:06 ◼   ► Still in beta and I'm not on test flights for everything I use.

01:12:08 ◼   ► So one day that will happen.

01:12:11 ◼   ► I'm using the small mode.

01:12:13 ◼   ► I really tried large mode for several weeks and I liked that it doesn't show the text

01:12:20 ◼   ► labels, but the size is just too big for me and they're too close together.

01:12:26 ◼   ► Something about it just feels a bit cramped for my liking on the phone.

01:12:31 ◼   ► I will say on the iPad, I like the icons bigger.

01:12:37 ◼   ► I think that makes sense there, but I agree with you on the tinting.

01:12:41 ◼   ► The tinting is weird.

01:12:43 ◼   ► I think it's really hard to get something that looks nice, but the thing that turns

01:12:47 ◼   ► me off is exactly the same as you Federico is I can't find anything like everything looks

01:12:52 ◼   ► the same and and so it is a no tinting over here.

01:13:00 ◼   ► Do we generally think this is ready for release?

01:13:02 ◼   ► I mean, if these are right, this is about done.

01:13:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:13:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:13:08 ◼   ► I think it is ready.

01:13:10 ◼   ► I think it's going to be.

01:13:12 ◼   ► How do you explain, I guess, I guess.

01:13:14 ◼   ► How do you sum up IOS 18 to people in your real life?

01:13:19 ◼   ► You can tint the home screen and put apps wherever you want.

01:13:22 ◼   ► Tint the home screen, put apps wherever you want, control center you can customize.

01:13:25 ◼   ► I think this is how I would sum it up, which is perfectly fine.

01:13:29 ◼   ► Have an overly ambitious animation when you turn the flashlight on on your phone.

01:13:35 ◼   ► That's the thing most people will notice is that is so unnecessary, but it's I haven't

01:13:40 ◼   ► seen it yet.

01:13:41 ◼   ► Like on my own phone.

01:13:44 ◼   ► It's wild.

01:13:45 ◼   ► You need to solve the beta for that.

01:13:46 ◼   ► Yeah, it's just it's it's it's simulating this cone of light in the dynamic islands

01:13:53 ◼   ► like this is so unnecessary, but like, oh, now I feel like I'm I'm an explorer, you know,

01:13:59 ◼   ► into a dark cave with my iPhone flashlight.

01:14:03 ◼   ► I feel so fancy and it's just.

01:14:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it generally feels ready.

01:14:10 ◼   ► I mean, I think there are still some some bugs to work out here and there, but 18.0 is not

01:14:17 ◼   ► it's not the one right.

01:14:18 ◼   ► It's it's not the feature release that 18.1 will be, at least in places that have Apple

01:14:24 ◼   ► intelligence.

01:14:25 ◼   ► And so I don't know how long 18.0 will be in the world as it is.

01:14:29 ◼   ► All right.

01:14:30 ◼   ► We've talked a lot about this.

01:14:32 ◼   ► We're not clear how long this will be around before 18.1 is ready.

01:14:38 ◼   ► So we don't know, but it's the biggest example I think we've had yet of not everything is

01:14:44 ◼   ► available on day one.

01:14:46 ◼   ► And that does put a bit of a damper on things like you said, talking about your review,

01:14:51 ◼   ► like there's just not a lot here.

01:14:53 ◼   ► But I think what is there in terms of customization?

01:14:57 ◼   ► People are really going to dig and they'll, you know, find the other stuff over time.

01:15:04 ◼   ► I mean like just stuff like the mail sorting is not there's so much stuff that is not there.

01:15:13 ◼   ► That is not Apple intelligence, just like stuff.

01:15:16 ◼   ► The sorting is is Apple intelligence.

01:15:19 ◼   ► No it isn't.

01:15:22 ◼   ► Priority not priority is and yeah, but that's just machine learning.

01:15:26 ◼   ► It's not.

01:15:27 ◼   ► Well, they, well, I mean this term, they tied it in the keynote, I think to Apple intelligence.

01:15:33 ◼   ► It's not an 18.1 beta either.

01:15:35 ◼   ► So it's, it's down the road.

01:15:37 ◼   ► Yeah, but I don't think it is.

01:15:39 ◼   ► I know, I know what you're saying.

01:15:41 ◼   ► I'm going to check it right now, but I don't believe it also doesn't matter because all

01:15:45 ◼   ► Apple intelligence is just a brand name over a bunch of features that aren't really related.

01:15:50 ◼   ► And I can tell you that when in particular I will never enable like I never want a mail

01:15:54 ◼   ► message, a mail application to sort my messages for me.

01:15:57 ◼   ► But I got, I got same box for that.

01:16:01 ◼   ► Mail is not the mail sorting is not part of Apple intelligence.

01:16:03 ◼   ► Okay.

01:16:04 ◼   ► Well it's not even in 0.1 so who knows when that will show up.

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01:17:38 ◼   ► >> Last week we spoke about Apple and Patreon.

01:17:42 ◼   ► I thought we had a good discussion.

01:17:43 ◼   ► I was very happy with it on reflection.

01:17:45 ◼   ► I think we did a good job of expressing our thoughts and feelings.

01:17:49 ◼   ► A friend of the show, Matt Burchler, wrote an article asking if we're in the slow decline

01:17:56 ◼   ► of the Apple cult.

01:17:58 ◼   ► Now for people who have not been around as long as the three of us, you may say cult,

01:18:02 ◼   ► that's a bit strong.

01:18:05 ◼   ► The idea of the cult of Mac, which is a website, but first it was a book, I think, was a book

01:18:11 ◼   ► first.

01:18:12 ◼   ► Anyway, they're around the same sort of time.

01:18:15 ◼   ► But that back in the day was very much that people who really loved the Mac were almost

01:18:21 ◼   ► cult like with Steve Jobs as our leader.

01:18:26 ◼   ► Where it was just an essence of this is a machine that had a smaller audience and especially

01:18:30 ◼   ► at some points didn't even look like it was going to survive, but the people that loved

01:18:34 ◼   ► the Mac, they really loved the Mac and they wanted to let you know about it.

01:18:38 ◼   ► And the book, the cult of Mac, features an entire section about the tattoos that people

01:18:42 ◼   ► have.

01:18:44 ◼   ► This is just the term that was used at the time, but I think is an interesting framing

01:18:48 ◼   ► of what Matt is talking about.

01:18:51 ◼   ► The idea that we're in this scenario now where the people that love Apple the most, us and

01:18:59 ◼   ► the people listening to this show and people that we're all interacting with and following

01:19:03 ◼   ► online are struggling to deal with their problematic fave, which is Apple.

01:19:12 ◼   ► Now, I'll read a couple of quotes from Matt's article.

01:19:15 ◼   ► "Over the past 20 years, Apple has grown immensely.

01:19:18 ◼   ► At first, it was fun and exciting to see the company that had been struggling, finally

01:19:21 ◼   ► showing everyone that they were legit.

01:19:23 ◼   ► But somewhere along the way, it stopped being as fun.

01:19:26 ◼   ► Record revenues and profits felt like a form of validation for us all for a while, but

01:19:30 ◼   ► today they feel less like something to cheer about.

01:19:33 ◼   ► Apple continues to make decisions that puts it at odds with the community that used to

01:19:37 ◼   ► tirelessly advocate for them."

01:19:39 ◼   ► And Federico linked to this on Mac Stories and referenced what we were talking about

01:19:44 ◼   ► in the last episode and the kind of phrase that you were using was the two Apples.

01:19:51 ◼   ► And it was what we were saying about like, you have this company, they make these great

01:19:54 ◼   ► products and we love to use them and they're really good and like the best in class and

01:19:58 ◼   ► we could never imagine using something else like when we were talking about the Pixel

01:20:01 ◼   ► Fold, for example.

01:20:03 ◼   ► But then at the same time, they're also this increasingly corporate company who seem to

01:20:11 ◼   ► be incredibly difficult to work with and want the money, money, money all the time.

01:20:17 ◼   ► And that can become complicated.

01:20:18 ◼   ► Money.

01:20:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:20 ◼   ► Money.

01:20:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:22 ◼   ► I feel like so this idea of it used to be fun to root for Apple, root for the underdog.

01:20:30 ◼   ► It's not as fun anymore when it's a multi-trillion dollar company.

01:20:35 ◼   ► I think a pretty easy way to understand it is ask yourself this question.

01:20:42 ◼   ► Do you see as many cars with an Apple sticker on them these days?

01:20:50 ◼   ► This article draws a line between that and how much money Apple makes.

01:20:56 ◼   ► And that's the wrong line to draw.

01:20:57 ◼   ► I think I disagree with that.

01:21:00 ◼   ► I disagree with that.

01:21:01 ◼   ► I think I think there's rightfully a natural distaste for billionaires, let alone trillion.

01:21:08 ◼   ► I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm not not saying that, but this is when I read this article, this

01:21:15 ◼   ► is what I thought of again.

01:21:16 ◼   ► Just my opinion.

01:21:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:18 ◼   ► You don't see stickers on Apple car on car.

01:21:20 ◼   ► You don't see stickers on Apple cars because they never made the Apple car.

01:21:22 ◼   ► You don't see Apple stickers on car.

01:21:24 ◼   ► You know, you don't see the t-shirts like there was a time, right?

01:21:27 ◼   ► Where being a Mac user because it was before the iPod and iPhone was weird and you were

01:21:32 ◼   ► like in a weird little group and then Steve Jobs came back and people were fans and we

01:21:38 ◼   ► saw the rise of Apple with the iPod and then the iPhone.

01:21:42 ◼   ► And well, I don't disagree with what you said.

01:21:45 ◼   ► I don't necessarily agree completely with what he wrote.

01:21:49 ◼   ► I think the bigger issue is not how much money Apple makes, but it's how some of that money

01:21:58 ◼   ► was made and how they behave because they have that money on their side.

01:22:04 ◼   ► That I think is the more interesting conclusion.

01:22:07 ◼   ► Like the chart of they make this much more money and like he labeled this up at the turn,

01:22:12 ◼   ► like that's only part of it.

01:22:14 ◼   ► And when I think about like the feelings that Apple fans used to have or what they have

01:22:20 ◼   ► now, I don't think that many people are actually upset that they've got, you know, whatever

01:22:24 ◼   ► it is, 150 trillion dollars in cash.

01:22:28 ◼   ► It's the how that that that money was scraped from 30% of all Patreon users and that they

01:22:34 ◼   ► use it to crush smaller companies.

01:22:37 ◼   ► I think he's saying that and I'm sure if he was here right now, he would make that argument

01:22:41 ◼   ► because he made like references specifically like developers and Patreon later on in the

01:22:45 ◼   ► article.

01:22:46 ◼   ► Like I see what you mean.

01:22:48 ◼   ► Like you could bristle at the thing of like the issue isn't that they have the money.

01:22:53 ◼   ► But I think that he draws the same conclusion that you've gotten to, Stephen, which is that

01:22:58 ◼   ► like it's the way in which the money is made, which is the problem that a lot of people

01:23:04 ◼   ► have because it is the problem that we increasingly have.

01:23:07 ◼   ► I think Matt is saying that and I think I agree with Stephen, like that is that is the

01:23:13 ◼   ► more interesting story for sure.

01:23:15 ◼   ► And I mean, if you ask me and this is going to sound totally uncool for all those, you

01:23:23 ◼   ► know, who think, yeah, yeah, you run a company, it's all profit based.

01:23:28 ◼   ► Like if it were up to me, a company that makes this much money for hardware, like they should

01:23:33 ◼   ► run the App Store for free.

01:23:35 ◼   ► If you ask me what I think, like it should totally be free and open because you make

01:23:39 ◼   ► so much money out of your services and your hardware, like just run the App Store for

01:23:44 ◼   ► free.

01:23:45 ◼   ► Like this is what I think and probably is my more socialist European point of view.

01:23:52 ◼   ► I mean, your phone moved to Europe, you know, you're just you're just you're all there.

01:23:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:23:57 ◼   ► So I think it's not just the money is the fact that you are now the biggest tech company

01:24:05 ◼   ► in the world or one of the biggest and how you behave with the money, you know.

01:24:13 ◼   ► And it's the thing is, it feels like these days with some of these decisions, you know,

01:24:20 ◼   ► taking the money out of Patreon.

01:24:21 ◼   ► I just saw, you know, Twitch is also raising their subscription prices, likely to, you

01:24:28 ◼   ► know, also deal with this 30 percent that they're still getting out of all these companies

01:24:34 ◼   ► and developers like it almost feel like at what point does it feels like you're punching

01:24:39 ◼   ► down?

01:24:40 ◼   ► Mm hmm.

01:24:41 ◼   ► I think a lot of people just stop at the money, like, oh, they have all this cash, so they're

01:24:45 ◼   ► not the underdog.

01:24:47 ◼   ► And the irony of that is that Apple learned lessons from when they were on the ropes right

01:24:55 ◼   ► 90 days away from bankruptcy, like the whole the whole legend.

01:24:59 ◼   ► Right.

01:25:01 ◼   ► And the problem is they haven't unlearned those lessons or they haven't learned new

01:25:04 ◼   ► ones in the years since.

01:25:06 ◼   ► And Apple, like what's so gross about it is that Apple still behaves like it's got to

01:25:12 ◼   ► scramble for every last dollar the way that they did have to do back in the day, you know,

01:25:17 ◼   ► 30 years ago.

01:25:19 ◼   ► And there's something about that that it's particularly unsettling as someone who has

01:25:24 ◼   ► followed them for a long time.

01:25:26 ◼   ► But the other part is unsettling about this is that there are people who get really wrapped

01:25:35 ◼   ► around the axle trying to defend the Apple of today like they are the Apple of 30 years

01:25:44 ◼   ► ago.

01:25:45 ◼   ► Right.

01:25:46 ◼   ► Like, well, it's of course, there should take this money or that money because of X or Y

01:25:52 ◼   ► reason.

01:25:53 ◼   ► And in federal case, like you said it perfectly and I don't disagree.

01:25:55 ◼   ► Like, you know, there's a case to be made that they should not take any money from the

01:25:59 ◼   ► App Store.

01:26:01 ◼   ► You know, take credit card processing fees and then move on.

01:26:04 ◼   ► Take three percent and move on.

01:26:05 ◼   ► Right.

01:26:06 ◼   ► Totally fair.

01:26:07 ◼   ► Totally fine.

01:26:08 ◼   ► And it's that's the part that kind of weirds me out.

01:26:11 ◼   ► And again, like the cult term, it is what it is.

01:26:14 ◼   ► It's a weird word.

01:26:15 ◼   ► Lots of baggage.

01:26:16 ◼   ► I understand that.

01:26:17 ◼   ► But when I see folks who are like trying to defend really the indefensible, that's where

01:26:23 ◼   ► I struggle to keep up and follow along.

01:26:27 ◼   ► And like, yeah, my feelings about this company have changed greatly over the, you know, 16

01:26:32 ◼   ► years I've been covering them.

01:26:34 ◼   ► And if you find yourself in the position where you instinctively defend any company or, you

01:26:42 ◼   ► know, any brand, then like maybe it is time to take a step back and look around and see

01:26:48 ◼   ► if if where things are today match where they were the last time you looked up and looked

01:26:53 ◼   ► around.

01:26:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:26:55 ◼   ► At the same time, here's the thing that I think makes this discussion fascinating and

01:27:05 ◼   ► interesting at the same time.

01:27:08 ◼   ► I still really, almost fundamentally, really like what this company makes.

01:27:19 ◼   ► Here's the thing.

01:27:20 ◼   ► Like they make the best computer and phones in the world.

01:27:22 ◼   ► They really do.

01:27:24 ◼   ► They make the best earbuds.

01:27:25 ◼   ► They they make the best tablet.

01:27:28 ◼   ► Like the software.

01:27:30 ◼   ► I mean, it's a iOS.

01:27:32 ◼   ► And I mean, for all its problems, iPadOS, it's still so they're both still so pleasant

01:27:41 ◼   ► to use and they're tasteful and they they have taste.

01:27:45 ◼   ► They have visual and functional taste.

01:27:49 ◼   ► So how I guess the question becomes, how do you reconcile for the same company feeling

01:27:55 ◼   ► about certain things a certain way and for other things being a fan?

01:28:04 ◼   ► Can you can you separate those two?

01:28:07 ◼   ► Should you?

01:28:08 ◼   ► And I feel like I feel like it's fine as long as you're mindful of what's happening and

01:28:17 ◼   ► as long as you're making an informed decision, like, for example, this whole story and this

01:28:23 ◼   ► whole and it's been a process, right?

01:28:25 ◼   ► It's been ongoing for years.

01:28:28 ◼   ► And even if you even if you just start counting at the D when the DMA stuff began, like for

01:28:36 ◼   ► several months, this has been ongoing.

01:28:39 ◼   ► But one of the consequences for me personally, for me specifically, has been that this whole

01:28:45 ◼   ► saga has put a bad taste in my mouth for Apple services, just their services.

01:28:54 ◼   ► So my informed decision will be that whenever I can, I'm going to prefer using something

01:29:02 ◼   ► like Spotify or using, you know, signing up for Apple TV plus only when I really just

01:29:07 ◼   ► want to watch something, you know, that's for me has been one of the consequences.

01:29:13 ◼   ► But at the same time, I'm going to use those services from other companies on an iPhone

01:29:18 ◼   ► because I still prefer it because I like iOS.

01:29:22 ◼   ► And and this has been like for me, I've been covering this stuff for 50, more than 15 years.

01:29:28 ◼   ► This is a massive change, like treating the iPhone as like just the platform instead of

01:29:36 ◼   ► like the whole package, you know, like, oh, it's just all Apple stuff, all in all the

01:29:41 ◼   ► way.

01:29:42 ◼   ► And I'm like, no, it's the best phone for me.

01:29:45 ◼   ► It's a great phone, but it doesn't mean that I am necessarily locked into the whole Apple

01:29:50 ◼   ► ecosystem for services because I don't like what this company is doing for services.

01:29:54 ◼   ► And I dislike this idea of giving them even more of my money while they're also taking

01:30:00 ◼   ► money out of developers and creators.

01:30:03 ◼   ► Like I really dislike that.

01:30:04 ◼   ► And I think that's a healthy approach.

01:30:06 ◼   ► We can like what we like from this company and understand that other parts of it are

01:30:11 ◼   ► less likable.

01:30:12 ◼   ► Right.

01:30:13 ◼   ► Or, hey, these three products from them are great and class leading and really exciting.

01:30:18 ◼   ► And these other products, not so much.

01:30:21 ◼   ► Right.

01:30:22 ◼   ► There's there's nuance to be had in all those conversations.

01:30:25 ◼   ► And I think that's I think that's an important point.

01:30:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:30:31 ◼   ► And I don't know.

01:30:32 ◼   ► I also want to believe that.

01:30:34 ◼   ► I feel like there are people at Apple that have the same feelings toward their employer

01:30:43 ◼   ► these days.

01:30:46 ◼   ► And I feel like there are people at Apple who are generally obviously passionate and

01:30:50 ◼   ► they think they're doing the right thing.

01:30:54 ◼   ► And so I don't know.

01:30:56 ◼   ► It seems like a very difficult conversation to have about this topic right now.

01:31:03 ◼   ► But I don't know.

01:31:05 ◼   ► I feel like it's tricky to recognize that the same company can do something that you

01:31:14 ◼   ► fundamentally hate while at the same time making products that you fundamentally love.

01:31:21 ◼   ► And I don't know if there's enough.

01:31:25 ◼   ► Here's how I would wrap it up for me.

01:31:26 ◼   ► I don't know if there's any other community on the Internet that feels the same way and

01:31:34 ◼   ► has this kind of problem.

01:31:35 ◼   ► It feels like a pretty unique problem to have right now in 2024.

01:31:41 ◼   ► You know, with the public perception and the missteps that they have had in public over

01:31:48 ◼   ► the past few months.

01:31:49 ◼   ► It seems a very...

01:31:51 ◼   ► I don't think this is happening in Google and I don't think this is happening in Microsoft

01:31:56 ◼   ► land.

01:31:57 ◼   ► I mean, Microsoft doesn't even make a phone.

01:32:00 ◼   ► Microsoft sure has its moments.

01:32:01 ◼   ► A lot of the open A.I. stuff.

01:32:04 ◼   ► Yeah, but like this whole thing of like super fans of the company that used to be the underdog

01:32:09 ◼   ► and now it's not the underdog anymore.

01:32:10 ◼   ► Now sort of having this epiphany or having like this wake up moment of sorts.

01:32:17 ◼   ► The closest thing to prescribe it to is a content creator.

01:32:22 ◼   ► Like this kind of thing happens more in the communities of content creators, right?

01:32:27 ◼   ► Where it's like, oh no, we don't like the content creator anymore.

01:32:34 ◼   ► It's closer to that, right?

01:32:36 ◼   ► Because I mean, I think that most of us have a parasocial relationship with Apple, the

01:32:42 ◼   ► entity.

01:32:45 ◼   ► At least if you're upset about what's going on, like you care about them and feel like

01:32:50 ◼   ► that they should, like not the people, the brand, right?

01:32:54 ◼   ► That like you care about the brand and believe that the brand shouldn't be doing these things.

01:32:58 ◼   ► And one of the reasons I think it's easy to have that kind of relationship with Apple

01:33:01 ◼   ► is because they operate as an entity.

01:33:04 ◼   ► They don't operate as individuals.

01:33:06 ◼   ► You don't know who they are and they won't tell you, right?

01:33:09 ◼   ► And so like it's this...

01:33:13 ◼   ► I want to come back to something you said a minute ago, Federico.

01:33:15 ◼   ► And I don't want to...

01:33:16 ◼   ► I'm not like picking apart what you're saying because I think you came to a very good conclusion,

01:33:19 ◼   ► but like I want to jump back to a word that you used as a way for other people to think

01:33:23 ◼   ► about this kind of stuff and kind of where I'm starting to like land on it.

01:33:26 ◼   ► You said like, how do I reconcile this?

01:33:30 ◼   ► And I'm just not sure that we have to.

01:33:32 ◼   ► Like it's a company.

01:33:38 ◼   ► Companies are big and complicated and messy and they're made of people that are complicated

01:33:45 ◼   ► and messy and it's just like a lot of them.

01:33:48 ◼   ► I don't...

01:33:49 ◼   ► I think it is too difficult to only...

01:34:00 ◼   ► I think it is too difficult to ask of yourself to only engage with content or companies that

01:34:09 ◼   ► are good because it is inherently like really hard to get to that because you...

01:34:19 ◼   ► Like what are you judging that on?

01:34:22 ◼   ► I just think it's too complicated, right?

01:34:25 ◼   ► And it's even hard to talk about because it makes it sound like I'm like, "Cancel culture,

01:34:29 ◼   ► am I right?"

01:34:30 ◼   ► Which is not what I'm saying, but it sounds similar.

01:34:32 ◼   ► I just think it's like, you just got to be like, "I like my computer.

01:34:37 ◼   ► My computer's real good and I like my phone and my phone's real good and I don't have

01:34:43 ◼   ► to feel like I need to judge every decision about my phone because Apple's taken..."

01:34:52 ◼   ► You know what?

01:34:53 ◼   ► Like, they're different.

01:34:54 ◼   ► There's different things.

01:34:55 ◼   ► Like you don't have to reconcile them.

01:34:58 ◼   ► You can like one thing, you can not like another thing.

01:35:01 ◼   ► Just by liking one thing does not mean you condone the other thing, right?

01:35:05 ◼   ► We all have a movie that we like that features someone who's canceled.

01:35:10 ◼   ► Everybody has one.

01:35:12 ◼   ► If you say you don't, I don't believe you, right?

01:35:14 ◼   ► Because there are bad people all over the place, people that you would deem have done

01:35:19 ◼   ► things that are not good, right?

01:35:21 ◼   ► There are types of content that you have like really strong emotional feelings.

01:35:27 ◼   ► We all know what one I'm talking about.

01:35:28 ◼   ► You have really strong emotional feelings too, but you don't like the person who made

01:35:32 ◼   ► it anymore.

01:35:34 ◼   ► Things can even go back to one that's less problematic like Star Wars, right?

01:35:38 ◼   ► Everyone loves Star Wars growing up and then Star Wars got changed and wasn't so good anymore,

01:35:44 ◼   ► but people still love the Star Wars stuff even though like, I'm not really sure there's

01:35:48 ◼   ► been anything good Star Wars since like 1970.

01:35:53 ◼   ► Like we're still trying, you know, like we're still just going for it, you know?

01:35:57 ◼   ► Although I do actually really love The Mandalorian, but you know, it's just like, it's just, it's,

01:36:02 ◼   ► you know, I'm trying to get myself to this point now where it's like, just trying to

01:36:11 ◼   ► talk about things that I like and I just got to find my balance where I feel like I'm doing

01:36:17 ◼   ► the right thing, talking about the things that are important, but like we're really

01:36:21 ◼   ► getting bogged down in the legal documents, aren't we?

01:36:24 ◼   ► Right?

01:36:25 ◼   ► Like we're really like, we're in them.

01:36:28 ◼   ► You know, I've read more press releases from regulatory bodies in the last year than I

01:36:33 ◼   ► had in my previous 35 and I'm not really sure I want to do that, but like I feel like there's,

01:36:40 ◼   ► there's gotta be a balance.

01:36:41 ◼   ► I think that I personally have tipped too far, right?

01:36:47 ◼   ► And I want to try and rebalance that based on like how I actually feel as a person, like

01:36:53 ◼   ► in that I love my iPhone more than I care about the DMA.

01:36:59 ◼   ► Or at least for me to sort of remix what you just said, for me, I think the healthy approach

01:37:06 ◼   ► will be, I love my iPhone more than I should care for the ethics of Apple as a company.

01:37:14 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

01:37:16 ◼   ► Right?

01:37:17 ◼   ► And like, because it's full of other stuff, right?

01:37:20 ◼   ► Like what, now every app developer's got to suffer even more because like Apple's taking

01:37:27 ◼   ► money from Patreon?

01:37:28 ◼   ► Like that now, like, oh, we all got to abandon our iPhones?

01:37:31 ◼   ► Like, no, like we don't have to do that.

01:37:34 ◼   ► You just, you just got to find our balance here.

01:37:36 ◼   ► And I think that like where we are like right now, I feel like it's an inflection point.

01:37:42 ◼   ► Like we're coming to it and we can all make our decisions and all go in whatever direction

01:37:46 ◼   ► we want.

01:37:47 ◼   ► And I think that's happening.

01:37:49 ◼   ► I think Federico's hit his inflection point like two months ago and you're making new

01:37:53 ◼   ► decisions, right?

01:37:56 ◼   ► And like, and I think I'm hitting mine now and I'm going to make different ones.

01:38:00 ◼   ► Like not like different to Federico, but like different to anybody.

01:38:04 ◼   ► Like they're my decisions.

01:38:06 ◼   ► Like, and I think we've all, I think we're at a point now where like, got to maybe we're

01:38:12 ◼   ► starting over again.

01:38:13 ◼   ► And I think that that's actually like a real good point.

01:38:15 ◼   ► It's just like where technology is today.

01:38:17 ◼   ► Like it's all changing.

01:38:20 ◼   ► We are at a point where technology is changing and it's going to change significantly and

01:38:25 ◼   ► it's going to change fast.

01:38:27 ◼   ► So it's, it's a good time to be like, let's think about this.

01:38:32 ◼   ► So that's where I am.

01:38:36 ◼   ► If you want to find links to the stories we spoke about, look at some pictures of some

01:38:39 ◼   ► brown iPhones.

01:38:41 ◼   ► Go check them out in your podcast player.

01:38:43 ◼   ► They're also on the web at relay.fm/connected/515.

01:38:48 ◼   ► There you can submit feedback or follow up and you can also become a member and get connected

01:38:51 ◼   ► pro which is the longer ad free version of the show each and every week.

01:38:56 ◼   ► This week we gave a listener some tattoo advice.

01:38:59 ◼   ► So that's, that's a switch again this week.

01:39:01 ◼   ► Members also get access to our discord newsletter, some extra shows each month for members.

01:39:07 ◼   ► It's a lot of great stuff.

01:39:08 ◼   ► So go check that out.

01:39:10 ◼   ► If you want more of us, we're out hanging out on the web.

01:39:14 ◼   ► Mike hosts a bunch of other shows here on relay and of course works some excellent,

01:39:19 ◼   ► doing some excellent work at Cortex brand.

01:39:21 ◼   ► You want to announce like a cool secret new product just right here?

01:39:25 ◼   ► Nope.

01:39:26 ◼   ► Okay.

01:39:27 ◼   ► Nope.

01:39:28 ◼   ► I want to make sure I don't want it to pass, pass by, you know.

01:39:31 ◼   ► I appreciate, I appreciate you asking though.

01:39:34 ◼   ► Okay.

01:39:35 ◼   ► You know?

01:39:36 ◼   ► Okay.

01:39:37 ◼   ► I'm in Puerto Rico, uh, ever at max stories.net where he's the editor in chief.

01:39:41 ◼   ► I know everyone's heads are down working on Iris reviews for, it could be very soon.

01:39:46 ◼   ► It could be in a month.

01:39:48 ◼   ► Uh, so looking forward to that.

01:39:50 ◼   ► Yeah, no, it's, uh, you can find my writing, which is mostly about performance this day.

01:39:56 ◼   ► I'll admit over at five, 12 pixels.net.

01:39:59 ◼   ► And that, I mean, there's, they weren't problematic, you know, performance, you know, they're just

01:40:05 ◼   ► out there.

01:40:06 ◼   ► I mean, some of them were pretty bad.

01:40:07 ◼   ► Some of them are pretty bad computers.

01:40:09 ◼   ► Well, you know, just taking people's money, not being worth it.

01:40:14 ◼   ► It's pretty bad.

01:40:15 ◼   ► Some of them, uh, at least you got a lot of bundled software.

01:40:18 ◼   ► So you had that going for you.

01:40:20 ◼   ► Uh, you can, uh, you can find us on social media.

01:40:23 ◼   ► Federico is at Vatici.

01:40:24 ◼   ► You can find him.

01:40:25 ◼   ► Mike is I M Y K E and I am ISMH 86 and we're all on a, you know, threads, Instagram, Macedon.

01:40:32 ◼   ► Not not that other place.

01:40:33 ◼   ► Not anymore.

01:40:34 ◼   ► I'd like to thank our sponsors this week, NetSuite, Vitaly, ExpressVPN, and KRCS.

01:40:41 ◼   ► And until next time, guys say goodbye.